LURKER THREAD- No Players

[Miguelito]

found this quite interesting:




This is Plemo, who is leading the game. The point are thr constructed buildings (note that this doesn't list conquered buildings, so he has more granaries -Kornspeicher- than appear here).
In particular I was surprised by only 8 banks, just the Wall Street requirement. It might be a function of his low costs with Rathauses, but still. He is quite fond of wealth builds, something that I have seen little in other leading players in this game. He also very much likes AP temples.
Otoh a surprising amount of universities, which would run against conventional wisdom (as far as I am instructed), although he avoided astro for a long time and consequently had no observatories available.


Also something I had not seen before:



Peter (large NA empire, but behind in tech) opened a turn to this. Then saw that:



He then reoffered the payment

[Amicalola]

Ha, that railroad service is an amazing idea.

Does Plemo still have any contenders for the win, or are the others playing for second/fun at this point?

How have the non-Peter empires in NA survived so long? For example Kendo Khan (Brennus, California) seems like an easy target, and Klops to a lesser extent too.

[naufragar]

Otoh a surprising amount of universities, which would run against conventional wisdom (as far as I am instructed)

I'd be interesting in hearing the conventional wisdom.

As for banks, my go-to reading is T-Hawk on banks as self-defeating. It's a good one: banks

[Mjmd]

This

All

Makes

Sense

[civac2]

Dullland (Inca in Africa) and JP (Viking in China) still have a chance to win.

I suspect the railroads have another purpose as well. JP recently conquered Alaska and western Canada. The railroad may allow him to shift his troops over to attack Klops in eastern Canada. So he's getting payed to faciliate his own invasion of Klops. Though, wp (Peter) also profits from the exchange.

Kendokhan was the chief ally of Peter who won't attack him for that reason. He has also managed to reach Rifling. His territory is also somewhat small very elongated and not overly fertile. Any invader would have to deal with Peter's cultural pressure.

[Tarkeel]

Otoh a surprising amount of universities, which would run against conventional wisdom (as far as I am instructed)

I'd be interesting in hearing the conventional wisdom.

Observatories and universities both give 25% science, but cost 150 vs 200 hammers. Observatories allows a scientist while universities give culture, so unless you're PHIlisophical for reduced university cost you're better off building observatories.

[Charriu]

Don't forget that you need some universities for Oxford

[Miguelito]

Plemo keeping it interesting:


As a neighbour I'd be a tad concerned.
Turns out he did research astro after all:



He recently finished Cristo Redentor and switched into OR (which probably gives away that those aren't units). That wonder is crazy, and I'm curious how all that un/little nerfed late game stuff that we normally don't care about will play out in PB59 (CR! corps! nukes!!)

I'd be interesting in hearing the conventional wisdom.

As for banks, my go-to reading is T-Hawk on banks as self-defeating. It's a good one: banks

Doesn't mean that banks are bad though, just unintuitive. But I guess what did it here for Plemo were the Rathauses, and the immediateness of wealth builds.

On observatories, for this game it's worth remembering that they also enable laboratories. I agree that you very likely want Oxford in this game, but more than 8 came as a surprise to me, considering he explicitly follows a frugal approach with buildings.

[civac2]

He said that after the Rathauses were up everywhere his research rate is quite high. Massive wealth builds also make universities more interesting.

@naufragar: Banks are the second most efficient eco building if you research rate is lowish.

[Mjmd]

That is A LOT of observatories. Is there a good empire screenshot? Just curious how lush Russia is?