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Post by Sullla on Mar 8, 2011 11:11:08 GMT -5
Things are looking pretty good for us at the moment. I'm really pleased with Teoihuacan, where we timed the forest chop into workboat perfectly, getting 22 shields this turn with 8/30 production in the box. Then the city can swap to granary on the same turn that Pottery comes in and whip it the following turn for 1 pop, with the food box very close to the perfect "half full" for a granary whip. Some of that was coincidence... but more of it was careful planning. Capital is also in very good shape. We don't have Pottery and our worker build synched together, however we need an extra turn to get the two grassland river cottages done anyway, and then Cherokee can swap right off the mines and onto double 2/0/2 tiles. Anasazi will also swap to granary and whip it for one pop; it will hit size 3 again just about when we complete its first cottage. And the new city will be founded on T53; I'm sending 3 workers up there after the initial cottage rush to road and connect that corn. Probably will chop that forest tile too, into granary or monument. International stuff... plako built another axe this turn and continues to be way out in front for the #1 Power rating. He has 46k, which I believe equates to 3 axes + 1 spear along with some early warriors. Perhaps he means to attack WarriorKnight again (?) That would seem foolish given his awesome expansion Cre/Imp traits, but who knows. Not enough info to tell. Luddite has grown again and hit 10 total population, 5 pop in capital and 5 pop in his second city. He's also researched yet another tech, his 9th overall for the game (most teams have 6 or 7 techs). This very strongly suggests that Luddite settled his second city at a gold tile, and has been working that to power his research. He also has to have a happy resource of some kind or his second city will be unhappy at size 5. My personal guess is that he's going for the Oracle; that would explain why he has so many techs (lots of those cheap Priesthood pre-requisites) and why he grew the capital so large. Of course, Hinduism is still out there and no one has Polytheism tech, so maybe I'm totally wrong too... Anyway, Luddite's got all this pop, but still only the two cities. That means he's starting to fall behind, as awesome as his Demographics numbers look. Nakor got 7 production in the city we can see this turn, and I was like "WTF?!" until I realized that it must be a worker build. I thought he was going for a monument there. So that kind of confirms our suspicion that he's a little light on workers. It's also nice because his culture won't expand to block off that choke near Vinland for a while, giving us time to explore the north with our scout and then slip past. I want to see if there are any food bonuses up near that copper before sending our scout on a deep penetration to find Nakor's capital. Important to know if there's a spot we want to race to up there. Here's what I sent to Nakor: Not much there, but the total lack of email contact in weeks was starting to feel like a bad sign. Maybe they'll say something of interest back. I also dashed off a response to Moogle, who's been out for the past week and had Sciz playing his turns. OK, here's the most important question: what tech do we research next turn? Animal Husbandry or Mysticism? I can see arguments for either one. Cows in capital (and seeing horses) would be very strong, but it would also be nice to expand borders with monuments. Give me your thoughts when you have a chance. I can be persuaded either way... probably leaning slightly towards AH, because of the horses thing. AH is significantly more expensive than Mysticism though, hmmm....
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Post by Speaker on Mar 9, 2011 19:48:38 GMT -5
I'd say AH first. We need to see where Horses are. Let the cities grow a bit more as we get Mysticism, then if we want, we can one-pop slave the monuments and overflow into another round of workers (or unfinished granaries or whatever). We should take advantage of slavery a little bit, I think, once we get some cottages up.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 10, 2011 13:52:12 GMT -5
I know we discussed this last night, and came to a tentative conclusion for Mysticism first. I feel like we're going to plant our fifth city too soon to delay and go AH -> Mysticism, and that gold/sheep spot will suck for a long time without expanded borders (which will take a full 10 turns to expand even after the monument finishes.) Still time to change our minds if we want, as I've been running 0% min science last turn and will again this turn. We planted our fourth city this turn at the corn/copper location in the west. It will take the workers a few turns to get over here, as they're finishing up with some cottages at the capital right now. I whipped the granary at Teoihuacan for 1 pop; it will regrow to size 2 immediately next turn. It needs one more work boat for its other clams resource, and then we can use it as a worker/whip factory for the immediate future. The capital finished a worker and swapped to double cottages; this actually made our Demographics look much worse, as we traded 6 shields for 2 food and 2 commerce. But of course those cottages will become really strong tiles over time, and now we're back to growing again. Growth and granary due in 5t. We were going to whip the granary in Anazai this turn... but now I don't even think that's a good idea. It will complete in 3t without us doing anything, which seems pretty fast for a whip. However, the real reason I don't want to whip is the happiness cap. Without any happy resources, Anasazi will be unhappy at size 5. If we whip, it becomes unhappy at size 4. I would rather let the granary finish naturally in 3t, grow next turn onto a cottage, and then build another settler or worker after the granary is done. We could use the settler for the gold spot, which is looking more and more important to get at least one happiness resource online. I think that makes more sense than whipping and being unable to sit at size 4. We found a fish resource up in the northeast, which means somewhere over here is likely city #6. Unless we see something else in the fog, I probably like this spot best, although once again it's fairly useless until it gets a border expansion for the fish. This spot would seal off the southern peninsula from Nakor and have very strong production potential. Of course, Nakor might settle here before we can reach it too... Nakor sent us back an email asking us not to settle any further east, which I thought was borderline insulting, since Teoihuacan is only 5 tiles east of our capital, and his capital should be roughly 20 tiles east of Cherokee. We'll just see what happens there as time passes. I left the turn unfinished for now, in case we want to discuss things tonight. Still 22 hours left.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 11, 2011 13:57:06 GMT -5
Alright, well I didn't end up whipping Anasazi because I think going granary -> settler is the stronger play there. That will complete naturally in 10t if we do nothing about it, which feels about right for getting our fifth city up and running. We'll also have the option to whip that settler to completion at some point, which wouldn't be a bad play either. But anyway, there were all kinds of big things afoot in the game this past turn that I'm going to cover in a long post here. We met regoarrarr/sunrise between turns, or more accurately they met us. They had a warrior on the same tile as ours, which I didn't even see until I saw their email in our team box today. Glad I've been checking that every turn even with little diplo action to speak of. Anyway, I'll get to regoarrarr's typically long email a little later on. For the moment, here's our dossier on their team: Shaka of Zulus Starting techs Hunting and Agriculture Moved capital first turn, settled T1 T10 Mining tech T20 capital size 2 [somewhat slow] T24 capital size 3 [fast] T26 Animal Husbandry T29 capital size 4 [very fast] T39 Wheel tech T42 capital size 5, settle second city [Reading] T47 Bronze Working tech T52 Fishing tech So they still have only 2 cities, size 5 and size 1. Seven total techs, same as us. We have nearly double their total pop, 11 to 6, and a higher Power rating as well. I have no idea what their team is going for, and it feels like they messed up pretty badly. Perhaps a failed wonder bid or something (?) No idea. Wonders were the news of the turn though, as Luddite's team completed the Oracle and took Monarchy tech with it. I predicted that a little while back, actually... sometimes I'm so good I amaze myself. ;D OK, not trying to showboat, but it does take some skill to predict what other teams are doing that you've never met through nothing more than CivStats and Demographics numbers. The play itself is an interesting one, as Luddite drastically slowed down his growth to make sure he landed the wonder. He still only has two cities, both size 5, which is rather incredible as he founded his second city all the way back on T29! Nevertheless, with happiness as scarce as we've seen on this map, the value of an early Hereditary Rule civic could prove very effective indeed. Not sure what to make of this play. Delaying expansion for 15-20 turns and investing heavily in the rather useless Mysticism/Meditation/Priesthood techs so early on definitely represented a high opportunity cost. Anyway, our cities look much the same as last turn. We finished a cottage at Anasazi, and the city grew from size 3 to size 4, picking up that grassland river cottage. As I said before, I want to let the granary finish (2t) and then go onto a settler (8t) for our gold/sheep city. Teoihuacan regrew to size 2 after its granary whip, and is now working corn + crabs while building another work boat, filling up its granary in the process. My plan there is to grow up to size 4 while building work boat at minimal 1 shield/turn, then swap to worker at size 4, put a couple of turns into worker and then double-whip the worker. That should give us enough overflow to finish the other work boat, I think... effectively using the worker and whip to convert food into pure shields. Does that sound about right? These are our Demographics for the turn. With our conversion of mines into cottages, we have now taken over the #1 Food spot in the Demographics, the one that's generally the most important. Almost half again the Average and more than double the poor "Rival Worst" (which I believe is the sunrise/regoarrarr team). Production has dropped but is still respectable. Our GNP continues to appear terrible, as other teams get tons of "culture" GNP to inflate the numbers. Much of that low number comes from no pre-requisites on Mysticism though; just swapping from Mysticism to AH sent us from #7 to #3 in GNP. So I'm not too worried about that, as we're already on 3 riverside cottages, soon to be 4. Most teams in the game don't even have Pottery tech yet. I looked at the research numbers for Mysticism: Need 84 beakers 24g in bank 100% = 26 @ -11gpt 90% = 23 @ -9gpt 80% = 21 @ -6gpt 70% = 18 @ -4gpt 60% = 16 @ -1gpt 50% = 13 @ +1gpt 0% = 1 @ +14gpt Straight 80% gets 84 beakers in 4t for -24g 3t 100% and 1t 0% gets 79 beakers for -19g With no pre-req modifiers it literally doesn't matter. Same result.And the end result was literally pointless, because we have an exact 1 beaker = 1 gold conversion rate everywhere. So that was a waste of time, heh. If even one other team had Mysticism we'd get a bonus beaker, but with only Adlain knowing the tech, we get 26 x 1.03 = 26.78 = 26 after getting truncated. No difference at all. I just set us to 80% research to land the tech in 4t. Mackoti planted his fourth city this turn, and WarriorKnight continues to rebuild his civ by planting his third. An update on Total Pop: Our Team: 11 [4+4+2+1] Luddite: 10 [5+5] (Oracle) Parkin: 9 [5+3+1] (Stonehenge) Nakor: 9 [4+3+2] plako: 8 [4+2+1+1] (has whipped a lot) Mackoti: 8 [3+2+2+1] Adlain: 8 [4+3+1] WarriorKnight: 8 [5+2+1] Moogle: 7 [4+2+1] sunrise: 6 [5+1] Our team, Luddite, plako, and Parkin are all in pretty nice shape. I'm honestly surprised at how well Parkin has done going Stonehenge before settler. Doesn't seem to have been hurting him that much. sunrise/regoarrarr seem to be really far behind for whatever reason. Adlain finished a monument in his pigs/gold city, so it will very slowly expand its borders now. Nakor finished a worker in the city near us. We'll be able to get our scout past long before a border expansion blocks us. Also, Adlain is "Rival Worst" in power rating, just 20k, while plako is "Rival Best" in power at 46k. We have Demographics visibility on plako now, and I'll have to look at that later on. Email exchange with regoarrarr is in our inbox. He never shuts up (as well known by reputation!) and since we are clearly not close to one another, I see no reason not to be friends. We were trying to discuss the map configuration, among other things. I'm not going to paste that much text here. OK I spent 2 hours on all this already, time to go get some actual work done. EDIT: So it was pointed out to me later in this thread that some of the stuff in this post was rather obnoxious and over the top. I won't go editing the content so that you can read what I originally wrote, but I am sorry if I offended anyone reading. Furthermore, luddite didn't even Oracle Monarchy tech (he took Metal Casting instead) so I'm not nearly as good as I thought I was.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 12, 2011 14:08:21 GMT -5
CivStats going down makes for a giant pain in the rear, let me tell you... So here's the situation. Seven of the ten teams had score changes. Total population increased from 85 to 90. Without CivStats, there's zero indication as far as whether that was natural pop increase, whipping, founding cities, and so on. My "fun" challenge was figuring out what the hell took place during the turn. After 90 minutes and a lot of trial and error, this is what it all meant: Luddite settle city #3 [Rival Best population 180 -> 181] Nakor settle city #4, Dorestadt [can see in diplo screen] Nakor capital grow to size 5 [can see other cities] plako city Asl grow size 2 Parkin third city size 2 WarriorKnight second city size 3 But that's +6 population, not +5. The trick was discovering what Moogle did: Moogle 7 land points, whip capital from size 4 to size 3 [total: +5 points] In the end, I did get everything correct, but holy crap, what an effort that was! Four natural pop increases, two new cities founded, one capital whip, and one case of land points. This would have been about a million billion times easier with CivStats. I hope to God sunrise gets the thing up and running again ASAP. On this turn (T57), Nakor discovered Agriculture tech and plako founded his fifth(!) city. They are size 4, 2, 2, 2, 1 so his economy can't be all that great right now. Imperialistic and winning a war will help do that for you, I guess... Hinduism was also founded this turn, I'm 80% certain it was Luddite's team with all those religious techs and fast research, with a 20% chance it could be the Mackoti/Ioan team. Harder to say when we haven't met the teams. It definitely was not Nakor, as he still lacks Mysticism tech. His team almost certainly got Agriculture, which they were previously lacking due to messing up their opening (e.g. corn still not connected at their city we can see). Our civ, basically the same as usual. We'll get a double growth next turn, capital to size 5 (onto another cottage) and Teoihuacan to size 3 (onto non-improved clams). Plan for each city currently: Cherokee: keep growing and working cottages. Still going to grow at size 5 because we'll have gold resource relatively soon. Next build after granary planned to be axe, to go defend eastern border. Anasazi: building settler (7t). Has granary. Plan to whip settler once it goes down to 1 pop needed, overflow into monument next. Also has half-finished barracks in queue. Workers are building road to gold city at present, will then move to chop forests, and will put a double forest chop into gold city [monument] on T62, which should be right around when it's settled. Teoihuacan: growing to size 4 while building work boat, will swap to worker at size 4, double whip to completion, and overflow into/completing work boat. That gets all three main tiles improved. Probably serve as a worker factory in between whips. No need for monument here, we'll just use 1 forest chop + double whip for a library. Writing tech next after AH. (This will also be the city where we run two Scientist specialists for 17 turns to get an early Great Scientist -> Academy in capital.) Olmec: corn will be improved next turn. Building granary. Will one-pop whip granary when halfway to size 2 (ideal time for granary whip). Workers will add grassland river cottage 2t after corn is done, just as city hits size 2. Forest chop after that to complete monument as well, get borders started expanding towards copper tile. Again, whenever you have the time to log in and check things out or comment, let me know. I'm pretty happy with where we stand, we're ahead of everyone other than plako and Luddite, and competitive with them in most senses. (Luddite has a ton of happiness/culture/research and probably in best overall shape, plako has most land grab and number of cities.) But we'll have most total pop in game next turn, 13, and we're working improved tiles everywhere. That counts for a lot too. Oh, one other thing to check out if you log into the game, Speaker. Adlain has a clump of happiness resources just north of his territory: spices + furs + sugar + double ivory (!) I guess this is supposed to be a contested region, but there's no such stretch of luxuries in our own northern frontier. So... I'm not sure what's going on here. It sure looks like he's been handed a giant advantage by the map creators. We have wines and two dyes buried in deep jungle, and that's it so far. Hopefully we'll find something similar as we keep exploring. If not, Adlain is going to be a weak civ, and he might be an excellent candidate to go take those luxuries... even if he is Protective and all... CivStats, grrr....
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Post by Sullla on Mar 13, 2011 9:54:45 GMT -5
Another turn with no CivStats, argh. That makes 3 in a row now, and I'm having to spend way too much time doing all this manually, with a lot of extra guesswork. I had to do something I really didn't want to do and make a fuss about it in the Email thread, because otherwise most teams would have just let the whole thing continue on. Unfortunately this draws some attention to us, which was why I was avoiding posting anything in the first place, but we absolutely need CivStats or something similar to be running. Without it, I'm literally blind - I can't tell what's going on out there in the rest of the world. And information is the key to these games, knowing what your opponents are doing and why lets you predict their movements and ultimately outplay them. I can't do that if I have to guess about what's going on in the game. Hopefully this other website (playyourturn.com) will be able to serve as a replacement. I even bugged sunrise's team in an email about looking into setting things up there for the Pitboss server. Hopefully this isn't too out of character for "Locke"... Builds are mostly the same. I'd love your input on the axe build in the capital, if you think we can do something better there. We're starting to run up against the happiness cap in cities, so we definitely need that gold resource. Even with it, things are going to suck in about 20 turns when we have the gold but no other happy resources beyond that. Just our luck, the one map where idiot teams that pick Charismatic get rewarded for it, and the noob Stonehenge-first build works out perfectly. The last thing I'll mention is that Nakor definitely does have copper, as Power tracking showing him building an axeman. Just one, but I'll keep an eye on it.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 14, 2011 16:29:25 GMT -5
Alright, update time: There's an overview shot of our territory. Capital is still growing, working cottages, and getting an axe for our eastern border. Teoihuacan has grown to size 4 (just two turns to grow!) and I swapped it to worker; it is actually unhappy at size 2, but that's no matter, as we'll double whip the worker in a couple of turns. The worker build/whip effectively lets us turn food into shields there, as the overflow should be enough to complete the city's second work boat. And we can definitely use another worker over there. Olmec, meanwhile, just grew to size 2 this turn and picked up a grassland river cottages completed the same turn by our workers. It will 1 pop whip its granary in two turns, with half of the box full of food, perfect timing for a granary whip. I will have the workers chop its one grassland forest into a monument there next, as we want borders to expand and grab the copper tile (and the other grassland river tiles) quickly. Number crunching research for AH tech: 46/172 beakers need 126 more for AH 5g in treasury 100% = 51 beakers @ -12gpt [lots of wastage here] 60% = 32 beakers @ 0gpt 0% = 1 beaker @ +20gpt Straight compare: 8 turns of min/max swapping = 51*5 + 1*3 = 258 beakers / 8t = 32.25 per turn Very slightly better; would be significantly better if not for major truncating losses. (One more base beaker = 3 more actual beakers!) We'll go with min/max for the moment, as it's slightly better for most base beaker amounts. Here's my big question for you, Speaker: Do we whip this settler to completion? My general sense is that yes we do, as it's nearly always better to whip and then regrow working cottages in the early game; Anasazi still has to fill up its granary food box, and better to do that at a smaller size with a smaller food box. But the settler does complete in just 4 turns anyway, so... I'm not entirely sure. You know the early game whipping math better than me from playing so many Ancient MP games. Please give me your thoughts on this. With whip, we found gold city in 2 turns, T62, and have the gold mined by the end of T63 (which, admittedly, works out pretty awesomely for our capital). If we let the settler build complete naturally, the city is founded T65, and the gold mine completes T67 (as I'll have the two workers double chop forests into a monument first instead). As far as other teams go, the regoarrarr/sunrise team finally revealed what they were up to by completing the Great Lighthouse last turn. Recall that they did move to the coast on the first turn, so I guess that was their plan all along. Frankly, this map doesn't seem to have enough water to justify that move, but I guess we will see... They are very, very far behind with only two cities and 7 total population. (We have 4 cities and 15 total pop.) We are running very strong in Food count at the moment, with 49 Food (#2) behind plako's 56 Food. This difference is explained by his extra city up over us, having five cities to our four. We also have the #2 GNP when we run 100% science, although take that with a grain of salt because of our major Animal Husbandry pre-requisite bounses. I think we are more accurately somewhere in the middle in research power, which is a good place to be given our large size, high costs, and relatively large number of units. Production is now the stat that looks bad, as we swapped off of hills to work cottages; we are at 17 Production (#8) compared to Rival Average 23 and Rival Best (35!) Again, at this early stage in the game we can't be tops in all three categories at once. If we emphasize Food/Commerce, then Production will be suffer. But that's a pretty good place to be, as we're making excellent use of Expansive + cheap Granaries + whip power already. Nakor note: he has an axe just outside the city of Vinland. Our scout is watching it at present. It's the one and only axe that Nakor owns right now, and I don't feel overly threatened. Nakor has 20 shields into either a settler or worker in Vinland, gaining 10 per turn, and since he just built a worker there I suspect he's training a settler at the moment. We could possibly race him to the copper location to the north of Teoihuacan (there's a fish resource 2E 3N of the copper) but I honestly don't think it's worth it. A good spot, sure, but not world beating. If he gets there first, we'll take all the rest of that peninsula to the south and be happy with it. Let me know if you want us to double-whip a settler to go contest that spot or something... kinda think you'll agree with me on this one though. Oh, and Nakor is working three unimproved tiles at Viland, his corn being farmed and two grassland forests. Excellent worker micro there. ;D Anyway, let me know about the settler whip when you have a minute.
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Post by Speaker on Mar 14, 2011 17:40:35 GMT -5
Let them feel the lash!
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Post by Sullla on Mar 16, 2011 9:32:35 GMT -5
OK, so I did whip that city for the settler. Regrowth in 4 turns (and that's with having to fill up the granary food box for the first time), whip overflow will complete barracks next turn. I realized that we have no need for a monument in Anasazi; all of the tiles it would need to work can be grabbed just from the first ring. So we'll hold off on monument and wait for a library there, and can use those 30 shields for another axe or something. Our fifth city will be planted next to the gold resource next turn. Our scout revealed that we're actually closer to Nakor's capital than I thought; it's basically over the water to the east. That makes the notion of trying to fight for the copper/fish spot in the north even less appealing. Here's my thought: I'd like to send Nakor's team an email telling them that we're fine with them taking the copper spot in the north, in return for us getting the land to the south of it. I don't think we can beat them there (Vinland very likely building a settler at 30/100 shields, +10 per turn) and it would help defuse tensions, making our own future cities to the south safer. What do you think, Speaker? We look very mediocre in the Demographics right now. I think that's because we just double-whipped our second city and are working so many cottages at present. But still, it makes me feel kind of uneasy. Could we have played things better? I feel like we've played a strong game thus far, and yet other teams still seem to be ahead of us. I guess we just have to wait and see what happens... At least CivStats is back up and running, yay!
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Post by Sullla on Mar 17, 2011 10:56:47 GMT -5
Another new turn: I was thinking about our conversation yesterday, and indeed Speaker is right about our situation being better than I thought. Our infrastructure is extremely strong for this point in time. Granaries in 4 cities already will do wonders for our growth curve, and we also have a barracks finished already in Anasazi. Little Olmec has granary and monument, thanks to a well-timed whip and a forest chop. Teoihuacan will have corn + double workboat crabs up and running next turn, food surplus of +9 at size 3! Even better, we have five cottages (all grassland riverside) with two of them already having grown to hamlets. We also have six workers for our five cities. As Speaker said yesterday, it's just not possible for other teams to have the same amount of Expansive infrastructure that we do. You can build the early wonders, or you can invest in settlers/workers/granaries as we have, but you can't do both at the same time. Our cities are already regrowing from the last round of whips, and pulling our economic numbers upwards with them. Workers finished mining the gold at Zapotec, which unfortunately is going to have slow growth for a while. I'm not going to work a 2/1 grassland forest over an improved gold mine, so we'll halt growth at the city for the moment while we employ the very strong (but no growth!) 0/3/8 tile. The workers are going to chop a forest to complete the monument, and then farm the grassland river tile NE of Zapotec (which can be swapped with Anasazi). In the meantime though, the gold resource will temporarily help push our research. With that gold tile, we are #2 in GNP at 100% science, although I caution that this is artificially boosted somewhat by getting a significant pre-requisite boost for Animal Husbandry tech. At break-even science, we are #4 in GNP. Still with absolutely zero culture to boost that stat. So... once you subtract out the culture from wonders/religion/Creative, I think we're actually a little above average in research power. The gold tile makes a huge difference; there seems to be one near every team's starting position, and I believe most teams jumped on them early for extra research. We remain #2 in Food (behind plako, I believe) and #10 in Production, although that's increasing quickly as we regrow population. Whip and work cottages is generally better than working mines in this part of the game, so being low in Production doesn't bother me that much. Speaker, I like our next city to go on the tile NE of the sheep resource here. It shares crabs with Teoihuacan and has the sheep in first-ring culture without needing to expand borders. We could also go one tile north of that, on the grassland hill, for a more defensive location, although that makes for a weaker city overall. What do you think? I'd like to get this eastern border locked down with Nakor before we start backfilling any of our other possible city locations. Nakor has not yet responded to the email we sent about agreeing on splitting the land over here. Probably hasn't seen it yet. Possible area of concern: Nakor's power has gone up sigificantly the last two turns. He built two axes, and has this total military: 5 warriors 3 axemen We have 5 warriors, 1 spear, and will complete 1 axe next turn, for comparison. Now I don't think he's planning anything - plako is the world #1 power on Nakor's other side, and he has to be worried a little about that - but I'll keep a close watch on this to be safe. Kinda stinks that plako is #1 in power and Nakor is #2 in power, both near us... Could have been much worse though, at least we have world #10 in power (Adlain) on the other side! Still no Bronze Working, and an army made up of 3 warriors! ;D If Nakor emails us back, I'll try to get reassurances in diplo that he has no aggressive plans. Our exploring warrior spotted mackoti (FDR/Netherlands) borders in the far north, and hopefully we'll make contact next turn. We also received some emails from regoarrarr and Moogle telling us that WarriorKnight and Parkin are relatively close to our scout. Hopefully we'll meet them in the next 5 or so turns, and get contact with most of the teams in the game. More contacts = more information = more bonus research. We're playing turns at a rate of 2 per day and it is awesome right now.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 17, 2011 23:20:37 GMT -5
We did meet mackoti and ioan in the far north with our exploring warrior. I sent them an email introducing ourselves and poking for some map information. There's actually a lot of emails going back and forth right not, nothing too terribly important though. Nakor still has not replied to the only consequential one about our borders. According to regoarrarr and Moogle, we have a very good chance of meeting Parkin and WarriorKnight in the next few turns with our scout. Here's hoping.
We discover AH next turn; two workers are in place to connect the cows at the capital, finally. It will be very nice to see where horses are located, and hopefully we'll have some nearby or already within our borders. At our current research (working that gold tile in poor Zapotec) we can get Writing next in just 6 turns. So probably slightly longer than that, when we swap Zapotec onto another tile to grow.
Cherokee finished an axe and went onto settler; I am intending this for the sheep spot along our eastern border unless you post something otherwise. Currently reads 7t but will drop to 6t when we finish the cattle pasture; I don't think we want to whip this in the capital. Teoihuacan put its whip overflow into another work boat, which seems more useful than any other choices right now. We'll definitely need some more work boats as we found more cities along the coast, it'll get used eventually. Next double-whip there is either another worker or for a library.
Olmec was the city where I wasn't sure what to build next. It already has granary and monument; I set it to axe for lack of anything better at the moment. If you have any thoughts, let me know. With that copper tile it can produce a lot of shields, so a barracks there to use Olmec as a second military center wouldn't be the worst idea...
I'll post a picture of horses (or lack thereof!) tomorrow when we get AH tech.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 18, 2011 12:12:25 GMT -5
Alright Speaker, we've got some problems here. I do need to get your feedback on this and maybe even log into the game to see what's going on. First our territory: We finished AH research and we do have horses just outside our borders. We definitely want to place a settler 1N of the horses, in the fish/cows/horses spot we planned out a while ago. It would need a border expansion for the fish and cows, but it could work the horses right away for at least one good tile. Alternately, we could place a city 1N of the cows, at minimum distance from the capital. Lots of overlap, but would have fish and horses right away, saving the cows for another city to the north. Still angry about that peak tile, since that is clearly the correct spot for the city to go... But the real issue is over in the east with Nakor. They planted a new city called Horsetown at the end of the previous turn. Horrible, horrible location - horses and not a single food bonus - but on a hill and only 4 tiles away from Teoihuacan. Very aggressive spot, to say the least. Then we received this email from Nakor about dividing up the land between us: I asked him for clarification with this message: So we'll see what they say about that. Now normally I wouldn't care, and would just go take whatever spot we wanted regardless. But here's the thing: Nakor is building a lot of axes right now: That's four axes in the last five turns. He now has: 5 warriors 5 axes If he sends five axes at us right now, we're going to lose cities. So... I want your advice here, Speaker. Do we just give up on the east for now? I would hate to have to concede everything east of Teoihuacan to Nakor. We can get a very strong city by that sheep tile. And there's no way he can beat us to that location with a settler, having just founded Horsetown. But can we defend ourselves properly? Should we plant our next city in a safer location? How much military should we be getting to feel safe? I really need your help here. I'll try to negotiate some kind of deal diplomatically, but I'm somewhat worried that Nakor is coming for us with an early rush. Like, do we feel we should swap from Writing to Masonry to whip walls if need be? I'm really uncertain on what to do. It really sucks that we have to deal with this. We are well above the average in military power (compare to Adlain's chart...) and now we're going to need to build more military to be safe, just because the world #1 and world #2 in power are so close to us (plako and Nakor). Meanwhile, other teams will tech/expand ahead out in the fog. Argh. What is with these no-food, extremely aggressive city plants in every game?!?
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Post by Sullla on Mar 19, 2011 14:23:01 GMT -5
Let me give you an update on what's happening. When Nakor didn't write us back, I decided to go ahead and send them a pointed email: That was pretty aggressive, but we needed to clear the waters there and get some kind of direct response. Interestingly, plako also had an email for us today: To which I responded with: I hate posted long email chains in forums, but these are actually pretty important to what we're doing right now. So basically it sounds like things aren't going too well between Nakor and plako right now. I wanted to tell Nakor that we were prepared to defend ourselves if they came after us, and let plako know that we'd be looking for allies if Nakor attacked us. The best possible result here would be Nakor and plako fighting each other and achieving nothing but stalemate while the rest of us expand and tech ahead. This is actually a terrible era for offensive warfare, after everyone has copper/horses and walls can be easily obtained, but before catapults arrive to knock down defenses. Hopefully plako and Nakor don't realize that... Here is our border city of Teoihuacan. I am putting 3 shields into an axeman this turn, so we can double-whip an axe whenever we want to complete 1 axe and get a ton of overflow into something else. Here's two different ways to manage this city going forward, depending on what Nakor does: Growth: Leave the axe at 3/35 in the box. Keep growing well past the happy cap as we research Writing tech. Grow to size 6 and triple-whip library when Writing comes in, then have city work corn + crab + double Scientists with library, getting us a ton of beakers along with starting progress towards Great Scientist, slow build worker at size 4 with food surplus. Sheep city would get the other crab resource. This is the ideal case but doesn't give us much defense if attacked. Defense: Double whip axe to get 3/35 -> 63/35 shields. Overflow into a second axe, which will be completed soon. Research Masonry and chop/whip walls into completion. We can get 4 axes + city walls into this city in about a half-dozen turns, which should be virtually impregnable at this stage of the game. Crushes our growth and research though, and is not a good play longterm. I decided that the best course on research was to run a turn of 0% science as we wait and see whether we can continue Writing tech or have to swap to Masonry. I will definitely send workers to go chop the forest next to Teoihuacan regardless though - too much of a security risk. As I type this, we got a response from Nakor: I guess that's reassuring, since he told us the military is intended for use against plako. Of course, Nakor could also just be lying, as he did to us in the Pitboss #2 game. I'm sending this to clarify: That would get us the one spot we want and hopefully get Nakor out of our hair. I hope that's more or less what you were thinking, Speaker. I still get this bad vibe from Nakor - his email didn't feel sincere to me. I think that's a pretty generous division of land between us, asking for one spot (close to our capital) and giving them the rest. If Nakor continues to push for a greater share of land, then we'll know that he's full of it and plans on attacking regardless. Really hope that doesn't happen... but we'll wait and see. If he does attack, we can 2 vs 1 with plako and destroy Nakor, although sadly that will also more or less kill our chances of winning the game. Sigh.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 20, 2011 13:48:23 GMT -5
So Nakor responded and stated that he was accepting our offer: they are taking our border deal (giving us the sheep spot on the hill we requested) and inking an NAP to turn 110. Great news... *IF* he actually keeps that deal. The thing is, I just don't trust Nakor. It has nothing to do with the previous Pitboss game, he simply feels less than trustworthy in this game. You don't build up that many early axes unless you plan on using them, and it makes much more sense to attack us rather than plako (since our Power rating is lower). At the same time, would Nakor really sign a straight NAP and completely ignore it? Maybe... but I feel like he would have just eqivocated back and forth with us instead of signing a deal he didn't intend to keep in that situation.
Anyway, it goes back to what you said before, Speaker: our land isn't so good that we can afford to turtle up and win out from there. We have to take some chance to win. I decided that I would take Nakor at his word and pursue the "growth" plan outlined above. That means growing Teoihuacan beyond the happy limit for a triple library whip, researching Writing over Masonry, and going ahead with our plan to found our next city on the hill next to the sheep. If Nakor does attack, then we lose Teoihuacan (not our capital though) and we're severely set back. I would rate the odds of him attacking at about 20%, and in a competitive game you have to play the odds when they're in your favor like that. I think we were agreed on that based on our conversations earlier.
That said, it's not like we're totally defenseless either. Library in Teoihuacan will grant us border expansion (vision) and cultural defense. We are currently the #3 team in Power, so literally the only teams ahead of us in military strength are Nakor (#1) and plako (#2). Lucky us, eh? Teoihuacan has a partially built axe than can be double-whipped at any point in time, and I'll go for cheap Masonry tech next. We are also in communication with plako, and I'm trying to work on getting a strong alliance there for the future, in case we would get attacked. Overall, this is the best way I can see to play our position, taking some risk but continuing to max growth with above-average military defenses.
We met Parkin and now have contact with everyone except Luddite. We have directions to his territory, and will head there next if we can get Open Borders with mackoti. Our overall position in the game is actually pretty good right now - we aren't ahead in total cities, but what we do have has REALLY good infrastructure. We have four granaries, two monuments, one barracks, six cottages (four of them hamlets!), and 19 total population, second only to plako's 21. We are #2 in Food behind plako and #4 in GNP at break-even science, that still without the culture that many of these other teams have (and also not working the gold tile; we are #1 in GNP when we work the gold). Other teams have cities and have population, but they don't have city improvements and tile improvements. Like Nakor, to get all those axes, has completely stalled his growth and has no city improvements. If he doesn't attack us, we will be ridiculously far ahead of him in 25 turns.
I'm going to throw up some pictures in our RB thread if you want to check them out there.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 21, 2011 20:56:27 GMT -5
Update time, Turn 70: Capital just finished a settler this turn, heading for the sheep/fish spot on the hill that we negotiated with Nakor. City will be founded on T73, with workers roading towards the location and then building a pasture on the sheep. Speaker, I didn't have a solid feel for what to build next in the capital. My best guess was to go axeman -> settler, although this will necessitate turning on "Avoid Growth" to stop Cherokee from growing to size 7. It stinks that we don't have any more happiness, as now would be the perfect time to grow the capital up to about size 10. Darn. Anyway, I want another axe to give us a little more military beef, both on the Power chart and for stationing on our eastern border. So even though it's suboptimal (would be better to be doing straight settlers and workers at capital if it can't grow) I feel we should do one axe before our next settler. Let me know if you have other thoughts here. We discovered Writing this turn, and two cities swapped to libraries. Teoihuacan has grown far into unhappiness, now with 2 unhappy faces at size 6. It swapped to library this turn and will triple-whip the building next turn, with the overflow finishing a work boat for the fish at our new city. We'll then work corn + crabs + 2 scientists as the city slowly recovers from whip unhappiness. (This will start us towards a Great Scientist and also significantly increase our science; 2 scientists in city with library = 7.5 beakers/turn, and we get about 25 beakers/turn at break-even rate currently. Increase of about 33%! Not to mention we only need a few more turns before we can start working the gold tile at Zapotec...) The other city swapping to library is Olmec, way out there in the west. I think the best play here is to do the same thing, grow past happy cap to size 6 and triple-whip the library to completion. This city grows very fast at +5 food with granary in place... so why not use our early granary and food to turn that into infrastructure power? Library is also good for two other reasons. First, this is a border frontier, and having library + monument will pop our 100 culture borders quickly, giving us dominant cultural control over this very nice river area. We'll be strong enough that Adlain won't even bother to challenge us in this region. Secondly, Olmec only really has four good tiles: corn, copper, and two grassland river tiles. We'll be able to work some Scientists there as well when we regrow and hit the happiness cap, just like in Teo. Unfortunately we'll have to work the 1/0/2 water tile next turn when the city hits size 4; borders due to expand in a couple more turns from monument. Ah well, such is life. At least I had the foresight to throw down that non-river cottage there earlier, so we have at least 3 decent tiles to work. Anasazi is just on military duty, perfect because it's our only city with a barracks. It's working rice, two grassland river cottages, and the copper. Will grow shortly to size 5 and pick up another hill mine, 9 shields/turn, for 4-turn axes and spears. I feel like that's a pretty good setup for the time being, supply the military needs of our other cities... Zapotec completes a granary this turn, thanks to a forest chop from our workers. The granary is really nicely timed, with half the food box full. City just needs to get that first slow growth (filling up the granary) and wait for that first border expansion to sheep, then it will be off to a very strong start. Even though growth has been stalled, we have both monument and granary before the city even hits size 2, so not all that bad. Library will be next build (for gold resource). I think our next city should go north of the horses, in the spot we've already discussed. That city can work the horses tile at size 1 and build a granary; initial growth will be slow like Zapotec, but we should have Code of Laws/Caste System not too far in the future, at which time we can force an Artist specialist and expand its borders. Horses city would make a great Heroic Epic/Moai location: work fish and cows for food, plus two more grassland farms; 7 hill tiles for production, 5 water tiles to benefit from Moai (plus a lake tile, does that also get bonus?) And the spot has no commerce potential at all, so it would be a great military pump. Just get granary, barracks, and forge and build soldiers forever. I like that spot for Moai over Teoihuacan because the latter feels more like a Great Person farm or Globe Theatre draft camp to me. Just not enough production to make Moai worthwhile. I think we'll prefer to draft or work specialists there. We'll see. Techwise, we finished Writing this turn. I set us to 0% science tentatively next... I want to get Meditation/Priesthood and then start stockpiling gold for a run to Code of Laws. However, we may also want to get Masonry for walls, although with an NAP in place with Nakor and a borders deal signed, that seems a little less urgent. Here's what I'll do: run 0% science for the moment and wait to see if Nakor accepts our Open Borders deal that I proposed. If he shows no further aggressive signs, we can proceed onto Meditation without too much worry. Nakor hasn't increased his power in the past few turns, which is a nice sign; feels like he would have kept going if he was genuinely going to attack. He also built a worker in Vinland rather than military. plako just inked an NAP with Nakor to Turn 130, so in our particular area we have: Us with Nakor: NAP to Turn 110 plako with Nakor: NAP to Turn 130 Us with plako: NAP to Turn 130 Looks like peace for the moment if all that holds. plako has hinted that he wants to attack together around Turn 130; I didn't say no, but that's way too far away at the moment to consider. If Nakor doesn't attack us for another 40 turns, we should be waaaaaay far ahead of him. We are already blowing past him in economy right now. With our two teams as neighbor, Nakor honestly needs to attack now or he'll just get out-teched into obsolescence. plako is #1 in population and we are #2. plako is #1 in Food and we are #2. Tough neighbors there for him, I will admit... So hopefully we just all stay peaceful, and we out-grow and out-tech Nakor by the time that NAP thing is up for renewal. OK that's all for now. Let me know if you have any suggestions. We are doing great if we don't get attacked.
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Post by Speaker on Mar 21, 2011 22:30:07 GMT -5
I'm fine with heading toward Code of Laws, if you think we can get it. +2 Happiness from religion+cheap temples sounds good to me. With such a lack of happiness resources, we may need to get Monarchy ASAP too.
The lake tile should get the Moai bonus, if I remember correctly, and I agree that would be a fine city for it. That city will be an absolute monster, with all the hills around, plus the horse, cow, and 6 or so water tiles.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 23, 2011 19:20:14 GMT -5
Update, Turn 73: Look at this. While exploring through mackoti territory heading to meet luddite, we found a totally unprotected settler. Could have killed the darn thing with ease by declaring war. I was almost tempted to do so, even with us having an NAP in place, but earning the lifelong hatred of another team just to whack one of their settlers didn't seem like it was worth it. Still, this is some pretty terrible play. Settler wandering around completely unguarded in neutral territory? Yeah, not the best idea... We founded our new city, Chinook on the barb city list, on the spot we negotiated with Nakor. Great city location, and pretty defensible on that hill spot. It's working one of the crabs from Teoihuacan, first build going into (of course) a granary. I will probably chop that granary to completion with our workers, and do a double or triple whip into library next after that (expand borders and open up Scientist specialists in a very high-food city). The two workers in this area could have pastured the sheep or built a road connection to Nakor for trade route purposes. I looked at this for a couple minutes, and found that pasturing the sheep would not speed up the growth rate of Chinook to size 2. (Takes 5 turns regardless whether we do the sheep pasture or not.) So therefore I decided to do the road first, covering our two workers with an axe for safety. I picked the actual road tile carefully: it's on the diagonal from Horsetown, the "weak" location where Nakor won't get culture until he hits the 100 mark, and our own borders will expand to encompass that tile in 4 more turns. As safe as I can make it, in other words... although by now I really doubt Nakor is going to attack (he hasn't built any additional military in the last 5 turns, and his capital his building a settler, according to build tracking). Here's a good question for you: can you build roads in another civ's territory with Open Borders? Pretty sure you can, wanted to confirm one way or another. I don't fancy waiting around for 4t for Nakor to build a cottage when our two workers can do the job themselves... As for Teoihuacan: Just enough happiness with the whipping penalty to get the 2 Scientist specialists at size 4. Now we start the clock ticking on our Great Scientist, 17 turns to go. Note that I'm working the grassland forest for one turn to get the work boat done, so that it can go to Chinook and connect that 5 food fish tile. Next turn I'll swap back to the corn and (slowly) build a worker here. Cherokee and Anasazi both finish axes next turn. That should be enough military for the moment, and I'm looking to go settler in the capital, worker in Anasazi next. Anasazi still has no culture and plans to get any in the near future, as it really has all the tiles it needs at the moment. Both cities are sadly at the happy cap, and Cherokee actually has to use "Avoid Growth" to avoid going past its limit. (I honestly think the mapmakers messed up; all of the other teams seem to have Calendar resources in ample supply near them, and yet we have none, except dyes in the extreme far north. Our atrocious furs location, and lack of silver, doesn't help either.) Zapotec finally grows to size 2 next turn and can start working the gold tile. Workers there are chopping forests while waiting for borders to expand at the sheep. Olmec still growing towards a library triple-whip; borders will expand there next turn, and pick up a lot of good tiles. Kinda been twiddling our thumbs there for a little bit waiting on that border expansion. Meditation research will be done next turn, and we're probably looking at 3t for Priesthood to follow that. Science rate with the 2 Scientists and our gold tile is very much on the upswing. It looks like it will take roughly 15 turns to get Code of Laws; we'll save cash to be safe for a little bit and then do a straight 100% rush towards the tech. We'll go for Monarchy instead of the religion falls while we're waiting. I think Confucianism is relatively safe, as no one even has Monotheism/Judaism yet. (Under other circumstances we might try going for that religion, but Code of Laws has the very strong appeal of getting Caste System along with the religion, so I think not here.) We're working so many cottages and Scientists that our Food stat has slipped from #2 down to #4. Our GNP is hard to gauge accurately, between culture and people flipping between min/max science and pre-requisite bonuses. I think we're a little above average there... If we had just one more happiness resource to play with, it would help enormously, as we could have another cottage at the capital and another city size in Teo/Anasazi. But that's life. We are still #2 in Total Population behind plako, and well above average in all the categories that matter (Power, Land, etc.) While we're not running away with things like we did in Pitboss #2, we're still in very good shape at this juncture. Once we solve our happiness crunch (hopefully Confucianism + Hereditary Rule), we'll be very strong indeed. regoarrarr asked for Open Borders for his scouting unit, which I granted. He was in-game when I logged in, and commented that our land was "very well developed." He also said they pretty much had "a big Lighthouse" and that was it. ;D I'm sure he and sunrise have realized by now that they screwed up enormously. They just founded their fourth city *THIS* turn. They have 8 total pop and have never whipped any city ever; we have 21 total pop and have already whipped 9 pop. So, uh, yeah - they are incredibly far behind. I'm a little surprised that the sunrise/regoarrarr/darrell team always seems to struggle so much in these games. I believe that they over-think things, like trying to carry out some zany plan to get an early Great Lighthouse, rather than just doing the boring, steady, normal plan of expansion. Guess we'll see what happened after the game... plako is really doing well. #1 in Food/Total Pop and #1 in GNP too. Hopefully all the other teams will focus on him and ignore us.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 24, 2011 17:09:05 GMT -5
Had a really interesting chat with mackoti at the start of this turn. After a whole bunch of boring pleasantries, he started telling me this about Luddite: I was asking for directions to Luddite's land, and suddenly he starts talking about plans to go to war. Craziness! I have no idea why you would start talking about that to a team you barely even know. Loose lips sink ships and all. Mackoti even seemed to realize during our conversation that he had screwed up, asking me to promise not to say anything to Luddite. Anyway, while this has little to do with us, it's a nice piece of news nonetheless. An offensive war at this point in time would be stupid on any number of levels. Hopefully we can sit back and watch some of these teams knock themselves out of the running while we continue to build and expand. You should probably log into the game when you have a chance, just to check out all of the vision we now have on Nakor's lands. He didn't say anything about prohibiting scouts, and I'm taking full advantage of it. I'd say his land is pretty similar to ours overall, with the one caveat that his extreme south is vastly better. He can get a silver/furs city with food resources that will actually be pretty good, rather than a horrible money sink like our proposed furs spot. Anyway, Nakor discovered Pottery as his last tech about 8 turns ago, and he finished another tech this turn, very likely Mysticism because he still has no way of getting culture. His empire looks a bit like ours a dozen turns ago, heh. We have vision on 4 of his 5 cities, and the capital Greenland is the only one with any city improvements inside. He has granary/barracks at the capital and that's it. Nothing else. Nakor just finished a settler in his capital, which is probably going east to found their sixth city on the border with plako, and most of his cities appear to be constructing granaries. So he is definitely not planning on attacking, and we're therefore quite safe. I can finally heave a sigh of relief, heh. We also should have a road connection to Nakor finished this turn, and start getting OB trade income next turn. Here are the Demographics, looking pretty good at the moment. We are very strong in Food, Power, Land Area, and Total Population. Production is a little subpar, although again it should be stressed that we're relying on whips for most of that. GNP is the hardest to figure out; I think we're a little above average there, probably (?) We are #5 and right at the Average mark when researching at break-even rate. We seem to produce a lot of beakers, although we also have rather high costs from our six cities (tied for most in game with plako and Parkin). Anyway, with all the culture and oscillating pre-requisite benefits, it's hard to tell for sure. 37 beakers/turn seems fairly solid for this juncture in time. At our current rate of research, we will reach Code of Laws right around Turn 90; that same tech/religion fell on T91 in the Pitboss #2 game, but that game had a much faster tech pace due to widespread Financial trait and non-Huge map costs. So I think we're in very good shape to land the religion at present. No one even has Monotheism/Judaism yet! I think that's about all. I'm sending two warriors to finally clear the black fog in the southern tundra; we did find another source of furs in the tundra (yay...) I think everything else is pretty self-explanatory if you have to play the turns. The only longterm concern is plako's grip on the #1 spot in Food, Production, and GNP. Hmmm..... troubling, although fortunately his two traits (Cre/Imp) are pretty garbage after the early game...
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Post by Speaker on Mar 24, 2011 19:25:08 GMT -5
What do you think about just grabbing Monotheism?
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Post by Sullla on Mar 24, 2011 23:00:13 GMT -5
I thought about it, but ultimately I think it's a bad idea for three reasons:
- I think it's extremely likely that there are one or two teams racing for Monotheism/Judaism right now, and will get there before us.
- Code of Laws is actually only marginally more expensive than Monotheism in beaker cost. For Code of Laws, we need Priesthood (103) and Code of Laws (603), 706 total beakers. For Monotheism, we need Masonry (138), Polytheism (172), and Monotheism (207), 517 total beakers. It's definitely more for Code of Laws, but a lot closer than you would think.
- Code of Laws also contains Caste System civic, which we can get a ton of use out of. Frankly, if it were just the religion there, I'd push for Monarchy tech and Hereditary Rule instead.
Again, we'll minimize risk by running 0% gold until we have enough cash saved to burn through at 100% research. If the religion falls while we're waiting, we simply go for Monarch instead (which Priesthood is also a pre-requisite for, fortunately). We only get screwed if someone steals the religion away from us right before we're about to land the tech.... knock on wood!
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