[spoilers] pindicator goes off the deep end

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, I forgot about that.

[pindicator]

Turns 87 & 88

We got 2 turns in yesterday! First time for that in a while.

I landed and settled my 15th town, FSRC. Stands for the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation.



There's a workboat coming from the north, about 3 turns away, and the galley just north of town is bringing a second worker with him.

Scouting about helped me find another wonderful spot for a city:



Rego has a galley heading this way, and I know from our talks he hasn't scouted what it is yet. I'm sure we are going to talk about it. I also have a settler on the way, but it will take about 5 turns of boat travel to get here, thanks to how the ocean tiles are laid out.

When T87 finished I picked up Code of Laws, so Courthouses went up all around the empire. This should really help expenses; city maintenance is costing me 106g this turn. I'm also set on growing the Moai Statue town of FAP:



It should be up to size 13 by the end of t95.

And the last bit of empire management was I started MoM in the capital. It's still another turn until the marble gets hooked up, but it still gets the wonder built a turn earlier.

Sian lost another city to Gaspadore Seriously feel bad about that guy this game. I was chatting with him earlier in the day and he felt he could at least hold out on his main island until maces came online. But it sounds like he lost his entire navy when he lost Pedro.

[pindicator]

We may get 2 turns in again today, so I'm saving the full turn report, but I did decide to diverge one more turn before heading to Civil Service & Machinery. What did I diverge for? Iron Working because I want to find my iron and I want to chop down the jungle to hook up my bananas. I discovered that I settled towns on top of 2 sources of iron. Dang it. In this hammer-poor map, dang it twice over.

[NobleHelium]

Show us the iron?

[pindicator]

Sure thing. We never got that 2nd turn, so I guess this the report

Turn 89

Here's the one that stings the most, since i just settled the city a turn ago:



And here are the other two sources within my borders:



You can see I've built my first pair of courthouses. My core is hand-building, but outter cities will whip. Most of my outter cities aren't really ready to whip, though, but this is the part where i like being Org.
Rego landed a settler on the gem island this turn, so there goes that idea. That settler is heading south instead, towards a 3-seafood site. It's a bit out there, but it should grow plenty fast.

[pindicator]

So, I had a thought. Two actually. And as usual I will use a round-about, verbose backstory to build up to my thoughts.

Earlier today we played t90, and while the turn was well and good, rego & i putting our heads together for c&d ran into a few problems. First off, we deduced that yuri & gaspadore had teched machinery. Then the only way for the t90 points to make sense would be if yuri teched civil service. Via GNP scrying i could tell 2 people learned machinery on t89 and 1 person learned it t90.

Turns out, the c&d was wrong. Rego asked yuri, who confirmed he got civil service on t90, but he did not tech machinery t89. Why the confusion then? Well, growing 4 population in this game usually gets 18 points. (It's 4.49 and change so unless the decimal falls the wrong way it will be 18.) Researching a classical age tech also gives 18 points. So we added 4 pop to yuri, and subtracted 4 pop from sian - because it was sian who teched machinery on t89 and can make maces.

But the c&d isn't the thought.

All of the sudden, I had gone from thinking "shoot, i guess zerks aren't going to be super effective" to "OMG, my neighbor can make maces and i need machinery yesterday" because i thought yuri had sneakily saved gold and then finished CS & then machinery one turn after the other.

So what if I do that to him?

Well, if he isn't doing c&d then there isn't any point to it. It just delays civil service needlessly. What does delaying civil service do? Costs me about 1fpt in CAA. So hypothetically let's say I do this. We're looking at stocking gold through t94, and then 100% research on civil service for 2 turns, 100% research on machinery for 2 turns, and then finishing them both in the next 2 turns. So both techs by t100, or in 10 turns.

Second thought: what about my great person?

There's about a 17% chance my next great person will be an engineer. He's due at the end of t96. So maybe a more measured plan needs to happen: plan on teching within 1 turn of civil service by t96. If at the end of t96 we get a great engineer then let's use him to bulb machinery, finish teching CS that turn, and start whipping zerks the next. If we get another great person, then we go back to doing it all manually.

Actually, it may be better to have CS teched at end of t96 and have some axe builds in place that turn. Then if we get the engineer t97 we can bulb the tech and all the axe builds upgrade to zerks, then we can 2-pop whip zerks everywhere possible. So let's do that. Let's save up gold through t93. Then t94-t95-t96 will be researching CS at 100%. And after that it will depend on the great person.

[pindicator]

Updating from the road because i'm procrastinating the writing i'm supposed to be doing. Thought i'd put together a spoiler thread to do list:

-Update latest turn report
-Post about how we're stacking up against the competition
-Thoughts about my alliance with rego
-Technology plan: what happens after maces?
-What do i do if i get a Great Scientist?
-Complain about how i got the worst draw on the map and the mapmaker must be blind to not have seen such obvious grievances against my place in the map.

Okay, that last one may be sarcasm. Is there anything else you want to see? This thread is for you lurkers after all.


The turn report will be up tonight, with shiny new screenshots. I think it's time for a demographics shot too; we haven't had one of those in a while.

As a teaser, i've got two settlers heading to the last two multi-food locations in my sphere of influence in this map. And gaspadore is going to bulb philosophy next turn.

Edit: And as an unofficial poll, tell me which bullet point you would like me to cover first. Aside from the turn report, that is coming first. So pick the one you want to see second.

[Ceiliazul]

Interactivity!

I'm most interested in your take on the alliance with Rego, past and future.

[oledavy]

I'm most interested in your take on the alliance with Rego, past and future.

Ditto

[pindicator]

Okay, alliance feedback it is!

But first, the turn report:

Turns 90, 91, & 92

Let's start off with some international goings on:



Gaspadore got himself a great scientist on turn 91, and researched alphabet the same turn. Smart money was that he would bulb philosophy this turn, but he hasn't done it. Why would he delay?

One: maybe he decided to use it on an academy in his capital.
Two: he isn't going to bulb philosophy; instead he will tech philo and bulb optics. No wait, that's dumb. Philosophy costs more than optics. And if he wants to bulb Astronomy, he's in the same boat I am: once you tech meditation you have to research Philosophy, Paper, Education, and Optics first, so that seems counter-productive. (Note to self: Rego and Yuri both do not have Meditation.)
Three: he wants to bulb Education.
Four: he forgot.

I'm willing to bet he is going to Education, or he's turning him into an academy.

You can also see Yuri took a turn of anarchy to switch to Bureaucracy and Organized Religion. He took the next turn to get some anarchy as well, changing his religion to Buddhism (yay! more shrine money!).

Rego has teched Iron Working and Compass. He said he did IW by accident, while he was checking GNP in the demographics screen to tell how many people had researched which technologies. Even if that is true, Compass is a good spot for him to go. A harbor for an Exp civ with Org Rel and Forges is going to cost 22 hammers. And he'll get at least 2 commerce for that investment.

These last three turns have been about 2 things. Growth and courthouses. I've grown 12 population in the last 3 turns (65 -> 77) and i've jumped from holding steady around 17% of the world' population to this last turn being at 23%. If I hadn't whipped away 10 population this turn on infrastructure then I would have been tied with Yuri in population this last turn!

Right now population looks like: Rego (90 - 17 cities), Yuri (87 - 18 cities), me (77 - 15 cities), Gaspadore (69 - 14 cities), Sian (21 - 4 cities). Sian is definitely out of this game, and when I chatted with him he was pretty depressed about how everything has gone. I tried to lift his spirits, encourage him to keep up the fight, to find something fun to play for in the game -- things I would be trying to tell myself if I were in his position. But I know it's tough.

Courthouses are about as done as they're going to be before I start war preparations:



After AAA finishes its courthouse, the only two core cities without one will be New Deal and CCC. Those are also my only towns with maintenance under 6gpt. Outlying towns will whip them in as they're needed, probably after forges, but if the economy gets bad then I could whip them ahead of forges.

Next turn we unload settlers for two more cities:



These positions are a bit far away from everything, so I'm hoping that helps keep them from being a target. Until galleons come in, there are only 2 main avenues that Yuri could attack my cities. Directly towards our border, and then here in the south. I'm feeling better about the south after scouting more of it out with a galley:



Seeing none of Yuri's cities down here is very encouraging. It also makes me wonder how much malaka-jin is costing gaspadore in maintenance.

And as promised, here's the demographics screen after I ended the turn:



Tops in GNP with science turned off is nice; right now I make more gpt than anybody else. Population is where I'm really making up ground - I haven't been #2 in the demographics population all game. Crop yield is holding steady... I've been holding steady about 30 points behind Rego for the last 30+ turns.

So I'm encouraged! And I'm also crunching numbers to try to figure out exactly what I'm going to have in place to attack Yuri with. Right now I'm targeting turn 103 as the turn I attack. I think I can have 25 berserkers, 13 galleys, and 4 triremes in the initial attack.