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Mack founded Taoism on schedule but his GNP had another serious uptick to it. I decided to give up on the Taj and focus on the AP instead. I'll just curse everyone who voted for this damn mod version. The worry after Mack wins the Taj is that he manages to get liberalism as well. Libbing Constitution and getting access to Representation in addition to Mercantilism. 
In a well-played game, it should be pretty impossible to go Taj -> Lib. While you go up Nationalism that should give someone else enough time to get to Lib. Lib -> Taj of course is more possible but it's not as powerful. There's no obvious counterweight researcher here though.
OH is the only other civ in the Vikings league right now but his invasion means me, Comm and REM all have similar to better GNP. OH did apparently capture the ToA a few turns after it was built(what was OT4E doing?), perhaps he can keep pace with Mack in the long game but I'm not sure he can challenge for this set of first-to bonus.
REM is my biggest hope, he's on his own island, so he should be able to peacefully farm away like Mack is doing. He's Phi, so he could generate a couple of great scientists. It's not clear how much effort he's putting into this game though. I don't see Comm valuing Lib too highly, he'll probably prefer to attack someone(OT4E's other side?) instead. Rightly so really, Lib isn't great when you only take something like printing press with it. But we really need someone to deny it to Mack, so maybe I should be thinking about that.
To round out the ranking of our opponents, I think Pin, OT4E and 2metra are out of contention now. I don't think Pin has captured and held a city from 2metra yet, despite a few turns of war already and he's making ~20gpt. 2metra is doing a fair bit of whipping now. Unfortunately for me Pin is still probably the toughest of these 3 to crack.
My immediate tech plans are to get Theo and Monarchy before the golden age. I'll have a 5t Caste system spurt while I research Feudalism, then Paper for Sankore followed by finally picking up Aes->Lit. It's a relatively straight path to Lib, but if Mack can ignore Machinery and Feudalism he could probably beat me, maybe even if he doesn't ignore those.
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On the bright side, ice monasteries!
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What is the deal with this mod version?
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This version of the mod puts the souped up version of Merc(2 specs, no restriction on trade) at Nationalism, which was already a very good tech target. IIRC Krill even moved Merc away from Nationalism in 3.0 RtR due to this issue.
At least the map nerfs Mercantilism a little bit by favouring Serfdom over Caste. Not sure if that's the case for Mack's land but certainly it is everywhere else I've explored.
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Personally, I find most of the civic juggling the worst part of RtR. I hated thinking about it in PB 27, even though it's such a key part of the game (what with all the buffed civics too).
Mercantilism is at Liberalism in 3.0, by the way. In my mind, it's a bad decision too. The guy that gets first to Liberalism gets a very high boon, while everyone else have to tech an otherwise useless (and expensive) tech to get access to the powerful civic. Meanwhile, Banking gives emancipation, which is just an ugly civic, and not in the economic category.
Overall, it's just a huge mess...
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Sorry to hear you've been having such a miserable time, TBS. I am genuinely astonished that you're still soldiering on here, what with every single possible thing could be fucked up about a pitboss game being fucked up here, and... you're still even trying to win despite the cards stacked against you a mile high since T0?!? The Kobayashi Maru ain't got nothin' on this, second ring from the starting settler. You've got an incredible spirit of forthright gamesmanship, truly amazing, man.
I dislike Merc at Liberalism in 3.0 too, for the same reasons you say, Ichabod. I don't think a 2-spec version of Merc is workable unless you put it at Democracy or something, but then that brings us back to everyone using Free Market for forever. I think a lightweight version of merc close to the original is a better way to deal with the problem... make it low upkeep + single spec + allows foreign routes, available at Banking again. Maybe both FM and SP are still clearly better than it civic vs civic, but at least this kind of lightweight version would have some appeal in that it wouldn't require Education (or Economics) and would be available much earlier. I think it's fine that some civics get surrplanted by later ones. I mean, nobody complains that HR isn't competitive late game with Rep, Police State, or US, do they?
I'm not sure if this map nerfs Super-Merc that much.... even size 1 iceballs get those 2 free specs. I remember spamming a lotta ice/tundra windmills in PB22, but there at least I had the occasional fish to grow onto them with.
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Yeah, moving Merc to Liberalism doesn't really change the problem much. To a certain extent we had the same problem with Free Market and RtR games were often dominated by the race to Economics. But it's not so bad because the free Great Merchant is the weakest of the 3 first to boni and Economics is a lot more tech down the road. But yeah, I think Joey's solution is the easiest for Merc:
Quote:make it low upkeep + single spec + allows foreign routes, available at Banking again
As for the game, I'm still having fun. We've been moving at a snail's pace since the Pindicator-2metra war broke out and that's what's sapping my enthusiasm the most right now. I'm not sure I really want to make much comments on the map, there's always a temptation to think your plot of land is the worst. I've explored a lot of Pindicator, REM and Comm's lands and I'd guess they're overall similar to mine but in different ways. For instance REM has a lot more food than the rest of us but he's in a bit of a bind regarding happy resources. I don't know about mack and OH yet though. It feels to me(looking at the resource screen) that they have a lot more food resources. I've been trying to convince myself that I have a lot of good land(serfdom grass hills) to work once I grow onto them but the same could apply to them for all I know. All I can do is keep trying to move the empire forward and see what happens ...
As for the iceballs, I'll probably get them to work a pair of serfdom windmills each(1/3/1 after RP), put up a pair of religious buildings and the income from either Merc or FM. The last city I settled about broke-even money wise(go Agr!) and they only cost 70h each(go Imp!). They should be quite fun eventually.
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Might be time for an actual update.
Foreign affairs:
Pindicator apparently threw away his entire force to burn the Pyramids/TGL city, I couldn't really have asked for a better result could I?
OT4E has lost ~3 cities, including the Great Wall and the Temple of Artemis to Old Harry. I found his stacks this turn though and they're quite impressive. OH did use a culture bomb somewhere. I guess OT4E thought he could hold the ToA but the bomb caught him by surprise and OH took advantage somehow. I think there should be enough here to hold OH for the moment, but now it's something like 17 cities vs 8 and he'll overwhelm him with sheer mass eventually.
Mack got to Nationalism about when I expected him too, I didn't really expect the golden age, I thought he'd just use the Taj for the revolt. Probably this means he doesn't have a great plan to build it. Still, my prospective date would have been about 6 turns after he completed Nationalism and that should be plenty of time to build it with a GA. I still think Mack is doing better than OH right now. With two incoming GAs, I don't see how anyone can beat him to Liberalism, he's already up Philosophy on everyone, he could possibly generate another great scientist for an Education bulb too. So he can liberate constitution and start getting 12-15bpt 'free' per city. His city count is only 14 IIRC, compared to 18 for me and 17 for OH. But my city count is pretty misleading and it looks like there should be more land to settle around there when he's ready. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have windmills at least, by the number of mines I've seen, hopefully his land is as hilly as everywhere else.
Some overview pictures:
Of the land I've explored so far, Commodore has probably made the most of his. I thought he was sacrificing an awful lot for the Colossus at the start of the game, but it seems to have worked out for him. I'm not sure what he can do from here though.
Probably I will be a solid number 3 and have to co-operate with whoever comes out second best from Mack and OH against the other. I have enough routes to close borders with them now, so I'll probably do that after I finish exploring their land.
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Domestically, I threw my golden age this turn, revolted into Christianity, Bureau, OR and Caste. We'll get into Serfdom and Hereditary rule in a few turns time.
My new capital is looking pretty good.
My NE city getting itself a GS.
The other GP generator. This is where I'm really feeling the lack of food. The best I can get is a 6f surplus in a city, which is not enough to grow them for proper starvation shenanigans. I'm not entirely sure what I want to get out of this city, I need to figure out a tech plan after the GA. My initial thoughts are to get a GM ASAP for another golden age to get into Mercantilism. But I figure it will be at least 15-20t after my golden age before that will complete. Another option is to push for a scientist instead, which will be a bit quicker. Use 1 GS to bulb Edu and win Economics, use the GM there to throw the golden age, stay in FM for a while instead of Merc. I could also just eat the revolt turn and delay the GA, bulb the GPs instead. I think 2 bulbs would be similar value to the GA, ignoring revolt turns. Anyway, this requires me to figure out a post golden age plan.
The holy city of Christianity. It's pumping missionaries hard right now, including 2 chops. My happy cap has been very tightly managed so far, because I've delayed monarchy and Calendar. I'm buying spices from OH for 8gpt and then the revolt to Christianity got me the last point of happiness here. Once HR comes in a few turns we'll be fine.
This will get the first missionary and then immediately chop out another one and start pumping some more.
Meanwhile, the free missionary went straight to Jakku to get working on the AP.
Future Moai city, prioritising forge first,because it gets a bunch of hammers from windmills.
And the University of Sankore will go here. Unfortunate that it's on the border with Comm but I don't see a better use for these forests.
Demos:
I've been slowly catching the top food figure as I grew onto more windmills(I have about 20 already btw). But obviously hiring the specialists dropped it, I estimated mack had a 30f real surplus per turn over me a couple of turns ago.
Tech:
This is something I really need to sort out soon, but I don't feel like doing it right now. We want Monarchy, Feudalism, Paper, Aes and Lit during the golden age. After that Calendar and IW are cheap and useful to pick up. We'll want to invade Pindicator at some point, but I don't believe knights are the time to do it, it doesn't work well with OR and the AP. Instead, I guess we either go for Cuirs or Rifles. Economically, Divine Right will be very good for the Spiral Minaret and Replaceable Parts could be worth as much as 100hpt by the time I reach it. Unfortunately, Guilds, Banking and PP are pre-reqs and not quite as useful. Then we also want one of Merc or FM ASAP too. There are surprisngly a lot of good tech targets here, usually I find with the increased costs of RtR or ToW there are not many really appealing techs that I want at this stage. But I need to sort out the order and figure out how that affects my GP plans.
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Luckily for me Pindicator took his time with the turn.
I decided to leave Lwhekk on Merchants. With multiple good options that don't require a revolt turn, I think the delay in the golden age will be fine. Then there's the question, do I really want to win Economics(which would want 2 scientists, to bulb Edu with one of them) and the answer is no. Even with the free GM it's not amazing value and I'm pretty sure I want Merc/Rep eventually. It's also out of the way on any military beeline and I feel I should go for one of them.
So, a rough plan right now is to go Divine Right -> PP -> Guilds -> Banking -> RP -> Gunpowder(pre-build rifles) -> Rifling (golden age, theocracy) -> Nat -> Constitution (end in Merc/Rep).
Obviously there's no need to set it in stone yet. It's not really perfect, I'm doubtful I can research Philo -> Nat -> Constit in one golden age, so that needs to be worked out. Ideally I'd like to do a Pacifism period in my second GA but I don't see how I fit it in. I can still switch to go for Economics or Merc before the invasion if I feel I can delay it.
Regarding the Cuirs vs Rifles choice, Rifles don't seem that much more expensive. We need to get to Gunpowder anyway, might as well go through Guilds. So it's PP -> Banking -> RP -> Rifles vs Philo -> Nat -> Music -> Mil Trad. The 100hpt of RP seems more important to me in securing a successful invasion than the extra beaker power of Nationalism. Then Rifles get my C1 Agg bonus and stay releveant longer(in particular defending coastal cities might be important). There are hill roads all throughout this map too, so G2 rifles could be as maneuverable as Cuirs.
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