[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Krill]

I edited because saying "Too Easy" and then giving the wrong answer would have been somewhat stupid.

[Tyrmith]

Admittedly, Pink Dot is not from an actual RB game (just a game with an RB team),

For what it's worth Pink Dot comes originally from the Sirian-Sullla SG that was on civfanatics right as civ came out if I remember correctly. I don't really know if that counts as RB or not.

Edit - here's the actual link http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rb...st-3218407

[antisocialmunky]

Wow Tyrmith's RB lore is on point. I totally forgot about that came, it actually the first forum thread game I ever read.

[scooter]

Admittedly, Pink Dot is not from an actual RB game (just a game with an RB team),

For what it's worth Pink Dot comes originally from the Sirian-Sullla SG that was on civfanatics right as civ came out if I remember correctly. I don't really know if that counts as RB or not.

Edit - here's the actual link http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rb...st-3218407

Wow Tyrmith's RB lore is on point. I totally forgot about that came, it actually the first forum thread game I ever read.

No, it's definitely not. It dates back to the Civ3 RB era. I wasn't around for that so I don't have any first-hand knowledge, but I know the term predates Civ4.

[Sullla]

Yep, the Pink Dot predates Civ4 and goes back to some of the RBD succession games for Civ3. I can't remember which one, and it makes me feel incredibly old that most of those games were over a dozen years ago now.

Anyway, I logged into the game and poked around. Here's some screenshots with some accompanying thoughts:



The ideal spot for the next city is the hill with mackoti longbow camped out on top of it. That's target #1 if possible. If not, here's the next location I like best, on this orange dot. This spot locks down our border with RMOG, grabs the clams for a new food resource, can borrow a deer from Lurker Killer, and bridges the path over to this version of the gold island. Hopefully we can get the hill tile on the mackoti border next though, and come here a bit later.

I do like the knight builds I see popping up. We should be able to double whip the knights in Praetorian Tour and Zulu Exodus before the Golden Age starts, and then use the GA to regrow those cities. (If we do not whip before the Golden Age, they'll grow uncontrollably onto unimproved tiles.) With a third knight from Lurker Killer, we should be able to grab that hill spot and throw our own city down, taking control away from mackoti. Unless he has something up his sleeve, which is always a possibility with mackoti...



More city spots. Here's another useful place to grab when we've filled up our more immediate needs. Lowish priority for now, but we'll want the crabs and wheat for later. It also does bridge us over to these islands; ideally, we'll get a galley out of the bananas city and settle on the island first, then backfill this spot afterwards.



Now that we have the island city by the silver, I'll suggest this slight variation in settling pattern for the western jungle. I don't think we need to cram in a city at the minimal 2 tile distance from Underwater Barb (although that is indeed a legal city spot, since UB is on another land mass). Instead, let's settle SE of the bananas tile and get three cities total in the area. This gives us claim on all the good stuff in the region and precludes plako from settling on the jungle hill NW of the bananas. In fact, this spot probably has next priority after the mackoti hill tile for upcoming settlers, as it will lock down our western border in a highly advantageous spot. If plako does settle the jungle hill by the bananas/clams first, then we fall back to our current "X" spot. Either way, we're reaching this area first, and that's good news for our team.

Overall city micro and worker micro looks very nice right now. My only suggestion here would be fewer farms up in the northeast by Rage Quit. I think we have enough food that we can still use the place as a whipping pump with cottages; the one grassland farm is fine, but I don't think we need 2 more farms on top of that. Your call of course.



Current techs reposted again, mostly for my own reference. I thought we might be way behind at this point in the game in techs, but fortunately we really aren't. REM and plako have the same techs researched as we do: Nationalism and nothing else. RMOG have Education to our Nationalism. Mackoti has discovered nothing and is going for Printing Press first, which is really interesting and unorthodox. I'm honestly not sure why he would want that before anything else; surely he can't have that many villages/towns yet? Probably heading for Replaceable Parts. Alhazard lacks Nationalism but is up Education, Liberalism, Printing Press, and Astronomy. We'll see if he's able to convert those techs into some kind of map advantage. Going for early Communism/State Property/Kremlin?

For what it's worth, teams are floating a lot of gold right now, and that likely means more techs upcoming in the near future. A word on espionage: the ability to see everyone's research is incredibly nice, and we're only going to keep gaining there. Scooter, we're going to need to dump another turn's worth of EP into REM and mackoti soon, but we'll have research visibility on all teams in the near future. After that, city visibility won't be too far away; we need about 200 EP for city visibility on REM, we have 95 EP invested already, and we're making 18 EP/turn. According to the bar graphs, no one else has built a single courthouse yet, so we are just killing them all in EP. Now I know how REM felt in the last game, and it's pretty sweet.

Some resource comparisons with the other teams:



Scooter: 22 resources, 14 unique
REM: 18 resources, 13 unique
RMOG: 15 resources, 11 unique
plako: 13 resources, 11 unique

Plus this sad sight:



Alhazard: 13 resources, 9 unique

All the tech in the world is not going to help if REM and mackoti snap up all of the available land near Alhazard. In his defense, he actually does have 6 cities, which is more than RMOG has out on the map right now, and equal to plako. Yeah, I don't know how that happened either. So we should probably give Alhazard a little more credit for his Liberalism gambit. RMOG crippled themselves with their terrible second city location, while plako is just struggling to get started. We are 100 points ahead of plako already (!) I mean, apply all the caveats to score not being particularly useful early in the game, but still.

Also, did you guys notice that we're up to second in score now? Pretty nice change from 10 turns ago when we were in last place. Scooter is doing something right here.

One other point from the resource comparisons: no one has gold or silver available for trade. Ergo, no one else has settled on the islands yet, or if they have, they only just planted a city like we did. Another plus in our favor.



I took our Demographics at break-even science rate, which is a little over 70% right now. The Demos are... really freaking nice at the moment. First in Land, a surprising first in Soldiers, tied for first in Food with another city planting next turn, narrowly off the Production lead, and competitive with the two GNP leaders (REM and mackoti) who are both running 100% science on this particular turn. Again, apply standard caveats about EP counting in this number, although we are actually last in culture while REM is first so our top competitor is getting some "fake" GNP as well. I continue to be pleasantly surprised here. I thought we would be way behind in science, and we are only narrowly behind the tech leader / even with or ahead of most other teams. If we can pull off our Golden Age plan successfully... well, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I like this position though.

What a fun game so far. Hey scooter, it turns out that we do a pretty good job when we don't end up playing a much weaker leader/civ pairing than our two biggest competitors!

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 225–226: EAST AND WEST

Playing it safe, the new city of Underwater Barb will not encroach on the English sphere of influence. The Aztecs have a better casus belli than to try spike England's wheels: they prepare to marshal forces of chivalry to bring to an end the aggressor Byzantium's blockade of the eastern isthmus for the past 240 years. Should this operation be successful there will be some more opportunity for settlers and infrastructure before the inevitable crunch. The Aztec nation is provided for in terms of cities, improvements, and resources, but research wise this position has come at a cost, an anxiety which is hoped to be shored up as soon as the treasury finishes hoarding its gold for the spending spree that will be the coming golden age. Workers are being recalled to help cottage the core in anticipation of the coming era's yields. These regular rewards are no permission for complacency, however, as eventually advantages can only be gained by stealing, by sword if not by flag. This is the uncertainty which has not yet been answered: who will be the Aztecs' coming adversary, whether by plan or ambush, for the Aztecs have not yet secured anyone's hand in partnership.

---

 
Edit: Replaced rose-tinted glasses on domestic affairs with grim foreign speculation.

[GermanJoey]

I edited because saying "Too Easy" and then giving the wrong answer would have been somewhat stupid.

but - no guts, no glory.

[scooter]

Sullla, one note. I'm pretty certain Mackoti didn't open with Printing Press. His tech rate is higher than ours, but he hasn't completed a tech yet, and Printing Press is cheaper than Nationalism. It seems likely that he switched techs at some point. My best guess is he's got a bulb plan worked out - partial-teching Education and waiting for a scientist to pop out and finish it seems likely. As for why he'd even want Printing Press, it's worth noting that Astronomy is bulbable via scientist once Education and Printing Press are cleared. Astro scientist bulbs are just about the most efficient use of bulbing that exists after all.

Turn 226

Sullla already showed a few things from this turn, so here's a couple overview shots.





RMoG re-offered my dye/sugar swap, so I accepted that and promptly hooked our second dyes. Workers are about to hook silver, so we'll have no need for happiness anytime soon. Very glad we elected to not burn the extra turn of anarchy on HR as it's turned out to be totally unnecessary on this map.

I don't have much else to add. I spent a good chunk of time last night working out the exact timings of the great people pops which was great fun. And by great fun I mean not at all, but it'll be fun later. I've had the plan outline in place for awhile, but now the precise turn-by-turn plan is like 90% settled. The main complicating factor is that I accidentally whipped Masterclass one more time than ideal, which meant I have to do some weird juggling to make sure it gets the 270-threshold great person out on a very specific turn (targeting any other threshold would screw up some timings).


One mechanics question: when two cities complete the great person threshold at the same time, the tie-breaker goes to the city that was settled first, correct?

[scooter]

That report was written this morning. I've since played the next turn. A couple screenshots on that tomorrow, but in the meantime, do your thing.



It's much more vague this time.

[greenline]

PB3?

(I was considering signing up for that way back when... dodged a bullet there for sure)