[SPOILERS] Serdoa, Ichabod and Ex-Girlfriends - co-starring NH,Bigger and Lewwyn

[NobleHelium]

Okay, Jowy cancelled the stone to marble trade so whatever, heh. He also swapped to Caste (is Spiritual).

Anyways, I don't really have a clear plan of what to do with building walls other than that it allows us to build a castle if we want, and it may be good for the intimidation factor. Knights do not get defensive bonuses so that obviously doesn't help, but muskets and rifles do. I was thinking we could whip a musket out of Billie or maybe even get enough culture (need 10%) there to draft a rifle. We should definitely be able to draft Anna by the time we're in Nationhood (I swapped the spec there to an artist to help out). I think we tech Engineering after Rifling because we need that movement. Now that I look at Dyrone's culture production we could just build culture during most of the GA and get to 40% culture. Walls would let us build a castle though, so I don't know. I'm not concerned about him attacking out of the fog at Dyrone, but he can do that at Billie if he gets Engineering and we'd need units there to defend against that (and thus fewer units at Dyrone). Anyway let's build culture for 1t as you say and then decide next turn.

Knights on galley into Dyrone is fine. The signed tile should flip over to us this turn and we'll get a land connection then.

I thought about it and we should probably send the previously earmarked missionary for Amy to either Billie or Dyrone. We're not in OR so Amy doesn't get any benefit from the religion for now, since we'll get the last sugar in borders at EOT from surrounding it in culture. We can produce another missionary for Amy shortly. I also swapped Carina over to a ziggurat for the same reason, missionaries can be delayed while we're in Pacifism. Anna can produce a missionary or two after its temple for the other southern cities.

[Serdoa]

Changed a few tiles around, nothing special. Except for Birgit, I don't think it makes sense to starve there right now. And Pamela, I took the Spy away as that is not needed, we will still be at 695 GPP after 7 turns.

For Birgit itself: I'm not sure if we should even generate a GP there at all. We have currently 2 GM, 1 GA. We will get most likely a GP or GE from Pamela. We will get a GS from Physics and a GSpy from Communism (I feel confident that we can get both techs first). So that's a total of 6 GP. We need 2 for the next GA and 3 for the one after. A possible GE or GP from Pamela would be used to either build a late shrine or rush a wonder most likely.

So, that leaves us with the need for 4 more GP (or 3 if we don't make shrine nor wonder) if we want another GA. That's in theory doable, but I'm not sure it is worth the hassle. But even IF we think it is, we can produce over the next 2 GAs those 4 GPs imo. The NE-city should be able to provide 2 (1 in each GA) and Birgit and Pamela can probably provide each one.

Therefore I have set up Birgit to put in GPPs put not starve. That will be enough to easily get a GP finished in another GA. I'm actually thinking that we probably want to get the 700 one from Pamela now, the 800 one from the NE, the 900 from Pamela, 1000 from NE, 1100 from Birgit (as it will have a long time to accumulate GPP, so should get the last one I think).

Are you ok with that Noble?

[NobleHelium]

I'm on chat for a bit, want to talk?

[NobleHelium]

Okay. I'm not sure what configuration you set Birgit to, but remember that we only have seven turns in Caste/Pac. The previous configuration had the city losing 5 fpt with 32 in the box, so it would starve on the last turn. I figured we would fire two specialists on that turn, we wouldn't actually starve. If you want to work an extra tile now instead of later, that's fine too (and actually slightly better). I don't think we should be working more tiles than that though, because we're not going to be able to work specialists on the last GA turn. So we should have two turns of -3 fpt and then five turns of -5 fpt, which gives us -31 food total and burns all the food in the box without starving. Last turn we work no specialists because we don't have any normal slots in that city.

You should hire the spy back in Pamela and fire a scientist instead. We have no GSpies so it'd be fine to use one for the next GA if that's what we get, and still be able to use the one from Communism. There's no telling what GPs we'll get from the NE city but they'll be more likely scientists than spies.

[Serdoa]

For Birgit: Do we even need to lose food at all now? I'd actually like to keep working the cottages and stay at a food neutral setup, I don't think we need to starve down the food box right now just for GPPs. Looking at the city:

6 GPPs right now
63 GPPs per turn for 7 turns
12 GPPs on last turn of GA
6 GPPs on non-GA turns

Totals to 459 GPP after the GA (if we don't stay in Merc what I assume). We should soon be able to get up 9 GPPt (Forge, Temple, Ziggurat). So lets say 5 turns with 6 amounts to 489 GPP. Than 5 turns with 9 amounts to 534. Next GA then would be 7 turns for 63 GPP / turn with minimal starving again. So that's then 975 already. And we then have another GA coming before that GP actually needs to pop. So we should easily get up to the necessary 1100 GPP. Looking at this we can even do with minimal growth (+1 fpt) and still be good. Will be 63 less GPP per GA, so we'll be at 849. We'll produce 378 GPP in the third GA, so that still bring us over 1100.

As for Pamela: Good thinking. If we get a low odds spy we should use it for GA 3 most likely and the one from Communism for GA 4 (actually 4 and 5 but I count by GPs needed).

[NobleHelium]

Well the main thing is that I'm not sure if we'll want to always be in Pacifism during the subsequent GAs. We might want OR instead for example. Pac helps a normal city a lot more than the NE city, so if we're just pushing GPs in the NE city and Birgit I'm not sure Pac would be worth it (if we can get the GP out of Birgit without Pac if we get enough points this GA). Getting the GP out of Birgit sooner rather than later will give us more flexibility to use something other than Pac in subsequent GAs. Most likely we'll still want Caste regardless since we'll be working more and more workshops.

[Serdoa]

Slow gets 30 gpt from yuri, he seems to give him gold for free in return. Not sure if Gold is worth 30 gpt tbh, but then I'm not sure that is the point of that deal

Also city numbers are interesting:

Serdoa/NH: 26
Jowy: 20
Gavagai: 18
yurimack: 16
slow: 15
WK: 14
Sian: 10
Kurumi: 8
BaII: 5
Nakor: 3

I didn't realize that Jowy is the only one to actually be in touch with us in terms of cities. And we will actually settle 27 next turn. And then we have ~13 more cities to settle. So we will be at 40 and I think that won't even take that long.

[NobleHelium]

Slow has been getting that gold for a while, I mentioned it a while back when yuris asked us for a loan and we declined. I assume he asked slow for something similar and he accepted.

[Serdoa]

Ah yes, I forgot.

[Serdoa]

Changed Iris from Monastery to Sankore for a turn as otherwise we would lose quite a few hammers to too much overflow. Also I only realized now that Iris does have an Academy but still no Library...

edit: swapped to Library. Feel free to go back to Sankore, that's probably overall the smarter build, it just irks me that we don't have a Library there.

edit2: actually Library will amount to 36 beakers at 100% while UoS will be 38 beakers right now. But UoS takes at least 4 turns, 5 with Monastery. We would at best save gold for 2 more turns so I guess Library is the better choice.