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Only above mack and 2metra in my reporting?
So the last picture showed me getting invaded by some surprisingly co-ordinated barbarians. I managed to fend them off without incident, though it cost me 3 expensive chops into axes instead of more important things. Here's my current barb kill count:
My Impi is stalking another barb warrior to hit the 10xp on. I don't think I really plan on an early HE though, but it's good to have it unlocked.
Here's a picture of my south:
I've settled 2 new cities by the gold and the horses. I really wish I could have settled the gold earlier and got some boats on that coast but I don't think I've had much choice, it looks like the corn city was settled just in time before Pindicator got there. I'm chopping out a WB there, probably follow it up with a galley -> ikhanda -> Granary -> grow on rice. Important city.
Ithor was settled for horses meanwhile, I'll want to get out a chariot somewhere to deal with barb axes easier. I chopped two forests for an immediate granary and it steals the pig from Coruscant to grow.
Building my granaries is a bit of a theme over these turns, I think at T75, the time of the last report, I had only one. Geonosis and Felucia both got one at size 2 via chop+whip. Endor will 2-whip one when it grows to size 4, while Coruscant's will be chopped out after it's built that worker. Now that I've settled the gold and can settle the Ivory when I like, the granaries make more sense.
On the topic of city specialisation, I've had my eye on the Ivory city for a while as my HE spot. It can grow on the corn and a farm and eventually work a BFC full of windmills. For the National Epic, I've been hoping(and still am) to find somewhere better, but I think we'll have to go with Endor for the moment. It's unfortunate that I built some cottages there already, but the NE is a long time away and I need the commerce anyway. I'll save it's 1 forest for that.
Up North:
Another Granary in Dagobah, and I'm debating growth and another in Alderaan after that worker. Bothawui's library has been delayed by the axes unfortunately but it will hire some scientists soon. It also still has a bunch of forests available for a wonder. I was noodling with a Pyramids idea when that unexpectedly fell a few turns ago. I mean the Pyramids are pretty weak with so little food, but once you hit Nationalism and Mercantilism they go into overdrive. Overall still not great though, so I'm not that cut up. Nor do I really miss any of the wonders that have fallen so far. The GLH and the Colossus I guess I am most envious of but they clearly don't suit my land. I would prefer to have a religion tbh, with no building multipliers at all I'd like to have access to OR( and the other civics, and the happy). Still plenty of time for one to spread to me though.
So what's left is really the MoM and the Hanging Gardens. I'd love the MoM but I'm skeptical of getting to Calendar first right now. I would have preferred slowing down expansion for a better tech rate and hitting Calendar early for the MoM but again, it would have cost me Geonosis and the site beyond it, so I'm not sure it would have been worth it. For the Hanging Gardens I need more cities meanwhile.
Short term plan: Alpha -> Currency for 3c international trade routes. Possibly Calendar/something to raise the happy cap.
Medium term plan: MC-> Machinery for windmills -> golden age through Feudalism and Civil Service for Bureau/Serfdom/HR/hopefully OR.
Long term plan: Hit Nationalism with a plan to 1t the Taj. Either via an engineer, forests from Bothawui or forests from the Ivory city + overflow cascade. Try to generate GP to speed it up; golden age, bulb Philosophy, trade mission. IMO Nationalism is now OP for the first person to get there, still very good value for everyone else.
Long term plan B: Unfortunately Machinery is a detour in a Nationalism race but I don't think I can skip it given my land. It does put me right beside Guilds though. There might be an opportunity somewhere.
Regarding Literature path: Parthenon and Paya are weak with this land. SoZ isn't great and besides the HE city isn't planted yet. The only city that can build TGL is Bothawui which is a cottage city and doesn't really want the NE. HE and NE cities need to grow before those wonders are worth it.
Graphs:
I think Mack is right behind me in food count, based on process of elimination rather than hard evidence. I would guess the current real leaderboard is OH, mack, me, REM, others.
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I'm not going to go for the MoM. Someday a mapmaker will give me Calendar resources but not today(I seem to get wine instead in at least 2/3 of my games). Here, I have 1 silk that requires a border pop(and ikhanda not started) and a sugar under some jungle. If we fail on the MoM, we fail pretty hard. And besides, the food surplus is so low that I'm not pushing against the happy cap, and I haven't even connected the Ivory yet.
Instead we'll try for the Hanging Gardens. It will be a seriously late build at about 16 cities. I'll tech alphabet first, then pick up Masonry to start the aqueduct. The islands out east are unsettleable mountains, so no internal routes for us. It looks like there might be an ice island up north, but that will probably cost as much as the trade will bring in. Bottom line we need trade routes and I don't want to leave it up to OH's kindness(nor do I want to help the game leader).
For my competitors, Commodore, OT4E and 2metra seem pretty easy to rule out due to low city count and previous wonders. Pindicator seems unlikely for this reason as well, he doesn't have stone connected and he's probably spent some forests on SH.
OH has been research building I think, seeing his GNP and delayed expansion. That strongly suggests against a Hanging Gardens build(partially a point for a MoM build too, but surely Maths -> Calendar, skip alphabet would have been just as quick).
REM just revolted to Buddhism, also a strong point against the HG. There's still plenty of time for him to build it but wasting a turn for an ability that rewards growing tall? He does have stone connected though.
That leaves mackoti, whom I haven't met yet. Guess I should try pay attention to his civ stats. He's already built the GL so he's probably used some forests. But I guess he's around 9 cities in expansion too right now.
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Please accept OBs next turn. 
He's got OBs with OH but those should only be worth 2gpt due to the war dec between them. I don't think he has a route defogged to my port yet, but he did turn a WB around at my borders a few turns ago, presumably to keep the trade bonus active.
I've already got 2 free spreads of his religion(Buddhism), hopefully we should end up good friends this game.
OH landed MoM and mack has settled a new city both of the last two turns.
On the whole map trade business btw, it sounds like REM is obliged to keep borders open with OH to explore his territory due to Ceil's ruling. But it should be a serious consideration for everyone to keep borders closed with him and slow him down.
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REM didn't accept. 
I sent him a fish for fish - let's be friends. In 2 turns my galley will be not so friendly and sit outside his city and I'll ask for OB again. If that doesn't work I'll offer him a gold resource too, though I haven't settled my spares yet. Hopefully we won't need to go any further.
Hoth is temporarily building research to complete Masonry this turn. Then it goes back to another galley before it's ikhanda. I want to go get more OB options and galleys will put pressure on people to accept.
Commodore was nice enough to accept my OBs at least. I need to defog this last bit of coast to get the trade routes:
Remains to be seen if he pulls a pindicator and cancels when I start getting money though. You can see the potential ice island in the north east but I really don't want to have to settle that if it has no resources.
I've settled two new cities in Jakku and Kashyyyk. Jakku will be entirely focused on a future Taj build, while Kashyyyk picks up a deer and some river grassland. The two libraries in Endor and Ithor are also part of the Nationalism plan. I need to get some scientists working for a golden age and a Philo bulb. Ithor is a particularly poor choice for a library, but the main point of it is for the specialists. Once I get to Mercantilism most cities will want a Lib anyway to run the specialists, we won't be in caste system, so we'll need to have slots unlocked by buildings.
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REM ran into my galley with a WB -> I'm getting money! 
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T100 - where I finally sorted out the micro for the Hanging Gardens.
First, Felucia whips itself a settler for the stone(ok, I already had the stone hook up figured out).
City is founded T103 and stone is connected T105(8 worker turns takes a while to get through).
Meanwhile, Dagobah and Alderaan build 2 more settlers. Alderaan's goes to the northern spot that says found T106. There's a second deer to the north, so this is a decent city when it's border pops. It will use the HG pop to immediately whip an Ikhanda and it will have a plains hill mine to build a granary while it waits. Dagobah's settler was originally earmarked for the marble. After consideration though, I think I'll switch it to the 3 gold city instead. Commodore just offered me a gems for gold deal, which I accepted. So hooking up those gold just became very valuable. The marble city was a bit of a longer term move, but I'll just send an axe to fortify there I think to make sure I keep it. It also would have benefitted more from the free pop, since the gold city would be quite happy to sit at size 1 forever but I think the extra happy will just be worth a lot more in the short term.
That will put me at 16 cities when the HG falls on T106:
I'll be pretty happy with how this opening has gone if I land it. We had a pretty slow start, presumably due to the capital, but everything has gone pretty well in catching up; awesome city 3, stealing a fair bit of extra land from pindicator, keeping the economy from crashing, both Maths and Alphabet have been really valuable for us.
I'm still not sure of the long term Taj plan though. I still think it's pretty OP in this version of the mod, but it's hard to see how we beat OH to it. Surely it will be top of his priority list after landing the MoM, if it wasn't already. Meanwhile he has a headstart on his teching and presumably doesn't need to detour to both Machinery and Feudalism, two very expensive techs. I have some plans to speed things up but he'll almost certainly do the same. I have to keep evaluating things here and keep an eye open for other options.
Speaking of those plans, I started running the scientists in Ithor:
Hopefully 33 turns from now won't be too late for the golden age. Next turn I hire another pair in Endor as it's Lib completes. With the golden age speeding things up, that GP should be complete at the end of the GA. So roughly I would hope to finish a golden age 40t from now with a GS to bulb Philosophy and a bunch of gold saved to rush to Nationalism.
I'll 2 turn Currency when Endor's library completes too. Unfortunately that means I'll have no gold saved when Bothawui's academy comes in but the earlier currency is worth more. The timing bugs me a bit, I wonder if it could have been improved somewhere, but the extra beakers from the scientists have been pretty useful in the earlier Alpha and Currency too.
Demos are quite average at the minute, thought they'd be better tbh. Still, we're within touching distance of OH and have a bunch of stuff half built in queues at the minute.
Oh, and it's been 100t and I still haven't built a granary in my capital. 
I think this is what GJ envisioned for the cap, pumping out settlers all game. I thought we might get a chance to grow it, but there's never been an opportunity. It usually works the FP village btw.
If there's any other pictures or thoughts you're looking for in a T100 update, ask away. 
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REM landed the Hanging Gardens 2t before me.
Damn 2t wandering at the start ... 
Well ok, more me being greedy trying to get 16 cities. He built it with 12, which is a much smaller profit. Still, with the lack of food on the map turning hammers into pop sounded a lot better than usual. It's a serious blow to the Zulu, wasted 100h into an aqueduct, plus a crappy stone city and some terribly inefficient worker usage.
At least I hadn't put anything into the HG themselves though, I've got roughly 200h available. I'll quickly 2t MC and turn that into a Forge and most of a market in my capital:
That'll get me up to size 10 and make better use out of the academy.
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I just offered OH open borders. 
He might not even accept, I think he just managed to miss my port cities when his WB was around the place. On the other hand my galley is at his borders so if he doesn't accept there might be some nets to rip up. Assuming we both have routes to each other, I reckon it's worth about 20gpt to me and under 16gpt to him, since Comm and REM already give him at least 2 commerce routes(maybe REM's are 3c already). Ideally we'd trade embargo him, but I need to fill my routes from somewhere first and the other two are already trading.
Anyway, my apologies to mack, pindi, OT4E and 2metra. I aim to cancel once I meet someone else to fill up my routes but obviously the more people cave in a harder a trade embargo becomes.
I can always re-evaluate and declare war if I see he's getting a lot of routes from me anyway.
Part of the reason is for the potential Taj build. There's a GP timetable, a hammer timetable and a beaker timetable there and I think it's the beaker one that will be tightest. Mack and REM at least probably should be thinking about the Taj as well as OH. I'm teching Machinery right now to get my windmills up. I figure I need to pick up at least one of Construction/Feud/Machinery before I research Nationalism. I wouldn't trust this crowd to leave me alone if stayed on axes while I teched Nat. So that might as well be Machinery. If necessary I could possibly cut the feudalism line to speed up the Taj research, if that guaranteed me the wonder then I guess the delay in Serfdom would be worth it. If I could generate another GM in a quick Caste period at the start of the GA to bulb Civil Service that would be great but I don't think there's another city with enough food.
The back up plan if we can't win the Taj is just to build the best golden age possible. Unlock the windmills to grow onto and some happy techs, revolt to HR/X/Serfdom/OR.
If I don't need to go for the Taj I could go pick up the epics too, which are obviously pretty powerful. I could divert the Taj chops to the Statue of Zeus possibly as well. In a normal game I might be more excited by this option but I don't consider any of Comm, Pindi or REM good military targets for some time. The TGL I wasn't excited by because I can't really pair it with the National Epic, which really limits its usefulness.
Monk economy is perhaps another option. The payback rate isn't great, but at least it's something. I really liked GJ's idea in PB29 of letting someone else build the AP and he tried to win Sankore. Particularly if REM goes for it, that sounds like a good idea.
Liberalism is decidedly meh unless you win something really good. I don't see anything tempting right now.
Economics with Free Market and it's GM has traditionally been a big win in past RB mod games but when you compare it to Nationalism you just see how good that tech is. Merc > FM, Taj > GM, oh and it's about 2-3x the cost. Particularly when I can't see a good use for the Knights you get along the way.
Maybe Astronomy would open up some more military options?
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Btw, right now, things look like this:
OH, Mack
REM,
Me
Comm,Pindi
OT4E
2metra
I think with HG I'd be right up there with OH but now I'm stuck quite far behind. To make matters worse he already has more land area than me. I was hoping I'd have the advantage there long term but it seems not. The only remaining land for me to claim is tundra/desert.
I can't really be sure of Mack's standing because we haven't me yet. All I really know about him is his high score and his size 15 GLH capital. Still, right now I reckon the leader is whichever one of the top 2 borders 2metra. OT4E may also be a good target, the Oracle massively inflates your score, but he may still have enough critical mass to prove thorny. It's hard to tell when I haven't met the guy.
REM looks to be on his own private island bordering me and OH, which isn't good for him. Not good for me either. He's a clear third after that Hanging Garden build but the way forward isn't clear. I guess he should look at abusing Phi somehow.
Pindicator and Comm have similar demos to me, lower city counts and I suspect slightly lower GNPs. I guess we're 'the pack' right now. They've both used up their 2 early game traits, while I still have Agg working for me. That's been pretty decent btw, it's not as good as Org but it's far better than Fin would have been for my start(pretty useless, terrain is all rivers, hills and no seafood).
Anyway, the question is who their other neighbours are and what land they have left to settle. Right now I expect Comm to keep up via the Colossus but pindi to fall behind. His front cities toward me are useless though and he's Pro, so an invasion doesn't seem like a great plan to me.
April 8th, 2016, 12:28
(This post was last modified: April 8th, 2016, 12:30 by The Black Sword.)
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OH asked for 2gpt for the OBs. I couldn't bring myself to accept, not when I have the galley by his shores and he's the one worried about diplomatic isolation. Figured I could threaten him for one more turn. He had a straight OB offer beneath that though, which I accepted. I'm about 80% sure he's not getting any routes, my Exports-Imports went from 0 to -16 between turns. This does fluctuate between turns IIRC, eg. whether REM uses up all of my routes first or all of OHs would change the figure and depend on the turn order. But there's not so many spare routes available right now so I think that's a big enough change.
Up to 100gpt breakeven. Building/Growing to whip workers in Geonosis, Felucia and Coruscant for when the windmills come in.
Trying to get the other places to grow now. They've taken forever to set up due to the lack of food. Lwhekk was the only one with something first ring but with no forests it's granary has taken a while too. Mandalore's about to pop borders, hook the fish and get a chopped granary. Hoth will steal the rice when Naboo hit's size 2 and the granary can be chopped to completion.
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