[SPOILERS]Boudica of Rome and Gawdzak ask: "Raise your what?"

[Gawdzak]

Golden Age

Swapped to Pacifism, Caste and Free Market. FM didn't do as much as I hoped.

Trying for that GE:




The Cap, starting Oxford next turn:




Demo:




Donovan's last three cities:

[Gawdzak]

Got the Engineer.




Doesn't make sense for me to go for Communism just to try and rush the Kremlin since Mack is so far ahead of me in that path already. Hoping for Mining Inc. one day.

I'm not sure about the best tech path for me to take right now. I'm seriously considering the merit of switching into Nationhood as it would save about 50 gold in civic upkeep. This is a huge map size, so I can draft 5 units per turn. Getting Rifling along with that would be great. On top of that, my capital is not that great: not enough towns since the terrain simply didn't allow it.

Might freak people out though by switch to Nationhood and Theocracy. Retep is building up a good amount of power and I'm not sure what he plans to do with that.

Astronomy would also be very important for me to control the seas, the good thing is that no one has it at the moment IIRC.

I think I still got a small chance in this game, although Mackoti is pulling ahead with his massive production building Wealth and Seven with his seemly unending Golden ages is also teching like crazy.

[Gawdzak]

I took Donovan's last city after Seven took two of Donovan's two western most cities.




GG.

[Gawdzak]

Last turn of golden age. Oxford is complete.




With Donovan gone, I had the room to settle three new cities. Flood plains are real food in this mod.




The demos:




Make no mistake, I'm still very much in 3rd place, behind Mackoti and Seven.

[Gawdzak]

GA over.

Mackoti gets the Communism spy to GA swap to State Property to close the gap to me in food. The demos:




Mack obviously have a lot of workshops, which are 2 food/6 hammer (grass) and 1 food/7 hammer (plain) right now. Perhaps just a little overpowered.

I got 3 different GP from my last GA, so I got that in my back pocket shall I need it:

[Gawdzak]

There's a new ToW game starting and there's some debate (like always) about strength of individual traits. This game is technically a test game for ToW, so I will share some data from my game here.

Charismatic: how good was it?

I'm playing as Charismatic in this game. This version of the trait gives 3 flat happiness and faster promos. This trait was pretty useful in the early game. I was able to go completely without happiness resources until turn 75 and was whipping with complete disregard to the happy cap. I was able to acquire a HE unit relatively early and was able to complete my HE before my preparation for my war against Donovan.

However the problem with flat happiness bonuses is that it scales very poorly into the late game with more happiness resources available. Currently, I ended up with this situation:




I am currently receiving zero benefit from the Charismatic happiness boost. Granted, I probably under-grew many of my cities. I feel like Charismatic happiness bonus was definitely something I could've lived without.

The extra promotions my units didn't come into play much at all in my war as I was able to overwhelm Donovan with sheer numbers.

The easier access to Heroic Epic was definitely a big help. The problem is that gaining exp to get a HE unit is situational and not consistent: what if there aren't enough barbs? or what if you lose low odds battles to RNG?

My conclusion is that CHM is good if one have no happiness resources, but on a balance map that we usually play on, CHM loses a lot of its value.

I recently did a ORG vs FIN comparison in PB21. I have neither of those traits here but it's not hard to pretend that I do.




Civic upkeep is 257 gold per turn. ORG would save 257/2*1.28 or 164 gold per turn.

I counted 207 commerce per turn if I was FIN.

FIN outscales ORG in the late game as I predicted. I still think ORG comes out on top by virtue of the cheap buildings. I have built lighthouses and courthouses in almost every city:




I didn't realize that I had to build 12 monuments. I think Creative, despite the nerf, is still a decent trait.

I think this version of Agricultural is completely broken: an average food tile that gets an AGR boost is worth 5 food. AGR boosted it to 6 food, that's a 20% increase. Assuming you are not limited by other factors (worker turns,happiness, etc.), your cities grows 20% faster, that means you get to work 20% more tiles or get 20% more production on anything through the whip. I'm not entirely sure my reasoning is correct on this but I think the general idea is sound.

Turn 174 Update:

I'm finally starting to build the Moai. This is very late, but I didn't have a good spot/time/resources to build it until now. I've been focused on getting infrastructure up and then preping for war.In addition, I have traded my Stone away for various reasons.




I will look to build the Forbidden Palace in Donovan's former capital:




Because the maintenance is getting insane in some cities:




Not whipping the courthouse yet, because the city have good tiles to work. I think this is the right move.

Hit number 1 in pop.




Demos:




I'm doing well, but I'm pretty pessimistic about my chances to win. Seven has started to draft rifles, I'm pretty sure he's going after either Haram or GermanJoey. I can't see either of them to put up a strong resistance. Mack has his 14 strength Grenadiers and can also look to invade Haram. Myself, on the other hand, borders Retep, who's going full North Korea mode; wetbandit, who I share a long coastal borders with and is even with me in tech (if not ahead of me); then there's Mack to the east and Seven to the west.

Feel free to ask any questions or for SS that you are interested in seeing.

[Ichabod]

Thanks for the post! Very useful info.

[Asterix]

There's a new ToW game starting

Great game so dar, Gawdzak, and very interesting thoughts on the ToW mode.

Where is a new ToW game organizing thread? Would love to participate, but don't see it.

[Gawdzak]

There's a new ToW game starting

Great game so dar, Gawdzak, and very interesting thoughts on the ToW mode.

Where is a new ToW game organizing thread? Would love to participate, but don't see it.

The game I'm talking about is PBEM63. Unfortunately, they are done with sign-ups. I'm sure another game will pop up in the future.

[Asterix]

There's a new ToW game starting

Great game so dar, Gawdzak, and very interesting thoughts on the ToW mode.

Where is a new ToW game organizing thread? Would love to participate, but don't see it.

The game I'm talking about is PBEM63. Unfortunately, they are done with sign-ups. I'm sure another game will pop up in the future.

Ah, thanks for the info, at least I can lurk that game. And do post in the future if there is a ToW game coming, mod seems very interesting, so i hope there will be another Pitboss sooner or later.