[PB29 Spoiler] In which Joey, then mackoti, swing happy go lucky

[GermanJoey]

T47.

How about an update, cause why the hell not? Here's our empire T47, 6 pop working 6 improved resource tiles:




Demos:




Here's what's goin on, city by city.

First, ST. Some nice micro goin on here. I originally thought to bring out the worker to 58/60 then whip into a Granary, but today I realized that since we already had 1h into the granary, we could whip this turn, at 48/60, overflowing 25h. That's 26h, with 4T to grow at 1hpt. Thus, once ST regrows to size 2, the granary will be at 30/60, meaning we can immediately whip again to finish it! BAM!! A turn saved! The food bin will be at 9/22, which isn't too shabby.




Next, HW. Here, we already have the granary done, thanks to the chop that came in last turn. Unfortunately, we need to delay growth for a single turn in order to fill up the granary bin since we'd instantly regrow otherwise. We'll still net 5 free food this way, so not bad. Delaying growth for an additional turn doesn't help, unfortunately. We'd still be at 15/24 food T49, except regrowing on T48 nets us an additional hammer.




MW takes over the Ivory, and pumps warriors. We'll end up with 6 in total. On T48, when we hit size 4, we'll finish the worker with at 1-pop whip, overflowing a billion raw hammers into a settler. We've whipped off 4 pop so far, for 120 hammers, while TBS has whipped off 6 for 180. He only just planted his 3rd city this past turn though. Nobody else has whipped at all!! Combined with the very high average hpt from the demos, and what I can see from Dreylin's graphs, I think some people forgot that they're not playing RtR and are building too many mines. Maybe it's ok for the Pro civs at the capital, but I don't think that not whipping at all near the deer or pig is optimal...




Finally, SRT. Our valliant warrior just murked the barb warrior last turn, defending at 99.9% odds on the grasshill forest from on an attack directly south. TBS just tripped the barb-city threshold last turn, so other players should be getting slowed some. Here, we're not going to rush the granary right away. The problem is that there's really only 2 tiles worth working until our borders pop, and we don't have decent excess food unless they're both improved and we're working both of them. So, what we'll do instead is whip a monument in from 3->2, and then whip the Granary in when we hit 3->2 instead. Founding a city 1N of the copper will bring in the grasshill to SRT's BFC early, so we'll mine that after the copper. This city is one where being Exp would help considerably.




City counts:
Us: 4
Fennbandit: 3
Borsche: 3
Dreylin: 3
TBS: 3
Tsargon: 2
Haram: 2
Scipio: 2

I wonder if Scipio tried for Henge and lost it. Or, maybe I'm wrong and he's not really Mack... I was so sure from the picks and the opening style, but he's still at 2 cities somehow. Probably the biggest red flag is that Xenu hasn't posted in the lurker thread even a single time now...

Any questions?

[GermanJoey]

T49.

Hmmm, we just met Haram's scout... also from the southeast. Is he our neighbor, or is Dreylin? We met Dreylin first, but he also seems to be more likely the type to let his scout go wandering. I really hope its Dreylin... I haven't been impressed with him this game, but my opinion of Haram is an extremely high. Haram also has Stonehenge, which is insanely good on this map (I think we end up whipping in monuments in our first 5 cities!), so he'll start catching up quick.

In other news, Borsche joins the "has whipped" club with a pair of single-pop whips last turn. Haram and Tsargon have founded their third cities; only Scipio remains at 2, despite being Imp.

I realized today that HW will need at least two grass farms if I want any chance of getting the Mids by T90ish. So, I think I need to figure out how we can get a worker out of SRT earlyish?

[GermanJoey]

More sims... the earliest possible we can get the Mids in HW, without completely giving up on expansion, is like T89. And that's with whipping down to size 2! The real limiter turns out to be tech more than hammers; this map is actually kind of small, which is skewing up maintenance more than I expected. Building up a 90h overflow chain in a weak city like HW means spending a lot of turns working farms and mines instead of cottages. It is very easy to tank our economy into the red at 0% slider if we're not careful.

OTOH, we can get it in MW, the capital, by about T86. We'd be way less reliant on chops there and the city has way more food and hammers available. Our economy doesn't crash as hard with this option, but our expansion does suffer some. That.... still feels way way too slow. If Haram or TBS end up settling for stone first-ring, then they could fucking slow-build it ages before then. Hell, Haram can pull in 27hpt w/ stone and size 5 in his capital! Cripes. Gotta figure out how to hedge our bets some... I still want that wonder real real bad, but I don't want to ruin ourselves to get it. Simply building cottages and rexing, and planning for the HG in HW instead might be a better idea. But, who wants to be smart instead of trying for sick plays?

Well, smart has its own tradeoffs too. We'd need to lib Astro and then beeline Communism, which Seven just nerfed, and then slow-tech Constitution+Democracy, which will cost like an extra 9k beakers, yuck. Hmmm... tough choices.

[GermanJoey]

Damn, I just looked again and he removed the Spy too? Now Communism is basically useless, lol... well, that's what I get for wanting to do a gimmick strat!

[GermanJoey]

T51.

MW's 3rd ring borders popped to reveal some good shit across the water:




Notice that barbs are over there, so we better ship some Skirmishers along with our settlers before any workers. IIRC a landmass has to be at least 50 tiles in size before barbs are allowed to spawn there, meaning that landmass must be pretty sizeable despite there not being a lot of room for it... I wonder if what we have is two parallel strips of land? Also, with the capital's borders popped, the western land is fogbusted (barbs won't spawn in areas a player can see) and we can send our warrior over to meet our western neighbor.

Our 5th city will be founded above the copper T57, while our 6th will be founded above the gold T60, but after that - City 7 right at the pigs/horse, City 8 at the pig/fish? Something like that?

for reference, global city count:
4 cities: Us (most recent: t42), Wetbandit (most recent: t49), TBS (edit: THIS TURN!)
3 cities: Dreylin, Borsche, TBS, Jowy, Haram, Tsargon
2 cities: Scipio (most recent T21, so is probably rushing someone)

Demos:




Basically, they're lookin' great. That's a pretty big CY lead, considering how much we've been whipping recently. For reference, here's the total whippage for all players:

1.) TBS, 8 pop = 3+3+2
2.) Us, 7 pop = 2+2+1+1+1+1
3.) Borsche, 2 pop = 1+1
4.) Everyone Else. ZERO POP = W+T+F.

Speaking of whips, our micro between T50 and T60 is insanely convoluted, even by my standards. BUT Y'ALL KNOW THAT'S JUST HOW I LIKE IT! I'll try to write it up sometime soon; maybe the next time I take a break from working, if I'm in the mood.

[GermanJoey]

Here's a VOD of brick and I discussing our micro plans: http://www.twitch.tv/eclipse_023/v/23897506?t=60s

[GermanJoey]

Oh, actually, TBS just settled his 4th city this turn. Two of the non-Imps are out-expanding 3 Imp players!

[GermanJoey]

T52.

4th city from Borsche and Dreylin - the latter of which also built The Great Lighthouse! This goes a long way towards explaining his anemic expansion pace, despite being Charley. At any rate, this is a very nice move for him, as a majority of one's cities on this map will likely end up being coastal.

Wonders in this game are falling very early... I think we should just abandon the idea of the Mids entirely. There's just too many Imp/Pro/Ind civs with excess early hammers to mess around. Maybe we can still grab the Wall and the Gardens if they're still around when its convenient to build them, though. This two are a lot easier to "burst down," to use dota parlance, so there's less setup overhead and thus less risk that we miss.

[GermanJoey]

T53.

Another 3pop-whip from TBS this turn, bringing up to 12 pop whipped total and meaning the settler for his 5th city will appear one turn before ours! We are going to have a 15-turn gap between the founding of our 4th city and our 5th city. It's all good, though; we are delaying it on purpose in order to get workers in a better position. Founding it early just ended up meaning that its granary completes with the food bin almost full; the way we'll do it, it will have a half-bin and borders popped on the same turn as it otherwise would anyways. It is simply the consequence of settling an awkward city without first ring-food for defensive reasons. At any rate, we'll get settlers for our 6th and 7th cities out almost immediately afterwards to get back on top of the city count. And, we'll have used those 15 turns to get a lot of stuff done - four workers built, a shitton of warriors built (6 warriors is incredibly awesome), and 4 granaries and 3 monuments built too. I'm more worried about our economy crashing than expanding fast enough!

edit: You might be wondering why I say the copper city won't have first-ring food when it'll have a pastured cow, first ring to SRT, already in culture - that's because I want SRT to keep that for now. SRT is very good at size 2 but sucks ass at sizes 1, 3, and 4, at least until borders pop and some more improvements are put down, and which point it will be excellent. Furthermore, SRT has only 1 first-ring forest, so we have to rely on tiles and the whip to build everything pretty much. ST was able to guild its granary just from size 2->1 whips, but that's only because it has a grass pig. A single grass cow is far, far weaker. Therefore, SRT needs to keep both cows for now. In contrast, the new copper city can simply work the grass copper, which isn't terrible pre-Granary, and get the Monument+Granary done ASAP with the help of a trio of chops.

[GermanJoey]

T57.

Ah, I'm like, way too tired and busy lately to type up my cool ass micro details just for kicks. Sorry y'all. Does anyone actually even want to read it? I could make it effort if anyone is actually interested... its neat IMHO but I think it'd be a bit too dry for most people to care about, so whatever. Maybe instead I'll finally get around to finishing the rest of my opponent "previews."

Um, in the actual game, I did a pair of double-whips last turn, for another worker and another settler. I did a trick in my capital T55, where I ended turn with exactly 55h in a settler so that I could do a double-whip T56. This is a weird rounding bug with the whip you see occasionally; the only time I ever consciously take advantage of it is with double-pop whipping Imp settlers though.

That city, C6, will get planted at the gold T60, and the new worker (born in HW) will be there just in time to start farming its first-ring corn on the same turn. MW overflows 30h into another settler on T58, and then grows back to size 4 on a galley, then double-whips that; we then complete the settler the next turn. First island city should go down T64, and then T69 + T70 or so. Depends on what we see down there, I guess; we'll be bringing a skirmisher and our scout on the first boat-load, and then another skirm in the same boat as the 2nd worker, like T63 I think.

My actual SE neighbor turns out to be Haram, not Dreylin. So that means that Dreylin is actually to my SW, if my map theory is right. I met a wounded warrior of Jowy's with my own warrior T54, and I backed off so he wouldn't feel threatened. I'm going to send my scout over there in a few turns, once spawn-busting in my north is no longer necessary, in order to unfog routes with him.

Overview shots:







City counts:
5: TBS (T56), Haram (T56), Us (T57)
4: Dreylin, Borsche,
3: Scipio, Tsargon, Scipio

Demos:




That MFG.

Whip count:
13 pop: Us
12 pop: TBS
2 pop: Haram, Borsche
1 pop: Tsargon, Fenn
0 pop: Dreylin (just swapped into slavery like 2 turns ago wtf), Scipio, Jowy

If anyone doesn't understand why I keep ripping on the MFG leaders, if you add to my stated mfg the hammers I've gained from the whip, spread over the last 15 turns (13*30/15 = +26hpt), then I'd actually have 46hpt. Quite a bit more than the "leader's" 31hpt! People in this game are building too many damn mines!