So a group of about 8 of us participated in the pre-turn stream tonight for a few hours, helping Noble get his bearing in game. Definitely a bit of a frustrating turn, not because of anything in-game, just because there's so much to start to keep track of when you've not been playing the turns. At least Noble was able to stream with video and audio successfully on his first try.
The turn isn't over yet, so no full report, but here are some issues that emerged:
*Most importantly,
Noble plans to stream the rest of the turn tomorrow when he gets home from work, around 9:00pm eastern. He should repost the stream link here then. I'll be afk from tomorrow evening through Sunday morning to take my daughter to an amusement park in PA, so I know any and all help in advance of and during the small window he'll have to play will be helpful.
*
City builds have been changed substantially, as shown by this updated F1 screen:
It's probably easiest to list the cities
not on cat or spy builds:
-->Mansa's Muse is continuing to build a bank, befitting its importance to our economy
-->Four German cities are building granaries and/or lighthouses: SplendidIsolate, Jack Frost, The X Factor, and Dom Dilemma
-->Eastern Dealers can't have its specialists whipped away and so is building a market
-->Horsefeathers is using its Heroic Epic to build a musket
-->Starfall is drafting its pop nearly every turn, and is building walls
-->and Ditchdigger is building wealth waiting for WPC to return stone to us
Speaking of Ditchdigger, he's a view into the city showing its overflow:
The plan for a while has been to wait for stone to be returned to us, build walls, and whip a castle. Noble raised the possibility of using the overflow now a unit, and getting overflow from that unit back onto walls. Inelegant considering the city has no barracks and a cat would be a 1pop whip, but something to consider.
Another city I was asked to flag was Let It Snow:
A cat whipped next turn here is useful. It can make it to the CFC front in plenty of time, or could contribute to the Apolyton stack depending on how far it penetrates into our territory before we engage it. However the courthouse is a straight 6 gold for 1pop and can be whipped immediately.
The general plan for all of the other cities is to slave the cats and spies in the queue next turn. If people object to some of these builds feel free to speak up. We have a little more time to decide whether to crack the whip next turn, and then a bit more time after that to discuss where the overflow should go.
*Starfall was
drafted but we need to decide on a full slate of 4 more cities to draft. Unfortunately we're going to have to stack draft anger at least somewhat - most German cities aren't near size 6 yet and it doesn't look like our enemies are going to wait for them to be. The nominees are Tree Huggers, Simple Life, Catherine, and our friend Let It Snow, but feel free to suggest other spots:
*With the
spies on hand and in the queue, we hope to get some visibility on the incoming enemy stacks. Depending on when Apolyton and Civplayers move in, we may or may not have warning, but especially in the southwest even 1 turn notice of where the stack is headed would be useful. One very useful action for our spies would be to pillage the border roads at The Gauntlet and Starfall. It would be great for anyone who is knowledge about the EP system to let us know if that's feasible. Otherwise I'll try to get a few minutes to look it up in Sullla's excellent EP summary he recently posted.
*Speaking of The Gauntlet, you can see a screenshot of the area in my earlier post. Should we begin
pillaging the roads from the area now?
*While nothing has really changed externally with out team, perhaps every little bit helps with Scooter's continual attempts to
find us some friends. I don't think it will swing things that much in our favor, but if the turnplayer switch or the new military builds (which our enemies will see next turn in earnest via civstats) can be used to chip into the axis of evil threatening us...well again perhaps every little bit helps.
*I'll leave this to Noble to request, but depending on how much discussion there is through the overnight and tomorrow morning (hopefully lots!), we could
request a pause due to a new turnplayer if it looks like we're going to have trouble finishing the turn on time. Hopefully though I can swap any needed builds and hit the draft buttons tomorrow on my lunch break, and so Noble will only need to move some units and handle the workers tomorrow.