Lunch is still on his exploration jaunt - I wondered if there was any point moving him off Dhalphir's roads. I mean what are the chances we'll just happen to bump into someone?
(It looks like Retep and Bacchus are fighting to the death here )
Azza is dissapointingly friendly with Pindicooter and YuriMack, but has at least had a bit of a dust up with Dhal. We offered wheat for corn and a map trade, but he doesn't have any money right now and we're not giving OBs for free
In other diplo news Krill is taking over from Slow due to a computer - fizzy pop interface malfunction. We had offered a happy for 5gpt, which he turned down, perhaps he'll reoffer after having a look around his two city empire - the capital got captured this turn.
Suttree's power hasn't gone up over the last ten turns, so the most likely situation is he's decided attacking us or Mackoti lets the other devour him and he will just turtle until one of us finally gets around to killing him. However his stack isn't in Barcelona any more and he has a lot of workers wandering around. So we're sending our stack to Hastings - I think we want some of it NE of the city to cover Jamestown in case of aquatic attack (how many galleys could he pull together? five?) but most of it SW of the city to get to Koniggratz in case of attack there. Sigh. Staggering the army movements like this means we're only paying 4gpt support costs for two turns rather than 10 for one turn.
While Harry is deleting the 100 signs I left in game I thought this was kind of funny:
I guess we are 3rd this turn.
Well, there is really only winning and losing in civ.
PS. Mack's land advantage is clear in CY, later it will translate into other demos too
PPS. Our excellent luxury resource situation is visible
PPPS. As well as our massive OB deals.. :P
Not a lot to report this turn, Commodore got the Hagia Sophia (would have been very handy for our jungles) and Pindicooter finished their golden age. We're just muddling on, but have a plan for our National Epic and Golden age now (I only spent three hours logged in ). Anyway, our sentry chariot doesn't find Suttree's stack.
Demos and power - Ichabod takes the tinyest hit while Slow/Krill plummets:
(December 9th, 2013, 15:02)WilliamLP Wrote: I think it may be an unpopular opinion, and I'm probably just repeating myself but I don't like gameplay changes of taking OB off writing, or see why the change does anything to help game balance. And I don't see why the variant it creates is a more interesting game.
The good is it gives an interesting strategic option for a tech that would otherwise be dead weight.
What I don't like:
- It's an additional snowball magnifier at a pretty crucial point in the game that didn't exist before, when everyone can get OB much earlier. There are already so many punishments for early conflict (which isn't always a choice), that falling behind on one more key piece to accelerate a mid game economy just hurts more.
- Between two equal players, starting in position where you can get contact with someone with Alphabet is a very large advantage, just due to geographical chance. It's not going to be a good idea to research Alphabet yourself if you don't need to, so if I have to in order to get what you already have I'm more behind, and this isn't small.
- Someone who researches alphabet can now sell OB for a significant amount of income, making technologically backward players actually suffer for it, while it's still in their best interest to buy it vs researching themselves. So this makes it an even larger snowball magnifier, and punishment for early conflict. It becomes like Hit Movies on steroids. (Some could argue this is a feature and not a problem.)
- The strategy and tension around open borders in the earlier game is removed. Do I allow it for trade routes with any given player, vs how much do I care about them scouting me out? It adds a reason to start thinking about long term peaceful relationships earlier, with the sustained peace bonus mechanic.
- Open borders happen much less. Scouting past a neighbour is often infeasible. Phony war declarations happen a lot more often, for water scouting. This isn't a big deal but it's not to my taste.
It seems William does not enjoy paying us for his OBs.. I would like to comment in the thread, but the whole discussion is a bit PB13-spoilerish to my taste.
Happy to talk more about this when the game is done, but here are some quick comments in case someone is interested or Krill reads this once he is rid of slow's "empire".
- We are probably biased, because we are so satisfied about our play to get early Alphabet, but I think this was a nice change. It makes a normally pretty useless tech a good choice in some situations, which is a good thing. Even more possible relevant tech path options to consider!
- map trade could indeed come a bit later, I like to have it earlier than paper, but maybe some compromise could be found between writing and paper..
Nice idea! We have definitely spammed too much so our neighbors won't be reading our whole thread.
I did not come up with any important additions. You could add one "cold war" post if you want. Just to demonstrate what kind of a struggle/mess/stress every single turn has been. For example the post where we notice that ~13 cat ~15 axe stack in Barcelona.
I would imagine that I will post a couple further complaits during the coming turns so we might as well add those later..
WilliamLP offers fur for our dye, we don't need the happy, but we can always trade other happy for cash now so I said yes. dtay also offered a map trade, again I said yes, just to keep friendly.
Questions for this turn:
- Do we whip Jamestown to overflow into the Heroic Epic?
- Workers at Peterloo - we only have three, but we have three forests and a jungle to chop, so which forest should we leave alone?
- Also the guy who just finished a mine for Gallipoli and Konig could help chop the jungle or chop a forest into the forge in Gallipoli - I think the latter will be more useful...
- Our new sentry chariot in Issy - send it to the mainland or keep an eye on Ichabod?
- Whip the forge in France this turn? Wastes two or three overflow hammers, but lets us get on with producing units there...
Next turn our two sentry chariots will get a sight of Suttree's land - I've put Hastings onto walls so they can be whipped if we think they're needed.
Power & Demos - a bit of a spike from YM, but they don't have guilds yet (there is a workshop on our border), so not toooooo worrying.
I spent a while in game so let's see if I remember everything! Lurkers can pretty much skip this post, it's mostly about our domestic decisions:
Worker & unit movement stuff:
- I suggest those 3 forest near Peterloo move onto those 3 border forest tiles that I put signs on. It would be indeed nice to chop that jungle N of Peterloo before we get CS, but we have still some turns before that and I think that chopping those forests and maybe also improving our border dyes is a higher priority than the perfect exxecution of our irrigation chain near Peterloo
- The worker between Gallipoli & Peterloo. Couple of options:
a) chop the nearby forest into Gallipoli and mine it afterwards
b) pre-chop that forest and move next turn (or in 2 turns) onto the jungle N of Peterloo
c) improve tiles for Königgratz
I'm fine with all those 3 options so I demand you to think about it for 5 secs and then make a decision
- I did not quite catch why the worker E of König is now workshopping a different tile, but I'm sure you had something in mind. Anyways, we want couple of improved tiles ASAP for König so that we can grow it in a sensible way and it becomes a solid hammer city before our GA.
- The chariot in Issy: Do you think Ichabod would allow it if we move it within his borders? He kind of should because he has scouted our territory.. His war with slow must end soon, WilliamLP whipped something like 5 cities this turn so I really want to signal that we can't be surprised by putting a LB into Nuremberg and stationing a sentry chariot into one of his island cities.
- Unit movements in east: Note that we can't move in and out into suttree's territory on t140 if we move our sentry there onto corn next turn. So do we want to check the corn tile next turn and leave that chariot inside suttree's borders after we declare or not? Some thinking could be done here too
City stuff:
- I don't think we want to whip Jamestown. We will complete HE anyways with a chop eot140 and if we want to whip a pop point we might as well wait so that we have a nice +100 % multiplier in place. Moreover the area still has couple of solid unworked tiles and worker support so growing the cities still makes sense
- I did put Isandlwana on wealth. I think courthouse next is a reasonable option there, but since the city has some overflow and it is going to get Taoism next turn waiting a turn earns ~2 hammers. It's not a big thing, but I think that e.g. getting courthouse 1 turn earlier is not better. However, feel free to change it back if you want
- I also put Hastings on wealth (let's change it back to walls or something else). The point is that I don't think we necessirarily want walls there. Hastings and König are our safest cities and I think we are fine if suttree targets them (with or without walls). The scary scenarios are those where we need to fight in the open and then defend a wounded stack or lightly defended city. That scenario only happens if suttree targets Jamestown or does something unexpected and in that case walls an extra LB or HA would be more useful than walls. There is also a realistic scenario that suttree is not going to attack and again an extra unit or economic build is more useful. So as a conclusion, I don't say walls build is wrong, but I just wanted to make you think about this once more
- I re-assigned some tiles so that Gallipoli grows already this turn to size 10. I thought that this was the most sensible use of our shared food resources in the area
- Just not that if we want a great person out of Cannae eot145 (our current plan) the city will need to work two times 4 specialists during the next 7 turns. Note that if we want to get it out already eot 144 we need to work 4 specialists during the turns 139-144 (so starting next turn). In our last chat we agreed that GP eot 145 works good with our peace timing etc. but I just wanted to mention this so that you are aware of the situation.
Dtay stuff:
- Dtay has paper now so we can see his techs
- It smells like a Liberalism-run (as we have speculated) because he also has Philosophy
- We are behind Civil Service (and Literature and Construction still for a turn)
- But we are up at least Feudalism, Calendar, HBR, Archery, IW & Alphabet
- So all in all that sounds almost like a tech parity despite the fact that dtay has been a GNP leader or one of the leaders for a good while and has already spent over 10 turns in Golden Age. Of course if he has some kind of bulbing sequence planned and gets Liberalism we will be beaker-wise behind (he also has 650 gold saved) but situation does not look bad at all (hell, if we would not have so terrible central position and someone else would have the duty to stop mackoti we would still be in the race to win this, oh well, ranting is my strenght).
- That said, dtay birthed a Great Artist this turn, I would bet that it was a low odds roll, but it's of course possible that he plans some kind of an artist bomb thing, wants GPs for a 3rd GA or is already preparing for a culture victory run
Other Foreign Stuff:
- Mackoti got a Great Merchant. So does he have now 2 great persons saved or what?
- TBS/Jowy got a Great Prophet, maybe he wants to gift it for us?
If you managed Harry here...
If Hydra or any lurker managed here... + cookie
(December 11th, 2013, 08:44)Fintourist Wrote: Worker & unit movement stuff:
- I suggest those 3 forest near Peterloo move onto those 3 border forest tiles that I put signs on. It would be indeed nice to chop that jungle N of Peterloo before we get CS, but we have still some turns before that and I think that chopping those forests and maybe also improving our border dyes is a higher priority than the perfect exxecution of our irrigation chain near Peterloo
- The worker between Gallipoli & Peterloo. Couple of options:
a) chop the nearby forest into Gallipoli and mine it afterwards
b) pre-chop that forest and move next turn (or in 2 turns) onto the jungle N of Peterloo
c) improve tiles for Königgratz
I'm fine with all those 3 options so I demand you to think about it for 5 secs and then make a decision
I'm guessing CS is four turns away, but it could be five or six, in which case option b sounds good. I was also wondering how we get irrigation chained up to Agincourt effectively, none of our workers are doing anything near enough to the tile that needs the first farm unless we get construction first, delaying things further...
(December 11th, 2013, 08:44)Fintourist Wrote: - I did not quite catch why the worker E of König is now workshopping a different tile, but I'm sure you had something in mind. Anyways, we want couple of improved tiles ASAP for König so that we can grow it in a sensible way and it becomes a solid hammer city before our GA.
He builds this one for six turns then goes back to complete the one on the road and has movement options afterwards - we'll be in caste/golden age in 8 turns with guilds not long after so I think we want both workshops up quick and the one on the road is going to be quicker to get help on.
(December 11th, 2013, 08:44)Fintourist Wrote: - The chariot in Issy: Do you think Ichabod would allow it if we move it within his borders? He kind of should because he has scouted our territory.. His war with slow must end soon, WilliamLP whipped something like 5 cities this turn so I really want to signal that we can't be surprised by putting a LB into Nuremberg and stationing a sentry chariot into one of his island cities.
If he kicks us out then that also gives us information...
(December 11th, 2013, 08:44)Fintourist Wrote: - Unit movements in east: Note that we can't move in and out into suttree's territory on t140 if we move our sentry there onto corn next turn. So do we want to check the corn tile next turn and leave that chariot inside suttree's borders after we declare or not? Some thinking could be done here too
I'd like to know what's on the gems tile, and don't like the risk of leaving our chariot in or near his land when we know he has a lot of workers around to combat road.
(December 11th, 2013, 08:44)Fintourist Wrote: City stuff:
- I don't think we want to whip Jamestown. We will complete HE anyways with a chop eot140 and if we want to whip a pop point we might as well wait so that we have a nice +100 % multiplier in place. Moreover the area still has couple of solid unworked tiles and worker support so growing the cities still makes sense
- I did put Isandlwana on wealth. I think courthouse next is a reasonable option there, but since the city has some overflow and it is going to get Taoism next turn waiting a turn earns ~2 hammers. It's not a big thing, but I think that e.g. getting courthouse 1 turn earlier is not better. However, feel free to change it back if you want
I nearly did the same
(December 11th, 2013, 08:44)Fintourist Wrote: - I also put Hastings on wealth (let's change it back to walls or something else). The point is that I don't think we necessirarily want walls there. Hastings and König are our safest cities and I think we are fine if suttree targets them (with or without walls). The scary scenarios are those where we need to fight in the open and then defend a wounded stack or lightly defended city. That scenario only happens if suttree targets Jamestown or does something unexpected and in that case walls an extra LB or HA would be more useful than walls. There is also a realistic scenario that suttree is not going to attack and again an extra unit or economic build is more useful. So as a conclusion, I don't say walls build is wrong, but I just wanted to make you think about this once more
In which case a horse archer is our best bet - either to mop up injured catapults or to pre-scratch them and allow us to win more fights.
(December 11th, 2013, 08:44)Fintourist Wrote: - Just not that if we want a great person out of Cannae eot145 (our current plan) the city will need to work two times 4 specialists during the next 7 turns. Note that if we want to get it out already eot 144 we need to work 4 specialists during the turns 139-144 (so starting next turn). In our last chat we agreed that GP eot 145 works good with our peace timing etc. but I just wanted to mention this so that you are aware of the situation.
You haven't looked at the spreadsheet since yesterday have you I've got it marked on to work four specialists the last couple of turns, but I'd be happier to work them sooner on the precautionary principle.
I can't decide if that's good or bad news... I don't like our neighbour being among the first to start drafting, but I think he's two golden ages ahead of us and that doesn't seem like a lot to show for it.
(December 11th, 2013, 08:44)Fintourist Wrote: If you managed Harry here...
If Hydra or any lurker managed here... + cookie
)
![[Image: PB%2013%20T137%20Demos0000.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/3680krs29djibi4/PB%2013%20T137%20Demos0000.JPG)
). Anyway, our sentry chariot doesn't find Suttree's stack.
I have 3 exams this week.. 
We have definitely spammed too much so our neighbors won't be reading our whole thread.
+ cookie