It's Clobberin' Time! Raging Barbs Highlands Tokugawa on Monarch

[Zalson]

Well I booted up and I can’t play. the trackpad that was in Valencia has someone how ended up in Florida.

Please skip me.

[Brian Shanahan]

Given the way the map builder algorithm works we should have iron inside the capital's third ring, as we had to reach for both copper & horses. And IIRC you need iron to build Samurai.

[Zalson]

Trackpad arrived today! If it’s not too late, I’ll try to play tonight. If it is, can we swap RFS-81?

[Zalson]

Trackpad's working, CIV is working. Let's do this.

T130
It is Turn 130 and we have 6 cities. I know we had barb trouble but this is lame. Let's see if we can double that in the next 50 turns or so.



Gligamesh has 8, Rome has 6, Mansa has 5.



Here is what our cities are up to: limping toward currency

SuperMarioBros



Goal will be to grow this super tall.



SonicThePig has too many tiles to be at such a low size; we should not have this many improved tiles with only 6 citizens. I'll try to grow this super tall, too. I'll also add a city to work some of these cottages.


Flindo's Quest is limping into research now, but I'll have it produce archers for Sonic and Super Mario


FootballManager has so much food it's painful. It also has too many forests! Let's lumberjack them down.


Landstalker should also grow tall.


Is there a reason we don't have horses hooked up here?

Techs


Shuffle some units around. End turn.

T131
Mansa makes peace with JC.

T132
Mansa founding right here means we are protected from the barbs.



T133

Finishing adding several workers. Now start the settler spam! (Also a lot of our workers are out of position.) 


This was going to be spot 1. I chose otherwise.

T135
I was completely wrong. I have no idea where barbs can spawn.



However, I do found Jungle Strike.


T136
Horses hooked up. Or rather, they were hooked up last turn but I now get capital credit.



I don't have the workers in place to support spot 1, so I was waffling over founding here. In the end, 1 is the better spot so i'll go there.

T139
Lose the horses at Cholo. However, our first horse archer and the axe on site are able to clean it up.



To celebrate, I found Contra. It drives our gold rate down to ... 0 gold at 100% cash.

Oh and I start on this litlte thing called currency. Due in 2 turns. Probably should have started it a turn earlier. That's what I get for not simming.

T140
No thanks, dude.


Buddhism spreads at the capital. I'd hold on the revolt until we get asked; we don't want to fight Rome without crossbows or maces.



We're up to 8 cities. Let's add 8 more in the next 10 turns.



I've left notes for the major actions. I have a settler going to this spot in the north. The workers should give the capital an extra cottage, then head up to the sheep.



Football Manager should chop out workers. You get a great scientist next turn: send him to the capitol.

Next research target needs to be sailing: we might have trade routes over the rivers.



Contra got a chopped granary: it should grow on the food between it and the capital and Football Manager; make sure to switch tiles as needed.

North and South



Demos: not too shabby, especially that GNP #. Let's just get an academy at the capital and REALLY rev it up.



I built next to 0 units in my set. If you're going to build them, use Flindo's quest. Or do the double-whip special (whip an axe 4/35, overflow onto a spear or vice versa; gets 2 units for 1 whip and you can use one for happy and another for fighting)

Techs

We've got 3 people working on the pyramids.

[haphazard1]

Hmmmm. 0 gold/turn at 100% cash and you want to double our number of cities? I appear to be missing something here....

Our expansion has been a bit slow compared to a normal game, but that is common with raging barbs. And losing our second city to the barbs for a while was also a significant set back to our growth curve. That we have caught back up to the AIs in number of cities is doing pretty well, overall.

Looking at the tech screen, nothing too unexpected. It is confirmed that Julius took Metal Casting with the Oracle -- the AI usually does, and it is a strong move for them. With so many civs knowing Polytheism, Sailing, Masonry, and Iron Working we will get a modest disccount on the costs of those techs. Every little bit helps.

What to tech next? Sailing is not a bad option: possibly trade routes to the AIs for a tiny bit more income and maybe resource trades, and opens Calendar for a bit more happiness. Iron Working would be useful to learn where iron is, and maybe give us a useful hammer tile or two if we are lucky enough to have some. With our city count growing heading towards Code of Laws would let us build courthouses to help control costs.

Buddhism...well, do we want to try to do anything with it? Our neighbors are split 2/2 between Hinduism and Buddhism, so we are likely to offend somebody no matter what we do. We are not desperately in need of happiness with HR, so maybe wait and see if we get more spread (natural or from AI missionaries)?

[Zalson]

We're not at 0 gpt at 0% gold per turn any more. It's like +4

We really need to try to get foreign trade routes, if we can. With currency, that's an extra 30 commerce, minimum. That'll rescue us.

CoL for courthouses I think is the best play: none of our rivers reach the AI.

Unfortunately, Mansa is our closest trading partner -- but we can probably road + build cities + fogbust down toward Gilgamesh and Rome.

[haphazard1]

Foreign trade routes will probably not help us nearly that much, unfortunately. Foreign cities that we can connect to get assigned to our cities, in order of best value, but each foreign city can only be used as a trade route by one of our cities. With Currency we get two trade routes per city right now, so we would need connections to 16 different foreign cities to get the foreign city bonus for all our trade routes. That is at least two and more likely three AIs to get connections with, if they are fully connected internally so we get access to all of their cities. Mansa is a good bet with that river heading his way, but other AIs are going to take longer to get linked up. So foreign trade might get us 5-6 commerce/turn initially, with more later, but that is about all.

Off shore cities also give a bonus, and your own cities can all use the best possible city within the empire, so two island cities would give every city more valuable trade routes for all their slots. But this being a highlands map script, there won't be any islands.

[Zalson]

You're right; I overestimated the benefit of these trade routes: they wouldn't be maxed right away.

However, adding Gilgamesh would give us at least +8 commerce. Adding currency gives us +8 commerce. That's +20 GPT at 0% science and that's before build wealth, which would give us +17 additional research currently. Converted to wealth, that's means we run +37/-80 which is about a 30% slider.

Additionally, markets in our commerce cities will push our slider significantly higher, too. Don't know the commerce breakdown to be able to say but it will be significant.

Also, I realize now that the library in Cholo is a mistake: that's a production city. I think we finish the library, but have it build a barracks and a stable and then build wealth or research when it doesn't need to do anything else (build units)

Roster
Zalson (just played)
RFS-81 (up)
haphazard1 (on deck)
Brian Shanahan
shallow_thought

[RFS-81]

All right, got it!

We need to improve our income. So I'll research towards CoL for courthouses. We'll want a trade route connection to Mansa Musa. Getting trade routes to more leaders would be good too. I try to get open borders with whoever wants. And we can also build markets. I think I'll build markets as fast as possible in our commerce cities.

Do we need to see cities to have trade routes? I guess I'll see when I hit next turn. If yes, I'll try to trade maps with Musa.

EDIT: Never mind, I don't think the river is connected to any of his cities yet.
EDIT2: Oh, we already have a lot of open border deals.

Also, I realize now that the library in Cholo is a mistake: that's a production city. I think we finish the library, but have it build a barracks and a stable and then build wealth or research when it doesn't need to do anything else (build units)

Hey, at least it'll help push back the Malinese borders.

[shallow_thought]

Also, I realize now that the library in Cholo is a mistake: that's a production city. I think we finish the library, but have it build a barracks and a stable and then build wealth or research when it doesn't need to do anything else (build units)

Hey, at least it'll help push back the Malinese borders.

Did I start it or was that Zalson's choice? I was certainly thinking that we needed the culture there.

A lot of Zalson's comments about us having not expanded enough are true; I think playing an SG can produce some odd mental effects about "leave it to the next player" in turns 7-10 of ones set; I should have been pushing for a settler in the last few turns of mine.