RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Friendly Kittens (Ragnar of Maya)

[Maniac Marshall]

All of these are off by one turn - displaying the last turn on which the build will occur instead of the first turn the object will be completed and available. Hindu Missionary shows up next turn (and will cool its heels for a bit near the AB site anyway) followed on T145 by an Aqueduct, followed on T146 by a Settler (which will found AB on T147). The two workers appear on T149 and T150. The next Missionary, Grocer, and Settler will likewise come into being on turn 155, 156, and 157, respectively.

This, on the other hand, is accurate as far as I know. (So too for Temminck.)

Oops...

The mills will definitely go up (my microplan puts a token worker turn into one on Turn 145) - we just need our newest cities to get up and running first.

Of course.

Temminck's happiness problems are illusory, though this is in part because we DO have sugar again, and CAN get the silks hooked up in time (our own second sugar should be hooked up by the time our current deal can be canceled.) The need for health is NOT illusory, but I don't think we'll need to whip the Grocer on turn 147, nor do I think we should whip this city unless and until it IS needed.

That was written when we were sugarless. Agree it's ok with the sugar.

The second and third workers should turn up on T146 and T147 actually, if I understand the plan correctly. (Overflowing into a University this turn = T143, building a Worker T144, double-whipping it T145, and overflowing into a one-turn Worker T146.) It should have time to complete its university (perhaps via the whip) before a Ball-of-String Court is needed.

Might be right. Again, written when we were sugarless.

At all events, given its location, Mali's stack and sentries should be able to warn us of anything approaching through JANK territory. It would be nice to have our own sentries to cover any possible approaches Mali might not see (from outside JANK territory of course, since we lack OB). Might take some coordinating with Mali.

We can post a sentry chariot in Azteca. I'm in the process of swapping a combat one out for a sentry one over by Byz. If you have a chance, can you suggest an optimal tile for him?

As with Fierias, those aren't quite right, mostly due to mistaking final build turns for completion dates. Now that I write this, I realize I did the same thing for the Globe somewhere up-thread (in discussing National Wonders.) Actual competion times are: Catapult (149) - Stable (152) - Rifle (153) - Cavalry (154) - Catapult (157) - The Globe Theater (158). I'd like to fit a University in here at some point, since it WILL have some cottages and things, but (as you can tell from the next few builds) it's going to be concentrating mostly on military.

Oh well.

It was planted mainly a territory city as far as I could tell (which explains why we don't know what it'll be doing).

You know, the more I think about it, I'm kinda glad we DID put Ornata on that hill. At least it's a shield for Temminck and HV there. I guess we should try to make this a commerce city with windmills.

After the temple ... I dunno. It has that gold, and I'm worried about our borders in the south, so maybe a library. (This has the advantage of eventually allowing a University. We ought to get eight as soon as it's practical:

1) Fierias (complete)
2) Temminck (complete)
3) Feng Shui ("in production"-ish)
4) Hukawng Valley?
5) Red Dwarf?
6) Smithsonian Park?
7) Ornata?
8) Adventure Beach? (Heh-heh - if only for the culture!)

Sounds fine to me.

I neglected to comment on this one's name above, by the way, but one of the colloquial names of Felis Silvestris Ornata is "Indian Desert Cat," which is of course what makes this city's name so appropriate.

cool.

I'm seriously concerned about our long-term commerce potential. We may be second in the world at the moment (severely trailing someone in a GA - though that might be an artifact of Organized courthouses, depending on who we're trailing) but how many of the eight cities we've planted (or soon will plant) since Feng Shui have been commerce cities? There's this one, and ... uh ... will Savannah qualify? Ornata, with its gold? If the answers are no, and this one gets half its non-farm tiles workshopped....

My concern here is that we probably won't be able to use the whip forever, and this city otherwise gets NO hammers unless we lumbermill the forests, which I think we should. Maybe just a couple of workshops?

Regarding the cities in general

Fierias - Right now, its a little of both. Eventually, like, when it's time to build the space ship, we'll have to bludoze those towns for workshops.

Pride Rock - Production city. will eventually become a weakish one, but was good in it's day.

Temminck - Pure commerce.

Feng Shui - Pure commerce.

Kilrah - Pure production.

HV - This could be converted to a commerce city post biology, no? Does it really need to be +30 food to be an effective Globe/whip city, or is that overkill?

Ornata - Weakish commerce city with windmills, or weakish production city with mines. Could do either. Leaning towards commerce, as the windmills will be useful post electricity.

Hindu Temple, then (probably) library. In fact, we should build temples BEFORE forges in most future cities unless/until Mass Media starts looming. (2 hammers + 2 beakers + 1 culture is nothing to sneeze at, the forge's +25% usually only contributes ~14 hammers to the temple, and the temple is 40 hammers cheaper.)

Ah, you're right!

That's hilarious!

The unit was named Reagan before he gave it to us. It came bubbling up near Thundara. If I'd known he was fixing to be a present, I'd have taken a picture.

Sorry to hear you're missing it. I hope the wedding is great though! Close friends?

Not really for my part. My gf's brother. Sort of obligated.

On Smith's GP pool: Sounds good; we can start running merchants around T158-160.

On civic swaps: I agree that a switch to SP would be nice, assuming we're not pursuing Mining Inc - and that should probably be possible if we wait for the GP we get from Kilrah. Of course, there's that whole "barring emergency" thing.

RE: Mining Inc. I've not 100% ruled it out, but I just dono if there's enough metal to make it worth it. If we knew we could get both that AND standard ethanol then we'd have to think about it i expect...

When you have time... relaxed pace, take a couple of weeks if needed, maybe you could see what you think. Maybe I'm wrong. If you don't have the time, then I'll attempt to crunch the #'s.

BTW: If you can show me that Corps can hang in there with SP, then I absolutely would want to run corps because it would be fun to be the one team doing that

[Maniac Marshall]

I believe we wanted to complete the theater first, even before the grainery at Savannah, correct?

I've set Savannah to theater, so I hope that's the case.

If that's NOT the case, then let me know or just log in and change it.

EDIT: Never mind. I've set the city to culture working FP as per the instructions in the worker plan. (no sign of religion in RT)

EDIT: We did want to complete the grainery first at Thundara, right?

[Maniac Marshall]

Just a short entry before I have to go get ready for the wedding.

HRE's GA ended, and we're now back at #1 in GNP. We're making ~490 beakers/turn now. To the best of my knowledge, no one else in the world makes 400 beakers/turn yet, though it's possible that Portugal does. Mali and Carthage are in the 380-390 range. On the other hand, we're only 7th in hammers, which is concerning, but somewhat mitigated by the fact we're once again #1 in food.

I really do understand what you're saying about commerce concerns longterm, but hammers are an equal concern. Right now we're getting a good deal of extra hammers from the whip, probably more than anyone from what I'm seeing on civstats, but still. Note that I'm not trying to compare our hammers to #1. That would be nuts since there are at least 2 civs (Babylon and Ottos) who are still getting GA hammers.



EDIT: Inca are also in a GA, but I don't think they're getting much production out of it since they are drafting/whipping themselves into the ground to try to stop Swiss, who has already captured Kalin's Burgers.

EDIT: Played around a bit with our tiles. Twelve more hammers would put us 4th overall, so it's not quite as dire as it appears.

Final Edit: Here's a look at our cardboard cutouts.

[RefSteel]

I discovered a handful of errors on my part:

1) HV's spreadsheet has it working a pair of mines before the worker plan builds any. This has been fixed in a new version, now posted in the same place as before (on the previous page). Thanks to the silks we'll soon (enough) have on-line, it could alternatively delay Globe by one turn and not bother working any mines for a while.

2) The spreadsheet I created for FS had some problems (the main one was that it mis-identified buildings under construction). Fortunately, they were easy to fix, and I have done so. The new version is now posted in place of the old one upthread.

3) Refusing to deal with emergency situations won't solve the (out-of-game) problem unless I also decide to not make any detailed plans. Which would be a good idea actually, but.... Anyway, we'll see.

4) Because of the way the granary works, with the particular amount of food we're getting at Savannah, working the Floodplain now actually does nothing for the city. I have therefore switched it to the plains hill mine, to ensure there are no worries at all about culture on the wheat. I have updated the microplan accordingly. I changed nothing else in-game. [EDIT: Wait, no, I did one other thing. See below.]

[RefSteel]

That was written when we were sugarless. Agree it's ok with the sugar.

Oops. This is the problem with me trying to go back and catch up after the fact.

We can post a sentry chariot in Azteca. I'm in the process of swapping a combat one out for a sentry one over by Byz. If you have a chance, can you suggest an optimal tile for him?

No suggestions at the moment, because I didn't see anything that looks great. Note that we don't have to park him if we don't want to; he can move in a kind of search pattern each turn if desired.

You know, the more I think about it, I'm kinda glad we DID put Ornata on that hill.

I'm glad too, mainly because it made Ruff happy. If it wasn't on that hill, it would have been strong enough in its own right, but given that it's mainly a territory city, it's good that it's on a hill.

My concern here is that we probably won't be able to use the whip forever, and this city otherwise gets NO hammers unless we lumbermill the forests, which I think we should. Maybe just a couple of workshops?

Workshops on the plains tiles would probably be good. I'm not sure about the lumbermills: Health is good, and production from lumbermills is nice, but one of those forests is riverside, and both are grasslands, so cottages do sound attractive. But bear in mind that I'm a Pacifistic Technologist.

Regarding the cities in general

Fierias - Right now, its a little of both. Eventually, like, when it's time to build the space ship, we'll have to bludoze those towns for workshops.

There will probably come a time when we have to do this all over the place. (I'm not making a plan for us to win by culture - as jokingly suggested by Maniac upthread - for a constellation of reasons that I can list if anyone wants.)

Pride Rock - Production city. will eventually become a weakish one, but was good in it's day.

Not sure on the future strength/weakness of this city. It's a good candidate for workshops as well as watermills, of course. I don't think the cows should necessarily go to AB: They should go where they'll do the most good. Adventure Beach shouldn't need them for at least its first ~dozen turns of existence, and probably longer than that - maybe indefinitely. On the whole, if PR is going to give up a 4 food tile, I'd rather it keep the cow and give its FP farm to Temminck.

HV - This could be converted to a commerce city post biology, no? Does it really need to be +30 food to be an effective Globe/whip city, or is that overkill?

Depends on how big we want to grow it. A city needs to clear 10 food plus 1 per population point to grow every single turn. But yes, it should be able to grow onto commerce tiles and still do that, even before biology.

Not really for my part. My gf's brother. Sort of obligated.

Well, congratulations anyway!

RE: Mining Inc. I've not 100% ruled it out, but I just dono if there's enough metal to make it worth it. If we knew we could get both that AND standard ethanol then we'd have to think about it i expect...

When you have time... relaxed pace, take a couple of weeks if needed, maybe you could see what you think. Maybe I'm wrong. If you don't have the time, then I'll attempt to crunch the #'s.

I dunno. Figuring in the cost of the GPs and the question of whether we get them would make the calculation more complex than it appears.

BTW: If you can show me that Corps can hang in there with SP, then I absolutely would want to run corps because it would be fun to be the one team doing that

Heh - yeah.

EDIT: We did want to complete the grainery first at Thundara, right?

Yes. Absolutely and without question. Barring an insane emergency, if you have to whip a granary, it should be the very first thing you whip. The reason a granary isn't coming first at Savannah and AB is that we're chopping one AS WELL AS a theater in time to lose ~no food anyway.

HRE's GA ended, and we're now back at #1 in GNP.

Someone passed us again by the time I logged into the game. Note that courthouses have a significant impact on the game-reported GNP, by adding EPs and by reducing maintenance. Game-reported GNP when running a gold deficit subtracts that gold deficit, so it's possible for someone with lots of courthouses to have a higher reported GNP than us but still be unable to compete with us on actual beakers produced.

I really do understand what you're saying about commerce concerns longterm, but hammers are an equal concern. Right now we're getting a good deal of extra hammers from the whip, probably more than anyone from what I'm seeing on civstats, but still. Note that I'm not trying to compare our hammers to #1. That would be nuts since there are at least 2 civs (Babylon and Ottos) who are still getting GA hammers.

We're above average on hammers for what it's worth, and yes, we're relying heavily on the whip. Our land and civ are very pro-slavery. That said, we certainly need some hammer tiles. Tentative early suggestions posted toward the end of the microplan.

Final Edit: Here's a look at our cardboard cutouts.

Hey! Those aren't cardboard! That's our Mrrshan Economy at work! (Sort of.)

Oh - if you still want a spreadsheet for Temminck, I can throw one together really quickly (once I see the request and get around to it.) The whole point of creating these spreadsheets is that it *saves* time - and it does. I have a template I can work from now, and a system for creating new ones. If I had more time, I'd set one up that could work for any city in any circumstance, and then I'd never have to run Civ except to log in and substitute-turnplay! (What? Whaaaaaaat?)

[RefSteel]

Oh - wait! I did do one other thing while I was in-game: I switched FS's production to a Worker, since I was sure that was the plan. (It was still sitting on a University when I logged in.) Also note that Kilrah is currently working a forest while one of its plains mines goes unused. I assume this was intentional, but want to note it in case it was not. I'd actually be inclined to work a Merchant there now, just to start getting merchant-turns out of the way, but of course that's me.

[Maniac Marshall]

3) Refusing to deal with emergency situations won't solve the (out-of-game) problem unless I also decide to not make any detailed plans. Which would be a good idea actually, but.... Anyway, we'll see.

4) Because of the way the granary works, with the particular amount of food we're getting at Savannah, working the Floodplain now actually does nothing for the city. I have therefore switched it to the plains hill mine, to ensure there are no worries at all about culture on the wheat. I have updated the microplan accordingly. I changed nothing else in-game. [EDIT: Wait, no, I did one other thing. See below.]

I've known for a while now that solving problems and making things fit together like a puzzle is what you like about this game. It's been obvious in the way you design things. It's fun to see what you come up with. I really hope you do continue to do stuff as you have time.

Cool regarding the plains hill.

[Maniac Marshall]

Oh - wait! I did do one other thing while I was in-game: I switched FS's production to a Worker, since I was sure that was the plan. (It was still sitting on a University when I logged in.) Also note that Kilrah is currently working a forest while one of its plains mines goes unused. I assume this was intentional, but want to note it in case it was not. I'd actually be inclined to work a Merchant there now, just to start getting merchant-turns out of the way, but of course that's me.

Actually, FS is supposed to spend one more turn on a Uni. That gives us an extra turn at size 12 vs 10, and, when the workers complete and the city starts accumulating food again, it will grow to size 11 in one turn, rather than 2. I'm basically squeezing out a few extra tile turns for delaying each worker by a turn. =)

Uuuhhh, except it just ocurred to me that you probably have those workers incorporated into your worker plan so I think I better just leave it for now. I'd rather lose the extra population than mess up the plan. I am going to change tiles to max production then. I miscalculated that the workers completed to the exact turn earlier. I was not planning to max commerce. Overflow is good.

Kilrah, on the other hand... when I looked at it earlier, I thought it was making more food than I expected it to, but somehow didn't notice it was working a forest. I'll log in and fix it.

BTW, in case the delay on the workers does NOT affect your plan, then please change everything back. I will not be able to log in again for a long time. Probably till after the turn rolls.

EDIT: It occurred that we can put a turn into the worker this turn, and then we have the flexibility to go either route next turn. This gives us time to sort this out.

If the delay of the workers does NOT affect your plan, then next turn we put a turn into a Uni. If it DOES affect it, well then we just double whip the workers as you expected we were doing. Let me know either way. I'm not going to fuss overly much over 4 lost tile turns. It's certainly not worth reworking a worker plan for. =)

More edit: At Kilrah, I reassigned the citizen working the forest to Merchantdome. It then occurred to me that, for the loss of 2hpt, we can change the priest to a merchant gaining 6gpt to help pay our maint and increasing our chances of getting a merchant vs a priest, which would give us other things we COULD do with the GP. A priest pretty much has 1 use; set off a GA (unless we want to bulb DR )

And then it occured to me that, heck, we could hire an Eng, 2 Merchants AND a Priest. It does stagnate the city, but gets the GP done in 10 turns. Erm, and then, finally, when I did the math, it can get the GP in 10 doing 9 turns of 3 specialists, and 1 turn of 3, so I fired the priest again for this turn, allowing you to weigh in on if it's worth stagnating the city to finish the GP in 10 VS going with clearing 3 food (grows in 9) and finishing the GP in 13.

[Maniac Marshall]

Someone passed us again by the time I logged into the game. Note that courthouses have a significant impact on the game-reported GNP, by adding EPs and by reducing maintenance. Game-reported GNP when running a gold deficit subtracts that gold deficit, so it's possible for someone with lots of courthouses to have a higher reported GNP than us but still be unable to compete with us on actual beakers produced.

Given this, I'd say it's a near lead pipe cinch to be Ottos. They have at least 4 and probably more courthouses, they are creative, and they are in a Golden Age, so, yeah, I'd say we're still kicking but.

Also, HRE, supposedly their 2nd best techer started Steam this turn. It;s due in 17.... Meanwhile, in the space of 21 turns, we're going research all of Rifling, Constitution, and Steam... so, yeah, I'd say we're still kicking but.

[RefSteel]

I've known for a while now that solving problems and making things fit together like a puzzle is what you like about this game. It's been obvious in the way you design things. It's fun to see what you come up with. I really hope you do continue to do stuff as you have time.

Well, one of the things (see my egregious self-obsessed posts above) but yeah.

Actually, FS is supposed to spend one more turn on a Uni. That gives us an extra turn at size 12 vs 10, and, when the workers complete and the city starts accumulating food again, it will grow to size 11 in one turn, rather than 2. I'm basically squeezing out a few extra tile turns for delaying each worker by a turn. =)

Uuuhhh, except it just ocurred to me that you probably have those workers incorporated into your worker plan so I think I better just leave it for now. I'd rather lose the extra population than mess up the plan. I am going to change tiles to max production then. I miscalculated that the workers completed to the exact turn earlier. I was not planning to max commerce. Overflow is good.

[...]

EDIT: It occurred that we can put a turn into the worker this turn, and then we have the flexibility to go either route next turn. This gives us time to sort this out.

I just looked at the worker plan, and it will survive delaying them by a turn. At worst, it will delay a few improvements at Kilrah (lumbermill, etc.) by one turn each, and fixing the plan to reflect the delayed workers will be easy. Since it works the same way either way, starting the first worker now and switching to the university again next turn, as you suggest, is probably best anyway because a) it allows more flexibility if needed, and b) it's sillier and therefore more fun.

And then it occured to me that, heck, we could hire an Eng, 2 Merchants AND a Priest. It does stagnate the city, but gets the GP done in 10 turns. Erm, and then, finally, when I did the math, it can get the GP in 10 doing 9 turns of 3 specialists, and 1 turn of 3, so I fired the priest again for this turn, allowing you to weigh in on if it's worth stagnating the city to finish the GP in 10 VS going with clearing 3 food (grows in 9) and finishing the GP in 13.

...... I would say work food for growth rather than extra specialists right now. In fact, if we work the farm and forest (and two specialists) the way you had it set up when I logged in, we'll grow in five and therefore have an extra pop point with which to work at that point. Also, if an emergency comes up and we have to burn the Econ GM on a Golden Age, it will speed up GP generation, in which case THAT would be the time to run extra specialists at Kilrah in lieu of food tiles.