[54 Spoilers] Nothing to see here! Miguelito and Rusten's max score game

[Miguelito]

Superdeath is giving Elkad iron as of this turn, yes.
You are right that we probably have never seen an intercontinental dogpile of the scale I'm imagining here, at least I can't think of an example, and less so in early middle ages. But the war/peace+OB between Mjmd and EG and the EP spending far further than graphs from SD and EG is giving me pause.

[Rusten]

On a more meta level they're all playing 5-6 minute turns as well, and not updating their threads.

[Miguelito]

let's hope you're right.

t139:

 


so...




I guess he won't.
If he doesn't, here is where I meant that we could move the galleys to fork Spore and Advanced Wars.





pillage those? Also some of the mines in Elkad's land if we want to replace them with windmills anyways? The city kept granary and lighthouse



Here I sent the axe to pillage this turn and the next before Okhrana pops borders.... only to find Frumentarii got its 4th ring just this precise turn. So we got nothing out of it but a turn of upkeep, duh.

New city!


looking at it again, I'm asking myself if the dyes are not indeed pushing it towards commerce... although I think that's not enough (the eastern cottages and plantations will be worked by the eastern blue dot assuming everything goes to plan). So pillage that cottage 1S of the dyes? Also need a road N of dyes before peace runs out.

With the war against Mjmd we also can't bring the circumnav workboat to the south, so if we don't get peace (and OB) I'll get one from Curiosi, inaugurating our new canal.

[Rusten]

The thing is that no matter how you want to specialize it it's better to farm and grow first, which is why I'm suggesting farms and windmills/watermills (get key infrastructure built too). One rule of thumb to keep in mind when playing is that if given infinite worker turns and a completely green BFC it's more efficient to first farm every tile to reach max city size and then cottage everything after.

Granary-forge seems right whichever way you run it.

I think Cairo's culture will cover those cottages next turn so you won't be able to pillage.

[Miguelito]

I was referring to the little cottage which is actually SW not S of the western dyes. The others are already in our culture. What I don't like is that Cairo is also getting the peak; I don't know for how long he's had 3rd ring in Memory, maybe if we keep running the artist we claim it before peace runs out. Then a cataphract stack W of the peak seems like a decent angle point for defense, with some further forces at Akritai.

And yeah while the eastern blue dot is nominally a commerce monster its growth will be awfully slow.... 4 grassland farms if we farm the workshop? How does that get the granary up though... well the horse is good for that at least, and can work a mine as well to get that started

[Rusten]

Mjmd already played so it looke like he took the peace.

[Miguelito]

Mjmd already played so it looke like he took the peace.

that was correct. Gives me a peace of mind regarding the west coast, while I'm a bit worried that in 4-5 turns we might run out of money (we have the Elkad capital conquest coming up, but I fear we need a more sustainable solution to that problem besides conquest gold)? The deficit has been getting a bit smaller though.

Turn 140
Good thing we didn't.


EG already had a GA, so the value is diminished. He also is not really in the running anymore with something like 11 cities, despite his great start. The main headache we could have from this is Mjmd conquering it. Ideally it helps EG to keep the balance of power.
ToA is in scooter's former capital. I think it's a nice wonder, but also it does not affect our game in the slightest.

Got the cats in front of the cap now:


I think I want to storm next turn. bombard with 2 accuracy cats, send 2 CR1/CR2 catapults in and then take out the defenders. We have 14 additional phracts between the two unmarked stacks. We will have some losses but keeping the stack there is very expensive, and it also prevents him from building/upgrading more pikes and whipping the city. Finally get the shrine online asap. Do you agree, or would you rather bombard a for whole turn first?

[Rusten]

I've not ran any sims, but I'm pretty sure it's better to take it immediately.
Courthouses will make a huge difference, as well as our golden age.
MoM to El Grillo is good news.

[Miguelito]

I had an idea! (It's very basic, you'll roll your eyes)

So a big part of our economic problems is due to our bad trade routes in Merc, which are 2/1/1 in coastal and 2/1 in the other cities. ( out of Merc we also were not getting enough foreign routes even before Mjmd declared)
I was therefore very much looking forward to conquering Elkad's island BUT that will take a lot of time still, maybe like 10 turns (4-5 if the defense is very light). So now it occurred to me that we can also get 2c trade routes from having large cities. Can someone tell me where the threshold is? I think Mag is growing to size 12 this turn or the next. Also gotta grow Septem (Moai island) asap so it provides 3c routes.

It's likely that Charriu covered this in the curious civplayer, but I can't dig through it rn so I'd appreciate the info out somebody knows.

[Charriu]

Here the reference to the CC article: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid761736

You are looking to increase the base value of a trade route. As you already mentioned this is determined by city size or distance between cities. The problem for you here is that the game takes which ever value is smaller. For example you can have two 20 pop cities, but if the always remain at the minimum distance they stay at the base value of 1. Best practice to increase that value is to have two big cities at both sides of your empire. It's quiet a lot of math to do calculation for every single city. I think the best way to illustrate what is possible is to do an extreme case. For this one would need the following information:

- Distance between Mutal (NW most city) and your SE most city
- Distance between Mutal (NW most city) and your SE most island city

I'm not sure if you know how the game calculates the distance, but you need the amount of tiles between those cities in x and y direction.