[PB59 Amicalola] The Vespertine Hour(s)

[Lewwyn]

Still 15 cities looks pretty good. How do you feel about the economy after settling?

[Amicalola]

Still 15 cities looks pretty good. How do you feel about the economy after settling?

The economy is great! Well... it's ok.

Every new city actually makes a slight profit at 0% science right now, thanks to +6 commerce from trade routes (2*3-commerce routes). These are predominantly from the Tarkeel-GKC-Superdeath-Commodore-TBS island. Beauregard the scouting Work Boat might have made me 1000 commerce by now, and that's just going to keep growing. Sending her out early is possibly the best decision I made this game.  

That's why I can afford to settle terrible sites like All Neon Like already. It will be even better once I have Currency. I'm also really pleased that I have 15 cities by T100 as a slow leader like Roosevelt, compared to Naufragar's 16 for example. However, the trade-off is I have basically nothing else in my economy; 0 villages, 3 hamlets and <10 COTTAGES.   So I might get outscaled in the midgame, or I might be able to abuse my GLH to keep up until my own cottages come online. We will have to see.

[Lewwyn]

Are there more wonder plans on the horizon?

[Amicalola]

Are there more wonder plans on the horizon?

You're spoiling all my T100 talking points!

I kid; thanks for the questions, I appreciate them. I was considering MoM, but Mackoti and TBS already have Calendar, and I doubt I could land it before those two wunderkinds. I was also considering Temple of Artemis in Unison as part of the GP pump, but someone (Charriu?) built it already. Actually, all of the early wonders have fallen, even the crappy ones like Great Wall. 

However, I am considering building the Great Library in Unison. I could go Aesthetics->Literature after Currency (before Calendar/Construction), and the build would take 10 turns (call it 8(?) with some good overflow). Unfortunately there are no forests left to chop there, so I'd be stuck with the raw build time. I think it would be worth, to get an academy early in Unison and just generally for +8GPP. The biggest problem with Calendar is that my happy cap is higher than necessary already for the moment, so right now it would just be for the two banana yield (except maybe the northern one if Cairo settles for it grumble grumble) and a couple of silks. Not super impressive for a whole tech. So yeah, maybe Great Library if no one else gets it first!

[Amicalola]

T100 Mega Report

If you follow PB60, you know that today sucked. But it's T100 so you get a report; maybe just not quite as big as I planned. I'll start with an overview of my territory.


I'm up to 15 cities, roughly on track with the IMP civs; I'm very pleased about that. You can also see two more settlers finishing; I wasn't kidding about the 'Classic Amica Recovery.' I went through this midgame emergency expansion in PB56 and PB58 too - Oops.  The big question is whether or not I can hold it together. On this subject, I think this map favoured the slower traits over the faster ones (other than maybe CRE), because the starting areas were so clearly defined. I think I got more land than average, but even then I'm talking about a couple of fishing islands; nothing crazy. 

I'm very pleased with my combo - I got two mid-late game traits, and pseudo-CRE (the most useful early trait here). The Great Lighthouse is proving so powerful that it plus Stonehenge are probably as good as a 3rd trait, which is awesome.  I'll show my finance screen when currency comes in, but as of this turn GLH makes me 33 commerce, and my coastal cities already break even.


Here are my demos:


You can see that I haven't exactly fixed my population problem. Too busy whipping out settlers!  I'm optimistic, considering that Food/Hammers/GNP are passable already. My goal for the next 20-30 turns is to convert my land-area lead into a population lead; then we will see how I'm really doing. 

I expect you'll cover these, but - How has the early going been for you compared to how you expected it to go? What's the tech path from here? Anything you wish you had done differently in hindsight?

Thanks for this. The early game has (mostly) played out ideally. I landed my two goal wonders, I've kept up in expansion, and my economic situation isn't ruined! In hindsight, I wish I'd not screwed up my worker micro early. I must have set myself behind at least 2 or 3 turns with those wasted turns and roads; imagine where I'd be if not for that. It actually made me like simming less; I way overthought everything. I've been doing much better since I stopped simming and just spent time thinking about micro during turns. I might start doing that instead for future games. I also wish I hadn't razed Pindicator's cities, but that's just life now. 


Here is the tech tree:


I was thinking about either Calendar for MoM, or Code of Laws for Confucianism. However, TBS got the former (yikes) and someone got the latter. Instead, I'm considering Literature for the Great Library in Unison, but I'll update if the plans change. 


I was going to do an opponent overview of the 4 people I seem to share an island with. Here's an abridged version. One thing worth mentioning before this list is that besides Pindicator, everyone on our island is pretty strong in the demos. We remind me of Africa in the World Map PB; if everyone is strong, no one can kill each other, and thus we will eventually get outpaced. I'm curious to see if that comes to pass. If I was on this list, I'd be between Cairo and Mackoti.

Pindicator: Might have been leading our island if not for the attacks. However, he's now been knocked out of contention. With that said, Pindicator is far from irrelevant, and can still play a major role on the continent. He can absolutely screw myself or Naufragar over, if he's feeling spiteful. I can't say I'd blame him.

Cairo: 2nd weakest player on the island. He's just got a very slow pick, and hasn't built any lighthouses despite being FIN/ORG, which feels weird. I've noticed Cairo doesn't whip much; I don't think that's objectively bad, but on this food-loaded map, it seems like a mistake. Cairo has won a game, and is much better than me, so I'm probably missing something. If he's left alone for long enough I'm sure we'll start to see that GNP spike, so Cairo is still a powerful factor.

Mackoti: I hadn't expected much from Mackoti after he wanted to quit and had a weak combo. He's rocking my world; Mackoti is the top GNP as Genghis Khan!!!   No idea how he does it. But I'm glad, because it means Naufragar has some competition instead of just steamrolling us. 

Naufragar: Currently winning our island, although Mackoti is much closer than I expected. Easy access to Pindicator, and all of Pindicator's eastern portion after the Dutch settled towards me. Naufragar does have a clock, but his food is near the top and I need Mackoti to act as a counterweight over there. I'm still annoyed that he left me out to dry, but I'm letting his scouting WB through, as a peace offering. Sometimes you gotta make the first move, right?

[Amicalola]

T100 Part Deux

I finally had time to sit down for my normal looking and thinking about the game. 


Met AT this turn and I think he might be one of the dying players, or he got sucker-punched. That's a really small resource list, no way is that natural. That's sad; I thought AT had one of the nicest combos and he was probably looking forward to it.

[Amicalola]

T101



Settled the jungle island between myself and SD/Tarkeel. I'm being pretty greedy, with two workers and only one axeman. I realised I don't have to make the island uncapturable, just obnoxious. Lewwyn's horrible deathtrap in PB55 made me realise that, but it's only sinking in with practice. A galley will ferry over more defensive units for a while, probably to a total of either 5 or 7; that should make assaulting it pretty unappealing. Superdeath sent back a fish-for-fish I sent this turn, but still won't sign open borders. I need a trireme over here ASAP, because I trust Superdeath as far as I can throw him. 

Currency comes in next turn, which I'm looking forward to.

Hey look, those are two of the original workers! Numbers 1 and 3, I believe. Bet they didn't expect they'd end up hacking jungle on some remote island.

[Amicalola]

T102



This brings joy. Current GLH value = 42 commerce.

I whipped 3 more cities this turn, and I already have plans to whip 4 next turn. I can't stop! Is there such a thing as Whipping Anonymous?

[Amicalola]

This is unrelated to the game, but it's happened a few times. I was just having a chat with Donovan, and it struck me that this is someone who's name I've known for nearly half my life. I was reading Sullla's report about the Apolyton Demogame in early high school. I had the same experience with Jowy back in PB55. Having never met a celebrity in real life, I think these interactions are the closest I've ever come to being starstruck.

[El Grillo]

We all might be nameless faceless internet strangers, but playing all these games together and reading each other’s reports does lend itself to an odd sense of familiarity