[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[Zed-F]

I wonder if Luddite is calculating on the assumption that we don't have any island cities. I agree it seems more likely to be a misunderstanding of how much foreign trade is worth and not a FU offer. He might be more interested in a metal trade, but that would force us into taking Iron Working next. Maybe Cairo would be more interested in trade routes, but I don't think we're in position to find his cities soon.

Maybe sending the galley up the coast later (after the ferry) will cause Yuris to re-evaluate that peace offer. Peace would be nice from our PoV of course, but if we can convince him that we're ready for him and he's got no prospects sending a small number of Cataphracts our way, so much the better. OTOH I am not sure how much military builds it would take on our part to be convincing, and we'd really rather be building settlers and wonders.

EDIT: To go along with the previous comment, I was thinking about the possibility of a immediate push from Yuris a couple turns ago, but so far it doesn't seem to have materialized. How much sense would it make to redirect whips at Roman and/or Shiv into settlers rather than military, and rely on Kendall and Logan to take up any slack if Yuris does start getting frisky? Feeling kinda torn about Oxy pushing ahead on cities while we are sitting on whips that could make new island cities of our own.

[scooter]

So, I have a weird problem that I'm not sure how to handle.

Anyway I think even with 5 cities it's only worth 7 commerce net, so I re-offered at 3gpt hoping my small number insistence prods him to recalculate.

The context was paying for Open Borders. And uh.





???

I have no idea what happened here. I certainly did not intend to gift him 30g over 10T. I'm not sure the best way to fix this either as reloading is a hassle. I can't cancel, and I don't really want to nuke trade routes just to fix this, so I sort of want to ask for the 3gpt back and call it even? There's a bit of a material cost here too. It didn't help that I didn't notice this until after finalizing the turn. Would really like to get this undone. That's reasonable, right? If we could communicate that this was unintentional, it could be resolved by him merely gifting the same thing back, and all I've done is give him a small 1-2T interest free loan.


In the meantime.




The work boat difference was amusing.





Yuris finally appeared with a mini-stack. I'm guessing this will get backstopped by a Phract? This could hit Kendall by T75 theoretically, but covering that will not be a problem.






The response. Elephant comes out of Logan and would be in range well before they could do anything. Roman/Shiv whipped a Spear/Cat combo and can overflow into 1T axes each, and Shiv will finish a Galley 1-2T after that, which would allow me to counter with 4 units off 4-move Galleys if he really gets spicy with me. Kendall dumped overflow into an Axe, and Connor started an Elephant of its own. Road network is being enhanced right now too.

I would really like to take a swipe at his units. If he does go onto the flatland next to Kendall, he will not be able to escape without the Catapult hitting it and then other units cleaning up, as the Catapult would be able to hit those tiles on T75, plus I could chase him down if he retreats with combat workers. I suspect he's timed this up to have a Cataphract join them, and he's hoping these 3 + 1-2 Phracts will be enough. They shouldn't be, but it will be enough to force me to whip. However, if that happens, and I can kill his stack, it may be time to just go total war and finish him given how quickly I could counter-attack by sea.

Or maybe he's just prodding a little. Hard to say.





Logan is up to 22 base hpt, which means 33hpt is the minimum output. (This screenshot helped me notice a mistake which is that I have a village assigned to Roman rather than coast, missing out on the Bureau multipliers for the tile.)

[Erasmas]

I have been ded-lurking this thread so unspoiled. It has been very entertaining following this. Why not let my first post be approtiate for a lurker: WAR! Why fight cataphrats when you don't need to? Capatalize on your advantage! Have a few turns of full war (whip barracks, stables, cats and elephants everywhere) and take Yuri out. I did see all the starting locations and they are all awesome. The infra after the quick war will be very useful for the next war and the left over units also. Snap out-of the wonder-building, this is MP, not SP.

Edit mist you last post. But the point stands: go all-in.

[Zed-F]

I can’t agree with that sentiment. Yuri isn’t our long-term problem, Oxy is. Going all-in to defeat Yuri pays far too much for too little gain. On a cost-benefit analysis it’s clear to me that Scooter was correct when he said claiming cities with settlers is much less expensive than with military forces, and Yuri doesn’t have many cities for us to claim.

We just need to continue to out-scale Yuris and keep our borders safe, and we can then mop him up at our leisure. Our focus should be on the competition with Oxy. I’m fine with poking Yuri by sea to take advantage of our greater mobility and see how well he can stand up to pressure, but unless we can kill a significant stack of Yuris’s first, ‘going all-in’ bespeaks too much commitment away from growth. If Yuri doesn't decide this is the time to commit Cataphracts, and we don't get the opportunity to kill them, then going all-in is premature.

In the meantime… did we decide to go to Metal Casting before Calendar and compete for Colossus after all? Or are we just getting MC for Forge/Trireme without a plan to potentially chop Colossus if it's still there, and only go to Calendar after that?

Does Connor have barracks? I hadn’t thought so. But maybe the timing of a potential naval excursion / defense if Yuris goes for Connor means there isn’t room in the schedule for one, or we don’t expect to need more than the one elephant out of here for now.

[scooter]

In the meantime… did we decide to go to Metal Casting before Calendar and compete for Colossus after all? Or are we just getting MC for Forge/Trireme without a plan to potentially chop Colossus if it's still there, and only go to Calendar after that?

I meant to mention this. Part of the answer is I've just been waffling a ton. I had noticed him whip the capital for a Forge (almost certainly anyway), so I had assumed he started Colossus elsewhere. However, the other big city he has called Gori (that frequently is in the Top-5 cities) I assumed was where he'd build it. But I found the city.





I hadn't realized it was a coastal city and therefore probably has limited production. So, adding up the various factors.


1) Failgold would be highly efficient as hammers are going through 175% modifiers (Copper + Bureau + OR), so getting some would actually be great.

2) He probably used most of his forests on Pyramids.

3) He's more likely to be building it in his capital (so only 2-3T head start) after seeing Gori


It just added up enough that I decided to head that way after all. Or more specifically, I mostly just dumped beaker overflow into it rather than Calendar. But overall the real answer is I've waffled a bunch, and now I'm leaning towards pressing a bit and seeing if I can either snipe it or get some fail-gold while completing a tech that is inherently really useful for me anyway.

[Zed-F]

Alright, if we were to attempt to build Colossus, where would we do it? The capital is reasonable, and you did mention a Bureaucracy modifier, plus the merchant points would go well with TGL. But between Moai, Forge, and Market, we already have a lot to build there, and that's without considering HG or military. If we do go after (hopefully get?) Colossus, does that mean we are going to push off HG for a while longer and potentially concede it to Oxy in favour of other wonders like MoM/GLib? The aqueduct is a bit expensive if we are going to try to build HG anywhere other than the capital... but at the same time, HG is one of the better ways to get hammers (via whip) across our empire, rather than concentrated at our capital.

Right now we have a substantial worker team near Connor working on roads, but presumably a bunch of them will move south and/or west for chopping duty soonish, and Calendar is in the cards after MC. What are your general thoughts on priorities here?

[scooter]

I'll be honest, I'm sort of playing on instinct here and turn-by-turn a bit as the Yuris situation makes things so fluid. Overall though, I just don't think there's much downside in starting Colossus here. It's just so fast to build in the capital even with no chops. The workers right now are mostly improving road network as it's really important right now for defenses. Another thing is that losing out on Colossus but collecting a bunch of hyper efficient fail-gold sounds like a surefire way to get Machinery and Berserkers in a flash. If I end up with a lot of failgold, I'm going to think very seriously about doing that and unleashing the Viking monster. Yuris and Oxy both would have an incredibly difficult time dealing with it. Right now though I'm not making detailed plans far down the line. Just can't really with units coming at me. I have an Elephant out and 2 more in various queues.


Anyway, not very eventful turn, but two things were amusing for very different reasons.





Popped a Gems. On the one hand, -1h in Logan with all its modifiers is a real negative. But uh, I'll happily take that trade, as that now means:

* +6c in Logan all going through, which means +9c right now

* Instant +1 happy everywhere which hits right as Logan was 1t from potentially growing into unhappiness (or more likely, shuffling tiles to prevent it)

* Forge in Logan is now worth +2 happy which is seriously useful in that city


Honestly this feels like a reward for going back towards Metal Casting after all.





I thought this was funny. This is a freshly built Galley - right after pressing End Turn in a sequential game. Interestingly, it seems the Galley receives the circumnav +1 movement after turn roll? Obviously I'm unable to actually move it in sequential, and MP will get refreshed up to the full 4 when the turn gets to me, but it caught my eye as something I hadn't noticed before.

[Zed-F]

Don't take my questions as doubts of the wisdom of going for Colossus -- I think that's well-justified, and if the capital is the best place for it then I'm cool with that. I'm just trying to make sure we consider the ramifications. Deferring HG in favour of Colossus is fine, especially if we can steal it from Oxy; if that works, he'll have just way too much trouble keeping up with us economically. At some point we'll just out-tech and out-maneuver him on the seas, take away his islands, and slowly choke him to death.

I love seeing the gems pop, that's awesome. I agree it does seem like a great reward for going toward MC. I still think Calendar is next, even if we do get failgold on Colossus, but maybe Machinery would come after that. We'd be close to Compass, too, which seems a great pick-up with all our trade routes.

[Qgqqqqq]

That is quite funny. It's extraordinary the number of surprises we still find in this 18-years-old game.

[Tarkeel]

I love seeing the gems pop, that's awesome. I agree it does seem like a great reward for going toward MC. I still think Calendar is next, even if we do get failgold on Colossus, but maybe Machinery would come after that. We'd be close to Compass, too, which seems a great pick-up with all our trade routes.

Note that the bonus from harbor applies to the base value of a traderoute, which is 1.0 until the city giving the route hits sizes above 10 (and after that distance also matters). It should be able to push foreign routes up by 1C though.