[SPOILERS] A new Thread [SPOILERS]

[Mardoc]

So far I've been focused mainly on short term and internal things. I should spare a thought or two for the larger strategic picture, too, however.

As best I can tell, we're one of the largest nations in the world, if not *the* largest. 2metraninja may be challenging us for the title but at the cost of a horrible tech rate. Land is power - as long as we get infrastructure and tile improvements up fast enough to keep tech competitive.

Filling in the east will add another four cities, the island to the south is another one, and there are two more spots for filler cities in the core (one of which is also a canal). After that - I sent a unit out scouting eastward and found borders pretty quick, so I think that's basically the limit. There's still room for one or two out thataway, but by the time I'm ready to grab them I think that'll be gone. We also have a lot of internal growth available - still nowhere near the happy caps in most cities, still have a ton of infrastructure to put up, still are only about a third Confucian.

That leaves the Ottoman empire in a pretty solid position - but I don't think it's a winning position. I don't really think anyone's in a winning position at the moment, although Zanth comes closest. How do we convert to a winning position?

Well, fundamentally I think I need to murder someone. Commodore's convinced me that the best offensive war is a naval one, because mobility is even or maybe biased toward the attacker. Still, we could fight a naval war against either Rome or China. Or maybe against BaII's Amestrians. So for preparation: I need to get a handle on how they're doing economically and techwise, primarily. Any of them, today, could be handled by galleons/janissaries. But of course by the time I get to Jans on Boats they ought to have advanced themselves.

So for a mid-term goal: I want to finish occupying the land we've claimed, and grow to use it properly. And push the tech rate well enough to be measurably ahead of one of those potential targets - then build a navy and an army and use it. I'm pretty sure this will be at galleons, but I'm not sure if their cargo will be Jans or Rifles or Other. Grenadiers could work, and Frigates in the water make a naval war much safer to wage - and I'm building a bunch of workshops anyway. The important thing is getting there ahead of my target. Along with having an empire capable of producing a sufficient navy and army - hence the recent emphasis on making hammer cities wherever I can.

So how to get there from here? Markets, Grocers, Courthouses to push the slider up, Libraries to use it once raised - and soon enough it may be worth pushing for an Oxford and possibly banks/wall street as well. Alphabet ought to let me keep an eye on my neighbors' vulnerability levels, and Printing Press - well, that's the odd one out. Cash is good, I don't know if it'll pay for itself until I'm ready to go on to Rifles. But since I'm not ready for war from a production standpoint, there's not much point in unlocking military tech.

[Mardoc]

While we wait for Sian to play the correct turn

More pictures for later thoughts.

[Mardoc]

So here's what I meant by 'can't go east much more - that purple square is Zanthian borders. True, I could probably grab the cow/canal cities still - but I don't really want to. Those aren't especially strong in themselves, they're jammed right up against foreign borders, and I'm not particularly interested in challenging Zanth given our respective positions. Much better to stick a Fort 2N of Sinop for the canal and keep my defensive front to one city + oceans rather than two plus oceans. That way I can use the settlers where they'll pay off a lot sooner.

Where's that?



Well, here's my first new city site - I'm pretty sure I can settle it next turn, in fact, if I remember the situation correctly. Three foods plus forests to chop to get bootstrapped should make it set up fast. I'll be workshopping most of it and making this into a solid hammer city.

After that, I'm going for the marble/banana island - not nearly as nice by itself but requires fewer worker turns - and I want the marble soon anyway for Epics.



Next wave of settlers is going into this peninsula. I don't like the west sites as much as the copper/dyes but I do need them for canals and they're limited by the 3-tile spacing rule. And they'll be worth having, just not as awesome as they could be if settled for pure output rather than balancing output with other factors.

Aside: flugauto dotmapped this. Since I can't find a reasonable improvement I think he deserves credit for that .

And...that's about it. After these sites are settled, this corner of the world will be basically full. There's one filler city probably worth settling down by Izmir, and after that we can have only the land that we take.

Speaking of taking land: oh my gosh, Rome is potentially extremely vulnerable to a naval strike. Basically his core surrounds a bay, so one fleet can fork ~6 cities, all important (IIRC). It's not as important as the question of relative military tech, but from pure geography he seems the obvious target.

He's got a few non-coastal cities and we'd need a land force to at least stalemate him, but that can be cleanup details.

I have to keep reminding myself: tactics don't matter until you solve the logistics question. Doesn't matter how vulnerable Rome is in theory if I can't get a big enough fleet built and loaded. And conversely: it also doesn't matter how vulnerable he could be if he builds an adequate defense fleet that can stop mine - or invade me instead. The question of the right target mostly needs to rest on tech and production power, not geography. If that means China instead, so be it. For that matter - if that means nobody for another 100 turns, also so be it. I'm aiming for conquest, but it's even worse to try and fail than to abort.

[Mardoc]

Here's Rome's vulnerability to a naval attack. Turns out I slightly exaggerated: can only fork four of his core cities with a single fleet, not 6 . Still, about 2/3 of his cities are coastal on oceans I can access, and the remainder aren't far.






Rome does have sentries and outlying cities that might give him some warning.

I'm not yet sure how vulnerable China is. We've got scouting info around his borders but hadn't gotten around to scouting inside them yet. Plus half of his stuff is across ocean, not coast.

Might be that he's built more inland than Rome. Or it might be that he's plenty coastal too and would be shocked by an Ottoman invasion.

[Mardoc]

More pictures for later thoughts.

Returning to this, it's time to finish the city analysis! Until..um, next turn, when this is no longer the end of the city list .




Mugla's pretty easy, really. Now that it's got a lighthouse, grow grow grow!

There are a couple decisions I need to make. That forest should be chopped into something useful, maybe a market, and then replaced with...workshop or cottage? I think cottage. The city needs hammers, yes, but a single WS isn't a significant amount of them. 5 fpt is a lot more than 4 fpt, though, and as long as I stay in Slavery (or dip back to it) I can still have hammers. But this city needs a lot of growth, which means food. No point in putting up a Market before working a lot more coast than we are now.

Also, is it worth trying to pump culture and steal the Chinese gems? I think, probably not. First, it's very hard to beat a first ring. Second, it would really torque off BaII for minor gains if it did work - not like we'd get extra happy, just one more good tile. If I want those gems, it's probably better to invade.


Ekisehir is a bit more complicated. I think I'm giving its plains and hill to Denizli, so it won't have a lot of hammers itself. But post-border pop it'll have a lot of grassland that could be workshopped, on top of the coast tiles. Worth doing? Well, at least a few of them. Lots of food here, so we can afford a few workshops, and they'd certainly help it develop a lot faster.




Inebolu's another up and coming city. It's got the potential for significant hammers as soon as the mine and workshops finish - all in progress - and a lot of commerce from those coasts. Combined with already a lot of food, and more if we can manage to steal the chinese crabs, this is a gem of a city. Now that we've got the vital infra in place (granary, lighthouse), it's just a matter of sitting back and watching it grow.



Finally, Adana is simple. Decent hammers from the cows and stone, stone will boost Moai and other wonders elsewhere in the empire (and probably castles too), and a ton of coast. It'll be in much better shape once I get a border pop for the Fish, which is why there's a Confucian missionary en route. But it does need some time yet for development; need a bare minimum of granary and lighthouse yet, and it wouldn't hurt to add in forge and commerce multipliers. I don't expect it to contribute anything but stone to the empire for a while yet.

[Commodore]

What is your slider rate? Courthouses are better than markets typically unless you need the market happy, too.

[Mardoc]

What is your slider rate? Courthouses are better than markets typically unless you need the market happy, too.

Running binary, but I'd guesstimate 35% or so at the moment. Going to wobble around this point with more cities and also more growth and Printing Press.

At the moment most of my talk about markets is just talk, sadly . Still primarily working on growth, which means barely any hammers into anything. We're in something like 8th place for MFG and the whip's been getting dusty as well. Part of why I keep coming back to workshops as the way to develop cities; I can't bear to pave over maturing cottages but we definitely need more

Eventually we'll need the market happy most places, but realistically the short term goals are mostly still granary/lighthouse/confucianism and REX. And I should mix in some more military, too, at least some cats. But those are obvious, so I wasn't bothering to mention them. I'll try to remember to post a city overview screen next time I touch the game so you can see for yourself.

Markets are more of a mid-term thing. The main reason I think they make sense is that they'd go mainly in core cities, as the only ones I've got with surplus hammers. Those cities pretty much all could use the happy - if not now, certainly by the time they can scrape up 150 hammers. But yeah, I'll be mixing in Courthouses too, especially at the periphery and in any city without a lot of commerce tiles in its future. That choice ought to become more obvious as the next few cities go down and bump up costs everywhere.

Main exception: Istanbul. But I'd expect capitals to be exceptions usually. It's putting up a Grocer, which I'd guesstimate to be worth 30 gpt on average, instead of a courthouse which would produce 3 gpt and 2 EP. I suspect even monasteries pay better in a Bureaucap than a courthouse.

[mackoti]

What is your slider rate? Courthouses are better than markets typically unless you need the market happy, too.

Running binary, but I'd guesstimate 35% or so at the moment. Going to wobble around this point with more cities and also more growth and Printing Press.

At the moment most of my talk about markets is just talk, sadly . Still primarily working on growth, which means barely any hammers into anything. We're in something like 8th place for MFG and the whip's been getting dusty as well. Part of why I keep coming back to workshops as the way to develop cities; I can't bear to pave over maturing cottages but we definitely need more

Eventually we'll need the market happy most places, but realistically the short term goals are mostly still granary/lighthouse/confucianism and REX. And I should mix in some more military, too, at least some cats. But those are obvious, so I wasn't bothering to mention them. I'll try to remember to post a city overview screen next time I touch the game so you can see for yourself.

Markets are more of a mid-term thing. The main reason I think they make sense is that they'd go mainly in core cities, as the only ones I've got with surplus hammers. Those cities pretty much all could use the happy - if not now, certainly by the time they can scrape up 150 hammers. But yeah, I'll be mixing in Courthouses too, especially at the periphery and in any city without a lot of commerce tiles in its future. That choice ought to become more obvious as the next few cities go down and bump up costs everywhere.

Main exception: Istanbul. But I'd expect capitals to be exceptions usually. It's putting up a Grocer, which I'd guesstimate to be worth 30 gpt on average, instead of a courthouse which would produce 3 gpt and 2 EP. I suspect even monasteries pay better in a Bureaucap than a courthouse.

I think the bigest mistake i can observe in people plays is not building CH, which is second best build after granary in civ.I know is expensive but costs way more to not get it.People build a misonary or 2 to get 2-3 gold in theyr shrine cities but refuse to whip build a ch which would net 4-5 gold and 2 espionage points.

[Mardoc]

Hmm...well, ok, a couple more Courthouses went into queues this turn, then. Here's what the F1 screen looks like at the moment. Note that it's still mostly basics, libraries and forges and etc.



We founded this city, which only cost 3 gpt off the empire's 100% savings rate. Must be starting to top out on the #/cities cost.




I changed course on tech for the moment; we're within a couple turns of having marble online so I want Literature. Bursa's definitely ready to put up the HE and start working on things like a cat stack, longbows/maces for garrisons, maybe some Knights for a quick reaction force.... Looks like that'll end up delaying PP by about 2 turns, which is probably worth it.

We've got 10! cities due to grow at EOT . This is where it starts to get really fun, having a big empire. That should improve all sorts of demographics.

[Mardoc]

Why do we always need a pause?

Xenu, I hope this is rhetorical. We always need a pause because Sian's basically checked out and his neighbors haven't killed him yet. Once he's removed, we'll go to 'usually' needing a pause instead of always .

News of the turn:

Catwalk razed a Jowyian city. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be cheap, though - Jowy's been whipping a lot. Catwalk's been drafting near max every turn, so he can probably overwhelm Jowy eventually, but it may take a while. I'm considering whether I should gift luxuries or something to Jowy to prop him up.

On the one hand I don't want to see Catwalk get too powerful too cheaply. He's ahead of me, and watching those ahead pull further ahead doesn't appeal. Jowy's got 10ish cities, and I wouldn't be surprised if Yuri makes a nice post-Jowy snack; he was losing to Jowy, after all. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Catwalk will win this fight eventually. He's got something like double Jowy's cities and is ahead in tech. That means I'll have to deal with him. Maybe I'd rather be friends with #2? Especially when I nearly border #1? Plus, fueling his expansion with early drafting (maces or muskets, not sure which until I research Alphabet), during a Golden Age, is probably going to gimp him regardless. Especially when he's razing cities, not capturing them.

I guess I'll continue my neutrality.

Not a whole lot newsworthy at home. Istanbul grew to 17, I paused its growth for the moment to give the food to Samsun. IIRC Samsun wants to pause at size 9, which shouldn't take very long to accomplish, and then Istanbul can have the tiles back.

Aestetics is in, Literature will be in at EOT. I expect marble at the same time, and I'll start the HE almost immediately (need to finish a missionary first). I've also gone ahead and started the Moai in Edirne despite not having stone yet; the timing on a whip of its Market meant I could either have a 1-pop whip after getting stone or a 2-pop whip now. And Moai will be valuable enough that I think it's worth pulling earlier in any event.