[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England

[Krill]

Turn 038

Last to play the turn, it happens when it rolls at 0400 my time and I'm on an early shift. Easy turn though. I've not shown it, but TBW moved his scout perfectly so the plains ivory was covered (scout is on the copper), and no barbs can spawn in the north now.




Moved Cavendish down south, but also found a barb lion. I decided to take the risk, G2, 81hp scout on a hill against the full health lion means that a new barb animal will spawn somewhere else, hopefully a long way away from me. And not a barb warrior if the lion dies in 2 or 3 turns.





Work boat due eot42 iirc? Whatever, it completes after teh settler and whatever turn it finishes is the right turn to fit in with the granary triple chop. Westminster will be unhappy next turn but that doesn't matter as it will be whipped immediately, and CHM is already saving us 15 hammers as we don't need a garrison warrior. I've been wondering about the...wisdom of that value of CHM, but here, with our back to the water and no nearby neighbours and a fog-busting screen is probably the best situation for that value to be presented.

[AutomatedTeller]

here's a name:

Wormelow Tump

[Krill]

Turn 039

Big triple whip turn this. I thought TBW was lagging in EP so he has met someone, but actually I think that is just his EP loss from the slavery revolt which occurred after we met (so our early revolt has earnt us 4EP, awesome!)







This is not the most efficient scouting movement, but it is the safest. Gilbert will remain in place until City 2 is settled on T41 (still taking suggestions for city name). Then on T41 will move onto the plains sheep, and T42 will quickly hop onto the plains hill forest and back to the sheep to uncover that extra bit of FoW, but once City 2 pops borders onto the peak and hill we should be able to keep the whole area fog-busted with just one unit (unless I have underestimate the amount of land, which is possible).

I already have new worker movements in hand if horse reveals 1S of the city2 sign. It won't, but it is nice to dream. It would bring forward library whip about 5 turns, but the horse would not be roaded (due to extremely tight worker micro needed to get the third city cow hooked and granary at size 1).




Obviously demos suck, as we only have 3 pop to top population that has a size 5 and size 1 city. Now it is waiting to see who gets the third cities down. We are scheduled for T49.

[Krill]

here's a name:  

Wormelow Tump

Sold. Wormelow Tump (WT) for second city.

Joey:

Second cities:
T28: Rusten (I think he was missing from this list, EXP/SPI)
T29: OH/Hitru (IMP), Borsche (EXP).
T30: GKC (Wut? FIN/ORG, what did he do to enable this, he has to have cut corners somewhere).
T31: BeardBeard (PRO/IMP, don't see how he can have a granary), Superdeath (AGG/CHM, same questions as with GKC). BaII (he hid it in the turn roll, only noticed T36)
T32: Pindicator (EXP), Gavagai (starting to seem more reasonable for double worker openings).
T33: TBW (EXP).
T34: 2MN (EXP/PRO, could have managed to fit a granary in actually)
T35: None settled
T36: Adler (hidden on turn roll again! sneaky sneaky). DS planted second city. Slow for EXP.
T37: Commodore (PRO/FIN, double whip, so he has a granary otherwise it's inefficient.
T38: Elkad (PRO/CHM, maybe he is the size 5 capital? he would be a few turns ahead of us due to cheaper granary).

So we are last to the second city, which doesn't surprise me. Truth be told I'm not concerned. Worker>Worker>Granary>Settler was always going to be slow, but with this land I still don't see any other way we could have played this. T50 we will have 5 hooked food resources, 3 cities, 2 granaries, 2 workers, all first row techs except Myst, Pottery, AH, BW and Writing. As Hannibal of England. We will be in as good a position as we could hope with this start IMO. Position on T75 is going to be a good indicator for us, we should have at least 6 cities, probably 7 and possibly 8 by that point and we need to see how close to Currency we are.

[Krill]

I can see where you're coming from, but what I'm trying to say is this: Bureaucracy was already regarded as the best-choice labor civic for most of the game for civs of all sizes even when it was high-upkeep! It was good enough that civs without a religion around the Ren era would try to get one and spread it just to be able to use Theocracy instead of Vassalage for double-promo units. I think its disingenuous to compare to Tribalism because as soon as any other option is available, it will be better than Tribalism.

This is patently untrue given how Nationhood was a better economic civic in the example you gave! And PB37 is a single game that was essentially designed to give Bureaucracy the best possible comparison! I'd write more, but I would just be viewed as being sour grapes and I don't see the point of that.

Ultimately, so long as Bureaucracy only has an effect on a single city, but the costs of the civic are calculated off number of cities and population, then Bureau will always have a cross over point where it is a net drain compared to just sitting in Tribalism. I'm not saying that Tribalism is useful, just stating a mathematical fact.

The cross over point with Theo is also not the full picture: In some cases, it is the only way to get a promotion onto a drafted unit (as Vassalage can't be run at the same time). Colosseums also give all players a reason to run both Vassalage and Theocracy, now boats can require both civics be run to get additional promotions, and finally, the choice is Medium cost Theo or High cost Organized Religion, so it is a false dichotomy that the choice is between Vassalage and Theo. The other choices of Free Religion require Lib, or Pacifism at No Cost but you pay extra Military unit costs, which requires Philosophy as well. Theo is often the cheapest choice out of all of them, and the only one attainable within a metagame that expects golden ages to revolt into civics.

As an actual example of this, I did eventually switch back to Bureau in that PB37 game I posted because I got more multipliers, specifically Oxford. I was also the biggest civ in that game, in terms of population; other civs most certainly got more relative-advantage out of Bureau vs other civics than I did. Nationhood was better for me long term because of the map situation (the best way to leverage lots of low-production, high-food islands was drafting) as well as the very high war-weariness I was suffering. Furthermore, using Nationhood long-term like I did was very much out of the meta, and very much something that was map-dependent. For another example, I'm thinking of capitals like my PB18 capital that were just crazy lucrative; I was definitely in Bureau all game for that one.

To be clear: I am not a believer that there is a single static metagame that is "Right", and definitely not in RtR. In some cases Nationhood is right, in others Vassalage, or Bureau, and the circumstances between them will change. That is the point of civics: Some are intended to be kept permenantly (tile bonus effects mainly) but mostly to change to the game conditions. This is something that Civ 6 has done wonderfully IMO.

You're right that Bureaucracy could be re-balanced for the late-game by setting it to no-cost. The problem is that now the balance of the early-mid game is thrown way out of whack! Just think about the extra maintenance gold each civ gets. Lets say go with your example of 12gpt at T120, and then mine of 84 at T174. Find the average maintenance savings and sum it up: 54*(84+12)/2 = a big civ now has an extra free 2592g! That's about two free early great merchants.

I think you should not compare to great merchant output. It's an irrelevant comparison.

The saved gold should be compared directly to tech costs (via a beaker multiploer, obviously) and the time between relative tech levels for units, because that's the most important comparison. The tech race is suppose to be slow enough that players have time to build units, position, fight wars between reaching one tech level, and then reaching the next.

Ultimately, I agree with your point earlier in this thread regarding gold multipliers and the usefulness of gold: it's used to pay costs and that's about it. Therefore, any relative gold saving from civic costs can be considered to go straight back into tech, but this is not a problem per se.

On one hand, this changes pacing of the medieval/ren eras; however, it also changes balance in this era in two ways. First, big vs small civs. Big civs, at the start of the medieval era, are typically hurting economically hurt pretty badly. That instant 12g savings at T120 as compared to before is fairly significant; a big civ might be only saving gold in the low-double-digits at this point of the game. (actually, in the slower-paced PB37 I was actually losing 1gpt at 0% slider at this same turn! I remember a similar pattern from earlier games.) Furthermore, the fact that CS is now even more of a beeline-target than it already was before further advantages civs that got "good capitals" over civs that got "capitals like the one we have here."

The interesting thing about the implementation of tech cost scaling is the the Medieval era tech costs are actually higher now than in previous RtR games: the savings form the ancient era are wiped out by the end of the Classical era, then there is more of a slog to reach the Renaissance. Tech cost scaling makes the late era Ren techs cheaper, but the first rank Ren techs are about the same.

With this in mind, the savings shouldn't actually have that great a difference in an immediate sense.

Even if Bureaucracy becomes a no cost civic, this does not change that the obvious way to balance Vassalage is to match it in general terms of cost savings: the unit costs saving should be altered to enable more gold saved if the full unit savings are taken advantage of (of course, this requires players build the units in the first place, so it's not an instant saving, but it opens up relevant choice in tech strategies and beelines). Or Vassalage could get another bonus ie reduced city maintenance by 10%. That way CS is not a one right choice.

Another side to this is that CS is not a beeline target in every game. In game position matters, as does other bulb targets. CS blocks the Astro bulb. Sometimes this will be needed, other times it will not matter. But it's a much more complex decision than "Bureaucracy is broken at No cost".

Look, I'm not saying that Bureaucracy wouldn't be damned useful. It'd probably revert to being a solid choice in most circumstances. Vassalage, Nationhood and Emancipation would need to be rebalanced to fit around it, but this should not be difficult to achieve. Should Nationhood and Emancipation be High cost? Probably not. Does Emancipation need to be free to revolt into? Not necessarily. Do we need to drop an extra bonus onto a civic to keep things in range? Potentially.

In the spoiler below is one way of potentially balancing the Legal Civics:

Vassalage: +1 free unit support per 4 pop. +10 free unit supply. +2XP to new units. Low upkeep. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic).

Bureaucracy: +50% hammers and commerce in capital. No upkeep. iAnarchyLength = 0 (does not cause anarchy to revolt to this civic).

Nationhood: [Effect unchanged]. Can draft. +25% Espionage points. Barracks provide +2 happy. Medium upkeep.

Emancipation: +100% Improvement Upgrade Rate Modifier. +1 food, -1 commerce from Town. Requires Constitution. Medium upkeep.

The take away from this is that a city costs 0.4g in Vassalage, and each pop point costs 0.08g, but for every 4 pop points Vassalage has you save 1 gold in unit maintenance. Therefore a size 8 city costs 1.04g in civic maintenance over Bureaucracy but saves 2g in unit costs. It's not obvious that Bureaucracy is better here.

The anarchy thing is another way to "fix" the issue of having late game opportunities to grow cottages. This way it costs to get into Emancipation or Nationhood, but you wouldn't get screwed over of being stuck in them as you can always revolt out. And no cycling between towns giving food and drafting down the extra pop, that is for SPI leaders only. And no, I don't see this as an unnecessary nerf to SPI leaders, the civics have been buffed so much SPI is potentially getting out of hand.

All that said, none of this is in this game. Bureau is high cost, Vassalage low and on a tech we need for Serfdom and strong defense, Nationhood requires food which we lack and Emancipation lets us cottage spam, so for this game, it's not hard to see the options.

[Krill]

Been looking at dot maps for a bit further on.




City 2 is locked in, as is city 3. We find horse on T41, so I was hoping to delay spending 2 minutes to make another world map (I'm so lazy). City 4 is necessary for copper and I don't think we can reasonably delay it until after Maths. I think we can go worker>settler after the next settler (both whipped, 5>3 T52, and 6>3 T60) before converting the capital to run on hill mines, and get it settled around T62. But I'm wondering about how we get past the ring of land beyond our starting area into the rest of the subcontinent, as there is very little food our starting area.

I think the answer is we want to settle the plains cow and grass hill sheep. It's not coastal, and we are going to struggle for coastal production come Astronomy, but it has 5fpt, 6hpt at size 2, four inner ring forests and 5 out ring forests, and leaves space for a filler 1W or 1SW of the copper. And best of all, it has 10 grasslands we can cottage, and 5 plains tiles later on. So it's an easy Math chopped library and granary into whip cycle. From there it's a straight road to the western bottleneck and we can fit a sacrificial front city in on the plains hill to the north.

Even if we can't get that sacrificial city, library culture gives us a city that is hard to approach and is on a hill against Rome. Then we can use two forests from the outer ring (2S, 2S1W) to chop a library a city 2N1W of the grass wheat, to open up two further forests for a granary chop. This way we can open up the entire continent without doing stupidly tight overlaps.

One issue is I'm still not sure if it makes sense to settle the plains hill west of copper for city 4, rather than leave it as filler, and just blitz out a library and work the mined copper to finish the granary. Doesn't pick up the ivory, but the capital does that on T50 anyway! We could still settle on the plains ivory later. This actually fits better with out available worker positions, and would allow us to just go straight onto a settler instead of worker 3 at the capital (which would whip the settler T55 and plains hill plant T59, [copper roaded T59, mined T61 with 1 spare worker turn] or [copper mined T60, roaded T61 with no spare worker turns]

[Krill]

Turn 040

This turn I am daring a random barb wold to have wandered, undetected through a fog-busting net to eat two workers and a settler. It has happened before. I'm praying it will not happen to me now.




I'm very much undecided about the city 4 location. Copper hooked T61 versus closer to T70? And not being able to improve the only food, a dry rice, until T73? (Or do the chops first, library eot62, copper mined T62, roaded T63) And ivory not immediately available? But then again, settling on ivory would still not get rice hooked until around T73 either, and the granary would be completed with the food box half full, even if it did take 10 turns to build the damn thing at 7hpt at size 1 with no spare forest chops? I have a feeling that horse location is going to change my entire opinion about copper, but I still can't ignore that we will need axes built just because we border Rome and TBW could be an opportunist.





3 overflow beakers get rounded down, Writing is a 174 beaker tech but has a 1.4 modifier. Going to have to save gold for a further turn, but we go up to 15 base bpt next turn, so 22 bpt into Writing with the free beaker. That's still an 8 turn tech, possibly 7 with the clam commerce for a few turns from T45? Whatever happens, Writing by eot49 is good enough for anything, really.





I should be congratulated for having demographics this bad...but how does someone still only have a size 2 city and a size 1 city at this stage of the game? That's ridiculous.

[Krill]

tl;dr of turn report: anticlimax and city 7 is now a no brainer because it has horse.

[Krill]

Turn 041

This turn feels like an anticlimax to me because the only thing that can really break stuff now is if barbs turn up (and barbs of the human variety aren't local). I think I've worked out the worker micro up to T68 for the new city4 location (more on this later), and there is a surprising amount of leeway in terms of whipping archers to manage barbs from T50 onwards.




Gilberts movement was easy. A barb lion is on the labelled plains hill, which is stopping a barb warrior spawning. Therefore moving the worker down to chop covers some tiles, so we can get a little bit of exploring in this turn rather than T42 and T43 before we have to nudge Gilbert back north as the worker will move back onto the road network on T45.





The horse is at city7 location, it just slots in so easily I'll noodle at if this ought to be city4 (with the micro I've come up with, it'd be hard to justify as city4 but might just be city5. 9hpt/5fpt at size 3 with 9 forests is an awkward city to ignore). In another world someone may have considered 1E and Mids, but doing that in the real border city against AGG Rome is dumb.

T43 we should uncover that last bit of FoW, but with that lion around I'm a little tentative about how far forward we move warrior1. OTOH, the "Correct" barb-busting location is 1S2W of the silver to cover the most terrain, but:

1. The lion is part of the network so long as it lives and,
   
   
2. the lion can easily eat the warrior.
   

With this in min, I'm playing the warrior moves by ear.





Please note the need to work the grass hill forest on T42, to ensure that we generate enough hammers overflow from warrior2 on eot44 to get the settler to 30/100 eot46 to whip T47. The overflow goes into a work boat eot48 (15/30): this is for the fish at TW. Build a worker on T49 whilst giving the wheat to Owlthorpe (6f/5h), then regrow to size 5 and double whip T52 (8 hammers generated during growth, wb 23/30), overflow into work boat (39/30) and regrowth@4 eot53, food box 27/26, which gets to the the fish on T58 (this is too quick by about 2 turns? But that otherwise it comes too late and whipping for 30 hammers in TW is inefficient use of happiness). Dump significant overflow T54 into a lighthouse, Regrowth reaches size 6 eot57, but sitting in unhappiness doesn't eat food whilst building settler whipped T61 and can settle the sign on T62 (it can be sped up a turn, but due to unhappinss and losing the wheat, Westminster slows down and needs to get the lighthouse down and work mines. The wheat is lost to Owlthorpe on T56.

This is rough micro: I'm not quite sure when Sailing finishes, it could be eot52 to eot54. Nor how the barbs act, or units we are going to need, but I'm hoping if I have to do anything with units, we just whip Owlthorpe as the happiness there is irrelevant.





OK, this micro gets a little fuzzy so I might have made a mistake. Two forests chop T44, third forest chopped T45 (granary eot45), grass farmed T47. Clam hooked and worked T45, growth@2 eot48, food box 13/24, growth@3 eot51, growth@4 eot53, whip library T54, borders pop eot59 and fish hooked T60 which means a work boat out of Westminster is needed eot55. The library needs 5 hammers in it, but I can't overflow form the granary, so I'll have to accumulate 1hpt from when Writing is complete and just stop at 5 invested hammers.

I'm not accruing hammers here because, frankly, once the granary gets chopped the hammers get dumped into a warrior that I hopefully don't need that quickly, and I'd rather pick the 3 commerce than 1 hammer at this point (at least one this turn, due to overflow from AH, working the lake is actually worth an extra beaker due to rounding).

I've tweaked the micro slightly so that the forest with 2 chops invested is the last forest chopped, in case I do need to emergency chop a warrior in the next few turns. I've got vision such that I can already see that far out but it's the principle of the thing.

Looking ahead a bit, I do see a double whipped lighthouse occurring ASAP, unless a settler for horse city seems better (I also need to look at available workers to improve the silver city, because even though such a city is connected via the lake for trade route purposes, I still need 7 worker turns invested into the tile improvement. Silver city is also the beneficiary for food burnt off from TW once it regrows to the happy cap for another triple whip, so there is also a point that it should come after a light house and not before.

Once borders pop, a barb-buster is needed on the southern copper tile, and another fogbuster on the tile below the hill Gilbert is on should give complete coverage.





Top pop looks to be size 5 and size 1 still, no one has a third city yet for anyone (EDIT: OH just founded third city, but their IMP so it's expected). 8 turns behind an IMP player in the lead for city count is OK IMO.





The white line shows what I have barb-busted, the red line is what I know the lion is fog-busting as well. I've spent long enough on this report, so I'll post about the city4 problem later.

[Krill]

Using the above world map, there are only 4 viable locations to use copper IMO. 3 are coastal, and 1 is not.

The locations are:

• Plains hill 1W of copper: Positives: Coastal, hill, 2 hammer plant. Copper inner ring. Negatives: Food second ring, requires library border pop which uses both forests, cannot work ivory. Delayed granary. Found 4 turns after settler completion.
  
  
• Plains ivory: Positives: Coastal, 2 hammer plant. 3 Forests. Immediate ivory hook helps Westminster and Wormelow Tump on founding. Negatives: Copper, Food second ring, requires library border pop which uses both forests, flatland coastal. Found 2 turns after settler completion; delayed granary.
  
  
• Grass forest 1S of plains ivory: Positives: Coastal, 4 resource tiles to work eventually, food and ivory inner ring. Found turn after settler completion. Negatives: 1 hammer plant, flatland coastal. Copper second ring: requires 2 available forests to go be chopped into a library; delayed granary.
  
  
• Grass forest 1E of copper: Positives: 4 resource tiles to work eventually, no border pop required [All resources inner ring, grass ivory in capital borders]. Found turn after settler completion. Granary chopped with food box half full. Negatives: Settles on forest. Not coastal, 1 hammer plant
  

There is a single reason why I think the none coastal city is best: We want coastal production and coastal commerce, but planting this city on the coast does not provide any reasonable form of coastal production. There are no hills, and we are not planning on ever using Caste, nor is there food to work even "bad" workshops. With this in mind, a coastal city is more likely to be a production sink as it requires more hammers in military units to hold it in case of naval invasion than a none coastal city would be. We can still settle a city 2W of the visible fish to get the coastal commerce.

The workers finish chopping Owlthorpes granary T54, so on T55 there is one worker 1W of Owlthorpe and he second 1NW. Given this starting position, and worker3 built eot52 in Westminster, we can get the copper roaded, and mined the turn after founding and forests chopped into a granary with the food box half full (copper hammers make up the missing hammers). No library is needed, and once at size 4 it pushes out it makes 11hpt and 2fpt: not worth whipping, but it is easy to leave on military duty. I worked out micro for a T61 founding, Copper hook up T62, granary eot65, ivory hooked t66, growth@2 eot68 with a half full food box, given a worker T53 from the capital, but on closer inspection I don't think the settler can complete before eot61 anyway. I don't think any of the other city locations can match any of this in terms of output, and I can't see a strategic advantage to being slower, so...1E of the copper seems best, even if the worker movements need fudging slightly it's only around the grass ivory so I think it all works out in the end.