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Post by Sullla on Mar 25, 2011 10:16:17 GMT -5
Posting this from free Internet at McDonalds on the road, so I'll make this quick:
- We found a Luddite warrior in Nakor's lands. He has 5 cities (as expected) named after various Irish beers. With visibility now on mackoti's Demographics charts, I swapped our EP spending over to Luddite, as the highest team in score that we don't have charts on. Parkin to follow. WarriorKnight/regoarrarr are backwards and we don't really need much info on them.
- We found a silver resource in the deep, deep south. Warriors are exploring. Probably next city after the horses one will go down there and grab either furs, silver, or (ideally) both with one plant. Remember that once we have Caste System, we can force a border expansion anywhere with a forced Artist specialist, and can therefore take the best spots without worry about having to get culture. Mini-Creative!
- While fiddling on the Espionage screen, I happened to see that mackoti has a ton of production invested in something in his capital. I took the time to ran the numbers, and he's got 425 shields into something. Looks like a Pyramids build in his capital, so expect mackoti to complete that any turn now. I've always felt that Pyramids was a total sucker's build in these games, slowing you way down for very little benefit, but I guess we'll see what happens. If we're really lucky, other teams are wasting time on the build too. There are a lot of Industrious teams in this game, after all...
Feel free to look around if you want, I did end our turn so it's not necessary. Have a nice weekend!
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Post by Sullla on Mar 26, 2011 18:09:34 GMT -5
Hey Speaker, hope your weekend is going well. Glad to be back here, and I even enjoyed the conference I was at more than I was expecting to. Not so much the 5 hour drive each way though... Anyway, here's the latest update for T76: Boom, we've got our luxury city spot. While this is indeed a garbage spot, it gets us furs and silver with a single settler. And bad as the land is, we can steal the fish from Chinook and get a draftable size 6 city, which is enough to be semi-decent. Connecting that silver by road will be an absolute nightmare though... that would connect with Sailing tech and a road on the silver, right? Or does it have to go through a city for that to work (?) I dunno. This should be the next city after the horses one, as by then we should have Code of Laws/Caste System, forcing an Artist for the border expansion. Nakor probably won't like this spot... I don't think we care though. I mean, it's not like he's going to be settling here or anything. What's he going to do, stick a city behind Chinook? Whatever. Fortunately this is also a pretty awesome defensive location too, with its back to the sea and three peaks blocking attack from all but a single tile. Also, if we can't defend Teoihuacan, we won't be able to defend here either, so it's pretty much a moot point. We finish Priesthood tech next turn at anything other than 0% research. I have us at 20% for rounding reasons; basically we get an extra beaker at 21 base beakers (21 * 1.2 = 25) compared to 14 base beakers (14 * 1.2 = 16.8 = 16). Now as for Code of Laws itself, we need 7 turns of 100% research to finish the tech. That requires about 190 gold, which should take roughly 5 turns of 0% cash savings. So it should take 12 turns for the tech overall, and we're on pace to land it on Turn 89. I think that should get us there first... Monotheism still not taken by anyone yet... One interesting thing. Parkin generated a Great Prophet this turn, presumably from his Stonehenge build. It has not been 50 turns since he built the wonder, so he was running a Priest specialist via obelisk at some point. Interesting. According to CivFanatics reference on Prophet lightbulbs: Great Prophet: Meditation Polytheism Priesthood Monotheism Theology Divine Right Mysticism Masonry (Warlords patch & BTS) Code of LawsCivil Service He has to go through Monotheism and Theology before being able to lightbulb Code of Laws. Doesn't look like any danger there if I read the chart correctly. Finally, plako now has 8 cities, after planting two of them this turn. He's easily tops in all of the major Demographics categories. Obviously we can't expand at the same pace as a Cre/Imp civ in the early game; that's the second-best pure expansion pairing in the game after Joao. Without visibility on plako's territory, it's hard to say just how well he's playing. Yeah his GNP is awesome, but he has tons of Creative culture and cheap Creative libraries, so half his cities are getting 4 culture/turn. And it's really tough for me to sort out how many techs plako is actually getting via score increase, because he gets so many damned land points from his cities. The good news is that we signed Open Borders with plako this turn, and with our scout having found all five of Nakor's cities, I'm going to start mapping out plako next. In another 10 turns we should have pretty good visibility on him. Oh, and I'm going to get another scout out of Anasazi after it finishes its worker next, to go scout through Adlain's territory, find his capital and his most recent city. We have OB with him too, since he asked for them. As long as we keep close tabs on our neighbors, I think we'll be pretty safe. We're equally strong with plako/Nakor now in military, as they stopped building units. Whew, ok, that should catch us up for now. Let me know if you have any thoughts.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 29, 2011 16:02:48 GMT -5
Let me do a big update here. These are relatively quiet turns for us, however I still want to take some time to go over what we're doing and planning. It's now Turn 80: The main thing we're doing at present is waiting, waiting on two things: for our Code of Laws research, and for the aquisition of additional happiness resources. We have nearly stockpiled enough gold to make a run at the religion. Two more turns will get us to ~195 gold, and that will be plenty. Our cities have matured to the point where we can do Code of Laws in just 6 turns of research, with a little microing for additional commerce in one or two places. So our expected ETA on the tech is now Turn 88. We have to hope that will be first; considering that Judaism lasted until T77, it feels to me like we'll have an excellent chance. A few teams have been landing Classical techs, but only a handful thus far. All we can really do right now is wait and see. If someone else grabs Code of Laws in the next few turns, we'll take Monarchy instead, although that will screw over our planned next two cities (which badly need border expansion from Caste System to be effective). I want to go through our individual cities and explain what I'm doing: Cherokee: We just finished a settler this turn. With the expectation of additional happiness coming online soon, I'm going to grow past the happiness cap while building a library. We actually grew this turn, same turn we produced a settler, as I had checked the "Avoid Growth" button previously. Since we're hoping to get 3 happiness soon (silver, furs, religion) I think we may as well go ahead and grow now, so that we can immediately work more tiles as happiness comes online. Workers will chop the one remaining forest to help library complete sooner, then cottage that river tile. Probably cottage another 1 or 2 non-river grassland tiles too. We also need to start a long road to the silver tile in the southern tundra, so I'll work some on that as well. Anasazi: Just finished a worker and scout, the latter unit going to spy on Adlain and keep us appraised on what he's doing. City is next building a settler, which will be double-whipped to completion. I had to micro this a little; I swapped off of a cottage at Ansazi for this turn, so that we can get 16 shields (13 + 3 overlow), followed by 12 shields, 12 shields = 40 shields and allowing a double-whip one turn sooner. Otherwise we would be left at 39 shields in box, one too few to double-whip. Following the settler, the city will build military while regrowing. Hopefully we'll get happiness online to enable us to grow past the happy cap of size 4 (with whip unhappiness). The settler from Anasazi should come out on T84, and then it takes 4-5 turns to move to its destination (I'm hoping to have a full road network complete to the desired spot to improve travel time). The plan is to found furs/silver city on T88, which would be the same turn that we get Caste System. Force the Artist, get border expansion on T91, and have furs connected T92. Hopefully... Teoihuacan: This city has been enormously engaging to micro so far. I've really enjoyed it. First we had the chop to complete a work boat, then a worker double-whip with max overflow to complete a second work boat, then a library triple-whip at two sizes past the happiness cap. Since then, we've been running 2 Scientists at size 4 (the current happy cap with whip penalty) while waiting out the previous whips. I had the city build a worker for awhile, now up to 20 shields in the box, HOWEVER we want to double-whip the worker to completion, not single-whip it, as food is plentiful here while shields are rare. Therefore I swapped us over to a work boat last turn; the city is currently timed to grow to size 5 in 3t, exactly when the current whip penalty wears off. The plan is to get one turn away from growth to size 6, then swap back to worker and double-whip it, the overflow finishing off the work boat (which goes to connect the fish at horses city). I can't recall another city that required so much juggling of food, production, whipping micro, whip unhappiness, specialist use, and Great Scientist training. It's been so much fun. I really hope that someday we'll be able to open up this forum, so someone else can read what we did and learn from it. ;D Longer term, this city will be an amazing Great Person farm, especially with Caste System. Once we have a lighthouse in place, this city will get +12 food from its three bonus tiles (6 food from fish, 5 each from corn and crabs). We could suppport 6 Scientists at size 9 via Caste System! Here's what's even better: let's say we get a Scientist for our second Great Person. We use him to lightbulb Philosophy, opening up Pacifism civic. Then we could do the civics shuffle with our Spiritual trait, flopping between Slavery/Organized Religion anytime we whip, and into Caste System/Pacifism when we don't need to. The latter combo would make us pseudo-Philosophical, and we could pile up a series of Great People (Scientists?) in a real hurry, giving us the jump on Education/Liberalism. Again, this is all longterm thinking, but I see great things in store for Teoihuacan - if we can defend it on the front lines. Olmec: The city already has monument, granary, and library - that last building via a triple-whip recently. It's regrowing quickly from that right now, back to size 4 next turn. For the moment, I'm working on a half-completed axeman. We probably want a barracks here at some point, as the copper resource makes it a pretty decent military city all alone. Anyway, no grand plan here, just working the river cottage tiles while regrowing to emphasize commerce. This feels like a hybrid commerce/production spot to me. Zapotec: Finally getting up to speed after its very slow initial growth. We have the sheep pastured, and that made all the difference. Zapotec does have a granary and monument, and its slow-building library right now, which we should NOT whip because of its limited food. Much as I would like to drop the gold tile for growth, we need it to help our Code of Laws research. I think we just let this city grow for now; it can get +4 food with that grassland farm, and then will grow further onto two more riverside cottages. I'm finishing the last one with our workers now, because we probably won't have workers in this area for a while. After library I have no idea what we'll build here... figure it out then, I suppose. This is a commercial city - it does have a lot of hills, but not the food to work them. Maybe extreme lategame. Chinook: Both food resources are connected. Granary will be done in 2t, as I'll grab the grassland forest at size 3 for an extra shield. Workers are going to throw down two grassland cottages to work as the city grows. We'll skip monument here, grow straight to size 6 and then triple-whip a library. This is also a pretty good location to train Great Scientists via Caste System specialists - I expect we'll do a decent amount of that at times. I do still want to chop the forests in this area for defensive purposes. However, with a long NAP in place and urgent need for other worker stuff, it has a second priority for now. Trust me, once we have our happiness stuff connected, that will be the next goal. Horses city: Settler is already en route to the location, will found on T82. We'll work the horses tile initially and use that production to build a granary. As soon as Caste System comes in, the city can force an Artist and expand borders to get the fish and cows. This is planned to be a pure military city, mining all the hills and farming the river grassland. All we really need is a granary, barracks, and then Moai. I expect this city will supply much of our military throughout the game. OK, enough about our civ. Here's something interesting we've observed while exploring the map: Notice how there are peaks everywhere that block access to this central region of the map. On a hand-edited map, that's way too suspicious to be natural. We'll probably do Sailing tech next after Code of Laws, and I'd like to get a galley + scout past these mountains to see what's up there. This appears to be somewhat like the central portion of a "Hub" map, in which case having control will likely be important. We'll keep this in mind for future reference. Internationally, mackoti built the Pyramids as expected on T78, exactly the turn that our build tracking said that he would. mackoti has already revolted into Representation. Now in one of the PBEM games he built an early Pyramids and rode mass Representation scientists into a dominant tech position, so we'll have to keep an eye on that. On this Huge map, it could actually be a pretty strong approach. However, we've been able to see 4 of mackoti's 6 cities from our exploring warrior, and his overall civilization management has not been great. Try looking at Bodola if you log into the game, Speaker: still stuck at size 2, despite being founded 40 turns ago. Remember how earlier we were wondering how teams could have so much GNP? That city explains it, people working gold tiles without food to support growth. Great idea short term, not so great long term. Looks like just about every other team did that except for us. We waited on grabbing our own gold tile until we had the food to support it. But maybe that earlier research power helped other teams a lot, who knows. plako almost certainly was the one who landed Judaism, I'm about 95% certain. Bad news for everyone. Their team is really strong right now, with 8 cities and top Food/Production/GNP. plako could well be doing a mass Creative library Scientist spam tactic himself, which would explain why his GNP is so consistently high. He is refusing to allow anyone to explore his territory with Open Borders; hopefully that's stepping on people's toes and irritating the rest of the player base. We're fortunate that plako is not next to us. We're #3 in pretty much all of the Demographics stuff still. I have not been able to determine if it's Luddite or Parkin who's in the #2 spot. I have really good information on several of teams: Nakor and Adlain (because they're next to us and we can see their cities), plako (from watching "Rival Best"), and regoarrarr (from watching "Rival Worst"). The other teams are just too hard to get much info on, given the distances involved and lack of scouting. We actually know a fair amount about mackoti thanks to our Open Borders scouting. I don't have the time to track Power increases every turn, nor am I bothering at this point. I think the game has shaped up so far into two groups of winners and losers: Winnersplako (BIG winner so far) Luddite Parkin Our team mackoti (?) LosersNakor Moogle Adlain WarriorKnight regoarrarr plako speaks for himself. Luddite used the Oracle to grab Metal Casting (my earlier guess of Monarchy was clearly wrong, as Luddite has never adopted HR civic) and is likely getting good use out of cheap Industrious forges. Nice play. Parkin has Stonehenge, and has lucked into a map where Charismatic happiness actually means something. Just like the Fin/Org HRE that Nakor played in Pitboss #2, this was the result of pure chance rather than any brilliant decision. The Stonehenge play would have been terrible on other maps, and it simply happens to be a good one here. No offense Parkin, but you got lucky. mackoti's Pyramids build may or may not work out well. We have played solid and done nothing spectacular, just grinded out fundamental Civ play. The other teams are in some serious trouble. Nakor has been squeezed on land pretty badly, and his city management has been subpar. He has granaries and that's about it. I think his longterm prospects are bleak. Moogle still has only 4 cities, I have no idea why or what he's been doing. His power has gone up recently, maybe he's thinking about attacking someone. Or possibly he made a wonder attempt and failed, he has Cre/Ind leader after all. Adlain tied himself up on religious stuff early and just fell super far behind. His cities are large and have lots of infrastructure, but he still only has 4 of them. His cities are virtually indefensible, they are so spread apart. WarriorKnight lost an early war thanks to the incompetence of Warlord and has been trying to recover ever since. regoarrarr and sunrise moved away from a triple food spot on the first turn of the game, crippled their expansion building Great Lighthouse on an all-land map, and have generally played foolishly so far. They probably over-thought things with their ridiculous spam thread. Our prospects longterm look pretty good. We still have an enormous amount of land to expand into. We've outexpanded every team other than plako (who has Imp trait). Our giant handicap has been lack of happiness, and we should be solving that in the next dozen turns. If our luxuries had been more accessible (like Nakor's, directly south of his capital in a very nice location), we would be in significantly better shape. We've lost out on much of the benefit from Exp simply because we couldn't grow past a low happy cap. I expect Nakor will try to attack us when he runs out of land. We should be able to see it coming and beat him back. Overall, we just need to keep expanding outward and upwards and see what happens. There are innumberable ways that plako can screw this thing up, and we're equal to or ahead of everyone else in this game.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 31, 2011 10:35:45 GMT -5
Threw up some pictures in our Realms Beyond thread. We founded our horses city on schedule. Turned on research for Code of Laws, due in 6 turns now, T88. All we can do now is wait and hope for the best. Anasazi gets whipped next turn for its settler, furs/silver city on target to be founded T88 as well. With a lot of worker investment and border expansion help from Caste System, we will have both happiness resources online starting T92. We will also get a Great Scientist out of Teoihuacan in eight more turns, on T90. So hopefully in the next ten turns, we'll have solved most of our current issues and will be in much better shape as a civ. I already have plans for a nice spot on the Adlain border for city #9, and I think I see which city to get the settler out of...
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Post by Sullla on Mar 31, 2011 20:08:00 GMT -5
No one took Confucianism this turn. 5 turns to go. I've got a question for you, Speaker. Once our happiness situation gets resolved, the next priority is going to be forming up our border over here in the west with Adlain. Things are pretty much settled over in the east, although we'll have to start building a real defensive army over there soon. Anyway, Olmec is going to grow into unhappiness next turn, and rather than feed a useless mouth, I'm planning on swapping the city over to a settler this turn. We'll invest some minimal shields into the settler while waiting 4 turns for the whip penalty to wear off, then grow to size 5 and grab the copper tile, double-whipping the settler thereafter to completion. The secret to this map seems to be that cities are relatively cheap. The teams that are on top are the ones who are expanding relentlessly, and we may as well keep on doing the same thing. My question for you is where you think we should settle. I'm assuming that we want that pigs resource for food, which will create a VERY nice commercial city with control over this fertile river valley. We could go with the blue spot, which is a little closer to Olmec, or the yellow spot, which I think has better terrain overall. What do you think? The white dots are where we can stick a final city later on to complete the border. No food bonuses (unless there's one in the fog to the south) but we could farm some of those grassland tiles and end up with a semi-decent city. Anyway, the point is that I think controlling this river will be key, as most of the land west of it is pretty crappy. If we can get these two spots, we'll have clearly won the landgrab with Adlain, and still have lots of room for more cities to the north. On a related note, I think we should ask for an NAP extention with Adlain. He's been a good neighbor thus far, and I can't see any reason why we would want to fight him while there's still more unclaimed land to grab. And of course you always want to get an NAP extention right before you go settle on the other guy's doorstep, eh? ;D So those are my two questions, what do you think about settling and about re-upping a longer peace deal with Adlain. Thoughts?
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Post by Sullla on Apr 1, 2011 14:40:38 GMT -5
So for anyone reading this, we agreed to go after the Blue spot in the above picture, as Speaker pointed out that having a bunch of hills next to your city makes for a very difficult location to defend. No one has taken Code of Laws this turn, 4t more to go.
The big news is that Moogle completed Hanging Gardens this turn. He founded two cities together last turn, and another city just a few turns ago, so he went from 4 cities up to 7 cities in effectively one go, landing an extra population point in all of them. Well played, no doubt about it. Still, he obviously had to slow down his growth earlier to get the Hanging Gardens (not building settlers while producing aqueduct/wonder) and no doubt there was plenty of worker labor helping to chop out that wonder. So Moogle goes from being very far behind in population to being in the middle of the pack in population. I'm not sure if the whole thing comes out ahead or not... I guess you need to get use out of that Ind trait though. Moogle definitely gets moved up out of the "Losers" category in the last post though, this helps him out a lot. He moved from one of the lowest population figures in the game to middle of the pack status. And best of all, a wonder we weren't going for falls very early and was not taken by plako. That's good to see all around.
Speaker, we re-upped our NAP deal with Adlain for another 40 turns, lasting until T130 now. This will be useful if Nakor decides to cause troubles when our T110 NAP runs out. I still can't see us trying to make any kind of offensive move ourselves until the T150 range, at the very earliest. It will take us at least that much time to settle the jungle region in the north, and there's no point in attacking until then. Late medieval/early Renaissance is often a good time to make a move, and that would synergize a bit with our England civ pick too. We'll see.
Here's a bit of an overview on where the teams around us stand on total population. It's a good general metric of a team's overall strength, although of course it doesn't factor in infrastructure or tile improvement. (For example, I very much doubt that Moogle has tiles improved for all of that new pop he just grabbed! Especially since two of his cities are brand new.)
Our Team: 27 total pop (grow 3 more next turn) Cherokee 8 (cannot use 2 pop here) Teoihuacan 5 Olmec 4 (stuck here because of happiness) Anasazi 3 Zapotec 3 Chinook 3 Apache 1
Compared to the cities of other teams we can see, we have really good infrastructure. All but the last two cities have granaries. Many of our cities have libraries or monuments. I don't think we're using a single unimproved tile. As we've said many times before, we just need more happiness.
Nakor: 18 total pop Greenland 5 (palace, granary, barracks, library) Vinland 5 (granary) Helluland 4 (granary) Dorestadt 2 (granary) Horseland 1 Beaverpass 1 Riverland 1
Riverland was just planted this turn, on the border with plako. None of Nakor's cities have any culture or have expanded their borders. Dorestadt and Horseland have no food and will never grow into anything much. We don't have vision on Beaverpass, but because Nakor already has furs connected, it looks like he founded the city with furs in first-ring... which means again that the city doesn't have much food. His civ's longterm prospects look pretty awful, as Nakor is already just about out of land and has managed his cities poorly. I expect a desperation attack to arrive sometime soon, which hopefully we'll be able to stop. Reinking our NAP to further tech up and expand would be awesome; it would effectively turn Nakor's civ into the "Dantski" of this game. Too far behind and too small to be a threat.
Adlain: 15 total pop Mecca 5 (no visibility) Medina 4 (granary, monument, library) Damascus 4 (granary, monument, library) Baghdad 2
Adlain's cities have a lot of buildings, but he has way too few of them. The initial investment into religion put him behind and has kept him behind. A good friend who we can either team up with as the junior partner, or devour later for more land. Both good options.
Mackoti: 19 total pop Hagi 5 (Pyramids, granary) Dobrin 3 (monument, granary) Bodola 3 (granary) Dudu 5 (granary) Lupu 2 Camataru 1
Well he has the Pyramids and that's about all I can say thus far. Six cities, decent infrastructure, nothing out of the ordinary. My guess is that mackoti will try to reprise his gameplan from PBEM9, where he took a big lead by running Pyramids -> Representation and mass library Scientist specialists. Of course, he's not Creative in this game, which will slow down that gameplan a lot. Anyway, could work out but on a Huge map I feel like fast expansion is better than a specialist economy. We'll see. Pyramids unquestionably slowed this team a lot.
regoarrarr/sunrise: 14 total pop Vine 3 (Great Lighthouse) Reading 5 Montgomery 4 Colerain 1 Hamilton 1
No visibility on any of these cities, this is all from Demographics tracking. Basically they slowed themselves down enormously to get the Great Lighthouse, which is a very weak wonder on this map. Not the best decision. They are pretty much doomed to be a minor player in this game. I've enjoyed the chats with regoarrarr so far though.
The other teams I don't have enough information on. plako has about 35 total population, give or take a little. I believe that luddite and Parkin are about the same as us, WarriorKnight somewhat behind. I'm hoping with more scouting it will become clearer. One other random tidbit: luddite is working a ton of production right now, and his Power is increasing rapidly. He may be going to war soon. We'll be in his territory soon (going east from mackoti) so hopefully there will be more answers there.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 3, 2011 9:43:55 GMT -5
One more turn to go. Hopefully we land the religion at this point... We talked about this a little last night, and it's something weighing heavily on my mind in the Pitboss game. Other teams are planting cities like crazy out there in the fog right now. Just to summarize: - plako already has 10 cities, and will likely go past that soon. - Moogle founded 3 cities in the last 4 turns, going from 5 cities to 8. - Nakor just founded 2 cities, and will found another next turn, taking him to 9 cities. - Parkin founded 4 cities in 3 turns, taking him from 6 to 10 cities. All of my Civ instincts tells me this is bad play. There's no way you can support going from 6 cities up to 10 instantly; even if you can afford the costs, worker labor can't keep up with the demand for improved tiles. However, plako has been spamming cities, and it's put him into the dominant position in this game. I'm really feeling at a loss here. It feels to me like we've played a very strong game, and we're no better than the middle of the pack in the Demographics. We're definitely not in first by any means, in Food or GNP or especially not in Production. Where did we screw up? What mistakes did I make? I'm trying to see what we could have done differently, done better, and I'm not sure what would have been a stronger play. It's kind of depressing. In other news, we will indeed have 8 cities next turn, and will finally get started on our furs/silver location. We should have religion too, and all of that will help a lot. Internationally, Luddite's Power and Production are both spiking through the roof, which spells very bad news for mackoti. Let's hope that turns into a bloody, inconclusive stalemate. Definitely looks like a war is going to happen there. I would love to see what the empires of Moogle and Parkin look like right now. We can see Nakor, and his new cities definitely are not at all supported by the proper worker labor. I have to hope that's the case for the other teams as well.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 3, 2011 13:50:38 GMT -5
We got our religion. Details to follow later tonight. EDIT: OK, screw it, I posted a bunch of stuff in the RB thread. The only stuff I want to add here is a few minor things: - Revolted to Caste System after getting in one last whip at Chinook. Using Artists to expand borders in new cities. The one issue is that we'll want Caste System to expand borders in the blue city when we found it, but we also want Slavery to whip out the settler for that city. I have to wait and see if it makes more sense to just stay in Caste System and build the settler normally, or go back to Slavery in 5 turns, then another span in Caste System 5 turns after that. Probably the latter, I think - we have too much stuff that needs Slavery whipping. - Had a long conversation with mackoti today. He is certain that luddite is about to attack (with vultures, LOL). I made some suggestions about whipping walls, and mackoti already knew the proper counter units to build (axes with one spear to protect against chariots). Hopefully he'll be OK - I'd feel a lot better if I saw more whipping from his civ though. If he would get Masonry/walls, he should be able to defend without too much trouble. Vultures kind of suck, as we well know. At the moment, we have a strong friend to the north. This is good, as war will delay mackoti from expanding south into that jungle region. mackoti also said that luddite is letting Parkin take all of the land between them, which is why he has so many cities. Really need to get units over there and scout out the land... do check out the maps that mackoti sent us though (in our Dropbox account). - World GNP is tanking! As expected, teams can't actually afford these cities that they're spamming. We were #3 in the world even at 0% science. I'm saving gold for the next two turns, since we'll get Academy + religion spread in the capital on T90. Here's my thoughts on tech order: * Sailing for sure first (lighthouses will help our seafood cities a lot) * Archery next, because it's uber cheap and archers will be nice for MP purposes * Then I think Masonry/Polytheism/Monotheism, for Organized Religion (whips!) and to clear the way to Monarchy. All of these techs are very cheap and give good value (walls will be nice to get in some locations). After that, we have many options: Mathematics (heading towards Construction for military safety), Iron Working (no jungle to cut at the moment though), Metal Casting (forges very good), Currency (a second trade route would mean 2 commerce in every city), and so on. Even Civil Service isn't far away on the tree, just Math as a pre-requisite. So we have many options, and a lot will depend on what we see our neighbors doing. Humorously, we could actually slingshot Civil Service with a Great Prophet if we somehow had one, since we have Code of Laws but have not researched Masonry. Not gonna happen, of course... Anyway, as always let me know what you think.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 6, 2011 11:14:51 GMT -5
Alright, well first the most important news. Realms Beyond lurker Man Behind the Mask figured out who we really were, sending me this PM: Really impressive work, I always thought someone would find us through comparing IP addresses (Sullla/Locke posting from the same location). I saw no reason to lie, and he's going to stay quiet and watch to see what happens. I'm sending Man Behind the Mask a link to this private forum, so please grant him approval to register or whatever is needed to get him in here. One lurker now for our private forum, woot! ;D OK, in actual game terms, luddite did not declare war as I expected on mackoti. I'm sending off an email to mackoti fishing for more information on his situation. I told Nakor that we were happy with our current border and would be willing to extend our NAP, both true. I also said that we were worried about plako too; we'll see if he bites on that lead and asks for some kind of cooperation against plako. I honestly don't even want that (let Nakor and plako fight it out!) but I wanted to give the impression that we were also worried about their neighbor. So... just keeping options open there. We got our double border expansions this turn from the forced Artists in Chehalis and Apache. Also got a free Confucian spread into Apache, woot! That's two free spreads in two turns, awesome. Apache's border expansion lets it pick up the fish tile (workboat was already on the tile) and the city will now grow in 2t, with granary already full, and it will pick up a cattle tile (currently being improved) after growth. Our worker/workboat micro at this city was just about perfect, connecting resources as needed with no wasted turns. Chehalis actually can't pick up its fish resource this turn, as Chinook needs it to finish a worker next turn. However, recall that cities need 22 food to grow to size 1. If we work a standard 2 food tile this turn, we can then work the 5 food fish for the following four turns, and still get growth to size 2 in the same 5t (2+5+5+5+5 = 22). So that works out pretty good. We'll be able to complete granary and most of a lighthouse at Chinook from forest chops, and from there it becomes a standard crummy fishing city, working the water resource and coastal tiles, whipping for production. The one place where we're hurting for worker attention is at our two western cities, Olmec and Zapotec. This is purely a result of needing to send 3 workers to connect the silver - otherwise we would still be right on pace improving tiles as growth takes place. We currently have 8 workers, with 2 more in production completing shortly. What I want to do longer term is have Anasazi crank out some workers at size 6. We can get exactly 12 shields there -> 15 shields with Expansive along with 2 food, for 17 total production and 3.5 turn workers. Probably rotate military with workers there for the forseeable future - the city has little commerce potential and doesn't need any real infrastrcuture. I want us to pick up the pace of expansion a little, as we can definitely afford some more cities. The best place to get them is the capital: we'll be stuck at a happiness cap of 10 for a little while, with religion/temple (+2) along with gold/silver/furs (+3). So while most of our other cities grow up to the new happy cap, the capital (which is already at that happy cap, thanks to growing into unhappiness!) can do some settlers for us. I worked it out, and we can get 20 total production at size 10, for 5t settlers, working double deer + cows + two hill mines + five cottages. Maybe get 2 settlers out of there... Therefore, since we have all the improved tiles we need at the capital right now, I'm sending the worker that was over there west to Zapotec, to add some more cottages. It will be just slightly late in getting there, putting up a new cottage 1t after growth. Oh well... In research, we finished Sailing tech with a lot of overflow. I stuck us on break-even research of 50%, which gives us a base of 64 beakers/turn. Not bad at all! Most Classical techs cost about 500-700 beakers on this map, so with pre-requisite bonus we can knock them out in 7-9 turns. That's the break-even rate too, half that at 100% research. Feels pretty good for this stage of the game. I'm planning on going Archery next (1t), then pushing for Organized Religion via Masonry/Poly/Monotheism. Should take about 6 turns total, and Monotheism also serves as a pre-requisite discounting the cost of Monarchy tech (Hereditary Rule), which we'll need to take the happy cap above 10 at the capital. So that's the immediate forseeable tech path; if we're good on happiness, we could try pushing for Metal Casting or Currency (or Math/Construction if we're worried militarily) after that. Plenty of options. OK, so here's my rant about the map. The other teams seem to have it much, MUCH easier than us when it comes to happiness. Here's our south for comparison: We have two furs. The one in the east is not at all safely in our territory, and could have been taken by Nakor quite easily. Still, you can get a relatively decent city over there, BUT you can't get furs and a food bonus in first-ring. Must expand culture to get them both. Our western furs is in an awful location... Theoretically, you have the crabs for food, but how do you even build a work boat for the city? It will take ages, and there's only a single forest down there to chop. There's also a crummy 3/2 hill deer tile, yay. I guess that helps, but you need border expansion + work boat to make this city even midly not horrible. A lot of investment for such an awful spot. The silver resources are even worse; there are no food bonuses at all near the silver. The only possible spot where you could place a city and get one is on the tile we have Chehalis, and that still required a border expansion + work boat. Connecting the silvers is a hellish ordeal all its own, moving workers all the way down past that peak tile. Honestly, this land sucks bigtime. It takes massive worker investment (and border expansions!!!) to connect these resources at all. If we didn't have Caste System to force Artists, it would take ages to do anything down here. Now I wouldn't care if all teams had the same hoops to jump through, but look at Nakor: Seriously, wtf man?! He has a food bonus at his furs city (Beaverpass) which does not require a border expansion, and then two more food bonuses after expansion. Triple food bonus furs city, on a river no less! His silver city (unfounded) will also have double food bonus, on a river, and both food bonuses obtainable without expanding borders. I mean... come on! Then you have other teams with lots of Calendar resources very close to their starting positions in the middle of the map. Adlain has ivory, sugar, spices, and silks just a little north of Damascus. Parkin already has furs and ivory (!) connected to his empire. We have a single wine in the north, and then some dyes in the extreme far north in the jungle, and that's it. Again, I'm aware that stuff gets missed when creating a map, especially a big map, but this is a pretty bad oversight. We got shafted on the happiness bigtime. We've been in last place in happiness on the Demographics for ages now, because every city is either at (or past) the happiness cap! Anyway, we do have furs connected next turn (thanks to the worker completing, ha! need 3t more worker labor on fur camp) and then silver coming shortly thereafter. We are back up to #3 in Food, behind only plako and Parkin. (Luddite is actually further back than I thought.) GNP at break-even rate is still #2 in the world, so that's going as awesomely as hoped. Speaker, you called it: other teams definitely over expanded and can't afford the cities they planted. Here's one last global metric for this post. I've talked about a lot of ways of measuring team performance (Food + Production, Total Population, etc.) and here's another good one: count up the total number of resources each team has connected. We can now see this with most teams thanks to finishing Sailing tech. Here's what that looks like: Our Team: 15 resources, 10 unique resources plako: 20 resources, 11 unique Parkin: 14 resources, 10 unique Nakor: 12 resources, 10 unique Luddite: 12 resources, 9 unique WarriorKnight: 10 resources, 8 unique Adlain: 7 resources, 6 unique regoarrarr: 5 resources, no duplicates It's a nice and simple metric, since resources are what power good cities, and they must be connected and improved to show up on the trade screen. This shows that we're indeed leading everyone other than plako in total improved resources. Since we are not Creative and had to pop our borders manually, and since we have 4 water resources (significantly more difficult to connect), we're actually doing even better than suggested. Overall, still in good shape, still teching upwards and expanding outwards, waiting for other teams to make mistakes. EDIT: Also just realized that the placement of Greenland, Riverland, and Beaverpass makes using that fish resource completely impossible for Nakor. LOL at the city placement, to say nothing of the worker farming a tundra river tile!
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Post by Speaker on Apr 6, 2011 18:38:44 GMT -5
Haha, I thought your still-long-winded posts would give it away.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 7, 2011 11:25:47 GMT -5
The war between luddite and mackoti has started now, as their long winded posts over at the "United Nations" thread has indicated. Luddite has much, much more power than mackoti does, so I expect this won't go well for them. I think mackoti totally misplayed this whole situation; if you remember, it was mackoti who antagonized luddite originally, and was planning to declare war. Needless to say, when your team is building the Pyramids and planning on teching with Representation speciaists, you don't want to be picking a fight with your neighbor. If mackoti had been less intransigent about their borders up there, and not tried to whack an unescorted luddite settler, he could have avoided a ton of trouble. Oh well, let's see what happens. Stalemate would be ideal, although I don't think it's going to take place. We have furs connected!!! ;D It only took us 92 turns to get a second happiness resource, heh. That removed another unhappy face in the capital, now only a single citizen angry there. I did some more fun micro with Caste System specialists too: picked up an Artist in Chinook for one turn to expand borders, as there's no good tile to work anyway with our last population point. With the workers done at the furs finally, I'll have the worker labor to chop forests and add cottages over there in the east. Also getting ready for a swap back to Slavery civic next turn... Teoihuacan has been microed to be one food point away from growth, and will double-whip its lighthouse next turn. That will stack up a double whip penalty for a few turns, but oh well. Not the first or the last time we'll do that there! For Teoihuacan, the basic plan will be to whip something on the first turn of Slavery, then regrow the rest of the turns we're in Slavery working max food. When we're in Caste System, the city runs the maximum amount of Scientists possible. It's going to take a long time, but we'll eventually get a second Great Scientist out of this city and use it to lightbulb Philosophy, opening up another useful civic (Pacifism) and clearing the path for a further Scientist -> Education lightbulb. In the extreme longterm, we'll have a pretty decent chance to make a Liberalism run if we can bulb those two techs. I'm also whipping the settler in Olmec next turn for the "blue" location in the west. Slow start over here, since our workers have been tied up getting the furs/silvers connected. But more workers will be coming over there shortly. We have axe + spear ready to defend the new city, which should be pretty safe against Adlain. Finished Archery tech and we have just enough overflow to do Masonry in one turn as well, haha. Just barely. We're getting 70 beakers/turn at break-even rate, although that is with two Scientists in Teoihuacan (which we won't have next turn while growing). Since Masonry has two pre-requisites, our GNP is actually #1 in the world this turn, at break-even science rate. Somewhat deceptive because of the pre-requisite bonuses, but still awesome. ;D There's no doubt that we're one of the better researching teams in the game now. Since we can afford some more cities, I'll emphasize extra settlers out of the capital next. So we are #1 (temporarily) in GNP, #3 in Food (behind plako and Parkin), still lousy in Production (#7 although slowly ticking upwards) and very average in military power. I also want to improve that last metric, just to be on the safe side. Here's something else that will irritate you Speaker: I checked the F4 trading screen, and found out that Parkin has even more happiness resources than we thought. He's trading gold to WarriorKnight (for a useless fish?) and gems to Luddite for wheat. Parkin therefore has 2 gold and 1 gems resources... Like plako's double gold resources, that's how he's affording his city spam, with mineral wealth. And while I don't like to complain about the map, I just don't understand how this was a fair setup. We have absolutely no chance to get something like gems or ivory, and our furs/silver were a total bitch to connect. Letting other teams run large empires off of the luck of having gold/gems resources offers them a huge, HUGE early game edge. The good news is that the value of gold, silver, and gems decreases over time as cottages mature. So the luck of the map draw won't matter as much as we go forward. I've just been struggling to understand how Parkin's Stonehenge-first, "never adopt Slavery civic at any point in time" (he still hasn't!) style of gameplay could put him in such a strong position. Now we have the answer.
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Post by Speaker on Apr 7, 2011 17:23:14 GMT -5
I have activated your account. Welcome Masked Detective, and congrats on your...err...detective work. As for the map. Yeah, it gets the big weed smiley face from me.
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Post by maskeddetective on Apr 8, 2011 2:46:27 GMT -5
Warm greetings from your first lurker . I have a lot of reading to do! I agree with the rationale in the opening post, although I think you might have downplayed the metagame advantage of your anonimity. However, since everyone would be in the same position if you were genuine ”mystery men”, I don't feel it should be an issue I'll probably keep my head down so you can get on with your game, but will keep an eye out for things that beg more explanation for the sake of posterity. Hope you avoid all those "stupid teams going to war"
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Post by Sullla on Apr 8, 2011 16:54:02 GMT -5
Well this was unfortunate: Adlain was last to play and founded two cities on the same turn. He can't afford them and he has no roads/no workers in place for these spots, but Basra has taken the spot that we wanted. (Adlain's other city is in the extreme west near the coast.) I was following the latter settler with our scout - I wasn't expecting him to plant two cities at once, when he clearly doesn't have the worker labor in place to support them. Anyway, we were beat out by a couple of turns and the settler that just came out of Olmec must go elsewhere. (I would have been really mad if Adlain won the contested spot because he held the turn to play last/first in a double move! Fortunately not an issue.) Speaker, my thought is to take the X over in the east, by the cows. This was going to be the next city founded, and so now I'll simply slide it up in the queue. It can borrow Apache's cattle tile to grow, and while it's a weak spot, better than putting nothing there. Then when we produce a settler out of the capital in 6t, we can send it over to the western border. I like the tile with X? best: about as good as you can do with no food bonuses. We can farm and chop to get a half-decent city there, lots of forests fortunately. We can also use that spot and Olmec to crush Basra with culture (Olmec expands borders next turn) and set up Basra for an easy attack later if we wish. That's my initial thoughts on this. Let me know if you agree about the settler, since I left it and several of the workers unmoved. Wanted to make sure you were on the same page here.
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Post by Speaker on Apr 8, 2011 17:23:51 GMT -5
Here is a picture of how we will settle the north and south.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 9, 2011 14:27:28 GMT -5
Turn 95, we finally have silver connected! Turn out we didn't even need a road on the tile, the river connected it to our trade network without further improvement. Since our workers are down in the south though, I'll finish the road just in case we ever need to move units around for some reason. This means that our capital is finally happy for the first time in ages, at its current happy limit of 10. (We can and will build a cheap Buddhist temple later, which will take us up to size 11. But we want some more settlers out of the capital first.) We also discovered Polytheism tech and had population growths in three other cities. Lots of score increases this turn. One build I want to explain is the Jewish monastery in Teoihuacan. Several reasons for this. First of all, its our only city with the religion, and we could use the ability to send our capital a missionary. But this isn't the main reason, as we could do the same thing with Organized Religion. More importantly, I want the monastery there for the culture. We're right on the border of Horsetown, and I wante Teo to continue winning the cultural battle there. Horsetown has a slight edge at the moment due to getting Confucianism (both cities have a library, 2 culture for us and 3 culture for Horsetown right now). Furthermore, as Nakor's only city with Confucianism, it's a moral lock that his next build in crummy Horsetown will be a monastery, to spread the religion around. So we need more culture of our own via the Jewish monastery, and we'll probably want a Confucian monastery for the same reason. Since this city will also be running tons of Scientist specialists, the +10% research bonus won't hurt either. I would run some Artist specialists, but I want to keep the pool pure for Great Scientists. A Great Artist would be nearly useless, while our next Great Scientist will be highly desirable. We found our ninth city next turn by the cows in the north. It sucks that it took 2 turns to move there; if I had known that we were going to lose the pigs site, I could have shaved off a full turn with one additional road. Argh. Oh well. Our following tenth city should arrive on T103 if all goes according to plan. I'm going to turn some of these forests into workers via chops, especially after we get Mathematics soon. We're a little strained on improved tiles at the moment, due almost entirely to spending so much effort on the furs/silver adventure in the deep south. It should sort itself out once the southern workers return. Internationally, mackoti continues to get creamed by luddite. They send us this picture yesterday: Despite telling mackoti that they needed to get walls, axes, and one spearman to defend against this attack, mackoti just built axes and then got owned by unexpected chariots. Not too good. Lupu fell on T93 and was razed. Camataru fell this turn (T95) and was retained by luddite, renamed to Peacemonger. Neither city had walls despite being on flatland tiles where it would have made a giant difference. On this turn, I screenshoted the Demographics before and after the battle; luddite lost 12k (two vultures) while mackoti lost 26k worth of Power (probably 3 axes and 2 chariots). mackoti is losing pretty badly. Hopefully luddite will stop and sue for peace, or mackoti will make a better show of defending his capital. (Also, the land at these cities is disgustingly fertile. Fish + sheep + copper at one location, irrigated corn + pigs at the other, both on rivers. Geez. Outside of the seafood resources in the Teoihuacan area, we sure don't have anything like this!) On our own Demographics, we are the clear #3 team now behind plako and Parkin. Our Food count is rising rapidly, now that our cities can, you know, grow past size 5. We are definitely the #2 researching team behind plako, who seems to have the best economy. Parkin is nothing special, average at best, very obviously over-expanded when he went to 10 cities. Still not sure why you would plant 4 cities in 3 turns, rather than adding a new one every ~8 turns as we've been doing. In terms of Total Population, it looks like this: plako = 51 pop Our team = 39 pop Nakor = 28 pop mackoti = 25 pop Adlain = 18 pop Those are the only teams I can evaluate accurately, and plako only from the F8 percentages section. Our cities are growing very rapidly now, and we are at least holding our ground here, if not catching up. Feeling better and better about our place in the game; not frontrunners at the moment, but in postion to be a major player at the very least.
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Post by Speaker on Apr 9, 2011 18:57:05 GMT -5
I think things will pick up for us as our traits start to shine. Expansive has been meh because of the lacking happiness, but we will gain an edge as we keep growing. Spiritual really shines in the medieval era and beyond. We are keeping a low profile as well, which is good.
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Post by Sullla on Apr 10, 2011 10:43:19 GMT -5
Yeah our traits are much better for mid and late game situations. Look at the other two teams that are out in front: plako = Catherine (Cre/Imp) Parkin = De Gaulle (Chr/Ind) Creative and Imperialistic are the ultimate early game traits, falling off drastically in usefulness after the first 100 turns. You get cheaper theatres and double Great General points, and that's basically it. Charismatic is pretty terrible all around, and Parkin didn't even need the happiness benefit, since he apparently has tons of luxuries near his starting position (he has gold, gems, furs, and ivory all connected....) The cheaper promotions are OK, I guess. Industrious isn't bad later in the game, although wonders are much more heavily determined by who gets the tech first than who has Industrious. The trait is better on this map because there doesn't seem to be any marble or stone here. Still, neither trait compares to the value of Spiritual, which becomes extremely powerful as the game goes on. And Expansive can be pretty good to counter pollution in the Industrial era even after the granary phase of the game has worn off, although that advantage has been mitigated by so many health resources appearing on this map. Anyway, on this turn Parkin completed... the Temple of Artemis. Uh... ok? What a bizarre move. I mean yes, Parkin is Industrious and all, but he doesn't have marble (we can see his resources) and that's still pretty pricey at 200+ shields. I guess he wants the free Priest specialist (?) He certainly can't want the extra trade route income, which will take his single trade route from 2 commerce up to 4 commerce. I could see building this wonder on an archipelago map where you also landed the Great Lighthouse, where it would be worth a ton. Here, the move just feels bizarre, like Parkin is playing to get the most "score points" possible rather than trying to win the game. No offense to Parkin, who is a really nice guy and one of the classiest people I've ever met on CivFanatics. But I have to say it: these are terrible moves. There's no way someone who's wonder spamming like this should be doing so well. The leader choice, the wonder builds... it's not good Civ play. I'm very skeptical on how much longer Parkin can remain in one of the top spots in this game. As for us, we founded our ninth city of Illinois this turn. We're being forced to work some lake tiles here briefly as I throw down more cottages on grasslands. Apache will swap to and double-whip a lighthouse when it gets to size 4, and the production and overflow from that should be enough to complete the barracks. I'd like to get a Confucian missionary out of there next for Teoihuacan, which can use the happiness and culture. Anasazi will get some archers and workers; archers are good because they're cheap, function as Hereditary Rule happiness police, scale into longbows if needed later, and free up axes/spears so that we can concentrate them on the front lines where they're needed. Cherokee still building a settler for the next city, eastern cities working water tiles and waiting for the next whip. We don't have quite enough beakers for Monotheism this turn, but that's fine because we can overflow a ton of them into Mathematics. We're holding steady right around 75 base beakers/turn at 50% (break even) research. That feels very healthy to me for this stage of the game, and most Classical techs are 5-8 turns research for us. We'll probably want to do Currency tech soonish, as it would be worth about 20 base commerce for us (2 commerce trade route in every city) and markets would also be nice to have. We'll see. As I said, we're sitting at #2 in GNP. plako is #1. I'm still not sure if he's actually researching faster than us, or if he simply has more culture. If I had to guess, I would say that he's slightly ahead of us in research power, due to his double gold resources more than anything. He also does have 11 cities to our 9. Still #3 in Food, but we are VERY rapidly catching up there to plako and Parkin, now that we have the happiness to grow upwards. You can see that we're at 128 to plako's 139; six turns ago, we had 97 Food to plako's 129. We've increased our Food by 33% in the same span of time that he's increased by less than 10%. Catching up indeed! As our cities grow, it's pulling up our Production stat as well. We're nearly up to Average now, after being beyond awful for a very long time. (This is partly due to us whipping for production, partly due to us having so many water-based fishing cities.) We are very slightly above Average in military power; the #4 is a bit misleading. Third in Land Area and Population, the land area stat looking worse than it should because we have a ton of water tiles in our borders, which don't count. Population still a bit low because our cities were crunched by happiness, and the higher numbers are worth more. I expect us to pass Parkin in Food and Population in the next dozen turns. Diplomatically, mackoti told us that he researched Construction this turn, and he hopes he'll be able to hold without further losses. Good news there, if they aren't mistaken again. (They though they could attack and beat luddite, heh.) Nakor replied and offered us an NAP extention to T140. (Put it in bold so you would see it, hehe.) I said I thought that was fine but would check with you first. I think we should take it and keep settling the north. One minor issue: T140 is the same turn our NAP with Adlain wears out. Coincidence? No idea. Could be trouble later. But I still think we should take the deal. Or maybe we could ask for NAP to T150? That might be nice. What do you think? Going to post a super-abbreviated version of this over at RB.
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Post by Speaker on Apr 10, 2011 11:44:37 GMT -5
I think things are looking really good actually. Keep NAPing and doing the farmer's gambit. Our border with Nakor should be very secure, since it's a 1-city choke point, and Adlain will be so far behind us by T140, he won't be able to attack. We have so many forests left to chop; we should develop pretty quickly.
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Post by maskeddetective on Apr 10, 2011 16:06:02 GMT -5
After a couple of lengthy reads, I’m up to date. It was a little quicker this time without wading through Dr Nomadic anecdotes. ;D The write-ups are as good as ever, Sullla, which is all the more impressive when you’re not doing them for public consumption. There are a couple of things I’ll touch on. If you ever consider opening up this forum, you should be prepared for at least some raised eyebrows over a few of the opinions. Your thoughts on your opponents are harsher than even your straight-talking alter-ego’s, and there are times when you might be a little too self-congratulatory. It makes for a good read, and it’s only your opinion, but the tone might be a little difficult at times for any who aren’t paid up members of the Spullla fanclub. I think post 86 loses some of the bravado, and I also wanted to remind you about this for a little balance. Wonders were the news of the turn though, as Luddite's team completed the Oracle and took Monarchy tech with it. I predicted that a little while back, actually... sometimes I'm so good I amaze myself. ;D OK, not trying to showboat, but it does take some skill to predict what other teams are doing that you've never met through nothing more than CivStats and Demographics numbers. I can see why you guys are feeling a little upset about the map. It’s tough for me to comment without any spoilers, but it’s always going to be difficult to equalise a huge map in a way that also keeps the game interesting. I know from the discussions that there was more to the balancing than just the resources, but that’s the area that feels important to you right now, and you can produce evidence of some inequality. Maybe it will just make an eventual victory that much more impressive! Things are looking really positive after the last few turns, so I hope I haven't rained on your parade.
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