[Spoiler] Any volunteers for a human sacrifice? Brennus of the Aztecs, by Krill

[MWIN]

Yes, this works. Thanks!

MWIN, check to see if the changes I have made work for you?

[Krill]

Turn 171 - The Conqueror's Plateau

Um, not likely. I get C1 on my triremes as one of the outcomes of this quest and I'm about to get caravels. I'm not going to be attacked by too many triremes so I don't want to build many triremes at all.

Nothing new...

Or here.

A new city, and an important one at that. I have four workers, one on each forest. I will chop two forests this turn to complete a granary, and will then chop another two forests by T173 to complete another granary. I spread religion this turn to make sure each galley has 4XP and can become three move. I will chop a fifth forest to speed up the granary, which should finish on T175, if I can get the forest chopped by then. These two galleys will be important in moving units over to the island to first of all raze azza's city of Cherrygrove, and then act as ferries in an area of the map that hopefully scooty will not look.

I unloaded the settler, longbow and two workers onto the grassland. I then moved the three move galley to pick up two more units. I considered transferring a further two workers, but in the end decided to take over one HA and settler to settle cities to lock up the continent and force scooty to either invade or cede the island.

Nazul have parked a trireme next to the main route south from WTF? to his front, so he can see me sending anything down via the coast road. OTOH, he can't see anything down if I take the slightly longer route, so I'm not sure of the usefulness. I have moved 4 workers to irrigate the plains underneath the longbow, so I can send them to cottage four different tiles next turn after PRNGG has reached the size 16.

I have six workers extant, and a further four being built I have already settled one of the city locations so that's everything.

A screenshot taken after scooty played their turn. They have moved a trireme forward. Obvious meaning is they want to stop me moving between the island and continent, but they can not declare war until T178. Between then and now I'm just going to transfer maximum units instead of moving between the fort and city to make sure units still have movement after the galley moves. You can see here that I moved the "D" sight one tile east onto the desert. The reason for this is it means I can slightly alter the dot map to remove one city from the island to make it more defensible, and to make each city stronger.
The downside is it means I will have more difficulty moving units between the continent and island due to the extra tile of movement. The answer to this is to settle a city on the jungle tile on the continent: it will not be a great city, but it will be able to use the fish from D sight, with a border pop. I will then fort the two tiles labelled on the island (I can fort a third tile, north of D) to make interdiction between the landmasses nigh impossible. scooty will have to block five tiles to stop me moving units around. The downside is that three forts will take a total of 30 workers turns to do, so I suppose it is a good job that I'm sending 10 workers over to the island.

Here is a map of the southern fort locations. I will be sending two HA over in the first galley from Arrogance, so if Cherrygrove has a small garrison it just dies, and the second galley will bring up a settler to settle on the A location. I can then build culture to pop borders, chop one forest at the desert city on the continent for a work boat for the fish at Cherrygrove (leaving two forests to get the work boat and granary at the desert city) and move over a bunch of workers (at least three) to fort the northern grassland tile. If I forted the five tiles around "A" and the desert city scooty would have to blockade five more tiles to stop me transporting units at this location as well. And they have to realise I could be transporting units down here in the first place.
This is going to be so fun. Getting the workers into place will be a challenge in itself, but with the obstacle of an opposing navy...no reason I can't win though. I already have enough gold saved to get Compass and Machinery researched. Get Caravels and the whole battle becomes a short term problem.

Crapital is starving to push out the next GS. I'm looking at a GS in about 15 turns, enough time to research Optics and Paper. I'm also building wealth, I don't wish to build an aqueduct just yet but will build a grocer at the first opportunity. Note the city maintenance as well.

Again, number of city cost is the same, although the city is much smaller.

The reason that the number of city maintenance is constant is that I have reached the Conquerors plateau, where the number of cities cost will not increase at all for each new city I plant. This is one of the reasons why settling the cities on the island will likely not bankrupt me: I will pay the distance maintenance, sure, but I will not pay more than 6 gpt for the number of cities, and the cost will not increase for my current cities.

I rectified the mistake and stole the river grassland farm to grow quicker to size 11.

Keep on growing.

Distance maintenance is never that bad, if you have as many cities as I have built.

DP seems to kept on getting whipped. Maybe without slavery I can make something of the city. All the same, it has been useful.

Now to the southern cities. Opportunism is three diagonal, six horizontal tiles from PD, the FP city site. SC is three diagonal, five vertical tiles from Crapital. Once the FP is complete I think I will save about 2.5gpt from lower distance costs. Now imagine that over a half of my cities...

Swap back to the settler next turn. NS is three diagonal, one vertical tile from the future FP position, similar to the distance that WTF? has from Crapital.

Still need a court house...

Luckily the distance maintenance will just disappear here.

I think that the number of cities maintenance caps at size 6...don't quote me though.

Building the monastery for culture...

Next turn should be fun...every single tile except one labelled plains farm will be turned into a cottage.

Building a worker this turn, slaving for one pop on T172. T173 overflow into another worker, and T174 slave that worker.

T172 build a galley, T173 slave it, T174 I should be able to build a galley...just about.

Keep on growing...

Work boats galore.

Boring.

Next turn build culture.

Three workers that chopped the forest are in range to cottage PRNGG.

With another two forests chopped by T173, another galley will finish then. That means I want to revolt civics no earlier than T174, the exact date of a revolt is based off By-Tor and general worker positioning.

Total expenses have increased by 2gpt over the last turn.

Equal first in MFG now. Crop yield, well, second place is keeping up.

Note that scooty still has the same power as azza. Nazul is about second and Commodore is pissed off at Cyneheard who doesn't have much at all either.

[Krill]

need a small favour. Can someone ask squareleg or Lewwyn to login and offer peace to scooty? I have played the red of the turn but then I had to run to work for a night shift.

[Lewwyn]

Sent straight peace to Scooter.

[Krill]

Lewwyn...you bastard for changing my name...but thanks all the same.

[Square Leg]

Hey Krill,

Sorry not sent you those pictures and disappeared last week. Had some RL stuff that yuo know about going on but it's kinda calming down a bit now.

I'll forward the pics on when I get a chance from my laptop.

SL

[Krill]

No rush SL, no rush. RL is more important.

[Lewwyn]

I was trying to decide between:

Krilling in the name of
Krilling You
We still Krill the old way

but just went with old faithful, Krilling Time instead.

[Krill]

Turn 172 - One small step for me, one giant problem for scooty

azza seems to have checked out of the game...or gone back to building.

Still nothing.

Change of naming scheme, I'm going to use the names of old military forts and camps for the cities on this island. I am transferring the third and fourth worker over now, along with one HA, a longbow and two settlers to be dropped off next turn. I will be able to get every city east of FS settled on the island before scooty can redeclare war, and there will be multiple longbows in each. All cities will be hooked up with roads, and there will be catapults and HA stack on hand to deal with anyone trying to land and attack. I am not giving this island up lightly.
I moved the settler onto the end of the continent, as it will make it even easier to move units over the water. It is also a potential Moai city, with 13 coastal tiles and one ocean tile, and can steal three grass hills and a plains tile as a workshop to throw out Moai at size 4 in 11 turns. It would depend on how everything was going, but it might end up the best place for it, if scooty back off.

Units are still streaming along, and the capacity to transfer units is increasing. I'm likely to remove a few catapults from Culture to sit on the island, while I have an uninterrupted transport system in place.

Next turn I will be able to look at Cherrygrove and drop off two HA to stop the worker and maybe, if I'm very lucky, raze the city on T174. I need to get the workers to road down to the desert to support the city I'll be planting there in a few turns. I'm considering building culture for a turn or two in Arrogance to pop the borders, to open up the silk forest for a chop in the desert city to make it easier to chop out a work boat and also pop borders there to open up the fish itself.

Where will I be in 10 turns? I hope to revolt back to Bureaucracy on T174, which would mean I might be able to have saved up to 1600 gold total, but also revolt to FR for the cheaper civic and better tech speed: I might be making over 700 base bpt with those two civics. That would mean I might be able to have Paper, Machinery, Compass and Optics by then. I will then have two GS available, both being able to bulb into Education but not complete it (a few hundred beakers short). If I had the population and five turns to be in slavery (not necessarily right then) I could whip out a bunch of universities and get started on the OU in Crapital, which should be in place before T200, all told.

Getting there.

I think I'm going to go with the engineer here, because it will give me the option of getting a mixed odds GA/GE (most likely the GA) as the fifth GP, allowing Crapital to get the 600 point GP.

Size 11 eot T178 I think, and the court house should finish about then.

Potential university slave site? Five population = 110 hammers. The university costs 200 hammers though so I'm likely to have to use OR to even get close to that, plus hammer overflow from other items...

Definitely settler next, for silver.

Another university slave site? I'll have to get a library first though...

Yeah, definitely a university location, good production, enough to just outright build it. OR, forge and workshops means that the university could be built in less than five turns.

This settler will almost certainly be used for the stone site...my other seven settlers are moving to the island or the desert, and hte stone city needs worker attention that should be available after PRNGG has been dealt with.

This missionary is a three turn missionary after growth, and will almost certainly go to CPH. SMS is not likely build any more missionaries and will instead build a few more units whilst growing at around 8fpt. I feel a bit on the light side all of a sudden, what with so many fronts to deal with.

I think I'm going to build the monastery next, with SMS going to handle military auxillary duty in addition to WTF?

Wealth to carry the overflow hammers until size 7 and then likely to build a few workers with food whilst not in slavery.

Slave this next turn for one pop with the new pop that has no good tile to work.

And the swap over is complete. I settled PRNGG on T138, so it has taken me 35 turns to get it to this position, and in a further 10 turns it could be making 65gpt from a market, grown cottages and a few windmills, though it will likely only be making 50 odd gpt. The other option was to watermill it and turn it into another hammer city, which would have been quite reasonable if I wanted to push out more knights to go kill people with, but I know what my needs are right now: gold so I don't go broke whilst taking all of the unsettled land available.
Note the longbow, the WW caused one extra unhappiness due to the extra pop growth, so the longbow is keeping the city happy for this turn, and next turn a chariot shall perform that duty.

Carry on worker.

I'm thinking this is the last galley from By-Tor. It will be the fourth here, with two operating from the desert city. I can build a trireme afterwards and focus on growing to work the hills and workshops to make By-Tor a good naval production city long term. If I have to build Caravels then I'll be better off relying on production rather than slavery due to other needs with the civics.

Worker or two? Seems reasonable.

There will be enough overflow to finish the next work boat without a slave, if the hill is used next turn.

Still boring, and still need to send a worker to that damned wheat. Why does it have to be on such a difficult tile to reach.

Deselected the next build to not benefit from the culture bug. I really ought to get that fixed...

Granary finished at size 3 with 12 food in the food box making 7fpt needing 14 to grow. Or will make 7fpt when I farm another grassland. As I want SA to build the NE and be my GP pump, I will likely just farm everything and then swap a few select tiles over to workshops to build the necessary infrastructure, the NE, library and assorted buildings. I want to get SA up to about size 10 and then turn the overlapping tiles into the workshops, because those tiles can eventually be worked by the other cities, but the unique tiles no other city can work are always going to have to be farms to support the specialists.

The second galley shall be built next turn. There is no food resource for this city so I shall have to irrigate everything and leave it like that for a long time, but the farms shall bring irrigation down to the wheat. I also changed this city after the screenshot was taken to build culture and work the plains forest to make 4 culture this turn. Next turn build the galley, the turn after that work the plains forest again and build culture to pop borders and then I can work the silk tile after chopping the last plains forest for the granary. It opens up the plains hill forest to be roaded and the wheat is easier to then access without wasting worker turns.

Build culture...Music has been such a useful tech for me. Two forests to chop likely to go into a granary, and the seafood I'd love to hook up but scooty will just pillage right away. The reason I'm bring the work boats down from Axe is on the off chance that scooty bugger off and don't try to mess me about at all, they can be used at FS to quickly grow the city and turn it into the main hub for the island, but most likely they are going to be sent down the channel and used at the western end of the island, where I don't have any cities that can build the work boats for the new cities, because every city on that coast is brand new.

Unit supply is staying stead with the amount of units I have moving between the landmasses spending a turn on the galleys. City maintenance will hopefully drop by 20% once the FP has been built but I'm not expecting anything that dramatic. I think I'll be lucky to see a 20 gold decrease in that. Civic maintenance should drop by up to 10gpt though when I go into Bureaucracy/Serfdom/FR though.

Nazul are second in power now, so I'm sending the sentry chariot in his land up the western coast to see if he is staging a naval invasion. I'm a little bit paranoid about that now, even though he is almost 200k points behind me, which is equivalent to about 35 longbows, HA and cats...

[Krill]

Turn 173 - Surprise

I got lucky with this turn, playing it and ending turn with less than three minutes remaining on the turn.

Two good points, Commodore revolted to Vassalage which generally means Cyneheard is going to get his head kicked in shortly if he isn't careful, and Pingo lost beakers due to a crappy event. Pingo also turned up with a galley and two triremes which makes me think he is moving the GM down to azza. I'm not going to stop him, but I also need to be careful and check out that he isn't going to invade me...

Bunch of catapults, few WE, nothing scary.

Not much to worry about then.

Um, that wasn't expected. I'm not going to use this longbow to attack the axe, I'll just ignore it and use culture to pop the hut. However, the longbow is going to have to go the long way around to reach the city, so I will get it to the E/F site on T177. The HA and settler will make the E/F city on T175.

Oh, this is good. a G1 archer on a hill, with 25% fort and 20% culture. My C3 HA still have odds. The name of the city on tile A must be something along the lines of an US military base in Japan. I should be able to plant that city by T177, I could settle it one turn sooner but that would betray that I have galleys down here to scooty.

Looks like nothing up here...

And nothing here either. Still need to check out the far north.

No change here but azza has started to road random tiles.

Some minor galley chaining allowed me to drop two workers off into FS ths turn, and move them onto the jungle tile. Next turn I can dump two more into the city and road the jungle and plains tile, and continue to road towards the eastern most city site. The settler and HAs west of FS are going to run along that road to settle that city before T180, not exactly sure what turn.

Next turn I move the galley next to FS 3, unload, then back out. I'm starting to run out of units to transfer over, with the transfer capacity I have in place, so I don't need to optimize for capacity but distance to keep as many worker turns available and for military units positioning. I have three workers on the boats, meaning there are nine workers total on the island from T174. Currently there are three HA and two longbows, but there will soon be five longbows, over five HA and at least three cats. I only need to transfer one more settler to settle the city site south of the flood plain, the rest of the settlers will be transferred via the southern galleys.

Most of these catapults need carrying over, but I also need to get a longbow or three in Micromanagement.

With Bureaucracy and FR from next turn I should get over 700 base bpt empire wide, most of it from Crapital. I will just about have enough gold to get all the way to Optics in four turns, but not enough to get paper as well unless lots of people have Machinery and I use more than a few wealth builds.

No one else has both Paper and Music yet, so I might be good for Sistines.

Longbows from next turn. I need them....

Keep on growing. Likely to need to build Wealth for few turns after the court house build.

Next turn I might revolt out of Slavery...if so I won't be able to double whip the worker. But I think I might wait the extra turn to see the effect that the FP has on my expenses before making the final decision. The war against scooty could recommence on T178 but I don't think having slavery on T179 or T180 will make much of a difference at this point, so the five turn delay between civic swaps I don't really care about.

For Silver.

I will likely be able to slave this forge for three pop in the next slavery window.

Missionary for Saffron. The turn this one finishes I will build the next missionary for Greed if it succeeds, but I will be up at teh missionary limit on that turn.

This settler is definitely being used for the stone city, but I might one pop slave the settler. Depends on the workers.

Finish the missionary T174 but after that will focus on growing and building that court house.

C'mon, I'm getting impatient now...

I think I'm going to build a few more workers at size six.

Overflow a temple? If I consider Sistines mine, then that's an extra 10 culture per turn the moment it is built. That'll get the lake back, and maybe even the grass hill in forty turns...

One mistake: that forest foes to SMS. Annoying...That market will take 11 turns then.

Slave the worker next turn for one pop, then regrow. Save the overflow via a wealth build and if the missionary spreads the religion then I want to build a missionary and temple.

Give the cottage to Micromanagment to work. Grow in two, and focus on growing vertically to pump out boats in case scooty declare war.

T174 steal either the grass hill or the river cottage from Axe. So many tiles to improve, and so few workers...

Next turn focus on growth. The court house is a necessity, IMO.

Boring.

More boring.

Still boring.

Galley this turn, culture next turn to pop borders, then chop into granary the turn after.

Pop borders, work the seafood...get a longbow and a few HA into the city.

Potential Moai city, will likely end up sitting at size four, working one food resource, either rice or the fish, and two mines plus a workshop. Moai is a big part of this cities productivity though, the question is merely if I can defend MM well enough. The question is answered by scooty's actions in the next 20 turns. If they leave me alone to solidify my grasp on the island then I'm almost certainly going to build Moai here.

Each new city generally costs me about five gpt or so, though with the FP built that number should shrink a fair bit. Court houses on top of that and I should start doing a fair bit better. Not as good as scooty but a lot better than anyone else.

Supporting so many cities below size six is starting to get monotonous.

Commodore lost a fair few units, Nazul are undisputed second in power and scooty aren't building military at the moment. But Pingo have shot up in power, so I need to keep an eye on them.

scooty do not have HBR, so although they have Guilds, I do not have to fear knights. They lack Meditation so no Philosophy but they do have Education, almost certainly with the help of a bulb. No Music by anyone, no Drama...

I need more units to feel safe. See, I'm paranoid.