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Regarding map size ... pure number of land tiles is about 10/player larger than PB49. But with the large inland seas the actual empire size is much larger because we can get more cities for the same amount of land (just more water tiles per city). All those water tiles boot FIN, and make Colossus a high-value wonder. I'm planning to knock out Colossus ASAP. I have already started to pre-chop at Rotterdam. I don't like putting such a high-value wonder in a border city. But I've opened borders with PRO Scooter and I'll try to set myself up as a favorable trading partner, while beefing the defenses. The culture from the wonder will pop border for cultural defenses which will carry defenses through the early game until Catapults become a real threat.
Also, TBS is a wizard. Somehow he is already back up to 5 cities (same as me) and staked a claim in the center with a sizeable army, all after getting 2 cities razed. I'm really really hoping he didn't manage to get Sailing because my island defenses are nonexistent ... hope isn't a good strategy, but victory goes to the lucky farmer (right?!).
August 3rd, 2020, 19:45
(This post was last modified: September 4th, 2020, 06:35 by Cornflakes.)
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Somehow TBS is already up to 10! TEN! cities, after getting 2 razed  how? My best guess is EXP cheap granaries. I have granaries up in every city but that cost me extra effort. I'm somewhat regretting all of the granaries since I'm now overflowing with food and lacking happiness. My last two games were played with RtR Charismatic +2 happy and that makes a huge difference in city growth in the early game. Here is the requested T50 info for posterity:
City count: 6
Workers/settler/units: see screenshot in spoilers
Food/MFG/GNP: see screenshot in spoilers
F2 and F6 advisors also in spoilers
And now an empire overview:
I am at or over the happy cap in every city, and I have had a total of around unhappy 20 citizen-turns. CHA would do wonders right now. I'm artificially low in food not working all food resources. Representation will take some pressure off my 4 largest cities (about 12-ish turns).
Sorry for the sign spam. Great Lighthouse (Rotterdam) and Colossus (Amsterdam) are both scheduled for an EOT53 completion date. I just researched masonry 2 turns ago and at the time known tech bonus was 15%, which means 3 of my 5 rivals have Masonry. One at least (probably 2) have had it for a half dozen turns. I'm not optimistic about Great Lighthouse, however I would be content getting my 120 failgold lump sum from the currently invested hammers. The worker build at Rotterdam may look odd, but this is my best way to convert the profuse amounts of food to hammers. I'm already 2 over the happy cap working fish + pigs + 2 unhappy citizens. The unhappy citizens don't eat, so I get 10 food-hammers into the worker. Do that for 2 turn for 20/60, 2-whip through forge for 95/60 (+7) > 33 un-modified overflow. Add 13 for the chop +1 natural production from city center, multiply by 1.75 and I get Great Lighthouse EOT53 ... for the cost of a size 1 happy cap and 35 turns of whip anger  Good thing I can work an engineer specialist and convert that to a wonder or Currency (or Machinery) bulb in 25 turns. Say 700 beakers for Machinery on this map size ... 25 beakers per turn. Or Great Library 14 hammers per turn, invested prior to unlocking the tech. That redeems this poor over-whipped city. [spoiler ... rolled the GEngineer T85 and sniped MoM from Scooter  ]
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Looks like 6 cities, not 5 
"Superdeath seems to have acquired a rep for aggression somehow. ![[Image: noidea.gif]](https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/noidea.gif) In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."
-Old Harry. PB48.
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(August 3rd, 2020, 20:06)superdeath Wrote: Looks like 6 cities, not 5
Fixed, just trying to downplay my current status 
I forgot to mention that last turn I made an attempt to cure my happiness pain by sending a silver-for-fish trade to TBS. Blatant extortion to give me a luxury in exchange for remaining peaceful when our enforced peace ends in 5 turns. TBS declined and responded with Ivory/ivory. Not sure what that means, but hopefully "you can gave my gems in a couple turns when they are connected". TBS's GNP tanked to single digits with the rapid expansion. Even with my detour to Metal Casting I should be able to get a couple turns advantage on HBR. I have trireme advantage on the seas, Galleys to turn axes and spears into 3-movers, HA beat Numidians ... all I'm missing is catapults for collateral and bombarding defenses. That is a big hole in my ability to conquer, but not in the ability to cause pain. After T53 when I see whether or not I've landed Great Lighthouse I'll evaluate my ETA for Construction and determine when to launch the attack vs. TBS.
My biggest weakness right now is luxuries. capturing TBS's city in the center would provide me with +5 happy faces when combined with cheap forges which I'll have everywhere. Any short-term war vs TBS will be aimed at brute-forcing that city and suing for peace.
One negative of Forges is that they negate the easiest way to rapidly raise an ancient age army from dust ... namely 2-whipping axes and spears with less than 5 hammers initially invested. In this way 2 turns of "emergency" hammers can be invested early, and then 4 units can be popped out on successive turns with 2 whips. The +25% bonus from forges make axes and spears 1-pop whips with even 1 hammer invested. Therefore it is a bit more difficult. However with HA unlocked a similar 2-whip of HA > overflow to axe/spear still works.
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Scooter landed Oracle. This is unfortunate since Scooter is one of the game leaders. I was hoping that the weaker small-empire, poor-development-AGG-trait AT would land Oracle. Which Classical tech did he take? Metal Casting as prerequisite to Machinery? I'm putting my money on Currency for the extra PRO trade routes. Yikes he's getting a formidable economic snowball rolling early 
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Coinflip at worst for Great Lighthouse, Colossus for sure at the turn roll.
Also finally planting the long-overdue western resource-rich site. At least I'm getting it down on the same turn the Great Lighthouse routes become available (it's getting a road on the Marble). The chop under the sign will go into something. I don't know if Workboat or Granary would be best. Happiness is a real issue right now so I might just chop into the workboat, use one 3-whip on a Library, and then just run 2 Rep scientists at size 5 working fish + pig + copper. Really hoping that TBS comes through with a Gems trade in the next couple turns. Otherwise I'm queuing up HBR to claim the luxury city by force.
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I definitely over-built granaries in this game. There is far more food resources than the standard map available. I’m not even working deer, the lake fish, wet rice, floodplain farm, or oasis this turn or last  And most of those tiles have been skipped at least once or twice each over the last 10 turns, if not more. I should have just pumped a couple more settlers out instead of a couple of those granaries ... or more units to have claimed a stake in the center from TBS.
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We got Great Lighthouse! Our task now is to secure it from Scooter’s greedy Protective eyes which must certainly be drooling over such a juicy wonder on the border.
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Congrats! Colossus too? That’s a big water commerce swing.
August 5th, 2020, 06:18
(This post was last modified: August 5th, 2020, 06:35 by Cornflakes.)
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(August 4th, 2020, 22:46)sunrise089 Wrote: Congrats! Colossus too? That’s a big water commerce swing.
Yep, Colossus too! Although that was not in doubt. I was first to MC, IND forge production bonus, had 2 whip-overflows lined up, and 2 Pre-chops. If someone beat that ... well, I would be shocked, and they deserve to win.
Commerce swing is +14 from great Lighthouse, and +5 from Colossus immediately. But my two island cities have 2 seafood each and will be rapidly growing onto more coast. No more cottages are planned. Coast is better than cottages for 10 turns, equivalent for 20 turns, then catches up for 10 turns. I can save the worker labor, work coast, and leisurely farm everything with while working towards Feudalism for Serfdom.
Also I remembered that I could check the Chinese Diplo screen for gold trades ... bingo, Scooter took Currency with Oracle. That is a great snag. I had slight fear that he had teched MC, bulbed Machinery, and would be sending strength-6 collateral crossbows at me while the best I could put up for defense is melee units, or archers next turn. I’m saving gold for 3 turns, the probably researching HBR next (4 turns) for some deterrence.
TBS accepted my blackmail for Silver. He can cancel any time by declaring war so I’m not putting my guard down. But Silver put 2 citizens to work immediately, and I swapped back to food tiles and grow 5 of my 7 cities end of turn
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