(May 27th, 2021, 17:27)Rusten Wrote: Island city is much more strained on production than CC. If one city has to get a work boat it's 100% CC. Delay the market if necessary.
In the end I concluded that Marinheiro can do it just fine.
(May 27th, 2021, 20:19)Rusten Wrote: Not so much room in terms of grabbing land and adding cities, but tons of room in growing to our happy cap and triggering our golden age. We're not even close to working all of our quality tiles. Even simple coastal tiles will be 2/0/5 with that GA. I hope you're prepared for how quickly we will tech towards Guilds Miguelito. 
In fact, no, I'm not
. Ftr right now it's 4 turns to Calendar on break even, which of course is fast, but it doesn't feel like we'll be at guilds in the next 2 weeks either. My main worry though is that our commerce outweighs our production capacities; we just have very many cities whose job it is to work coast and which are not good for much more. I'll do a city tour below, which might help us to assess how to deal with that.
(May 27th, 2021, 20:19)Rusten Wrote: On that note I think we should start making units in non-commerce cities now or at least very soon. We could use some axes and catapults to go with our knights. I think construction is our tech after CoL in order to enable those. Given how weak DZ is I think there's also a case for building up slowly and declaring war before we reach guilds even, and then finish him off with said knights. Not a whipping offensive, but we have forges several places already so the units will be coming fast either way. I wouldn't prioritize things like markets except for pure high-value commerce cities (islands, CC and Bonfim). Do not overbuild infrastructure on the mainland -- so much of our base commerce is going to come from fishing villages working coast.
The quicker we deal with DZ the bigger our knight window against civac+Suite will be. They are our main rival this game. I hope to strike them before they're fully recovered/matured from their war. Maybe we can even get Elkad with us and have him attack in the north.
I don't see a pre guilds attack happening, but we can keep the possibility in mind. Certainly Construction comes pretty soon after readying for the GA, although if we want to keep the phlio bulb option open (and Elkad doesn't just grab it first) alphabet should come first (ok we also have to get out that GS). And surely we'll build a bunch of cats.
Fwiw I had planned for markets only in CC and Bonfim. My sense also tells me less libraries, but I'm following you there.
Ok, turn 100, let's see what we've got. I posted the overview a few days ago, so I'll go straight to the details:
CC has excellent food, which is all shared for good measure. It still bears a lot of whip anger from early settlers and then the Colossus campaign, which is about half my motivation for the market. It can switch between very nice commerce tiles and some solid hammers. After the market it needs a barrakcs and then I expect nothing but units for a long time. It will never be that many though, although with guilds certainly a number of knights will get whipped here.
We've decided to make this a (the) specialist city, besides its helper functions. Which is why I'm building the library, as it should have a few slots outside of caste. After that barracks and units. It will have to help a bit more with cottages in the west once Bonfim pops borders and gets new river cottages.
In Marinheiro we want to get Moai running before the GA starts. It's going to be a great city. The decision of library vs straight barracks -> units does not feel easy to me at least.
The jewel of the empire (you don't see it working the gems mine). Only to be more gorgeous with the upcoming border pop, grabbing the last FP and ohter river cottages. 3 cities are helping with cottage growth. With the gems it has a respectable 12 base hammers. After the market there's nothing left to do but barracks and units, good.
The first functioning production city. Sadly it is on hte lower side hammer wise. I hope to improve this with growth and getting the forests into borders for more lumbermills. I stubbornly refuse to chop these forests because I want to save them for something big.
Our most productive settler whipper, recently equipped with a forge. It has one last 2 pop settler whip due, after which it can fulfil its purpose as our most promising production center. HE candidate.
We settled this early because of the fur. With Colossus and Fin it is beautiful, sure. Bit low on food, so every turn I have to control myself not to whip it. The fur will get chopped, after which the food surplus increases to 5, and then I'll see if it ever catches up with the happy cap and can use a
This city is now 19 turns old already, and sure enough has been a slow starter. It needs the pig, and since we decided to not research Mysticism (which I guess is justified considering how much Currency is doing for us), and on top due to my aformentioned refusal to chop getting culture took some time. I think this is a rare case of a coastal city that doesn't want a lighthouse very soon, as it really should develop cottages (and has no help for that). So, forge->barracks is due. With the pig online this city should take up a lot of speed.
A very useful cottage helper for Bonfim and occasional whipper with unclear long term perspective. As you see I have been putting spare worker turns into workshops, so maybe that is its future, a coast/hammer hybrid? We've decided against a library for now. Now, does a forge make sense...? It will get whipped often enough I suppose? May also just whip a worker before anything else. ....and now I noticed that it has no build selected. Put it on a forge.
Awesome place and the Moai of my heart, but it has no chops available and we want to get a scientist during the GA here. Can whip a bit more than your standacoastal city, thanks to the shared corn and the lake. 2pop into the library? It will give up the corn to the new city for a while anyways.
Cheeky little city is stealing the capital's fish. But it has great prospects. Needs an MP from somewhere, or just whip into one?
Probably library next. One of those coastal slow growers.
Our first island grab, where we went over the middle line. Naturally doesn't get started too fast with all tiles under the jungle, despite 2 workers doing their best. After the copper mine and road they go home though, no point in cutting more jungle. With the mine the city will have only 4 food surplus, but at least some hammers.
I would be a lot more concerned about the unpromoted archer and no reinforcements, were it not for Mjmd fighting Arab invaders, and us providing him copper.
A clone of the last one and gets developed the same. It is a lot more exposed though. Mjmd and Elkad should be fighting over this (where is our second contested island though, then?). One very nice result of the landgrab is that Elkad can not have a harbour city on the whole bay to the west, so we can cover Jogador and have some triremes in the strait and have a whole bunch of cities secured from shenanigans. Fwiw I hope Elkad stays peaceful and we can be friends until the industrial age at least.
The Donovan border city. Imo the best of a bunch of unappetizing options. It's on a hill surrounded by flatland (once it's cut down), and with the banana coming soon it will be fine. If Dono lets us have the cow it will be pretty good in face, but I suppose we'll have to make him let us. Sadly the National Park isn't unlocked yet.
Two workers are busy imrpoving, and will have cleared the banana tile just when Calendar's done.
Unsure how to develop. Farm the flat grassland? Cottage it? Just work coast after a caste border pop?
So that's all. I wanted to present a fresh one, but Rusten already commented that it's delayed. Here's how the game trolled us:
The forest S of spices wasn't there yet last turn. This is the first forest growth all game and it happens just in this way. You see we had a worker on the galley ready to mine the copper, as well as the spice forest pre chopped.
In the end I sent the spice worker cottaging 1N and the boat worker went on the spice forest to chop next turn.
More prospective places:
A filler with shared pig and banana. Gets us stone for Moai.
green vs red is save a valid tile for Marinheiro to work for vs clam first ring. Basically depends on how far from the GA and caste we are when the settler's up.
The same city in pink, which is no coincidence. The upper sign is mine, the other three are Rusten's, and of course he's right. My vague idea is that Mjmd could tolerate it, given his other worries and our friendly signals. Like, invest a settler and a WB, put a blank archer into the city and see what happens.
Now here you see the actual pink dot. If there is any way to make Dono rage and whip units it's this. Otoh that is a very nice spot
. Blue is for if we found it after sucessful conflict with Dono.
You also see sad future wine city. At least we have coasts. There is no way to build a fort on that tile and get the resource that way, right?
It's getting late, but have som graphs including civac's which we just got fresh:
Pretty high numbers from Don, although we surpassed him this turn
doing surprisingly well here, although there are a few people out there who surpass us in the demos.
The decline is palpable for Mjmd and AT. Meanwhile civac is doing excellently despite the war. He also has 17 cities, which we'll catch up to only next turn. All the while we've seen 500+ worth of hammers put into vultures. And no financial vulnerability, they had Currency before us, and likely Priesthood already for their UB which helps them control the post.
Finally, demos. I show them at 50% research (break even), so you can appreciate us being first place in GNP.
. If the GG is on the axe, that means that the galley got 7 XP from combat, right? Again, happy that we don't have to spend resources on stacks like this one.
