[SPOILERS]The 3 Muscateers playing Ragnar of Rome!

[Catwalk]

The ArchDuke has the save.
14 hours 27 minutes passed since the save has been handed on.

Everybody else plays fast, if not for Archy we could have pulled several double turns already. But at least the figurative whipping in the tech thread has ensured 1t/day for a while now, hope we can keep that up.

[Catwalk]

Quick thought on tech path before I forget: If we go for Monotheism and Monarchy, it will be practically free to get Priesthood as well because of the tech discount. Also gives us a discount on Code of Laws and Writing. I'm not interested in an Oracle run, since waterbat has Mysticism + Fast Worker + Industrious. I don't like the odds of competing for that.

[Catwalk]

t26 report

Micro plans

Plans are the same as last time, now with signs instead. My settler finishes 1t sooner somehow, so we will be able to grow sooner if we work a 2/1 instead of a 1/2. I have noted down two suggested expansions, chip in if you have an opinion about them. I failed to include that there is a desert hill gold NW of the peak to the NW.

Events so far

Hinduism was founded early, Azza's score strongly suggests that he founded it. That likely also explains the high GNP on the demos. I will keep an eye out to see who gets the next big score increase, will be the one who founded buddhism last turn.

Demos

Very satisfied with how we're doing so far, I think we're off to a good start in spite of the lost turn early on. Whoever only has 3 pop points total is lagging a bit behind in production and food, I think he will end up paying for that. Although if it's waterbat, extra production from chopping might have offset his low pop.

Babbling Baboon

I went with Babbling Baboon instead, as neither Beautiful Beaver nor Benevolent Bengal would fit. Babbling Baboon is the max length, 15 characters. It will be able to grow to size 3 on the warrior if I work unimproved copper. Can use the extra pop to whip the settler, or for whipping a granary after the settler. Food + production will be 17 at size 3 with copper mined, third pop contributing only 1 point.

Angry Angora

Capital is plodding along, speedily getting the settler ready one turn ahead of schedule. I want a worker here afterwards, followed by a granary.

[slowcheetah]

Looking good, I have just one thought from my quick scan. I'd put A one south of the location you have marked. Allows the city to grab the seafood for long term potential and gives it an extra Grassland Hill. It's also the same distance away, and can still be used to grow a single cottage for the capital if needed.

[Catwalk]

Problem with moving A south is that it messes up the dotmap (see earlier post). Specifically, I won't be able to build the fishing city that uses the two lake tiles, and I might have a hard time putting down a good city for the cows further south. For now, the dotmap above is still current.

How about growing on a workboat in the capital sometime soon? Can send it exploring the NW coast and possibly help us get Magellan's in concert with our SE warrior.

[Catwalk]

Forgot to report an important news item:

Marble has been located to the east, suggesting a new city location over there. Settling on top of the marble has several benefits:
1) It saves us 1+5+2 worker turns to improve a marble tile that is not worth working anyway
2) It gives us two first ring food resources
3) It gives us +1 hammer on the centre tile
4) Hill defense

Slight downside is that it will delay acquisition of furs, but it looks like we will be able to settle 3S of the marble to get them. I'm not sure what we'd actually use the marble for, seeing as we're not making a play for Oracle. The next marble related wonders are Mausoleum, Great Library and the epics. I'd say we definitely want to grab either Mausoleum or Great Library. I still wouldn't want to grab Calendar ahead of our current tech path. Maybe something like the following:
Mysticism => Polytheism => Priesthood => Monotheism => Iron Working => Writing => Mathematics => Currency => Sailing or Aesthetics (depending on which wonder we want to go for). I'd say one of them will still be available by then, those are cheap techs and we will tech fast.

Items not given priority on that list:
- Hunting
- Archery
- Masonry

Azza has Isabella of Egypt, we should make sure that a rampaging war chariot won't mess us up too badly. When should we upgrade from warrior defense? If we only put warriors and axemen in our cities, we might get in trouble.

[Catwalk]

t27 report

East

Jackpot! The marble site is an excellent city location, will definitely be moved much higher on the priority list. I think it's too far away to settle in the near future, maybe it can be city #6? Will have to check in my sandbox what the difference in upkeep is like. I have filled in the fog with information from our desert explorer, suggesting that there are two good city locations down by the fur as well. If I go with the pink dot, I will have to claim the second clams tile further down to the SE. I will only be able to claim it from the desert area if I settle on top of a flood plains tile.

South east

Nothing new here, other than more confirmation that the map seems to be completely mirrored. Let me know if you spot any differences.

West

I think I will let this warrior keep going west. It seems confirmed that we have 5 connecting arms surrounding us, the obvious theory is that each one will lead us to a rival. I'm still not quite sure how that ends up being mirrored, but our keen explorers should be able to tell us a lot more soon.

I think our overall plan will be to use praetorians to hamper the expansion of our enemies. One consequence of the diplo system used is that they can't conspire against us if they all get pissed off about our praetorians on their borders, or share information about our expansion. I (somewhat seriously) think we should take full advantage of that by building a single praetorian to send against each of our rivals fairly early on. If they send scouts our way, we should kill them off if possible. While this might make them wary of our intentions, I don't think it will lead them to go on the offensive against us or explore aggressively towards us. Either they will expand peacefully in other directions or they will build up their military without taking it out on us (our power graph will look impressive, even though it will effectively be a paper tiger). Best case scenario, each rival thinks that our power graph is aimed at them specifically. Please offer feedback on this plan!

[Catwalk]

Update dotmap, now with distance costs!

I decided to settle all my planned expansions in the sandbox and record the resulting distance costs. Note that distance costs will vary a bit from these values, seems that they go up with the population of the city. For purposes of early comparison, I think they hold. I hope we will be able to use these values to better determine the value of each site. For example, site F is looking really lucrative after settling C, D and E. After these, the alternatives all cost 2.4 or more, with the exception of O which is not that great a site.

To supplement those costs, here is a table of upkeep from number of cities and civics:

Code:

# of cities | city upkeep | civic upkeep | marginal cost
      1     |      0      |      0       |      0
      2     |      1      |      0       |      1
      3     |      3      |      0       |      2
      4     |      4      |      1       |      2
      5     |      6      |      3       |      4
      6     |      8      |      3       |      2
      7     |     11      |      6       |      6
      8     |     16      |      8       |      7
      9     |     19      |     10       |      5
     10     |     24      |     12       |      7
     11     |     30      |     14       |      8
     12     |     35      |     16       |      7
     13     |     41      |     19       |      7
     14     |     47      |     20       |      7
     15     |     54      |     23       |     10
     16     |     61      |     24       |      8
     17     |     70      |     28       |     13
     18     |     78      |     30       |     10
     19     |     87      |     33       |     12
     20     |     96      |     36       |     12
     21     |    107      |     37       |     12
     22     |    117      |     40       |     13
     23     |    127      |     44       |     14
     24     |    138      |     44       |     11
     25     |    150      |     47       |     15

These numbers all assume that all cities are size 1, with the capital at size 3. The marginal cost shows how much this city adds to upkeep, excluding distance costs. We see a major jump in marginal cost for city 7, meaning that we should probably plan on our initial expansion spree being 5 expansions. The 6th expansion will be much harder to earn fast profits from, and may break our back economically. Here is a diagram showing the numbers:

In this diagram I use only marginal values, meaning the added cost in that category. It is interesting to see that total marginal cost goes up and down very consistently, suggesting that we settle in pairs of 2. Whenever a cheap city is up we always want to settle it fast, and whenever an expensive city is up we want to put it off a little longer. Moreover, it is clearly shown that there is a big jump at 7 cities, at 17 cities and at 24 cities.

Note that civic upkeep will rise considerably as our cities grow. With 10 cities and a civic upkeep of 12, changing the capital to size 5 and all other cities to size 3 resulted in a 50% increase in civic upkeep.

[Catwalk]

t27 report

From now on I will only be using screenshots from before I end turn, in order to avoid confusing everybody. Not least myself. Lots more exploring done! Love growing on early warriors, according to the soldier count we have the most warriors and that means more info for us.

Over to the east we see superjm's borders. Interestingly, they seem to originate from different arm than the one we're exploring. Looks like it might be somewhat similar to our PH expansion if this tundra matches the tundra to our west. Also, more resources! This will definitely be a contested area.

Down south east we have run into TheArchDuke. I'm strongly tempted to run in and mess with his workers, if only to force him to build extra military. We're seeing the borders of his capital, and his warrior has just returned from a trip down by his gems. Going to spend EP on him for now. Might also use this warrior to explore the mirrored gems arm after checking out his borders.

Over to the west we have found some resources, looks conspicuously like the eastern tundra arm. If so, we want to make our presence felt here as well. I'm highly convinced that each arm is mirrored and leads straight to an opponent, will have to figure out how that all fits together. I also just realized that our expansion completely blocks off movement from the NW arm without declaring on us, hadn't thought of that.

Demos still looking good. Whoever has 5 production or 13 food might be falling behind, those are low numbers even with a chopping economy. 5 production would mean city tile + cows only, so no expansion and no mine. 13 food makes little sense to me, you get 11 from city tile + corn + cows. I tried messing about with pop numbers and gave up quickly, there are many ways to end up with those totals. It seems highly that someone doesn't have both corn and cows hooked up yet, which is good news for us. Guessing that a few players don't have clams hooked up either, considering we were the only ones to start with it. I'm guessing TheArchDuke has had a bit of trouble, considering he started out with Wheel and Mysticism. Maybe waterbat too, since it seems highly likely that he grabbed Buddhism immediately after Agriculture. Guessing he went worker first, farmed the corn and mined the hill. That probably would leave him time to get AH in time to pasture the cows, though.

Concerning tech path, I forgot that Monotheism requires Masonry. Masonry is not much of a priority for me, so that will delay acquisition of Judaism a bit. The following techs are early priorities:

Mysticism (for Monument, will need them fairly soon)
Iron Working (for Iron tile and Praetorians, I'm still keen on putting out a few Praetorians early on for the intimidation factor, might even be able to do some easy damage)
Writing (for library, do we want to get an early academy in the capital?)
Mathematics (for awesome chopping)
Currency (for trade routes and wealth, giving us a good econ option when we need to grow a city and don't want more units, also allows us to "borrow" money for added expansion)
Monotheism (mainly to grab Judaism, secondarily to get Organized Religion)
Monarchy (we want to switch to HR and OR at the same time)

I'm still leaning towards making a play for Judaism. Suggested tech path after landing Pottery in a few turns:
Mysticism => Polytheism => Priesthood => Masonry => Monotheism => Iron Working => Writing => Mathematics => Currency

Moved Iron Working further down the line in order to have a better chance of landing Monotheism, on the assumption that we will still be busy growing if we get it sooner. Am I valuing Judaism too highly? I won't be able to revolt into it for free while getting OR and HR, so it won't do much for me for a while after getting it.

[Catwalk]

After a lot of sandboxing today, I have decided to change plans:
1) Second expansion will be the gold spot NW of BB, on top of a flood plains. It will get a monument right away, in order to get the gold and the clams as soon as possible. Will whip the monument after it grows in 4 turns. Might move the location if the warrior spots more resources, don't mind losing a clams tile that much as it will also move the settlement away from the flood plains and possibly next to the gold = much faster happiness.
2) Third settlement will be south of AA, by the corn. This location can be developed faster, being closer to the capital and sharing more tiles. It also has a lake tile that is a useful substitute in case a tile is needed somewhere among the cities. My worker has already moved on the hill tile, but this fits in fine with the plans to establish a road connection which can also be used for the next expansion.
3) Fourth expansion will be by the corn and the sheep. Delaying it a bit makes it easier to supply the worker force needed to improve the sheep and corn in a fashionable manner.
4) Fifth expansion is uncertain. If there are furs to the west, that is my preferred site. Else I will likely settle to the east, either on the marble or possibly trying to snatch both the furs and the silver. superjm is Willem of China, he has great culture early on but little military power. I'm gambling on being able to intimidate him, if I don't make a show of force he will be able to steal key tiles culturally.

Updated tech path:
Mysticism => Polytheism => Masonry => Monotheism => Iron Working => Priesthood => Monarchy => Writing => Mathematics => Currency
Hunting will likely be stuck in at some point after Monotheism. I will revolt to HR and OR as soon as we have Monarchy, followed by a stream of missionaries to important cities. When we have enough religious cities (at some point after Currency), I will turn us into Jews.