May 5th, 2016, 15:08
(This post was last modified: May 5th, 2016, 15:08 by picklepikkl.)
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Brain fart; last turn, when I meant next turn, I meant this turn's next turn (that made sense, right? :P), because I'd pressed Enter to look at the EoT demographics. This turn, two libraries finished (The Fool's built by hand, The High Priestess's finished with a whip), and next turn we're embarking on a new exciting period of expansion.
In foreign affairs, Sian built his fourth city, and I offered Open Borders. I miss knowing what people were teching, but tracking demographics and score every turn was a headache that I wasn't very good at. That said, our tech rate is going to be pretty banging with all these libraries and two core cities at a high size, so hopefully I can catch up if I've fallen behind  .
Next turn is turn 50 (which is to say, t75), so I'm going to do an empire overview.
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Let's start with foreign affairs, because it seems I'm the only one in this game dutifully updating  . Sian built his fifth city (!), right after building his fourth last turn. greenline and I are on four, Jowy is still on three. He also signed Open Borders with me, which I was not expecting, so I'm going to derail my exploration of the southern coast to see if I can figure out his dotmap. I kind of suspect he's laying claim to the Promised Land -- his first two cities were in that direction -- but it's also possible that with my claim to the southern gems, he's settling aggressively to take the western gems before greenline gets them. None of my rivals have signed OB with each other, which may indicate that I'm the only one with Writing -- I haven't seen any libraries from looking at cities. Mechanics question: do city centers you've seen update their buildings while you don't have LOS on them?
And now on to the promised overview!
The Fool looks a lot less foolish when it's at its happy cap and working four cottages, two of which have progressed to the second tier. We're probably going to go Settler->Settler here, and then re-evaluate (hopefully by then the gold will have come in and we can grow again, though we're out of riverside to cottage unless I overrun a dye).
The Magician's first priority is getting that Great Scientist out, a goal for which we are halfway there (but not living on any sort of prayer -- that's The High Priestess's job). Long-term, this makes a nice hybrid commerce/production city, with all its hammer resources, food surplus, and dry grassland. Earlier, I'd thought that I might build a barracks in here before trying to make real military, but then tensions escalated with Sian and I decided to build the Axe first instead, but not before I'd put a turn of production in.
The High Priestess's future, in contrast, is definitely military. The cottage it's currently working will probably be passed on to the city to its east, when that ever gets founded. Once I finish the barracks, I intend to crank out a succession of real military units so that we aren't caught with our pants down.
Our newest city, The Empress. I think her destiny is to be hybrid commerce/Great Person, with her ridiculous food surplus (grass sheep, plains sheep, grass river pigs), six dry grass, and double hill gems. Horses are currently being improved, but sadly most of the things I want this city to do will have to wait for border expansions. I will probably send one worker back east after the horses are done and have the other mine the grass hill, to speed up production on the library that is to follow the granary (since it lacks first-ring forests to chop).
Overview shots of our north and northwestern frontiers. The next city will be comfortable backline, the 2 site that claims the gold, but following that my medium-term target is to colonize up to the rice/incense/silver site. However, as I said before, this depends on what our rivals are doing, so if Sian has settled aggressively there isn't much I can do at this point to contest it, and I'll revamp my dotmap accordingly. The 3 site will almost certainly be our sixth city, though; fort the desert and it gives us access to the two inner seas we care about.
This, however, is the screen I've been most excited to share. 84 GNP, first by a margin of nearly fifty percent!  Granted, that will go down once we turn research off and start saving gold again for Sailing, but I hadn't realized that there would be this much fight in the dog. Ten turns ago I was feeling really lousy about how bad our economic situation seemed, but this makes me feel so much better.
Questions? Comments? Compliments? Statements of disgust?
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(May 6th, 2016, 13:45)picklepikkl Wrote: Let's start with foreign affairs, because it seems I'm the only one in this game dutifully updating . Sian built his fifth city (!), right after building his fourth last turn. greenline and I are on four, Jowy is still on three. He also signed Open Borders with me, which I was not expecting, so I'm going to derail my exploration of the southern coast to see if I can figure out his dotmap. I kind of suspect he's laying claim to the Promised Land -- his first two cities were in that direction -- but it's also possible that with my claim to the southern gems, he's settling aggressively to take the western gems before greenline gets them. None of my rivals have signed OB with each other, which may indicate that I'm the only one with Writing -- I haven't seen any libraries from looking at cities. Mechanics question: do city centers you've seen update their buildings while you don't have LOS on them?
And now on to the promised overview!
The Fool looks a lot less foolish when it's at its happy cap and working four cottages, two of which have progressed to the second tier. We're probably going to go Settler->Settler here, and then re-evaluate (hopefully by then the gold will have come in and we can grow again, though we're out of riverside to cottage unless I overrun a dye).
The Magician's first priority is getting that Great Scientist out, a goal for which we are halfway there (but not living on any sort of prayer -- that's The High Priestess's job). Long-term, this makes a nice hybrid commerce/production city, with all its hammer resources, food surplus, and dry grassland. Earlier, I'd thought that I might build a barracks in here before trying to make real military, but then tensions escalated with Sian and I decided to build the Axe first instead, but not before I'd put a turn of production in.
The High Priestess's future, in contrast, is definitely military. The cottage it's currently working will probably be passed on to the city to its east, when that ever gets founded. Once I finish the barracks, I intend to crank out a succession of real military units so that we aren't caught with our pants down.
Our newest city, The Empress. I think her destiny is to be hybrid commerce/Great Person, with her ridiculous food surplus (grass sheep, plains sheep, grass river pigs), six dry grass, and double hill gems. Horses are currently being improved, but sadly most of the things I want this city to do will have to wait for border expansions. I will probably send one worker back east after the horses are done and have the other mine the grass hill, to speed up production on the library that is to follow the granary (since it lacks first-ring forests to chop).
Overview shots of our north and northwestern frontiers. The next city will be comfortable backline, the 2 site that claims the gold, but following that my medium-term target is to colonize up to the rice/incense/silver site. However, as I said before, this depends on what our rivals are doing, so if Sian has settled aggressively there isn't much I can do at this point to contest it, and I'll revamp my dotmap accordingly. The 3 site will almost certainly be our sixth city, though; fort the desert and it gives us access to the two inner seas we care about.
This, however, is the screen I've been most excited to share. 84 GNP, first by a margin of nearly fifty percent! Granted, that will go down once we turn research off and start saving gold again for Sailing, but I hadn't realized that there would be this much fight in the dog. Ten turns ago I was feeling really lousy about how bad our economic situation seemed, but this makes me feel so much better.
Questions? Comments? Compliments? Statements of disgust?
You get to see all new buildings in the city if you care to spend enough time zoomed in.
Just remember that your traits will do little for your expansion but will get better and better as the game progresses. On this difficulty you probably have the best economy based civ there is.
What is the plan going forward? What could prompt you to war?
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Excellent, thanks! I don't mind zooming in; it's a lot easier than score/demos tracking!
To explain my thinking about plan, I need to talk about a concept I picked up from my days playing Magic: the Gathering -- "inevitability." Inevitability is closely linked to the notion of figuring out who, in a particular match, is in the role of "the beatdown" and who is in the role of "the control." The quick & dirty version is that if what you brought to the asymmetry advantages you if the game goes long, you have inevitability and are in the role of the control. Therefore, the beatdown (the person without inevitability) wants to throw away resources for a quick payoff now in bringing the game to an end, because they're more likely to win if the game is short, and the control wants the opposite: to invest resources in future advantage and defend against what the beatdown wants to do to them.
As you pointed out, I have the best economic traits (my UU and UB are also lategame, but probably not worth mentioning). This means that I view myself as having inevitability, as long as I keep pace in expansion. As such, I don't really want to go to war before I have an overwhelming advantage, unless someone does something to give them inevitability instead, like starting to overrun their neighbor. Obviously, this ignores both the metagame aspects of this (I, uh, haven't played multiplayer Civ 4 before, and am almost certainly the worst warfarer in this game) and the "tournament structure" (do I want to play a first place or last place strategy, or do I want to shoot for second place on score?), but it helps explain my big-picture strategy.
In the medium-term, however, I want to make untrue the thing you mentioned: that my traits do little for my expansion. This is why I've been driving up the center of the tech tree: I want Code of Laws and cheap courthouses everywhere, because maintenance costs are ruinous on this difficulty. The universal truth of strategy is this: find your comparative advantage and exploit it as hard as you possibly can.
May 8th, 2016, 15:49
(This post was last modified: May 8th, 2016, 15:56 by picklepikkl.)
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This turn marked the beginning of a new era! Future generations will look back upon this day and marvel, for everything changed! That's right, on t51 the year increments began to be in blocks of 40 rather than 60!
Also, we discovered Mathematics and entered the Classical Age. I've got to say, I like the Classical Age music a lot more than the Ancient Age stuff. "Ah-yey-yey" was getting on my nerves. Currently saving gold and will probably 1-turn Sailing next, but given how little use we get out of it for a while, I might go straight for Currency instead.
In foreign affairs, Jowy founded his fourth city, and greenline his fifth. Jeez, I am about to fall behind! Can't have that. I want to get to six very soon (may even use the whip, which I haven't done in either The Fool or The Magician in a while), and after that I am leaning more and more to colonizing the eastern sea's Stone Temple Pilots Island, for the 2c internal trade routes and the extra speed for Moai Statues in the 777 from The Fool location. I'd even consider swapping the order of settling for my next two cities, but my workers are out of position for that, and the eastern city is able to start helping the empire immediately with my third luxury resource for my core cities.
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Decided last night that I'm going to go straight for Currency->CoL. Depending on when I end up founding my first inner-sea city, I may take a pause to 1-turn Sailing and get my international trade going, but I know that at least Sian has both Writing and Priesthood (he built Oracle, and I looked at his city models and saw a library), and Code of Laws is good for everyone on this map, not just me. My fallback position if I miss Confucianism is probably bulbing Philosophy. On the subject of religion, Jowy popped a Great Prophet, which I assume will be used to Shrine Buddhism.
Not a whole lot happening domestically this turn. Soon I'll have the Settler out for The Emperor, and a few turns after that my Great Scientist will be born. Even if I miss the first-to bonus on CoL, perhaps I can use the Academy to start getting to other key techs first.
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Also, I keep forgetting to mention this in my turn updates: I gave up on Hanging Gardens. On a map this lush, I don't think it's worth it without stone. If I deforest The High Priestess for anything, it'll be the Mausoleum.
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Righto, I spent a lot of time in game today, so let me show you my empire:
This tile setup is a little weird, but I think it works:
AI diplo is definitely not the same as no diplo:
:P
If Stellaris has a weakness so far, it's the midgame. At my current level of inexperience, it's hard to get a sense of what options are available and good for increasing my empire's power at this point. I don't know what ship configurations are good yet, so my military research has been essentially arbitrary. But the opening is the most fun 4Xing I've ever had.
Anyway, due to Stellaris, I'd had the turn for an hour before I noticed (oops), so I caught up on my missed meal and then settled down to what was sure to be a relaxing uneventful tu WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT
He is on my side.
I don't know if any of y'all grew up sharing a room with siblings. I did. When you share a room with a sibling, one of the first things that gets established is this: there is Your Side, and there is My Side. Sure, sometimes you need to cross over, or you get invited, or the mess on the floor is no respecter of imaginary lines. But if you start storing things on the wrong side, or hanging out there... well, that's an act of war.
This was an act of war.
New game goal: See this city burn. Obviously not immediately -- I have Jowy's graphs, and he's about equal to me, and it's pretty well insulated from fast-movers 1-turning it out of the fog (water tiles on its diagonals, ack). But one day, it will fall.
Jowy, today's the day you went from "my other neighbor" to "Public Enemy Number One."
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Could have turned research on this turn; elected not to, since I get an Academy on t56. Will keep saving gold for now; founding The Emperor either next turn or the turn after (I can't get my head around how moving road->unroaded flatland works). Jowy built a Shrine, as expected.
May 10th, 2016, 17:55
(This post was last modified: May 10th, 2016, 17:56 by picklepikkl.)
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Soundtrack to this game: Fallin' Behind, to the tune of Stayin' Alive. At least I lead in Soldiers!
Next turn I become last to five cities, Academy my capital (first one to do so, at least), and 2-whip my Settler for city #6 with maximum overflow. After all that, I guess I'll turn research on and see where it puts me. I am also chopping outside culture borders for the Library in The Empress, because style points (also because that city isn't great for food surplus until it gets the border expand for the pigs).
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