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

[Krill]

Turn 174 -One More Turn

Pingo offered Bananas and rejected the silk trade. I don't think they understand the idea I was trying to convey, so I need to continue being vigilant. Well, I have another offer for them shortly when they cash in on their GM. I am going to ask them for a 500 gold upfront payment in exchange for a 52gpt return trade, costing me 20g for the trade. This will just about get me enough gold to research Paper, Machinery, Compass and Optics over five turns whilst in Bureaucracy, and then revolt back into something more useful if there is war.

Doesn't look like there is anything up here...makes me wonder where that power is. Or maybe I'm just jumping at shadows.

Ah, azza, nice play. He upgraded the archer to a longbow, and placed his fast worker in the city. It won't save him though. Next turn the real army arrives.

Next turn I will drop three HA and a catapult NE of Cherrygrove. On T176 I will bombard with the cat after promoting it to Accuracy, then I will have five HA to attack with, and even have two HA on a galley that I can attack with if needed, or drop them off the other side of the isthmus

I moved the units out of Pingo's land, and it doesn't look like azza has done anything new.

Next turn I use the two workers adjacent to FS to road the coastal grassland tile that my units are on. Then the two worker on the jungle road where the HA/settler stack is standing. Then the two worker on the coastal grassland road the grassland next to the barb axe. That allows the settler next to the coast to make Fort Stanwix, and the HA/settler on the plains to move 233 and settle the G city site on T176. I will keep 2 HA covering the two workers next to the axe so they do not get captured. There is a settler in FS that will move to the longbow and settle 4/C on T176 as well. 4/C needs a lot of worker attention, but most of it is irrigating and chopping the tile forest under the axe and SW of the longbow.

Note, that without the wealth builds, my current gpt would be +49gpt.

Just keep going.

I added the engineer later on. That will push out a GP eot T194, most likely a GA which I can use defensively in a war against azza when I take him out or use for a GA when I have more pop. If it's a GE, well, I can use it on what you normally use GE on: a wonder I need or a golden age. And more longbows...

Growing eot T179 to size 11, then sit there and either build cats if I need more, or build wealth, or build a forge. Depends on needs at the time.

As I'm not revolting civics this turn, I can slave this next turn.

Boring.

Keep on growing...

The missionary for Saffron, leaving one missionary for Greed to be built. Now that I only have 20 workers on the mainland I really need to consider if it is worth building a few workers here, even with the delay in growth.

I decided against whipping this settler, because after going through all of the extant settlers, I found that this settler is only needed for two purposes: settling for the horse and double lake location between SG and Opportunism, and keeping in case of a war and needing to plug some gaps (ie Greed and Culture city placements). The horse city is worth it but needs the horse hooking and three forests chopping, a total of 12 worker turns (nine with Serfdom), but I don't have those available right now. The delay one one turn in settling the city is thus not a huge problem, even if it means that I'm two food further away from growing to each pop size.

For CPH. You can just see the city site that the settler from NS is likely going ot be used for. with three forests. SMS will probably have to build the missionary for that city as well...actually, if I spend one turn building wealth in SMS, I can then build a missionary in three turns, and the turn it can move it can immediately spread Buddhism to the new city without any chance of failure. Yeah, that's probably worth it...especially because I have the chance to use OR in the next bunch of civic swaps, and that would mean the three forest chops and two turns working the horse and I would have the light house and the granary completed. The rest of the time that means use the lakes to grow and then the horse to build the court house. Actually I think I'm going to do that...

One last turn to go, and as I'm the last player to end turn I will immediately see the benefit of the FP. If I do use OR after the next civic switch (FW whilst teching then go to OR if I don't have a war on my hands) I could build a forge and then build missionaries without having to spend time on a monastery.

Time for the workers to be built.

The temple to make use of the extra culture from Sistines, and if I fail that I can always stack the unhappiness a little higher. The other option was to build a worker and one pop slave it next turn. This city needs the culture though, so the temple it is as the next build it going to be a forge, which I would have built ahead of the worker anyway.

I like the city maintenance number,

Next turn go off the grass hill onto the lake. Regrow on a forge or Wealth. Probably wealth, though that forge is tempting...CPH can just grow straight to size 14 and stagnate there working seven workshops, two ivory and the hill. I would only need to workshop over two of the farms as well, and grow on the coast, so no worker improvements are needed until CPH hits size 14, and it will max out at 11fpt at size seven. Probably worth it...

With Buddhism in By-Tor, I can use it to spam missionaries in OR, if I'm not at war. Probably a reasonable thing to do with no other Buddhist cities near by and being limited to three missionaries extant or in construction.

Got no idea what to do here. If I had six workers to improve the city, it wouldn't be so difficult with Machinery just around the corner, but with no worker attention or Slavery, well. build them the hard way?

Thanks to the forge, I can get just enough food to slave the court house next turn for 2 pop, and then focus on regrowing. Even with the FP about to complete, I think it's a reasonable option because I can just focus on growing to something like size seven or eight and then building a Buddhist temple and monastery. And maybe use one of those galleys to get a worker onto that forest to chop the damned thing. it feels like I'm getting trolled just like when I saw that fish off the coast of Pingo's land.

I've sent one worker from Arrogance to farm the wheat. It should be farmed on T177 (thanks to Serfdom). When it gets hooked up to a farm chain I don't know. probably 10 turns or so.

I'm just going to eat the pop loss and slave this for three pop...I don't have a great tile to work with the sixth pop, I can overflow the excess into another monastery if the missionary succeeds in spreading religion, and UI'm not going to be in caste for at least five turns, so I will be back to size 6 by then (after using Serfdom for five turns), which is large enough to work four artists (for 19cpt) at size six, meaning borders will pop to 40% just after I could revolt out of caste which is just about perfect.

Whatever. next turn I will plant a city on the "HERE" sign, open up the banana which be immediately hooked and can be worked by SA. The new city could just work the plains hill mine from PD, forcing PD to work a farm instead to grow. The new city works culture for 2 turns to pop borders, so two workers can chop the forest at the new city for a granary on eot T177. Until that point, the new city doesn't need any food resources so SA needs to work them all.

Pop borders, next turn work the silk and chop the granary. Granary completes eot T176. Then grow slowly off a grassland farm. I got two galleys out of hte city and still got the granary. I'm happy with that.

Who needs tile improvements...forts are where it's at. And roads. Roads are cool.

Who needs land? Hell, who needs to even do anything relatively sane when I can just throw down cities wherever I want.

Note, 180 city maintenance and 101 inflation.

I still have another eight cities to settle over the next five turns. That land area is going to be scary for some people.

seven galleys, six of them next to the island and all but one of them are three move.

one third more pop that Nazul, and they don't have cities going down.

I always like to look at this screen. Three well spread religion, one religion that is newly founded and in the process of being spread (Taoism). Christianity has a nice shrine now, it's just in an indefensible position for me. For anyone, really, because cities on that coast can't be held without other cities on the opposite coast, and I'll never allow anyone from the other continent to keep any Pingo cities on this continent, and I don't see how I can hold cities on that continent without the game being basically won.

One last turn in these civics. Next turn revolt to Bureaucracy and FR and turn tech back on. Need to decide if I'm going to research Paper, it will only take one turn but I will have difficulty in researching Optics without a loan from Pingo, and without that loan, I can't research it short of a lot of wealth builds and that leaves myself open to an attack from scooty. The next ten turns will eithe be really entertaining (war) or really boring (me building a billion cities and doing worker management).

[Krill]

This weekend I'm hoping to get the turn reports for T189 through T192 up on the blog. I haven't written them yet because I've been doing nights and am a little bit out of sync with reality...

Um. Don't expect a lot on the cities.

[Krill]

Turn 175 - National Wonders Win Games

Um, wow. Another source of gems, which with the FP means I'm making another 60gpt above last turns gold per turn.

Success! the Missionary spread religion to Saffron, giving me another 3gpt due to decreased unit costs and shrine gold...

New civics, Bureaucracy should give me a bit more gpt and a much better bpt along with FR. Serfdom will help me in the short term to improve the island and keep up with the tile improvements in the jungle.

Fort Stanwix, which will be abbreviated to FSx, is not coastal. It will therefore not be threatened by scooty until they can land a stack and threaten me. It has fifteen unique tiles, but no resources: the one flood plain is going to get irrigated along with all of the plains. Seven forests are going to wait for as long as possible for OR, but I'll almost certainly have to chop two before then for a granary. After that I'm not sure, maybe a forge, maybe a court house, with OR three forests are worth 112 hammers so I can likely get a granary, forge and court house out of the forests with minimal hammer investment

Settle two cities next turn, 4/C and G. Leaves two cities to be settled, one of which is being roaded to (you can just see the road down the western coast) and one city at Cherrygrove.

Third to last mainland city. It uses the sugar as a food resource, but will take all of the tiles it can from SA except the banana, thus has 12 tiles it doesn't share with other cities. If it takes a few plains tiles from PD and the hill and river grassland from Greed, it has 16. I can do a lot with TO, I could turn it into a cottage city with only three none cottage tiles or turn it into a hammer city.

This is one move that perhaps I shouldn't have done. Here I have double moved azza to pillage the mine. It is not a move that azza could do anything about though. I have unloaded the units in range of Cherrygrove. Now I didn't expect to be able to play this turn on Wednesday, due to RL reasons. Turns out I wasn't completely wrong, I could have at least started it by midnight, but I wasn't able to play it out completely without a long pause. The effect to azza is actually less than minimal in this theatre and has given him the chance to double move me on the other fronts with greater information. I think it is fair to say that I haven't benefited from this move in game, but I have managed to keep the game pace up by doing this. Next turn the city falls.

Nothing up here...

Nazul and scooty are in a bit of a bother over here. Rapture cuts off Speckled Band, but Rapture holds the coastal route to future island cities for Nazul. Nazul can't afford to give up Rapture but scooty will not make much use of Speckled Band, which I think was an attempt to both shut off expansion for Nazul and open up my island for them to settle. Well, they failed, and scooty still have a route up the eastern side of the island (as well as a tertiary route to other islands if they settle a core island city and pop borders across the ocean).
Best thing for me is they fight over these islands, which Nazul might do because they have a much higher power than scooty, and at the very least I can't see Nazul stepping away from a confrontation as they are not far away from caravels (Machinery, Compass, Optics but a reasonable tech pace). Scooty could attempt to use their naval prescence to stop Nazul colonising efforts but they are going to have a problem holding onto 5 Orange Pips, never mind Speckled Band.

I'm starting to become rather depleted in this area of hte map. Luckily all Nazul have to threaten me with are LB, which aren't an offensive force capable of hurting cats and HA, though I don't have a huge amount of HA around. Enough to repulse an invasion eventually, without losing Culture or PD, but I would have a problem if azza got frisky at the same time. Still, I'm considering the effect Guilds would have on my game plan: would it allow me to invade azza with knights and wrap up that war, and still defend? It is on the way to Banking after all, and grocers are useful for health in a few cities.

I could build the UoS here at 33hpt, due in about 17 turns. Some cities could do it a bit faster, maybe in 13 turns, but Crapital is the one city that doesn't have anything else to build between now and when it would finish, whereas other cities would be delaying forges, workers and missionaries. And it gives a better return than building wealth, and it doesn't matter too much if I have to wait 10 turns or so to get the pay off as I'm likely to turn tech off for that long anyway.

Boring.

Grow to size 17 needs one health resource which I don't have access. At size 16 with five watermills and an additional farm I can get WTF? to 33 base hpt, enough for three knights every four turns. a stack of twenty knights along with cats support, left over HA and a few assorted maces and longbows would probably be enough to finish off azza as he doesn't have many HA to flank away cats. But that's a fair distance away, though azza doesn't have any horses or iron and I could just declare on people to stop him getting those resources. Could get a bit hairy if people I have OB with do it though. And the longbow built on T176 needs to head north to protect the settler from GNAP.

I'm building wealth so that this turn I can run 80% slider and not overflow a single adjusted beaker. Next turn I will have 880 gold remaining, enough to get Machinery and Compass with minimal saved gold over the following three turns. If I don't get Optics and did get the loan from Pingo, then I would be able to get Guilds and Machinery in about four turns. Maybe five. But SC will go back to finishing off that court house from next turn.

Double slaved. The overflow will go into the galley most likely which will then be swapped over to wealth until the galley needs to be completed.

Galley needs to be completed on T181, to ferry this settler to silver

Boring.

Missionary for Greed, but I might build another missionary from here for TO. Or I might build it from SMS. Not decided yet, it will depend on what each city is doing at the time I can build one. Reminder I'm going to workshop the cottage, jungle and fort and leave Opportunism at size 14, meaning a forge will payback quickly and open the possibility of building the commerce multiplier buildings and turning Opportunism into a late game cottage city.

For the horse site, don't finish the longbow save it for when I'm in Theocracy or Vassalage. Maybe build into a forge because when I workshop over some of the farms NS will be able to reach 24 base hpt at size 13.

If I keep the banana at SMS I can work 11 cottages and the gems, a grass hill mine, horse and cow. 16hpt, size 16. That's a reasonable cottage site, and perfectly defensible. I think I'm going to do that at SMS, rather than turn it into a hammer city.

Handed over the plains hill mine to TO to build culture, but PD really needs to grow. PD I want to keep as a hammer city, so size 15 is the aim, with a grocer and forge I can basically work every tile here. Size 20, over 40 base hpt depending on civics. Seems reasonable, actually...

Just more workers...

Size 10 is the aim for SG, I'm going to give the sugar and jungle to CPH, so I need to send a bunch of workers to SG to workshop it. 20 base hpt at size 10 isn't shabby, really. makes a forge seem like a reasonable choice.

With Machinery due eot T177, I need to ensure that I actually have a few workers here to windmill the grassland hills. Size 17 is sustainable, just need the food to get there, but as the new tile would also be a windmill I'm not in a rush to get there, so will not take the banana from SMS.

Aim is size 15 now, 8 workshops, grass hill mine, grass ivory for minimum of 33 base hpt. 41 base hpt with both Caste and Guilds. The light house means that it will not have any problem reaching that size, an the two workers will keep up with the tile improvements. Just reinforces the need to get another couple of workers to improve SG then help out at CPH to keep up the tile improvement rate when I drop out of Serfdom.

Too much depends on a potential war with scooty. 26 base hpt, 31hpt with caste and Guilds, size 13-14. Need to tidy that up...

Trololololol.

Steal the cottage from By-Tor and farm it, and then work four specialists, probably artists in caste. A light house is a good choice to grow quicker to work those specialists. That should help to push culture back a bit.

Forget micro plans for Greed, just try to grow it in case I need an emergency slave to deal with azza.

Same plan as Axe, grow vertically and run artists when I go into caste. One extra grassland is being farmed for Saffron, and probably have to farm the plains and fort.

So much worker improvement needed...and I don't think I have the workers to go as fast as SA can grow.

Just make a forge, factory, power plant and dry dock, grow to size 11 and build wealth until I can build navy ad infinitum from Arrogance.

The impressive thing here is that almost cover the city maintenance at size 1 now just with trade routes and innate tile commerce. I don't thin kthe island is going to cost me all that much once I can get court houses down.

Wait and see on scooty. Really hope he goes away, I'd love MM as Moai, it would mean that a good amount of production cities down here, enough to try and win the game relatively early.

Still building culture, plains forest this turn and next turn, then a grass forest for two turns. Then two flood plains farms. Granary and worker turns are the main variables.
Note, this city was named after a city that was part of the best turn I've played in a game a civ. There aren't many pictures left of that turn after eight years, but it's a game that's worth checking out if you have any time.

I changed this to culture, build culture for two turns then swap over to the sugar. Granary should be finished eot T178.

Even with the addition of two new cities, city mainetenance has dropped 24gpt, inflation increased because unit costs also increased by a large chunk due to leaving Vassalage. Still, down 15gpt on last turns costs. The FP has been rather useful...

MFG should start to sky rocket in about 15 turns at a guess. GNP might start to catch up after that if I swap over to wealth builds, or power is going to get huge as I build a new army to wipe out azza for once and for all. Now I need to judge when to swap around between Serfdom and Caste system, and what my tech targets are after the current research period, and find a way to defend my lead in the game.

[novice]

Regarding Versailles - how much of your city maintenance is distance maintenance?

As for PRNGG - maybe I asked already, but shouldn't it convert two mines to windmills and two plains farms to cottages?

[NobleHelium]

I'm pretty sure free specialists don't count towards Domination.

[Krill]

I'm pretty sure free specialists don't count towards Domination.

Population is never the problem with dom, it's always land area.

Regarding Versailles - how much of your city maintenance is distance maintenance?

I have...32 cities, and about 12 court houses, so say 160ish of it is actually number of cities. However, if I do go for Domination, that is going to change and it will become mostly distance maintenance. For instance, azza's cities are not near the FP and they will be mine fairly shortly. I would likely build Versaille in Pingos land FWIW, they have one none coastal city that is reasonably positioned for that distance maintenance and is a decent production city.

As for PRNGG - maybe I asked already, but shouldn't it convert two mines to windmills and two plains farms to cottages?

It should do, but there are two reasons I have not changed them over just yet. Workers not in position to do it after I got Machinery and that I can still do with the hammers from the mines. I think I should either have built them immediately, to grow that one extra pop, or wait a short while to use OR to get a few more buildings down. Oh, a third reason, I only recently got enough health to support that final pop point as well.

[Qgqqqqq]

Just want to say thanks for the awesome reports! Probably the best reporting anywhere around.
Which do you consider a bigger threat, Scooter or Nazul?

[Krill]

Scooter has the civ I'm more concerned about and is an all round better player than Nakor. The Vikings have a much better tech pace than anyone else, but very limited production, though Nakor is on my doorstep and has no need to build a navy to attack me. Nakor doesn't have a tech edge on me (Education doesn't count when I can have it any turn I want, and Philo is worthless to me until I'm ready to use Nationhood). TBH though, I think I can deal with either of them, because scooter needs to take out Mick and Nakor is focussing on settling far away islands, and I finished settling all my islands over a dozen turns ago, and have the workers over there and granaries down. I'm only concerned now with keeping up in tech and finding the best way to shut down each competitor. For scooter that means stopping him from getting any land. For Pingo that means taking their homeland if they have success against yuris. For yuris that means assisting Pingo to screw him up, for Commodore...well, I think he is kinda screwed already, as are Cyneheard and Mick. Nakor I just need to stop him from tech trading with anyone but he is doing that himself with his bad tech decisions. More on that in the next turn report though.

[bato]

Btw at the whale city if you are only waiting for a culture pop, wouldn't it be better if you ran the citizen as a specialist which would give you culture due to sistine?

[Krill]

Stop spoiling the surprise That's also in the next report.