[SPOILERS] Welcome to the Kuro Corporation! (Kuro and BaII)

[BaII]

Yeah, it was starting to get late over here and I needed to get some sleep. But everything sounds good for far, after Writing I think we might want to reach currency for those extra trade routes or Code of Laws for Courthouses, and if we get lucky we might potentially get a religion from that. Although I doubt it, as it is a common slingshot with oracles.

[Kuro]

Yeah, it was starting to get late over here and I needed to get some sleep. But everything sounds good for far, after Writing I think we might want to reach currency for those extra trade routes or Code of Laws for Courthouses, and if we get lucky we might potentially get a religion from that. Although I doubt it, as it is a common slingshot with oracles.

Whoever slings w/ the Oracle is probably going MC or CoL or some silly deep sling, yeah. But I am not sure we can go Code of Laws and get the religion anyway because I don't think we will be teching quick enough to do so due to expanding + our likely poorer land in comparison to the other players. IDK.

Anyway, I got the turn, so I am going to play it now and report.

[Kuro]

Losing TGL really hurt not just for the loss of it's ability, but also for the loss of the 174 hammers we had invested into it: The end result of those 174 hammers is, essentially, building Wealth. Which is pretty crap early on: It means our Imperialistic and Expansive traits will have to make up for our being behind in the city/Worker bell curve. Even if our lands suck, our only true options now are to expand!

Research set to 100% to burn through our failgold, the Axe that killed those two Warriors told to heal (3T), the capital 2-pop whips a Galley to check out that island and see if it is better than our homelands: Will overflow into a Settler, then see if it is quicker to slowbuild the Settler or whip it, or if slowbuilding is better anyway to run out the anger clock. After that Settler gets out, we might want to leave it at Size 4/5 for a while and just pump out 4T Workers until we have popped out around 2-3, as our Worker labor is a bit too low.

Fortunately, Sam Walton finishes a Worker in 2T: Walton will then grow to Size 4 and whip out a Settler. Do we want it in John Dodge or the Cows/Clams city?

The two cities sites, for reference (Also I'll give Cows/Clams a name soon):

John Dodge:



Cows/Clams:



Personally, I am in favor of John Dodge first: It allows us to share that Grassland Deer, which the Workers can improve ASAP (And thus it could be set up for the new city), it should be able to reach a good amount of food thanks to 2x Deer resources and, in the near-ish future, the Wheat resource. And it can become a killer Worker pump by working 3x hills, Grassland Forested Deer and the Wheat, which should allow for 11 hammers per turn + a good food surplus + Expansive to bang out 3T-4T Workers. We might wanna keep it there for a while and just have it build endless Workers(/Settlers?) for a bit once it is set up to make sure we have proper Worker labor.



Galley is going to check this over here out to see if it is an island with good stuff on it: If it has grassland or what not, we might want to go for it, even if defending it will be...difficult. It'll also give us an "overseas" TR if it is an island.

Interesting Graphs:

GNP:



Production:



Crop Yield:



It looks like WilliamLP is building up now, so he is either about to hit a whipping cycle or gonna stay there, maybe get a bit more of an uptick, soon. We need to found more cities and through them, catch up with the crop yield!

Power:



Appears to be keeping in lockstep with us. Note our increase due to Hunting.

And finally, Demographics:



Going for The Great Lighthouse and failing has basically put us in shit tier for demographics. But hey, everyone loves a challenge! Lets see if we can claw our way back to #1 for Number Fun!

[Kuro]

Kuro Muses

Started thinking on various parts of our map, game, ecetera and decide to make a post that was basically a slathering of my musings.

1. We're Imperialistic, but lacking Cottage-able land.

Pretty much nothing past our starting area can really be cottaged, which is bad when your plan involves REXing up. We may need to end up throwing down cottages on Plains tiles, lots of them, and trying to make up the food as best we can. We might need to work a good deal of coast to make up the difference. Commerce will be tough, so...

2. We'll want to build up!

While we should continue whipping hardcore, we will likely need to build our core cities vertically as time goes on, because they make up the bulk of our good tiles. Ergo, we will need plenty of happiness and want to really build them up. Getting places like our capital up to Size 8+ will help support our weaker "bridge" cities across the ice, hoping to "bridge" over to that better land to our right before other people get to it (And even if not, we might as well claim the ice fast). This leads to the problem of...

3. We don't have a lot of luxuries.

As I've mentioned, we have 3 happiness resources: A Furs we can get soon, which will be very helpful, a very contested Silk, which WilliamLP is likely to get, and some very far away Silver. This does not bode well for building vertically!

4. Key techs

Ergo, our key techs after we get some of the basics down are as follows:

Monarchy: We're badly hurting for happiness...so let's just BUILD our happiness with military! Monarchy requires either Priesthood or Monotheism: This leads me to think that we should head up Mysticism -> Polytheism and, if Judaism is avalibile, go for Monotheism: Otherwise, we open the door to Priesthood, which gives us Monarchy and...

Code of Laws: Another key tech for us...but ONLY if we don't get Judaism. I feel like getting a religion is almost a must given everything that has gone on: Each happiness (Or, with a Temple, two) is a happiness we don't need to spend military resource costs on, and we get Courthouses...but Courthouses aren't really that hot for us. Most of our icy cities will have a hard time getting to 120 hammers quickly or getting to Size 8 to whip it out, so the majority of our cities will not be able to build them all that well. But we'll want a religion. More on that later. Code of Laws requires Writing and either Priesthood OR Currency: We'll get to how to get it later.

Currency: Our key economic tech: Markets give +1 happiness from Furs (Though only our core cities will get them out quickly) and, most importantly, we get +1 TR per city, which will be a massive economy boost. It will also be the most expensive to get, either Mathematics or Alphabet required to research, which could be problematic. More on the order later.

Metal Casting: We'd love the Colossus if we could land it! But this is highly imrpobable, so it is more of a key tech for Forges. So this would be far behind the other three.

5. Techs and Orders

We need to prioritize what we need to get. Personally, I feel we need to get happiness first, because we simply cannot toil under a 5 happiness (Post-Furs!) cap and remain competitive with our opponents. This means religions and Monarchy!

Our first priority, I feel, is religion, as it is the only one where when you discovers it matters (Gotta do it first) and not having to build the 30 hammers in our ice cities to grow will be massive. (Instead, we get stuff like our capital busting out 3-4T Missionaries and the like). I feel our first target should be Monotheism and, if that falls, we instantly beeline Code of Laws, with a detour to Animal Husbandry. If we get Judaism, then we can ignore Code of Laws until later. Monarchy comes right after whatever religion, followed by Currency. We'll need to be careful about expanding so that we do not explode our bank before we get key techs.

Ergo, the order looks something like:

Mysticism -> Polytheism -> (Monotheism / Priesthood) -> Animal Husbandry -> (Code of Laws, if no Judaism) -> Monarchy -> Currency -> (Code of Laws if Judaism?)

Obviously attacks can derail our plans, but to be honest if WilliamLP attacks us we pretty much lose even if we hold him off, so there isn't much of a point in considering that possibility aside from "Try to have defenses".

6. Religion and the Monk Economy

So, why is Religion a big deal for us? Multiple reasons. Let me go through them.

1. Most of our good tiles will likely be concentrated in our core cities: Ergo, 40 hammers in, say, Standard Oil will be easier to get than 30 hammers in Ice Junk. The ability to transfer the hammers-to-culture via Missionaries to lesser towns will be great and jumpstart those cities enormously.

2. +1/+2 happiness is amazing since we're so low on happiness. Monarchy might give you theoritically infinite happiness, but you gotta pay for every garrison, which can get costly. Religion is free, aside from the oppourtunity cost of going for a religion.

3. Don't underestimate Organized Religion! +25% to buildings is a huge boon across our empire: Fishing cities whip better, our main cities build faster and everything is accelerated. It also means we don't have to bother with Monasteries to build Missionaries. We'll want Monotheism for this for our religion at some point due to this (Slot it in before or after Currency if we have to go Code of Laws?)

4. This is a bit of a pipe dream probably...but it'd be very good if we could get the Apollistic Palace, as having +2 hammers per religions building would be great for our ice cities, as they will likely be primarily ocean based and even if not, will be lacking in tile yields. Monastaries can even be whipped fairly easily! It's a pipe dream for now, but would be killer if we got it...

5. Finally, I feel we should run a Priest in a city when we get a religion so that we can pop a Shrine out. We're going to be spreading our religion around a lot...and the gold adds up, especially since we're IMP and can spam cities and can send missionaries to other players. We should be easily getting 10+ GPT fairly quickly as a base from a shrine...then throw in stuff like a Market and we're set! It would extremely help our finances.

And that's all the musing I got. How much of it is good? No clue! But musings are worth musing, at least.

[TheHumanHydra]

Thank you for the thoughts.

[Kuro]

Thank you for the thoughts.

Always good to hear people enjoying what I write! c:

[BaII]

Ugh, losing TGLH is going to hurt us greatly in this game and it is pretty much forcing our hand right now. Good idea on running a priest specialist but that we would get the prophet in 34 turns..... I'm kinda of sad right now since we have to do some pretty risky stuff to keep up with others right now. But yeah tech path seems reasonable except for trying to get the religion from CoL after Monothesim, as we are not very like to land it, as we are diverting our research path's elsewhere beforehand. I'm thinking is it possible to get away with not using a religion and using MP to keep our cities happy. Although you are right about it possibly being expensive, and if we are fighting a war we do not want our military forced to sit in cities as MP. So we pretty much have no choice IMO to go and chase after religions. So we might as well try and grab the religion from CoL if we fail our religion grab from Monotheism.

[Kuro]

Yeah, normally I wouldn't want to go for CoL right after Monotheism, but we're just not in a position where we can't take some risks. Without TGLH we're not going to get a lot of production from the ice cities (As opposed to TGLH making them quite valuable!) and if we just play the same game as everyone else we're going to lose because our everything is inferior, so we need to take a risk (Religion) and hope it works...

Actually, how about this: CoL is usually gotten fairly early...but THEOLOGY isn't, we're heading towards Monotheism and Writing anyway...if we lose Judaism, what if we beelined Theology instead of CoL? I already outlined why we won't building a lot of Courthouses quickly, so CoL is not the economic tech it usually is...both need Writing, but Theology needs Monotheism and CoL needs Priesthood, so Theology has 60 beakers more in requisite techs...but at the same time, we'll be getting Monotheism anyway, so it isn't a big deal (Organized Religion!).

The bigger issue would be Theology costing 500 beakers compared to Code of Law's 350, but we'd be more likely to land Christianity than Confucianism. And if we got to Theology first, we could start a city (Probably our capital) on the Apollistic Palace ASAP and probably land it.

Your thoughts on CoL vs. Theology if we miss Judaism?

[BaII]

I don't know if we can try and land another wonder though, we already chopped all of our forests in an attempt to get TGLH, and just we need those hammers to go into settlers.. Yes if we do hit and miss with monothesim we could try for Theology, however it would take about 15 turns to even research it. We need to throw down some cottages to quicken that research tech. Also we can't keep chasing the monk tree, or else we will far behind elsewhere, and I fear this may happen if we try for Theology. If we can get Theology within a reasonable amount of time then I say go for it.

[Kuro]

I don't know if we can try and land another wonder though, we already chopped all of our forests in an attempt to get TGLH, and just we need those hammers to go into settlers.. Yes if we do hit and miss with monothesim we could try for Theology, however it would take about 15 turns to even research it. We need to throw down some cottages to quicken that research tech. Also we can't keep chasing the monk tree, or else we will far behind elsewhere, and I fear this may happen if we try for Theology. If we can get Theology within a reasonable amount of time then I say go for it.

Alright. Anyway I was basically just wondering if you thoughti t was an alternative to CoL that we could go after instead of CoL, not if we miss it. Gonna play my turn now.