[PB56] Lazteuq's Cool Facts about Space

[Lazteuq]

Turn 115: 1AD
Nobody has alphabet yet, and I'm losing research situational awareness. I haven't seen anything obvious like civic changes to Bureaucracy and Vassalage. I haven't seen a single unit more modern than a catapult either. From bridges, I known Amicalola and Gira have Construction, but it looks like Noble actually doesn't. I don't think I've fallen behind too badly yet, HBR and Calendar are the two most popular techs I've been neglecting, but that's not a big deal.

For the push to Guilds, I think I can average 140 beakers per turn including lots of wealth builds. By loosely estimating the known tech and prereq. bonuses, I think Guilds is ~3200 effective beakers away. That's about 23 turns. Let's add a little margin and say 25, so Turn 140 is my Guilds target date. For comparison, NobleGas in PBEM78 got Guilds on T119. Miguelito/Rusten had T122 in PB54 I think. I'm certainly not performing to anywhere near that standard. On the other hand, the overall tech pace on this map feels slow. So maybe turn 140 is only "kinda bad" and not "really bad". Time will tell.

The good news is: cataphracts remain strong for a long time, so even if I'm unusually late to Guilds, it's OK.
The bad news is: I have little production, so I'll have to cripple my economy post-Guilds to get a decent army built.
I accepted a spice for stone trade from Amicalola. I guess they want to build some walls or Moai. I don't know what else stone is good for at this point. Also they gave me copper, which is nice, although I don't necessarily need it now. I guess this is in response to me declaring war on Noble. But it wasn't a real war. I hope Amicalola's not too disappointed.

I'm spending 11gpt on unit maintenance, thinking about deleting some axes and chariots after I've made my longbows clearly visible.

Space Fact 44: There are two groups of asteroids orbiting along with Earth, approximately 60 degrees ahead of and behind Earth along the orbit path. They settle into these areas because they are gravitationally stable Lagrange Points. Other planets have similar groups of neighboring asteroids, especially Jupiter.

[Lazteuq]

T117:

Good News: I have two sources of iron! Both are on the Gira border, but that's OK.
Luckily, I had a mine and a worker already roading one of the irons, so I get access next turn. Metal Casting is next.
I'm delaying barracks and stables in some cities until after forges are done. Risky I know, but I have to take risks here. If I spend as many foodhammers on military as my neighbors, I won't be able to get ahead in research.

I was building a settler to sneak in a city on the inner coast, but now it looks like Gira will take the spot.
I'd been really seriously considering researching CoL and switching to Caste to quickly generate a merchant and artist. That would enable another GA much sooner, but I decided the 522 beakers it takes to get CoL is just too much delay.

Peace treaty with Noble lasts until T123. I'll have at least three longbows on the border by then, plus archers to upgrade and queued longbows to whip if necessary. It looks like Noble and Amicalola have a lot of units tied up in their border cities, so I don't think a Noble invasion is very likely.

#1 GNP is probably Noble. Yes, my power is absolutely terrible.
Somehow I still don't have any religions.

Although I was forced into it, I've been really having a good time with these closely packed cities. I don't think I've left a single cottage unworked in the whole game. It's easy to redistribute tiles after a city is whipped, and cities can trade mines when they need production. I'm sharing tiles way more than I ever did in PB51. Because of this efficient use of improvements, I've been running on pretty minimal worker labor, with only 8 workers for 8 cities. The biggest disadvantage is that I don't have the space for many cottages. This contrasts to Amicalola's heavily cottaged, spacious river valleys.

Space Fact 45: In addition to landing on the moon, the Apollo 15 mission left behind a small satellite orbiting the Moon called PFS-1. It communicated directly with Earth at 128 bits per second.

[Lazteuq]

T119
Amicalola and Noble are at war, but I'm skeptical if its a real war. I only have one scout over there, so I might have missed a stack. I've seen lots of 1-move Classical units, but no really aggressive moves. The big unknown is where Amicalola's horse archers are.
I'm not sure what I can do to help Amicalola against Noble right now.
Civac is attacking Cairo. I don't have a good picture of what's going on though. I wonder if Mjmd will join that war?

Metal Casting is done next turn. Nothing else very interesting is happening. I'm growing cities as fast as I can, so I'm actually not running any scientists right now. Including some wealth builds, my breakeven beaker rate is already about 140/turn. That's better than I expected, so I think I'll have Guilds earlier than T140, maybe as early as T135.

I'm still concerned about Gira attacking, although he did just enter a golden age. Worst-case scenario: Gira could probably just walk all over my land, pillaging improvements for cash if they wanted to. I would struggle to make favorable hammer trades since I don't have Construction. I think realistically Gira is more likely to chill out, do some research, and build infrastructure for a while instead.

[superdeath]

T119
Amicalola and Noble are at war, but I'm skeptical if its a real war. I only have one scout over there, so I might have missed a stack. I've seen lots of 1-move Classical units, but no really aggressive moves. The big unknown is where Amicalola's horse archers are.
I'm not sure what I can do to help Amicalola against Noble right now.
Civac is attacking Cairo. I don't have a good picture of what's going on though. I wonder if Mjmd will join that war?

Metal Casting is done next turn. Nothing else very interesting is happening. I'm growing cities as fast as I can, so I'm actually not running any scientists right now. Including some wealth builds, my breakeven beaker rate is already about 140/turn. That's better than I expected, so I think I'll have Guilds earlier than T140, maybe as early as T135.

I'm still concerned about Gira attacking, although he did just enter a golden age. Worst-case scenario: Gira could probably just walk all over my land, pillaging improvements for cash if they wanted to. I would struggle to make favorable hammer trades since I don't have Construction. I think realistically Gira is more likely to chill out, do some research, and build infrastructure for a while instead.

[Lazteuq]

Turn120+121
I got this confusing message from Amicalola (Amicalola and Noble are at peace again):

I think this is referring to them having a 10 turn peace treaty, while I have 3 turns left on the treaty with Noble. But I don't understand the meaning. I guess nobody can give me a hint, so I'll just wait and see.
I live in constant fear that Noble will 1-turn a city out of the fog with horse archers. But what can I do about it other than spam longbows/spears?! I guess war elephants might be pretty similar to longbows on defense, but they cost more, and I don't have construction.

I'm unsure if I'll be able to achieve much with Cataphracts. I have big dreams of taking a bunch of cities, but it's going to take cooperation. Gira and Noble can build 2 or 3 times as many units as me. To even the odds, I'll need my target to be distracted. My target will probably be Noble, because I expect him to be distracted in a war with Amicalola. In contrast, I don't think Gira is as likely to be fighting Civac. Also, if I'm fighting Noble, I'm hopeful that Gira will realize it might be in his best interest to support me instead of attack me. We certainly don't have a good history though.

Space Fact 46: The far side of the moon is a lot brighter than what we see. That's because the side of the moon facing earth has a lot of ancient lava flows which are relatively dark colored rock.

Space Fact 47: The sun is surprisingly not very dense. While the core is far denser than the core of any planet, most of the sun is far lighter. This means the average density is only about 20% of water. So I guess you could say the sun would float.

[mackoti]

I read just a little bit , but i realy like your fighting spirit. I can tell you, by now doesnt matter, that Jowy took Gira second city with  numids winning some batles at 3% , lost just 1 numid to kil 4-5 spears and a combat 1 chariot   in a city with 40% defence.

[Lazteuq]

Thanks, Mackoti!
That's insane RNG, I don't know what to say. It explains the sudden drop I saw in the culture graph.
So Gira is alone without a dedlurker now, eh? I guess that's good news for me.
There are lots of things I want to ask you about, but I should wait until the game is over.

It's Turn 122.
HBR is done, now it's "only" 2500 beakers of Machinery and Guilds left.
I whipped a forge in Adrianople. It was a 4-pop whip, but I think that's OK. The citizens I whipped away were only working coast tiles.
I won't whip Constantinople though, because it needs to stay large and run merchants. Also it's still recovering from old whip anger.
I'm unsure if it's a good idea to whip Moai...Probably not.

Noble was the first to Code of Laws, and his Confucian holy city is Explore(just north of me). That's the worst place it could have spawned, and now Nicaea and Nicomedia are getting culture-pressured even more.
The GNP graph is interesting. Only 4/8 people on the map are seriously researching: Noble, Me, Gira, and Amicalola.

I have graphs on everyone but Cairo, so now I'm putting all espionage on Noble.

Noble and Gira appear to both be saving gold right now. Gira's at +135gpt(in a golden age), and Noble has +114gpt. I am a little suspicious that Noble might run at 20% or something instead of 0% to hide his true income rate. Do people actually do that kind of thing?

I just now noticed there are no spiritual leaders in this game.

Space Fact 48: In the short time (1960ish) when we had orbital rockets but didn't have powerful solid-state computers and cameras, the US Air Force wanted to put a manned observation station in orbit. It would be like the recon satellites of today, except with people on it at all times manually operating cameras and sensors.

[Lazteuq]

OK, it's paranoia time. I think Noble and Gira are about to coordinate an attack on me. I say that mostly because Gira is maintaining a turnsplit with someone: Gira played last, but didn't play a double turn. I doubt it's a turnsplit with civac, so it's probably me. My peace treaty with Noble ends next turn.
I've seen in other games that it is possible to plan a synchronized war declaration with AI diplo. If they do attack, I'm completely screwed.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 124.
So maybe Gira isn't involved in a conspiracy after all. Considering the relatively flat power graph and the short turns Gira is playing, I don't expect an attack.
Meanwhile, Noble is being pretty overt: he parked 6 axes, 1 cat, 2 spears on the border, in position to hit Nicomedia next turn. That's not a threatening force on its own, so I'm sure he's planning something more.

I'm trying to think of this from Noble's point of view.

• He knows that I want Cataphracts. I picked Byzantium, and I already have Feudalism and Metal Casting. It's pretty obvious I'm going for Guilds. Surely he wants to delay me in getting that. If he can hurt my economy by forcing whips and pillaging, he will delay my cataphracts.
  
• On the other hand, if he attacks too much and actually tries to eliminate me, I will whip every city into the ground for defense. He can't afford to make this a fight to the death, while I can. Sure, he could completely kill me eventually, but my City Garrison 2 Longbows in walled hill cities mean that will take huge investment.
  
• He has spare axes and spears which will be soon obsolete, so he might as well do something with them.
  
• He has far more production than me, so he can afford to burn some units. I can only afford hammer trades at 2 or 2.5:1.
  
• He has a peace treaty with Amicalola for 8 more turns, so now is a great time to attack.
  

The thing I'm most worried about is him deciding to just pillage my land.
I thought about declaring war to send some suicide units to find what he's hiding (like I did last time our treaty expired). That wouldn't work very well this time, because he has blocked most of the convenient border hill tiles. Also I don't feel comfortable throwing away archers for that.

I also considered upgrading archers to longbows(95 gold!), but I think I'll wait and see just how desperate the situation is first. I don't want to overreact.
I've already done far more longbow whips than I would like. Now I have a couple good tiles left unworked because there aren't enough citizens to use them.

Noble's stack on the border might just be a diversion, an attempt to make me reinforce the wrong cities. He could have a more dangerous stack somewhere else, like Standstill. That would be really bad, because such a stack could threaten the capitol, from hill tiles. Or, he might attack Nicaea if I move units away.
So many possibilities... I'll find out tomorrow. If we end up at war, I'll post labeled screenshots every turn.

Space Fact 49: The space around Earth is not symmetrical dawn-vs-dusk. Because Earth is moving pretty fast (30km/second), the dawn side of earth's magnetic field is more "squished" relative to the solar wind, and there are some forms of space weather which only happen on the dawn side.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 125: Party's over.
He did what I was worried about (and then some more!), moving 12 horse archers onto that flatland dye tile. They can certainly take the capitol next turn. but I should be able to hold Angora and Nicaea for a little while.

I'm whipping everything into the ground of course. Spent all the cash on longbow upgrades. I'm leaving the southern areas completely undefended, so Gira can take them if he wants. I do hope he takes them instead of letting Noble eat everything.
I don't have much faith that anyone will take Noble down.

Noble has 7 more turns of peace with Amicalola. There is no way Noble can keep killing my cities and still reposition these units in time for the treaty to end. However, I guess he will get away with leaving that border more lightly defended, because Amicalola's main stack is also far from their border, moving toward Vanrober right now. So... Amicalola and Mjmd probably finish splitting Vanrober. What happens next, I'm not sure.

I've failed to strike a balance of units vs. research in this game, but I'm not sure if there ever was a good answer. Lurkers, was I a fool for trying to make a run toward cataphracts? What would you have done?

Space Fact 50!: Contrary to popular opinion, the solar wind usually doesn't directly impact Earth's atmosphere. In order to reach low altitudes, particles from the sun usually have to loop around from the night side of earth.