[SPOILERS] Oxy and suttree save the day, again!

[suttree]

Took a look in game, are you sure you want the settler out of Floreal to go to the marble city?
What about we settle the northern island city instead?

You're right that it's not a very profitable city. But we're running >50% science at the moment so we have room to expand. With an abundance of trade routes we get +5c/t when a city is settled, so not as expensive as you'd usually think. The idea was to build the galley for the island out of the marble city, yes? So its important we slog through granary->LH now so we can settle the island sooner rather than later. Also, there's the peace of mind that comes from knowing we have the marble locked down and c_h or BowAivo aren't going to snipe it from us.

The island city is more profitable but, at this stage in the game, its really just a parasite on Niv. IE more of a filler than an expansion city. It will be fun, though, to revolt to Mercantilism during our second golden age with two solid ICTR cites

Our two priority expansion cities were the stone and the marble cities, I have us settling both t106.

You didn't post the new micro, so you may already be doing this, but should Brumaire work the plains cot over the sheep and give the sheep to Vend?

There was no new written long-term micro because things were changing so fast

I was happy to resolve things with Maga t100 because this was our optimal turn to prime the Stone settler out of Bru. Bru gives up the sheep, puts 2T/10h into a settler, grows, then whips 9-6 t103. Otherwise we would have 1-whipped out of the dog, overflowed in to a market and whipped the market 8-4.

Now that the IW micro is out of the way, I think the worker micro will be pretty straightforward. The workers are evenly distributed through the empire, 1 or 2 for each city, so it's just a matter of developing tiles. I've marked everything with signs in-game.

In this turn's set of screenshots, I'll write down my thoughts on preparation for the golden age.

[suttree]

DIPLO:

*Here's a copy of the agreement with Maga. I like how the "obligation to consult" clause is just what I've been trying to get Maga to do all along - actually make offers and counter-offers.

BORDER AGREEMENT (see screenshot)
*Immediate permission for M&L to settle two cities on the line between the green dots, inclusive of the green dots.
*Immediate permission for OxySut to settle the blue city
*No further cities beyond the 5T line.

NON-AGGRESSION PACT
*T180 NAP - to be kept confidential from all other teams

RESOURCE AGREEMENT
*OxySut connects stone as soon as possible.
*Oxysut will gift 10 turns of stone beginning the turn stone is connected.
*Oxysut will gift 10 turns of stone at M&L's request, so long as M&L gives 10 turns notice

We are happy to consult with you first regarding resource trades. You can read below what we mean by "consulting you first". We hope you would agree to follow the same guideline. Let's confirm the above and we can move forward with resource trades or Open Borders or whatever else you might be interested in.

OBLIGATION TO CONSULT
*If either team has a surplus resource for trade, it (the seller) will notify the other (the buyer) as soon as possible by e-mail: soliciting a bid and setting a deadline for submitting a bid.
*If the buyer submits a bid by the deadline, the seller will respond as soon as possible by e-mail, accepting or rejecting the bid.
*If the bid is rejected, the seller will include a counter-offer and a deadline for responding to the counter-offer.
*If the counter-offer is rejected, or if at any point the buyer does not reply within the deadline set by the seller, neither buyer nor seller is under any further obligation to consult.

*I forgot to mention that I got c_h to pay attention to us in-game and agree to a t125 NAP with 5T cooldown

MAP (one error: Ger should be working the lake. Will fix)

CITIES:

DEMOS:

I was going to do a city review thing, but didn't have the time. The plan depends on what our happy deals turn out to be, I think. I would like Ger/Fri to be at Size 12 + surplus when we trigger the GA.

Here are the screenshots, if you're interested:

Vendémiaire

Brumaire

Frimaire

Nivôse

Pluviôse

Ventôse

Germinal

Floréal

Prairial

Messidor

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Agree that written out worker micro isn't worth it anymore. I'll try to post some thoughts on city specialization tomorrow, but this week is pretty busy for me. Great job on diplo , we're looking pretty good right now.

So what does prospective tech path look like? CoL->Alphabet->Philo(bulb)->Poly->Medi->Masonry->Mono->Priesthood->Monarchy? That will probably get us to a couple turns before GA, and gets all the civics we need to switch into once we start it. After that, I guess MC for forges and then down the lib path.

Just thinking about the happy cap a little for GA preparation:

Current:
+4 Base
+1 Gold
+1 Fur
+1 Sugar
+1 Silk

Total: 8

New sources:

+1 Spices(Turn 113, IIRC)
+1 Incense(If we work something out with Maga)
+1 Wines(Monarchy)
+1 Hereditary Rule(Base 1 for garrison unit, obviously we can get much higher considering the amount of junk units we have)
+1 Religion(Turn 122, though it'll take a while to spread the religion everywhere)
+1 Forge(Gold)
+2 Market(Furs, Silk)

So we're looking at a base: 13 cap, but with buildings or more HR units, we can get higher than that. So we're looking really good on happy, especially once the GA begins, we should have no trouble going vertical.

It looks like our current plan leaves us with 15 cities to settle plus maybe a filler or two. So we're going to be looking for expansion prospects right around the time our double first-person+taj GA ends(assuming we get Taj, but it seems like we have a pretty good plan to get it very early), which should also be around the time our NAP w/ Orgy ends. Something to think about.

[suttree]

Map:

Demos:

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Ok, some ideas about city configuration, only got to 3 cities will post more later in the week.

Vendemaire

Final Configuration:
17 Tiles Worked
0 Surplus Food
23 Hammers(before any boosts from tech like railroad)
6 Cottages Worked

I see Vendemaire as a very strong commerce/production hybird. We can share its cottages between Frimaire and Brumaire, and then stagnate on mines as we grow vertical. The wheat can constantly switch back and forth between Vendemaire and Frimaire, depending on if we want to bootstrap growth or run specialists. Once Vendemaire hits size 17, I think Frimaire can permanently take the wheat. Obviously, we want Moai here.

Brumaire

Final Configuration:
16 Tiles Worked
1 to -1 Surplus Food(depending on civics for workshops)
7 to 17 Hammers(Depending on workshops)
8 Cottages Worked

Brumaire is pretty much a pure commerce city. It's growth will forever be retarded by the need to work that gold mine, so food will be a little scarce here. Thus, I think we shouldn't bother cottaging the two bare plains and instead workshop them so the city can become reasonably productive in a pinch. In theory, we would build Oxford here but I'm not sure if we ever want to build it. On this map, we would need to build 1400 hammers worth of universities first and by the time we finish it, we'll be out of bureaucracy. I think we should start building a palace here once we trigger our GA to take advantage of the extra hammers and OR bonus.

Frimaire

Final Configuration:
11 Tiles Worked
9 Surplus Food
5-13 Hammers(Depends on Workshops)
4 Cottages Worked

Frimaire is a very good secondary GP pump that will be very important in generating great people during our first GA. It can work a solid 5 specialists along with all of its other tiles. We should try to synch up Frimaire's GP pool with Germinal's to get maximum efficiency out of both. Because we'll be working so many specialists, I don't think we should go crazy with cottages as they won't be worked that consistently. Instead, we can workshop some of the currently jungled grasslands. Eventually, this city will become a little marginalized, but it will be very useful for generating GPs.

[suttree]

RE: city plans - awesome - I think that's exactly what we need at the moment.
All the screenshots are done for this turn, but a big decision:

We got a Hindu (Org state religion) spread in Vent - our missionary pump city. Reviewing the log, I think Org bulbed Theology with a stonehenge prophet. So we should expect AP soon. I remember we talked about this way back - 2h on religious buildings is super awesome, even once Org builds the shrine. Also, M&L is 3T from Alphabet, so if they've been hoarding a GS for all this time, or if they have one set to pop t105, we miss out on Daoism.

SO - I think we should 1T meditation this turn. We get 40h overflow out of the settler in Vent, so we can have a monastery in place t104. Plenty of time to get 5+ missionaries out for the golden age. We delay Philosophy to t107 but, at worst, we lose Daoism to Asterix. With AP in place, we could even snipe Sankore from Org.

Let me know if there's something I'm missing here.....

[Oxyphenbutazone]

No, spreading Hinduism sounds great. Especially because Orgy is looking like our most likely expansion prospects right now. I think we should still bulb philosophy, unless you want to make a play for music, though with marble we might want to consider that.

[suttree]

Ok - I'll finish the turn on Meditation, then. Hmmmm.... if Asterix is going to bulb philosophy we have no need to research Alphabet right away. Probably should count beakers and see how much leeway we have for techs other than the bare minimum required to prepare for the GA.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Ok, so can we research every tech we need for civics before our golden age that starts t122? To research meditation-polytheism-masonry-monotheism-priesthood-monarchy-aesthetics-drama-philosophy we will need to produce 2672 unadjusted beakers(I divided out the multiplier) in the next 20 turns.

So approx. 133 bpt for the next 20 turns. We're currently at 112 with a couple wealth builds. I think we could accomplish this, though a fair amount of wealth builds will be necessary. It helps that the spare GS can build an academy in Brumaire. We also get to skip the relatively useless alphabet for the aesthetics line and possibly the music GA(* would be our main competition for that as they are the only civ coming close to our research capacity)

[suttree]

Haha... crosspost

Map:

Demos:

Cities: