This is gonna be good: von Adlercreutz and Taotao

[reddog]

we need to do a plan to see if we use 1,2 or 3 workers to mine the gems.I will not end turn if you want to change something.I put pihajoky on worker taking 4 turns and capitol on a market but you can chage if you want.

Ok, I've been logged in for a while, but seem to be a tad too tired to do proper constructive thinking. I'll post thoughts here in random order though so I don't forget everything.

- We seem really short on workers, at least to our north. I therefore approve of the worker in Pyhäjoki (fourth city with clams).
- Capital can build market this turn (picking up 13h overflow). I then propose worker for 1t, and then market once more for 1t when we have the new cottage coming in. A worker costs 60 food-hammers. We have 15 food hammer base. I propose we work 1 coast tile instead of cottage for 1t while building the worker. That way we get to 59/60h in worker in 4t (6t in total). We then 1-pop whip the worker for total overflow of 44h that will go into market (at 73/120h after this). Consider if we want to 2-pop-whip, 1-pop-whip or just chop and/or slow build those last hammers for our new happy cap.
- I considered 2-pop whipping Jutas for the settler. Considering Andrea and Georgie aren't quite ready with their actions and hammers from Georgies chop will arrive in 2t I think it might be better to save the whip for the next settler though. (Your proposed city5 seems fine to me (unless Serdoa does something odd with his settler)).
- It might be that we need to send the workers by our new city Svartholm towards the shared floodplain for city 4 after they've improved pigs and copper and possibly chopped a forest or improved wheat (haven't worked out micro wholly)
- It might be that we need a worker from Revolahti as well, but I think we should grow it to size 5 now anyway while the city has stolen wheat (can't grow it to size 6 without mp).
- With all the other workers occupied elsewhere I believe we will only have 2 workers for Pulkkila/city 4 (Eddy and Fran). I think those should build the two roads necessary to found "city 4 on t79. Afterwards they should probably mine Pulkkilas jungled gems before going back up to improve the gold.

- Serdoa has IW (dont know for how long, but it's evident by the jungle disappearing from gold at Nat Pagle).
- Is it possible that REM is on a crazy beeline to guilds? He has located iron and horses, but has omitted even teching mysticism for a long time even if he has cities that would sorely need a monument. Some bulb path that make sacrifices necessary?
- DZs city is empty! He has military, but where is it if not in his border city? We have a chariot nearby, but I'm thinking that it might be better to play nice now and come back when where ready to finish him off in one go or at least really cripple him (it's not like he's running away with the game even if he founded a new city last turn).
- Both REM and DZ are putting 1EP/t into us. Kind of annoying when we don't have graphs on CH and Borsche yet.

Very good plan with that worker in capitol , well perhaps beter to slow build somehow takin eve the mine from revolati?If not posible 1 pop whip is alright.

I noticed he has it for some time(serdoa IW) so he's power is well lower then ours. Well reem could beline to guilds but we will be there first anyway his economy is very weak compared with ours and ours will get beter and beter with the hoard of workers we have(i can bet we more then anyone else) and we still have to get 2 gems and 1 gold online.

Our demos are looking great and we will plant 2 more cities shortly and have loads of good tiles to grow for many cities.We just need to cotage alot so we can benefit alot from emancipation.

Lets be very friendly with dz for now.

[taotao]

t73
I'll do a short update for any lurkers of the past turn that we've already been discussing.



This was the situation when we founded our 8th city. Sorry Serdoa, but you were just a tad too late. There are closer cities than this that we could settle, but actually we pushed first against Donovan, secondly against REM and only now with our 8th city did we really settle towards you. I don't have any wish to attack you at this point, we still could become at least decent neighbours, but moving up our units is simply a way to show you that we were prepared when we settled this city, it's not like we noticed an area is going to become contested and set out a lone settler on a wild trek.



Fintourist had a look inside Donovans third city and found it empty.
It's also on flatland which is nice for us considering a potential attack further down the road...



Finally demos. Which as mackoti pointed out look really lovely. Especially the 9point lead in food is encouraging. GNP is nice and all, but remember that we're producing a lot of culture and this is us researching at 100% with a bit of ktb.

@mackoti
Otherwise I think we're pretty ready for the next turns, but the road to "city 3" is about to finish and we need to decide on which of the alternatives we want. I still think that "city 3 alt" by the horses are better, but would you be ok with that?
In part it's to stop DZ from claiming the area, but also because city 5 will follow very quickly and I feel like I'm sending the workers slightly too far away if they are to improve sheep (this is a feeling, not something I've looked at properly).
Then there's one thing I haven't mentioned and probably shouldn't be taken too seriously in the discussion:
We could opt to save the (8) forests in the bfc of city 3 for a while for a wonder. 240 base hammers when we've got both stone and marble could get us pretty far and the city does have some production capacity of its own. I'm not saying we should beeline a wonder, but if a mass psychosis occur and for instance MoM is still on the table when we're researching Calendar anyway, then this could be an option...
Again, I'm not saying that we should/need to do this, I'm just throwing it out there.

[reddog]

City 3 has too 8 forest in bfc and let us plant later another city, after we conquer donovan of course.About the wonder as i write i am all for a calendar rush now to try MoM, we can build it in like 18 turns from now which is not very late.

[taotao]

City 3 has too 8 forest in bfc and let us plant later another city, after we conquer donovan of course.

What other city? (this is an honest question, not an accusation)
We can plant "city 5" with both alternatives.
Only city that gain any new tiles that we can build with "city 3"-alternative, but not "city 3 alt"-alternative is on the plains hill 1E from Jutas wheat. And it only claims 2 lake tiles not taken by other cities (so pretty much equivalent to 1E from furs).

[reddog]

1E of the wheat of jutas, of course this will be late era, but even those cities would be good, i know cause i have somne experience with late era.What you think about MoM plan?did you seen we can get IW this turn?

[reddog]

After IW maybe archery? so we can get 3-4 archers in border cities?

[taotao]

In reality it's a pretty small matter we're discussing. We don't disagree on order of settling. We agree on placement of surrounding cities. Same tiles will be worked (more or less).
Still, this is Mackotis suggestion:


- red city is the one we're discussing
- pink city the late game filler city
- green are future cities of ours
- yellow is DZs city that will become ours
- blue are already founded cities of ours

and this is my suggestion:



My interpretation is that my suggestion makes us a bit more sure to claim the area the city and provide a stronger red city and Alavo while mackotis suggestion gets us a stronger city 5 (in green) and slightly Jutas (until the filler is founded).
I can admit that I don't know how to value the late game pink cities against each other.
I believe my version of city 3 & 5 are slightly easier to set up worker wise, but I'm far from certain.

Possibly factoring into the decision is that I believe we should try for MoM in whatever red city we choose here, while mackoti seems to prefer the capital (cap is slower, but it's also less worker intensive).

[taotao]

What you think about MoM plan? did you seen we can get IW this turn?

After IW maybe archery? so we can get 3-4 archers in border cities?

Going towards Calendar (hopefully with a shot at MoM) I don't mind. Did you see that I had had the idea about chopping out MoM in "city 3" even before you mentioned it? I think I'd prefer to build it in our new city rather than the capital. It requires more worker turns in the new city which of course is slightly problematic, but we'll get it quicker there.

I saw that you managed to squeeze out IW in 1t (noticed that already working the cottage instead of coast in Oravainen pushed it back to 2t). It's not that important since we won't start chopping jungle anyway this turn, but it's of course always good to know where our iron is asap.

I probably would've gone Sailing - (Archery) - Masonry - Calendar, but don't mind getting Archery first.

Do you want Fintourist to check if Serdoas city is on a hill or head more in a S-SW general direction?

[taotao]

T75 rankings
As I did some rankings of the players and combos before the game started I thought it might be fun to follow it up with some rankings as the game develops as well. This is all meant to be very good-natured as we’ve only met about a third of the players so far and I have hardly done any C&D worth noting. If you lurkers want a proper take on the situation you’re better off heading to the lurker thread and looking at the overview that TBS supposedly has done for t65.
[Old ranking in”(x)” ]

22 - Donovan Zoi – Stalin of Zulu (19)
Very slow expansion out of the gate and doesn’t have a good wonder as an explanation. Our likely avenue of expansion by the sword. Might be around for a good while longer, but if I am to believe in our own chances then I need to rank DZ low.

21 - theWannabe – Joao of Egypt (13)
Has dropped more places than anyone else in the list I believe. Even though I haven’t met him I’m basing this drop on a few things. First, he hasn’t gotten a(n experienced) partner even though he advertised for one. Secondly, his interest seem to go a bit up and down and he hasn’t been the best about getting help when he’ll have difficulties in catching a turn. After war chariots start to obsolete he seems like a very nice rush targets. Finally, people (who I guess has read his thread(?)) don’t seem too impressed by him in the pb30 ranking discussion (though he is compared to some very nice players there as well).

20 - Elkad – Shaka of America (20)
Got out a scouting workboat really early . Also has some really (n)ice floodplains he can expand into. Expansion has not been great though and he’s still sitting on 4 cities. Also shares a long border with imperialistic and military focused REM. If he had a bigger army he might still be able to hurt his neighbor with aggressive units before the pain train comes rolling in, but unless REM decides to focus on us for some strange reason I don’t see things ending well for Elkad.

19 - Grimace – Boudicca of Japan (17)
I know very little of Grimace in this game. Charismatic seems like a worse trait than normal with the easily available early happiness though. That he’s sitting at the very bottom of the scoreboard doesn’t bode too well either.

18 - Tsargon – Pacal of Persia (14)
Tasunke quit / got forced out and Tsargon took over the reigns. GJ has decribed him as “a budding psycho gamer” which doesn’t sound too good if aiming high. He has also said that Tsargon has improved a lot though so we will have to see in which direction this game goes.

17 - Nyles Standish – Ragnar of Babylon (22)
The likely sock puppet. I still don’t have a clue who this is (other than that it’s not mackoti…), but I’m getting a slightly competent wibe. Sadly we haven’t met and I have hardly anything to base assumptions on.

16 - Borsche – Hannibal of Vikings (16)
I’m not too impressed by Borsches opening. I’ve also seen someone say that he didn’t sim his opening and doesn’t seem engaged in the game. Well, an unengaged player is often a fairly weak player so even though he is at a respectable 6 cities he’s still more towards the bottom of the rooster.

15 - HitAnyKey - Alex of Maya (18)
Here’s the wild card. Got Buddhism. Got the Oracle. Built a temple! and has shrined his religion. Was at 1 city for an eternity, but has started to build cities now. With good, aggressive neighbours I don’t think HAK will be more than a tasty snack, but if he has passive/poor neighbours and manage a decently sized empire, then his economy could really bring HAK places. Unfortunately for HAK, Mindy seems to be a global lurker in this game and only rarely chirps in his thread.

14 - Ichabod & Retep – Nappy of Greece (11)
Ichabod wanted a team mate for this game and retep volunteered. Now retep (who did a possibly more than fair share of the early turnplaying) seems to have gone awol and it’s up to a “powerless” Ichabod to try and squeeze in the turns. They are both reasonably strong players, but their situation doesn’t seem too promising.

13 - Barteq – Tokugawa of Aztecs (10)
I like Barteqs leader/civ combo and it is soon to start hitting its prime. However, I’ve got a feeling that he hasn’t done too well so far and has some catching up to do if he wants to remain competitive. His skill is quite hard to evaluate from previous threads as sadly he is a person who doesn’t really report.

12 - CheaterHater – Washington of Inca (9)
Likely to be one of DZs other neighbours. Not much synergy in his leader and civ, but both aim for fairly quick starts. Still, he was at 4 cities for quite a long time and only recently expanded to 6. It would stretch our empire a fair bit, but I don’t see it as impossible that we’ll try to attack CH next after DZ (if the first war goes well). At that time he might well be fairly big though as he does try to expand (unless he gets distracted and starts a completely pointless war).

11 - Yuris125 – Justinian of Khmer (21)
Biggest climber? I believe that Yuri has set off on a pretty quick expansion so far in the game. Question is whether he can change old habits and actually conquer someone instead of just providing his neighbor with good infra?

10 - ReallyEvilMuffin – JC of Russia (15)
Beat us as one of few nations to 8 cities and has really proven the value of imp. With Elkad as a possible future conquest target he could get even more land from there. Question is how his economy is holding up? Will it tank or will he emerge as one of the big players?

9 - Molach – Willem of Celts (7)
Flying under the radar. Haven’t seen anything especially good from Molach, but haven’t noticed anything bad either. With so little info he’s staying at approximately the same place as my pre-game rankings.

8 - Automated Teller – Charles of Mongolia (12)
AT seems to prioritise this game and is updating his thread often. Gets a decent amount of lurker attention. Has somehow climbed quite far towards the top of the score table. I think he’s playing a stellar game so far.

7 - AdrienIer – Hammy of India (8)
Hinduism founder, but without crazy Great Prophet chasing. Haven’t followed his doings at all otherwise. Could be rushed I guess, but if he gets left in peace he has the tools to do really well.

6 - Serdoa & Noble – Wang of England (6)
A slower start than I was expecting from these guys. Beaten to an amazing site (for them in particular) by us. Seem to have good land to their NorthEast still unsettled. Their stock has gone down in the first 75t, but still the market might get roaring.

5 - Krill – Monty of China (3)
If I followed well enough he didn’t settle his second city until t35 or so. No religion to explain the slow start. Actually quite weak so far, but Krill is Krill and I’ve got far from perfect info on him.

4 - Plako – Pericles of Germany (2)
Seemed interested, but is often playing very short turns compared to most. Nothing noteworthy that I have noticed and hard to say more due to that.

3 - Gavagai & Bacchus – Roosy of Mali (4)
I don’t know much about these guys, but it seems good for them that Gav apparently is the primary turn player and has Bacchus as an active participant in discussions rather than the other way round. If they can set their aggressiveness rating to the right level, then they should do well. Founded Judaism so are likely to get a big economic help to their end game.

2 - Commodore – Sury of Ottomans (5)
Has a history of often getting in a war early on and winning the war, but losing the game. Not so this game. Has a solid economy with two classical techs researched same turn we got Currency. Prioritised one of the most coveted wonders and landed the mids. I can bet that he has now gone into rexing mode and has made himself a target to keep like 10 cities by t85 or something. Still only on 6 cities though. Mackoti think it’s likely that he’s heading straight for CoL. I kind of think that he’ll pick up at least a few minor techs before then. One annoying thing is that I don’t know where Commodores empire is situated. I believe it’s close to REM and Elkad, but to the north or the south?

1 - Dtay – Augustus of Sumeria (1)
Will this be the game where Dtay transforms his good start to an actual win? Landed Stonehenge on t40 and might even have had 3 cities by then. Good expansion since, but not blowing our own away by any means. From the top3 in my previous ranking dtay is the one that has shown his front feet most in the early turns and as such he keeps hold of his top rank position.

[reddog]

I dont wanna MoM in capitol, there we need to get the market but I want it in city 3 becasue of that i decided to get more workers.