[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Bacchus]

Khatunate is ripping us off because they have more island cities, I would imagine. If we have 2, and they have 3, we would have 7x 3gpt routes, whereas they would have 8x.

I'm in favour of going north by west with the boat, I want the KTB and map.

[Coeurva]

Ah right, I forgot that one of their island cities isn't visible to us.

[Bacchus]

Looking at the graphs again, I have to say, Savant's getting of IW ahead of Currency and Alphabet will really hurt, how does he even get out of this? Especially as we will start meaningfully adding power soon, likely pushing him to do the same. Also:



Hang on...



....

Albeit this does mean that Whitehall will soon be in a lot of cultural pain is my guess.

[Coeurva]

he's insistent. Alright, we're going to add a barracks to Whitehall, and perhaps Styx; that should be enough to hold the fish for a while against Fountain Head's 7 cul/t post-Monastery. If not, maybe Moai becomes necessary there after all.

Rough schedule:

eot97 Iron Working
eot101 Metal Casting
eot105 Mathematics
eot109 Construction
eot113 Calendar (swap with Construction if needed)
eot117 Aesthetics
eot121 Literature (needs Poly too)
[HBR, Feudalism, Machinery, Guilds, etc.; Drama? Music?]

Need to settle on marble (with Masonry) by T122. Quite convinced that Vermin should build the Heroic Epic (especially if we build Moai at the filler near Lifeblood) in order to 1t catapults afterwards (needs 1-2 non-Caste workshops), but it can already 2t swords prior to that with a forge, which is what it will start doing once Rhapsody can take over wealth builds (happiness required). Lifeblood won't be much worse (3t-ing swords or NumCav). I hope that X11 can be groomed fast enough to take over settler builds and such. What's your estimate of the army we're going to need to conquer Yuri?

Would indeed be nice to spark a Golden Age roughly on finishing HBR and Feudalism, prebuild NumCav, revolt into Vassalage + Caste (workshops), and tech (Machinery ->) Guilds as you've suggested, then just build knights everywhere. That should be ~T150 at the latest, incidentally, so Whitehall needs to get 4 specialist slots and work them continuously from about T130 or earlier.

Delaying Construction for 4t by going for MC before Maths might be risky, but I want the hammer + happiness pay-off from forges.

I've noticed that we can't actually improve the gems faster with the four-worker plan, because the library pops borders too late to place the mine. Not fatal, since we can build a road towards the National Epic site with the two workers next to the hill, and the other two workers can still proceed with other improvements from their current positions. I've even considered whether a dreadful monument whip could salvage the plan (it doesn't).

[Bacchus]

I'm still not sold on forges -- even at leading production centres they take something like 30 turns to pay back, so definitely not in time to matter for the Yuri conquest. I'd rather get maths and construction, and get building those cr2 swords and catapults. Also, path to feudalism includes Monarchy, which solves happy problems. On army size, I think we will need 4+3 catapults, 6+2 swords, plus some of that junk in zodiac spire for covering, the pluses are what's not needed immediately, but would be required to maintain momentum. Maybe we can try the first assault even with 3 catapults and 5 swords, but that will probably be cutting it pretty close. We will also need to reinforce the northern border though.

With our leading GNP, I think we should be trying for the Music artist, maybe we can GA with him. We are not going to get Caste for a while though, now that we turned off the CoL path -- especially if we are getting Feudalism, CoL is kinda pointless. Could try Maths -> Construction -> Poly -> Lit -> Priesthood -> HBR (start stables) -> Monarchy -> save gold -> Music -> (GA) Feudalism -> revolt to HR and Vassallage -> (GA) MC -> Machinery -> Guilds, the only thing I don't like about this path is that it's quite single purpose, if we don't conquer Savant almost entirely, that's a lot of beakers for not much return. There are other exciting things to get -- Nationalism, Optics/Astronomy, Education and Oxford. I guess what you can say for the Guilds path is that it gets you to the doorstep of Banks and Mercantilism, a free specialist everywhere is not bad.

[Coeurva]

Savant is actually building swordsmen and moving them into Sorpigal. Holy shit. We can't see the city itself, but we can see two of the swords and I have no idea why he'd build them for garrison. His MFG is spiking (although not his power) and his treasury is zero; no idea what he spent it on, another Ancient tech? An upgrade?

I'll be brief. I think we're not going for Metal Casting next despite what I'd like to take (+2 happy from gems + gold must suffice); Construction will be more important. If we find out (somehow) that he's just building swords to scare us, we switch to Calendar instead. With our pre-chopped forests, Maths will even be useful in its own right.

Both X11 and X12 get settled and supported on T100, I have the logistics planned out by now.

Savant moving before us this turn means he can kill two of our work boats next turn, but I don't think he will. Particularly if he's gearing up for war and doesn't want to spoil the surprise. If he does... we'll have to deal with it.

With forges, there's the problem that our top production cities will not add any more production, just about everything is mined already, so forges are the only way to increase our hpt if we want that. Half of the advantage lies in the happiness boost and for very easy Colosseum whips. However, since we can grab happiness from other sources, we might not need forge happiness in the short term.

Edit: so yeah, let's whip those double-speed colosseums already. We can finish barracks at the production centres as we hook up luxuries.

[Bacchus]

Bah, this means we must have at least a couple of archers in every seaboard city, unless we can blockade Sorpigal.

If he decides to be annoying, we might have to war with him instead of absorbing Yuri.

[Bacchus]

Have you tried putting the sentry chariot into Zodiac Spire? I think it may be able to see into Cuckhokia from there. I hope it lives. What do you think Savant is trying to achieve with that Sword trodding on the jungle by the way? Tell us to get out?

[Bacchus]

In happier news, at 100% Research, our GNP is double rival best. It could be that the leaders are all saving gold just at the moment, but nonetheless. Especially cool that we are doing this with no wonders, no religion and no creative, albeit the Academy does output some culture.

EDIT: Dtay is very scary. He has known IW for ages, all sorts of his iron is mined, and even stuff we can see on his islands is improved. Neither Mongolia nor Greece know IW.

[Bacchus]

Had to click on production queues after logging in, please review them. There is iron everywhere, including 2 in Vermin (one shared with Lifeblood, one already mined), 1 in Capital, 1 in Stygian, 1 on Wheat Island in Sorpigal Bay, 1 on a 1-tile island south-east of Zodiac Spire and one in the no-man's land between us and Savant. Vermin is now such a powerhouse that I'm even more convinced of pushing straight for Lit.