[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

Hypothetical crazy way to pop borders:






In an 8 player game with only 1 or 2 IND civs I might go for this (and it would be possible to shave a couple of turns off), but in this game you have to ask yourself if you're in the upper three percentile points. And the answer here is no, since someone is going to have a plains hill start (or EXP) to be four turns ahead of us, and delay pottery, and settle their second city on Marble, and immediately bang it out. E.g. in PB13 I think Oracle fell on EOT 53 or something crazy early.

[WilliamLP]

Interesting from our civ's team of ancient function key telepaths:




Note the lurker civ gives us C&D info we wouldn't have without it, namely a baseline for total EP spending in the game!

We've got 62 EP on Commodore, 86 on Ichabod, 4 on MYKI. The total is 152 (= 38 x 4 since we settled a turn late). It's 62 on Commodore and not 60 because Darrell found us in the second half and so we split the EP 2-2 that turn without a chance to switch.

Ichabod has 96 on Commodore and 56 on us. That's 152, or all his EP! (Not 156, because of one anarchy turn.) This means they have no other contacts, and also shows serious newbie colon smoke colon that they've wasted 32 EP divided to Commodore - a full 16 turns - by not switching to spending exclusively on us.

MYKI also has 148 on Commodore, meaning we're his first contact! He and Ichabod have not met due to MYKI's scout dying.

This is interesting stuff, and is indirect evidence for the triangle landmass rule-of-threes world theory.

What's slightly concerning is that in Darrellbod's eyes, they may suspect they're in a duel, and they're trying to scout past us instead of their other border. Hopefully they're paying attention and see that we're spending EP on someone else now.

[MindyMcCready]

Hypothetically, could we shave off any turns by moving it 1E? That +8 (or whatever) culture boost would get those whales in a hurry giving the fast start + the whales you want.

[WilliamLP]

It's a good hypothetical exercise. I don't think 1E does any good. 1NE might, with 5 forests to chop in its BFC, but that's the last place we want a 1-off-coast city.

It's possible to get it down to at least turn 57 if willing to slow build a piece of it. That sacrifices a lot of long term growth, e.g. whip worker before granary in city #2.




It's certainly possible even significantly earlier with more disregard for the rest of the empire, e.g. just focus on getting four workers and a settler as soon as possible. That puts the bottleneck on researching Priesthood, and to get very fast we'd have needed to start that path (Myst -> Meditation -> Priesthood) before Pottery.

The EOT 53 finish from TBS in PB13 scares me off I think! Like Henge and the two first religions, it's a really good bet that someone is going to sacrifice a lot to get there. There are a lot of people really good at micro in this game and everyone knows if you're going to go for a contested valuable goal you need to go all-in.

If we knew that a turn 58-59 build could land it, it would be a good idea to go for it I think.

[WilliamLP]

Some tech costs, adjusted for prereqs:

Fishing: 69
Sailing: 143
Myst: 85
Masonry: 115 / 99
Meditation: 115
Priesthood: 86
Archery: 58
AH: 123
HBR: 358
Writing: 148
Monarchy: 431
MC: 431
Aesthetics: 431
Math: 358
Alphabet: 358
Currency: 575 / 493
Calendar: 503
Construction: 503
Code of Laws: 503 / 431

I'm really debating the crazy play of skipping Myst all the way to Currency + Calendar, using either Barracks or Libraries for border pops if necessary, since any given city will probably eventually want one or the other. It's one of those questions about hammers vs beakers and goodies now vs later, that Seven can precisely quantize, and I wouldn't necessarily trust the values, but then he'd use them to easily clean my clock in a game anyway. In the grand scheme of this, speeding up the rest of the tech tree by 85 beakers (cost of Myst) might not be that big of a deal.

Rejected wacky idea: pop border in city #3 with The Great Wall. Ignore barbs! War deterrent with the GG emergence! Free GPP! 2 culture per turn!

A build in city 3 like chop granary -> double whip library at size 4 could do double duty as both a border expansion to get whales and also enable a fast academy.

I've been revisiting Krill's game back in PB5, mainly because it's reported in such detail. It's very interesting to go back to it! I remembered the skirmish with Azza in the center (and the game could have been different if Azza brought a single spear to the party). And I remembered the midgame land grab and bullying Regopin into giving up a city just by having tons of horse archers.

What I didn't remember was just how economic Krill's early game was. He went on the religious line first to Monarchy and then to Alphabet before HBR, which he didn't finish until EOT 121. He played a strong vertical capital opening (with dubious land) and didn't settle a second city until T43. What I also didn't remember is that he was basically dominating the demos even before that skirmishing happened.

His basic style in that game is the one I want to try and emulate, at least the part about growing fewer cities at the very start, but growing them vertically as far as possible onto cottages very quickly. And then, with strong cities, the curve for new settlers gets higher and higher quite steeply. And also, avoiding war early but perhaps changing that later when opportunity presents itself.

I also think the RB metagame has evolved a lot since then. Particularly with the introduction of a lot of bright new players who study the game hard and are extremely good calculators and micro planners. I think that if that same map played out with Krill's poor start, but you put in TBS, Dtay, Oxy / Suttree, Gavagai, Harry / Fintourist then Krill at least wouldn't have been running away with the demos. The reputation of a few players' performances after that game haven't been kind (Azza, Nakor, Yuri). Pindicator and Commodore's starting moves ensured that neither would be competitive to win. Plako died to a warrior, and Scooter played from the notorious "dying moose-snake" island.

[MindyMcCready]

We might have a tougher go of emulating Master Krill's strategy. He was Charismatic +2 happy which allowed that high vertical growth without too much stagnation. I don't recall what he had for happy resources. The other thing I'd say is that he might not have done it out of pure optimization but more due to a derth of good land outside his capital area. The land you have hear still suggests horizontal I'd say. Vertical while delaying monarchy also seems like we might get capped early.

You've eluded to it a bit, but if you're going to grow vertical first (at the cost of horizontal) you may need to kneecap someone to ensure that you have the land later when you're ready to go horizontal. I'm really surprised to hear that he landed Alphabet before HBR. I sure don't remember that, but will take your word for it. A part of his success I attribute to his run up the top of the tech tree. An early HE cranked out the HA necessary for him to get easy and/or free cities from his neighbours.

It was really fun to read how he took his HAs from one end of his empire to the other in a one-at-a-time bullying for profit play. Rego at the time commented that Krill was playing a "take-one-city from each civ" variant. :LOL:

Barracks for culture - no reason not to. If we're not getting Monarchy or religion soon (or Oracle), we can largely ignore that part of the tree for awhile.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 40:




Hi-Yo Silver, away! Yeah, my naming scheme is a little weak. Simultaneously it's a television horse and a way to bamboozle MYKI by falsely insinuating a luxury resource.

Speaking of which, check out the gold / deer site that MYKI should get. The hut there is unclaimed but there's a good chance MYKI will pop it with his warrior this turn (the sign says where he was T39), unless he's scouting toward Darrellbod.

Also note Ichabod's warrior to the north is visible and a little wounded and promotable from a lion (probably).

Possible micro future for Silver:

I have it taking the wheat until the cows are improved to speed up its curve. This does slow down Mr. Ed's curve though, since it could grow in 2 but is instead growing in 3. I think it's worth it though to get this city productive as soon as possible. I'm also thinking of double-whipping the barracks for the border pop to claim the corn for possible city number 4 on turn 65.

(I've seen enough calculations now to know that even nerfed double-whips are viable with high food, more so if there's extra value in the here-and-now factor, which there is for border pops.)

The road to the SW of Silver was just intended to get a worker started on the cow right now while doing something useful (but not essential).

Mr. Ed will produce a warrior and then I'm thinking of a second scout. This is because a second warrior is impossible with copper, and with map trading off all the map awareness we'll ever get we need to uncover ourselves. (I really like that about this game.)




Demos are solid. Both MYKI and Ichabod got techs.

Ichabod has been playing turns since T33 switching over from Darrell, I'm not sure if that's significant.

[WilliamLP]

We might have a tougher go of emulating Master Krill's strategy. He was Charismatic +2 happy which allowed that high vertical growth without too much stagnation. I don't recall what he had for happy resources. The other thing I'd say is that he might not have done it out of pure optimization but more due to a derth of good land outside his capital area. The land you have hear still suggests horizontal I'd say. Vertical while delaying monarchy also seems like we might get capped early.

He had (eventually) gold + furs + wine in that game, and the +2 happy for CHA, and he founded Buddhism and got some pretty fortunate free spreads from it. But yeah, his surrounding land was very poor, completely different from this game.

I think it might be easy to underestimate just how quicky research will stagnate after 4-5 cities without some vertical cottage cities for fuel. We do have ORG at least. That's something that I'm intrigued to learn in this game, just how much Joao can grow on these map settings without shooting himself in the foot later on.

You've eluded to it a bit, but if you're going to grow vertical first (at the cost of horizontal) you may need to kneecap someone to ensure that you have the land later when you're ready to go horizontal. I'm really surprised to hear that he landed Alphabet before HBR. I sure don't remember that, but will take your word for it. A part of his success I attribute to his run up the top of the tech tree. An early HE cranked out the HA necessary for him to get easy and/or free cities from his neighbours.

Yeah, I remember it being the game that makes the case for fast military and expansion trumping economy, but it's a really interesting re-read. He was basically running a minimal military build for the first 120 turns with lots of warriors, lots of cottages, and then managed to dominate the map starting with like 2 chariots. And it was the slower vertical ramp earlier that enabled the fast horizontal spread later.

It would also be fun to re-read Commodore's thread from that game some day. I'm not sure if you gave him The Title yet.

Barracks for culture - no reason not to. If we're not getting Monarchy or religion soon (or Oracle), we can largely ignore that part of the tree for awhile.

I'm coming around to that too. Also I'm really getting intrigued by the library first build in city #3, with an aim toward a fast academy in the capital.

[Commodore]

You should! My best thread ever for raw entertainment..

[WilliamLP]

Dammit:




MYKI popped the hut and beat us by one turn which was expected, but it popped barbs! I have no idea what the odds of keeping the scout are but they can't be great. Bad luck for us, even worse for him with an empty city sitting right there.