[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Miguelito]

There is a problem with the forum software where saving a post as a draft and reopening it for editing multiplies line feeds. Which made my t100 update look as it did. Apologies.



We met Amicalola (Roosevelt of Ethiopia) and Ramk (Cyrus of Arabia), somehow (I didn't see units).







Ramk is the one who has been decimating Mjmd, who as of this turn is down another city, to 8. He's evidently quite trigger happy, and if he finishes the capture might become a problem eventually. Amicalola seems to be somewhere in the east, maybe on a continent with TBS, Comm, Tarkeel (?) and Joshy (??).

They have wonders:




Interesting that with Arabia's techs Ramk got the start going well enough to build Oracle on I think t50? He is in HR so may have taken that instead of MC.

In other, irrelevant foreign news a careful observer can spot that Jowy lost the Jewish holy city.


Meanwhile we built 2 new cities:







And suddenly we're running short on improved tiles! I was even tempted to queue a worker for a 2 pop whip in Lavandeira, but controlled myyself. I did queue one in Canoa Virou though, as it can be whipped down to size 2 for a moment as Bonfim is growing. Myhope is that the worker situation gets back under control once the copper mines on our faraway islands complete.

Cheeky little city is stealing the capital's fish. But it has great prospects. Needs an MP from somewhere, or just whip into one?

Shouldn't whip this at all -- too many independent coastal tiles and we want to work them all. Every hammer should go into infrastructure. Commerce beast.

Unsure how to develop. Farm the flat grassland? Cottage it? Just work coast after a caste border pop?

Just do coast, our water tiles are super good. We basically have free/instantly matured non-fin towns. Use it for war -- good food surplus with banana and cows. Think we have caste soon enough to skip the library and just go forge-barracks.
EDIT: Maybe a library is good to secure the cows through regular culture output. I think I might be in favour of it for that reason.

I definitely think Marinheiro should get a library.

edit:

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?

If we control both tiles we can fort next to it and improve the wine -- that works. But we can't put a fort on the wine itself.

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.

2-pop library seems alright, but other than that just grow and work all the coast.

Ok I feel that we have a disconnect here. I'm increasingly asking myself, where are the hammers going to come from? If we accept that

• we mostly avoid whipping off coast nor cottages
  
• the coast heavy cities get libraries after their lighthouses
  

then by my count that leaves for all the production needs of the empire:

• Corta Cana - can't whip a lot though, as it's a commerce center, and on top rn it's busy with the market for some 10 turns at least
  
• Paranauê - busy with a library, after which it can build a barracks and contribute. It's supposed to be work specs though, and has some whip anger stacked
  
• Marinheiro - due library and Moai, so it will not contribute anytime soon.
  
• Bonfim - busy with the market, whipping is problematic for all the cottages
  
• Lavandeira - the only barracks/forge setup that we have ready already. Not a lot in terms of whip potential.
  
• Viola - the one hammer city that I really like
  
• Camunjerê - still in the cusp and has cottages to grow, but yes.
  
• Dinheiro (new stone city), but of course it's just getting started
  

So, we end up with just like 2-3 cities among our 17 which actually can produce things in the forseeable future, and only one of those is really good at that, and it's currently size 3.
So my worry is that we'll have excellent research but no substance. Of course I am aware as well how awesome our coast tiles are, after all that's why I went for Colossus right after Sailing. And I also realize that whipping coast is not some magic button that will solve all of our problems, because most cities don't regrow as fast.
But if we want to go to war in 20 turns or so (or earlier as you suggested), I don't see where the units for that are going to get built, with how we are handling development currently. I suppose that we would whip more liberally once Guilds is in, but I would also think that cities whipping knights want at least a barracks and also a forge really. But the way things are going most cities will just be finishing their libraries by then.
And we have talked about getting a stockpile of catapults, but again, from where? Or useful things like triremes.
Even the GA will not help  a lot in terms of hammers in cities working mostly coast.
I suspect that you have a clearer idea how this can work out, so I hope you can reassure me, but right now I'm pretty doubtful.

It's a bit weird, in PB54 we had just 2 real commerce cities (of 10 or 11 after the peaceful expansion), but could whip out 3 cataphracts out of each city right after guilds. But there we had forges near everywhere, and Police State. Here things feel pretty much reversed, like near every city mostly does commerce. Maybe I've just not played enough games to have a feeling how this can shake out.

[Rusten]

I can go more in-depth later in the week, but in my mind we *are* going to whip away coast and cottages (with a few exceptions). We're just not doing it until knights are available. The production cities pre-build things like axes and catapults. The golden age is going to generate a lot of extra hammers for these cities.
My main concern has been to stop you from whipping before our golden age.

I think whipping some cities without a forge is totally OK, seeing as our main form of military production later is going to be the draft (which doesn't benefit from forges). I see us doing a quick burst from everywhere and then letting the big guns handle the reinforcements, but of course it all depends on DZ's power level.

[Miguelito]

Encouraging demo (before whipping off 3 ui tiles):








Although it is interesting that despite our Colossus glory there's still somebody getting higher GNP than us.



With Calendar we'll be getting 2 quick happy faces. We've talked a lot about how much food is lying around, but we've also packed our cities pretty tightly, so it will be a while until we get to the happy cap in any of them, with the first likely Corta Cana, which just this turn is growing into decaying whip anger.

I can go more in-depth later in the week, but in my mind we *are* going to whip away coast and cottages (with a few exceptions). We're just not doing it until knights are available. The production cities pre-build things like axes and catapults. The golden age is going to generate a lot of extra hammers for these cities.
My main concern has been to stop you from whipping before our golden age.

I think whipping some cities without a forge is totally OK, seeing as our main form of military production later is going to be the draft (which doesn't benefit from forges). I see us doing a quick burst from everywhere and then letting the big guns handle the reinforcements, but of course it all depends on DZ's power level.

I'd appreciate more depth, yes . But the principle does sound like a plan. And I can agree that we don't need forges in coast cities that will contribute via drafting later on. But I would think we still want barracks in most cities, so how do we get those? (particularly on the islands the GA will be of minimal help)

And we don't have to argue over whipping before the GA, there's no question that we want to mostly grow right now.



Another issue that I would be interested in discussing is the post-Colossus economy. You laid out a plan focusing on cottages, many of which we would grow after Astronomy with Emancipation.

Here's where I see issues: even with Emancipation, a cottage->town growth still takes 35 turns, which in the mid-/late game feels like an eternity. Do you think it'S realistic that we can afford to stay as long outside of slavery (and caste)? And during those 35 turns, how do we keep the economy afloat? In particular since we may need astro significantly earlier than democracy. (say, civac building galleons in the inner sea, or Ramk in the east). Of course Fin coast will still be not bad, but we want to be working a lot of modestly grown cottages at that point.





Further, immediate questions that I'd like input on:

1. Mjmd is down to 7 cities, so apparently he's in free fall.I think at this point it is likely that he will not care if we grab the horse island, in particular since we're providing him with copper. I've just whipped the settler in Viola. Go for it? I'd then put the OF into another settler for another 2pop whip, which will finally go to our own horse island. That would also make it more justifiable to found our horse island city with 2nd ring clam, which is better for long term development.
   
2. I offered iron to AT, since he'll get his copper pillaged this turn. We'll be without metal for this turn and the next, when an island copper gets a road. But we're not using metal anyways (and would maybe even want to queue a warrior?)
   
3. In Catarina (copper filler) I queued a lighthouse out of habit. It has just 4 independent coast tiles, but it just doesn't have many independent tiles at all. I think it makes more sense than forge or barracks, but if you think one of those makes sense we should change it, because I want forges and barracks
   
4. You switched off the worker in Canoa. I get the idea of not building them with food, but we need to build them somewhere. I don't like Lavandeira because it's the only city with a barracks. We can also decide to just get by with the workers that we have, and those coming back from islands, it isn't as bad. Also from size 6 on it will be out of tiles. We can also whip the settler for the Donovan excursion, although I don't see yet where we get the supporting units from. Fwiw the northern hill in Donoland looks like a good target for that, yes.
   

Rusten already has identified civac as our main opponent in this game, and it is really quite evident. So I suppose some analysis is in order.



civac and Suite playing Shaka (Agg/Exp) of Sumer (Vulture/Ziggurat)

players: my impression of civac is that of a highly motivated deity player, which is reason enough to take him very seriously. He comes from civforum.de, but apparently only engaged in some multiplayer Alpha Centauri some 10 years ago. My understanding is that his first MP civ 4 game was PB55 here, which he took over early from Ruff and promptly won (through an early conquest of AT ). His next showing in PB56 was solid, but not spectacular. He expanded hard and warred early with relative success, but crashed his economy and could never really get ahead, not of Noble but not into a clear second place either, with both Mjmd and Amica up to his level (my impression). He knows his mechanics better than I do and plays quite good openings, which I intend to make up for by having the superior dedlurker. Suite is solid and motivated, but 1-2 power levels below civac. In CF PB 88 he drew one of the better starting positions but otoh Saladin, expanded peacefully into a very decent position, which he then threw away in two spectacularly failed invasions against a much weaker opponent. He'll give civac food for discussion though, which will be very valuable to them. As I mentioned earlier, their thread has 3-4 times the postcount of this one, which is not lacking spam.
pick: Exp is nerfed and it hurts, but we've still found it useful, and evidently it has helped them with expansion as well. Charriu has given his best to buff Agg, which in this version has "-50% unit maintenance cost, free Barrage I for all siege weapons" on top of the BTS version. That doesn't make it an economy trait, but it certainly helps especially keeping the economy afloat during an early invasion of somebody . The siege buff makes attacking them extra painful, not that it was easy with the regular Agg buff. The techs are the same as ours, which are not as good as in vanilla BTS, but have proven still very useful in particular for Exp going for early Pottery. The Vulture is supposed to be a bad UU in MP because they lose to axes, but  we've seen the results. They'll resist knights better than axes would, dangit. Finally the UB is prettygood, in particular for the game they're playing, salvaging an economy dragged by early conquest with cheap and early courthouses.
their game so far has been a huge success, which is why I'm writing this. They've managed already an unlikely pre-catapult conquest of their neighbour. AT has 4 cities left, and will pile up some axes in his cap, but it's getting him nowhere. I've counted 14 vultures + some chariots and spears in the invading army, which nearly equals all of the military units that we see in our F5. While building that army they also managed to get ahead of us in city count (well including conquest, but that's real as well) and crop yield, and to maintain a functioning economy, reaching currency ahead of us. Our big foreign advantage - an anemic neighbour in the south in Donovan - is also their advantage, because they can be certain to gobble up the entirety of AT unmolested. I can't even rule out them just proceeding to march into Spain, while we're still researching towards Guilds. Although that would likely overextend them and rather be an opportunity for us.
Also I suspect that their city bordering ours in the inner sea is some kind of goodie island, which they secured pretty early in that case (will confirm next turn). If we had any production capacity I'd consider making a play for that, while their army is busy with the Khmer (we should have the tech advantage of triremes), but as it stands...

[Rusten]

Although it is interesting that despite our Colossus glory there's still somebody getting higher GNP than us.

Whoever that is probably has way more culture than us. Until a few turns ago we still only had culture in 1 city.
Imagine TBS for instance. He's getting +2 per city in addition to probably having some doubled libraries for +4 -- that will add up. Still a very solid economy of course.

[Rusten]

Just doing these as I find the time.

You switched off the worker in Canoa. I get the idea of not building them with food, but we need to build them somewhere. I don't like Lavandeira because it's the only city with a barracks. We can also decide to just get by with the workers that we have, and those coming back from islands, it isn't as bad. Also from size 6 on it will be out of tiles. We can also whip the settler for the Donovan excursion, although I don't see yet where we get the supporting units from. Fwiw the northern hill in Donoland looks like a good target for that, yes.

I think we're OK for workers, not that many tiles left to improve and we rely so much on coast.

We can 3-pop a forge in Canoa (2-pop a galley first if you think we need it) and make it a production city. It can take the deer from the city north of it for extra food surplus and lots of military whipping. Those two tiles is already +9. Clam is enough for the other one (available soon) -- just go commerce in that one. We'll be getting new tiles for Bonfim with the border pop so Canoa can take the river cottage at 6. I think we have workers in the area. If we can't improve Bonfim in time then give Canoa the deer immediately if we've ran out of tiles. The northern city has a LH for coast tiles, even if it will grow slow before the clam. Only temporary until we whip the forge or complete a new Bonfim cottage anyway.

Mjmd is down to 7 cities, so apparently he's in free fall.I think at this point it is likely that he will not care if we grab the horse island, in particular since we're providing him with copper. I've just whipped the settler in Viola. Go for it? I'd then put the OF into another settler for another 2pop whip, which will finally go to our own horse island. That would also make it more justifiable to found our horse island city with 2nd ring clam, which is better for long term development.

Go for it. It makes it more feasible to conquer that continent later too, in case civac proves to be too much of a stalemate.

I think it would be much better to produce the settler in our city with no food surplus though (horse+pig). The Viola overflow can be put into whatever you were planning to build there instead. Viola can grow a bit, especially since our GPP city will soon switch to scientists and require less tiles. The other city can get the settler out just as fast, but won't waste any food doing so (and saves us from some whip anger).

In Catarina (copper filler) I queued a lighthouse out of habit. It has just 4 independent coast tiles, but it just doesn't have many independent tiles at all. I think it makes more sense than forge or barracks, but if you think one of those makes sense we should change it, because I want forges and barracks

LH and then slow-build barracks seems alright -- and just using it as a drafting tool with commerce.

I offered iron to AT, since he'll get his copper pillaged this turn. We'll be without metal for this turn and the next, when an island copper gets a road. But we're not using metal anyways (and would maybe even want to queue a warrior?)

Some warriors wouldn't hurt, no. That's 10 hammers saved for the secure cities. As long as we have instant access to metal again through DoW (on AT) I wouldn't bother hooking up the metal just yet. Send the workers back early instead if you have the opportunity to. We can road the (new) mainland copper instead a little later.

Here's where I see issues: even with Emancipation, a cottage->town growth still takes 35 turns, which in the mid-/late game feels like an eternity.

They are already quite good at villages (at least with financial), and über at towns. It's only 15 turns for villages.

[Rusten]

Made some minor changes based on what I posted. Lavandeira is working some forests for the settler. If the sight of this upsets you can whip it for 2. I marked the city for no whip earlier, but that's one I can accept. We're getting banana soon for the northern city anyway so it will grow. Whipping immediately might just be strictly better with currency anyway, because I think we'll have a galley available to ferry it to Marinheiro Island.
Gave Bonfim some extra food so that it can grow in 2 turns. It might look weird when you log in due to city growths but I've tried to set it up with several turns in mind.


For future reference: I'd stick to running non-scientist specialists in CC. That way we can ensure a smooth 2nd GA when we want one.

[Rusten]

We are #2 in both mfg and crop right now, as well as #1 in GNP with next to no culture so that's nice.
As much as civac (and Suite) has gotten off to a great start we are still doing well here. Surely first to guilds, even if we are surrounded by teching civs (Elkad's GNP skyrocketed recently).

Mjmd has made peace with Ramk. Does that change your island evaluation? Should we head for the DZ spot instead?

[Miguelito]

What,  we have an actual decision to make? I'll delay the sleepy morning turn to the evening .

I think the Mjmd island is still my preferred target.  I'm pretty site he'll just want revenge on Ramk, even if it takes a while. The island, while a bit offending to him if we take it,  is not something that would be useful to him on that endeavour. If he really doesn't like it the can signal it when we drop the worker there. If we do get it,  we should add a longbow when we can,  and then I think it should be ok for the while being.
Meanwhile I don't see us yet having the units for the DZ adventure, also considering that he has added a bit of power lately.

While Elkad's is a nice GNP spike (and we approve,  as we want him to do well, if not great), that's near certainly Currency with 2 arrows, so it has that caveat.

Uplifting demo news

[Miguelito]

One more thing regarding Mjmd horse island, assuming we go there: should we consider planting on the horse,  as TBS did? Compared to a city working the horse,  that variant has +1f/-3h/-3c (or plain +1h when not working horse).
It also costs >10 worker turns less (no need to ferry one over from Caiangó), provides more new coast, but attackers can land on jungle because we'd never cut those.
With a 2h plant we would be able to 1pop whip the granary and then the lighthouse after 15 turns (actually faster.  GA hammers do apply to city tiles,  right?).  I doubt we would get there much faster working the pasture.

Your opinion?

Fwiw for our own island it isn't an option, as Marinheiro wants to work that pasture.

[Rusten]

Ah yes, the seafood is still first ring with a horse plan. Agree with settling on horse then. Saving worker turns is relevant.

City tiles get boosted by GA, yes.