(April 15th, 2023, 14:29)Ginger* Wrote: Yeah I should make a more detailed post about how I feel about this game and my irl time constraints starting a spring term and a new job. But I do want to point out what an energeticand interesting effort Scooter has put into the diplo channels. Constant small talk about various in game minutiae to prevent a spell of silence and keep us informed, and great defusion of tension without being too on the nose.
He's alive! Would be very interested to hear your thoughts and input on the game.
Well, we're going to find out fairly soon I guess if Bing is honest when he agreed to settle as we discussed and otherwise stand down.
This looks a little hairier than it is, but it's still not awesome. Thankfully we're into sequential turns now so I can count on that at least. White Dot gets settled next turn. In the area Bing has a floating warrior and also a Skirmisher pair to defend the site I agreed to let him have, while he also has workers roading up to it. I'm pretty sure he's not gonna do something dumb like try to choke/harass me and prevent the city from being settled, but next turn we'll find out. Worst-case I delay it slightly. I may only have an axe + warrior here, but if you notice there's one completing out of Shanghai this turn, and Chengdu and Xian are both getting axes into instant whip range just to be safe. Chengdu's is whippable next turn, Xian shortly after that. I'd prefer to NOT do that, but it's important to be able to do so if needed. Again, I'm deeply annoyed that I have to commit this much military while Mjmd runs around with 8 cities and a half dozen warriors, but what am I gonna do. I just like to think I'm playing with barbarians enabled while Mjmd and Superdeath are not.
In the north I'm finally going to settle Stone Island. Guangzhou is gonna give me a Forge-boosted triple whip and rapid regrow while Shanghai is gonna line up a Galley 2-pop whip right at the 12/50 Forge double whip threshold to max overflow into Colossus which I've been chipping away at non-urgently. I badly need the IC routes to juice the economy enough to get through this next phase. I've dragged break-even tech from 20% and like 13bpt when Chengdu planted up to more like 40% and 20bpt, but White Dot is gonna set me back again. I can bulb Machinery all I want, but I can't actually build any CKNs without Iron Working. Speaking of, I fired the Engineer at Guangzhou for a few turns. I'll rehire him once I'm in Representation - I have enough buffer to get a second Engineer there before Beijing spits out a Prophet. The constraint on CKNs is now Iron Working rather than Machinery, so I may as well make my Engineer turns Representation-efficient.
Anyway, I'm not quite certain if I'll settle on Stone or next to it. I have reason to believe there's a seafood in the fog based on a screenshot someone (Charriu?) sent me showing their Stone island having one, so that may drive the decision ultimately. I want to get Moai into that city quickly. Normally small island Moais are a bit of a noob trap due to the time it takes to build them, but when you're sporting 150% production modifiers it's relatively breezy.
Speaking of the stone, Beijing is slightly TBD. I probably need to get a settler out of there very soon. That said, Stonehenge has survived a fairly insane length of time, so if it lingers too much longer it'll be a very efficient source of GPP if nothing else, not to mention pop a few city borders. IND + Stone means two chops and dash of overflow would comfortably 1T it (particularly if I whipped a Forge into it to generate said overflow). That said, a part of me sort of wants to goad a neighbor into building it so I can get some hyper efficient failgold instead to burst through this IW->Writing->Maths->Currency rut I'm stuck in.
Demos look like they're closing the gap to the leader, but do not be fooled. This is approximately 30 minutes after Mjmd whipped away 8 population from 4 cities. His food count was north of 100 on the previous turn. What caught my eye was that Rival Worst GNP. That's 13. Now, I'm hardly one to GNP-shame. I am I believe the proud co-owner of the worst GNP ever recorded in an RB Pitboss after all...
You already knew what it was.
That wasn't even the lowest the number got - that's just the lowest screenshot I can find.
But the actual point here is that's Bing. His tech is crashed and he's still rushing out settlers because my activity here has panicked him I think. My tech is struggling due to the far-flung cities, but my land is much better developed than Bing's from what I've seen. I'm pointing all this out to say - if he doesn't get some tech pronto, there's going to be a very long window where he'll have just Skirmishers. Catapults are ages away for him, let alone Horse Archers. So that's the one nice bit about all the Skirmisher spam - he's broke and will continue to be for quite some time. If we can just skate through these next half dozen turns without things blowing up, we should be able to manage.
Well, signs of progress. We were dead last in food not long ago coming off the Oracle play, but I've clawed back into the thick of the chasing pack. This is of course turn delayed, so you can see what Mjmd looked like before whipping away 8 population.
Next few turns will be eventful. On the horizon this week.
1) White Dot
2) Pyramids + Representation (the anarchy is worth it this time)
(April 16th, 2023, 22:25)scooter Wrote: You already knew what it was.
That wasn't even the lowest the number got - that's just the lowest screenshot I can find.
Ah yes, the epic relocation of Zululand. That was such a great game for the lurkers.
The Superdeath -> GLH that I've been expecting for a month finally came down, while Charriu picked up his second scientist. Superdeath is definitely a contender here. Keeping up good expansion pace while building a fairly "expensive" early wonder (in that it needs a Lighthouse too) is well done. Cornflakes has been active here logging in semi regularly for long periods of time, and I think he's a nearly perfect teammate or ded-lurker or whatever the situation is there. Cornflakes has strong early micro and can help keep Superdeath from doing Superdeath things, and that's going to get him into the mid-game as a real contender. Nicely done from this duo.
Was relieved to see Bing back off the Warrior and hold the Skirmishers in place. So Hangzhou was settled as planned. This will let me ease off the axe pushing in the area in favor of Granaries and such. Also, a reminder that we get cheap Monasteries due to... I dunno, one of our traits. So, probably going to slip that in at Xian before long and use missionaries to pop borders. (Plus I think the monk wonders are in our future, so cheap Monasteries go well with that.) Well, unless I build Stonehenge. More on that in a second.
Here's a peek inside Shanghai. Carefully setup the Galley with some tile juggling and overflow to get exactly 12h this turn. That puts us 38h short, and a Forge whip is 37h. End of this turn the Engineer is in. Then next turn we'll double whip the Galley (immediately regrowing) and overflow a full pop into Colossus with 125% modifiers. Then the Galley is timed to arrive exactly when the Settler from Guangzhou comes out to load up and settle Stone Island. Really happy with how this all lined up.
T74 BingWatch: He settled this spot here on this turn. His GNP is 1/3 of mine, and I'm making 12gpt at 0% science (caveat: I have more culture than him). Some lurker needs to bug him to see if he's at risk of striking or something. Glass houses though - we're starting to crash here a bit too. Island will be a major lifeline though. In a perfect world I would have done that a dozen turns ago, but it was so imperative for every city to be quickly productive to keep pace with the leaders. Not to mention the long-term land secured by pushing south aggressively.
Hello.
If I pretend GNP doesn't matter for a quick second, I'm pretty thrilled with the food/mfg recovery here. It's a bit deceiving I guess as I haven't whipped in a couple turns, and I'm about to change that, but this was rough pretty recently. To be around this spot with Oracle + Pyramids and Colossus a tap-in feels super promising.
The empire. Development in the south is what's most interesting as that's where the bulk of my workers are setup currently. Hangzhou has a worker pair already on the Deer (1SW of the city), while the other worker pair (2W of Chengdu) is headed next to the Deer 2N of Xian as that's going to come into cultural borders on T77. The silk 1S of Xian is getting something I've never built in the thousands of hours I've played this game - a forested Silk Lumbermill. This may be a little weird, but 1) I sort of expect I'll delay Calendar a bit, and 2) our early Machinery + the CtH change means this will be a fairly rare 2/2/3 tile once it comes in which is handy. I'm also going to be cottaging over that Sugar that Nanjing/Hangzhou can share, so between Representation/Forges boosting my happiness + good mileage out of unconventional improvements over Calendar resources, it means I can prioritize other techs while others are likely going to get there ASAP. It'll be sad to miss MoM, but I was never going to get there quickly enough anyway.
I also cobbled together a plan to get Stonehenge in Beijing. I figured out a way to 1T it after hooking Stone, and then I realized it would cause a Prophet to pop before an Engineer, so I backed off that. I'm still going to put overflow hammers if it's still there when Stone comes in, though. Current plan is to either complete it a little more slowly than possible, or at least get very efficient failgold (some +100%, some +125%) if someone else snipes it in the interim, which would also be tremendously useful. If someone completes it really soon then forget I said any of this.
Oh, two more things. One, wanna see those Mjmd whips I was telling you about?
Yeeeeeeesh.
Second, something I've been noodling over lately.
I sort of know what's in the fog based on a screenshot Charriu sent me awhile back, but obviously we're still fogged. But I think these western islands will be crucial in the upcoming turns. Mjmd admitted to me awhile back that he wasn't going to contest these islands due to me have Trireme access long before him. And this is good - I think it's going to be very strategically important to hoover up these islands. If I fear Mjmd as a potential runaway, then this is the only way to get him in arm's reach should some intervention become necessary - whether that's in 20T or 100T. Also, there's Marble out there apparently, so I'm going to want that anyway.
I don't have a grand plan out here yet, but I just think it's really important to have access to Mjmd. Nobody is forcing him to defend himself right now, but he absolutely would have to if I was free to float around here with 1-2 Galleys loaded with CKNs should the opportunity present itself, for example. I'm not interested in a hot war with him at all, but I would like the option to a cold/lukewarm war if it became absolutely necessary. Let's be in control of our own destiny here.
(April 17th, 2023, 21:44)scooter Wrote: Oh, two more things. One, wanna see those Mjmd whips I was telling you about?
Yeeeeeeesh.
That MFG curve looks very much like a GA, which I assume it isn't? Yeesh indeed.
I'm atleast very entertained by how different you all are playing the openings here.
No Golden age, just a huge pop whip. I'm at 22 pop across 7 cities. He was at 8 cities and I'll assume slightly better pop, so let's get aggressive and guess 30, which I think is high. Even at 30 pop, he whipped away over a fourth of his population. It's so extreme that I sort of want to ask him about it.
I basically did a big overview yesterday on T74, so I'm going to call that my T75 report. This one will be brief instead.
Bing settled this beauty tonight. If you remember, he settled one near me yesterday. I mentioned it to Charriu today and he said to me,
Charriu Wrote:I somewhat expected that city going in your direction since there is no good spot near me.
Jinxed it. I should probably stop leading off every single report with "here's a thing Bing did" but it's so entertaining and also impactful to me. That said, I'm just now realizing I need to get my Scout out of there because he's about to be culture trapped. Hopefully I can get back to Charriu's land before Gao's borders pop or something.
Another clutch free spread of Buddhism in a spot where I'm very happy to get the culture. I'm going to slip a Monastery in somewhere before long.
The top 3 of us are fairly tightly bunched together at this point. In foodhammers it's clearly Mjmd-Superdeath-Us, but overall it's quite close. The GNP is An Issue, but keeping in mind I've converted quite a few foodhammers into beakers in the past (Oracle) and near-ish future (Machinery), it's not quite as bad. And that scary GNP is actually Charriu who is playing a very different game.
He's got an Academy, settled Scientist (confirmed with him today), and a bunch of CRE Libraries, not to mention the ability to run the slider higher. He's quite behind on expansion, but I'm really curious if his approach will actually work as he's going to be able to have his pick of first-to techs. For example, I expect him to grab Great Library just by getting there first, which would be quite something into his scientist/Academy city. I dunno, I've been so skeptical that I'd already written him off into an also-ran, but I do wonder whether there may be something to his approach. I'm at least a little less skeptical than I was a week ago. Stay tuned I guess.
![[Image: bOB8C9U.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/bOB8C9U.jpg)
.