[SPOILERS] Mardoc's Magical Mystery Tour

[Mardoc]

Wow, this turn speed!

I'd swap them around. Without considering the capital in great depth, the top sizes in the early game can be very marginal to pick up, and I try to go for Exploration right as I want the next city, as I don't think it pays off until you want to lay down to that city. Not many worker turns at your city, but road turns are marginal anyway, and getting out a EC before the settler would be huge, if you can squeeze it.

Up to you, though. That's just my instinct.

Hmm, that's true. With just agri/calendar, we've got only four tiles we can improve. After that we're to forested hills and that sort of thing. Much better to have a fifth citizen as a sage than a fifth and sixth each working a forest. Might change once we have worker tech - but then there's no question we want all the techs, the question now is priority.

Hang on, by third tech do you mean Exp/Myst or just one of the two? If one, equation becomes harder - Exploration wanted for road-speed, myst wanted for GK revolt.

Only one can be our third tech. The other is probably our fourth, unless there's a reason to make Crafting fourth instead.

That said, I'm not sure what the value is for us in an early GodKing. Slider will be 90 or 100%, we'll be working mainly farms and dyes. There's value if we settle a wane as a GMerchant, but I'd tend to think by the time we want to swap to merchants, we'll also want City States. 20h Elder Council, in our shoes - yeah, I want that. But God King? I don't see it.

Well, I guess it doesn't hurt to revolt into. Will make our forested hill workers somewhat more worth having.

Keep second on hold permanently, actually, as one super-fighter is very handy in a pinch.

Eh? A super fighter is handier than, say, 2 warrior-pults? Cause if he's settled as an Engineer, that's 2 warriorpults in 10 turns, just from the Wane.

The general rule sounds plausible, though. If tech becomes the limiting factor in Titan, then we need to boost tech because it's the bottleneck. So really it comes down to 'wait and see what the barbs look like'. With a side order of 'and how kind the RNG is'.

And hang on, since when is Cotton in BtS?

Since...well, um. I guess maybe it isn't? Not sure how I got that in my head.

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah, you're right on GK, I'm thinking too grab-it-SP-style.

Makes the decision all the tougher between the two - but OTOH, it's not going to affect choices pre-Calender. Are you allowed to sim in this game?


Even accounting for a shred of SP bias, I think you're underestimating the power of a C4, Sh2 warrior, especially within a city/using roads.

[Mardoc]

Turn this morning. Only really noteworthy bit is our adept got up to 2XP. I left him unpromoted, not sure if Shadow/Spirit is worth much to us, but I didn't want to commit to Combat I just yet either.

Makes the decision all the tougher between the two - but OTOH, it's not going to affect choices pre-Calender. Are you allowed to sim in this game?

Allowed to, sure. I don't really think I'll find the time to, though.

Even accounting for a shred of SP bias, I think you're underestimating the power of a C4, Sh2 warrior, especially within a city/using roads.

Ok, I was wrong. It's equal to *three and a half* warriorpults. Four if fortified in a city. Five if it's a hill city.


So 15-20 turns for a Wane to pay back its own combat power, if settled as an engineer (and producing 0 XP warriors). Harder to calculate if settled as a tech-booster. Basically - if I'm currently in a war, or expect to be in a war very shortly, it's worth keeping around high XP units. Otherwise, better to boost the economy and spam units when needed.

I just finished a game (35) where the power of quantity was firmly driven home.

[Mardoc]

Haven't showed the west in a couple turns. We finally have something nice other than the gold!




I wasn't going to show the east, but then I found something important: Amurite borders.



For context, I can fit the entire space between us in a single screenshot. I'm sorta tempted to rush for the plains hill spot between the sugar, cow, and sheep, but I probably shouldn't. Reasons?

• Toroid means there are probably foes in a similar distance in other direction, foes who have REX boosts that the Amurites don't
  
• Metamagic mana means I wouldn't be able to hide the fact it's a pink dot.
  
• The land is basically useless until we have animal husbandry, fishing, and probably sailing. We have a first five tech list that doesn't include any of that.
  
• It would defog a lot of land, while also giving us a lot of city maintenance costs.
  

Also, 200 land tiles for each of us has got to mean the other directions are richer. There's what, 20 tiles for each of us in that bridge? 20 tiles in each of five directions does not add up to 200. So rushing for that nice plains hill choke...is rushing for a minor prize.



That said, I should go ahead and dotmap, and if I happen to naturally grow into more than my fair share (industrious, hopefully wanes ) then I won't complain .

[Mardoc]

First potential XP! On the forested hill, with an enchanted Blade, we slightly have odds!




But... he moved out of sight at EOT . I won't stand here and hope he changes his mind but I might try for defensive terrain regularly now.

------

If you want to get the save, or think you might want it in the future, now while the tracker is being made is the time to ask. I believe Brick is doing that. Of course, if you'd rather confine yourself to kibitzing, that's fine too.

[Mardoc]

Aurorarcher's scout showed up to the north of Bananas. If he moves just right, he'll be able to force our worker to stop farming the corn 1t short of completion and run away. Fortunately he doesn't see the worker so there's a good chance he doesn't do that. I thought about covering the worker with our garrison adept, but I feel that's a bit too much risk to run - in his shoes I'd be tempted to take a 10% shot at adept + worker + evidence of empty city. I'd much rather stay at peace for the moment.

[Qgqqqqq]

Agree with decisions. I think the game I made shows the problems with pink dotting quite adequately.

And yes, it's probable I'm undervaluing quantity. Ignore me

[Mardoc]

Ignore me

Not on your life! Disagree, perhaps. Proceed against your advice, quite possibly. But even when I think you're wrong, you force me to think through my plans and explain myself. I'm sure some future occasion will find you right and me wrong, anyway.

An unfortunate thing to note is that I accidentally held the turn for two hours just now, forgetting to check my RB e-mail account. But, we do have the second of the day and a chance of another yet.

I discovered...that the lack of a possible aristofarm economy might just be a Sidar thing. Looks like Aurorarcher will want to expand away from us at least with his first city .


He did not threaten my worker, in fact his scout disappeared entirely. So we continued to develop, second civ to size 2 (after the Lanun). Probably we're just a turn ahead, since Industrious saved us a turn on our worker, but I'll take anything I can get. I'm not quite sure why Jalepeno is growing instead of worker-first; he can't be growing on a workboat. Maybe he decided that a workboat ASAP was more important than half a worker, and swapped as soon as he finished up Fishing?


We met the Sheaim DaveV. As expected, he get a Skeleton out and exploring. I think it must have won a fight to be combat I? Not empowered, combat? What a waste of good XP . He is far enough away that we'll definitely have a warrior out by the time he finds us, though.

[Mardoc]

Hmm, and Aurorarcher has not Smoked his bananas yet. I'm surprised, I'd have thought an Arcane civ would have done that by now.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hey, you guys asked for minimal editing! I heavily modified the starts, got rid of some peninsulas and replaced some AH resources with comparable grains, but otherwise I was hands-off. Rolled about eight maps total.