Thread of Lost Tales: Bismarck of Japan

[The Black Sword]

Jowy took peace. Met GJ.




No stone so HG should be safe from him. No Currency either and something tells me he's beelining it. He's obviously doing great but not really focusing on gnp. And I guess the various techs that I'm so anxious for aren't so good for him anyway. I offered him OB since my routes are still not full but he probably doesn't need it, he's already got a lot.

I built TGW last turn too:




Mostly for the culture and gpp. Here's where my HG is planned and hopefully the Parthenon too. That would give me 9gpp before any specialists. Though this place might have to be hammer focused long term for lack of any better options.

The island:




I'm going to settle the marble and the crabs before the HG comes in. Both cities are pretty crap though ... Hopefully they're worth it with a 30h discount and 2 trade routes. I do need to ensure I have the marble for my wonders. The 3rd HG city I'm settling is the corn filler I showed previously.

Gold and 2 engineers coming online was a nice boost to my GNP.

[The Black Sword]

Haram built the Mausoleum!




That's pretty good news, it makes him less likely to be building the HG. Building two big things at once is generally difficult and it would limit his ability to spam out a few extra cities for it. Looks like we guessed the right path.

The MoM was not built in his capital, so it was probably built quickly via forests around either my Gondolin/Dor-Lomin locations. I guess he has teched Calendar + Priesthood in about the time it has taken us to research MC + part of Currency, which is a similar tech rate. Hopefully I can beat him to Currency and be first through the Lit line if he's also thinking of going that way.

Also pictured are my other two new cities. Anfauglith was whipped out of Lammoth, it works the fish and gets an immediate granary chop. The corn city will be 2-whipped out of Himring(Forge!), the corn will be pre-improved and it will use the HG pop to whip a granary.

That would put me at 13 cities, 1 behind GJ and he could still settle more. I've been wondering where he's getting the land for all these cities though.




He doesn't have much extra apparently. He doesn't have easy neighbours. Dreylin is the other guy on his main island and he's also expanding fast. Fenndit are on his secondary island and I expect them to get all of their side of the jungle. If he copies Jowy, he'd be attacking Borsche in the northern island. That might work out better for him than Jowy, given Borsche's slower rate of expansion to the islands, but I still don't think it would be a great move.

So I don't think I really need to panic yet.

In comparison I have Scipio to invade through the mainland. After that I border Tsargon on the mainland and the secondary island. His food graph is similar to Scipio's. The only problem is it takes like 5 turns to march through the jungle for a mainland invasion. I should think about when that invasion should take place; Construction, Samurai, Knights or something else.

[The Black Sword]

Hopefully some good turns coming up:







If I roll a scientist I'm going to put an Academy in Gondolin. It's not an amazing Academy city, due to my low breakeven rate from specs and it doesn't have the Palace yet, but it'll be such a good city in the long run that it's probably worth it. I have been wondering whether I should put my Academy here or in Menegroth. Why not both? I should be getting a couple of GPs with the specialist economy after all, with a high scientist weighting. Menegroth needs the Academy by the time it builds TGL but the second GS should suit for that so I'll save travel time by putting one up here first.

If I roll an engineer, that will either rush build a Lit wonder or bulb Machinery, which works for both the Samurai and Knight paths. Haven't thought about which is better yet.

I toyed with the possibility of working a number of Rep citizens to finish Currency next turn if I get the Academy but I'm just slightly too far away to do it economically. GJ and Borsche just got it, so I'll have almost 20% KTB.

Here's a new set of graphs btw:









Tsargon is only doing slightly better than Scipio. He still hasn't settled our island. Should I go through the jungle and try take it myself? It does leave a vengeful player alive with their core lands. I'm not so worried about harassment from him but whether he'd bring his army into Scipio's land and help defend in his culture when I invade.

[The Black Sword]

We got an engineer. Marconi, hopefully he transmits a message to Haram to stay away from Literature.

Option 1 is to bulb Machinery for ~1k real beakers.

But I don't really want Machinery immediately. I want Literature, Calendar, Iron working, and probably Construction+HBR first. If I was going toward Samurai then CoL and Civil Service would go first too. And maybe I want to pick up Music.

So it's not really worth 1k beakers right now.

Option 2 is to build the ... Temple of Artemis? That's 200 real hammers saved. But the wonder is probably worth at least twice that. ToA is actually a pretty good wonder when you combo it with Rep, Parthenon, NE and Academy.

TGL is getting 1 turned anyway, so it doesn't need to be rushed. Parthenon will probably be 1 turned too. Rushing the more expensive ToA at Polytheism is probably better than the National Epic after Literature. I don't feel like any other wonders out there are actually worth rushing yet.

What I'm thinking of doing is switching the designations of Dor-Lomin and Menegroth.

Assuming Dor-Lomin's 3 remaining forests can 1t the TGL, which seems reasonable, I can make that the National Epic city. It didn't have the hammers to build ToA in any reasonable timeframe but the engineer takes care of that. The only drawback is a fairly slow build on the actual NE afterwards.

I can put the Parthenon in Menegroth instead and make it my HE city, to which it seems much better suited.

I've been leaning toward an earlier attack than Samurai or Knights. That just seems a long time away. In that case Machinery is a bit unnecessary whereas rushing the ToA gives more resources I can put into that attack. If I succeed in all the wonders I want I think I'm likely to be relatively gold rich and hammer poor too. Unlocking the Heroic Epic earlier would be a non-trivial benefit.

[Commodore]

Why the crossbow hate?

[The Black Sword]

They are excellent units for this time frame. Good defenders and a great(the best?) follow up to catapults until longbows appear.

But if I wasn't getting Machinery 'for free' from the bulb, I'm pretty sure I'd put at least the first 5 techs I mentioned first. So I don't think they're really worth 1k beakers to get access to.

Additionally, I need to pick up IW and hook iron to build the crossbows. If I do that after Lit, that's a further delay, if I do it before Lit I risk losing some stellar wonders in TGL and Parthenon. And of course that's about how long it would take to get access to catapults from construction too.

Still have 2 turns to change my mind though.

[The Black Sword]

More succinctly, I think they're really good units for their hammer cost, but not when you factor in their beaker cost.

[The Black Sword]

Good turn.







173+26 = 199 food, take that GJ!

I have also apparently missed the fact that Tsargon and Scipio researched alphabet. This confirms that Scipio was the one who got Iron Working this turn and that he doesn't have Maths.

[Ichabod]

This map is pretty cool. Too hard for me to play it, but pretty cool nonetheless.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, I like the map.

I only have 2 nitpicks.

1. Happiness resources shouldn't be mirrored. We should have similar quantities but more duplicates to encourage trading. This would also result in a slight decrease in general available happy sources, which I think is a positive.

2. The land borders should not be so easily defined. As it is there is not really any reason for player interaction for some time. But hey, Jowy was kind enough to fix this issue for me.