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

[marcopolothefraud]

Nas was in the news again over some video, and I only knew who he was because of you!

Different rapper with Nas in his name. 

"Lil Nas X" is a 22-year-old rapper who released a new song with overtly gay themes and references. Nas, the original Nas who made Illmatic, is a completely different person.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Aw, nuts.

Still old and out of touch.

[Sullla]

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 105

Actually wound up being a fairly good turn. 




Looks like sub pulled back his forward jong, probably to promote it. I fill in the southern passage with two of my galleys and bring up more. Sub has 6 jongs now, I think, between a faith purchase and upgrades, but he still shouldn't be able to shoot through fast enough as long as we hold these two chokepoints to limit the amount of fire he gets. 

The real action is at Yerevan. My quad goes down to the Catapult and Japan moved in, but was unable to capture, as predicted:




It only takes attacks from my two healthy galleys to bring down the city:




Japan's fleet is scattered to the winds, though I'll let Kaiser out in return for cash or a luxury (if he declares war, then Australia gets x2 production, so that's a briar patch I'm open to being thrown into). The city is renamed Fuji. Fun fact: Fuji is apparently the ship that sank the Borodino, lead ship of her class and my capital's namesake. So a nice bit of revenge there. I place a 4-adjacency lavra, pretty weak, but it'll be +8 production someday when it finishes. I also miss that I apparently captured a builder and use my accumulated faith to purchase one, intending to quickly fix the fish, plantation the tobacco for the amenity, and probably lumbermill the hills. 

Knyaz Suvurov has grown to 7, but distressingly the Harbor is not discounted:




Oof. I have 2 Harbors placed - at Borodino and Navarin, and the one at Borodino is completed. I have 7 districts unlocked with Entertainment Complexes being the latest addition to the roster, and have 15 completed - 10 lavras, 3 campuses, a harbor, and a plaza. I have a harbor, a campus, and a lavra placed but not completed. I thought my third harbor SHOULD be discounted and the calculator agrees, but apparently not? Hm. I'll wait a turn, then shrug and accept the cost. 

Overview of the East:




Fuji's priority is to finish the lavra. Note that it also must convert. That is due in I BELIEVE 3 turns if I'm understanding pressure rules right (1 follower, 176 pressure, 10 incoming pressure - does the 2nd citizen convert at 206 pressure? No idea). I might need to dispatch a missionary here and to Donskoi to speed things up. Actually, damn, Donskoi is going to need one anyway since founding on the rice will guarantee rapid growth. Oopsies. 

Hm, possible - Marco, do YOU want to send a missionary to these two cities? If you have no plan for your pile of faith, since you haven't monumentality. The only other options I can think of for Australia are to try and take Valetta's suzerainty and dump faith into City Center buildings, or to eventually build the Grand Master's Chapel and spend your accumulated faith on a little army. A missionary is 1 turn's income for me. Not a huge deal.

Oslyabya is able to go back to economy with the east largely pacified. I want a granary, harbor, and monument here, not necessarily in that order. The captured builder will grab the pearls for the amenity, improve the silver tile, and maybe head to Sevastopol to improve ITs silver as well. 

Sissoi Veliki will need to swap off the Heavy Chariot next turn (dump production into a pre-Feudalism builder, most likely), so as to sync completion up with the growth to size 4, allowing me to directly dump the production into the Campus. 

Note that Borodino has been chopped to size 9 and will hit size 10 in 15 turns. I need 3 builder charges here - after I inspire feudalism I will chop the rice farm into Borodino, chop the forest into the Industrial Zone placed on the former farm, and then use the final charge to plant a mine to add +1 adjacency to the IZ. 

Overview of the west:




Something of a radical change in policy here - with no settlers being purchased for 4 turns, and no prospects of a massive settlement wave yet, I had the faith to afford several more builders, inspired by Yerevan. I am also starting to run low on luxuries due to my booming population (still the largest empire in the game even after losing 2 cities), and Navarin and Knyaz Suvurov in particular are working vast amounts of unworked tiles. So, it seemed apropos to dump 4 turn's worth of faith into builders. 

Mikasa will get a diamond mine, a lumber mill, and Petropavlosk gets a fish. 

Navarin will get a farm (#6 for Feudalism).

Knyaz Suvurov will get a turtles, a farm (#5), 2 lumber mills, and a mine. 

Borodino is receiving a farm and a turtle. 

Then I'll get a wave of 16 charges at Feudalism (Sissoi Veliki and Sevastopol each produce 5 charge builders, Oryol a 6-charge), which should be fairly doable, one of which will head to Borodino for the IZ project, the other 13 charges spent as needed around the empire. 

So a good economic turn even as we still keep turning out ships! 

Last bit of math is to work out quads. I need 3 more quads to be able to upgrade all 5. Navarin can probably get out 1 at least. The other two might need to come from KS and Borodino, temporarily interrupting galley supply to the Matilda battle. If we can't afford that, they'll need to come from Mikasa and Navarin building 3 between them. Hm. 

Final point: Marco, do you think we can spare the gold from upgrades to buy the forest at your new city? Then we can move in Magnus perhaps and give the holy site a chop, which will halve production time. We can work out how much to expect from the chop and actually WORK the forest until that point, too, to minimize time spent building the holy site.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Marco, I think buying the tile is the play. You have the spare builder charges to literally spend an extra charge to plant a lumber mill to work at size 2, which should dramatically speed up the holy site (down to 20 turns or so). A chop with Australia's numbers and Magnus right now gets 105 production. The holy site should cost 190, so we chop when you're at 85 production. City center gets, what, 1? Plus 3 from the lumber mill, so 4. So 20 turns to get to 85, probably less since we can run urban planning (15 turns), plus some growth, plus tech increases increase chops. So we'd be able to chop probably in more like 10 turns, letting this city get fully active by turn 115, just as Frigates appear.

Next turn send me a request for the cost of the tile and I'll pass the gold along. We have about ~1 frigate's worth of upgrade gold to spare, given the niter situation, and getting Australia's cities up and productive quickly is a necessity.

Doing the same thing at the Oasis city - buying TWO tiles, moving in Magus, and then chopping both - will get you another +18 site, but we also need to buy the holy site tile itself (probably done from Aquemini to save on costs, but this will still be very expensive)...so that can't happen until after Frigate upgrades. I'd settle the city and just work on basic infrastructure and tiles, maybe even place a harbor since food is abundant and size 4 should be easy.

[williams482]

Oh yes, the OTHER fun thing about the district discount: it only gets recalculated after a tech or civic is completed, which happens before production is processed at the start of the turn. So no help there.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

The thing is, though, I finished a tech and civic last turn, both after Vladimir Monomakh fell to Indonesia and I lost my 'third' placed Harbor. So that can't be it.

I'll probably need to suck it up and pay full price.

[williams482]

Huh, so that's not the problem. Maybe it's something strange with losing the placed district not being accounted for correctly? Whatever the cause, weird.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Here's the PBEM20 sheet.

[williams482]