[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[Zed-F]

How are the demos looking?

Also, Scooter indicated the plan was to land with military and come back with workers on a second trip, but Pindicator's plans seem to assume workers arrive with settlers. Crossed wires?

[pindicator]

Oh sweet, the turn rolled and I'm home. I got this

[scooter]

Turn 120

Pindicator got to this one before me, but I don't see signs of him reporting. So here's a few screenshots. It's not very interesting because it's kinda late for me, but I mostly just wanted to take a look at world news. First, though:

How are the demos looking?

Not bad.



GNP is of course pretty fantastic since that's at 0% science. We're keeping pace with the top guys in food despite lagging behind just a tad in expansion and settling a few heavy investment cities, so I'm satisfied.

Also, Scooter indicated the plan was to land with military and come back with workers on a second trip, but Pindicator's plans seem to assume workers arrive with settlers. Crossed wires?

Yeah pindicator is doing things a tad differently than I had in my head. Pindicator: we may need to do a tiny bit of galley shuffling, because there's a strong chance we're going to run into barbs on that island, so we can't really just drop a settler/worker pair with no protection. Should be fine. Anyway, proof that we are nice peaceful folks:



Our galley totally could have moved one more tile but generously chose not to block dtay from using the clam. We're so nice there's no way we're going to wreck someone with nasty Berserkers. If you lurkers could go ahead and spread that rumor in the various threads that would be wonderful. The world report:



I'm actually glad to see that 341GNP figure is a product of a golden age. Anyway, dtay into Caste. Again, I'm a big fan of his game so far . I remember before this game, a certain player who will go unnamed was voicing concerns over the pace/quality of the game and new players. This isn't entirely unreasonable, but he seemed to make a Bigger deal out of dtay being an unknown than the others did. Welp, here we are 120 turns in, and dtay's PYFT track record is immaculate, and he's playing a nearly spotless game too. Good stuff. Well, not good for our chances of winning, but you know. Also I have no idea what that little suttree/mackoti thing was about. Actually I'm guessing they just wanted enforced peace in the region.

Today In Trivialities:

We're totally going to get this peak right?



I'm more amused by this than I really ought to be.

I mentioned this earlier, but just to highlight one interesting part about mackoti hitting MH:



He and Plako will be neighbors! Good.

[pindicator]

PREVIEW EDIT: Ninja Reported!


Turn 120

I opened the game up to find this:



Oh silly captain

Event log shows that dtay is a few steps ahead of us, but playign the same plan pretty much:



I hope I moved the boats right Scooter. I wasn't sure where the second axe was coming from and a worker was loaded, so I moved out. Crossing my fingers that this is what you had in mind:



I offered Commodore his trade



And here's the south -



Started another worker at TImbers. You can nix that if you want, Scooter, but I figure we want to get them out before Civil Service comes in. With Metal Casting now and Civil Service in 5 or 6 turns, it's going to be lots of worker to-dos coming up rather soon. Workshops and farms will be the order of the day rather quickly.

I thought I had a demo screenshot, but I don't. We're #5 in GNP even at 0%, and we're #5 in crop yield. Hopefully this next wave of settlers will get us up a few more spots.

[pindicator]

Thinking about the tech path post-Civil Service and towards the upcoming Nakor war:

Do we want to try to hit Nakor with HA and zerkers or do we want to wait until we tech guilds and then hit him with knights on land and zerkers by boat?  Waiting for knights will probably delay any attack by 10 - 15 turns.  So do we try to attack soon after the GA or do we wait to attack when our military advantage is overwhelming?

Or as an odd-ball choice, do we just forget Nakor and go with the "European" model: focus all our efforts on colonizing the islands and then invade retep with zerkers?  Even though Nakor has been asking for it with his latest city plant.

I'm asking because I'm starting to wonder what our tech path is going to be after Civil Service.  Machinery seems like the no-brainer follow-up: unlock zerkers and allow watermills, and it's on the path to several tech lines we will want sooner rather than later: Engineering for +1 road movement, Guilds for knights, Astronomy for galleons.  My question is two-fold I guess: 1) what order do we prioritize those three techs? 2) What other techs are worth the diversion?

My answers:

1. This is actually a tough question.  I'm sure waiting for knights will make the war go easier, but it will also mean waiting 15 turns or so after when we'd be ready to attack with HAs.  And will Azza or Lewwyn decide to attack Nakor first in that time?  If we attack with HAs, I would go Engineering first for the extra road movement and to get Construction for catapults.  If we wait for knights then obviously Guilds comes first.  Astronomy looks like 3rd place either way - the only way I'd push Astronomy first would be if we decided to not even bother with Nakor and just focus all our efforts east towards retep.

2. The only tech I can think of diverting for is Theology.  Theology would be so we can revolt into Theocracy at the end of our golden age and have 2-promo units ready for war.  (We could also do this with Vassalage, but I think our capital is too big a part of our economy to swap out of Bureaucracy until later on.)  Literature would be nice, but we won't have a 10xp unit until after we start the war, and we won't be ready to build National Epic until then either.  We'll have to do our big Great Person push around when we get our second golden age, later in the game.  And Music isn't happening for us - too many civs have Literature and Aesthetics already.

[scooter]

Pindicator: I've been kind of thinking about this myself... If we are confident we can get the job done with HAs, there's a lot of reason to do that. However, we do have pretty tremendous teching ability, so like you said, waiting for Guilds doesn't even delay us THAT much. What do you think about generating a merchant during our golden age to bulb Guilds?


Side note: slowcheetah lifted a city off dtay. I'm assuming it was that little border city.

[Zed-F]

If you do gear up for a post-GA war with Nakor, what role would the islands play? Factor into the war effort or off doing their own thing?

[antisocialmunky]

I think your decision on the Nakor War should also be based on the post-Nakor situation. Can you defend ex-Nakor against 2 pretty well known warmongers better post Zerks or post Knights?

[pindicator]

Regardless I think we're going to tech pretty quickly. Right now breakeven is just shy of 60%, with 190bpt and -9gpt. We'll burn through our gold to get Civil Service in 4 turns. And then at breakeven we'll be able to get most of Machinery done before we start the golden age on turn 129. I figure the golden age puts us at least at 300bpt breakeven (we'll be swapping to some favorable civics, remember), and with techs of Monarchy (483), Feudalism (1127), and Guilds (1610) - we should be able to get all 3 of those by the end of the golden age. Maybe just shy of Guilds.

The GM bulb won't work, for two reasons. First is we need to tech Alphabet and Paper before Guilds opens as a bulb target. Those two techs cost about as much as Guilds and definitely more than a bulb would get. And second is that we dont' have a great spot to run enough specialists to get a GM from. Maybe Bulldogs if we grow it after the worker. Or Tigers, but I think we want Tigers working it's cottages. All our other cities have GP pollution that may give an undesired person.

[NobleHelium]

I don't think it makes sense to attack with horse archers when you're about to get Civil Service.