Agreed, I've read up on a few of GKC's games and he strikes me as a good player with solid fundamentals and an interesting approach to predicting his opponents' behavior. His opening has been quick out of the gates as expected with India, founding cities on T30, T41, T53, and T62. Considering how whip-light he's been playing (6 1-pop whips), I would expect him to be near top CY and MFG. Hopefully he can press on Plemo's borders while the Dutch were busy expanding south toward me.
At long last, Springer Mtn can work all of its improved tiles.
I made contact with GKC, offered Open Borders (who knows if he'll accept to let my scouting WC through, but it can't hurt to ask), and he's on five cities consistent with the score tracking. I'm going to put enough EP on him for graphs, and then probably swap them back to Plemo. I'm about 15t away from getting research visibility on him.
Also, well look at this, this was never a private island. It's superdeath!
He just founded his fifth city this turn, so there it is. I accidentally immediately used my Workboat for nets (that I can't even work for 3 turns, ugh) instead of making contact, so one of us will need a border pop, or I'd need to bring my sentry unit back, before we make contact. I can't say I'm pleased to border Rome, even over the water, but I'm going to proceed with the assumption that superdeath wants to Praetorian rush someone and he's already picked his target and it doesn't involve Sailing and Galleys. Fingers crossed on that one
After all of the whipping, our demographics and especially GNP are in a truly rough state:
+8gpt at 0% research, yikes! Thankfully we have lots of cottages and other 3c tiles to regrow back onto, and I'm looking to get Springer Mtn started on its priest specialists once it grows a size. The plan is to 2-pop Worker whip off and regrow onto priests instead of the plains hill mine, so it won't be done ASAP, but roughly around t90. Hopefully we'll have had a few more passive spreads by then.
Graphs:
Plemo's power keeps rising. It's starting to get a bit scary, not gonna lie...
Yeah, I'm probably too used to singleplayer where you always want to make contacts when possible. Hopefully the landmass east of Springer Mtn is actually an island and not yet another neighbor's land
GKC agreed to Open Borders so I sent my WC in to take a look. Also, Ramk settled his fourth city in a rather provocative flatland location toward Plemo, it's basically halfway between where I believe their capitals are from the culture shape.
I think that allays some of my concerns about being attacked in the immediate future, if anything I'd hope that this leads to a build-up or even war between the two of them. Yes, please let the AGG player fight PRO Mali while I grow my economy out of the GNP gutter
I'll post an overview next turn when I settle city #6 so I can share just how bad things are looking, and go over some plans to recover.
Demos:
Graphs:
Also, Ramk's fix removed all the coastal forests and jungles as advertised.
Big overview post, sections in spoilers for length.
Let's get scouting out of the way:
Bombay is GKC's second city, which means his capital is probably somewhere 2N of the corn. Bombay has a Monument but not a Granary, so there's probably another resource or two in the fog to the SW. I'm going to get a peek at the capital and then continue heading west to meet more players, as I don't want to overstay my welcome in Indian territory. The presence of multiple mines leads me to guess that GKC is probably among MFG leaders, and also explains why he hasn't been whipping much. It's nice that Fast Workers can start those mines without costing an action.
Onto the main topics: demos, city review, and where we go from here.
Demos and observations:
0% research:
40% research (breakeven):
100% research:
My observations here are:
- We need 3 more turns of saving gold until we can tech Mathematics at 100%. This roughly lines up with a potential 2-pop Library whip at Tuolumne Meadow, though I haven't decided whether or not to commit yet another whip cycle that isn't military. The border tension up north between Plemo, GKC, and Ramk makes it awfully tempting though.
- I had thought our break-even would be worse, 40% honestly isn't that bad. Our GNP is inflated by +7 from culture at the moment, but our costs aren't quite at the "crippling" stage yet. Not that I'd now want to go for another city right away, but this isn't such a deep hole to dig out of.
- Now that we know the map seems to be designed with each player having 3+ neighbors by land and not 2, I feel a lot more secure strategically. In a traditional donut setup, you want to demilitarize one border and then are free to attack on the other, but with a 3-player setup, an attacker wants to be significantly stronger than their target to induce the third player to dogpile that target as well, making the conquest easier. The undesired scenario is getting bogged down in a war with one neighbor while the third stays out of it and keeps developing, then commits against their preferred target after the first two combatants have used some collateral, maybe lost some cultural control due to city losses, and are otherwise weakened. What tends to happen in the games I've seen here is that no one wants to be the first to move without a particularly effective timing attack (often an Astronomy-based fork, or when one player falls behind in development and can't field a strong enough military deterrent).
- Looking at average and worst CY, as well as time between score increases from pop growth, we are going to see the stronger civs pull away from the weaker ones. While there's still superdeath's Praetorian timing to be resolved, and surprises are always possible, I think I'd rank the growth prospects of the civs from top to bottom like so:
Like I mentioned earlier, the capital has the opportunity to 2-pop whip the Library in two turns when it grows to size 5 and has 30/90h in the build. It also has 1h invested in the Axe so this could also be a pair of Axes instead. Alternatively, we just switch to a Worker and let the whip timer cool down a bit.
I do feel tempted to whip since lack another improved tile for the city to work, though I do have Point Reyes' Worker headed back to build that last riverside grass cottage, and then either the shared non-river grass cottage or a riverside grass mine.
I'm leaning toward the Library whip at the moment.
Humboldt Forest:
Axeman: 15 (+5) / 35
Whip timer: 15t
Humboldt Forest is borrowing the pig for a turn so it can regrow faster, and will be handing the pig next to Las Trampas after that city grows next turn. This city's contribution to the economic recovery plan is simply to grow onto the lake tiles and let the whip timer cool down. I do want it to finish one 0xp Axeman in case a barb Spear shows up from the west, but I also want the Monastery completed sooner than later so I can effectively 2-pop whip for overflow.
Springer Mtn:
Warrior: 12 (+9) / 15
Whip timer: 0t
This is the part of the plan I feel least confident about. I've decided to increase the priority of the Great Prophet, opting to work a second Priest instead of working the plains hill mine. I was thinking about the Great Prophet timing and concluded that unrealized GPP is not really helping us get ahead, so if we're going to do this, we should do take it seriously.
Now this does delay the value we'll get from slow-building that Granary since we probably won't be whipping until after the Great Prophet is born, but the Granary will still pay for itself over time, and it's not like the alternative of building 1-4 Warriors during that time would've been better.
Further down the line, I'm thinking of building a Library and hiring 2 Priests + 2 Scientists here for our first Golden Age starter. There's already enough of a food surplus to do so, and even if the city to the southeast will want some of the food resources, we can get +8f surplus and hire 4 specialists with the two wheat farms and one floodplains cottage at size 7. That basically constrains us to only 2-pop whipping the Library here until both Great People are born.
Point Reyes:
Workboat: 3 (+1) / 30
Whip timer: 0t
This city will be our dedicated military source once it gets set up. The plan here is to keep the city small and 2-pop whip in the Granary, then a Barracks, and then Axes with max overflow. The timings don't quite line up so we'll accumulate a bit of unhappiness here until I get around to mining the plains hills, but that can wait. Our next round of cities will be securing three happiness resources, if everything goes according to plan.
I do want to finish the Workboat for the one-day second crabs (passive spread please and thank you), but also to head down and scout that landmass to the southeast. Hopefully it's an island that we can settle for ICTR, maybe it's not, but either way the earlier we know the better.
Las Trampas:
Granary: 8 (+2) / 60
Whip timer: 0t
We get to work the pig here when the city grows and that will get it well on its way to working additional cottages. Ideally I'd like to chop in the Granaries here with Mathematics instead of whipping them in, since that would force Las Trampas to keep the pig for longer than I'd like, but that might end up being the play since Worker labor continues to be tight in the short term.
Blacksand Beach:
Granary: 0 (+1) / 60
Whip timer: 0t
Our latest city, named after Black Sands Beach from California's Lost Coast. This city does quite a bit for us on its founding turn, allowing our Workers to start improving more cottages, linking Springer Mtn to the trade network, and bringing down our unit support costs. Without any real food bonus, this city will definitely be getting its Granary chopped in post-Mathematics and will be whipped much less aggressively.
Graphs and other info:
Seems like no one planned to make an Oracle attempt with an IND player in the game, but then that player didn't found either early religion so it could be up for grabs. I'm not really in a position to contest it, I'd like to have Marble hooked and a lot more Workers available to chop. I think our targeted wonder will be the MoM, when we're better set up to make a proper attempt at it.
We're running short on Workers and that will become more of an issue as the cities start to grow and outstrip their improved tiles, but I'm not sure if I want to whip out any more in the short term. This could come back to bite.
What's next for Egypt:
To summarize some of the thoughts in the previous sections:
1. Our economy isn't in terrible shape and will only improve with cities growing onto commerce tiles. No drastic actions are needed, and we have strong prospects for future growth coming out of the early game. The state of the union is optimistic. Our next wave of Settlers will look to secure the nearby luxuries, and then with Construction and Iron Working we can look to secure the border hill cities.
2. We can turn research back on for Mathematics, timed with the Library, allowing our Workers to better support our developing and new cities with enhanced chops, bringing us closer to the critical techs of Construction and Currency.
3. Our military is a bit light on real units, but we've been effective in fogbusting, defeating barbarians, and scouting. The strategic situation with our neighbors each having 2-3 neighbors may deter aggressive moves toward us. Give us ~20 turns to Construction, and we should be safe for a long time.
4. Moving into the midgame, we'll have a shrine around t95 and a GA around t105. The details are still fuzzy but this should be a decent time to switch into HR/OR/CS to generate the Great Scientists for either the classic Civil Service -> Liberalism play or a push for Astronomy or Guilds. A lot depends on more scouting and how the other players develop.
As always, all questions and comments are welcome.
I appreciate the thorough update with thoughts on where your civ is going next. What is your next tech goal after Mathematics? There are all of those useful Classical era techs available (Currency, Calendar, Construction, Metal Casting, etc.) along with Monarchy/Hereditary Rule and Monotheism/Organized Religion as potential goals.
I’m pretty sure the first post-Math tech has to be Construction. From the threads I’ve read at civforum.de, players there seem to absolutely love using an Axe/Cat tech advantage against neighbors who don’t prioritize it as highly or don’t get there quickly enough. Not having it when both my German neighbors do seems like it could be a death wish.
Now the cheeky idea I had was going for the Oracle if it still hasn’t been built in 12 turns, which admittedly seems far-fetched. However, if giraflorens decides to continue to emphasize expansion (whipping 2 and 3 pop recently), there’s a shot no one else attempts it. Even without Marble it’s only 4 Math chops, which Springer Mtn could easily provide. That would allow me to bulb Currency on the way through Masonry/Construction and that would be a juicy prize indeed. Springer Mtn would even benefit from the GPP from the Oracle toward my Golden Age Great Person.
GKC's capital. So he did have a 4-yield BFC tile like I suspected way back at the beginning of the game! Delhi has a Granary and lots of riverside grassland cottage potential, and that's without even seeing half of its BFC.
Demos:
Graphs:
Plemo has started another big whipping cycle, doing a 3-pop whip on T68 and a 3-pop whip in T69. More Settlers perhaps, or maybe Libraries?
The big news of T70 is that Plemo declared war on Ramk. I had a feeling that that forward flatland horse city would cause trouble between them. Now my understanding of how the UI presents War Weariness is purely theoretical, but when I highlight Plemo and mouse over Ramk, Ramk's window shows 9 WW. When I do the reverse, Plemo's window shows 0 WW. I honestly have no idea what this means, is this something you're more familiar with Charriu? The most logical course of events would be for Plemo to have attacked Ramk, but the city itself is still standing. 10 WW (1 wears off per turn, I know that much) seems high for a single turn of combat this early in the game, I guess we'll see when the graphs update.
As I said earlier, my two neighbors exchanging units and building up bad blood leaves me sitting pretty. I sent Ramk a rice-for-rice trade to indicate peaceful intentions from my end and 2-pop whipped the Library at Tuolumne Meadow. Onward to Mathematics next turn!
Meanwhile, our scouting WC found another of GKC's cities, this one with a Monument and Granary. That puts his remaining two cities due west and east of his capital, but I don't plan to stick around and reveal them.
Demos:
Abroad on T70, superdeath settled his 6th city and vanrober settled a 4th city. Lazteuq made another 3-pop whip, up to 17 pop total. There's a group of players who have been whipping heavily (us, Plemo, Lazteuq) and the others have whipped significantly fewer times.
![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.sullla.com/Smilies/smile.gif)
What is your next tech goal after Mathematics? There are all of those useful Classical era techs available (Currency, Calendar, Construction, Metal Casting, etc.) along with Monarchy/Hereditary Rule and Monotheism/Organized Religion as potential goals.
