[SPOILERS] Chevalier Mal Fet and Marcopolothefraud lead a Soviet Down Under

[marcopolothefraud]

Re: building Ancient Walls. That's a great idea, and it would help me get Engineering very quickly as well. I don't think I need any Aqueducts, though. Maybe at the Blueprint, which is at 4/5 housing? But a Granary would be much easier to get.

Re: Nazca. Yes, I think we have to declare war on Kaiser to get Nazca. Shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Re: Settling the eastern part of the continent - I would be very wary of this, because there's a lot of flat, defenseless terrain. Sure, it's high-yield terrain, and I bet the cities could grow very quickly, but I think we need a good navy before we should settle this part. Even before people research Frigates, the eastern part could be vulnerable to an amphibious invasion of Classical/Medieval Era land units if we don't have enough ranged units to protect this eastern part.

There's a chance that the eastern part of the continent may be worth the trouble - we just have to see who our eastern neighbors are. Settling the lands west of MBDTF is relatively safe, but also relatively useless. Apart from the Sugar tile and the Iron tile (and maybe the Silver if we're strapped for cash), I don't see much value in this area. If we really want these yields, Illmatic can buy the Sugar, Iron and Silver anyway, though it'll take gold we don't have.

Ultimately? I think Russia should produce at least 1-2 settlers, giving us time to explore a little bit, and then we'll see if it's worth filling out the continent or if we should settle others.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 75

Woo! This game feels like it's going slowly, honestly. 75 turns in and no clear favorites in sight (probably China followed by Japan but both have their problems). 

Anyway, after our diversion to Scripture we finally stagger into Political Philosophy, more than 10 turns after China:




We take Oligarchy which perfectly suits our needs - 2/2 military and economic policies required, and the strength boost will assist with Nazca and Mohenjo-Daro. I take this government temporarily:




Conscription is an easy +7 gold per turn, which takes us to #1 in all 3 of gold, faith, and production per turn. Maritime Industries beats Agoge for now, but in retrospect I could have taken Discipline. I won't be engaging any barbs this turn, though, so I can swap that out. Economically Scripture is of course necessary, being worth 17 faith/production per turn. Colonization is actually my economically next best choice - I wanted to get the settler for Navarin out of Knyaz Suvurov, since I had some hammers sunk into it from earlier. It's worth +9 hammers per turn, far ahead of Urban Planning's +6. However, I do want to improve my science rates, so we are headed through Recorded History to pick up Natural Philosophy and add +6 science. We'll swap the same turn we finish the settler out of Knyaz Suvurov. 

With the repairs at Hong Kong, our culture is now solidly middle of the pack, trailing China's wonder-fueled 37 and Norway's mysterious 27, but tied with Japan's 22 and a few points ahead of everyone else. I have I think 1 or 0 monuments finished outside the city-state, not sure, so we can expand an additional 12 once we have time to invest the production. On the whole, our production, less than 25 turns old at two of my cities, and less than 10 turns from its doubling with Scripture,* is already starting to show, though: I am first in city count, faith, gold, production, and military score, middle of the pack in culture, and last in science. That's a bad thing to be last in, but I have Australia passing me eurekas and my strong production can land me more. The next step is to build ancient walls at the capital (due in 6 turns) to boost Engineering (due in same), then start an aqueduct right away to find niter. Then it's harbor time. 

With PP in, it's time to start the Ancestral Hall:




Imperator Aleksandr is the strongest producing city in the empire, with 25 hammers per turn. That will grant us the Hall in precisely 6 turns. It'll grow to size 5 on the same turn, and will start a granary most likely to enable growth to size 7 for its campus. 

Oh, also the barb scout has returned and now is going to try to trigger a new wave of barbs at Imperator Aleksandr. Not today, Zerg!




I wish my two warriors had been sufficient to clear the camp, but I took too much damage from the slinger and warrior. It'll be a pain to clear if they get swords out. 

Hong Kong starts its lavra...




Due on turn 88. Nothing I can do to speed up that timeline at the moment, since there's no food for the city to grow and it'd take ages to get a builder over here. Once we hit 88, the city will be at a paltry 15 production, but that's enough to squeeze out a granary and builder for the diamonds and seafood. The city states are kind of garbage cities, likely by design. This is good news since half of Norway is made up of conquered vassals. 

In other news, the wolf pack's first wave nears Nazca:






We should be able to begin the assault on turn 76, finishing the conquest by turn 78, barring developments like a sword or galley appearing. This will probably piss off a lot of people, and will potentially spark conflict down the road since I think Nazca is fairly central, given where I am and where our friendly neighbors scouted from. It'll be a decent base, though, and I can't let it fall into enemy hands. I might need to station my navy here - thankfully I can block most approaches easily and can reinforce from my two strongest cities, so until Frigates it should be safe enough.

Pity it's a garbage city, though. 

In the southeast, Magnus is en route to Sevastopol. He will establish on turn 79 and will need to hang out until 83 to boost the chop:




Along the way, at turn 81 (when the hall finishes) we'll purchase a free settler here and send it to Oslyabya. I think Oslyabya is a mediocre city on the whole, but a production queue is a production queue. Down the road it'll be a good shipyard for operations in the Japanese theater. 

After 83, Magnus will bounce back to IA to let it begin settler-pumping. 

Abroad, Archduke has a settler out and sub interestingly spent all his iron:




With 4 era score, that's the world's first swordsman. What are you up to, I wonder? Hopefully he's plotting an invasion of literally anyone other than us. It looks like Norway intended far more than a raid on England, as Carthage, Norway, and England have all lost about 4 ships between them. This is, of course, excellent news. Bloody each other! Kaiser literally can't sustain more military than what he has - he's at -1 gold and only 2 in the bank, meaning he'll need British subsidies to keep afloat (England subsidizing wartime allies? What else is new?). 

Overview:

This is probably a bridge too far, but what if you used the builder out of Borodino for a settlement-time chop at Sissol instead of at Sevastopol? The chop would come on t85 instead of 83 and it slows the Sevastopol lavra, but in return either accelerates the Sissol lavra, or allows you to save the campus forest for a short term +1 adjacency and a chop into something else a little later. The free Sissol builder can then walk over to execute the Sevastopol chop 5 turns after Sissol is founded (most likely settle t85, chop t90).

It looks like the Settler's shortest walk to Sissol would get it there on t81 and settled on t82. Waiting for three turns doesn't feel great, and it seems likely you'll complete AH soon enough not to need to wait around for that. I had some other crazy thoughts (send the current settler to Oslyabya! Don't place the Sissol lavra immediately, start some other cheap and useful thing and chop it out, then place the lavra! Or start something slightly more expensive, move Magnus over here after purchasing the next settler, and Magnus chop that thing with overflow into the lavra!) and I present them briefly for consideration here, but most likely the straightforward "place the superpowered district on the best tile as soon as possible" play wins out.

I've considered things like starting a monument or something until the builder gets there, but every lavra is worth 12 production and 12 faith. If we normalize 2:1 faithroduction, then every turn of a lavra is worth 18 hammers. A chop right now is worth 48 production, meaning I can only delay 3 finishing the lavra 3 turns for a more efficient chop. That means if I spend more than 3 turns on the monument OR more than 3 turns longer on the lavra once I've built the monument/granary, then it's not worth it. Thus, better to throw down the lavra right away, even if it means deleting a forest, in almost all circumstances. 

Right now, SV is projected to settle on turn 82, and I should finish the lavra before turn 90. 

*

At present, in cities with my religion present, I have 61 total production. 34 of it is from Work Ethic, meaning empire-wide production has been doubled by my religion. China's getting similar free production from his builder abilities, but can anyone else come close to this?

Re: Settling the eastern part of the continent - I would be very wary of this, because there's a lot of flat, defenseless terrain. Sure, it's high-yield terrain, and I bet the cities could grow very quickly, but I think we need a good navy before we should settle this part. Even before people research Frigates, the eastern part could be vulnerable to an amphibious invasion of Classical/Medieval Era land units if we don't have enough ranged units to protect this eastern part.

There's a chance that the eastern part of the continent may be worth the trouble - we just have to see who our eastern neighbors are. Settling the lands west of MBDTF is relatively safe, but also relatively useless. Apart from the Sugar tile and the Iron tile (and maybe the Silver if we're strapped for cash), I don't see much value in this area. If we really want these yields, Illmatic can buy the Sugar, Iron and Silver anyway, though it'll take gold we don't have.

Ultimately? I think Russia should produce at least 1-2 settlers, giving us time to explore a little bit, and then we'll see if it's worth filling out the continent or if we should settle others.

We know our eastern neighbors - it's 95% certainty Japan. They named the bay off our coast, we can see loyalty pressure so we know there's a player there, and their galley alone came from that direction. We also know that Japan and England are embroiled with the two most dangerous civs in the game, and that Kaiser can't afford any more military tahn what he's already got - which is scarcely more than Australia's. Down the road, a concerted galley attack COULD take, I dunno, turtleville, but by that time you'll have had time to get the city up and running.

I strongly feel that expansion earlier is always better than expansion later, just as long as you aren't giving free cities to our enemies. Those cities will grow quickly and be contributing quickly - at least, Oasis, Desert Folklore, and Turtleville will, with so many solid tiles. That would double Australia's size and the sooner they settle the sooner they'll be self-sufficient. Plus, you want to get districts down as rapidly as possible so they're as cheap as possible. THe more you research before founding them, the more expensive their starting districts will be. 

In fact, it's honestly almost worth running Colonization and Urban Planning, cranking out 3 settlers from 3 cities, and pushing for those 3 (the desert filler and southern filler can wait). What more urgent projects could Australia have? You have 3 campuses done or nearing completion, your first Holy Site is about to come online (and I'll convert you a turn after), then you'll need time for faith to accumulate to get some missionaries and spread it around for the rest. In the meantime, while our enemies are all distracted, why not make a settler push? The sooner started, the sooner it finishes. 

The Russian navy is actually at present the 2nd strongest on the map, after the Indonesians, and can grow at a moment's notice. Send your land units along with each settler to garrison Oasis and Turtleville and there'll be plenty of safety. At the very least, Desert Folkore is a solid city with some tile purchases (gold generation would be the only other Australian project - got time for a trader?), and Oasis has tons of resources (as does Turtleville).

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

(One final reason why I decided to settle Oslyabya: in <32 turns it'll repay its faith cost, which is easily within the lifetime of the game. Thus Oslyabya is indeed worth it).

[marcopolothefraud]

In fact, it's honestly almost worth running Colonization and Urban Planning, cranking out 3 settlers from 3 cities, and pushing for those 3 (the desert filler and southern filler can wait). What more urgent projects could Australia have? You have 3 campuses done or nearing completion, your first Holy Site is about to come online (and I'll convert you a turn after), then you'll need time for faith to accumulate to get some missionaries and spread it around for the rest. In the meantime, while our enemies are all distracted, why not make a settler push? The sooner started, the sooner it finishes. 

Sure, I think this will work. I'll reach Political Philosophy next turn, and the College Dropout and the Blueprint can both immediately switch to settler production.



I discovered Japan's city of Miln, and I'll probably be able to see it for good next turn. I also finished the Blueprint's Holy Site, bringing my gold generation to 1 per turn. Next turn, as College Dropout's Campus and Illmatic's Government Plaza both finish, I'll start to go into the negatives. That's quite dangerous...

(With Celestial Navigation, I think I can harvest crabs from College Dropout. A gold shortage is pretty bad news, though.)

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I can keep you afloat in the short term, but yeah, gold needs to be on the priority list.

At least we're not in Kaiser's boat - dead broke and with a military half the size of both his enemies!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

augh, Kaiser did the thing again where he played PBEM18 but not PBEM20.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 76

While somewhere in the wide world, English and Viking and Punic galley fleets clash, Russia quietly continues its own internal development. We (finally) get Craftsmanship as our 10th civic, normally the 2nd or 3rd:




We'll plow on from here straight to Recorded History. We will unlock it on turn 79, when Knyaz Suvurov will need 9 more production for its settler, with 18 native production - thus the extra 9 hammers from Colonization would vanish on that turn. So the timing is perfect to swap in and grab me a science boost, which will have Russia more or less entirely in line with everyone else and plenty of room to grow. So that's a relief.

For the next few turns, I take Discipline over Maritime Industries:




The slinger is the issue. I can kill him, but I worry that whoever I kill him with will be exposed to the warrior. Can I fortify and heal? I need to keep the lavra free of enemy units or I can't finish it. I ahve an archer reinforcing from the other flank with a good river base to defend from. I think I should clear these guys out first and then heal and push for the base, picking off any scouts to prevent new spawns as best I can. 

Interestingly, I can cross the river onto the iron hill and build the mine on the same turn:




Interesting. That speeds up all my timelines by a single turn. I'll get Magnus's 2nd title on turn 79 with Recorded History and can purchase the settler on THAT turn, not turn 81 (I think, I forgot to recalculate the faith. I need 320 and have 180, so yeah, 3 more turns will do it - although I should wait a single turn to make sure that KS gets its settler out first). So purchase on turn 82, possibly chop the same turn, and then move Magnus on. 

Kaiser suzerained Mohenjo-Daro as well as Nazca:




I also thought I saw a peace notification in there, I think a city-state, but forgot to pay it too much heed. Oops. Anyway, Marco, after my galleys finish Nazca on turn 79 I aim to scoot along these islands near the equator and see if I can find my way there. Then Russia can seize the city and pass it to Australia. 

We'll start at Nazca with 2 galleys on 77, 3 on 78, and 4 on 79, against just an archer it seems:




The city itself is garbage, but it'll be a useful base. I'm tempted to use it for a settler purchase, but it has little food and will be a looong time regrowing. Hmm...I MIGHT be able to drop Magnus here by turn 100 and purchase my last monumentality settler out of Nazca? That would let me start settling the nearby islands, but I expect here is where I'll bump into friends. There's a Norwegian warrior lurking about, so I'll need a small expeditionary force to truly secure this area.

Ironically, the chop won't actually speed the lavra all that much. Assuming I can chop on turn 81, it'll speed things up by 3 turns:




Should I divert to Sissoi Veliki and harvest the deer on founding day? My builder is going to be about 2 turns behind...hmm...Worth thinking about. 

Australia finished its first Holy Site, a 5-adjacency beast that would be very impressive anywhere outside of Russia:




My missionary is due in 4 turns and can convert the city with one charge, which will be good for +5 production for The Blueprint. The religion will be a bit of a slow burn for Marco since he needs to build FULL holy sites, not half-cost lavras, and he needs some missionaries to spread it, but unlike me has no calls on his faith. If he can find room for Scripture he can be getting +10 or more production per city. 




From there, hopefully at least the College Dropout can get a good holy site too and Marco will be off to the races. Given how strong this combo is proving for Russia anything we can do to get the same snowball rolling in Oz I think is very much worth doing.

Speaking of, Marco, in 5 turns you'll have your pantheon. Have you thought about what to take? A culture or production one is always strong. Desert Pantheon would be an Australian version of Dance of the Aurora, and you could get maybe 3 or 4 good holy sites with desert adjacencies? 

Overviews:

[marcopolothefraud]

The problem with pantheons is that I don't know what other people have picked, because I don't have that religion screen pop-up. Maybe you could access the other pantheons from the religion screen, and tell me what's still available?

Turn 77
I adopt Oligarchy, mainly because I don't want any Diplomatic policies and I think it's useful to have a 2 military/2 economic card setup.


That also means I slot in the Colonization policy card, and build settlers in two of my cities. This exposes just how low food/low production my cities really are.


Finally, the Great Scientist screen provides a dilemma. There are 3 classical-era Great Scientists: Aryabhata, Euclid, and Hypatia. Hypatia is far and away the best one, and I'll have no chance of getting her because everyone else is on my tail. Should I cut my losses and just take Aryabhata? Or should I pass it and aim for a really good Medieval Great Scientist, like al-Zahrawi (+5 HP healing for wounded units) or Hildegard (Holy Site adjacency converts to Science).


EDIT: Oh, and I finished the Government Plaza, and decided to put one governor title into Liang so MBDTF can have a 4-charge builder. I now have a Pingala x3, Magnus x1, and a Liang x1.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Good to see. The build times on the settlers is painful, but again, what better use of hte production is there right now? The Blueprint will get an injection of +5 production (so +7.5 towards the settler) in a few turn as soon as my missionary arrives, so that will ease things. And we don't want to invest further in research infrastructure since that won't solve the production problem and will make future districts more expensive. So, the only other investments would be builders or military units. Builders you have out and have largely tapped out the surrounding tiles, and I can cover any military needs we have in the next ~15 turns. So not to worry about the long build times - it's the best use we have for the time we have. 

As for the great scientist, I BELIEVE that if you pass him, you'll recruit the next one, which will be 50/50 Hypatia or Euclid. You won't have to wait for the medieval era (speaking of, if I can recruit the medieval great scientist that adds science to holy sites...:O Have to bank my scientist points for her). I think it's worth a shot to pass, although Euclid is pretty lame. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on any of those points.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

As for pantheons, we know Indonesia has Earth Goddess, since that one was taken when I signed up for my pantheon. Per religion, China has OLORAM and Japan has, hm, can't recall. I'll check the religion screen when I load.

Norway and England both have pantheons as well, leaving only Phoenicia as an unknown. Archduke goes for culture pantheons usually and Woden might have taken God of the Sea. He's working on his great prophet now so I'll know for certain once he founds.