Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)

[The Black Sword]

Ah well, we probably would have lost it anyway without Gaspar's interference. I'm moving this warrior back home because there doesn't seem to be much benefit in checking out the terrain around there and we're short on units. The scout will probably continue to look for contacts.

We also founded 3 Texas Steers and I improved the plan slightly for the next few turns, we can get our next city started up a lot quicker. I'm not sure of the continuation yet though.



What do you think we should call the pig city?

Regarding tech; Keshiks are some time away IMO, archers would be for a Holkan counter if we're delaying the copper for so long. I don't really value Libraries right now, 90h is 1.5 settlers! We do need a GP plan though and the only options for a Priest are golden age and shrine, neither of which sound great, so we might need to generate a GS to push it back a bit. I think delaying Monarchy until after Currency is quite likely atm, though I'd re-evaluate after Maths which definitely wins right now IMO.

[Becko]

Shame about circumnav, but we would've had to beeline straight east and west to beat that time, no?

We also founded 3 Texas Steers and I improved the plan slightly for the next few turns, we can get our next city started up a lot quicker. I'm not sure of the continuation yet though.

More cities earlier sounds good.

What do you think we should call the pig city?

I'm trying to pick site-appropriate names for each city, so my first thought was one of the early football films, like Maker of Men. 'Cause you know, pigskin (har, har).

We do have to use his best movie -- which is actually very good -- at some point though, and we might as well do it while we're still out exploring.

Regarding tech; Keshiks are some time away IMO, archers would be for a Holkan counter if we're delaying the copper for so long. I don't really value Libraries right now, 90h is 1.5 settlers! We do need a GP plan though and the only options for a Priest are golden age and shrine, neither of which sound great, so we might need to generate a GS to push it back a bit. I think delaying Monarchy until after Currency is quite likely atm, though I'd re-evaluate after Maths which definitely wins right now IMO.

OK, makes sense to me. If we can get a sentry out there, would we need archers on hand? Oxy's something like 20 tiles away from our borders. Sure, a Holkan might already be inbound, but we should still be able to get plenty of warning. Maybe keep a couple turns' worth of gold on hand in case we do need to tech Archery quickly? Also, might barb spears be a problem?

Random thought: this type of map might suit CRE players especially well, since a lot of the tile values are bound up in resources. More than what is perhaps usual, I mean. Does that make sense to you?

[The Black Sword]

Been a bit busy recently, here's a quick update of where we are:



Looks like we might be first to a 4th city after all(of the people we know anyway). You can see 1 worker roading the pigs, so we can use 3 workers to complete the pasture on the second turn of the city's existence. Working the phf on the first turn allos us to complete the granary(with a chop), just in time for the full bonus. Let's go with Makers of Men for this city and we can use The Searchers for one of the pig/fish spots, those are likely to be some of our best cities and so deserving of the name.

The worker in the west needs to improve the horses. I spent some time wondering whether I should road the deer to get there, eventually decided we would be unlikely to use the road for anything else in the next 30t so I skipped it.



With 5 workers for 4 cities, there didn't seem to be much other choice here, I should have some time to plan out the next few turns tonight.



We meet dtay soon, so our last rivals, Thoth and Pindicator must be south of us on the map. Speaking of our rivals, Oxy's capital is up to size 6, he's settled the other wet corn, ivory spot. That's riverside Ivory requiring 4 worker turns to hook and giving a good tile to work, as opposed to 10 worker turns for our tundra furs/silver ....

OK, makes sense to me. smile If we can get a sentry out there, would we need archers on hand? Oxy's something like 20 tiles away from our borders. Sure, a Holkan might already be inbound, but we should still be able to get plenty of warning. Maybe keep a couple turns' worth of gold on hand in case we do need to tech Archery quickly? Also, might barb spears be a problem?

Random thought: this type of map might suit CRE players especially well, since a lot of the tile values are bound up in resources. More than what is perhaps usual, I mean. Does that make sense to you?

It's hard to judge whether Oxy will bother us enough to need an archer, just need to stay flexible I suppose. I doubt barb spears will show up before we settle copper at least. I'm not sure I agree with you on the map, I think most RB maps are this generous with resources and Cre is just generally pretty strong. Tbh, I think the fact that there are so many Cre players in this game has made it weaker because there's so little competition for the rest of us for good border popping methods.

[Becko]

Looks like we might be first to a 4th city after all(of the people we know anyway). You can see 1 worker roading the pigs, so we can use 3 workers to complete the pasture on the second turn of the city's existence. Working the phf on the first turn allos us to complete the granary(with a chop), just in time for the full bonus. Let's go with Makers of Men for this city and we can use The Searchers for one of the pig/fish spots, those are likely to be some of our best cities and so deserving of the name.

Sounds good to me. Football movie it is!


(Nope, that's not John Wayne, but it is some guy from Maker of Men, supposedly.)

We meet dtay soon, so our last rivals, Thoth and Pindicator must be south of us on the map. Speaking of our rivals, Oxy's capital is up to size 6, he's settled the other wet corn, ivory spot. That's riverside Ivory requiring 4 worker turns to hook and giving a good tile to work, as opposed to 10 worker turns for our tundra furs/silver ....

The spreadsheet is a mess right now, and I'm not sure if I'll have time to clean it up before it becomes entirely irrelevant. There is a lot of pop growth going on, albeit with most of it on the turn roll. Thoth, especially, is still going strong. Should I be looking for anything in particular, now that Stonehenge is in the bag?

Thinking about the medium term, what is your thinking on the expansion of the glorious Mongol [strike]empire[/strike]duchy? Expand until broke, grow until not so broke anymore, repeat? And if so, have you been thinking about how to leverage the (hopefully) resultant pop lead?

[The Black Sword]

I don't think we're going to be competing for any first to bonuses in the future, so the C+D isn't so useful. I'd say tech is the most important thing to follow, pop is interesting but ultimately I doubt knowing the pop of our opponent would affect any of our decisions. It can be hard to figure out the one without the other though! Hinduism just fell this turn btw, any idea who that was? I was feeling some regret over not picking up a religion before heading on but that makes me feel better, we wouldn't have beaten that time.

In the medium term, just expansion and more expansion, that's what Joao does(actually, it's hard to stop with him!) The tricky part will be making sure we have enough gold coming in to fund that, so mostly we're looking at gold making ideas. One thing I've often wondering about doing, though it fits a Cre civ more, is to hit writing whip in a library, maybe more and save gold as you wait for a GS to bulb Maths, you can then push straight on to currency(or have a nice advantage in a MoM race). I'm not sure if our gnp will be low enough for that to be worthwhile though. More regular methods; push cottages almost everywhere, get 2c trade routes up ASAP, work our silver and golds, increase our happy cap.

We should know when we're running out of expansion room and we can see where we are on the tech tree and what our options are. I don't imagine we can be very competitive for first to bonuses on the tech tree so war via knights or keshiks might be good but can't make any decision yet.

Here's a picture of Oxy's third city site btw;

Given the speed the corn was connected, I think he might be on the plains rather than the plains hill.

We might have a bit of trouble meeting dtay:


Have to see what he does. Our scout has definitely lived a good life so far though.

Here's where we are on the current turn:


We're whipping and overflowing 4 workers out of TC and LT. The plains hill pigs spot in the east is next, and I have 2 warriors heading over that way now. It turns out to be better to work the wines over the mine this turn due to overflow rounding. The demographics are not particularly exciting:


I was thinking a bit more about our cities in this area:

I'm thinking now we should make the western one the National Epic and the eastern one the Moai statues city. Similar quality NE city and an excellent Moai spot. Of course building either could be quite difficult, we haven't seen any marble or stone so far. Also of note is that we don't have any good heroic epic spot with a good amount of food and hills yet.

[Becko]

I don't think we're going to be competing for any first to bonuses in the future, so the C+D isn't so useful. I'd say tech is the most important thing to follow, pop is interesting but ultimately I doubt knowing the pop of our opponent would affect any of our decisions. It can be hard to figure out the one without the other though! Hinduism just fell this turn btw, any idea who that was? I was feeling some regret over not picking up a religion before heading on but that makes me feel better, we wouldn't have beaten that time.

AFAICT, Commodore picked up a 5-turn tech this turn; could he do Poly in 5? He could have saved up to do Myst and Poly in one go, I suppose. But wouldn't he be in his new religion right away? Or is that next turn? Dtay got 14 points last turn and 10 this one, should be a tech in there somewhere. The other players' last techs are a few turns back, I think (Thoth T49, Gaspar T45, Pindicator T49, Oxy T50).

In the medium term, just expansion and more expansion, that's what Joao does(actually, it's hard to stop with him!) The tricky part will be making sure we have enough gold coming in to fund that, so mostly we're looking at gold making ideas. One thing I've often wondering about doing, though it fits a Cre civ more, is to hit writing whip in a library, maybe more and save gold as you wait for a GS to bulb Maths, you can then push straight on to currency(or have a nice advantage in a MoM race). I'm not sure if our gnp will be low enough for that to be worthwhile though. More regular methods; push cottages almost everywhere, get 2c trade routes up ASAP, work our silver and golds, increase our happy cap.

Interesting idea. So the trade-off is you get to Math and Currency sooner, but you delay, say, an Academy for the capital (and each subsequent use for a GS) by those 100 GP? Basically a trade for gold (and thus expansion -> population) sooner in exchange for beakers later?

I'm sorry, this is very obvious to you I'm sure, but I'm just trying to wrap my head around it.

We should know when we're running out of expansion room and we can see where we are on the tech tree and what our options are. I don't imagine we can be very competitive for first to bonuses on the tech tree so war via knights or keshiks might be good but can't make any decision yet.

OK, then here's another weirdish question: how do you think other players view you? Would you say that your RB persona so far is aggressive, or buildery, or just plain competent? Just trying to figure what your opponents would expect you to do -- though as I've been informed in other places, doing the opposite of that is apparently a better strategy in poker than in Civ.

I'm thinking now we should make the western one the National Epic and the eastern one the Moai statues city. Similar quality NE city and an excellent Moai spot. Of course building either could be quite difficult, we haven't seen any marble or stone so far. Also of note is that we don't have any good heroic epic spot with a good amount of food and hills yet.

No, you're right, our land seems pretty flat.



Oxy's land seems comparatively undulating; perfect terrain for Keshiks!

And if there's no marble or stone yet, it would be weird if it showed up in some random spot now. But that does makes IND stronger, doesn't it? Who do you think will go for The Oracle?

[The Black Sword]

AFAICT, Commodore picked up a 5-turn tech this turn; could he do Poly in 5? He could have saved up to do Myst and Poly in one go, I suppose. But wouldn't he be in his new religion right away? Or is that next turn? Dtay got 14 points last turn and 10 this one, should be a tech in there somewhere. The other players' last techs are a few turns back, I think (Thoth T49, Gaspar T45, Pindicator T49, Oxy T50).

Commodore might have been able to get Poly, it makes the most sense to have all the gold saved up beforehand and with overflow that could be 6t teching. Dtay makes a bit more sense though, his intial techs were better and that long period of low score could have been him saving up for the run.

Interesting idea. So the trade-off is you get to Math and Currency sooner, but you delay, say, an Academy for the capital (and each subsequent use for a GS) by those 100 GP? Basically a trade for gold (and thus expansion -> population) sooner in exchange for beakers later?

I'm sorry, this is very obvious to you I'm sure, but I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. crazyeye

Well, the obvious opportunity cost of the bulb is the Academy. So you're trading the maths beakers now for Xbpt from the Academy. The ideal circumstances are when you have a weak riverless capital, so no obvious early academy site, which is not the case with us. A higher difficulty level and a toroidal map would also make it more powerful, as you get more beakers from your math bulb and maintenance costs are higher. When more cities are too expensive and you desperately need an immediate boost to some techs that make your cities more efficient it seems like an interesting option.

Let's run the numbers for our situation; Maths is 373b or 311b before pre-reqs. Lets assume our capital would be size 7(+furs, silver, gold,-1whip) working cows, deer, mine and 4 hamlets for ~ 24bpt. It probably would make sense to go Writing -> Sailing -> save gold for ~15t. Assuming a 50% breakeven rate that's 15*12=180b in the next 15t. Half that for the following 15t is 290b total, probably a bit more with growth, so 311b seems reasonable. My rule of thumb is for things with constant rates of return to pay themselves back in 30t to be reasonable investments. Hmm, honestly I was expecting the Academy to win that by more tbh, might be worth firming up on some of the assumptions here. In a situation with a breakeven rate below 50% you can really see how this would be a good idea.

Thinking about it another way, your first GP is just an excellent deal, you want to use him as early as possible and getting you out of an early tech hole is not a bad option. 90h for a Lib, lets assume 20h is the actual value of the +25%b so we're paying 70h and 68f for 311b. Using another rule of thumb 1f:1.5h:3g that's 344g value for 311g value. We're gold restricted at the moment though, so whenever I have an opportunity to make trades at those rates I'm taking it, implying the exchange rate should be a bit better than that for our current situation.

Curious, I'm currently still saving gold on Sailing, tech gets turned on next turn. The idea was that Oxy might get Writing himself before we do allowing some earlier trade routes if we had sailing. I'm tempted to go for Writing first instead now. I'm pretty sure that we'll need to put a Library up somewhere and get a GS out in order to push our SH GP back another 50t to when he'll be useful. Unfortunately, no city is really all that suited for a library besides our capital and we don't want to risk the GP.

Man that's a lot of words!

OK, then here's another weirdish question: how do you think other players view you? Would you say that your RB persona so far is aggressive, or buildery, or just plain competent? Just trying to figure what your opponents would expect you to do -- though as I've been informed in other places, doing the opposite of that is apparently a better strategy in poker than in Civ. smile

How would my opponents view me? I imagine I've demonstrated so far that I'm pretty good at building. I don't really view myself as an aggressive player but I'm pretty happy to hit my opponents if an opportunity arises and to go to war for land if I think that's my best play and there's evidence of that in my games. I think that makes me more aggressive than most of RB but merely average in this field. In both PB13 and PBEM53 I prioritised Knights I suppose, and given the mongolia pick that'd probably be what's expected in this game.

No Marble or Stone does make Ind a lot stronger. Honestly, if they're not around I'd just write off a lot of the more expensive wonders, unless both Ind players are miles away in tech. I'm expecting The Oracle for Commodore and GLH for dtay, though I suppose whichever one got that religion is the most likely. If they pay attention to each other's tech paths they could end up splitting the wonders nicely between them. Our only chance to compete would be setting up a nice Forge/OR city.

[The Black Sword]

We might have some barb problems. We can get 2 warriors in the city though and the first guy has less than 25% odds. I put some hammers into an emergency whip warrior in case he wins. Assuming he loses, I don't think it should even delay the horse being hooked.

We're mining the hill tile SW of LT, it'll be completed with the help of the 2 newly completed workers next turn. That will allow us to 2t a worker with the overflow and give the wheat over to The Conqueror for 2t as it grows.

Does this look like a military unit to you?


Thinking more about the GP situation, I'm not sure I like either a Maths bulb or an Academy given that previous analysis. It looks like they're ok deals, but unless we're really stuck we should try get better from our first GP. The only other option is a Great Prophet. He could bulb Theology, which I'm not sure I like or a golden age which might be good. It's a bit early but Joao should be able to get more pop up quicker than most. We wouldn't really need pacifism to generate some GPs, at least the 200 and 300GPs should be doable with just Caste System. It could save a religion revolt and a set of civic revolts. We'd focus on growing pop point up to that situation, so we should have plenty of nice buildings to put the GA hammers towards, especially if we can get ourselves into OR. What would we do with the tech boost though? We'd want Currency, CoL, Monotheism and Monarchy plus either Bureau or Vassalage might be an option if we go the Knights path instead. What's our options after that?

-Music line, top of the tree: Lack marble for the wonders, don't need build culture with SH
-Nationalism: I wouldn't be confident we can build Taj fast enough to beat a slower Ind techer
-Lib: Probably too expensive for a GA with this timing. Even still, I doubt we'd be ready to build Universities, I don't see anything good enough to take for the free tech
-Knights: Sort of needs a weak neighbour, only one left by process of elimination though.

[Becko]

Man that's a lot of words!

Indeed, but I appreciate it a lot, really gives me a different perspective on the game mechanics and the choices. It also gives me an idea on how to do the math a bit more rigorously, but that'll have to wait until my next game, I think. And that would be more of a fun side project anyway: what I would really like to improve is the sort of back-of-the-hand calculations that you and the other skilled players here seem to be doing almost intuitively.

About the first GP: is settling right out the window, whether it's a GSci or a GPro?

Oxy's power bump is probably a unit, yes (or two). I can't really tell for sure just by eyeballing it, and I can't measure it pixel by pixel ATM, but it looks like around 6K -- compare it to the pronounced BW bumps for first Commodore, then Oxy, and then us, which are 8K each. And he (Oxy) didn't get a tech, so it's not Archery. And building a Barracks at this point in time seems uncalled for, not to mention two on the same turn. So that leaves units and pop. He did grow a pop this turn, so that could be 1K. My guess would be an Axeman (6K) for barb defense, although either a Holkan or a Chariot plus a Warrior would work too.

If nothing else, Knights are fun. But will the timing match up? What I mean is, it's a roomy map -- something like 225 land tiles per player. So iif we get Guilds at a time when Knights are powerful, will we be able to absorb any conquests efficiently, or would we just be able to use them to put an opponent or two out of commission?

[Becko]

OK, using the scores and the graph to break down Oxy's power:

Techs: Mining T0, Hunting T15, AH T24 (2k each), BW T36 (8k), Wheel T44 (4k) = 18k (also Agri T9 and Pottery T50)
Pop: T16, T30, T36, T47, T49, T51 = 6k
Units: Warrior T16, T20, T30, T46, T50 (2k each), Chariot/Holkan/2xWarrior T48 (4k), Axeman (or combo of units) T51 (6k) = 20k

Sums up to 44k and matches the turns (I think).