[Spoiler] Fintourist loses his multiplayer virginity

[Fintourist]

Turn 107

As a continuation from my last turn report: Azza!!



Azza has 3 Axes, 2 Chariots and a Spear in the picture. What do you need them for?? You are forcing me to whip my nearby cities if you bring any more units here. Sure, if this was a duel, I would totally understand any kind of aggression, but at this point there is really not much to gain from warfare. And I promise that I'm not going to let Azza take any cities without whipping myself to the ground. Go Attack Hydra, who has no military, not the rival best in soldier points. My city placements must have really pissed him off..

Sareln got a Great Engineer. Golden Age or the Hanging Gardens? I guess we'll see in a turn or two. EDIT: Of course Mids sounds solid too..

[Old Harry]

[Fintourist]

Turn 108
Mini-report: Sareln used his (probably low-odds) GE and landed mids. His wonder collection is now quite imperessive! (Oracle, GLH, Colossus, MoM & Mids) My guess is that he decided to postpone Golden Age and will revolt into Bureaucracy & Representation next turn. Sareln finished Construction and Viqsi some other tech (MC?). I'll settle my 13th city next turn.

Our turn pace continues to be disappointing (108 turns is 140 days). Currently it is Azza that constantly misses turns without a warning. It seems that my opponents are also not reporting too much. Viqsi has not wrote anything after January, which is a pity since I'm really looking forward to reflecting this game afterwards from my opponents' perspective. I'll do a proper report latest at T110!

[Fintourist]

Turn 109

Sareld revolted into Bureaucracy and Representation as expected. Domestic highlight was settling my 13th boringly named city "Angle Games":



Settling this new city increased my costs with... 15 gpt. Expansion has become truly expensive, but I hope that it will pay itself in the long run. My break-even rate is currently between 45 and 50 %. I'm not going to settle new cities immediately, but I'm definitely not going to stop the growth yet. Hydra and Viqsi are currently sitting with only 7 and 8 cities respectively and even though that now helps them to research with a higher slider than me I believe that it is the wrong choice in the long term. If I manage to organize enough settlers, workers, military and financial support from my core I can see myself settling almost 20 functional cities before attacking anybody.

This was the last turn that I save gold. If anything unexpected happens I will start burning through those 1000 gold next turn. That should be enough to get me Education in 6 turns and leave some cash for Gunpowder, which I expect to get in ~12 turns from now. There is no way anybody builds a huge stack of knights by then. Theoretically Sareln could research Machinery quickly and then attack me then with Maces, but I'm pretty sure that all he wants no is to enjoy his wonders and grow his cities. He is currently 3 cities and 21 pop points behind me. The probable build of Hanging Gardens will help him, but there is still a lot to catch.

Btw, this was the first time since T55 when I was not 1st or 2nd in GNP (currently 3rd). Of course that is with 0 % research, but nevertheless it shows that the maintenance costs are really starting to affect my economy. I think I will whip courthouses soonish in a couple of selected cities. That will also help with espionage, which would actually be useful since currently everyone is putting at least some EPs towards me. E.g Azza is using all his EPs on me already for a good while.

[Old Harry]

It always feels like lowering your slider means you're researching slower, but I guess if you're making more money you can afford to divert a smaller amount to research. Is there a formula to work out how much of a hit each new city causes your economy (other than just looking at how your income changes on settling)?

Oh and I take it you haven't found enough forests anywhere to build Hanging Gardens yourself?

[Fintourist]

It always feels like lowering your slider means you're researching slower, but I guess if you're making more money you can afford to divert a smaller amount to research. Is there a formula to work out how much of a hit each new city causes your economy (other than just looking at how your income changes on settling)?

Unfortunately I don't have an exact formula and to be honest, I haven't even tried googling it. It is enough for me to know that currently every city brings additional costs worth ~15gpt, which is too much for trade route and early tile yields to compensate. Measuring the long term benefits against short term losses is, as we discussed earlier, extremely hard and probably more art than science. Selecting an optimal expansion pace at this stage is difficult and surely a topic where I would significantly benefit from prior civ experience. I guess this is my 2nd game that I ever play on prince, and probably the first with prince+toroidal combo..

Oh and I take it you haven't found enough forests anywhere to build Hanging Gardens yourself?

Yeah, Hanging Gardens would be amazing. I have some sites that I could settle and then chop 4 forests, but I guess I prefer diverting them into granaries and lighthouses since 4 forests is not even close enough for the HG. Of course if I had stone the situation would be completely different. Unfortunately I was unlucky here and the only source that I have visibility is located completely on the other side of map and Sareln has settled to it already..

[Old Harry]

Unfortunately I was unlucky here and the only source that I have visibility is located completely on the other side of map and Sareln has settled to it already..

Are there any islands in the fog to the NW that you haven't uncovered yet?

[Fintourist]

There should not be anything available before optics. I'll check next time when I open a save whether there are any unfogged tiles that could give a chance for revealing a new island. However, I'm 99 % certain that this is not the case..

I will send just shortly a galley towards Hydra and explore whether the island between us (exactly N of my core) would enable a passage to some undiscovered lands. Finding anything worth settling is pretty unlikely, but not completely impossible though. I spent today some time sandboxing and I think I'll settle my next two cities somewhere between T120 and T125. I'm wondering whether that's too slow.. In the sim I pretty much spent the turns 110-120 building forges all over my empire, but of course I could be whipping more settlers/workers/military instead.. And yeah, I expect to finish researching Gunpowder EOT119.

[Fintourist]

Turn 110 & State of the World

New turn finally arrived so it is time for a proper update.

First surprise came when I did my standard scouting moves with galleys:


It's pretty crazy to leave a border city without any garrison I moved my galley NW-NW and loaded a spear into it. I moved my trireme NE-E-SE so that it's in the position to check without declaring whether the city is empty next turn.. Should I raze the city if it's empty next turn?? That city has already some infra and destroying it would obviously weaken Azza. The problem is that I feel that Azza is not my main competitor in this game. That's Sareln. If Azza get's pissed off and declares a game long vendetta to me while Sareln techs in peace my position does not look particularly good. I guess I should not declare a war before there are significant gains. Declaring simply to get some raze money and weaken one opponent does not win this game for me, but might well cost it. But still, something like that should be punished. I'm undecided

In domestic news I turned tech on and finished Paper. Education can be finished EOT115 if I want:


I guess there are two things to notice:
a) I'm putting hammers into hammer multipliers and
b) 390 raw beakers created is quite good for BC years.
A large chunk of it comes naturally from the Bureaucracy capital:

1 town, 5 villages and 4 hamlets. Chip 'n' Charge currently grows the western cottage for the capital so that Ace can work soonish another grassland hamlet with no need to work a "wasteful" 2/0/1 tile. I'll grow the city next turn into unhappiness by grabbing back the fish tile. I'll get Dyes online just in time during T112.

Here are the EOT110 demos, which look quite okay:

Me and Sareln are pretty much even in GNP stat, but especially the food lead is promising. Azza is the no. 1 in production and power. It's actually quite funny that Hydra is the number one in "Exports - Imports". Nobody is using any trade routes from him because of turn order.

And here is the usual overview graph:



At this point it is possible that I have done some mistakes in C&D, but the mistakes should be only minor. It's actually the same story as always, but the absolute differences are getting bigger. I'm leading in the tech front, but Sareln is close, roughly 1000 beakers behind when we take my gold reserves into account. Viqsi (who settled her 9th city this turn), Azza and Sareln are all 15-20 pop points behind me, which is quite a nice lead at this point and definitely worth something. Hydra's situation is not really improving. He whipped hard this turn and I guess he has now a settler or two ready, which are definitely needed. However, 34 pop points is an alarmingly low amount for T110 even though we are playing with normal speed. I believe that Hydra really needs some favorable macro events (wars between other players) to catch up.

Btw, if Sareln's wonder power proves to be the winning strategy my back-up plan is to win Liberalism, grab Nationalism and draft a good stack of Janissaries and see if I can do some damage. Of course I need to win Liberalism first, but currently I believe in my chances. Sareln needs to start beelining it pretty much now if he wants to stand a chance. Still, one education bulb or a GA is probably not enough. Research visibility gives me the chance to react. Btw, I hope he does not notice the map trading possibility immediately...

To those interested, here are the graphs with couple of comments:

Viqsi's economy is improving




The combination of Azza's production and power spikes are slightly worrying, but still not too worrying.


Let's keep climbing here!

And here are my border areas + comments:

Will the "Gold Girls Guns" still be standing after the next turn?



This pic could use resource tags. Nevertheless, Bollitieri's is enjoying the crabs that it stole from Azza. I consider settling a city where I have the sign in ~10-15 turns. It has two first ring fish, bananas and dyes, of course it's quite a reach.. But delicious.



Border area with Sareln. I hope that it remains peaceful until I decide otherwise.



And finally the area between me and Hydra. I wonder if I should be aggressive and settle the "fish dot" or a city grapping cows+fish. If these islands are not settled when I get my first Janissaries in play I might go for these sites.

Aand that's all. I hope that our terrible turn pace will improve. However, I'll travel to Japan in two weeks, which probably won't help the situation..

[Old Harry]

An undefended size five city is too good an opportunity to miss. Azza isn't all that far behind you and sareln, and while you are obviously a very kind generous person occasionally you have to be cruel to be kind!

* views of bloodthirsty lurkers may not be entirely sane.