The Hills Send Back The Cry [SPOILERS]

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

In brief:
- Teched Metal Casting
- Khan accepted peace
- Offered Ginger Sugar for Dye
- Thinking of using the Great General for a 5-move Galley on the outer sea

Seen pitboss 30 for the powers of those eh?

[El Grillo]

Oh yeah

I have this fantasy about razing Adrien's Colossus/TGL city, but in reality I don't even know if it's on the outer or inner sea

We definitely want to attach the GG to a unit so Onramp can start the Heroic Epic, and I think the first speedboat has more utility than the first super-medic.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Oh yeah

I have this fantasy about razing Adrien's Colossus/TGL city, but in reality I don't even know if it's on the outer or inner sea

We definitely want to attach the GG to a unit so Onramp can start the Heroic Epic, and I think the first speedboat has more utility than the first super-medic.

Haha. Although are they even in the same city? I don't want you missing out on the promos you want, so remember the nav promos come from flanking.

It does depend on your plan of attack really as to what is better. Do mind that a GG galley is a huge and very weak target to hit.

[El Grillo]

I know from the Top 5 Cities screen that they're both in Djenne (which is rather silly indeed, as the Wonders list on the same screen reflects my in-game ignorance of their location).

[El Grillo]

T84 and T85:

Khan finished the Mausoleum EOT85 in a city I don't have visibility on. We have peace until T94, and I'd like to get eyes on it, but I doubt he'd be willing to open borders. Khan sent me an email explaining that he's feeling a bit frustrated and burned out with the state of the game, which could also explain those <1% attacks a few turns ago. Hopefully he feels better soon - I think his position is definitely recoverable (well, provided I don't do everything in my power to prevent that ).




Khan has moved back the bulk of his forces to Mount Pleasant, with a small garrison of 2 Skirmishers and a Spear at Odiham and 2 Skirmishers at Northolt. With all those defensive modifiers, it'll be a tough nut to crack, even if I upgrade my HAs to Knights. One option would be to use the Artist to try and claim one of Mount Pleasant's first-ring tiles to road and bring in Trebuchets, but that would leave the city in revolt for quite a long time (the mechanics are based on the population, with reductions for shared religion and civics). For the moment, we'll finish Forges in our productive cities and continue pumping HAs.




Ginger refused the Sugar/Dye trade and the Open Borders trade, oddly enough. He doesn't have routes with anyone else, and he'd definitely benefit more from OB than I would, so why refuse? I'll wait to see where his Settler plants and adjust my own city site for a respectful border. Also, his eastern Bowman, despite being on a hill, has all of its forward sightlines blocked by Forests. I think he only just became aware of Gauntlet's existence after it expanded its borders this turn




Domestically, I have two cities ready to birth Great Scientists - Tossing & Turning, shown here, and Stuntsheet One to the south. I'm not sure if it's worth using one for an Academy at this point, or if I should use both for bulbs along the Liberalism path (targeting Astronomy?). My capital just hasn't had time to work that many cottages, and I still need it to work mines for the foreseeable future while I'm in Caste System.




ORG is saving me roughly 47 gpt in civic expenses, after factoring in inflation of 11%! Adrien is probably getting more out of FIN than that, but I'd wager that it's a smaller difference than you'd expect. I think I can probably get a fairly precise estimate using pop distribution and subtracting his hooked food/hammer bonuses, so I'd put it in the ballpark of 60 tiles.




Note that Adrien and I are both on Machinery - I'm on pace to get it in 3t at breakeven, and he's listed at 5t right now, making 113 gpt. He has fewer cities too, so while his expenses might be a bit higher than mine overall, it's still a frighteningly strong economy. I wonder if I can send some kind of warning to Khan or Ginger, but I'm fairly certain that all but the most obvious resource signaling just confuses everyone involved.




Where are you, Djenne? I wonder if Ginger would be amenable to a map trade if I get Paper.

Graphs:

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

T84 and T85:

Khan finished the Mausoleum EOT85 in a city I don't have visibility on. We have peace until T94, and I'd like to get eyes on it, but I doubt he'd be willing to open borders. Khan sent me an email explaining that he's feeling a bit frustrated and burned out with the state of the game, which could also explain those <1% attacks a few turns ago. Hopefully he feels better soon - I think his position is definitely recoverable (well, provided I don't do everything in my power to prevent that ).




Khan has moved back the bulk of his forces to Mount Pleasant, with a small garrison of 2 Skirmishers and a Spear at Odiham and 2 Skirmishers at Northolt. With all those defensive modifiers, it'll be a tough nut to crack, even if I upgrade my HAs to Knights. One option would be to use the Artist to try and claim one of Mount Pleasant's first-ring tiles to road and bring in Trebuchets, but that would leave the city in revolt for quite a long time (the mechanics are based on the population, with reductions for shared religion and civics). For the moment, we'll finish Forges in our productive cities and continue pumping HAs.




Ginger refused the Sugar/Dye trade and the Open Borders trade, oddly enough. He doesn't have routes with anyone else, and he'd definitely benefit more from OB than I would, so why refuse? I'll wait to see where his Settler plants and adjust my own city site for a respectful border. Also, his eastern Bowman, despite being on a hill, has all of its forward sightlines blocked by Forests. I think he only just became aware of Gauntlet's existence after it expanded its borders this turn




Domestically, I have two cities ready to birth Great Scientists - Tossing & Turning, shown here, and Stuntsheet One to the south. I'm not sure if it's worth using one for an Academy at this point, or if I should use both for bulbs along the Liberalism path (targeting Astronomy?). My capital just hasn't had time to work that many cottages, and I still need it to work mines for the foreseeable future while I'm in Caste System.




ORG is saving me roughly 47 gpt in civic expenses, after factoring in inflation of 11%! Adrien is probably getting more out of FIN than that, but I'd wager that it's a smaller difference than you'd expect. I think I can probably get a fairly precise estimate using pop distribution and subtracting his hooked food/hammer bonuses, so I'd put it in the ballpark of 60 tiles.




Note that Adrien and I are both on Machinery - I'm on pace to get it in 3t at breakeven, and he's listed at 5t right now, making 113 gpt. He has fewer cities too, so while his expenses might be a bit higher than mine overall, it's still a frighteningly strong economy. I wonder if I can send some kind of warning to Khan or Ginger, but I'm fairly certain that all but the most obvious resource signaling just confuses everyone involved.




Where are you, Djenne? I wonder if Ginger would be amenable to a map trade if I get Paper.

Graphs:

Bare in mind only 1 city will birth a scientist. The other will need an extra 67gpp for the next one. Cities birth them if they reach the threshold the same turn in order of founding (ie if you use the cycling arrows at the top of city screen)

If one can make more GPP han the other might be worth editing which is built first.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

What is your ranking of players currently? Who's gonna qualify?

[El Grillo]

Good point about the GPP, but I think it'll work the way I intend. Stuntsheet One (my Moai site) will birth this Scientist and then swap to working tiles, while Tossing & Turning, which has an absurd food surplus and will get the National Epic, will keep working on the next one.

As for player ranking:

1. Adrien: FIN will only get better, he has a great timing window with Knights coming up, and it's awkward for me to fight him until I control the center, outside of Operation Djenne. Maybe I could sell Pikes to Ginger, but that's about it. It's very hard to imagine him falling to 3rd place in an AI diplo environment.

2. Me: I have the lead in cities, beakers researched, and teching ability, if you consider bulbing. My traits will also continue to scale as the game goes on, I wouldn't be surprised to see ORG saving me 100gpt from civics before this is over, and although I haven't made any swaps in a while, there are lots of good civics coming up soon, Mercantilism and Theocracy and Nationalism and Pacifism. With my EP advantage, I should be able to get most of the upcoming first-to bonuses, and I'll even have city visibility on Khan soon. It's pretty hard to imagine falling to 3rd place, Adrien would have to run over Ginger and fight me over Khan, and I'd have to lose to Khan in our next round of war.

3. Khan: I'd definitely put Khan in 3rd place for now, but with the MoM secured, and a Scientist from earlier (surely he saved it for this), he could certainly recover from this position. With IND and monopoly over Marble (and denying Stone to Adrien), he could try beating us to Taj even if he's later to Nationalism, and the other Marble wonders are quite powerful, too. However, this makes him a more tempting target for Adrien and me, so he might be priced into teching to Feudalism/Guilds/Engineering anyways. As an aside, I don't think EXP ended up being quite as good as to justify its high point cost. It's fairly easy to imagine him coming in 2nd over me, if Adrien decides to attack me instead. That's why I'm prioritizing Engineering over Guilds myself, if I show him Pikes while he's still in the target selection/buildup phase, he should know better.

4. Ginger: With less total pop, less developed land, the most dangerous neighbors, and a significant tech lag, the only way I can see Ginger making it out of 4th and into 2nd place is if I can steal a march on both Khan and Adrien and boost him there The more I think about this and his recent diplo actions, the less feasible or even desirable this seems, so if he ends up making some kind of power play and coming in 2nd, I'll eat my hat. Also, while I think CRE/IMP could've been a very strong combination on this map, I think it would've required tighter planning and an early rush to the center. This was a metagaming mistake on my part - I assumed the person who settled the middle would immediately be targeted by everyone else, as if it were a particularly tasty barbarian city, but this just hasn't proven to be the case here.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Good point about the GPP, but I think it'll work the way I intend. Stuntsheet One (my Moai site) will birth this Scientist and then swap to working tiles, while Tossing & Turning, which has an absurd food surplus and will get the National Epic, will keep working on the next one.

As for player ranking:

1. Adrien: FIN will only get better, he has a great timing window with Knights coming up, and it's awkward for me to fight him until I control the center, outside of Operation Djenne. Maybe I could sell Pikes to Ginger, but that's about it. It's very hard to imagine him falling to 3rd place in an AI diplo environment.

2. Me: I have the lead in cities, beakers researched, and teching ability, if you consider bulbing. My traits will also continue to scale as the game goes on, I wouldn't be surprised to see ORG saving me 100gpt from civics before this is over, and although I haven't made any swaps in a while, there are lots of good civics coming up soon, Mercantilism and Theocracy and Nationalism and Pacifism. With my EP advantage, I should be able to get most of the upcoming first-to bonuses, and I'll even have city visibility on Khan soon. It's pretty hard to imagine falling to 3rd place, Adrien would have to run over Ginger and fight me over Khan, and I'd have to lose to Khan in our next round of war.

3. Khan: I'd definitely put Khan in 3rd place for now, but with the MoM secured, and a Scientist from earlier (surely he saved it for this), he could certainly recover from this position. With IND and monopoly over Marble (and denying Stone to Adrien), he could try beating us to Taj even if he's later to Nationalism, and the other Marble wonders are quite powerful, too. However, this makes him a more tempting target for Adrien and me, so he might be priced into teching to Feudalism/Guilds/Engineering anyways. As an aside, I don't think EXP ended up being quite as good as to justify its high point cost. It's fairly easy to imagine him coming in 2nd over me, if Adrien decides to attack me instead. That's why I'm prioritizing Engineering over Guilds myself, if I show him Pikes while he's still in the target selection/buildup phase, he should know better.

4. Ginger: With less total pop, less developed land, the most dangerous neighbors, and a significant tech lag, the only way I can see Ginger making it out of 4th and into 2nd place is if I can steal a march on both Khan and Adrien and boost him there The more I think about this and his recent diplo actions, the less feasible or even desirable this seems, so if he ends up making some kind of power play and coming in 2nd, I'll eat my hat. Also, while I think CRE/IMP could've been a very strong combination on this map, I think it would've required tighter planning and an early rush to the center. This was a metagaming mistake on my part - I assumed the person who settled the middle would immediately be targeted by everyone else, as if it were a particularly tasty barbarian city, but this just hasn't proven to be the case here.

Haha I really wanted to put a preplaced barb city on the marble... Couple of archers to make things interesting even with no barbs I think this could have been interesting, and made things interesting.

Plan in my head was city, monument and worker for them with 2 cg3 archers... They would have struggled with unhealth there but would have been hard to shift. Worker steals might have unbalanced it a bit though. Slightly ameliorated with static barbs on the isthmuses.

Would you have liked that or preferred the more standard map?

[El Grillo]

That certainly would've been exciting, introducing a lot of variance - the barbs choosing to build Workers vs Archers would keep all of us on the edge of our seats. For a small, casual game like this one, I would've enjoyed playing it, though it may have strayed a bit far from what the original hosts had in mind

I checked the 74B subforum, and there must be some kind of bloodbath going on in there - picklepikkl and greenline each have ~1000 more thread views than us!