[PB70] The Cartographic Correction Committee convenes

[scooter]

Congratulations. .

Forgive me if you already explained, but why did you choose to use the GE to construct The Pyramids in Guangzhou, of all your cities?

Good question! I’m not sure if I explained this well or not. It was by necessity. The overall gameplan here was.

1. Oracle Metal Casting to unlock IND Forges and PHI Engineer running. This had to be built in Beijing because I couldn’t build Oracle in another city in a timely manner.
2. Immediately whip a Forge in a city and run an Engineer quickly enough to pop prior to the Oracle Prophet. I need a guaranteed Engineer, so it had to be another city. At the time, Shanghai was more developed and easier to get this up and running. Use this Engineer to build Pyramids
3. Run a second pure Engineer pool somewhere. Shanghai couldn’t complete a second Engineer prior to Beijing popping a prophet, so we needed a second Forge location. Guangzhou was the only one that could do it in a timely manner. Doing this requires building the Pyramids here so that the GPP rate of Engineer + Pyramids (12 GPP/turn) pops the Engineer quickly enough. Use this second Engineer to bulb Machinery and unlock Cho-Ku-Nus.


Guangzhou is not where I would have chosen first, but it was sort of working backwards from the larger goal - very early CKNs. This ordering was the only one I could line up without even further compromising expansion.

Guangzhou also has high food ceiling, so running Representation specialists (therefore generating more PHI-boosted GPP/turn) here later is super doable, so there are some long-term benefits.

[scooter]

Well, mild bummer news




Turn 77 has to be some sort of Stonehenge record. I was ignoring it due to We Have Enough On Our Hands Already (peaceful edition), but Superdeath and Bing passing on it put it back on my radar. Appears Mjmd had the same idea, but settled Stone much quicker. Not a big deal, but I don’t really want him to continue to reap benefits like this. I’m bracing myself for him landing an obscene Hanging Gardens before long because he’s the only one it’s realistic for anytime soon which means he can sandbag it hard. Not great.





Thanks for the warning that you were gonna trap me, Superdeath. Irritating. He knew I was over here. I hope he enjoys the renamed Warrior.





45 gold/turn while I’m rocking 15. Beautiful. However, 15 is a slight improvement. Why is that? Well, we finally got some trade routes.





I have 2c routes in every city, and 3c routes in 1-2 cities. My routes with Mjmd are still recovering from a war-dec earlier in the game, but they’ve come to life now. As a result, I no longer profit from an island city - I already have the benefit. Combined with the fact that we no longer care about Stone for Stonehenge, and I’m calling an audible.





We’re going back to Green Dot. I already had a worker in the area, and the city will come online very quickly, so it works out nicely. This looks a bit more reckless in this screenshot than it is, FWIW. Anyway, while the settler is moving, it’s Representation time.





The happiness is massive here. I honestly forgot the map size was Standard and not Small until recently, and as a result we get the happy boost in 5 cities. Once I settle for Gems (+2 happy with cheap Forge), our happy cap will basically not exist in core cities for the next phase of the game, and that’s before Calendar happy starts coming online. I’ve whipped Beijing and Guangzhou harder than normal in this early phase, but it’s about time to start growing them, and now I definitely can.





A shot of the south last turn. In addition to the Green Dot settler, there’s 2 more coming in the next half dozen or so turns, and I’m starting to think now about where they go. An obvious candidate is red dot down here to finalize my planned border with Bing. I’ll pay for it with maintenance, but I do want to make sure this is actually locked down. In addition, the Wheat can be pre-farmed as it’s already in borders thanks to the holy city. Downside is I will need a Monument, but I can also build the work boat for the Fish from Shanghai, so I can get it up to speed in a reasonable timeframe.

Other candidates include Marble Island to my southwest (fogged for me) and a dot north of Beijing to start forming by Superdeath border. If the Marble site is as rich as the one Charriu has and showed me, then I may just get that one online and make that my Moai city once I’ve backfilled Stone. I’ll get a look at it with my Galley in a couple turns.

[Qgqqqqq]

Man, I've been enjoying reading a Scooter-reported game! Its been a while (for me at least with my 2 year hiatus).

[scooter]

Man, I've been enjoying reading a Scooter-reported game! Its been a while (for me at least with my 2 year hiatus).

Glad you've liked it! Been awhile for me too, but the Civ4 itch always returns eventually.




Green dot settled. This city should be fairly productive quickly. Weird game that a city this close to the capital is settled 8th, but here we are.





Quick checkin on pink dot aka Chengdu. This city rules. The plan here is to space whips between this city and Xian (3 tiles north) so that I can share tiles cleanly. In this case the optimal point to whip this Granary is in 2 turns, so I'll do it then, and Xian can borrow a tile or two. Over time this will hold most of the land tiles due to the inability to add a Lighthouse here which does limit the longterm a little bit, but overall this is a production city through and through.





Beijing overflowed from a worker whip into a 3T settler, then it's time to grow a bit more. That settler is ticketed for Stone Island. More workers are needed asap, so after this burst of settlers it's time for a workers everywhere in order to have tiles to grow onto the new expanded happy cap.





Nanjing will provide our next settler from the south. Nanjing is a nice utility city. The Cow/Copper/Granary/Forge makes it a great little production pump here. I've been experimenting with a basic cycle where I grow it to size 4, whip a worker or settler with the foodbox above half, then while regrowing from 2 -> 4 I can still put a non-trivial amount of hammers into something else thanks to 9 base hammers from 2 tiles + city center, +2h more from Forge. In this case while regrowing I can also help grow a cottage that will eventually go to Hangzhou which will be a great commerce city. The settler from here is ticketed for Red Dot (not currently visible) to the southwest - but it's the spot 2S of the Wheat that also picks up second ring Fish. I don't love how city sites shook out over here, but this was the only way to make it work with Bing doing his Skirmisher thing. I think Galley -> Worker are probably the next two things out of Nanjing.

Meanwhile Shanghai is finally freeing up. Colossus is due EoT83. Once that's in it's going to promptly whip out a settler for Marble, then grow while producing a Work Boat or two for the islands. My Spear did confirm that Marble island has a second Fish, so ultimately I'll want two settlers over there. I thought about sending them both now, but I really want to get Moai going on Stone Island, so I'm not going to delay it further.





All those whips from Mjmd grew back and then some. Superdeath talked to me a bit yesterday, so we just talked about the state of the game a little. I made it clear that I felt we were 2nd and 3rd and as a result, should not be in conflict due to Mjmd's status. He seemed to agree, so that's good. Of course, we have a NAP for the next 30 turns, but he was already worrying about after that, so I hopefully calmed his concerns some. I'm just gently trying to steer folks towards acknowledging Mjmd is in the pole position, and hopefully they don't change their minds when Colossus drops in a few turns.

[civac2]

Assuming you keep the tile configuration whipping in Chengdu whipping in 2 is too late. You will finish the granary 1t ürir to growth and only get 8 of possible 12 food into the granary on the growth turn.

Edit: Oh, you could give away the corn farm for one turn. Then it lines up. That'sprobably what you meant.

[scooter]

Assuming you keep the tile configuration whipping in Chengdu whipping in 2 is too late. You will finish the granary 1t ürir to growth and only get 8 of possible 12 food into the granary on the growth turn.

Edit: Oh, you could give away the corn farm for one turn. Then it lines up. That'sprobably what you meant.

You were correct by the way. Two things were mixed up - I was off in my notes because they were planned before my anarchy turn changed, but also I was targeting the wrong hammer double whip threshold due to mixing it up with Xian, which has its Forge already. Stellar work all-around by me.


ANYWAY, quickly...




Time to finish some Lighthouses. Also, finally finished Writing. Superdeath was kind enough to tell me he was about to finish, so I waited until he did and got maximum known tech bonus. Tiny victories.

[scooter]

It’s been a few turns, so time for an update. It’s time to plant 3 cities in 4 turns.





Macau is the first of them and arguably the most interesting. I debated briefly over settling on Stone vs hill. Ultimately, the base hammers are the same either way - 3h plant + 4h mine vs 2h plant + 5h quarry, so that’s a wash. As a result, the ability to split that Mine over to Guangzhou later on plus the ability to bring in a couple more coast tiles won out for me.

With a 3h plant, a 4h PH Mine, and a 1/3/1 Lumbermill, we can get to 10 base hammers here. Moai costs 250h. We get +100% for Industrious National Wonder and +50% for Stone. That’s a 10T slow build without any whips, which is really not bad for a tiny island. There’s no point in adding a Forge prior to building because a Forge brings the 10T build down to, uh, 9.2. So, Granary-> Lighthouse -> Moai is the tentative plan. However, I’ll definitely double check to make sure that’s actually better than Granary -> Moai -> Lighthouse. Thinking about it, Moai before Lighthouse probably is actually better. I’ll double check.





Next turn, it’s Red Dot. I thought a bunch about going 1E with it, but I did promise I’d settle here to get Bing to stand down, and I’ve decided not to poke the bear skirmishers just yet. If he marches a Skirm over and parks it on that hill then you can all rightfully point and laugh. I would honestly prefer to plant a different city with this settler, but as you can see Bing has done some expanding since I last reported. More on that in a second. This city will get a Work Boat supplied by some other city (Shanghai?), but it’ll go Monument-Granary-Lighthouse aided by a pair of chops. I hate building Monuments and have built 0 so far, but I need the culture to bring in the Fish and deal with Bing’s incoming culture. I also hate 2 pre-Math chops this late, but the city just gets up and running SO slowly without them, so I’m going to bite the bullet. I’ll slip a mine in here, but otherwise this city is gonna be Fish, Wheat, Mine, and a bunch of Colossus coast before long. And the Mine is only really necessary to help get the minimum infrastructure in place. One worker here in the area will get it up and running, and then worker labor will be pushed away into more critical areas.





Finally, Marble City will follow 2 turns after Red Dot. Shanghai will 1T a WB after the Settler whip to net the Fish 1T after settling, and a worker is coming over with the settler to get the Marble online. I’d like to get a Trireme in this region before long and flash it at Mjmd and help defend the city that way.





I’m noodling over what to do next with Beijing right now. It’s complicated. So, Guangzhou is obviously going to pop an Engineer soon, but the next city in line for a great person at the 300 GPP threshold is Beijing with a nearly-pure Prophet pool (it’ll be like 98-99%). That’s good, as we really want two things from a Prophet. We’d like a Buddhist Shrine for the gold now and the natural spreads, and we’d like to bulb Theology to build the Apostolic Palace. Superdeath already volunteered to use our religion when we build the AP so that they can benefit too, which is great. The problem is the Oracle GPP alone will take another 30 turns, which is a bit slow for me.

One option I’m considering is building a Buddhist Temple next or shortly thereafter, and then running a Priest. This would speed things up significantly. The problem of course is then I need to choose between Theology and the Shrine. The upside of the Shrine is it helps spread the religion, and while you can always natural-tech Theology, you can only get a Shrine with a Prophet. The downside is right now it’s only worth 4gpt, plus nobody can race you to the shrine (though nobody looks likely to race us).

One noteworthy thing though is the Shrine would let me run 3 Priests. Shanghai then could run those priests (9 base GPP) + Shrine (1GPP) + Colossus (2GPP) for a PHI-adjusted 30GPP/turn, which would get us to the 400 threshold quickly. The problem of course is it would be a prophet/merchant dice roll with reasonably good odds. So we’ll see. I’m not 100% on this plan yet, but it’s something I’m considering. The other option would be to use the first Prophet to just bulb Theology and get the AP online more quickly, and then circle back for the Shrine later when it’s more lucrative, but it starts to get hard to unlock the Priest slots to do it. I could also wait until I’m ready for a Golden Age to try to generate these Prophets, but I think I’m a little further away from that right now.





Bing slipped in two more cities down here - both spots I knew he was going for and agreed to. One is the central one marked with a sign, but the other is just under the interface 3S of Chengdu. Chengdu is slated for a Library next as a result. I need the culture down here badly, but it’s also a prime city to run some Rep scientists given that it’s a great short-term city with a meh long-term and can’t build a Lighthouse and work coast. Get the city around size 6-7 with a Library, run Rep 2 scientists for a cool 15bpt at 0% science, and we’re in business. In fact at size 6 it can work Corn/Banana/Sheep/GHMine with 2 scientists and still slowly grow with a 3F surplus while producing enough hammers to get some units out. Nice utility border city.

By the way, I don’t know if anyone noticed, but when I improved the Sheep I forgot you can move diagonally between peaks. What can I say, it’s been awhile since I’ve played Civ4. So I burned quite a few worker turns walking a worker pair around the peaks to the Sheep . That’s also why there’s a weird road outside my culture. Ah well.

[Miguelito]

Everybody hates monuments, but can't it be avoided here with a missionary from a Phi boosted monastery?

[Tarkeel]

In all fairness, the graphics makes it look like there's no path between those mountains.

Nabbing that sheep from Bing is probably going to pay off nicely down the line.

[scooter]

Everybody hates monuments,  but can't it be avoided here with a missionary from a Phi boosted monastery?

Yeah, I probably should have explained this. The issue is I don't yet have a monastery, although my first is about to complete. So the missionary would be lagging behind a potential Monument by several turns, enough that bringing the Fish online a few turns later sort of washes away the Monument hammers. In addition, there are other cities that would like a Missionary too, so sending one down here is one that isn't going elsewhere, so it was just enough to make me prefer Monument. Ideally I would have had a Monastery by now, but I'd been getting away with no Monuments this whole time due to city placements and a couple fortunate Buddhism spreads, so I've slotted in other things.