It's been almost three weeks now... I'll break my self-imposed silence and go back to providing some updates again. I haven't changed how I feel once bit, and I still believe that if you can't be bothered to make the most minimal effort to check the forums on a daily basis, then you have no right to complain if you miss a turn. (And if your teammates are so oblivious that they don't jump in and play for you, well, that's the penalty you suffer for poor communication.) But whatever, it's over and done with at this point, and stepping away from the situation to let cooler heads prevail was the best solution, I think.
Anyway.
![[Image: RBPB6-23s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/PB6/Sullla/RBPB6-23s.jpg)
This is after playing Turn 104. We will discover Civil Service next turn; we actually only need the beakers from 2 out of our 3 teams to get it, so we will probably have Speaker and sunrise end their turns, popping Civil Service tech, and then I can revolt into Bureaucracy civic on the same turn for my monster capital. Comparing when each team discovered Civil Service:
Team 3: T95
Team 4: T97
Team 2: T99
Team 1: T105
We were therefore 6-10 turns behind the other teams, as the penalty for taking Music tech first. Was it worth it to delay Bureacracy for that length of time to claim another tech? Probably, although without the free Great Artist the equation would look a lot different. We shall see.
Note that I have not whipped my capital yet, and probably will not do so at any point in time. Because Speaker and I had so much food available at the start, we opted for more vertical approaches to our capitals, building them up before training settlers. You saw the result at Speaker's capital in the pictures he posted, where he turned a pair of forest chops at his size 10 capital into 2t settler -> 1t worker -> 1t worker. Helps to be Imperialistic there, but that's still mighty strong. Speaker and I will both be planting cities next turn, my city going on the tile with the X mark. I'll try to show Speaker's territory next turn.
From what I can see from the score tracking (and it's tough to check number of cities without being able to open the diplo screen) we have fewer cities so far than a lot of the other teams. Team 3's India and Rome players both look to have 4 cities already, and I believe that's the case for Team 2's Ottoman player as well. Team 4 has fewer cities but Team 4 unfortunately just seems to be behind in a number of ways. What we'll get to see in practice in this game is the effectiveness of building up the capital early vs planting more cities early on. From our theorycrafting, I think that our strategy is stronger (well or else we wouldn't be doing it, heh) but this should be a fun way to see things play out in practice. If our land were weaker, we would probably be playing things differently. However, with this super-duper fertile starting position, it would be crazy not to cottage all those floodplains and grow the capital to some ridiculous size ASAP. I think the current target is size 12, working the 8 floodplains cottages and 4 hill mines. A Bureaucracy capital like that is worth about 5 regular cities!
The other advantage of early cottages: early growth to hamlets -> villages -> towns. I have 8 floodplains cottages, and 6 of them have already grown into hamlets. And I'm Financial. Yeah, those 3/0/4 tiles are pretty nice.
![[Image: biggrin.gif]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Smilies/biggrin.gif)
Next builds in the capital will probably be Library -> Buddhist Monastery to stack up the 35% beaker bonus while continuing to grow upwards onto more tiles. I will be able to run 100% science permanently, because my teammates can gift me gold when I run out. (No need to ever waste time adding gold multiplier buildings, I can concentrate on pure science.) With those buildings + Bureaucracy bonus + cottage growth, I should probably be able to hit 100 beakers/turn by about Turn 115. We'll see where things go from there. So I'll probably be a little bit smaller than some of the other teams, but in exchange I can probably double their science output. Feels like a worthwhile trade.
Elsewhere, we've found TMIT (Team 4) up in the north, directly above my capital. There's a large expanse of jungle between us though, so little action likely to happen early on. Team 2 appears to be northeast of Speaker, and Team 3 appears to be east of sunrise (and presumably west of me). The map is large and extremely defensive in nature, thus there will probably be extremely little fighting. Whoever can farmer's gambit the best will win this game.
Lewwyn (Bismarck of India, Team 2) build the Colossus a few turns ago, which feels like a bit of a waste no matter how cheap it might be. Yes, you are Industrious, and yes, I'm sure you had copper for the production boost. Worth it though to build Forge + wonder so early on a map that's 80-90% land? I'm skeptical.
Speaker and I are #1 and #2 in Soldier Count, with our "armies" of military police warriors and archers, so no one appears to be rushing anyone. Music to our ears. More next turn.
Your game analysis posts are always worth reading, and I appreciate them (more so now that I have some experience in how much time it takes to create them).
Hopefully the game goes a bit faster from here. 