[spoilers] - Pindicator's Industrial March Madness!

[pindicator]

Turn 266

Some people have all the luck:




Which begs the qusetion: why do we have barbs on? And how did I not catch that earlier? Warriors aren't really doing much out here except to help one person get absurdly lucky.

I didn't note this before, but a great engineer was born and Taj Mahal built 2 turns ago. An odd choice for an early wonder, but I guess it helps and it's "free".

Our cities:




Cui grows to 8 in 2 turns, with a chop coming in so that the rifle finishes at the same time as the city hits size 8. We'll switch to a settler and then 4-pop whip it complete on turn 270. I have 4 workers around the city to get tiles improved, chop forests, and soon to build a road northeast towards the copper.

The capital just finished it's library and I tentatively started a rifle -- but I'm a little undecided. I could chop out an observatory and try to keep stacking multipliers in the capital. A galleon is also a good idea to start getting an idea of the seas -- or possibly to even attack REM across the waters down the road. Curious as to what you think about the priority for the capital is here; I lean towards a unit just to make sure we have good coverage for the settlers I'll be whipping out of the other cities.

Mussorgsky put a chop into a settler last turn and this turn we're growing. I'm pulling irrigation down from the capital so we can get that corn irrigated, and I think I'll put workshops on the plains tiles to just focus on production here. Not sure when I put this city over to a settler -- probably as soon as the rifle finishes.

[pindicator]

Turn 269

Next turn we'll be ready to whip the settler at Cui




Workers are moved to road to the spot. I was originally going to put it 1 more tile to the west so it would also grab the gems, but that would be very food-poor, with only the pigs to feed working hilled horse, hilled copper, and hilled gems. I don't like that this is closer in -- I'm eager to stake territory -- but I also want to get good locations. If you think it should go elsewhere now's the time to let me know.

Mussorgsky will finish it's rifle and hit size 7 at end of turn; we'll be starting the next settler there.

[pindicator]

Turn 270

Well, we aren't whipping because I guess the rounding error shows it's ugly head again. So even though 4 pop = 150h (120 x 1.25) and we're exactly 150h away, it won't let us whip until next turn

[picklepikkl]

Ugh, so in truth Forge Math whips are 37h instead of 37.5? That sucks, sorry that your micro was betrayed

[pindicator]

No, they're 37.5

I can't remember the exact details, but the bug is in how the game calculates the number of population needed to whip, not in the hammers you get for whipping. So it says I need 5 people but if I could whip 5 this turn it would give me full value

[GermanJoey]

yeah, the problem is that two different equations are used. with the first, the whip button calculates using the equation ceil(hammers_remaining/floor(30*modifiers)*pop_available) to see how much pop is required to complete the build via the whip. in this case, it works out to ceil(4.05) = 5pop required. however, a different equation then is used for calculating how many hammers a whip is worth: floor(30*modifiers*pop_whipped), which is the equation everyone has in their head for the whip, and is equal to 150 in this case.

it comes up only rarely (i.e. only for multi-pop whips when you have exact hammers with the second equation) but is always really obnoxious when it does. got me in pb29 in the ancient era at one point, i remember, blegh.

[pindicator]

Turn 271

Potentially a huge break for us, if we can take advantage of it:




Barb city discovered, and I dont' think Gaspar has eyes on it yet. It's a little closer to his city than ours: 7 tiles from his closest city & 9 from ours. I moved a rifle towards it right away and I'm going to try and road along the path to speed that up. We do have 8 workers that suddenly need stuff to do after all.

So originally I was going to plant a city on the spot just northwest of Cui, but now I'm wondering if I want to instead put that settler southwest and try to build a bridge towards the barb city. But there will be no workforce in that area, and we also have a settler that will be whipped out of Mussorgsky on turn 276, and instead of going east to try and grab the copper of BGN perhaps it would be better to instead push towards Gaspar by settling everything east: first settler goes as planned, second settler builds a bridge to the barb city, and if we're lucky hopefully we can capture that barb city with a rifle.

As for the rifle getting there, I moved the rifle in Cui and 2 workers to the forest hill 2W of the city. I will work out how fast I can get the rifle over to the barb city and with how many workers before playing the next turn. Hopefully I can make it work with 2 or 3 workers, but I have up to 4 or 5 in the area if I choose -- I'll just have to build (whip) some more for the new city.

Also, after ending turn BGN spawned a Great Artist. I wonder what kind of artist bomb plans he has in mind, but it makes me less inclined to settle up on him.

[pindicator]

Turn 272

Alexander Borodin is the namesake of our 4th city, and below is a link to his "Prince Igor":



Borodin unfortunately is the one to suffer from the decision that had to be made this turn: namely, was sending 4 workers to help speed along our rifle to the barb city worth it? I decided that yes, it was worth it, and so Borodin is going to whip a worker of it's own. Luckily Cui has enough overflow from it's settler whip to 1-turn a worker, so Borodin will still have a pair of workers to help improve it.

I'm also going to send 2 rifles out to the barb city: the one in Borodin will move southwest as well. There's a rifle finishing in the capital this turn that can move up to cover Borodin and Cui.




We should be able to take the spot. Gaspar & Noble's city might be closer, but he settled that city a ways from his capital already (and in a superior spot to where we settled our northeast city I might add), so I don't think he's going to try and stretch yet again to reach this one. And if all goes to plan we should have reached 6 cities total by turn 280.

Demos are meh; the food is a bit concerning really:




But it's still early.

[pindicator]

Turn 273

I'm really glad I'm not OT4E's neighbor!



1st: Artists aren't something we're able to go after, but admittedly I was even thinking about them as a possibility. More rustiness in general / unfamiliarity with the industrial start. (Note: we will need to watch what BGN does with his artist.)

2nd: I didn't need to whip that worker out of Borodin; I had 3 workers on hand to chop it out.

3rd: Scooter & Sullla's settling pattern is too tight, IMO. I think this makes me want to push more settlers out west to grab more than my fair share of that land.

[pindicator]

Turn 276

Celebrations!




Balakirev is captured!



Meanwhile back in the core, we whipped the settler for city #5 in Mussorgsky, and we completed the chop + plantation at the capital, letting it grow to size 12 and also finishing it's observatory. Probably another settler there next




BGN has an explorer snooping around to the east of Mussorgsky. I'd love to expand that way next too...