[PB58] Tarkeel and Amicalola's rule through fear

[Tarkeel]

Here's a shot of some of the cities that don't make headlines:

Corulag is an early hybrid city working a mixture of mills and mature cottages. Swaps mines with Kuat and Kessel as needed.


Alderaan is a later commerce city, still growing it's cottages.


Anoat is a very generic fishing village.


Carida has some more land tiles to work, and is actually quite powerful once we get back into serdom.

[civac2]

Interesting that you have so many mills and plains farms. I suppose in Serfdom they are pretty good.

[Tarkeel]

With Replaceable Parts the wind and watermills get a production bonus, and we'll also be going back into serfdom which boosts farms and windmills further. The map feels pretty light on food which makes me value the extra food higher. It's not exactly a template build, but we've been making it work. They were extra good to have during the golden ages!

[Amicalola]

With the vast majority of our temples and monasteries now up (22/25 of each), our MFG and especially our GNP are quickly approaching GA levels again. I'm very pleased with how quickly we were able to get them all built; in 5 turns we went from 8 to 44 buildings. We definitely got our money's worth out of the Slavery swap. In 4 turns when we (hopefully!) launch our last GA of the series, our demos are going to be disgusting. 

And yeah, we realised pretty early on that Serfdom would be quite good on this map, due to a lot of rivers and hills, and low food. I'm really surprised that no one else has been running it yet. As Tarkeel said, Serfdom feels extra good during the GAs, but we think we're probably going to stay in it after this one because the hammers/commerce are really nice. It also synergises quite well with the monk economy, since we don't need/want to whip as much now.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 176-178 (1180 AD)
Has it been three turns already? We've finished this round of whipping buildings; only the fresh cities don't have both hinduism buildings now. We're getting close to the next golden age; Coruscant is missing 72 points and is producing 36 per turn, so hopefully it births something other than an engineer in two turns. This gives us three big questions to answer:

• When do we trigger the GA?
  
• What should we research?
  
• What civics do we want?
  

I think we'll want to swap into nationhood (leaving vassalage), serfdom (leaving slavery) and theocracy (leaving slavery) on the first round of the golden age. This will let us do a final round of whips first, probably cuirassiers but possibly knights. We're not going to be building many buildings for the next rounds so I'd rather swap out OrgRel for theocracy, so we can leave vassalge for nationhood and drafting and still build 2-promo units. I'd love to swap into representation civic before the golden age is finished, but that means we need a detour to Constitution.

We've been saving gold for the last few turns, and are now sitting at almost 2.5k which should last for nine turns of full blast research. The primary research goal is cuirassiers, and secondary is ReplaceableParts. Right now, outside of a golden age, it will take us three turns to complete MilitaryTradition (with 132 beakers in the final tick) and 2 turns for Gunpowder (with 552 in the final tick), which should work out to 4 turns total. For ReplaceableParts it's another 4-5 turns total, and then it's a question of Rifling vs Constitution.

We've just turned the dial up to 70% (just above breakeven), and will get MilitaryTradition in three turns. Kuat will finish the Forbidden Palace next turn, so here's a before-look at our economy:

[Tarkeel]

Turn 179 (1190 AD)
Kuat's Forbidden Palace was completed, so here's a comparison shot of the economy:


There was a courthouse completed as well, so total savings for the FP is about 15ish gpt, which is good but not fantastic.

We also founded Tatooine to work the desert incense:


Jowy birthed a prophet to shrine Hinduism a few turns ago. We could have spread taoism instead by delaying everything about 5 turns, but then we'd still be spreading religion instead of building forces now, so I think it was the right call. It wasn't a given that he'd birth another prophet.

Edit: We're also spending much more time on these turns than anybody else; AT just played the second half of his double turn in less than two minutes.

[Amicalola]

Edit: We're also spending much more time on these turns than anybody else; AT just played the second half of his double turn in less than two minutes.

That's what happens when just sending a screenshot takes 2 minutes.  

But more seriously, I think that has probably helped our comeback somewhat. Just spending more time to notice the little opportunities, options, etc. And hey, this is fun!

[Tarkeel]

Turn 180 (1200 AD)
The RNG-gods didn't hate us that bad, and Corsucant birthed another merchant. We did a final round of pre-whipping knights in selected cities, putting them back in the queue and then triggering our golden age.


As can be seen from the cities list, we're more or less done with infrastructure and are working on units. This allowed us to swap out OrgRel for theocracy, and vassalage for nationhood. We also swapped out slavery for serfdom to boost our economy. We've set the following schedule for conscripted service:
T180: Nal Hutta, Naboo, Dantooine
T181: Anoat, Hoth, Wakeelmui
T182: Eriadu, Carida, Sullust

The research plan is:
T181: Finish MilitaryTradition
T182: Finish Gunpowder
T183: Finish PrintingPress
T185: Finish ReplaceableParts
T187: Finish Constitution

Demographics and economy before and after golden age w/civic swaps:

Before:




After:

Edit: We're also looking at converting Sullust to a draft center, and are building the final theatre in Kessel this turn, so we can start Globe Theatre next turn.

[civac2]

The screenshot tags in the spoiler are broken.

[Tarkeel]

Thanks, it's fixed now.