[spoilers] Commodore and Dtay are Sitting Bull of Inca, somehow.

[Commodore]

-Islands can be helpful but don't think they're vital. A good way to lose is to over-focus on the islands and Elkad's backyard, that's insecure land.

...and this is why we write this stuff down, children. Because it looks really nice to get entangled in a war in the backwoods when local forces are one orange axe against our own axe and two chariots. But we're not here to gain marginal, hard-to-defend land out in the Netherlands' backwoods. We're here to kick ass and take names in the Home Continent's frontwoods. Ask yourself: Does this help get us more knights in thirty turns?

Two good cities here and I'm happy, Deadman and a town for clams/shared corn north.

Here's the Sitting Bull Inca, turn 80. Bit of fiddling and a single wealth build nets us MC in 4; the chopping for Colossus begins soon after and Cascade Point and Cobra both hurriedly get forges for hammers and Great Engineer points respectively. When stone hooks up Moai get erected with the wood being sported up in Warhorse, meanwhile Angelmass gets the Cobra settler and then we send a wave of CG2 archers to claim our share of the Western Island. Above all, we are on the Path to Knights; no other techs allowed that aren't to support that goal.

Iron working next just to make extra-sure we have secure iron ready for the build-up.

[Ceiliazul]

Man Grimace lands are going to hard for him to defend. Even if he.could use the.sea as a safe backlines, and dont count on it with Gavagai behind.

[Ceiliazul]

Building wealth on t80. That's good stuff!

[Commodore]

Building wealth on t80. That's good stuff!

Agreed, it's nice being Current this early in the game. Our motto here is “seed corn is delicious”, so expect to see a lot of wealth builds over the next couple dozen turns. When we lose the wealth, as with the current turn, we do see someone o'er top us with GNP. The MFG and CY ties amuse me, but the fact that we're ahead of one of those in turn order and behind the other means those are two separate people. I do expect those who have more land than us (everyone but Grimace) to improve that comparison as time goes on.

The rival worsts are actually not as bad as I've seen in recent games at this point, nobody has completely whiffed on the start here.

A brief look at the First Three, starting with Cascade Point, shows how we actually really do want those whales online and more luxuries if they can be found. Cascade Point is going to be putting that lighthouse on hold to quickly bang out a forge once that's an option; need the happy doubler on silver and gold something fierce. We've finally stopped adding riverside tiles, now it's the painful and slow process of growing on dry grassland cottages to look forward to. At least Triplet helps with one and Blackcollar with another, allowing the grass mines (coming!) to be worked for infra. This is not a place we want to beat up much more with the whip, although I could see growing into two unhappy faces to get a forge whip in. Market follows the lighthouse and forge, because gold is good and happy (+3!) is better.

Better to have cottage growth than another too-early Great Scientist right now.

Cobra grows in two and forgives the brutal whipping in three, so we may make a corn donation westward for a turn. The library is gonna be nice but I think the forests remaining go into a forge first, with an aim for a mixed Prophet/Engineer pool. Not sure if that happens if we want shrine/Pyramids(MoM?) or just fire a golden age (Machinery bulb?). You can hear me waffling. That's not good. But the plan for the city is definitely for it to be the “other” cottage location in the core, high on commerce if low on (pre-levee) hammers. Just need a GP plan for this sucker.

Libraries are a general question for this short-termist game, I honestly don't know how many more cities will get them pre-knights.

Rounding out the big cities we've got Triplet. Sooo...here's a question. We want to save worker turns until after CS and spec this city for hammers with farms/workshops, or should we immediately start planting cottages on all this green for a third cottage city? Final hills would then get windmills and the city would cap out at size 15 with good hammers and impressive commerce...after a long long growing season. I honestly don't even know what would be best, but if we want it to be the latter we need to shake loose a worker now to start the cottaging. It wouldn't be a worker helping with Plan Early Knights but by turn 150 we'd be extremely glad for the cash. Jokes aside, we can't actually eat all the seed corn and there is no guarantee captured land will have hamlets/villages.

Still completely failing to spread Hinduism, naturally.

Unless our long-term economic plan is “succeed in this lazy Colossus shot and just work coasts forever”?

[dtay]

Hmm.

If we get the colossus, I think it's unnecessary. 3 commerce coasts are as good as or better than non-river cottages for 70 turns pre-printing press. (Which these 70 turns will be). That then will collapse with astronomy, but we both should have killed someone by then and the hammer-econ is fine at that point.

Pushing the other way though is that the alternate triplet spec requires guilds and civil service, so also isn't really coming on pre knights anyway. So the question of how to spec Triplet really is almost purely a long term one, not one that impacts the knights plan besides worker turn usage.

If the ETA on colossus is soon-ish (both so coast commerce is online and we know what we have to do) then I would hold off on cottaging triplet. If not, I think it's a tough call because if we're gonna cottage it we would want to start soon.

[dtay]

Things not taken into account above - are we aiming at a free speech economy lategame? That makes towns substantially better than I'm assuming in my instinctual comparison between them and workshops.

[Commodore]

By the way, a note on Retep:
He's a touch bored with this game.

Not a man renowned for his laser-like focus, our boy Retep.

[Commodore]

On the subject of the Colossus...well, we're working on it. Here's what we've got to work with in Deadman Switch:

Assuming no random Elkad offensives here, of course.

So basically, plan is thus:
1. Grow to size two and work quarry for 5hpt and chop both southern forests into a forge. After five turns of that (getting a spare 5 from 1h at size one and two extra turns at size 3), whip in the forge.
2. Chop three snowy BFC forests and also the one 3N all into the Colossus (104h x1.75=182h from chops)
3. Derive the remaining ~40 base hammers from an archer whip and natural quarry production.
It's simple, and that's about a dozen turns from now finding us fat and happy with a big naked bronze dude. Yay!

On the subject of WONDERS OF THE WORLD, looks like Hinduism spread for free. It's nowhere that desperately needs the culture right now but I won't turn it down and the happy will definitely come in handy once its revolt time (practically, golden age). I'm leaning more and more towards making Triplet another cottage place; Cobra and Cascade point don't want to go it entirely alone and if we have a problem sparing a single worker that's on us. These two bumbling around down here are going to finish the rest of the riverside cottages for Cobra before going to Yonder Contested Isle out west.

Leaving, yes, poor whipped-and-abused Spinneret to make replacement workers for the dry land and her own mines.

[Mardoc]

Colossus (104h x1.75=182h from chops)

Is that a RtR change? I thought copper was a doubler, not a +50%.

[dtay]

Colossus (104h x1.75=182h from chops)

Is that a RtR change? I thought copper was a doubler, not a +50%.

Ya, RtR change. All resource doublers were changed to +50%. Actually if I remember correctly there was one wonder or something they forgot to switch, but I forget which one and Krill might have fixed it.