[Spoilers] Pindicator's Nice Thread

[pindicator]

171

22% chance of getting the wrong Great Person




But even then, I'll just send him to Commodore's ToA city and power through more tech.

Alphabet > Printing Press is next.

[pindicator]

172

I am not the tech leader. Naufrager is by 3 beakers.




The tech breakdown:

Naufrager
Total Beakers: 14,365 (+3)
Current Gold: 173g, average burn of -66gpt over the last 4 turns
Techs He Is Up: Divine Right, Engineering, Theology
Techs I Am Up: Aesthetics, Alphabet, Calendar, Drama, Literature, Banking, Paper

Naufrager went for the religious techs of Theology and Divine Right early, then followed that up with Guilds and Engineering. Lately he has filled out Civil Service and may be currently going for Nationalism.

Magic Science
Total Beakers: 11,375 (-2,987)
Current Gold: 442g, +104gpt. Increasing Gold the last 4 turns.
Techs He Is Up: Engineering
Techs I Am Up: Alphabet, Calendar, Drama, Banking, Civil Service, Paper

This is the surprise for me, as I expected Magic Science to be doing a lot better economically. He did spend a lot of money upgrading horse archers into knights and perhaps that has caused his lag. Lately he has picked up Aesthetics and Literature, as his ask to buy my marble was likely due to him wanting to build his Epics. Saving up for a larger tech recently, but I wonder what his burn rate is now with such a stretched out empire.

Bing
Total Beakers: 11,150 (-3,212)
Current Gold: 170g, +56gpt. Increasing Gold the last 2 turns, but most of his current stockpile is from conquest gold.
Techs He Is Up: Engineering
Techs I Am Up: Aesthetics, Alphabet, Drama, Literature, Banking, Civil Service, Paper

Another surprise. I thought Bing was a lot more well rounded in his tech rate, but he appears to have just done a very late Guilds rush and then used that to invade Superdeath. Honestly, if it was anybody other than Superdeath it might not have worked. Also, what has happened to Superdeath lately? His last few games he has been so .... passive.

Superdeath
Total Beakers: 11,120 (-3,242)
Current Gold: 434g, +48gpt. Increasing Gold the last 3 turns, but just took a bit hit with losing his capital this turn.
Techs He Is Up: Music
Techs I Am Up: Monotheism, Alphabet, Drama, Banking, Civil Service, Paper

Yeah, like I said earlier: What has happened to SD? The only reason he was even slightly prepared to defend against Bing was due to Gavagai stabbing him and getting him to whip down his cities 15 turns ago.

Commodore
Total Beakers: 10,509 (-3,853)
Current Gold: 526g, burning at about -180gpt over the last 3 turns
Techs He Is Up: Engineering
Techs I Am Up: Meditation, Aesthetics, Alphabet, Calendar, Drama, Literature, Banking, Civil Service, Paper

I'm still having trouble grappling with the fact that Commodore is in last place. It looks like his vast expenses have been dragging his economy down, but what are the expenses from? He doesn't have a large army (my power is a little higher) and he doesn't appear to be that sprawled out. Has he just neglected infrastructure? He has been leaning heavily on Great Merchant gold to fund what he has got so far, and that is a well you can only draw from so often. Most perplexing to me has been the choice to avoid Calendar when he has multiple sugar luxuries he could be accessing. Perhaps the coastal nature of his land combined with him not being FIN means he really needed to rush Metal Casting and land Colossus - it certainly was around long enough to be claimed.


Overall, I appear to have underestimated the field's teching strength, and underestimated naufrager's slightly.

The other big question going into this turn was what Great Person would I get.

The wrong kind, sadly




At ~20% odds I landed a second Great Merchant. This isn't awful as I'm going to send him south to Commodore. But it will cause me a bit of a reset on my rush-to-drafting strategy. Now I'm two great people away, so at least 20-some turns, before I can pull off my next golden age. However this might be a bit of a mixed blessing as I'm going to try to use it to get some banks built. FIN gives me +50% production on banks and so I'm going to try and get a number of them built in my core over the next 2-4 turns. My capital is doing a Grocer for the health: it will give me 2 more food, good for another specialist.

Parthenon comes in at the end of the turn, and My Little Pony will build up a bit of a cat stack for me after.

Out West:




Bing captured Superdeath's Capital this turn, and we can see he has a smaller knight stack to threaten Ur. My settler is finished out of He-Man and next turn I am going to cram it in to the spot between Bing & Commodore, right where Commodore's worker is. Not really a defendable spot, but once I get into Mercantilism I'm going to want to cram cities everywhere I can put them and start stacking the per-city bonuses. This means I also want to cram a city in by the Wine, right on the Commodore border in the east. EDIT: And possibly another on the coast north of Ghostbusters as well.

I almost switched straight to Engineering because seeing my tech lead has me thinking I should play not-to-lose rather than risking plays to win, but I'm going to stay on Printing Press. And I really do need to get to Astronomy quickly so I can threaten Magic Science... but maybe I squeeze in Engineering first.

[pindicator]

173

Everybody loves The Care Bears, right?




...right?




I was thinking it's time to cram cities in everywhere but this guy cost me 16g net, so probably not yet.  Although the other two spots I'm looking at are going to be working a Silver and a Winery, so it will be closer...  but I probably need to wait for Rep+Merc still.

Parthenon finished.  Bing offered me 10g for a world map trade so I accepted.  Because I like gold.

[pindicator]

174

It only took 174 turns, but we are #1 in score now!




Rather amazing.

With the golden age coming to a close, I swapped back to Slavery and into Mercantilism.




Then watched my GPT at 0% drop by 90! I might have been tempted to stay in Serfdom if I had known it would have been that large a drop. But no, this is a necessity: we won't likely be whipping a lot, but we will want it there for emergencies. I feel like we have a bit of a target on our backs now.

Demos for the final turn of the GA:




Bing picked up Civil Service this last turn. We turned on the burners for Printing Press. Next turn I cash the Great Merchant in, so I'll be able to keep the slider at 100%. I think Printing Press in 4, considering the GA is ending. Hopefully not 5.

[pindicator]

175

Let's compare those Demos, now post-Golden Age:




We've drastically improved the mfg situation.  Before we were well below average and now we are probably average if you remove Superdeath's demos from the mix.  Tops in GNP is rather amazing.  I am still needing to pull in infrastructure, especially courthouses, because my expenses have really caught up to me with the latest round of conquests.  Breakeven is only about 25% and banks are cheap to build.

But something more immediate was cashed in first:




Printing Press finishes in 3t and then we have another 1000g to get our next tech aim.  Replaceable Parts would be tempting from a production point of view:  some cities like My Little Pony are especially dependent on windmills, and several others are going to be, like Ghostbusters and Inspector Gadget.  There's also the window of our 3rd golden age.  If everything falls right now we'll get the next great person in 7 turns and the final 9 turns after that.  That means 17 turn until we trigger the next GA.  This GA is where we want to get into Representation at the end - and possibly even Emancipation if I can land Democracy and Statue or Liberty.  I'm not sure really - either that or Serfdom.  (Final Form civics are naturally State Property and Serfdom but that will take a 4th GA and is perhaps beyond the scope of this game.)

Taj is sadly out of reach.  Naufrager picked up Nationalism this last turn becoming one of the first civs to reach Renaissance Era.  Commodore joined him, landing Gunpowder.  Will Comm push straight on for Steel?  That is certainly in his nature.  I think I need Cuirs by then.  Or Rifles.

Finally, it was good to see Superdeath round into form a bit:




It's a shame that lately we only get to see Superdeath's full potential when he's attacked.

[Tarkeel]

Printing Press finishes in 3t and then we have another 1000g to get our next tech aim.  Replaceable Parts would be tempting from a production point of view:  some cities like My Little Pony are especially dependent on windmills, and several others are going to be, like Ghostbusters and Inspector Gadget.  There's also the window of our 3rd golden age.  If everything falls right now we'll get the next great person in 7 turns and the final 9 turns after that.  That means 17 turn until we trigger the next GA.  This GA is where we want to get into Representation at the end - and possibly even Emancipation if I can land Democracy and Statue or Liberty.  I'm not sure really - either that or Serfdom.  (Final Form civics are naturally State Property and Serfdom but that will take a 4th GA and is perhaps beyond the scope of this game.)

Emancipation is rather nice now, but best if you can pair it with Merc and/or SoL (as well as Rep), but PB66 is a lot greener than this map.

[pindicator]

176

Ur has fallen, and Bing has replaced the city Superdeath razed last turn:




Now that Superdeath's culture is removed from the area I am going to plant another city there soon, on the end of the peninsula, north of the silver. I normally would delay this because it's so marginal, but I will be competing with Bing's culture up there and I want to get a leg up on it all. I had already been slow-building a settler for this in Rescue Rangers, but I whipped it complete this turn. It will still take 5 turns for me to get the settler over there and found the city. In the meantime, the missionary for this city is being built in Smurfs.




I am trying to keep a 1-unit-per-turn completion rate at Thundercats, and finally settled my Great General there so fresh units are coming out with 2 promotions. I no longer can just 1-turn knights here, but I am very close to rotating 1-turn longbows with knights. The threshold for that would be 32hpt. 40hpt would let me 1-turn knights again, but I will need Railroads to reach that mark. There are a few cities that need longbows so for the time being that seems the right play. Even with this, I am only maintaining power with my neighbors:




Hopefully I can lean on Thundercats here while I get Banks built in other core cities, as I get ready for the gold to run out.

[pindicator]

178

I felt like I was doing important work by posting this, but I see Superdeath's posted yesterday so you probably already know that Bing is advancing again:




Naufrager is your leader this game. Not just in score (as he's reclaimed that the last few turns) but also in tech pace. Over the last few turns he has been mopping up the cheap techs he skipped before: Aesthetics, Literature, Calendar - all of them 1-turns. Honestly I'm not sure I would be able to do that at break-even. So even with Printing Press coming in this turn, I'm still behind in GNP and still behind in total beaker count. But banks and courthouses are coming online and making a real difference: breakeven has jumped from 25% to 40%. Several more major cities are working on banks and you better believe I'm going to whip those out as soon as it looks beneficial. I think I can hit 50% soon enough.

Next tech was a tough decision. Astronomy costs as much as Rifling, if you take out the previous tech bonus. I almost picked Compass just to get a cheap harbour built in Thundercats - the city is at minus-3 health right now - with the aim of picking up Optics and getting some work boats out to connect those whales (+1h/+2c apiece), but I reconsidered this morning when I calculated out how far we have to go with great people.

4 turns left until the next great person. I'm trying to minimize scientist specialists on this one in order to give myself the best odds of a non-science great person. I decided to risk a few turns of merchant specialist from here on out: if I lose a 5% roll then I lose a 5% roll; I'm willing to gamble that to lower my odds of a Great Sci. After that I build a courthouse in the capital so that I can hire a spy specialist as well. All said and done, I'm looking at 52GPP/t for the first 3 or 4 turns of pushing out the next great person and then 60 after the courthouse - so about 12 turns total. That means 16 turns of research to go. 4 of those are "burn turns" and 12 more are at break-even. Burn turns are at 550bpt and breakeven is at 270. Once I get this round of banks up that probably goes to 300.

1 turn of burn into Philosophy and then the remaining 3 go into Education. Then 2 more turns of break-even to finish Education, another 1 or 2 to get Philosophy to 95%, and we're probably looking at a 6-turn Liberalism. With only 2 or 3 turns until the golden age. So no side projects like Astronomy, quite yet. Obviously we delay Liberalism as far as we can - if I see anybody grab Education or Philosophy then I pull the trigger on it. Then I just aim to be as greedy as possible with it.

[pindicator]

179

Screw it, let's just beeline Rifles and figure the rest out later

[Thoth]

179

Screw it, let's just beeline Rifles and figure the rest out later

QotM