[SPOILER] Krill rambles on

[Mardoc]

Weird thought for the day: Researching Wheel>Pottery>Myst>IW gets IW done around T48 and then I can mock Joeys map balancing tool for hte rest of hte game, or ignore copper. Could be fun.

Holy cow. You cut the costs of ancient tech *that* much?

[Krill]

Tech cost scaling is a weird. I'm using the same formula that Seven put into ToW. The differences here are that I lowered only the starting tech costs and nothing else. All starting tech costs are 35 base beakers, which on a huge map puts them to 38 beakers. In a 5 player PBEM on normal speed they'd be about 42 beakers. Seven kept the values of hte starting techs higher than that so ToW has a slower start from a tech perspective.

There are no changes in cost to the other ancient era techs.

Seven tried to scale it IIRC, so that the time to Currency was about the same. but IW is the cheapeest Classical era tech, it's 200 base beakers so the tech cost scaling affects IW more than the other classical era techs. IW is 320 adjusted beakers in this game. AH is 140. Archery, Masonry, those are 75 beakers. Writing (and BW) are 174 beakers.

AH, which shows me horses and allows me to camp the ivory, plus the ability to build archers, costs me something in the region of 165-170 base beakers (rounding is real at this statge of the game). IW is about 265-270. This would be the case in RtR or in ToW.

Normally I'd say it's better to get AH, I value horses more than copper for the flexibility in defending against barbs and players form the mobilty. This game is a bit different. I need 3 warriors to barb bust the entire north east. I then only need to gaurd a northern choke point city, and push south, which doesn't need mobility as much as I need the good city defenders of AGG melee units forted in a hill city that has a border pop be it from Henge or a chopped Barracks. IW also allows me to settle for those three silver jungle river grassland tiles, 2/1/6 when improved. Working those tiles for an extra 20 turns basically pays back the cost of IW. Of course there is hte question of prioritising settler locations, worker turns and opportunity costs etc but that's a real decision to make.

Copper isn't attainable without some fancy/wird/absurd dotmaps until around T55, maybe T50 with something truly fucked up. Why not research IW by T50? Do I need the ivory happy? Do I need ot improve that tile for the extra 1 hammer and 1 commerce? I can say now I'm not that bothered about horse by T50.

[Krill]

Joey, Joey, Joey...I take it back.

You're a dick, even if you didn't mean to be.

[Krill]

That's Egypt. You put my copper equidistant with Egypt. And He settles towards my copper just to hook his copper. Bastard.

[Krill]

Seriously what's the point of researching AH now? Not like Chariots are going to be any use to me against Egypt to the south and an AGG India to the north on the other side of a choke point.

Oh fuck, he's Joao of Egypt?

Well, this is going to be interesting.

[Krill]

OK, issues: That's Joao. If he plants towards me he will get third city before I do. He can plant for my copper before I reach it, unless I plant my second city for the copper.

If I plant my second city for copper and the copper is second ring to the south, then he can just plant for it first ring and I'm still screwed.

If I ignore the south completely and rush IW, Joao can plant 1N of the marble and claim almost all of the land to my south: if I don't have iron to the north I'm never going to be able to threaten him never mind defend against WC.

So I'm in a position where TheWannabe is controlling my actions because of his leader/civ combo, and my only way to defend is to be preemptively aggressive with a bunch of forward city plants. Turns out doesn't matter how well you balance food, screw up copper like this and everything goes out the window.

First plant to consider: Settle second city on marble. It invalidates every single city location TheWannabe can plant for my copper first ring. It can't be rushed by WC without stopping on the plains hill. I can work a plains hill forest for a 5 turns barracks whilst the wheat is hooked, then grow to 2 and whip archers.

Problem: The obvious Egypt city is 9 of his copper for first ring rice and crabs and second ring plains cow. He would have undisputed control over the plains hill 33 of the marble city and could 1 move marble city once Construction is in. Can also fork a coastal city from 2 of my copper.

Second plan: Plant second city on the copper: can't get pillaged then, and it's only a 0/5/0 tile so who cares.

Problem: Gives Wannabe an easy route towards the "centre" of the continent. Only 1 food resource and the flood plains take too long to improve this early in the game. That deer is a 3/1/ tile when improved, decent but...too much work to be described as valuable IMO.

[Krill]

IW finishes eot T46, before a third settler could be completed out of any second city location, on the tech path Pottery>Myst>IW. Henge is expected eot T43 with MM for any second city I've considered. Third settler from cap instead of Henge would be expected eot T44, but if I didn't research Myst I could get IW eot T43 in that and so I would be able to either settle forward for the copper or settle for what is hopefully a saner iron location.

Personally, I think if Joao of Egypt wants to WC rush someone then second city on or horse adjacent can have WC out by T32 easy. TheWannabe could have 2WC at my capital by T40 after rolling over a second city with no difficulty, and frankly I'm not going to waste time with archers if he wants to try and do that. So I'm probably going to play this like I haven't been screwed over and see what happens. Onwards with Henge. Updated world map later today after I've played T22.

[Old Harry]

End of turn turn 43 , 44, etc is starting to grate...

[Krill]

[Thoth]

Copper is overrated. Least necessary strategic resource in the game.