[pb72 spoilers]: the esteemed gentleman's literature and book club

[greenline]

I talk like that's going to be my final post of the day, and then we squeeze 3 more turns in.

I am thinking tech path wise, we aren't going to be first to Democracy. Going for Guilds / Banking and the general lower half of the tree has just put too much of a delay to reach that tech before Aetryn / Bing. So, plan B: Steel, cannons, and we kill whoever builds Statue. 

[Qgqqqqq]

Really appreciate the update

[greenline]

why I'm not too scared of the Bing GA (yet):




This is after Rep Parts came in.

I decided to make the call for making a pit stop at Education on the way to gunpowder. Reasoning is: I was messing with the slider and seeing that higher percentages that we can now afford don't generate that much more beakers. We could use a way to get more raw beakers, and what better way than having Oxford in the Bureau capital? Hopefully that won't slow us too much down on the way to steel.




I peeked at the EP screen because I still haven't gotten Bing's graphs after dumping all my new Courthouse EPs on him for a while. I saw this discrepancy. I'm not used to using the EP screen in any capacity, but it looks like he used a GSpy on us? I did see him birth one ages ago.

[greenline]

Is this a bug?




Just founded this city and it has no routes, despite it being on the trade network. Is it possible to run out of domestic routes?

[El Grillo]

Any chance the road was finished after the city was settled? Otherwise, no, you can’t run out of domestic routes.

[greenline]

I did build the road right after settling. I assume that delays the game updating the routes in this case, for a turn.

[Qgqqqqq]

Yes it does, quite an important micro habit to get into (though it doesn't matter much at this stage).

[greenline]

Seriously, what does Xist have against pigs?

Note that the lack of road on that desert hill means he can't make a quick move from this direction. Not sure why he built the pasture instead of just building the road instead.




Aetryn popped a GA and pushes for Liberalism afterwards. He asked for my stone presumably to finish Spiral Minaret. I told him no thanks. I think he's the weaker of our two rivals, but I'm not giving the monk trio for free, here.

Bing, in the meantime, is following in our footsteps towards Rep parts. That will give his demos a good push forward. Hoping that when Xistland expands borders I can get those cities to make up. Along with the new ones I am founding.

Education in next turn - I'll try and get the requisite number of universities out for Oxford and then continue building settlers and defensive units while pushing for Steel.

[greenline]

Education in. A bunch of cities in the core timed to start building the requisite five universities for Oxford now or next turn with significant overflow. Gunpowder comes in 2, nice that it is a much cheaper tech. We can start building PRO muskets as garrison units instead of flip flopping between LBs and crossbows.




To give an idea of my civ's development, I thought I'd showcase some of my mature cities settled in the more barren land I had available.













Any questions?

[greenline]

After ages of slowly pushing back with a wave of courthouses and castles, we have graphs again!













Aetryn, to his credit, has made good use of his GA to grab UoS and several other techs. He appears to be sandbagging Lib to grab something of higher value. Probably a mistake by me not to force him to burn it earlier, but I thought Bing would have managed that. He had meditation for ages and ages. He also had more available land then I thought, having settled three new cities. He might be the main rival at the end of the game instead of Bing...