[SPOILERS] Out of retirement and into the fires of war. yuris125, Pitboss 68

[yuris125]

We did claim control of the gold hill, so here's what we see of Thoth's land




5 praets on the wheat, 3 more in the capital. 10 (that we can see) total




And he's on Construction now. Dealing with this will be a pain. I wonder if it's worth running the numbers to see how many units it would take to kill the stack on the wheat....

Miguelito got Monarchy and ate a turn of anarchy to adopt HR

Commodore sacrificed two horse archers to kill our two spears and the two workers rebuilding the wheat farm. Started a replacement worker in Big Red Dragons, and we might get away with two for now. It's very annoying. But makes me feel less bad about taking Judaism from him after he puts some research into Monotheism

All in all, not many pleasant things happened this turn

[Charriu]

Hey yuris. Could you do me a favor and post a screenshot of the F2 advisor. Just want to check some potential bug in my tracking tool.

[yuris125]

Here you are Charriu

[Charriu]

Thanks

[yuris125]

Judaism founded in Big Red Dragons. Monarchy is a 4 turn research at 100%, but of course we spent the money to research Monotheism. Next turn will check how long it would take at breakeven rate, and decide when to fire golden age

Big Red Dragons becoming Judaism holy city makes it easy to choose Hinduism as the state religion, as holy city culture in See-Scape will be a lot more useful

Realised while checking military that we're down to just 2 spears, Big Red Dragons will build a couple more once it finishes the replacement worker

[yuris125]

Commodore has galleys back in Blue Moon, wonder if he's planning something unpleasant again, but can't figure out what it is




Moving a stack of 4 axes back to the Commodore front. Now that we took control of the gold hill between See-Scape and Thoth's land, he can't hit See-Scape in 1 turn




Well, technically he can, if he roads the tile S of the gold. But so far he showed no interest in renewing hostilities, there's been no unit movement whatsoever on his side, and with his research on Construction, he's probably planning one last big strike once he gets catapults

Our breakeven research rate at the moment is ~25%, and if we could use this rate, Monarchy would be a 9t research. Feels like we could fire the golden age in 2-3 turns and get the research done in time to switch at the end. Playing guessing game a bit, safest bet is to fire in 3 turns, so T107. T106 would probably be ok, but would be such a waste if we can't quite get there

Nauf, two questions. Firstly, what do you think of gardens (Babylonian Colosseum replacement, which make granaries store 60% of food instead of 50%, and provides +2 health in addition to +1 happy, for 80h)? We don't really need the health boost anywhere except Big Red Dragon, but the food bonus seems relevant as the cities start growing larger? Is it worth 80h though?

Secondly, is there any reason to spread Judaism if we're not planning for it to be the state religion? Only reason I could think of is that it unlocks more monasteries / temples, but I'm not sure how interested we are in building them. Temples do give extra specialist slots, but we're not especially interested in great prophets, and I don't think monk economy wonders are viable in this game

[naufragar]

Nauf, two questions. Firstly, what do you think of gardens (Babylonian Colosseum replacement, which make granaries store 60% of food instead of 50%, and provides +2 health in addition to +1 happy, for 80h)? We don't really need the health boost anywhere except Big Red Dragon, but the food bonus seems relevant as the cities start growing larger? Is it worth 80h though?

Oh no! Math!?! I don't know the answer, but I can take a stab at figuring it out.

I think Civ4 truncates almost everything. Occasionally it respects a decimal (culture? espionage points, maybe?) but I suspect it'll just truncate the food. So if a city needs 28 food to grow from 4-->5, a granary stores 28*0.5=14 and garden+granary stores 28*0.6=16.8 truncated to 16. At size 5-->6 there's a breakpoint. A granary would store 30*0.5=15 food, while the garden would mean 30*0.6=18 food is stored. Another breakpoint at size 10-->11 where the garden gets 40*0.6=24 food rather than just 20.

So when growing to size 6 and every size up to 9, the garden has given you +3food, for a total of +12food over the course of 4 growths. A garden is 80 hammers, which is ~2 population points worth of a whip. +12food isn't even half of 1 point of pop needed for the whip. Whipping from 9 down to 7 gets you 60 hammers and regrowing back from 7 to 9 requires, what?, 31 food with granary+garden? Forgive me, it's early and I'm doing finger math. So a garden only pays back its hammer cost from whipping after 10 pop growths at sufficiently large sizes. This feels like a long time, but perhaps not.

Whips get less efficient at larger city sizes, while the garden helps to regain some of that efficiency. I don't think the Garden is worth it, if you're trying to maximize whip hammers. (Although it's an interesting puzzle...)

On the other hand, if you've got cities that need to grow to size 10+, that aren't going to be whipping, and have a weak food surplus, then the garden seems like a good idea. (I'm not sure we have any cities that fit this?)

I think the health and happiness are negligible this game, but I could be wrong.

Secondly, is there any reason to spread Judaism if we're not planning for it to be the state religion? Only reason I could think of is that it unlocks more monasteries / temples, but I'm not sure how interested we are in building them. Temples do give extra specialist slots, but we're not especially interested in great prophets, and I don't think monk economy wonders are viable in this game

I can't see one. You've hit the big one: needing more priests to produce a great prophet, which I don't see us doing?

[yuris125]

Thanks for the math! Yeah the only city which we don't whip and with weak food supply is Big Red Dragons, and we may want a garden there if we decide to grow it past size 7. But since it will only get the coast to work, doesn't feel worthwhile in a production-focused city. Unless we also invest 250h into Moai. For that price, I would rather have 5 catapults

Yeah - since we're going to run Theocracy, if we want to spread Judaism, we have to do it while in OR. But I just couldn't find a reason to do it. Getting a low odds great prophet wouldn't be completely useless, Theology is currently at the top of its bulb list, and we do want it. But we definitely don't have any reason to put effort into getting one. Once Theology is out of the way, Divine Right will permanently be its bulb target, the choice will be between that and a single digit gpt shrine

[yuris125]

Actually that's not quite true, a great prophet would bulb Meditation right now, but it's easy to get out of the way should we get a great prophet

[yuris125]

We're actually very close to researching Monarchy in 6 turns. I think we can fire the golden age next turn




Been running the numbers to see if we could knock Thoth's small stack off the gold hill and let See-Scape work it. But can't find a way to do so efficiently with the current units. And of course if he puts a single praet on that hill, we can't do anything about it. Have to wait until crossbows

Speaking of crossbows, Miguelito got a great engineer - we'll see next turn what his choice is between Machinery bulb, Pyramids, or another wonder