[SPOILERS] scooter's thread: how to finish second

[Merovech]

Thanks guys. So I just realized Regoarrarr won't get to find out if I took the city or not until after Ichabod gets back which is over a week away. That would drive me crazy.

Somewhat realted: What happened to the devil smiley (not the Diablo one)?

[scooter]

So with Ichabod back, I'll be getting a new turn probably sometime tomorrow. So to welcome the game back, I want to do a little strategy post. Short-term, there's the obvious things. I'll be getting my Academy soon, which will be a nice boost. I've gone over how I'd like to turn my capital into a commerce monster, so I won't repeat myself too much there. More important to me now is to examine how to leverage my PHI trait longterm. FIN is easy, just build cottages and, well, work them. Brain-dead easy, which is why I like it . Lizzie gets derided for being anti-synergistic, and I think that's mostly nonsense. Sure, maybe you can get a little more out of PHI if you pair it with SPI, but FIN is a primary trait, PHI is a support trait. You can bend it to help whatever your goals are - whether that's a traditional FIN cottage economy or a full-blown SE.

The key for me is the scientists. There's really no reason for me to want any other great person. Scientists can bulb a ton of good stuff (captainobvious.jpg), and it's especially useful in this game. For those like me who don't have the bulb list memorized, here's the scientist bulb list with really early & really late things removed:

Writing
Mathematics
Scientific Method
Education
Printing Press
Alphabet (BTS)
Philosophy
Chemistry
Optics
Paper
Astronomy
Compass
Aesthetics (BTS)
Sailing
Iron Working
Metal Casting
Engineering
Liberalism

It goes on further and there's a ton of modern techs here that I snipped, but I'll just look at this batch. The obviously attractive target here is Education. Lizzie is THE Oxford queen IMO. The PHI university bonus is insanely underrated IMO. Getting a quick Oxford to go with Academy + Bureacap would be really, really attractive to me. If I can stock up on scientists a bit, I could get a couple more and get a jump on both Oxford and Liberalism. I really believe my key to winning this game is going to be to get a jump techwise, and quick Oxford is a nice way to do that.

There's a more interesting play here that I could make though. Astronomy bulb! Let's narrow this down a bit by only including techs that are in the right range here:

Education
Printing Press
Philosophy
Chemistry
Optics
Paper
Astronomy

Ok. So Chemistry is not really a factor, but I'm noting that because you can do some fun things with a Chemistry bulb too. Anyways, you can mentally cross off Education, because Paper is required for Education, so if you can block Paper, you block Education by extension. Printing Press is the same deal - it's unlocked by Paper (and other things). Optics is a direct requirement for Astronomy (along with Calendar which I already have), so you can actually chain those two bulbs together pretty easily if you bank a couple scientists. That means we have to block Philosophy and Paper in order to make this work. Philosophy is really easy to block - it requires Meditation. I have not researched Meditation, and I have no plans to do so. Easy. Paper is a little harder - it is unlocked by either Theology or Civil Service. Theology is similarly easy to ignore, but Civil Service not as much. It kind of flies in the face of my goal of juicing my capital as much as I can. However, the potential rewards are pretty significant. Galleons when everyone else is running around with Galleys is pretty powerful. It'll give me dominance over the islands, and the islands look to be a pretty significant part of this game. Sparks would fly, that's for sure.

So this is the main thing I'm mulling over right now. I don't need to decide right this second, but pretty soon I would need to commit to early Astro if I'm going to do it. Both routes are attractive to me for very different reasons.

[Commodore]

Alphabet is a small but real blocker tech too.

Seriously, though, speaking for us lurkers: You've really got to work at showing us how this silly "Education and early Oxford" plan is even remotely comparable to the Astro bulb in the fireworks department. Otherwise, you can forget a buy-in from us. Blood for the Blood-god.

[scooter]

Alphabet is a small but real blocker tech too.

Oh right, I'll need to tech that before the bulbs open up.

Seriously, though, speaking for us lurkers: You've really got to work at showing us how this silly "Education and early Oxford" plan is even remotely comparable to the Astro bulb in the fireworks department. Otherwise, you can forget a buy-in from us. Blood for the Blood-god.

Well the main problem right now is lack of map knowledge. If I go Astro, I'd like to have a plan/goal/target in hand for how to use it. Right now I don't really have one, mainly because I know so little about the islands. Working on that. The default push-for-Oxford plan is a really nice fall-back given that it probably also gives me a good shot at winning Liberalism.

[scooter]

And we have a turn! Regoarrarr accepted peace:



Nice to keep my warrior too. Ok here's the thing. I really want trade routes with Regoarrarr, but the war canceled our OB. He also didn't offer me OB after taking the peace, so I'm not sure what to think here. I suspect the reason he declared war was to keep me from mapping out his coastline, but I have other things I need to do right now besides that. So let's see if I can't signal that I'm going to leave his coast along by leaving:



That might not be enough, but I'll offer it anyways:



So I'd like to repair things with Regoarrarr. He's similar to me in how he approaches the game - he's willing to be opportunistic, and he's also willing to forgive and ignore opportunism from other players. He messed with my micro with a scout, he killed my scout, and he declared on my galley, nixing our trade routes. All of that was opportunism, and me sniping his scout-defended city is more of the same. He's not likely to get wrapped up in a DIEDIEDIE vendetta war. Surveying the landscape, I believe Pindicator to be the clear leader right now, and I think he'll recognize that too. So hopefully we can call it even and leave each other alone now. I don't think that would work with all players, but I think it works with Regoarrarr.

Anyways, it pained me to have to let this guy go:



But I need routes with Ruff. I can still intercept and kill him if I want, but I may just let it go. I want the positive diplo points, and I want our routes to keep maturing and not be negatively impacted by war. I reserve the right to change my mind . Hopefully he'll pay me back in kind down the road by not killing something of mine that he could kill. Would be nice to work out some sort of alliance that way. Maybe when his scout comes I'll shadow it a bit to prove I could kill it if I want, and then let it go. We'll see. Anyways, here's the demos:



Decidely middle of the road, which is about what I guessed. My food takes a bit of a dip compared to where it would normally be since I'm working 2 scientists (GS due in 8T). Here's the full set of graphs now that I have everybody's - I'll include a few comments but spoiler it in case you just don't care.

My dip there is the previously mentioned scientist swap mainly, along with a whip or two.



Poor Ichabod. He's miles and miles behind in foodhammers. GNP:



Ichabod's GNP is a total mirage from all the culture - though GLH means he probably is teching decently. Genuinely concerning is Pindicator's GNP, I'm not even sure what that is. Mine is a bit low due to culture:



Power:

So I'd say the current standings are roughly (ruffly?) like this:

1) Pindicator
2) Regoarrarr
3) scooter
4) Ruff
5) Ichabod

Actually, maybe I'm in 4th, who knows. Ruff does have circumnav after all. I'll have an Academy soon though, so that should help me. All signs point to me being ahead of him in tech too, so I'll be optimisticly biased and slot myself in at #3. Who knows.

[Bigger]

why do you have ichabod in 5th? Didn't he build 3 wonders? and he's first in score so i can only guess he's doing well in demos (still only reading your thread, so I don't know anything you don't report. oh I've read a bit of the lurker thread but haven't learned much of anything from it).

[scooter]

why do you have ichabod in 5th? Didn't he build 3 wonders? and he's first in score so i can only guess he's doing well in demos (still only reading your thread, so I don't know anything you don't report. oh I've read a bit of the lurker thread but haven't learned much of anything from it).

He got a city razed by somebody, and he's been stuck at 3 cities ever since. Look at the graphs I just posted in the spoiler tag - he's wayyyy behind. He was always going to be a bit behind with the wonders, but losing that city crippled him. If everyone gives him GLH routes out of pity, though, he could make a comeback. So I wouldn't give up on him just yet, solely because of GLH. Otherwise though, yeah doesn't look so great for him.

edit: basically, his score is solely because of his wonders. Take away those wonders, and he's probably at the bottom of the scoreboard.

[scooter]

So I pretty much have decided - Astronomy bulb is a go. I'm going to try to do it with just one bulb though. In order to also bulb Optics, I would need 3 GS's (1 Acad, 1 Optics, 1 Astro), and I don't think I can do that. I can't do it with just 8 Mile anyways. I could possibly do it with a second city with a Library, but I don't think that's going to be worth it. Besides, that'll let me use the eventual 3rd GS on a more expensive tech like Education.

So the basic plan goes like this:

1) Shut off tech for 8T - that's how long it'll take my Acad scientist to come out. Swap research from Calendar to Polytheism.
2) Once Academy goes up, tech on - path is Poly-Priesthood-Monarchy. Those 3 will drop very fast.
3) Capital will grow in a couple turns. Once it grows, settler. After that, grow it a few more sizes, even into unhappiness by a couple pop. Workers will continue laying down cottages, and the cap will take over all the mature cottages too. I'll also be pushing out several warriors for MP since I have avoided Hunting.
4) Once Monarchy is in and I revolt to HR, the capital should be able to support a very good tech rate. From there, it's clean up Alphabet and a couple other techs (more on this in a minute), then tech up to Optics and bulb Astro.

As for the Other Techs - I haven't nailed this down completely, but I have a rough idea.
1) Calendar - I have 2 sources nearby that I'll eventually need.
2) Code of Laws - Would like a religion, but I won't be too sad if I skip this. It's actually becoming pretty unlikely that I bother with this, the more I think about it.
3) Metal Casting - I'm toying with the idea of getting this before Optics and building a forge in 8 Mile to run 2 scientist + 1 engineer and just see what comes out. That gives me a 1 in 3 chance at an Engineer, which would mean free MoM (or something). On a hammer-constrained map that shows no signs of marble/stone, that would be huge. If I lose the dice roll, I have plenty of uses for a scientist anyways, so it's not really a big loss.

We'll see what I do with the above 3 techs. Doing some basic math, I do believe I can get my tech rate up quite a bit in the next couple dozen turns. My hope is also that Rego will re-sign OB with me so we can get routes going. I'm also going to send that galley by Rego to try to defog a trade route with somebody else too - we'll see how that goes. Those routes should be another boost, which I think will be enough to make this happen early enough for it to be powerful.

[Bigger]

so, how are you going to exploit astronomy in a way that will make that superior to the oxford/education bulb path (which will clearly be better for your tech rate)?

[Qgqqqqq]

I'm guessing the SS approach - stuff them with maces/(whatever) fork. a dozen cities and sacrifice them one-by-one to the lurkers .

Shuddup bigger its superior because it makes great entertainment for the lurkers


If you go MC , how soon do you slot it in - soon enough for collosus?