[SPOILER] Smegbeth heads to the terrace for a prawn cocktail and beer

[Krill]

If I could grab that tile with another city I wouldn't cram a city that close to the capital to grab the horses...

[Krill]

World map: beware, it's 20MB. Download at your own risk.

[novice]

Yeah I meant from a third or fourth ring expansion, but I don't see that happening.

[Krill]

Starting this turn report off with the demographics. I have the best GNP in the game. Second place is Thoth but he has a lot more culture than me and I think I have higher costs. Everything else sucks but that is what you get for having 4 specialists run at this stage of the game.





You can see that Thoth is the only real threat to me in terms of coming knocking with next generation units. So I'm going to use this time to grab some economic techs before getting HBR and Construction.





Our MFG are really close together. As far as I'm concerned, this graph doesn't mean anything right now in s strategic sense.





OK, this one is more important. I'm starting to fall behind in crop yield. Thoth is just about matching me. We have to use the tech edge, the others need to turn food into beakers some other way. They lack the techs to build research so I imagine that specialists and cottages are in the immediate future, and that suggests that an offensive war from the other players is not in the cards because none of these players likes to whip units at this stage of the game. I have 5 cities and 3 more settlers in production (or in queues), plus a couple of happy resources plus land. Don't know what Thoth is planning. Don't care much about anyone else.





Thoth has a few more units than I do. I already have uncovered a scouting archer to his north east (good luck figuring out where). Not enough to concern me, not with a sentry net out.





Nothing special. Still awaiting Oracle.





I have 15 pop points. You can figure the rest out for yourselves.





I also have 2 archers and an axemen being built. No spears, but they are the next units built. The axe was to make sure that I kept on beating the barb warriors; quechua will do well enough against the archers. I've won every battle against a barb except the scout. Some expected, some...still in my favour but not greatt odds like 70% battles etc.





Settler is at 18 hammers. The GS pops out eot T70. The settler is whipped T73. The rice will be given away on T70. The happy cap is going to rise to 8 once the ivory is settled, so the questions are about how to work the cottages here. It is possible to plant on the tundra forest hill to the north, which would leave RD with only 5 cottage tiles no other city could work. That requires other trade offs though.

I need lots of worker turns here though, so after the settler there is a real chance that I whip a worker and drop the city down to size 4. 8 cities, 4 workers, you do the math. Build a pier whilst regrowing. Revolt into HR and maybe OR on T72, get the extra gold, beakers and hammers flowing.





I'm growing on an archer for 1 turn, then whipping the settler next turn. Due to the lack of trade routes at the horse city, that delay should work out better as the city will be a drain on gold, and I can't take the rice off RD until T70 anyway ie the delay in settling does not cause a delay in growth.

After that, dump the overflow into a worker, regrow to size 4, finish the worker, do something. I don't know what though, but I do need a workboat out before eot T83.

However, an interesting question for others to consider. If I intended to farm a grassland, then I could dump the overflow into a pier instead, and be able to use the freshwater lakes as a 3F tile for 4 turns before a grass farm could be completed. At what point does completing a 20H pier beat out a worker due to short term growth? I figure that if I had 2 lakes the pier would be worth it.

The forests are staying for lumber mills. MC has had to wait a bit though.





Whip settler for 2 pop, dump overflow into a workboat, and use the workboat to convey the settler from RD to the ivory island. Then regrow on units and stagnate out on the three mines, 2 cottages and corn. Eventually teh forest hill will be lumbermilled, and a windmill on the grass hill will allow the city to stagnate. No more foodhammer units after that workboat.





Nova 5 was planted on this tile specifically to enable to "quick" settling of the eastern and western cities respectively. When borders have been popped, the crab can be improved for the western city (although that city will need a pier and terrace, so mining the forest hill is required after Maths is researched). The eastern city is a billion coast tiles and no forests to chop the terrace, so it needs to use the sheep to grow to size 2 to whip the terrace and then get the borders popped so a work boat from SB can improve the clam. N5 is also hard to reach for Thoth, so it's not a dreadful city in terms of dence, but it does miss that dye.

Short term, probably going to be stuck on a size 2>1 whips for a worker and workboat, and grow on a pier. N5 doesn't need much worker attention with premade 3 food tiles...





Shit city. The eastern forest is chopped T77 for a terrace in Esperanto. The fur forest is chopped for a terrace in TD (although I note the name is misspelled, should be Tarka Dal). It'll steal the flood plain from Esperanto, which will itself use the fish. This is a good example of a strategic filler city...it is only going to grow above size 6 if I'm using the draft. it'll only build a pier to get to a shipyard and drydock for the extra hammers; or the harbour and customshouse.

Probably going to just whip a worker at size 2...? Other choice is to get the workboat from here and dump the overflow in BM into a worker instead. You can obviously see I've not put much work into this.

[Krill]

Strategy:

Right now the plan is to get Priesthood and Monarchy in the next 5 turns, then revolt into HR and potentially OR. I considered going for Feudalism, but I would have to save gold for a bit and then research, it would likely delay a revolt about 10 turns. Not worth it IMO, because as nice as longbows are, they can die to swords. OK, CG3 longbows probably wouldn't without siege support. But still, I have other concerns.

After reaching Monarchy, I need to save gold again. I'm probably going to crash the economy somewhat hard what with the new cities going down, but I'll be able to make anything between 31 and 52bpt just from scientists and great scientists in RD. The reason I said before that I have a better tech rate than Thoth is that he is going to be crashing his economy just as hard if he tries to keep up with me in expansion. Anyway, what to research after Monarchy.

Horses can be hooked T88...in 20 turns. So HBR before than doesn't mean much. The choice that intrigues me is Aesthetics. The world map is above, you can see that there is a large number of forests to the south of Nova 5. I'm considering chopping SoZ into a front city there. I need 6 Math forests for SoZ and 2 forests for a Theatre. I push a Great Artist for additional culture per turn from the free settled great artist, and use the GA to bomb against CH when I go to war with him. The number of forests necessary limits the placement of such a front city to either 1 or 2 of the iron. 4 of the iron can do it but is a little bit slower only having 6 forests. but settling south of the row of tiles that has the iron is very, very aggressive. Fuck, planting further south is aggressive, I'm only considering it because it's the only way to not have like 7 front cities against Thoth. The lack of food resources also limits the economic value of a city south of N5, yet the cultural control of that land outweighs that concern.

Also, SoZ requires both Aesthetics and Monarchy. No way someone beats me to that if I throw 4 workers south to make the chops.

The issue arises that pissing off Thoth has a very real chance of causing him to try to take out everything south of Nova 5...or that my focus on defending this area means that Thoth instead takes out CH ahead of when I am able to do so.

[Krill]

Other tech options are somewhat boring.

• Alphabet: I have trade routes to Plako and Thoth. I have more cities than both. Not helping my rivals.
  
• Maths: Would get after Aesthetics for hte wonder chop plan, otherwise pass.
  
• HBR: Don't want before T88, T86 if double pasturing the horse.
  
• MC: default peace option, getting into Vassalage and Serfdom replacement civic (whatever it's called) around T100 should help both with per turn hammer production and preparing for a knight rush what with growing lumber mills earlier.
  
• Feudalism: Safety tech. Good fallback but if I'm not able to revolt for 24 turns then I have to wonder how useful longbows are at this stage of hte game with a low production base.
  
• Code of Laws: fuck that. Need MC to make it useful due to civic needing MC tile improvements.
  
• Sailing: OK will get after Monarchy.
  
• Calendar: I have 4 Calendar happy. I'm getting it ASAP aren't I? But most of that happy is not safe and requires a front city against Thoth to secure it.
  
• Construction: Meh.
  
• Machinery: Eventually, but need iron and Feudalism. Could have been made to work if I'd rushed it once the Academy was in place and turned the capital into a watermilled 1 HA per turn city and ran CH over but doubt that works now.
  
• Music: I still have my eye on that.
  
• Theocracy: ...I want it for AP and free temples. You know what, fuck it, I really want that, but 400 hammers is a lot.

[Krill]

Some fucker finally built the Oracle. T68 is around about the time it fell in PB5...so perhaps not that bad? And it was built by Joey, who seems to have taken 2 classical era techs?

[Krill]

[Krill]

bpt@0%: 40bpt, +21gpt
bpt@100%: 102bpt, -17gpt

Get Sailing, then I can 4 turn MC.

[Krill]

Someone got GLH and Thoth settled the one tile island next to the ivory island.

That's going to be a bitch for both of us.