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Post by Sullla on Apr 10, 2011 22:11:05 GMT -5
No, those comments are fine. I can come off sounding way too irritating and obnoxious at times. Some people don't mind it, and some people can't stand it. I'm not deliberately trying to stir up controversy, but when teams make a nice play, I like to point it out, and often times that means a lot of patting ourselves on the back. I also criticize bad plays/mistakes when they occur, and not always in the most tactful manner. While I do try to work on that, sometimes it spills over in unflattering ways. I went back and put a notice at the end of that post you mentioned above, apologizing for the tone (but not editing it, so that people can see the original comments). Sometimes when posting in a private forum it's hard to remember that everything will be public someday... The map, I'm somewhat irritated about, but not too badly. I realize how hard it is to get everything right on a large map. This map has something like 2500 tiles, and there's just not enough time to go over everything and get it all set up properly. I'm pretty sure that this map is designed to be balanced at a macro level; we have more total land available to claim, at the cost of it being lower quality than what other teams have. Maybe, maybe not - that's my best guess though. My one comment is that the map team should have been a little more careful with the gold/silver/gems resources. Those things are extremely powerful in the early game, and it looks like plako and Parkin rode easy access to them into large empires. And I think our furs/silver should have been a little easier to access. But ah well, it's life. On the whole, this is an interesting and fun map to play. It's reasonably balanced, and that's good enough for me. We got another four population growths this turn, sending our "score points" soaring over 300. Parkin and plako are very close to one another there, followed by our team, and then a big drop off to the rest of the pack. In overall population we're getting really close now: we have 46 pop and plako has 52 pop. Our Food is 137 (#3) and plako or Parkin is #1 with 144. Getting real close there! Anyway, both of those teams are still ahead of us because they have 11 cities to our 9. plako furthermore shot his GNP up to 220 this turn (we are at ~120) on some kind of 100% research. I'm still trying to figure out where he's getting all of that GNP number; perhaps he's running mass Scientists with cheap Creative libraries (?) That would be a nice way to leverage his traits if true. I need visibility on his cities and/or Alphabet tech to get a better sense of what plako's really doing. Still, we're making really good progress towards the leading teams, after our forced stagnation due to the earlier happiness crunch. I am getting another worker out of Teoihuacan, sped along by a forest chop. It says 5t and will take 3t with the chop. Sadly, I don't think it's worth waiting for Math there, will try to save all the rest of our forests for another few turns until we have Math (tech + OR civic would get 37 shields from chop, on buildings at least). I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I believe the right turn to revolt our civics will be in 2t, on T99. The whipping math seems to line up best on that turn in several cities (Chinook and Apache mostly). I want to whip at the start of that turn, then flip to Caste System + Organized Religion, spend those turns running max Scientists in Teoihuacan, and then flip back to Slavery 5t later. Unfortunately we can't flip into OR + Slavery right now, or force us to delay Caste System for another 5t. So we'll go CS + OR first, then back to Slavery + OR, and then probably CS + default after that. Ahh Spiritual, if only you could swap civics more often than 5 turns! The Adlain border city should be founded on T103, and I'll have it set up so there's a grassland farm ready for it to work on the first turn, plus a (Mathematics) forest chop on the second turn for an instant granary. With the granary in place immediately and a second grassland farm ready at size 2, that city will actually grow at a pretty decent rate. Get it up to size 3 for +5 food, and it will be an OK spot, a lot like Fort Henry in our previous game. This is the city that luddite captured from mackoti; you can also see the ruins of the other city that was taken and razed. I thought about sending this to mackoti, and held off unless he requested it. A pretty nicely mixed army, although they will fare poorly against catapults, especially on open ground with City Raider promotions. We'll see. I want to explore south and loop around to the southwest, over by where those mountains block us. We might have a chance to get some cities past those peaks in the northern jungle. I sent Nakor a message accepting his T140 NAP, since it sounded like you agreed with it. Adlain also renamed all of his cities in-game, which was really jarring after having seen "Mecca" and whatever for the previous 95 turns. Parkin founded his 11th city, and his GNP totally sucks right now; he's average on the chart, and if you subtract out the massive culture from Stonehenge + Artemis + 11 free monuments, he's got to be one of the worst researchers in the game. Looks like total over-expansion to me (we actually have more resources connected with our 9 cities than he does with his 11). plako, however, is the real deal, and appears to have excellent research to go along with all his cities. This game is eating up a ton of time and running me a bit ragged with everything else I have to do (work, RB site moderation, YouTube videos), but I really am enjoying it. ;D Playing Civ5 earlier this year really hit home and reminded me how amazing of a strategy game Civ4 truly is. One of the best strategy games ever, no doubt. EDIT: Luddite just played his turn and took Balachi off of mackoti. That makes three cities taken thus far, two captured and one razed. Luddite is up to 9 cities now, although three of them are brand new and can't have much development. mackoti is down to just 5 cities and appears to be really hurting badly. Luddite didn't even lose any units attacking (although mackoti only lost 5k power, so there wasn't much fighting at all). It appears that planning aggression against your neighbor while building the Pyramids wasn't such a good idea after all, imagine that... Hopefully mackoti will at least be able to survive this war with his western core intact. It looks like the big dogs in this game are going to be plako, Parkin, luddite, and ourselves.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 11, 2011 8:48:31 GMT -5
Very quiet turn for us, with little of interest going on other than our discovery of Monotheism. However, it was a bit disheartening to see that plako founded two more cities this turn, taking him up to a grand total of 13. I feel like I've done the best I could, but it just wasn't possible to keep up with that kind of expansion. He's at 13 cities in just 98 turns, holy cow... We'll have city #10 on T103, but I still feel like a failure in this regard. I'm at a loss to see how we could have kept up with that pace. plako also discovered Currency tech last turn, so he will be getting double trade routes in all of those cities to help keep his economy afloat. Now his economy has to be suffering badly from all that; with Currency tech, we can see that he has 4g in the bank this turn, and I'll be able to see what his per-turn income is once he drops down off of 100% deficit stuff. I'm pretty sure now that plako is running mass Scientist specialists with his cheap Creative libraries and using that for research, which is a darned good strategy for his setup. (This would also explain why we are close to him in Food count, when he has so many more cities. Specialists don't prioduce any food, naturally.) Anyway, it was pretty disheartening, but I don't see anything else we can do other than soldier on. At least we're in good position to take advantage of any plako mistakes, and I feel like other teams will have their targeting sights set on plako.
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Post by Speaker on Apr 11, 2011 12:04:53 GMT -5
He captured a city pretty early on, right? That provides a huge advantage, especially if it can produce another settler or two for the empire. Combine that with an extra gold funding his research so he could maybe slack on cottages and work more mines (or slave), and expansion is easier. He is also Imperialistic and Creative, so he gets cheaper settlers and has no need for building monuments, and it's pretty clear that he has a good start.
The good news is that Creative is pretty from the Medieval age on, and Imperialistic becomes just cheaper promotions once the land is filled out.
So we'll see if Plako can take his fast start and snowball....or whether his lead will dwindle as the game goes on.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 12, 2011 16:19:10 GMT -5
We have reached Turn 100. We're in good shape, although far from where I would like us to be. Here's hoping for an even better 100 turns ahead.
Last turn (T99) I double-whipped two cities and then revolted us over to Caste System + Organized Religion. I wasn't entirely sure about going into OR, but the decision was definitely the right one, as we got the 25% bonus on much of that whip overflow production. Of the two cities I double whipped, both of them immediately regrew one pop, and Chinook will actually regrow its second pop point next turn (Apache in 2 more turns). 60 shields in each city for 2 or 3 turns of missed population. Well timed, I think. I'm using Caste System to run 4 Scientists in Teoihuacan at the moment. The city is at the current happiness cap, and when we go back to Slavery, I'll double-whip the city and have it regrow back pop, then run Scientists again in Caste System. Fun stuff.
Speaker, we have two major issues we need to decide. The first is which city location we are going to settle next. Cherokee produced a settler this turn for the Adlain border location (to be settled on T103), and another settler will be due in 5 more turns. We have three choices for this settler: the fish/rice spot in the NW, the pigs/wines/gold spot in the NE, or one of the southern tundra locations. We could make an argument for any of them: fish spot has the most overall food, wines spot has a resource we don't currently have, and the southern locations are the easiest to set up with our workers. Where do you think we should go? We can do any of them, but we need to decide now so that our workers can start preparing with roads and such.
The other major issue is which tech to pursue after Mathematics (due in 2t - I've got a bunch of forest chops timed to finish as soon as it completes). There are currently 6 other teams with Math based on the bonus beakers we're getting, so it's pretty widely known. I think we have three compelling choices for our next tech:
- Currency (690 beakers): extra trade route in every city and markets. This would significantly help our economy.
- Monarchy (517 beakers): Hereditary Rule civic and wineries. The cheapest tech by quite a bit, as we get 40% pre-requisite discount. This should probably be our next tech if we want the wines city location in the NE.
- Metal Casting (776 beakers): Forges and triremes; forges are hugely important for increasing production, especially when paired with OR for the 50% bonus. Essentially medieval factories for pushing infrastructure. Forges are also worth +2 happiness due to our gold and silver. Downside is that this is the most expensive tech and it does nothing without building expensive forges.
My tentative feeling is that Currency would help us the most right now; those extra trade routes are worth 20 base commerce (our total income is currently ~120 commerce, so that's a very sizable increase!) and a market in some of our key commercial cities would do wonders. We also get +1 happiness from furs with a market (and later +1 from whales) so it's not even a total waste from a happiness perspective. Then I would go Monarchy, followed by Metal Casting, giving us time to go market -> forge in a lot of cities. I realize that the opposite order would be more ideal, but at the same time, bonus commerce will speed us to Metal Casting that much faster. What do you think?
Internationally, we're in pretty much the same position as before, sitting in 3rd slightly behind Parkin and substantially behind plako. I'm honestly wondering how plako can afford this many cities; he planted another city this turn for his 14th overall. plako founded cities on T85, T90, T94, T98, T98, and T100. We are currently losing money at 40% science with a very well-developed empire of nine cities. How he's managing this with 14 cities without going bankrupt is honestly beyond me. My best guess is that plako is sitting on 0% science or close to it, and running Scientist specialists via cheap Creative libraries. His GNP is consistently amazing, sitting at 280 this turn to our 147, despite plako having 9 gold in the bank. So... again, I honestly don't know how his numbers can look so good. I can't wait to get Alphabet and see what techs plako actually has. I'm really hoping that this is some kind of GNP smokescreen, because my Civ instincts keep telling me that it's not possible to plant this many cities so quickly and also be the research leader.
I sent out some diplomatic emails to regoarrarr and WarriorKnight just trying to sound them out a bit. I'm trying to figure out if there are any large alliances forming in the game; doesn't look to be right now, but we want to be kept up to date on what's going on out there. Can't afford to find ourselves at the wrong end of a coalition. I'm also quietly trying to see what others thing about plako; if there's going to be a group formed against him, we at least want to be aware of it, whether or not we're part of it. plako is the only other team that actually worries me; I have little fear of Parkin's wonder-building "no Slavery" ways, and luddite is still very far behind us despite his impressive army. Perhaps Parkin will make me eat those words, we shall see... but for now, plako is the one team that has me worrying.
I guess that's all. I'll throw up an overview picture in the RB thread without saying too much there. Let me know what you think about our next city and our next tech.
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Post by Speaker on Apr 12, 2011 21:04:01 GMT -5
Sullla and I spoke over IM, and our consensus was:
1) Research Currency and plant the Fish/Rice city 2) Research Monarchy and plant the Wines/Pig/Gold city
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Post by Sullla on Apr 15, 2011 10:58:51 GMT -5
Update after a couple of quiet turns: We founded our 10th city Navajo this turn. It's a weakish city because is has no bonus resources of any kind. However, the land itself is very good, in a fertile grassland river valley with tons of forests for chopping. This spot is designed to lock down our western border with Adlain. Navajo will get a lot of worker attention in the upcoming turns; we already finished a grassland river farm so that it can start at +3 food/turn. Next turn, a forest chop will complete a granary, so it will be able to fill up most of the food box during this first slow growth to size 2. I'm hoping for a free Confucian spread, since the Holy City is a mere three tiles away by river. If we get our religion, then two forest chops would complete most of a library (75 shields); if not, it'll be three chops. Religion + library would get us 3 culture/turn, enough to win the local battle with CEO's Spite next turn. Even if we lose, there's only one tile in dispute, and Holy City Olmec nearby will ensure we always control the tiles to the north. This city really just needs to get to size 2, where it will hit +4 food/turn, with a nearly full granary box, after which growth to size 3 (and +5 food/turn) will proceed rapidly. Once we have three farms, we can proceed with cottaging the rest of the river tiles. It's a longterm project, but this city will become pretty good eventually. And our land isn't so good that we can afford to waste spots like this. Cherokee is building another settler (2t) to head off to our fish/rice spot in the NW. It looks right now that that city will be founded T108/T109, depending on how fast I can get a road built up there. As for Cherokee itself, I think it's time to go back to growing again after that settler is built. We can knock out a cheap Buddhist temple, then go straight onto market (they key building in our commerce heavy capital). Temple gets us to size 11, market gets us to size 12, wines + HR gets us to size 14. I see no reason not to go straight to size 14; we're currently working 5 grassland cottages at +5 food, so we can easily get to 8 grassland cottages (the max our terrain allows) at size 13 without even having to drop our food count. So we'll go back to grow there for awhile, which will help our economy quite a bit. After taking this picture, I changed Anasazi to settler (8t). I realized that if we were going to be growing the capital, we'd want a settler out of another city, and the timing was best from Anasazi. That city really doesn't have great longterm potential, and it didn't hurt much to put it on a long settler build. By starting it now, the settler finishes on T111, and founds the wines city around T115, which is right about when we should be getting Monarchy tech. Since we'll need to also force a Caste System Artist to get those wines into our borders, now seems like the time to get the settler started. Have to plan ahead... Olmec and Zapotec are building missionaries for our eastern fishing cities, Teoihuacan and Chinook. Teo won't get a free spread because it has Judaism, and we can't wait forever hoping for a lucky spread into Chinook and Chehalis. Now is a good time to build the missionaries, before we get the techs for markets and forges and such. Apache is knocking out a galley so we can go explore the land across the water to the east, where we're blocked by peak tiles. I'll stick a warrior on the galley to serve as a cheap scout. Apache is going to be a really nice city for us as it continues growing; it will be our military pump for the immediate future. I went ahead and forced an Artist in Illinois to get the border expansion there. There weren't any great tiles for the second citizen to work after the cattle (just lake tiles), so it seemed like a good time to get the free expansion. Chehalis did a forest chop into worker, which is nearly complete (2t). We have 11 workers currently and that will be the 12th. Teo continues its slow progress towards a Great Scientist. We really need religion here to raise the happy cap; with three more happiness, I could pick up the other crabs tile and then run 6 Scientists. Soon enough, I guess... There are two forest tiles here waiting to be chopped, but I'm holding off until we get our religion spread into the city. It's worth 7.5 extra shields per chop with Confucianism. I will revolt us back into Slavery civic in 2 turns, double-whip the Jewish monastery, and then go back to growing the city again. Would have done more whipping but we've been up against the happy cap (or over it) pretty much the whole game. Our Great Scientist is probably due around roughly T125, which we'll use to lightbulb Philosophy tech for Pacifism civic. Do need to grab Alphabet tech for that however... although that's pretty good for us too, since we can then monitor everyone's teching. Currency is due in 6t, and I should be able to discover it in the time stated by fiddling with Scientist specialists and such. (At the moment we just barely discover the tech before running out of cash; Currency is worth enough that I'll do micro stuff to make sure we actually get it on T109. Will probably have to force Scientists in a place or two.) Two Great People were born this turn, a Great Scientist and a Great Engineer. There were only 3 previous Great People the whole game so far (our Scientist, plako's Scientist, and Parkin's Prophet). No idea who got the Scientist, could be anyone. Engineer was either mackoti (from Pyramids) or Moogle (from Hanging Gardens) or luddite (from forge Engineer specialist). If it was either of the first two, they got lucky while running scientists + wonder. If it was luddite, very nice careful planning. I actually don't care so much about the Engineer, since we have no wonders on our horizon we care about building. We continue to be "Team #3" in the Demographics. Third in GNP, third in Food, third in Land Area, third in population, third in score. Parkin and plako hold the first two positions in all categories. I was feeling bummed out about this, and then I checked the Total Population numbers. Check this out: plako: 60 Our team: 53 So for all of those extra cities and crazy GNP stuff, plako only has 7 more total population points than we do. Don't get me wrong, we're behind and all, but it made me feel a lot better to see that. I really, really want to get Alphabet tech to see what he has on the research tree. GNP can be such a misleading stat. Maybe plako's actually like 6 techs up on us or something, but if he's not and it's a "false positive" GNP reading... Could be pretty interesting. I talked a bit with Parkin, and floated the idea of organizing a worldwide economic boycott of plako. Basically, we would see if we could convince all of the other teams to Close Borders with plako. He would then be denied all foreign trade route income, which would potentially crash his economy. Peaceful boycott! What do you think? Worth going forward and asking teams about this? I think it's worth a shot to see what happens. Guess that's all for now. Oh - Nakor teched Code of Laws for his first Classical tech and swapped to Caste System. We'll see how much value he can get out of it.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 18, 2011 12:44:22 GMT -5
Very little is happening in the Pitboss game right now. I would post pictures but there's not much to discuss or go over. We're researching Currency (3t) and growing upwards and outwards. Our settler is on its way to the rice/fish spot; it will be delayed a little bit because of all the hills on the route there. I have workers building roads, but moving onto hills slows them down (no Fast Workers, sigh). Should settle on T109, same as when we discover Currency. Next settler will follow at the wines/gold/pigs spot around T115.
Main news internationally is that luddite finished the Colossus, which he was a mortal lock to do ever since he used the Oracle to grab Metal Casting. Luddite has also taken the last mackoti city east of the mountains; with mackoti having catapults, they may sign peace soon. I think it would be tough for luddite to push into mackoti's core, but we will see. Also, Adlain discovered Currency this turn (cheapening the cost for us, yay!) which means he also has Mathematics tech. Nakor settled his 10th city to pull even with us, and two of those ten are beyond the mountains to the north of his core. He must have ferried them past the peak tiles on a galley (he named the cities Crossing and Crossing II, making it obvious where they went). Current city count:
plako: 14 Parkin: 11 luddite: 11 Our team: 10 Nakor: 10 Moogle: 9 regoarrarr: 9 WarriorKnight: 7 Adlain: 7 mackoti: 6
regoarrarr is recovering a bit and spamming cities, using the Great Lighthouse for trade route income. They are still very far behind but doing better than before. Luddite is going to be very strong once he gets his conquests integrated into his empire.
The big news diplomatically is the proposal we made for other teams to cut off trade with plako by closing their Open Borders. Maybe you could call it the "Locke Proposal", haha. ;D Teams are really dragging their feet on responding, but with so much anxiety over plako's size, I think we have a real chance to get an agreement. Our scout is moving through plako territory now, and most of his cities don't even have defenders in them, nor do they have any infrastructure. He may not be doing quite as well as the Demographics make it seem...
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Post by maskeddetective on Apr 18, 2011 16:57:38 GMT -5
The embargo proposal was a pretty big move in a game where you are trying to lay low.
You've written a lot about plako's strong position, so I'm not surprised you wanted to take direct action. It will be really interesting to see if you can get over the ”I will... if you will” critical mass.
Are you confident in your C&D, or will you need Alphabet to see where people really stand?
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Post by Sullla on Apr 20, 2011 10:25:47 GMT -5
Alright, Turn 109. Lots of turns with practically nothing happening, and now we finally have some stuff going on again. This should be a fairly large update. First of all, the attempt to get teams to boycott plako seems to be a failure. About half of the other teams were willing, but the remaining half just didn't care. Adlain flat out refused, and mackoti never responded to any of my messages. In fact, hardly anyone is writing anything at all diplomatically. I send out pretty frequent stuff, and often don't get responses, or only the most half-assed form answers. I wondered if everyone was boycotting us for some reason, but regoarrarr said he was experiencing a similar reaction. So... I don't know what's going on with this game, but I feel like most of these teams are just going through the motions right now. Like look at Adlain, he's pretty much just sitting around waiting for someone else to win the game or take him out. Even though the boycott idea was a failure, I still stand by the decision to take it, just to do SOMETHING to try to shake up the game and pull the leading civ back to the pack. What we have right now is boring... Say what you will about regoarrarr, at least he writes me back, which is more than I can say for most teams in the game. Some overview shots of our civ (apologies if these are overly large): There were two real big things of note on this turn. First of all, we discovered Currency tech, and as always, that's the key economic tech in this era of Civ4. We pulled in an extra international trade route in every one of our 11 cities, for 22 extra free commerce. This single-handedly boosted our civ from break-even science rate of about 70 beakers/turn to break-even science rate of 95 beakers/turn. So one tech increased our true research by just shy of 50%. Yes, Currency tech really is that powerful! Monarchy tech is next at a very healthy 4t research pace. This is a little bit deceptive as we are getting a 40% bonus on this tech from pre-requisites... but it's still pretty good, and I believe plako remains the only team with Monarchy tech. He's the only one in HR, at the very least. After that, we are going to want to do Alphabet tech next (probably also 4t, maybe 5t depending on costs) because we're getting close to popping our next Great Scientist. We need to do Alphabet first so we can lightbulb Philosophy with our GS. I won't lie either: I want to be able to see what techs other teams have very badly. Knowing every single tech that every single team has for the rest of the game is EXTREMELY valuable information. If you watch what they're researching, and how fast they're researching it, you can make very informed deductions about their plans. This is why I think running the Espionage slider for research visibility is generally so silly - if you track techs with Alphabet, you can predict where teams are going next with very high accuracy. And that commerce is better spent on research. Anyway, Alphabet/Philosophy don't really do that much for us right now, aside from letting us run Pacifisim civic some of the time as we push towards our third Great Scientist. What they do is set us up for a Liberalism push later, because with Philosophy cleared as a tech we can use future Great Scientists on Education (and potentially Liberalism itself too, if we get even more of them). And maybe we won't even be a candidate in the hunt then... but maybe we will too. With no Philosophical civs in this game, the value of running Pacifism + Caste System + 5 Scientists in Teoihuacan is not to be underestimated. We can always turn those Great People into Golden Ages too. We'll see. Always want to have a plan for the future, if possible. Discovering Currency tech also meant marketplaces. I have them queued up in our biggest cities, Cherokee and Zapotec and Olmec (after work boat for new city). I'm going to whip the ones in Zapotec and Olmec, after chopping a forest into each city. This isn't the optimal timing on whips, but I want to go back into Caste System civic next turn, so it'll have to do. Those cities are the only ones with unimproved tiles (having to work some forests here and there), which means they're good candidates to whip anyway. Cherokee can build its market naturally. More on the capital... it just grew to size 11, which has us one behind Parkin's capital (12) for top size in the game. Given his ridiculous happiness overload (gold + silver + gems + furs + ivory + Charismatic!) and our extreme paucity of happiness, I'd say we've done pretty well there. The city will temporarily grow into unhappiness again at size 12, which will be fixed via Hereditary Rule civic and wines. Market gets us up to size 14, from the furs bonus. I plan to keep growing as long as we have food, stuffing extra archers or whatever in there for HR happiness. We have seven cottages done at the moment, and the worker in the area will finish the eighth grassland cottage in a few turns. So at size 14, we'll be working 8 cottages, the deer/cows food bonuses (+7 food), and 3 grassland hill mines. That still leaves us at +4 food, able to pick up four further grassland hill mines or plains cottages or whatever. We could conceivably be getting 30 shields/turn (base) at size 18. But wait! It gets better. We already have two religions in the capital. Judaism from Teoihuacan would get us a third. We are near-mortal locks to get Philosophy tech and Taoism as well. Assuming luck with missionary spread, that gets us 4 religions in the capital, worth four monasteries. So we could conceivably be working the 8 cottages + library + Academy + 4 monasteries = 115% science. And then add Bureaucracy bonus to that... well, you see where I'm going with this. ;D Elsewhere, Teoihuacan successfully accepted a Confucian missionary this turn, for much needed happiness. That allowed me to start putting forest chops into the city, which were delayed for the Organized Religion shield bonus. I want the Jewish monastery for two reasons: spread the religion to the capital (in case we're not in OR) and for the extra culture, to ensure we win the local battle with Horseland. Now I would whip this city normally, however I want to run 5 Scientists with Caste System starting next turn to get that Great Scientist. So for the moment, that means laying off the whip handle. Chinook fortunately got religion spread for free; it doesn't have enough population to whip a market yet, so I think I'm going to chop a forest into another worker there next. Goodness knows we can use more workers. Chehalis can whip library next turn right before we go back to Caste System - slightly non-ideal whip, but no biggee. Northern cities. Remember how I said there were two major things this turn? The second was the founding of Carib, our 11th city. This pulls us even with luddite and Parkin, behind only plako's 15 cities. (Yes he just planted another one!) I made sure to finish the road with our worker before founding the city, which got us an instant trade route in the city (otherwise we would have had to wait until the start of next turn). I looked at the math for Carib, and it works out better if we force an Artist immediately at the start of next turn, to get the 5f fish into play. Basically, this comes out ahead of working the rice tile and then forcing an Artist at size 2, because this way I can use the workers to chop a forest for an instant granary and fill up the food box at size one. If I do it the other way, the workers must farm the rice tile first, and then it delays the granary forest chop. Unfortunately, I moved one of the workers before doing the math, delaying our granary chop by one turn, sigh. Think before you move the workers... So Carib will take 8t to reach size 2, but at that point it will have granary + fish + rice tiles improved, and will be off to a flying start at that point. Apache building military, will probably do settler next. I swapped one of those lake tiles at Illinois over to the grassland forest after taking this screenshot, as that took us from 3 shields to 4 shields -> 5 shields with OR bonus. Definitely worth it. Workers are roading to the next city location, and it will be founded T113 if all goes according to plan. We'll definitely force an immediate Artist there too for border expansion, get the pigs and wines into play. Probably wait to go back to Slavery until after that's done. Also, notice the galley? We have a warrior on board, who's going to explore across the water. Nakor has two cities across the water, hopefully we'll find either them or more unclaimed land. The Demos look really good, almost shockingly good. Currency tech improved our GNP by a huge margin (although again we do get a lot of pre-reqs on Monarchy tech). But at the same time, that's our GNP at break-even rate too, not some crazy unsustainable deficit. Food has really climbed upwards, although it will drop again as we whip cities next turn (sigh). I checked the Total Population number off the percentages, and we have 65 total pop compared to plako's 70. Only five fewer citizens than him depite so many fewer cities! We are very Average in military power, right in the middle of the charts. We're ahead of both Nakor and Adlain, our two neighbors, so I don't feel a great need for increase there. The numbers on the chart are thrown off somewhat by luddite, mackoti, and plako - those three are all far above the rest of the field in military power. plako will likely attack WarriorKnight soon, I can't see any reason for him to build up his military power otherwise. Time will tell. Our production also stinks, but that's because we're growing and whipping/chopping for production. That number tends to look terrible when you choose to work those 2/0/1 grassland cottages over 1/3/1 grassland hill mines. Overall I'm really happy with how we're doing. Currency just made so much of a big difference. mackoti even owes us 40g for that earlier warrior gift, which I sent him an email about. He seems to have more or less given up on the game, so I hope he pays us back. (He sure was quick to ask for the gift earlier! Heh.) We're still lurking, biding our time, waiting to make a move. As England, time is on our side right now. Our UU and UB are both upcoming in the Renaissance era. Spiritual as a trait gets better and better the longer the game goes on. Our 65 total pop compares to 42 for Nakor and 30 for Adlain. (We have visibility on all Adlain cities, and 8 of 10 Nakor cities.) We continue to snowball ahead of these teams. At some point, we'll be out of room for peaceful expansion, and we'll hopefully be far enough ahead of our neighbors to make a move on them. In the meantime... expand and tech, expand and tech. You might want to check out what's going on with the game, just to see what I've missed. If there are any wonders we want to target, let me know. (I can't see any right now, nor do I really want to pursue them with a gazillion Industrious rivals, but let me know.)
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Post by Sullla on Apr 21, 2011 9:30:21 GMT -5
Update for T110, no pictures though. Don't have time. Big international news: WarriorKnight has declared war on plako! The exact reasons are somewhat unclear, he's apparently trying to get revenge for the war earlier in the game. Since WK has 7 cities and plako has 15, there's a good chance that this won't end well. I've emailed WK asking him what his goals are... more or less, asking him why he's going to war in the first place. Hopefully we'll get some more information there. This could go one of two ways: either WarriorKnight slows down plako and helps out the rest of the teams, or WarriorKnight gets crushed and speeds plako along into an even more dominant position. Time will tell.
Less heralded but also important was the founding of Christianity this turn. I'm about 90% certain that it was Parkin, as it would fit with everything he's been trying to do thus far. Even the timing is perfect, since he discovered Currency tech 9 turns ago, and that's about how long it would take him to research Theology. (The tech is 8t research for us at break-even rate.) If Parkin still has his Great Prophet from his Stonehenge build, we'll probably see a shrine soon. Or, he could have used the first Prophet on a super-specialist in the capital, and be hoping for a second one for his shrine. We'll see in time. Note that with plako doing defensive whipping for this war, Parkin has taken over the lead in Total Population. We have 68, plako had 70 at last count, and Parkin has 71 this turn. Very close there!
It goes back to the old question again: how is Parkin doing so well? I don't want to hate on the guy, but it really feels like he shouldn't be in this leading position with his Stonehenge before settler, no Slavery, and heavy concentration on religion playstyle. If I had to guess right now... I think he's the one team that's had everything break in the right direction so far. Remember in the Pitboss #2 game, where Nakor didn't really do anything special and ended up in a strong position? It feels like something similar happened here. Let's see, Parkin was fortunate to see these things happen:
- Very large map where Stonehenge opening (decided before the game started) turned out to be a good choice. - No aggression from neighbors. - Western neighbor (luddite) stopped settling cities to build an army to attack other neighbor (mackoti), leaving Parkin to take all the disputed land between then uncontested. - Extreme abundance of pre-Calendar resources, meaning happiness was never an issue.
Anyway, we'll find out more after the game. And I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, I just think that these moves Parkin made shouldn't have been rewarded with as much success as they did. If he had tried to play the same opening on a map like the Pitboss #2 one, it would have been a disaster.
For our civ, I realized this turn that I messed up the whipping math. Chopping a forest doesn't change the number of shields needed for a whip until the following turn... should have remembered that, pretty basic stuff. And we couldn't whip the market in Olmec at all, since we only just started work on it this turn. So I decided to hold off and whip our markets next turn, as that was the plan all along, getting 3 pop whips instead of 4 pop ones. This will also make the timing of the whips slightly better, whipping with more food in the box. The only real downside is that our newest city Carib will have its growth delayed slightly, as I have to wait one more turn for Caste System revolt. Next turn (T111) I'll do three whips (Olmec, Zapotec, and Chehalis) and then swap us over to CS civic.
As always, let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 21, 2011 21:53:52 GMT -5
OK, happy fun civic swap time! I went ahead and did our planned whips at the start of the turn: three different triple whips in Olmec (market), Zapotec (market), and Chehalis (library). We lost 9 of our 69 total pop, yeouch! As someone who religiously tracks the Food stat, I always hate to do that, sigh... Obviously it's worth it though. Olmec (size 8) and Zapotec (size 9) were both working unimproved forest tiles, as they had outgrown their local labor supply. Zapotec and Chehalis will both regrow one pop size immediately next turn, so those whips were pretty well timed, and Olmec will grow back in just 2t. And the markets will help significantly; the library in Chehalis not so much, but hey, it's an icy fishing village, and every little bit of infrastructure helps. Because I was curious, I snapped the Demos before and after swapping civics. Here's the results: Food: 186 -> 164 [the big loser] Production: 59 -> 50 GNP: 185 -> 190 [haha, due to hiring Scientist specialists with Caste System in Teo] So overall, not that bad. Our research rate actually increased from Caste System scientist usage, although our costs also increased slightly from not working water tiles. The whips were definitely worth it, even as I shed a tear for our poor English souls trodden under the lash. Now this was more fun: Yeah, baby! Whip in the morning, hire Scientists in the evening, and party all night long. Damn I love being Spiritual! ;D We'll have our next Great Scientist in just five more turns, meaning our Great Person production is actually running ahead of our Alphabet research, heh. We can sit on him for a turn or two before he carries out his lightbulb. Also, after taking this screenshot I realized that building a temple here in Teo is stupid, because we're about to go to Hereditary Rule civic, and this place will have a large military garrison pretty much forever. So I opted to go ahead and (mostly) finish the barracks instead. We'll definitely be drafting this city later, so it's not wasted. Elsewhere, we finished a settler for the wines spot, and I set Apache (top shield producer) to build another settler, due in 6t. Where do we want the next city to go? I'd say one of the two southern locations, probably the stronger deer/furs spot. We want to get the rice/fish and wines cities up and running a bit before pushing further north, I think. Carib, the newest city, forced its Artist for border expansion (this is another reason why our Food stat went down!) Capital still growing and building a market. That's all I can think of at the moment. Monarchy tech due shortly (although we'll have to wait 5 more turns to revolt into HR civic, which only affects us at the capital). Plenty of chitter chatter about the plako/WarriorKnight war, but nothing too substantial. Everyone waiting to see how that turns out. The mackoti/luddite war seems to be in stalemate - still going on, with nothing happening. Mackoti stopped responding to emails a while ago, and seems to have given up on the game. That's not good, although it will help us settle the northern jungle...
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Post by Speaker on Apr 22, 2011 11:17:43 GMT -5
Sorry I haven't been around at all the past few days. Work has been crazy, and the in-laws have been in-town since Wednesday, staying in my computer room. I'll try and catch up with you at some point later tonight, if I can.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 22, 2011 11:37:49 GMT -5
Hey, no worries. Been nothing much going on in this game lately. Now if we were invaded by 4 or 5 teams at once, and I had to play it out solo, then I might feel differently. Here's something of interest we've just discovered. We've found what appears to be a small island just to the north of Nakor's Fishtown, with rather nice land. Ideal dotmapping would be a city on the plains hill NE of the pigs, and then another city on the NW grassland hill, the only spot that can claim the fish tile. Of course Nakor knows about this spot too... he's had visibility here from Fishtown for quite a while, and he has a galley prowling about too. The question would be, should we make a play for this island? There's a settler due in 5t from Apache, which could get over and found a city on the plains hill as soon as T121. My gut feeling would be to go ahead and try for it - this island is worth at least two cities, probably three, and we could quickly force a border expansion with Caste System, creating a strong disincentive for Nakor to settle here. Controlling this sea region and blocking off Nakor from going further north would both be important goals to achieve. Of course, a settler could pop off of that galley next turn and make all of this a moot point (heh), but until that happens, I say to go for it. We have a continued NAP with Nakor, and we're not scared of him. Elsewhere, we will found our 12th city on the X tile indicated next turn, then force Artist for border expansion to claim wines, pigs, and gold. Carib just got a forest chop completion for its granary. We're a little short on workers, so I'm turning the two remaining forests at Chinook into two workers, one under production right now and the next one to follow. We need to deforest that region anyway, and getting some much-needed workers seems like a solid plan to me. Also check out sad little Navajo, the city on the Adlain border, now size 2 (with granary) and growing very rapidly. It's actually growing faster than I can build farms to keep up with it, haha. I'll probably work an Artist for a turn or two there at size 3 to get the borders popped out, while waiting for worker labor to catch up. Parkin is revolting to Christian religion this turn, so we temporarily take over the #1 spot in GNP. Pretty nice. The whipped markets helped us out a ton here; we went from 104 beakers @ -10gpt up to 110 beakers @ 0gpt, after markets finished and cities regrew population. "GNP" went from 190 up to 211, for what that's worth. As expected, the market whips clearly were worth it. We're doing pretty good. With plako tied up in war, Parkin appears to be the current top dog. Remarkable. At least he has to waste turns in Anarchy changing to his religion (and if he ever decides to swap civics!) while we can use Spi to continue catching up.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 23, 2011 11:46:49 GMT -5
....so that pretty much removed any doubt. We're settling this spot next. ;D It's definitely an overstretch, but the land is way too good to pass up. We have to make a play for this. Settler is due out of Apache in 4t, and I can have a city settled on the X tile on T121. One Caste System Artist border expansion would essentially hand us this whole island area. Now we just have to hope that Nakor doesn't go here in the next few turns. I would whip our settler in production if we weren't in Caste System. Good sign though: Nakor just founded a city this turn, at his silvers location in the deep south. (He named it "Silvertown", letting us know exactly where it is!) That means we probably have some time before he plants another city. Hopefully, anyway. Nakor doesn't have Currency tech yet (pretty sure at least) and so he probably can't afford too many more cities until he gets it. His economy is significantly weaker than ours - we have 66 pop to his 44. Half again what he has. Elsewhere, we settled Saxon at the gold/wines location, our 12th city. City is forcing an Artist for a much-needed border expansion; all of its best tiles are in the second ring. We also discovered Monarchy tech and started research on Alphabet. I will revolt us to Hereditay Rule civic as soon as another civics change is allowed, in 3 turns. Capital will be unhappy until then, but oh well. We're letting it continue growing into unhappiness right now. Chopped a forest into a worker over at Chinook, and I'll follow it up with another chop/worker pair. Our Great Scientist is due in just 3 more turns in Teoihuacan. Parkin revolted again this turn, finally changing civics from the default into Slavery/Organized Religion. It's a good move, although his costs will definitely increase from the "Low" maintenance of the default civics. Apparently he either does not have Monarchy tech for HR civic, or has enough happiness not to bother. It's fun though how we've gotten 2 free turns on him here as he had to go through Anarchy (yay Spiritual!) Parkin also founded another city this turn, his 12th as well. Our teams are on an equal footing there, although we've achieved it in totally different ways: Parkin never whipping his cities and relying on high Production to build stuff, us working cottages and whipping/chopping for most everything. Parkin also had a wee bit more happiness resources to play around with... regoarrarr also founded two new cities this turn, taking him up to 12 overall. Their team has founded 7 cities in the past 20 turns, after a mere 5 cities in the first 90. This is very obviously a Great Lighthouse trade route spam tactic. Good idea, although I think they are somewhat of a paper tiger right now. It's impossible to have the worker base necessary to support that kind of city-spamming... Luddite actually had a city captured by mackoti last turn, and he did a lot of whipping this turn (5 whips for 6 total pop) in response. Those two teams seem intent on destroying each other's chances to win, heh. Hopefully WarriorKnight will do the same with plako. If it comes down to us against Parkin, I like our chances.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 25, 2011 11:27:22 GMT -5
OK let me update you with what's going on for T115/116: Sorry for putting that full size, it was really hard to read the city information when I shrunk it down to the usual size. Anyway, times are still peaceful and prosperous for our Barbarian civ. I revolted us back to Slavery civic and into Hereditary Rule at the start of the turn. This necessitated some extra micro at the end of last turn. I queued up a market in Teo so that we can whip it this turn, and actually forced a very slight food deficit there, so that the city would be just short of growing to size 9 (at the ideal spot for a whip) rather than hitting size 9 and being stuck with half food in the granary box. I haven't whipped Teo yet, but I will before hitting end turn. Elsewhere, Saxon expanded borders this turn and can start growing. Two workers moved onto the pigs tile this turn, and will have the pasture done next turn. Navajo, over on the Adlain border, was not going to expand borders in time from our forced Artist, so last turn I did this: Stuck an extra Artist in there at food deficit to get the border expansion. We had to get that border pop before revolting out of Caste System, as Navajo was mostly out of grassland tiles in its 9-tile radius, and I wanted very badly to pick up a whole bunch of river grassland tiles in its expanded radius. Caste System provided the solution, at a slight cost in food. I love that civic so much... it's a shame Slavery is such a necessity in Civ4 most of the time, as Caste System is probably my favorite civic in the game. Fortunately we get to run both for being Spiritual. Navajo will run +5 food surplus from its three farms, and will grow onto river grassland cottages. I'll probably finish the library with another forest chop, and then look into a quadrule-whip market after that. No free religion spread here so far, despite being three tiles from our Holy City. Cherkoee is nearly done its market, and gets one turn of being happy before growing again into unhappiness next turn. We'll have wines connected in 2t and the market completing shortly thereafter, taking us to happy-neutral at size 14. Apache finishes its settler next turn for the island spot. I'll have it go back to military for a bit, as Anasazi supplies the next settler. (Maybe another spot on the island, maybe a location in the deep south. We'll see.) Nakor does have a galley sailing around this island, however he's been moving around it for the last 3-4 turns now. I have to feel like Nakor would have already landed a settler if there was one on the boat. Really hope so, haha! So long as there's no settler on the boat, we should be safe to claim the island, as our own settler will be there very soon. We did generate our Great Scientist this turn, who moved towards the capital (not that it matters much!) We'll burn on the Philsophy lightbulb next turn, and take another religion with 99.99% certainty. I guess someone could discover the tech at the start of the next turn and found Taoism, but that does seem exceedinly unlikely... That will allow us to start setting up the Slavery/OR -> Caste System/Pacifism cycle we've talked about earlier. When we want to whip or chop something, we make sure we're in Slavery and Organized Religion civics. While our cities were recovering from whips, we flop over to Caste System and Pacifism civics, which allows Teoihuacan to run 5-6 Scientists at once. 30 Great Person points/turn in a game with no Philosophical civs will add up real quickly. Even better, we still get to whip Teo every 10 turns and produce some nice infrastructure too! I've been microing to set that up, and it's coming along very nicely. With the plako war slowing him down, we're really starting to look good internationally. Our GNP is down quite a bit from firing those Scientists and Artists when we dumped Caste System for Slavery civic; GNP went from 202 to 175, and actual beaker count decreased from 120/turn to 108/turn. Same 0gpt break-even rate in both cases. However, our Food and Production increased substantially, from 177/53 up to 194/61. Pretty clear that those Scientists trade food for research, eh? We're now closing in on the leaders in Food, just 14 behind the top spot. As recently as five turns ago, we were behind in Food 208 to 164. Thirty food in five turns is pretty good stuff, as we fire specialists and recover from those whips. Of course, we'll lose more of this when I quad-whip Teo later this turn... sad face... Alphabet will tell us exactly what techs everyone in the game has, so expect a report on that next turn. I'm REALLY looking forward to that, although beaker tracking suggests that we are one of the top civs already in research. (I checked some of the researchable techs via GNP "known civs" bonus: no one has Alphabet, one team [luddite] has Metal Casting, two teams have Construction, one team has Aesthetics. Rivals aren't exactly burning up the Classical era!) We'll know for sure next turn. The wars out there aren't going so great for us. WarriorKnight suffered a big loss in Power last turn. No idea what happened, but it can't be good. Luddite posted that he smashed mackoti's army in a battle. That will show up on the Demos next turn, and we'll see how bad it is. Mackoti has not responded to an email in weeks, and appears to have pretty much given up on the game. Adlain played his turn while I was in-game, logging in and logging out within like 3 minutes. Don't think his heart is in this either... Luddite has emailed us asking for closer friendship ties. We were on pretty good terms with mackoti earlier, but with him not saying much of anything and likely on his way out of the game, I think it's time to cut strings with mackoti and go with the winner. Luddite wants to work together against Parkin/plako, and that sounds good to me. What do you think, Speaker? I think luddite would be a good ally to have, and we could use someone else on our side up on the north side of the map. Longterm, I see us trying to eliminate Adlain and annex his land. He's one of the weakest civs in the game, has excellent land, and it would be highly defensible as well. (Adlain has no western neighbor, just water and then WarriorKnight on the other side.) Ideally, we'd get a long term deal with Nakor and use that time to take out Adlain, then let Nakor be a weakish ally serving as a buffer state against plako. I have no clue if that would happen, but that's what would be ideal. Attacking Nakor would be silly, as his land isn't that great and it would only put us next to plako. Adlain is the one to attack. I do feel bad about that because he's been a really nice neighbor, but... we're going to have to eliminate someone to win, and he just hasn't played strongly enough so far. All plans subject to change depending on what happens!
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Post by Sullla on Apr 26, 2011 10:53:20 GMT -5
Alrighty, Alphabet tech is in! That's the news of the turn, but let's get to some routine stuff first. Our exploring scout has found luddite's core cities. And... he has mines everywhere! I remember earlier we were looking at luddite's huge Production stat, and trying to figure out where he was getting all those shields. Now we know. Luddite has pretty much mined his entire core, and he's been using that to build the army which is currently engaged in war with mackoti. It looks like luddite's economy is mostly running off of water tiles, which provide nice yields since he also has the Colossus. He can turn out a ton of production with his cheap Industrious forges (which are everywhere from early Oracle slingshot of Metal Casting) and happiness is no issue, with gold + silver + gems all benefiting from those same forges. Luddite is also going for the Great Library next (he has Aesthetics, only team in game with it) and will likely use his Great Engineer on the Parthenon, to increase the effect from the free Scientists. Luddite is a mortal lock to land Great Library, IMO. Well played so far, and certainly using the Industrious trait to good effect. However... while this economy based on running mass mines, coastal tiles, and wonders is working out great *NOW*, it won't last forever. Yes, those 2/0/3 coastal tiles look awesome compared to our 2/0/1 grassland cottages when they first start out. But once we get into the Renaissance era, that Colossus is going to obsolete in time and our cottages will grow up into 2/0/5 towns. We can even get production out of them with levees and Uni Suffrage civic. Specialists/wonders also drop off greatly in power as the game goes on. So... I don't think luddite's prospects are nearly as good in the long run. Now maybe he'll overrrun mackoti and just get so much land that it won't matter. A lot could still change. I do feel better about our team though, now that I can finally see where all that Production came from! We also got several pop increases this turn, and finished the settler heading to the Gems island. Galley is waiting to ferry it over the water next turn. Teoihuacan, which was quad-whipped last turn, regrew one pop point this turn, and has enough food excess that it should grow on 3 or maybe even 4 straight turns. (I didn't do the math, but it's growing back FAST.) Our wines resource will be connected next turn. Market is almost done in Cherokee, which will be a significant boost in income. I selected Metal Casting as our next tech, as forges are the logical building to add next. Technically we should have gone forges before markets, but we needed Currency tech very badly for the trade routes. Forges will let us pair up the forge/OR combo for "medieval factories" and give us a huge boost in infrastructure. The only other choices are military ones (Construction, Horseback Riding, etc.) and we just don't need them at the moment. We are up to #5 in Power, and the only teams ahead of us are the four that are fighting wars: plako, luddite, mackoti, WarriorKnight. We have more Power than both neighbors, neither of whom is gearing up for war, and with whom we have long-running NAPs. So... might as well keep pushing the economic path, eh? But the real story of the turn was seeing everyone's techs. Now we know exactly what everyone else has. Here's how that shakes out: Our TeamAncient Age (17) Classical Age+ (6): Mathematics, Currency, Code of Laws, Monarchy, Alphabet, + Philosophy [Medieval] Tech Score: 3646 Just for reference purposes. We have all Ancient Age techs, 5 Classical, and 1 Medieval. If you remember from the Pitboss #2 game, tech score is an unofficial tally of total beakers researched. It's not completely accurate (I count all techs of the same era equally, even though some are much more expensive than others) but it does give a rough estimate of research progress. It's all automated in Excel anyway, so I might as well use it. plakoAncient Age (17) Classical Age (5): Mathematics, Construction, Currency, Monarchy, Horseback Riding Tech Score: 2879 plako has the most similar techs to our team. We are the only two teams with all of the Ancient techs, no doubt because we both wanted Monotheism for OR purposes. (Well, plako was the Judaism founder too!) We both have 5 Classical techs, with plako swapping out Code of Laws and Alphabet for Construction and Horseback Riding. His tech choices have been good ones, as plako has a hot war on his hands with WarriorKnight and Code of Laws would be pretty useless to him. No faults with any of these tech choices, I think plako's done a great job. He has NOT run away with the economic side of things, as the GNP graphs were suggesting before. This is very good news for us. We are a little bit ahead of plako in tech! And get used to hearing that, because as it turns out, we're equal or ahead of everyone else in the game. ;D ParkinAncient Age (16), Missing: Archery Classical Age+ (4): Mathematics, Currency, Code of Laws, + Theology [Medieval] Tech Score: 2941 Parkin is also doing pretty well in tech, and has that huge GNP graph which looks so intimidating on the Demographics. He has not researched Archery tech, which seems bizarre to me. A lot of teams did this, actually. Archery is dirt cheap and lets you build cheap defenders for Hereditary Rule purposes; I really don't understand why you would skip this tech (?) But Parkin wasn't the only one. Anyway, he has Math, Code of Laws, and Currency as his Classical techs, to go along with Theology as the Christian founder. Parkin did go to OR on his last civics change, so he should be able to get some value out of researching all those religious techs. He'll have to spread Christianity around though, and that will take some time. Parkin is probably a mortal lock to build Apostolic Palace, as he is Industrious and went for Theology so early. That's a shame because it would be great for us, but ah well. Such is life. In summary, Parkin is doing well, but not nearly so well as his huge GNP graph suggests. (He has a LOT of culture, which inflates the graphs.) regoarrarrAncient Age (15), Missing: Meditation, Monotheism Classical Age (4): Mathematics, Currency, Calendar, Iron Working Tech Score: 2411 Yeah, guess what? These guys are really tearing it up on the tech front recently, fueled entirely by Great Lighthouse trade routes. Their score has been going up very quickly, no doubt due to picking up techs. Of course, this is also a very artificial way to run an economy, and not sustainable in the long run when those trade routes expire. However, it seems to be working great at the moment. These guys are like the plako of Pitboss #2, but with more cities and more land. Great Lighthouse city spam has gotten them back into things after their atrociously terrible start. We'll have to see where they go from here. In terms of tech choices, they must have a lot of jungle, as suggested by the Iron Working and Calendar picks. They are the only team in the game with Calendar, and one of only two with Iron Working. NakorAncient Age (16), Missing: Archery Classical Age (3): Mathematics, Currency, Code of Laws Tech Score: 2174 Like Parkin, Nakor has decided to skip Archery for some reason. I guess that's why we've never seen any archers defending his cities... For Classical stuff, he has Math (which every team in the game has) along with Currency and Code of Laws. Those are good tech choices: Currency is worth a lot on this map, and Code of Laws allows them to switch into Caste System civic. Nevertheless, Nakor isn't researching anywhere near as fast as we are, and he is sitting squarely in the middle of the pack at present. I expect him to go for Monarchy tech next. AdlainAncient Age (13), Missing: Masonry, Polytheism, Monotheism, Priesthood Classical Age (4): Mathematics, Currency, Horseback Riding, Iron Working Tech Score: 2257 Adlain has made some bizarre tech choices. Despite the heavy investment into religion early, he's skipped all of the religious techs other than Meditation. He can't build temples and he can't run Organized Religion civic. Strange decisions. Amongst the Classical techs, he has Math/Currency, but then Horseback Riding and Iron Working (!!!) I thought that might be some precursor to an attack, and then I looked at his Power rating, which is still last in the game. And from the Power graph, you can see where he got IW and HBR techs (both are worth 10k points) from spikes upward, but no building of soldiers followed. It doesn't make any sense - why research those techs if you have no intention of fighting? Other economic techs would have been far more useful. I don't get it. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on Adlain and watch to see if he's planning any kind of military strike on us. I can't see it succeeding, since he has half our population, but it never hurts to be safe. mackotiAncient Age (13), Missing: Meditation, Polytheism, Monotheism, Priesthood Classical Age (4): Mathematics, Construction, Currency, Horseback Riding Tech Score: 2257 This guy has entirely skipped the religious part of the tree. He does have Horseback Riding and Construction for military purposes, although he is still losing slowly to luddite. mackoti got creamed in a battle two turns ago, which finally showed up on the Power graph. He dropped down to our level of Power, so the end is probably nigh. I don't see too much more to say on this team. ludditeAncient Age (15), Missing: Monotheism, Archery Classical Age (3): Aesthetics, Mathematics, Metal Casting Tech Score: 2097 Remember all that stuff I said earlier about luddite working too many mines? This is the result. His economy is pretty terrible right now. Outside of Math, the only Classical techs that luddite has are Metal Casting (which he Oracled, and did not research) and Aesthetics. And yeah, the Great Library is great and all, but you know what's even better? Techs like Currency, Monarchy, Code of Laws, etc. I guess luddite doesn't need Monarchy because he gets +6 happiness in cities with a forge, but he is falling very, very far behind economically. He badly needs to kill mackoti and get back to building up his civ. The land over there is pretty awesome, so maybe he'll be able to do it. Note that luddite does not have Construction tech despite being at war for so long. MoogleAncient Age (15), Missing: Meditation, Archery Classical Age (2): Mathematics, Monarchy Tech Score: 1783 Overexpansion alert! We've found the slaze/Inca of this game. Remember back when Moogle threw down four cities at once and built the Hanging Gardens? I said that there was no possible way that he could afford that, and no way he had the worker labor to support that. Guess what... he couldn't afford those cities after all! Moogle has built one city in the past 30 turns, he is well behind the leaders with only 9 cities (to our 12 and plako's 15), and his economy totally stinks. He just finished researching Monarchy and swapped into HR civic... and that's pretty much all he has in terms of contemporary techs. No Currency, no Code of Laws, no Metal Casting, nothing else. He is VERY far behind already. It's a shame, as Moogle has some of the best economic traits in this game (Cre/Ind). I think that the whole Hanging Gardens thing just put him too far behind. Remember, you have to ask yourself, is this really worth it? Just because you can make a cute play with an early wonder build and settler spam, doesn't mean you SHOULD make that play. Sometimes conservative, normal city building is the better path. WarriorKnightAncient Age (15), Missing: Polytheism, Monotheism Classical Age (2): Mathematics, Horseback Riding Tech Score: 1783 He's behind by a lot. WarriorKnight needs to land Construction soon or plako will simply run over him. I'm not at all confident about his chances in this war. plako will probably win, and then he'll be very, very strong. We'll have to devour our own civ (Adlain?) to keep pace. Overall, despite all of the fancy plays that other teams have made with wonders and wars and such, we're the ones who have the most techs. I wouldn't say we're ahead, but we are indeed even with plako (whose traits are completely focused on the early game!) We are getting very close to taking over the lead in Food and GNP, the two key economic metrics at this stage of the game. We're already #2 in Land Area behind only plako's city spam + Creative pairing. Our UU and UB are both still ahead of us. The Redcoat in particular is almost uncounterable in the Renaissance era, a draftable rifle who kills enemy rifles. Very nice, very very nice. We are almost assured of having another Great Scientist for an Education lightbulb, giving us a major edge in the Liberalism race. Honestly, if we get another 30 turns of peace to build up, we'll be in an extraordinarily strong position.
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Post by maskeddetective on Apr 26, 2011 14:25:03 GMT -5
Thanks for the massive tech update! Unless you post that over at RB, I could now be the best informed lurker in the house. One question if you’ve got time: given the earlier happiness crunch, could you have moved Metal Casting and Monarchy further up the tech priorities? Metal Casting, in particular, feels like it could have been really valuable as you’ve been whipping so aggressively for production. The game is really all action at the moment, and your long posts show how much is going on in just your empire.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 26, 2011 16:11:46 GMT -5
That's a good question. Here's why we had to go in the order we did: The key thing in Civ4, more important than anything else, is being able to figure out what you need the most at this moment in time. Prioritization is one of the toughest things to learn, as you have to know all the various game mechanics, balance them against one another, and figure out which one is left most wanting. In our particular situation, we decided to go in this order: Code of Laws -> Poly/Monotheism -> Math -> Currency -> Monarchy -> Metal Casting We had to do Code of Laws first for several reasons. Number one, it's a religious tech, and for a Spiritual civ controlling your own religion is a giant benefit. Confucianism was worth +2 happiness in every city, from religious spread and our very cheap temples. But if it was just the religion, we wouldn't have gone for Code of Laws first; we also needed the tech for Caste System, to set up our constant swapping. This is the power of a Spiritual civ, their ability to multi-task in every civic at once. You must take advantage of this when playing a Spi civ. We had no way to expand borders easily in our cities prior to getting Code of Laws. Chopping/whipping a monument or library were our only choices. Compounding the issue further, our furs and silvers were located in tundra soutern spots where they had to get a border expansion to claim the resources. Caste System allowed us to force an Artist in a size 1 tundra city with 0 food. It would have taken ages to get a monument in that city and then expand borders at 1 culture/turn. So Code of Laws absolutely *HAD* to come first over everything else, as it was worth +4 happiness and also allowed us to claim land with easy border pops. It also let us set up the Caste System Great Scientist play that we just put into action. This was the most vaulable tech for our civ's setup in the Classical Age, hands down. If we had played a different civ, if we had been Creative or Industrious, then we would have made different choices. That's why Civ4 is such an amazing and deep game. After that, we took the religious techs to be able to expand our religion. Again, as a Spiritual civ Organized Religion civic was more valuable than it would have been for other teams. Because we had just gotten that infusion of happiness from Code of Laws, we didn't need to go for Monarchy tech immediately. Instead, we went for OR civic, then Mathematics (for forest chops) and then Currency. That last tech was really important, as our economy was starting to crash under the weight of too many cities. Currency always makes the most difference in rescuing your economy from overexpansion. Always. Been that way since long before the game was released! We chose to do Currency over Monarchy and Metal Casting because it would speed our progress to those techs, improving our research rate. Even though I would have preferred to have forges in place for market whips, I feel pretty strongly that it worked out better the way we played things. The timing for Monarchy was pretty good, as we got the tech just as we were starting to use up the happiness gain from Code of Laws. We also landed the tech at the same time that we settled our wines resource, which was a factor in the delay. (If we had had wines in our core, we probably would have gone for Monarchy earlier.) The Metal Casting timing is pretty good too, since our cities have just finished markets and are regrowing after those whips. They'll grow back in time for a nice 3-pop whip into a forge. So why not earlier Metal Casting? We're not Industrious, number one. It doesn't provide that much happiness for us; we didn't have the silvers connected until T95, and so forges only would have been worth +1 happiness. We could indeed have gone Metal Casting before Monarchy, but at that time our cities were building markets. They didn't need another city improvement then! Better to get the passive happiness from HR and connecting wines at that time. Now we certainly would have gone for MC before Alphabet under normal circumstances, if we didn't have the Great Scientist lightbulb for Philosophy tech sitting around. I love Metal Casting, and forges are a very important city improvement. However, we had higher priorities in this game. That's pretty much all there is to it. Code of Laws was top priority, then Currency after that for the economic gain. And then we did Monarchy because our cities were building markets at the time. On the plus side, Luddite is still the only team with Metal Casting, so we'll be a front runner in getting forges going. Parkin and plako are the only teams in Organized Religion other than us. We should be one of the first getting the medieval factory combo in place. Oh, and it sounds like there's a ton going on in this game right now. Two wars being fought, and a lot of expansion/economy/wonders going on with the other teams. Don't mind little old us, just flying along under the radar...
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Post by Sullla on Apr 28, 2011 8:15:15 GMT -5
OK! Game was down pretty much all day yesterday, but now we are back up and running. There's a lot going on, and we've definitely gotten into the interesting phase of things now. I'll go through what our civ is doing now, plans for the future, and then international stuff with the other teams. The best news for this turn was the loading of our settler onto a galley for transit over to the island spot with the gems. This, combined with Nakor's continued sailing north with his own galley, essentially ensures our control of the desired spot. We land next turn (T119), move to spot T120, then settle on T121. Unless Nakor is unloading another settler with a second galley as we speak, this spot should be ours, and then the whole rest of the island (peninsula?) will fall to us. Since there's at least two (and probably three) high-quality city locations over here, this is a pretty big deal. I will ferry two workers over immediately to pasture the pigs, force a Caste System Artist for fast border expansion, and we'll be well on our way. We also completed a winery down at the bottom part of this picture, near Saxon. This removed the latest unhappy face at our capital, now happy-neutral at size 13. We finish a market at Cherokee next turn, granting us another happy face (from furs) and a nice boost of income. The market is worth about 6gpt right now, and of course more than that as our commerce continues to grow. When we popped our Great Scientist for Philosophy, the religion was founded down in our iceball fishing village of Chehalis. Not the best spot, but it's a fairly safe location, so alright all things considered. We had a Confucian missionary moving to Chehalis, which successfully spread the religion there despite the new Taoist faith. The free Taoist missionary is headed to the capital, where we'll have about 80% odds to get the spread. Really hope we don't get unlucky there, as getting another missionary out of Chehalis will be a pain. I got another worker out of Chinook via last turn's forest chop; I think we have 13 overall. Worker surply is just barely keeping up with the need for improved tiles, more or less right where we want to be. I mean, I could always use more workers, but we're rarely working unimproved tiles. Alright, here's my latest Great Idea (TM) for us going forward. I was thinking about this last night, and trying to ponder ways that we could get a Great Prophet for our Confucian shrine. The thing about shrines is that they don't scale by map size; you are always stuck with the hard limit of 3 missionaries, and the gold benefit is always one per city. They don't function like corporations, in other words. Therefore the larger the map size, the more valuable a shrine can potentially be. Here on a Huge map, there's a very big incentive to control your own religion + shrine combo, especially for a Spiritual civ like us. (This is in contrast to a Team Battleground setup in the traditional MP 5 vs 5 game, where religions are totally ignored, and correctly so.) Confucianism has already spread pretty widely, and it looks like about 15 cities have it so far, several of them beyond our borders. Right now, a shrine would already be worth about 20gpt with our market in Olmec. With Nakor spreading the religion on his own, and this map being so large, it's not a stretch to imagine the religion reaching 50 cities by the Renaissance era, and we could increase our gold output via market, grocer, stock exchange, and Wall Street. In other words, that shrine could be worth a good 10-20% extra science on the research slider all by itself. If there's a reasonable way to get a Prophet, we should go for it. Now normally it's very difficult to generate a guaranteed Prophet outside the early game. You'll often get them at low odds in the 20-30% region (usually when you don't want them, ha!) but if you try to get a straight Prophet, it takes absolute ages. Prophets are limited by specialist slots: you need a temple to force a Priest, and you can't get Priest specialists via Caste System. Normally, getting Great Prophets means investing in early religion wonders (Stonehenge, Oracle, etc.) and if you don't go that route early, you generate other Great People and raise the cost in Great Person points, closing off that route. However, these rules do not apply to us, thanks to the magic of a Spiritual civ! As I said, the limiting factor on Great Prophets is Priest specialist slots via temples. As a Spiritual civ, temples are first of all very cheap for us to build. We just need the religion, and we already have two religions + two temples in the capital. Many thanks to Adlain for sending us that Buddhist missionary earlier! We will very likely get Taoism spread in there in another couple of turns from our free missionary. Potentially, we can get a fourth religion, Judaism, via a missionary from Teoihuacan. So we have the religious means largely in place: two religions guaranteed, a third very likely, and possibly a fourth. If we can avoid striking out on the missionary dice roll, we just need to build one or two more temples. That gets us the specialist slots. Then we rely on the power of Pacifism civic. Normally two Priests will get you 6 Great Person points (GPP) each turn, and since we need 300 GPP for our next Great Person, that's an eternity of 50 turn. Not worth it. But we're Spiritual and can pop into Pacifism civic, which turns that into 12 GPP/turn. Suddenly the number is down to 25 turns. With a successful Taoist religion spread and temple, now we're up to three Priests and 18 GPP/turn, 17 turns to a Prophet. In the event of Judaism, we're up to 24 GPP/turn, a mere 13 turns. Note that this is the functional equivalent to having EIGHT temples! No wonder you can't do that normally. Now it will take longer than that for us, because we'll be alternating between Pacifism and Organized Religion every 5 turns for whipping purposes. It will probably take us 25-30 turns to generate a Great Prophet. And it will hurt the capital's production from having to work Priest specialists over mines, no doubt about it. Still... isn't it worth the effort? I have a feeling this is going to be a long game, and we'll have our Shrine up around the start of the medieval era. Furthermore, we can build up Great Scientist points in Teo at the same time, and simply wait to pop the next Scientist until after the Prophet is done. After all, we don't NEED another Scientist for a little while, as the next one goes for an Education lightbulb. Let's use the intervening time to get our shrine up and running! ;D Anyway, that's my latest crazy plan. I really like this one, as it involves a combination of all the stuff we've achieved so far: multiple religions, constant civic swapping, our cheap Spiritual temples, and so on. Note that something like this isn't really possible without being Spiritual - you could run a Pacifism specialist strategy, or an Organized Religion whipping strategy, but never both in the same game. The sheer versatility of the trait is what makes it so strong, and it's a shame to see it go so underutilized in most games. The civics are strong - use all of them! There was also a lot of diplomacy taking place on this turn. Luddite sent us his minimap (very small above, feel free to zoom in) which revealed... well, not too much, actually. Looks like he hasn't explored all that much because of his war with mackoti. At least I know where all of his cities are now so I can go visit them with out scout. Luddite hasn't really expanded east at all, which explains why Parkin has gotten so big. (I believe that Parkin has water to his east and regoarrarr on the other side, much like Adlain has water to his west and then WarriorKnight across it. Not sure, but that's what others have led me to believe. This would help to explain why he's succeeded so far, neighbor who focused entirely on the other direction, water barrier on the other side. Perfect builder scenario!) Luddite expects to win his war soon, and I don't really see much mackoti can do to change things. mackoti also emailed us. He said that his situation was dire, and wanted us to research Iron Working and then send him iron. He had some kind of outlandish plan to research Machinery and then build crossbows (for use against vultures, I guess?) and wanted us to supply the iron. I gave a polite refusal to that. It's not the direction we want to go with our research, plus we don't even know for sure that we have iron... although we'd better with this much land. I don't feel too much sympathy for mackoti. He's the one who picked this fight in the first place. Luddite is fighting the whole war with vultures, chariots, and spears. Luddite still has no Construction or Horseback Riding. mackoti, on the other hand, does have Construction. So... I'm not sure why he's losing so badly. He should at least be able to hold out and get peace. Tactics must be bad if you can't win with the catapult advantage. regoarrarr congratulated us on landing Alphabet and offered to transcribe everyone's techs if we emailed him our F4 screen. Uh, thanks but no thanks there! Nice try though. I sent another polite refusal back. Parkin sent a long email which was very polite, without actually saying too much. We mostly are chatting about how much we're each worried about plako. Of course, we're both in slaze "EXPANSION MODE" right now and neither one of us is going to stop that to go fight someone far away from us. But there's much wringing of hands over the downfall of WarriorKnight, who is really taking it on the chin at the moment. I'll see if I can get Parkin to supply WarriorKnight with copper, as he's lost his own source. (This will probably involve sending our extra copper to Parkin, who has only one of his own.) I don't really want to trade copper directly to WarriorKnight, since that's really obvious and would throw away any prospect of good relations with plako. I'll see what I can do there. Parkin also threw down 2 more cities this turn, taking him up to 14 total. His ability to afford these cities is very dubious; we're already up Alphabet, Monarchy, Archery (heh) and our Philosophy lightbulb compared to Parkin having Theology on us. We're ahead in tech even if you don't count our Philosophy tech, very far ahead (1600 beakers) if you do. I guess we'll see what happens going forward. Pretty sure our economy is better though. Finally, Nakor emailed and wanted to talk about extending our NAP agreement. He suggested going to T175, and I think we should accept. What do you think, Speaker? The way I see it, Nakor is a natural ally for us against plako. He can serve as a buffer zone for us with the much stronger civ to the east. We prop up Nakor the same way we supported Dantski in the last game. Meanwhile, with guaranteed peace on one side, we can then concentrate on knocking out Adlain to the west (who is extremely far behind, is one of the weakest teams in the game, and who has lots of high quality, highly defensible land). Now we won't be going after Adlain for some time yet, but planting the seeds of alliance with Nakor now feels like a strong move. Nakor as our friend, plako as our enemy. Never let it be said that we let pre-game assumptions dictate how we played! I guess that's it for now. Let me know if you have any thoughts.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 29, 2011 14:07:18 GMT -5
Updating for today's turn (T119): Cherokee finished its market, taking us up to about 45% science at break-even rate. We gain +10gpt at 40% science, and lose -14gpt at 50% science. If we could set the science slider in different increments, our teching rate at true break-even would be about 120 beakers/turn right now. I have set us to the higher 50% mark for the moment, as we have a little gold in the bank to burn through, plus I'm going to whip some population shortly, and it's better to run a higher science slider when we have more pop working tiles. Metal Casting should finish in the stated 3 turns with no problems. The capital will probably go ahead and finish that monastery for the 10% science boost. Our Taoist missionary will roll the dice on a religious spread next turn. I tried to look up the calculation for religious spread based on how many religions are already present, and couldn't find it. I believe that it's roughly 80% spread chance when you have 2 religions present already, so... here's hoping. Will suck if we have to get another Taoist missionary from all the way down in Chehalis on a failed roll. Assuming success, I'll finish the monastery (1t) and then build us our third temple, for Great Prophet generation as detailed in yesterday's post. Teo is going to double-whip its Jewish missionary next turn as part of that same plan. I want to get four religions and four temples in Cherokee as quickly as possible, as we won't be able to get our third Great Scientist until we get our Great Prophet. Teo will be working to help out in that venture. We can change civics again in 2t, and I plan to go into Caste System + Pacifism. Therefore a lot of cities are going to get whipped before that happens. To wit: - Chehalis whips market next turn (3 pop) - Olmec swaps to work next turn and then whips T121 (2 pop) - Ditto for Zapotec - Apache swaps to worker next turn and gets a forest chop - Chinook narrowly misses having enough pop for a market whip. I'll keep growing and whip forge there as soon as we're in Slavery again next. - Illinois, Navajo, and our new northern cities are all growing pop for forge whips. Not enough pop for market whips and forge + religion will do the most to speed up their growth. That will get us a nice infusion of workers, and then we can grab forges in most of these cities on the next round of whips. Our state religion is present in 9 of 12 cities, just missing Navajo, Carib, and Saxon. We should get a free spread to several of them, especially Navajo which is 3 tiles away from the holy city. With those three new workers coming in, I think we'll be set for the moment. Our island settler landed this turn, moves onto the hill tile next turn, and founds the city on T121. This coincides with our swap back to Caste System, allowing us to force an Artist right away. Workers will land on the pigs tile T121 and have it pastured when the new city expands its borders. Looking pretty good up here, in other words. I don't think Nakor can beat us to the spot anymore. That means we have to start thinking out where we settle next. There are basically three spots we can go: - Down in the southern tundra that we've been ignoring forever. - Over in the west in the sole unclaimed spot on the Adlain border. - Another northern spot on the island by the fish. I must have spent 15 minutes thinking about this, and I think my preference is for the tundra spot by the furs. Although it's a weakish spot, I feel like we'd be overstretching our worker capacity to push any further north right now. I also definitely don't have enough workers in the west to get the last spot (with no food bonuses) on the Adlain border. I think that we'll want to push further north with the next settler after this one. (Actually, I might dial up two settlers next, one from Anasazi and one from Cherokee. I really would like to get that spot over by Adlain!) But please do feel free to weigh in with any thoughts you might have on this. Internationally, WarriorKnight has lost his capital, and it looks like the beginning of the end for him. If it wasn't already. We are trying to put a deal in place to get him copper, running it through Parkin, although I don't think it really matter that much. mackoti also continues to whip heavily, and it's only a matter of time before he's also eliminated. The capture of Athens takes plako up to 16 cities, and Parkin planted yet another city this turn as well. The city score looks like: plako: 16 Parkin: 15 Our Team: 12 (almost 13) regoarrarr: 12 Luddite: 11 Nakor: 11 Moogle: 10 Adlain: 8 WarriorKnight: 6 mackoti: 5 I'll admit, I do worry about these teams having a lead in cities on us. We've got 13 cities in the first 120 turns of the game, which feels like a lot to me. I wonder sometimes if we should have been more aggressive with expansion though. Do you think we should have pushed for more settlers (?) I look back at our territory, and I feel like we couldn't have gone too much faster and still maintained adequate worker labor to keep up with our expansion. Still... well, I don't know. It's tough sometimes to see all those city names on the diplo screen and not get worried. The good news is that most teams in the game definitely seem to be suffering from over-expansion. The world tech pace isn't exactly racing along right now. Since picking up Alphabet, there have been exactly 2 techs discovered worldwhip (amongst 10 teams!) in the past 2 turns. No one got anything last turn, and this turn Adlain got Calendar [he ran his gold down from 71 to 8 at unsustainable 100% last turn] along with regoarrarr getting Monotheism. Yes, that's a small sample size, but you would think with this many teams that they'd be grabbing techs more quickly. We are actually the #3 team in GNP at 0% science right now, heh. Not bad. At our slight deficit, we have 200 GNP: "Rival Best" is 217, Rival Average is 131, Rival Worst is 40. We have 215 Food compared to 234 for the leader. (Since we have significantly fewer cities, that's not bad at all.) regoarrarr did cash in his Great Merchant for 1000 gold on a trade mission, so expect him to burn through that cash and pick up some techs soon. At least thus far, not too much tech movement from the other teams. plako might become a monster once he finishes this war though... I guess I'll try to pick up the pace of expansion slightly, just because we seem to have the economy to afford it. But as always, there's no point in adding cities if you can't have workers to improve them, and units to defend them.
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