[Spoilers] Shallow Thought and Hitru's series of (unfortunate?) events

[Bacchus]

Looking at the field as a whole, who do you think will achieve what in the next 15-20 turns?

[shallow_thought]

Looking at the field as a whole, who do you think will achieve what in the next 15-20 turns?

Much as I'd love to give a fuller reply, I'm going to focus on one team right now - us.

Turns out that city number eight has cratered our economy, from a mid-30s break-even to low 20s. With two more settlers already on the map, that is ...interesting.

We can run a couple of scientists, work a lake or two. We have briefly stopped working silver to grow DQ, which doesn't help, but that will come back in 5t. But we're going to be scaling back our settling plans, with the bananas settler coming south to grab a filler site and let us get more cottages down. At best.

The barb city is on flatland with three warriors. Two Imms should raze it unless we're very unlucky. I doubt we'll get much gold, if any, but we can hope.

The real problem is that the econ crash means we can't afford any more units.  So it's Alpha for research builds. ASAP. Things are going to be tense for 10t or so.

Pictures are on my other computer; sorry.

[shallow_thought]

Busy turn. War-peace from MS, and RFS-81 has informed us we're in a turn split (possibly only for one turn). He doesn't know that we have no intention of settling anything just yet.  We also attack that barb city, at 80% odds. Two wins, some damage. We'll promo-heal and hit again next turn, unless someone else hits it from the fog (a risk, particularly given RFS-81's request). Still, XP is XP.




Pulling our setter party from the bananas back within borders saves us 2gpt. I was going to explore more with our galley, but that would be 1gpt, so it pokes its prow out and comes straight back for the moment.

Economically, calculations suggest that our last city cost ~4gpt, and the next will be 4.5 (annoyingly the numbers from my sim are just that bit lower than in game, even taking AGG into account - map size?). Our demos are ... iffy. That rival GNP is worrying - Couerva (almost certainly) will be running around with catapults, horse archers and wellies soon at this rate. And our MFG has gone from impressive to not so good as we focus on commerce (working another lake over a mine this turn, partly to grow BeaB faster so it can work both); the absolute value is not too bad though.




Graphs suggest that we're still strongly in the top half of the field, but we need to get research builds going ourselves to compete with the leader.

[shallow_thought]

Bah. RFS-81 indeed had forces ready to raze the barb city. I would probably have been better off moving the Immortals to the hill and waiting. Other than that it's been a quiet couple of turns, with a little time to think. I'll try to get round to answering Bacchus' question from earlier, but right now it's hard to see much beyond the current cagy situation. Four of us roughly similar in strength, RFS-81 notionally weaker but OK for military power, Couerva gearing up to escape into the distance...

No-one other than Couerva has alpha. I've switched EP back to SD for a turn to get graphs. Diplomatically, RFS-81 and Couerva have had OBs for a little while, which is ... potentially annoying. We have trade routes with RFS-81 after some galley exploration.




We're in position to settle two new cities next turn. Can we afford it? I think I'll try settling the filler first. That should provide +5 commerce to offset the maintenance. If it breaks even, I'll plant the forward city, which will only make 3c and will be further away.




Additionally, I'm looking to build some libraries. CC is the obvious "commerce" city, with a couple of cottages and dyes to come, but it is slow growing and lacks hammers. That last can be solved by borrowing a mine from BeaB, and sets us up for a 2-pop whip in a few turns. That's going to hurt, but it will pay off - possibly quite quickly. Even with the RtR slavery nerf, whipping into a granary to regrow at size 4/5 is getting a lot better than 1 hammer for each food; and I need to do something with the pop I can't currently afford to turn into troops or settlers...

[shallow_thought]

Welcome to the Great Depression. Gangs of homeless orphans roam the decaying ruins of formerly prosperous cities, or camp by the sides of the roads that lead nowhere. They would live under bridges, but we don't have that technology.




3gpt at 100%. I carefully calculated that we could afford two more cities, with one of them being a filler plant in the core that could share food with the capital and BeaB, while working river cottages. This would break even, while the new city would be a cost, but one we could afford. However, it turns out that civics maintenance also scales with number of cities and population (compare below to the previous post). Who knew? Oh, right, everybody .

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/c...ed.148840/




That explains why ORG is so good, especially at higher difficulties; at least I've learnt something today. I'm still surprised I managed to dig this deep a hole this fast - it's not as if I'm not used to playing on Monarch. Partly it's that I'm used to having BTS FIN or ORG as a crutch, partly that I've not respected this map enough - there just haven't been cottage sites away from the capital (DQ will probably get one rather than a farm on that lone grassland, to go with the silver and justify some commerce buildings down the line). But the main reason is the excitement of being IMP - take a look at this.




Yep, unimproved grassland. There is worker support at the city but it was busy chopping. More is one the way, but this kind of land-grab explains a lot. It does give us a hill-based staging post to go say hello to RFS-81, assuming we can maintain military tech parity. Right now that looks tricky.

This turn makes things look a little worse than they really are. Both the capital and DQ (the silver city) have been reconfigured for growth. In 5t or so they can get back to working more commerce tiles. We will have several more river cottages coming online in the next few turns. I also expect to get a library at CC in about the same timescale. That will drag us back from "appalling" to "mediocre". We should also get whales online, allowing the capital to keep growing and working yet more cottage tiles. We'll get to Alphabet and start heading out of the hole. Where everyone else - particularly Couerva - will be by then is a different question.

There will be an interesting mini-game in trying to get, work and keep the gems tile at EE. Superdeath has popped borders first from the north, but I think we'll pop first on the west. But we can't even send workers to chop and mine without more units there.

[shallow_thought]

RFS-81 and I have spent a couple of turns being very polite. He didn't take a shot at my Immortal, and I didn't take any 78% shots at an axe defending two workers on flatland, or his warrior defending a flatland city. Sigh . Not shown on this pic (I thought I had a shot from two turns ago, but apparently not) is his settling party (two axes, kept to defensive terrain - he's polite, not stupid); I think it's now on the hill W of the razed city. That's a slightly aggressive plant, but not too scary - we want a library in DQ anyway, so I'm not expecting cultural pressure any time soon. And I don't fancy his chances of beating back Inca culture quickly. I'm probably going to have to ask for OBs from one of MS and RFS-81 to get that Immortal back out of there. I'd rather not have OBs with RFS-81, as I do think we'll be looking to try something on there - but, given his possession of stone, not until after Construction.




Also visible - we've finally made it to the borders of our last competitor, Couerva. We also have graphs on him.













The GNP is terrifying but unsurprising. The power is a lot more fun, and brings me to the real news of the last few turns. Superdeath declared on Couerva, followed by Charriu. Turns out that SD's was a war-peace, which I'm not sure is a smart move with the clear leader, as it just frees him to keep heading upwards. However, I don't have the full picture: I've put a few hammers into units on the border in case he's trying to free himself for a move in our direction.

Charriu, as indicated by the graph, was rather more serious. Good for him! Just a tinge of war-weariness so far, but hitting the leader now makes a fair bit of sense. Praetorians are still vicious, but less so on the defensive. Sadly, there's pretty much nothing we can do to help.

Economically, there's mostly good news. We should get whales next turn, and the cap is on a growth spurt (at BeaB's expense) to exploit this. We also now have a bunch of new cottages down, and our older ones are maturing. A library has just been whipped at CC, because next turn we turn science back on (EDIT: nope, it can be turned on this turn after some tweaking by Hitru). 3t to Alpha. We also get an Academy soon. This will hopefully let us rocket through some key techs. A quick diversion into Mysticism is planned, partly as a pre-req for masonry, partly to get a quick and dirty monument out in EE (not visible in any screen shot - the exact 50% culture split between us and Superdeath on the gems tile, which is in his favour). After that, Maths, then the real meat - Currency, Calendar, Construction (with Masonry thrown in somewhere). The exact order will depend on events, but this should mean we start getting some value out of our land and crop yield.

[shallow_thought]

Other than finding a worker somewhere I had no idea I had put him (and that was definitely me, not Hitru), not a lot of news this turn. We do get one more happiness resource - whales; interestingly, Charriu has this too.

Main reason for posting is that I've belatedly noticed the mapmaker having some fun. There will be some value to Astro, at least. What's not obvious, because of the lack of resource bubbles is the fish next to the lumbermill. There's a similar "orphaned" fish just out of shot to the west (this is a terrible screenshot), probably indicating yet more land. Well, tundra.

[shallow_thought]

Aaaand ... we're back with an actual economy again. Alpha is in and we have a respectable GNP. This is partly because Couerva's has dived during the war; there's no real news from the front, which is probably bad, as it means Charriu didn't make immediate progress. Not a lot we can do right now, other than build away.

First thing we're going to do is take a dive into the lower part of the tree. Mysticism: a pre-req for Masonry, and allows a monument on our culturally pressed border with Superdeath. And, once we have that, if Hinduism is still up for grabs, a quick diversion to Polytheism. Then Masonry, for stone - we have Moai to build, as well as wanting the security of quick walls. Finally Meditation so we actually have the power to spread our (hopeful) religion. A bit more research multiplier at key cities would do no harm either.

After this little trip, back to Currency, then Maths-Calendar (I had forgotten that we don't need Maths for Currency any more).

Speaking of Superdeath and our close borders sparking tension - he has offered us OB. We've offered OB to Charriu, partly for security, partly to assist in some small way with his war against Couerva. But Superdeath? A degree of short-term security? Perhaps. A chance for his Impis to wander through our territory and plot out an attack? Maybe. If we each have an island, OBs don't mean a lot economically before Currency, but the extra foreign routes would be good once we get there...

Let's be friendly. After discussion with Hitru I've returned the offer. Still going to be cautious with workers on that border though .

RFS-81 wandered his settler around a bit before deciding on a fairly conservative plant. When I saw him working the sugar I thought for a weird moment that he might have Calendar already, but no - it's a cottage.




Of course, having the power to build research doesn't magically make it appear, as the numbers at the top of the screenshot show (I played around with tiles and builds later). We're currently building it at CC - at all of 1 hammer per turn as we try to grow the city back after its library whip . I've also decided we don't need the worker out of the cap just yet, so it can stagnate on research. Even here we're only working one serious hammer tile (copper) - I'm prioritising the river cottages and gone back to running scientists to get the GS out for the academy. It would have been clever to save cash for 6t while trickling beakers into Myst, then run two turns of science, 1-turning Poly with the overflow. But we want to get those beakers rolling, pushing for Masonry. Why? Amongst other things, because I have a fun little mini-game going at BeaB.




I'm going to try to stash all the overflow from both lighthouse and library whips using research (whip-research-whip-research as happy allows), and then drop it all into Moai with stone boost. We'll see if I can get the parts lined up. I'd love to say I'd planned this all well ahead of time, but it's more that we've simply ended up with two nearly complete buildings from the depression. But I've not really played with the overflow-preservation mechanic before, so lets enjoy ourselves.

[shallow_thought]

I've had a couple of days off due to family and work dinners messing with my schedule (and sobriety), so Hitru's been in charge. And it's been a mildly exciting few turns. First Charriu came back with an OB offer, gladly accepted. We're busily scouting out his and Superdeath's territories, and SD repaying the complement. Charriu has something better to do with his troops: he made peace with Couerva, but moved straight on to declaring on RFS-81. Now that is interesting. I'd been starting vague plans about a post-construction cat/sword push, but if Charriu is rolling the dice now, we need to consider whether to join in.

RFS-81 has few cities, and we have easy access to several of them. These are immature plants, and on flatland. I hope he has tougher ones on Charriu's border. The big prize is his capital, which we've not yet seen, but we know we're quite close. His one advantage is Masonry and stone, which means we have to expect walls everywhere. But all RFS-81 has in these cities at the moment is an axe/archer or axe/warrior pair. And we'd get odds on those with Immortals even behind walls. Of course, a single spear (cash upgrade or whip) would be a problem, and we'd need to be able to hold anything we took, so we probably want a mixed force, which we could stage from NW of GG, out of sight.




We can put a decent force on the staging tile in 4-5t, at the cost of some slightly painful whips. With worker support we're then 2t from an Immortal strike, 3t for 1-movers. This is very, very tempting. Even if we commit to some extra unit builds and then pull back that's not a disaster. Power is a deterrent in itself, and it's worth some cost to have options. We can also risk a galley to take a look at his capital if we declare war. We don't have enough to seriously threaten an amphibious assault, but using the sea might allow reinforcements to arrive more quickly, so we don't want to lose it, but I doubt he's had many spare hammers for ships.

In other news, 1t to Polytheism. Even if we're not pipped at the post by a coin-flip, it's statistically improbable that we'll get Hinduism anywhere useful(EE) but we can hope. SD has managed to beat us to getting a library up, and is dominating the culture clash; we'll see if religion can turn the tide.

[Old Harry]