[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

Re: J - I mean, it's actually a pretty scary decision. EJ is more defensible, for now. To be honest I think we're going to have to raze suttree's northernmost city and possibly plant a forward outpost if we want that river valley to be safe long-term. Do you guys think there will be some sort of window where we can do that quickly with horse archers or knights before he gets longbows or some such? Or do you think that would make him go berserk and commit us to a total war?

Well, I think if we can manage until Hastings pops borders our situation will be quite good. Hastings is on the hill, where bowmen are really in their element still for a good while and if suttree tries to advance towards "Jamestown" he'll have to go through many flat tiles within our borders. Consequently, after we get a border pop and have a reasonable zone defense force in the area (which can support the northern parts of the river valley as well) I will feel fairly comfortable about our borders. In the long term suttree's lands could of course be a nice addition to our little empire. For now, we have still too many locations that we can settle without open war so e.g. the era of knights, which you mentioned, could be a realistic time frame for our aggression. Well, it's really hard to say how the situation develops here and at our other fronts so who knows..

Although, if that horse tile is our only one then I have to agree with you Hydra and we might need to figure something out..

His city is 1S of the gems?

Yes, IIRC.

Re: Peace - Yeah, I agree we should seal off the area first.

Well, our settler is already so close that I would gladly accept a peace treaty if it were offered. I don't see any realistic scenarios how suttree could peacefully screw us.

[Old Harry]

Re: J - I mean, it's actually a pretty scary decision. EJ is more defensible, for now. To be honest I think we're going to have to raze suttree's northernmost city and possibly plant a forward outpost if we want that river valley to be safe long-term. Do you guys think there will be some sort of window where we can do that quickly with horse archers or knights before he gets longbows or some such? Or do you think that would make him go berserk and commit us to a total war?

If what we did already didn't make him berserk then we'll be alright. Of course I think it did and it's just going to be a while before he has enough axes to make good on that zerkness. Right now he's just waiting for us to let our guard down, but as long as we bear that in mind with everything we do we'll be fine. We have ten units in theater and my best guess is he has two chariots and 7 axes in his whole civ, some of which he needs on the Yurimack border. And with AGG, until he outnumbers us I don't think we need to worry.

Re: Peace - Yeah, I agree we should seal off the area first.

Well, our settler is already so close that I would gladly accept a peace treaty if it were offered. I don't see any realistic scenarios how suttree could peacefully screw us.

I forgot to check on J, so he could have moved a settler there last turn and settled this turn (civstats says he didn't) or moved there this turn and offered peace on the inter-turn. I'd be very suspicious if we log in to a peace offer tomorrow morning...

BTW, unless I see something scary with the scouting bowman next turn I probably won't pillage that road - I've come around to your thinking that allowing Suttree to get another promotion on a chariot wouldn't be good. Other than that I think we were all agreed on the rest of next turn!

The tile re-assignment sounds good too, I should really finish worker actions before doing the city micro. There are a few other places we can squeeze out some more hammers to make sure we finish Calender eot98, which gets Dunkirk the banana a turn earlier... Then we can run a lower slider to complete AH and then work out how to approach CoL. Is there anything else we need before embarking on a CoL-Philosophy beeline?

[Fintourist]

The tile re-assignment sounds good too, I should really finish worker actions before doing the city micro. There are a few other places we can squeeze out some more hammers to make sure we finish Calender eot98, which gets Dunkirk the banana a turn earlier...

Yeah, I did a short micro run and noticed that (although our sandbox is a bit of a mess at this point)(no critisism at all, it's totally awesome that we still have one where we can try stuff!!) Getting those bananas earlier on is of course helpful, but since it basically just means +2 food for one turn we should not sacrifice too much for getting it.

Couple of quiick points/questions that one should keep in mind during the next turns:
- What is the worker that just finished building the riverside cottage for Cannae going to do? (In the sandbox we got Calendar eot99, and I moved it SW and roaded the sugar, but I don't think that's such a good idea. Maybe road the tile where he currently stands so that we can build a road from Cannae to south for our settler
- Because we have so many Calendar resources, our workers will be totally overloaded during the turns 100-110 even though we are getting couple of new ones. We really do need to think, which cities need the most support and probably plan our micro so that we whip couple of pop points away (e.g. galley or another worker in BoP)
- In my micro run I switched Agincourt into settler immediately after the Calendar came in and double-whipped it a bit later. This was too fast, because our workers were still busy with bananas and stuff. Probably switching to a settler & slowbuilding it is the right approach and then we double-whip another settler a bit later in e.g. in BoP or Endor
- I'm also a bit unsure how to plan the worker micro near City I. We are going with granary first supported by 2 chops?

Then we can run a lower slider to complete AH and then work out how to approach CoL. Is there anything else we need before embarking on a CoL-Philosophy beeline?

Hmm.. MC for forges and workshops? Construction for cats?

However, I also like the idea of early Philosophy. Any chance we could bulb it? Let's tech AH-Alphabet-Mysticism-Meditation-(Priesthood)-CoL and bulb Philosophy? That is something we could think of. Alphabet actually has significant value in RBMod as it allows open borders and espionage is allowed as well. Accompanied with couple of map trades, we could boost our trade route income quite significantly. IIRC, Cannae has some GS points already so we need ~32 scientist turns. So let's say we start working scientists on T100 and produce a GS EOT 115. We would have ~17 turns time to get AH + the techs required for Philosophy bulb. Hmm.. I actually start to like this as this also reduces the immediate tile improvement need of our workers by couple of tiles

I have tomorrow a fairly busy day, but should have some time in the morning ang again more time later in the evening.

[Old Harry]

On my phone

The worker could road the plains and farm tiles.

I like the sound of slowbuilding or 1-pop whipping the settler from A.

For I two chops finish the granary, then one builds a mine and chops and the other worker goes to France. I doesn't need a barracks so can alternate workers and wealth.

The bulb idea is great, it lets us be sure we're getting the prize before making most of the investment... I want to go try a run through now rather than going to sleep! I'd want CoL early and most of the religious techs as late as possible in case someone beats us to it though. I wonder what the beaker value of all that is?

[Old Harry]

Turn 97

Our friend dtay has a galley. I didn't think tempting him would be a good idea, so I didn't uncover that last tile and sent the wb SW-SW. The work boat will get to France a turn early.


Friend! (He didn't force us to build the spear.) I'll complete the worker in Endor. Yossarian discovers more borders - I think we'll do well to get the x? site.


In the war zone Suttree added a spear to the danger tile There is still only one chariot there so we could keep just two units in hastings and put another bowman on the forest or in J. What do you think? Everything went acording to plan and I decided not to pillage the road as its possible he only has one chariot and can't cut us off next turn. Oxy moved to J after I took this picture.


Lunch uncovers some pigs, Rowain is going to deal with a spear and Lord Parkin will kill the other one. Eventually. I think the NW x? is a high priority here to seal the island off from Ichabod. It'll need a decent defense force and a caste border pop. France grows this turn, then how about putting two turns into a worker and 2-pop whipping?


The intrepid BaII discovers that mostly_harmless has settled towards us after all. If we want that iron city we'll have to hurry. Between us we're spawn-busting the area south of Cannae, so I'll move BaII SW next turn to see if that's a first-ring border. Things are getting tight now.


I've turned science to 90%. When Endor goes back to wealth next turn we might get 100% again. Although my dreams of completing Calendar eot98 are dead so we can stop some of the wealth builds. We could use Dunkirk's overflow in a worker if we decide we don't need another bowman, spear or axe?


Power - Yurimack seem a bit worried about something - is this related to our turning down their map trade? Not much from Suttree. He does keep putting EPs on us - we're at 52/47 now.


Demos

I've ended turn.

[Fintourist]

Our friend dtay has a galley. I didn't think tempting him would be a good idea, so I didn't uncover that last tile and sent the wb SW-SW. The work boat will get to France a turn early.

Friend! (He didn't force us to build the spear.) I'll complete the worker in Endor. Yossarian discovers more borders - I think we'll do well to get the x? site.

I think Yossarian could risk it and move SE next turn. I doubt Jowy/TBS want to make an enemy of us (at least this early). Note: not a suggestion, just stating a possibility

In the war zone Suttree added a spear to the danger tile

Good news!

There is still only one chariot there so we could keep just two units in hastings and put another bowman on the forest or in J. What do you think? Everything went acording to plan and I decided not to pillage the road as its possible he only has one chariot and can't cut us off next turn. Oxy moved to J after I took this picture.

Currently suttree's actions look fairly peaceful and it seems that he is just securing his borders (or gathering masses in the darkness). I wonder if we should propose peace for one more time now that we are about to settle the City J

Lunch uncovers some pigs, Rowain is going to deal with a spear and Lord Parkin will kill the other one. Eventually. I think the NW x? is a high priority here to seal the island off from Ichabod. It'll need a decent defense force and a caste border pop. France grows this turn, then how about putting two turns into a worker and 2-pop whipping?

Yeah, I think Ichabod will settle there first, but of course it would be awesome to get that fish-pig site. Actually France can just put 1 turn into worker and then double whip it, because depending on our tile choices it will produce 10 or 11 foodhammers.

The intrepid BaII discovers that mostly_harmless has settled towards us after all. If we want that iron city we'll have to hurry. Between us we're spawn-busting the area south of Cannae, so I'll move BaII SW next turn to see if that's a first-ring border. Things are getting tight now.

Hmm.. Well that was to be expected. We have now "x-signs" pretty much everywhere around that iron and now I am wondering whether S of Iron, would be a possibility.. And yeah, we are hurrying! We just have settling races in every direction!

I've turned science to 90%. When Endor goes back to wealth next turn we might get 100% again. Although my dreams of completing Calendar eot98 are dead so we can stop some of the wealth builds. We could use Dunkirk's overflow in a worker if we decide we don't need another bowman, spear or axe?

Yeah, Calendar EOT99 is good enough. I logged in and changed Hastings back to barracks, because that city won't get chops that would help completing barracks+granary, which we both want there fast. I'm not sure about Dunkirk's builds, but I think the city should work grassland forest this turn instead of that plains cottage (I did the change). That will grow the city to size 4 and next turn our worker can finish chopping the bananas, which means that we will have 3/0-tile to use (equivalent to grassland farm) and we can work e.g. the cottage + that banana tile.

Analyzing our tech path to Philosophy is also very much worth a discussion, but I leave it for a separate post later..

Power - Yurimack seem a bit worried about something - is this related to our turning down their map trade? Not much from Suttree. He does keep putting EPs on us - we're at 52/47 now.

Good news for us. Let's hope he forces suttree to keep his units in the south. Although that power "spike" is probably just one unit or archery or something.. However, I checked F4-screen and found out that suttree and yurimack have active gold for gems and sheep for clams deals going on.. This made me significantly more worried again..

Slowcheetah's power on the other hand.. Let's hope that he keeps Ichabod busy and away from our island! The war weariness of 57 indicates that quite a few units have been sacrificed so far..

[Old Harry]

Currently suttree's actions look fairly peaceful and it seems that he is just securing his borders (or gathering masses in the darkness). I wonder if we should propose peace for one more time now that we are about to settle the City J

Worth a try.

I think Yossarian could risk it and move SE next turn. I doubt Jowy/TBS want to make an enemy of us (at least this early). Note: not a suggestion, just stating a possibility

I agree, if they kill him we kill their chariot.

Yeah, Calendar EOT99 is good enough. I logged in and changed Hastings back to barracks, because that city won't get chops that would help completing barracks+granary, which we both want there fast. I'm not sure about Dunkirk's builds, but I think the city should work grassland forest this turn instead of that plains cottage (I did the change). That will grow the city to size 4 and next turn our worker can finish chopping the bananas, which means that we will have 3/0-tile to use (equivalent to grassland farm) and we can work e.g. the cottage + that banana tile.

Good changes, the only issue with the banana is we give jungle a (half) chance to re-grow.

On techs and bulbs - am I right in thinking we can bulb Philosophy (for Taoism) if we just take CoL and Alphabet? Cannae has 6 GP points so t115 is a good approximation for our great scientist.

Having a religion isn't that useful if we don't get Mysticism, Polytheism, Masonry and Monotheism to allow Organised Religion.

Tech	Beakers	Pre-reqs	Benefits	Adjusted beakers	Turns
Myst	79	0		79	0.79
Poly	161	1		134	1.34
Masonry	128	2		91	0.91
Mono	193	1	Org Rel	161	1.61
Total				489	4.89

We also want to have Animal Husbandry to see our horses, although we know where one source of horses is, so I don't see it as that vital. CoL allows us to pop borders quick so we want that ASAP (possibly before AH?) Alphabet gets us trade routes with Ichabod and Slowcheetah (presumably giving us +20 gpt?)

Tech	Beakers	Pre-reqs	Benefits	Adjusted beakers	Turns
AH	161	2	Horses	115	1.15
CoL	562	1 (or 2)	Caste	468	4.68
Alpha	483	1	trade routes with ichabod and slow	403	4.03
Philo	1,288	1 (or 2)	Taoism	1,073	10.73

Other techs that could be useful are Construction, Metal Casting and Aesthetics. Meditation for Monasteries would be handy for a tech bonus later while Priesthood for cheap temples gives great prophet points if we want a shrine.

Tech	Beakers	Pre-reqs	Benefits	Adjusted beakers	Turns
Meditation	128	1	Monasteries	107	1.07
priesthood	96	2 (or 1)	temples	69	0.69
MC	723	1	triremes and forges	603	6.03
Aesthetics	483	1	statue of zeus	403	4.03
Const	562	1	catapults	468	4.68

We're making around 110 base beakers with wealth builds everywhere, and for a couple of these we should get known tech bonii, so let's assume that 100 is a reasonable average over the next 15 turns. Going from the tables the religious techs take five turns, while CoL is five turns and Alphabet is four.

So I'd suggest we want to go:
- Calendar (eot99)
- save money for a turn, start building settlers and workers again in selected cities
- CoL (eot105) - speeds the border pop in Hastings by a turn, more useful in G, I, J, K, L (we'll be at L by then, right?)
- AH (eot106)
- Alphabet (eot110)
- religious line (eot115)

Alternatively we prioritise Alphabet to speed up subsequent techs. There is also an option to do the religious techs including Priesthood to reduce the price of CoL by 60 beakers, but I don't like that much.

[Fintourist]

Great work! (both with our turn reports and this analysis!)

I have to run now so I'll commen't more in the evening. Here are the first bullets though:
- Does the road prevent the jungle spread onto bananas?
- We need CoL, Alphabet, but also Meditation (pre-req) for bulbing Philosophy with a GS
- I'm currently thinking about delaying CoL from suggested EOT105 to ~EOT115 (going (AH +) Alphabet -> Other Rel techs -> CoL). Mostly because the cities that will benefit the most from courthouses are not ready to build them yet (more about this later) and also because I'm not sure yet whether our situation with suttree and other neighbors is too tense for announcing the world that we can't whip units for 5 turns.

But that's all preliminary! I'll come back to this!

[Old Harry]

- Does the road prevent the jungle spread onto bananas?

- 50% chance IIRC

- I'm currently thinking about delaying CoL from suggested EOT105 to ~EOT115 (going (AH +) Alphabet -> Other Rel techs -> CoL). Mostly because the cities that will benefit the most from courthouses are not ready to build them yet (more about this later) and also because I'm not sure yet whether our situation with Suttree and other neighbors is too tense for announcing the world that we can't whip units for 5 turns.

I think our military is making our neigbours pretty jumpy too (witness dtay's sentry chariot checking out our borders and Yurimack asking for maps), I can't think of a better time to spend five turns without the whip than when our army is 50% bigger than anyone else, but we could try the declare-peace trick on the more worrying neighbours before we start to research CoL? I think we need to know what cities we're putting where and when before knowing when we need CoL, but the extra 20gpt Alphabet gets could sway me anyway.

Also what are the chances we're racing for Philosophy? Us and Dhalphir are the only SPI civs without a religion yet. Getting those religious techs and missing Taoism would be a pain (unless we then grabbed Theology for Christianity). But I don't think Dhal has been teching very fast.

[Fintourist]

I think our military is making our neigbours pretty jumpy too

I sure hope you are right!

I can't think of a better time to spend five turns without the whip than when our army is 50% bigger than anyone else, but we could try the declare-peace trick on the more worrying neighbours before we start to research CoL? I think we need to know what cities we're putting where and when before knowing when we need CoL, but the extra 20gpt Alphabet gets could sway me anyway.

I agree that ~T105 might be a good moment to do the switch and run couple of artists although the benefit of that is possibly significantly smaller compared to those 20 commerce per turn that we can get from Alphabet (which is a fairly realistic scenario)

Also what are the chances we're racing for Philosophy? Us and Dhalphir are the only SPI civs without a religion yet. Getting those religious techs and missing Taoism would be a pain (unless we then grabbed Theology for Christianity). But I don't think Dhal has been teching very fast.

No idea about our chances, but I think that our planned bulb play might be a strong move and it gives us at least a very realisitic chance to get it. When we look at our graphs and past demos, our research speed has not been stellar, but still quite competitive, which means that our rivals also have to make a clear investment in order to get Philosophy this early.

I don't think that getting those religious techs is a big investment. We easily can (and I think we should) backfill Masonry, Polytheism & Monotheism after we get Philosophy. (If we tech faster than produce that GS we can spend some turns collecting cash and then get those techs quickly if we land a religion). Mysticism + Meditation which we need to tech before Philo are firstly cheap and also not useless as they put us closer to Monarchy, which is something that we want for wine + HR pretty soon too. Overall the most annoying scenario would be putting e.g. 800 beakers into Philosophy and then losing the religion race. Apart from religion Philosophy will have only limited use for us in the near-term (I don't see us using Pacifism and producing great persons in masses quite yet).

Whether we want Priesthood or not depends on how tight our schedule is and how soon we think that we want Monarchy. Mathematically getting Priesthood only costs us only (96/1.2) - [(562/1.2) - (562/1.4)] = 13 raw beakers. So almost nothing.. Meaning that unless we really need those 13 raw beakers to reach a specific tech goal a turn earlier, we should get it before teching CoL.

Btw, I noticed a wierd thing when going through our opponents. We have an option to open borders with m_h, but we can't see his techs in the F4 tech screen. I think this must mean that m_h has teched Alphabet, but F4 tech info is not working in the same way as it worked in my previous BTS PBEM. Anyways, since m_h is on the same continent as we are this is not a trade route jackpot, but we could get foreign intercontinental trade routes for our two island cities. Meaning +4 commerce. However, we don't have a trade route with m_h yet. In order to get it, we must reveal one coastal tile of his with our fog-busting bowman (I put sign in game). Note also that m_h does not have trade route to us and because his WB was at our border (right?) I think it must mean that he does not have Sailing yet.