[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

BTW, since turns are rolling around pretty often, perhaps we should put together some ideas about what to do after 'Henge. One way or the other, the current micro plan is done next turn. What do you want next in Mr. Love?

[Commodore]

What do you want next in Mr. Love?

Khorne hungers.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

What do you want next in Mr. Love?

Khorne hungers.

Who, this guy?



All in good time. Patience, lad, we're still piling rocks together.



Coin flip time, at worst.

Stats:

Without actually running the numbers, one opponent size 4 capital (suttree), two opponents size 3 + 2. Warrior next in Mr. Love next turn, to complete as we grow to 4. Then perhaps another as a cheap military police, or another worker then chop/double whip a settler for city #3. We need to scout locally like woah. Also, Fishing next after BW completes so we can get back to those yummy clams. I haven't simmed anything yet and I'm unlikely to today as I'll probably be on a boat out in the bay in a couple hours (and will be totally worthless after that), so you should spend a little time figuring out what to do next. But, warrior to size 4 probably must happen. We're a bad barb roll from being totally hosed here.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'd think about chariot to size 4 now actually, and I'm not in a hurry to settle the next city for six more turns until we see where the copper is. But chariot next -- in addition to buying us some protection it will get us scouting again. We need to find copper to be flexible on the defense attack (this fake edit brought to you by Players Caring for Lurkers). Next tech is definitely Fishing so we can hand off the shared tiles to Happy Face full time and get it pumping workers/settlers. Planning, sandboxing...will wait. I'll think about it more before we have a deadline.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T39 - I thought we purchased a big pile of rocks. These aren't even as tall as the tree tops. As long as they do their magical culture spreading thing I guess it doesn't matter if it looks nothing like what was advertised.




Seriously, it looks like some kind of baby model replica of the 'henge. At least we got a giant monument (of a spearman?) in town.

We need a new micro plan, so how is this for a start?




Step 1 is to continue trying not to die, so we've started on a chariot in Mister Love. Bronze Working finishes in 5 turns and if we have copper on hand, having an axe or two sitting around (or exploring for neighbors to murder) will make me feel more safe. Until then I've started moving the warrior to the tile noted with the sign, 1E of where he currently is. From there he can make it into Happy Face or Mister Love before a rival chariot could. Our tile improvements would be dusted but it's better than dying. Until we can project power outward a bit we have to set the bar low here, just cover our asses enough to guarantee we live to see the next turn.

I think next turn the worker should skip the road on the cow tile since it doesn't do anything necessary. He should move to the bare hill and begin mining it the next turn. That will give Happy Face a second improved tile to work quickly as it grows after completing the worker. When the worker completes he can start chopping out whatever is next, probably a quick third worker to chop out a settler or work boats. You'll have to test to see if it's worth chopping the work boats, or whipping them (doubt we want to whip them, I think we want to grow toward our tall happy cap as long as we can keep up on improved tiles). Preliminary guess is slowbuild the work boats while growing, save whips and chops for workers and settlers so that we don't have to stop growing until we get capped. And of course we shouldn't be capped, that's what 3 pop settler whips are for. We should be able to get rolling quickly here soon...just as soon as we can get out and explore the neighborhood and find out where the next city needs to go. The next obvious location is wherever the copper turns up, if we have any.

Something else to consider going forward is what other wonders we want to target early on. For right now I'm sold on the wonders of workers and settlers, but I could be talked into one of the Lighthouse or Oracle. We're IND so a quick Oracle --> MC for early cheap forges is a pretty straightforward and solid plan. One argument against that is that chasing early forges seems like it pushes a bit of a taller empire earlier (if only because when you're building forges you aren't building workers or settlers), so we need to decide if our goal is maximum expansion, or if we value early forges a bit more, or what. I don't think we can answer this yet because we don't know enough about the map and the land we will have access to settle.

What I don't suggest is that we jump for the Lighthouse right now just because of the land we've managed to explore so far most of it was coastal. Yes, we could get a lot of coastal cities if that was our goal, but I don't think the shape of the continent (that we've seen so far) will make that the best way to go about settling our empire. So the Lighthouse may be something we can come back to later on if, for some reason, no one has claimed it within a reasonable period of time.

What are your thoughts on building the Pyramids? My first inclination is that I am not very good with running a specialist economy so I'd much likely get a higher return on the gob of hammers it would take to build 'mids by spending it on settlers and workers instead. If we happen upon some stone and the opportunity cost to build it goes down, well sure, we'd be stupid to not try it. But again, this also goes back (partially) to how we want to build out this empire, massive wide expansion or smaller and taller. Pyramids to representation will give us a really high cap early on, so that's either bigger cities or more whips, however we need to use it. But we all know how it works...the question comes down to whether we want to try running a solid specialist economy when we're probably not great at doing it. I'm a firm adherent to spamming cottages on as many green or brown tiles as possible within reason, so 'mids is not really for me at its cost. (How To Build an Economy: build a worker, walk around to as many tiles as possible and press T as you go).

Now, if we did do an early Oracle --> MC and run a dedicated engineer specialist and hope for a low odds GE (assuming we build Oracle at Mister Love), I'd spend a GE on 'mids in a heartbeat. It won't make me any better at running a specialist economy but it would make me a lot more willing to try if the cost to get started wasn't so high. But we're not going to have a guaranteed GE pool for a while, until we can get a second city (not the capital) to run a forge engineer long enough to spawn the great person AND not get a prophet out of the capital. But that's a problem to worry about later on. We can use whatever GP we get in the early going.

I'm not sure if I've come to any useful conclusions here. Basically, for wonder preferences I think I support a run at the Oracle to try a quick MC. Colossus is a nice side benefit if we can manage it, but I think the more important goal would be to get IND forges in play as early as possible since it's going to pay back so quickly. I think 'mids isn't worth it unless we find stone nearby, and I think the Lighthouse is a great wonder and for all I know it could be really good on this map (seems to be plenty of water, this is the unmodded BTS game so the Lighthouse is its regular awesome self) but I think I'd rather just keep expanding for a while before we try for the Lighthouse, if we try for it at all. Welcome more feedback on this topic, though, we have plenty of time to decide.

I think we're agreed that Fishing is next, since it's only 4T from completion as it is. Fishing, WB/WB, and then figure it out. Pottery will be useful so we can start laying down cottages soon and pick up speed on our tech rate. I think Fishing and then run for the Oracle if we think we can still get it.

Has Polytheism gone yet? I don't recall.

Demographics:




I don't feel like solving for this right now, I'll do it later. The turns have gone by so fast over the weekend that I don't remember who settled what, so we're probably going to be guessing at it from here on out. That didn't take long. I did better tracking that this in PB8, made it to at least turns in the 60s before I gave up. Team game, less effort...bad teammate!

[spacetyrantxenu]

Hey Brick, this is your five day warning. Boldly and I will have bachelor party duties next weekend and we're going to be off the grid to do it, more than likely. I don't think there is Internet access where we're going and I have no idea about cell coverage, so we may not even have phone Internet. Are you available to play turns next weekend? I'm not sure yet if it will be Friday through Sunday or just Saturday and Sunday, but I'll know for sure later in the week.

Depending on how many favors I want to owe you and your availability, and chance you could sub in PB8 as well? I know you were always dying to get your hands on the Portuguese empire. That should be two turns max over the weekend. Non-spoiler insider info: running my empire isn't exactly a lot of work these days.

PB8 Spoiler info - Players go away!

Just build lots of units, that's the whole game plan. Well, the other part of the plan is don't get invaded, but you have less control over that part.

Let me know, if you aren't available (or interested, especially for 8) for either PB11 or PB8 I can ask around over the next few days.

[BRickAstley]

Um.... I will be traveling as well, my brother's graduating, but I should be able to grab turns for this game. I would be willing to sub for PB8 as well, but since I'm globally spoiled at this point, I'm not sure if other players will have a problem with that. Might could ask about it in the tech thread there.

Either way, since i will be busy, we might need to ask people to be willing to pause if timers start counting down.

[spacetyrantxenu]

It's not a big deal in 8 if we have to pause, I don't think. But we can probably recruit someone to help out here in 11 if we need to.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T40

Awesome, we got our rocks stacked neatly! Now that that is out of the way, let's expand! And scout!! I'll add some thoughts to your commentary soonish™, I just need to do some other stuff first. Here's the current turn:



Stats:

[spacetyrantxenu]

Congrats.
You're 80h down for 50% Cre and +1 everywhere.
Your plan 'henged on it.

Thanks for the congratulations... on the pun. Ouch!