[PB 55] Miguelito and Mjmd help Amicalola avoid a repetition of last time

[Tarkeel]

Turn 92 (575 BC) [Reporting format shamelessly stolen from Tarkeel in my 56 thread]

Happy to be of service :P It's one of those things that comes from lurking, as it can be very frustrating (as a lurker) to correlate information when turn number is not supplied. It's also much more interesting to read the thoughts behind the actions than just a summary of what happened, especially the thoughts leading to actions not taken. (It also helps when you're doing your post-game analysis of what went wrong)

[Amicalola]

Turn 95 (500 BC)

So obviously the big news this turn is that Superdeath has quit (either permanently or temporary? I'm not sure). His post in the tech thread had me a bit worried. Superdeath when you read this later, I hope you are doing ok. 

His replacement, Cornflakes, begged both horse and silver this turn (Maybe this is why SD quit?). Sent horse for the war with Lewwyn, but not silver, since we only have 1 and will for some time. This is because our island is, well, not great. It has a whale undiscovered, but that is almost certainly it. I am posting a pic with my desired dotmap, though I don't love it. Any nitpicks? We will settle the wheat city on T97 if not, while Silver/Whales/maybe fish(?) will come later. 



Commodore built The Great Wall this turn.

We got a Buddhism spread in Purple Rain which will expand the borders twice as fast. This is very nice, as we are in a hot culture war with Jowy. 

I will probably make a big overview featuring cities, demos/graphs, foreign diplo, etc at T100. I am sorry for not having better posting, I've been far busier than I expected this week. Turns out moving house is a long-term affair, which everyone else here probably already knows. Oops. It's been affecting my 56 thread too.  I both hope and genuinely think it will dramatically improve soon.

[Miguelito]

I'm not sure if I 'd not rather settle NE of wheat and grab the whale with 3rd ring borders (optics is far away still anyways, maybe work some artists during GA)
Also orphans the green tile but shrug?

Otoh your dot makes a stronger claim for the furry clam island (civac in fact can't get through without our OB)

Speaking of, how likely do you think is an attack from Rome? And does Lewynn have construction(you can check on F6 if anybody does at least. More informative would be score tracking(

[Mjmd]

I like that dot map because with a lighthouse we can kind of use the whale as a food resource which massively helps the fish sharing. Also, blocking Civac from settling the fur city. I would say wheat city is our last city until currency though.

I would say SD is in trouble. Sure he has threatened to quit before (like when ruff got cover on his axes in PB49), but he has never actually done it. Sadly we aren't really in a position where we want to make a full offensive army. I only want to be whipping workers and libraries. Cornflakes is probably a better player than SD or at least equal with less distraction. Sadly its not a high level player like Old Harry taking over backed up by a cadre of other good players (yes I'm still a little meh about PB52, deal with it)

I mean if Lewwyn still only has a spear in that island city.......... 2 axes on a galley could at least show a little support, although if Lewwyn is crushing maybe not. Up to you.

[Amicalola]

Can't play the turn for a few hours and about to rush off but I am indeed working out a plan to take our rightful island back.

Edit: Quick question to you two or any lurkers as long as it's not considered cheating. As an Emperor-level singleplayer guy I often build swords in mixed stacks vs the AI. However I have heard that they are basically never worth building in MP. Is this pretty much a hard rule of thumb?

[Miguelito]

Charriu has tried to make swords more appealing by increasing the city attack bonus, but not as much as in RtR where people were using them. But I still don't really see people using them.

If a city is purely archer defended they'd be good, against axes and spears I guess axes are better? (against axes a sword attacking a city is basically a Sumerian vulture, which loses against axes).

They'd have some merit against elephants (together with cats, if you don't have your own phants), but if axes are mixed in that stack they lose heavily, and that will almost always be the case.

[Amicalola]

Thanks Miguelito, that was really helpful.   Sounds like we probably don't want to be building them (although the island is guarded by 2 archers and a spear, so perhaps the exception ).

Short post this turn for I am tired, but the main news is that Hadrumentum got captured, and Cornflakes/Superdeath is in real trouble. Going to try and nab the island in the next 10 turns while they're still feeding, and then I dunno what we do. I feel like we have to do something, y'know?

[Mjmd]

Do we have iron in our borders? The only one I remember seeing is the one in-between our two southern filler spots?

Speaking of map: GKC did you forget our fur food on the island? (just keep asking to see if he is still reading our very long thread).

When do you plan on turning on tech? I'm assuming some number of libraries incoming. It isn't a bad idea to just wait until you think you can tech both straight through if you don't have a lot of chops incoming / you have more libraries incoming.

[Amicalola]

Yep, Mulo had iron on the border with Civac, and one of our central filler cities will get it also later on for a safer source.

Also yeah, so we have 2 libraries incoming and I am thinking about 3-whipping a third one at Moscow Mule in 3 turns also so that we get maximum research when it is turned on. Right now we research quickly (maths takes 2 turns at 100%) but huge costs compared to income (we are basically 20% breakeven right now, really bad, prioritising commerce to get to currency). I might even wait to do both in one go as you say, if I think we can get a few more libraries in too.

I am expecting our economy to absolutely explode in about 20-30 turns, during which we will get our shrine, get currency, (hopefully) get circumnavigation, and launch a golden age.

[Amicalola]

Hey guys, I'm sorry I've been so quiet. I'm housesitting and have lots of time to theorycraft and work out where we're headed, but can't take decent screenshots on my crappy laptop. There will be a big mega-update when I get back, which should be around T106, and will also be around when we blast through Maths and Currency to bring us back into the game, and start to settle out many more cities. From there we will need to decide between Calendar for home-dev or Construction to fight Lewwyn with Cornflakes. Merit to both, and largely depends on what Civac does.

The big concerns right now are that Lewwyn is going to finish off Cornflakes/Superdeath before we are ready to intervene, Civac is going to run away with the game, or Gavagai is going to completely eat AT (he has currently taken 3-4 cities). We are in a terrible position geopolitically, bordering 2 of the top 3 teams (including Civac, the clear no. 1), and none of the 3 weak teams. Our long-term hopes look fairly grim because of this (it feels we either fight Lewwyn and let Civac win, or fight Civac and let Lewwyn win), but for now I guess we are just going to tech up as best we can and hope for something to change geopolitically. 

In other news, I think I took the 'fix the economy later' too much to heart, and that would be my biggest criticism of myself this game. We should have built a bunch of cottages much earlier, as every other team has now researched Maths, some currency, and Civac both currency and Calendar (and built Mausoleum; hey, I said he was game leader!) while we still just save gold at 25% breakeven. Anyway, just thinking about what I should have done differently, and focus more on commerce from T70-90 is definitely high on the list. I think we are still a very relevant force this game; we just are in a horrible position with regards to neighbours, so I think 'do something cool/fireworks' is more realistic than 'win' at this point. Still, we shall see!