[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[pindicator]

lurker request: could you post a big flying camera shot of your continent?

Kind of hard to make it all fit, so here are two full shots from different perspectives (click for larger pics)

From the SW:




And from the NE:

If he does settle on the hill, and you do declare war, what would your objectives be?

We wouldn't declare until we're ready to go to war, so it wouldn't happen right away. But if we go after Nakor it's going to be an All Your Base Are Belong To Us mentality, I think. He's got ivory, gold, sugar, silk, and gems - all luxuries that we don't natively have.

Probably would realistically be a goal of getting everything west of their new city and as far south as their capital. Going further south would just over-extend and all the luxuries are in that group of cities.

Looking at those pics, why aren't they settling the island to their west? That's tons better than trying to press a city against our borders

[scooter]

Turn 115, Part 2

Firstly:

Looking at those pics, why aren't they settling the island to their west? That's tons better than trying to press a city against our borders

Uh, yeah. He looked at this:



and was like "nah man, who needs food resources and IC routes, I'm gonna go settle in Scoopin's face over here"



I'm 95% certain Nakor does not have Calendar. Wheeeee. Well, Black Sword is certainly going to be thankful for the neglecting of a nice island, so there's that. Anyway, in terms of our eastern island expansion options, here's what we have right now:



Anything down here that gets the fish and horse is a reach. We can backfill a spot with the sheep, but overall this is just not a huge priority to us right now given our recent discoveries. It was going to bother me that we were going to miss out on most of this island, but not anymore. We have this:



As I was saying to pindicator in chat, if I was retep's neighbors, I'd be furious with him for playing a troll game when he has some legitimately nice expansion options to his west. Yes, he's cramped, and yes, he was going to have to kill people eventually... but 3 cities with a combined 5 population is not putting forth effort. Anyway, we're going to try to reap the benefits of his screwing around by claiming all these islands that would normally be his rather easily. Even this one too should be useful:



More settlers and workers needed. It's a legitimate challenge for us actually, given that we have so much happiness right now that we're struggling to find cities that can afford to stop and build a settler/worker. Good problems I guess. Here's what a bad problem looks like:



GG suttree.

Yep, I now have a "mackoti_death_machine.jpg" in my dropbox folder.

[pindicator]

Did my usual duck in and make all the easy moves routine. Scooter can handle the heavy lifting

So when I was moving our galleys I thought "How many turns until our forced peace with dtay is up?"

Answer:

Zero. Yay for bugs!

Oh, scooter - I am doing the big moving this week. I don't know how my internet connection is going to be over the next couple of days, but I should be able to play turns by mid-week at the latest. Forgot to get the router password from the person I'm moving in with and they're out on a vacation until Monday.

[NobleHelium]

Sounds like the deal became a cease fire offer then.

[scooter]

Turn 116

For starters, I did a quick glance at the city count numbers, and here's where we're at:

dtay - 14
Commodore - 13
scoopin - 12
Ichabod - 12
Plako - 12
Lewwyn - probably 11
mackoti - 11
Black Sword - 10
Azza - 10
Nakor - 9
WilliamLP - 8
Dhalphir - 8
mostly_harmless - 7
suttree - 6
slowcheetah - 5
retep - 3

The Lewwyn number is somewhere from 10-12 - they've been logged in for awhile so I couldn't get to their diplo screen. Anyway, mackoti has been at 11 for a long time, combined with a serious military spike, so like I posted last turn, fireworks might be coming sometime soon. Nakor spite settler confirmed:



Barring some other neighbor doing something more irritating than that, we've likely confirmed who our first aggression target will be. Pindicator and I have spitballed this a bit, and generally something involving Zerks off 4-move galleys by sea combined with some Horse Archer games in the middle of his land should make for an effective war when the time comes. Thankfully, that will be one of the very few cities that's on a hill. Here's a look at our great capital:



The unhappiness from the whip wears off end of this turn, so that's perfectly timed for growth to size 12. We'll pick up that plains river cottage and go from there. Here's a shot of our core with the interface and resource bubbles off so you can see the city details:



The markets at Tigers and Trailblazers has been a source of great debate. The upside is those are our best two commerce cities, so of course markets would be beneficial. The downside is the amount of gold they would actually produce is still fairly minor, and perhaps those hammers are better spent increasing the happy cap. I don't totally buy that given that we can easily get the two cities to size 13 and 12 respectively without building anything to increase the happy cap, but pindicator is pushing for swapping to forge builds once MC is in to double the gold/gems that we have our hands on right now. We don't have to decide for a little while obviously, but that's the current economic debate we're having behind the scenes. Orioles is going to get the Stable in now, and then we'll probably just have it build Horse Archers endlessly for quite awhile. They have such a massive lifespan, and they should probably be the vast majority of our military builds out of the core between now and Zerks. Also, yes, Gators is the very definition of an "investment city" given that is sucks massively right now and contributes virtually nothing. Such is life, we'll be glad later.

Here's Big East island:



We're pre-chopping various forests in prep for Moai. We're getting pretty close to that. Here's a glance inside Boilermakers:



I'm pretty excited for Moai to get online here with 13 coastal tiles, a 10F surplus, and the happy to support double digits in size (this will be a Rep-boosted city for us). We've had to settle a few marginal cities to secure key resources/borders recently, but this is the city that is primed to quickly boom into a key city for us.

So that's about it. In terms of Fun Things That Don't Matter, I'm looking forward to seeing Trailblazers higher up on this screen:

[Zed-F]

IIRC right now you are trading spices to MH, suttree, and Nakor. How long do you envision those trades persisting? I am guessing not forever since you've said you can get to size 13 easily, which will need another happy from what you have at the moment.

[pindicator]

IIRC right now you are trading spices to MH, suttree, and Nakor. How long do you envision those trades persisting? I am guessing not forever since you've said you can get to size 13 easily, which will need another happy from what you have at the moment.

They will last up until the moment we need them for ourselves

Good news - internet hooked up at the new house! Now to put together my new dresser and finish laundry.
Oh, and civ. That works too. But still let me know if you need me to play a turn this week scooter - i plan on heading to my old place and cleaning after work this week so i may not be around for civ.

Funny thing with Nakor's soon-to-be-pita city: borders pop at Tigers in 4 turns. That should be fun.

[scooter]

Yep, I should be fine to cover turns this week. Just give me a heads-up when you're fully back in action.

[pindicator]

It's been a slow monday so I've written out a few thoughts

Forges vs Marketplaces:
With CoL finished at end of turn I think we want to build ORG-boosted Courthouses ahead of both.  I do see your point about the +2 happy not being as strong as +25% for cities that can already reach size 11 on their own, and when you put it like that I think I have to agree.


Worker Actions at Gators:
Did a little number crunching and if we need the dye hooked up first or the grass tile farmed first.  If we keep the wheat with Red Wings then we'll have enough time to finish both roads and then farm the grassland first, allowing Gators to grow faster, and then both workers can chop and connect the dye before the capital hits size 14.  We'll have to cancel a spice deal when Trailblazers reaches size 13.

If we think we might swap the wheat over to the capital at all before turn 126 then we should make the plantation ahead of farming the riverside jungle.

Code:

Turn   TB Size/food          Worker Actions at Gator
116    11  42/42    +7fpt    each road 1/2
117    12  27/44    +6fpt    each road fin
118    12  33/44             chop riverside 2/4
119    12  39/44             chop fin
120    12  45/44-> 13 23/46  farm 2/5
121    13  28/46    +5fpt    farm 4/5
122    13  33/46             farm fin, dye plant 1/9
123    13  38/46             dye 3/9
124    13  43/46             dye 5/9
125    13  48/46-> 14 25/48  dye 7/9
126    14  29/48    +4fpt    dye plant fin

But I am also tempted to swap to a settler at the capital when it hits size 12, and 5-turn it.  We can even 4-turn a settler at the capital.  Or 3-turn the settler with a forest chop and the wheat is not needed.  Alternatively we can use the last two forests at Red Wings to chop a settler out from there.


Next Tech:
I was envisioning Monotheism.  That should get us enough overflow to 1-turn Metal Casting next turn and we want Monotheism for Org Rel anyway.

[scooter]

Some quick responses before I dive into the turn:

It's been a slow monday so I've written out a few thoughts

Forges vs Marketplaces:
With CoL finished at end of turn I think we want to build ORG-boosted Courthouses ahead of both.  I do see your point about the +2 happy not being as strong as +25% for cities that can already reach size 11 on their own, and when you put it like that I think I have to agree.

Agreed that Courthouses are better than both of them for us.

Worker Actions at Gators:
Did a little number crunching and if we need the dye hooked up first or the grass tile farmed first.  If we keep the wheat with Red Wings then we'll have enough time to finish both roads and then farm the grassland first, allowing Gators to grow faster, and then both workers can chop and connect the dye before the capital hits size 14.  We'll have to cancel a spice deal when Trailblazers reaches size 13.

If we think we might swap the wheat over to the capital at all before turn 126 then we should make the plantation ahead of farming the riverside jungle.

Code:

Turn   TB Size/food          Worker Actions at Gator
116    11  42/42    +7fpt    each road 1/2
117    12  27/44    +6fpt    each road fin
118    12  33/44             chop riverside 2/4
119    12  39/44             chop fin
120    12  45/44-> 13 23/46  farm 2/5
121    13  28/46    +5fpt    farm 4/5
122    13  33/46             farm fin, dye plant 1/9
123    13  38/46             dye 3/9
124    13  43/46             dye 5/9
125    13  48/46-> 14 25/48  dye 7/9
126    14  29/48    +4fpt    dye plant fin

But I am also tempted to swap to a settler at the capital when it hits size 12, and 5-turn it.  We can even 4-turn a settler at the capital.  Or 3-turn the settler with a forest chop and the wheat is not needed.  Alternatively we can use the last two forests at Red Wings to chop a settler out from there.

Honestly, I think a settler at size 12 at the cap is probably our best move. Either way, I think we farm before completing the dye at Gators and work around that. We can cancel the spice for 5gpt to suttree anytime I believe.

Next Tech:
I was envisioning Monotheism.  That should get us enough overflow to 1-turn Metal Casting next turn and we want Monotheism for Org Rel anyway.

Yep, sounds good.