[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Nekira Sudacne]

I have never really played around with espionage much--it's just not a facet of the game that much interests me. I get that having graphs is good, but how long would it take to get them on everyone just by leaving it evenly divided amoung everyone?

The problem there is you have to wait a long time with graphs on nobody. If you direct it, you can get visibility on key opponents first. And then move the output off them, which encourages them to do the same, so you both can stay at the 43EP mutual graphs threshold.

It's a part of the game I really like. Sure, some of it is broken (the insanely low cost of change civics missions is the big one), but the other stuff is fun. Even the passive stuff like City Visibility is very powerful.

City Visibility is nice, yes.

[GermanJoey]

I have never really played around with espionage much--it's just not a facet of the game that much interests me. I get that having graphs is good, but how long would it take to get them on everyone just by leaving it evenly divided amoung everyone?

The problem there is you have to wait a long time with graphs on nobody. If you direct it, you can get visibility on key opponents first. And then move the output off them, which encourages them to do the same, so you both can stay at the 43EP mutual graphs threshold.

It's a part of the game I really like. Sure, some of it is broken (the insanely low cost of change civics missions is the big one), but the other stuff is fun. Even the passive stuff like City Visibility is very powerful.

All the active missions are pretty broken, e.g. see plako's thread in PB22. And that was with RtR mod, which had doubled mission prices across the board. And yeah, City Visibility is pretty powerful, if "powerful" is a word you'd use to describe being allowed to see your opponent's poker hand while yours remains hidden!

[scooter]

Turn 213-214



RMoG settled their city here. I guess they have a different dotmap in mind with regards to the fish and southeast rice. I've gone ahead and pulled this explorer back.



Mackoti landed a scientist for his first great person. He either built a library early, or he got one low-odds. I expect he'll bulb something with it.



So first off, Alhazard finished slow-teching Education last turn. He's sitting on a prophet, so I expect him to complete Liberalism with it in a handful of turns when he's teched enough of it.

At the bottom, Nicolae finished Nationalism last turn. I'm expecting they'll rush the Taj this turn. I suppose they could risk it and delay it by a turn, but I think they really intend to go through with the golden age. If you notice, their score is very high. Their first two cities are both sitting at size 7 while laying off the whip, and that seems like it's designed to take advantage of the golden age. I wouldn't be surprised if they go get themselves Constitution to get into Rep too.



On the other hand, we'll be triple-whipping this next turn for yellow dot. After that, the plan isn't quite set in stone. I'll probably try to get another worker pair out of here soon.



The settler chop came in this turn. That'll be settled on T216 3E of here.



As mentioned earlier, Nicolae leads the field by a mile in total population which seems indicative of someone gearing up for a golden age. The good news is he hasn't whipped any settlers recently.



Here's another look at Nicolae's recent foodsplosion.



Spread Christianity into Lurker Killer this turn. We'll need that to take advantage of Pacifism during the golden age.

[Sullla]

Alhazard doing crazy stuff to land the Liberalism prize is great news for us. That's the least dangerous team to get a free tech, and they've seriously crimped their growth curve to get it.

Nicolae/REM being the likely team to land Taj Mahal is bad news for us. They have played the best game so far, and channeling a free Golden Age into Spiritual/Pacifism + Baray free food + Apostolic Palace monk economy is only going to make them that much stronger. They are the top dogs right now, the biggest threat to win longterm.

That said, I really like where we stand right now. Those Demographics are excellent: first in Power and Land, second behind Nicolae (who has not been whipping) in Food and Production, competitive on GNP despite making no real effort to push research so far. And we have a settler finishing at end of turn, plus two more coming out in the next couple of turns, which will give us 8 cities by Turn 218. I was a little bit worried when we weren't out-settling teams in the early turns, but I suspect a lot of our competitors were pushing settlers before workers. Now they've had to pause to push out workers, while we have not, and we're finally getting our expected city count lead. Do not worry about in-game score, it's not particularly important this early on. Alhazard is ahead of us, and he's doing terribly. The Demos are more important.

Also, that RMOG city we just got visibility on, JungleAllOver? Terrible city placement. It's too far away from the rest of their territory, it's going to take forever to improve with workers, and the placement rules out cities on the water. They can't use the fish tile outside of planting an island city, and how do they get an island city with nothing on the coast? Weird place to settle.

On espionage: I don't think it matters too much who we put our EP against. At the rate we're pumping out the Sacrificial Altars, we'll have everyone's research soon enough. I would get research against Nicolae first since he's currently winning the game, then reassess whether we think we need to see mackoti or plako or RMOG after that. Like I said though, we'll have them all pretty quickly. (Espionage has a snowball effect where if you're producing way more EP than anyone else, the passive benefits also arrive at cheaper amounts, further compounding your lead.)

scooter, we've hit Turn 214 and the end of the current micro plan. I have a little time today to tinker with it - would you like me to do so? If you already have something lined up though, I won't try to pull things in another direction.

EDIT: Oh, and the longbow in Pocketbeetle can start heading towards Yellow next turn, as soon as we don't need it for happiness in the city.

[scooter]

Sullla, go for it if you want to and have the time . You'll see I started messing with it but didn't finish yet, and I'll be too busy tonight to look at it anyway.

[scooter]

Sullla, one more thing. Lurker Killer is about 5h behind the spreadsheet. I think I worked the wrong tile the turn we whipped the worker. So if you do take a look at that, I would avoid trying to time something too precisely there and let me refine it.

Turn 215

I played the next turn earlier this morning. Not too much happened other than, well...



Taj confirmed. More interesting is probably that scientist from Plako. He has yet to use that earlier engineer unless I missed something. It's possible he could go for a super early Oxford by bulbing Education and rushing Oxford after building cheap universities? Actually, nah. I think it's far more likely he's just going to use that engineer on an early golden age like us.



This city settles next turn, and yellow dot the turn after that. I've got some good city names in mind, but that will have to be explained later.



Well let's just say the non-Nicolae division is very competitive!



I've waffled a little bit on what to do with the Explorers, but here's what I've tentatively landed on:

* Western explorer goes south to check on Nicolae and hopefully pin down where some of their cities are. Longer term, he watches the area between us and them.

* Southern explorer swings up north to act as a Mackoti-area sentry. I'd like to see if he's still got a unit parked on that jungle hill. I assume so because he has rejected my peace offer a couple times.

If there's a better idea, I'm all ears. I've changed my mind once or twice which is why I did a little bit of longbow shuffling. All in all it's not especially consequential for now.

[rho21]

A couple of questions.
Do we know from other maps what's going on at the poles? In particular, is there a land bridge, and is that an island in the sea near the crab and furs, or does it connect to the pole?

What's the plan for colonisation after the three current settlers? The western land bridge looks like an obvious priority. Or make a few units and have a play for the eastern land bridge?
Perhaps whip out a galley at yellow dot. Showing it to mackoti might result in acceptance of the peace treaty, and it could be useful anyway to claim a luxury island. Those seem awesome if you can hold them.

[scooter]

A couple of questions.
Do we know from other maps what's going on at the poles? In particular, is there a land bridge, and is that an island in the sea near the crab and furs, or does it connect to the pole?

That's a good question, and one of the explorers should go check that out. It does look like there's a land bridge up there judging by what we've unfogged from other players.

What's the plan for colonisation after the three current settlers? The western land bridge looks like an obvious priority. Or make a few units and have a play for the eastern land bridge?
Perhaps whip out a galley at yellow dot. Showing it to mackoti might result in acceptance of the peace treaty, and it could be useful anyway to claim a luxury island. Those seem awesome if you can hold them.

Yeah, let's talk about this. Our immediate two settlers are spoken for, but we're about to whip another from our capital, and we haven't actually nailed down a spot for it. Let's look at a few options.



I think this is the spot. I could be convinced to move it 1N or something to collect a free jungle chop. I could also be convinced to move it to more easily turn this into two cities. The upside of this specific spot is that it's riverside, and it's just flat-out going to be an amazing city that gets started very quickly. We've also got workers that are very well-positioned to get it going. We can even avoid building culture off the start because it's got everything it needs in its initial 9 tiles.

From here we can easily settle this silver island to the west of here. I like targeting that island because we aren't likely to have much competition on that water anytime soon. Plako has more important spots to settle. That coastline for him is pretty meh on food - we've ignored our equivalent for the same reason.

Here's two more that I like for soon-ish.



I like this a lot as a Moai city, although I hate burning a forest so 1N has crossed my mind. The upside is that it's on a hill to establish a nice border with Plako, and as a canal it has obvious benefits. Early on it'll be a quality whipping post, and later in the game those grasslands will make good workshop tiles to go along with Moai.



I keep posting this one because it's a good city, but we always seem to have a couple spots that are more important. The problem here is it requires jungle chops, and it doesn't come with forests to kick-start it. The upside to me is of course the double banana (plus ability to share deer), and the access it grants to that northern island.

The gist of it is I think we want to be aggressive in targeting the western islands and more conservative in the east. Defending the eastern water will be much harder than the western water. The resources seem to bias you towards settling on the western water, which means people will get their boats out on the water west of their start first. So I think we would face little-to-no competition from Plako, but we'd likely see quite a bit from Mackoti. That's of course bad, because he's got a trump card in the Phracts that make fortifying those cities a little more difficult.

In addition to all of this, early-ish Astronomy is a more likely path for Mackoti than Plako. Plako's setup likely wants the same kind of things we do - Representation, and he also wants to hit the top of the tree to unlock his UU. Mackoti on the other hand doesn't need the top of the tree much. The better strategy as FIN for him is to cottage himself to death and pursue an early Oxford and probably Academy. Popping a scientist seems to confirm this, so Education early seems likely. Doing this means he could conceivably compete with Alhazard for Communism. All of this means Astro is very likely on his radar. If we settle stuff on the eastern islands and he comes calling with Galleons and Cataphracts... that'll be a pretty wasted investment. I would say he has the second-most reason to tech Astro behind the Dutch.

So that's my general settling thoughts. I'd like to hear other input, though. I'm definitely not locked-in on this.

Sullla, FYI I won't be playing the current turn until roughly this time tomorrow.

[Zalson]

I'm getting no pictures

Some how I was blocking photobucket. All good now

[Dp101]

If you settled your first choice, how do you pick up the dyes and spices? Do you plant another city on the plains SE of the dyes? Edit:SW.