[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[retep]

Well if you were ORG I will push for COL.
Any plans for the stone. I'm 99.99% sure tha Mids haven't fall yet. Or they have and you haven't post it in which case is your fault that I don't know

Seryously, I think that most people are afraid to build wonders on this game maybe there is an advantage in there...

[Fintourist]

Turn 93

Our weak hut luck continues.. No Masonry, no gold, just -1 unit costs (3rd scout):




I think we'll settle the spot where I unloaded the settler. No luxury resources, but at least a tundra deer.. Another option would be settling 2W of current location and trying to steal fish from gold city (and getting fairly uselessly marble inside our borders).

As advertised we are 1-turning Masonry. If we would/could run 100 % research our GNP would already reach 250.

Another piece of negative news of the turn is that we are not getting trade routes from all of our neighboring cities:
Cheater hater 7/7
Cyneheard 7/8
Pindicator 3/9
I really can't say what are the reasons for this, but I hope that it has something to do with pindicator's (& cyneheard's) internal roads and this will change.. Well, at least the island city that we are settling next turn will bring us concrete value..

Well if you were ORG I will push for COL.
Any plans for the stone. I'm 99.99% sure tha Mids haven't fall yet. Or they have and you haven't post it in which case is your fault that I don't know

Seryously, I think that most people are afraid to build wonders on this game maybe there is an advantage in there...

Yeah, in 33 player game aiming for wonders feels always like a gamble. But the later game advances, less competitors there will be and maybe we should make a run for selected wonders. We won't be aiming for Mids, but I'll see if we could divert a chop or two into it for fail gold once we have stone connected. MoM sounds attractive, but unfortunately we don't have marble (or a really strong production city) so I really doubt that we would stand a chance. I'm still thinking about it and I'll see if there would be a way to build it at least on a semi-competitive schedule.

Stone will be immediately used for building Moai. There will be a bunch of overflow waiting from a worker whip that will be used once the quarry is built.

[Old Harry]

Our weak hut luck continues.. No Masonry, no gold, just -1 unit costs (3rd scout):

- At least we've got enough spare units to fogbust the SE or to explore through all our neighbours open borders...

I think we'll settle the spot where I unloaded the settler. No luxury resources, but at least a tundra deer.. Another option would be settling 2W of current location and trying to steal fish from gold city (and getting fairly uselessly marble inside our borders).

Sounds good to me. I'm shocked there wasn't a nice tundra silver there though. Commodore, what happened to you man?

Another piece of negative news of the turn is that we are not getting trade routes from all of our neighboring cities:
Cheater hater 7/7
Cyneheard 7/8
Pindicator 3/9
I really can't say what are the reasons for this, but I hope that it has something to do with pindicator's (& cyneheard's) internal roads and this will change.. Well, at least the island city that we are settling next turn will bring us concrete value..

Presumably Pindi hasn't linked his Barry conquests into his main empire yet? Try to settle the city next turn AFTER Pindi has played in case he completes the road next turn (trade routes get recalculated when you settle a city).

Well if you were ORG I will push for COL.
Any plans for the stone. I'm 99.99% sure tha Mids haven't fall yet. Or they have and you haven't post it in which case is your fault that I don't know

Seryously, I think that most people are afraid to build wonders on this game maybe there is an advantage in there...

With 90 hammer courthouses we're 1/2 ORG already. If I had the time to sim I'd take the T99 sandbox and swap CoL for Calendar and see how much it helps/hinders, but I have the feeling that the extra happy is worth more to us immediately anyway.

FT - did you check if anyone has Marble hooked to allow us to try a MoM build? Also we're aiming for Azza to build the Mids for us, but failgold for it on this map with these tech costs will be valuable too...

[Ceiliazul]

It also suggested a tactic for this game - try to get Krill to rage quit. Any ideas how we that?

pssh, that'll happen anyway. over/under is t60.

What happened Ceil? It's T90 now. Do I need to start slagging off Stoke in the tech thread?

I credit Novice as a moderating influence... actually I'm surprised the whole game hasn't collapsed in pyft entropy yet. Of course Lord Parkin is doing his best impression of Atlas.

[retep]

Actually I was thinking after calendar? Col?

I think that mids will be build before t100 and HG probably should fall in the next 3-4 turn too. But wonders are being delayed more than normal so maybe building MoM wouldn't be so unreal.

Also is CH still at war? Does he has cooper conected?

[Fintourist]

Turn 94

I think that mids will be build before t100 and HG probably should fall in the next 3-4 turn too. But wonders are being delayed more than normal so maybe building MoM wouldn't be so unreal.

Ha! Retep's estimations are once again correct and HG indeed fell at the end of turn 93. Based on score increase, it should be German Jojo, who sniped the wonder.

Also is CH still at war? Does he has cooper conected?

Yeah, no further cities have fallen, but the war is still there. CH still has both copper and horses connected.

Meanwhile we settle Lucky:




WB will be whipped in Izzy. You can also see settler for "Nina" in place under the annoying screenshot box.

And we also founded Marmalade:




Sorry OH that I did not wait until pindicator has played. I would be really surprised if he had not roads between his captured and original cities. I think there is something else fishy going on. One random guess is that for our foreign trade route purposes roads/coast need to be covered by continuous culture, but internal trade routes work even if there are holes. I cant imagine that Cyneheard wouldn't have connected all his cities either.

Currently we are "losing" 12 commerce per turn due to not having full set of foreign intercontinental trade routes. We could get ~5 extra commerce if we would sign OBs with Azza, but I think maintaining our current policy of not supporting his economy until he demands it himself makes sense. Azza is finishing Maths this turn and is still a long long way from e.g. Currency Currently I think we can just get CoL after Calendar and then grab Construction + HBR and start increasing our military while expanding to 20+ cities. If an opportunity presents itself we attack Azza with HAs+cats+elephants+stuff, but at the latest we will make an concentrated effort once we can build maces+knights. Azza probably can get his own WEs in a reasonable time frame if he goes directly for Construction + HBR, but that will really put him far away from having any kind of economy.

Btw, bad news of the turn is that Azza now has Madrassa in Hello Joe and will start gaining culture on those vision providing mountain/hill tiles at our border. There isn't really much we can do (lucky religion spread + monument in Cornelius would of course help) except recognize the situation and possibly increase our defenses a bit in ~10 turns.

The random screenshot of the day is the power graph, which isn't really alarming:

FT - did you check if anyone has Marble hooked to allow us to try a MoM build? Also we're aiming for Azza to build the Mids for us, but failgold for it on this map with these tech costs will be valuable too...

Nobody has marble connected (and even if someone had I wonder if anybody would sell it to us for a decent price).. I haven't really planned any fail gold chops yet, but I'll see if some of our workers have extra time. 50 % bonus from stone makes chopping into mids a decent play, but it's not quite as economical as in normal BTS or previous version of the mod. We are currently making +92 gpt so one fail gold chop equals half a turn of research (which is obviously good, but not an enormous boost as we don't have any trouble of reaching Calendar and CoL via normal research).

[Old Harry]

Is the 12 commerce from twelve missing trade routes? (ie have you factored in the island city?) I suspect Azza will only ever get us 4 commerce, but signing OBs might make him avoid Construction for a little while...

So Hello Joe is making 5 culture while we're making 3? How many turns before he overtakes us? (ie what is the % on the mountain and the total culture of the city?)

I might get a chance to try and figure out what's going on with pindi's trade routes tonight, and maybe even do a bit more sandboxing . It'll be good to start helping out properly in this game (ie don't count on it - we're still totally relying on your micro skills )

Also, lets test retep a bit more: Who is going to land the mids by t100?

[Old Harry]

I had a bit of fun with your save stack and was impressed how well it all holds together. Especially the micro for the settler founding Ophelia is great

Then I had a look in game to answer my own questions - I'm a bit puzzled over the trade routes - we'd be getting three extra commerce if we had island trade routes rather than foreign ones in three cities.

I'd like to get a scout over to CH's land ASAP, so we could send our southern galley (it's 9 turns to get there) or build one in Hazelnut instead of the Axe that's just started there this turn? I think we've got enough units to cover ourselves in the east for now...

On Azza's border the mountain culture ratio is 56/43% and Cornelius has made 53 culture which means we have about 43 on the peak which (I think) means Azza has 33 on the peak, so it'll be about t99 before he gets it back. The borders of Hello Joe should pop to 40% on turn 107. At that point he'll start gaining on the tile SW of Flossie, but not fast enough to take it before Flossie pops her borders in 80 turns.

Edit: And looking at the sandbox it looks like you're right about culture needing to touch to have a trade route in the fog.

[Fintourist]

Ok, cool! Sorry, I've been the whole day on the road and did not manage to answer your questions (good tactic for making you analyze things apparently ) Yeah, the way our cities choose trade routes is a bit stupid.. Btw, if you want feel free to log in and change the build in Hazelnut (Axe --> galley). You are right, that I'm probably playing it a bit too safe there and we could get away with close to no defenses there. I would like to keep the southern galley there for later Azza attack and worker transports..

EDIT: Changed the build into galley

[retep]

Also, lets test retep a bit more: Who is going to land the mids by t100?

Not sure if you are jooking but just in case in spoilers

Plako or Novice

If you want to know how I guess here are the steps:

First how do you know someone is building the wonder:
-People that overexpand and can't tech anymore will try for Mids to get out of the ecnonomic crash.
-Stone/Marble seems plentiful even if contested.
-Wonder are falling later then normal because people don't want to make big risk earlier but now someone will take the bet in order to end on top.
Now how to guess who is going for it:
- There are 33 players. from there you take away the ones you know for sure are not going for the wonder:
Finharry (lurking) Pindicator(win war recently) Barry (lost war) CH (at war) Whosit (at war) Mardoc (build up) Azza (Build up).
-Who isn't playing his turn regularity for the past 20t.
Hashoosh, Darrell, Caledorn, Qqqqqqq, Bacchus
-Eliminated the lower half of the scoreboard:
Jowy,AT,Furungy,Dhal,Nakor, Molach, MYKI, HitAnyKey, wetbandit, CYneheard, daze, Ruff.
-People that already build a wonder not so long ago:
JoJo (HG), Boldy (bulb Phylo)

That leaves:
Dtay, Ball/Oxy?, TBS, Plako, Yuri, Space, Ataturk( who is Ataturk? Catwalk?) WilliamLP, Krill.

From that bunch I would put my money on Plako or Krill but I think that Plako is more likely to go for The MoM.
Krill on the other hand could easily overexpand and Novice has the skill to make the Mids pretty fast.