Login

Coeurva · July 26th, 2017, 04:45

T83

Yuri took the peace offer. The map looks nothing like I had expected, and will be presented without comment.

[Image: aHeTsVI.jpg]

I'm hoping that Savant doesn't kill our Woody 3 axe with whatever he has on his galley (hopefully, nothing at all -- fortunately, he never saw the settler before now, because it was always out of sight or loaded on the galley). There's a new axe inside Harmondale, his galley has returned to Fountain Head, and that's all the changes I can see. Power graphs show another marked increase from him, I'm guessing he's at ~110,000 (us: 133,000)

[Image: a4Xh6bT.png]

Chopped granary rather than galley at Whitehall; we can't hit Savant's galley anyway, and we'll have to compensate for giving the fish to X8 next turn.

I left a C1 chariot and axe inside Whitehall, with a 5xp warrior and chariot loaded onto the galley. If Savant didn't try to take the city against chariot+axe 2t prior, that will probably not have changed yet -- Fountain Head produces no units.

I might have mismanaged two workers by moving them into the last forest at Ignis (for a granary chop), because Savant can fork those and Ignis with his Sentry chariot, forcing the workers to move away (we only have one spear there) -- he'd have to move 13 next turn, then declare and park on the silver hill.

Running 100% research for 93bpt, -51gpt; Alpha in 3t. Some builds finish 1t "too early", but we should be fine.

Coeurva

The map layout must be a ribbon of land wrapped thrice vertically around the torus, with islands interspersed. That also explains how Savant could circumnavigate so early.

Yuri's map is centered due to Stonehenge, so at the moment I'm guessing that dtay is actually Savant's northeastern neighbour by wrapping around at the pole. Conjecture, though. Nor am I sure whether our map is actually centered as well after the trade.

I really want to settle the stone island. There's a lot of other sites to consider, though: horse filler, rice/crabs filler, filler between Vermin/Rhapsody, marble island, western island (if it has food), eastern island (wheat)...

EDIT: I'm actually thinking western ruins is the way to go now. Yuri has enough land for himself still, we have enough units to defend it, will build more, can immediately pasture the sheep, can immediately chop + whip a barracks, gain another whale tile, mine a few hills and produce units, chop a granary or whale boat after the border pop.

Bacchus · July 26th, 2017, 10:56

Oh man, dtay really got the better deal from our war. Tasty land and so much of it.

Our map is clearly not centred, there's just not enough space for 8 other civs.

Western ruins are the way to go.

Coeurva

I wouldn't say dtay got the better deal. From its size despite the somewhat-low food surplus (of course, we can't see the whole cross), I'd guess that SpaceRock is probably the site that he and CML were competing over -- it's about seven tiles from Cahokia, and thus must be the same distance from dtay's capital (no idea what his theme is, by the way). Only that corn-grabbing city should be counted as spoils of war. By contrast, we've gained at least three city sites -- our war has effectively opened the entire southern sea down to Yuri's ivory -- including a marble resource we probably wouldn't have taken otherwise. Sure, we'll have to settle the extra cities ourselves, but so does dtay, and we're at an advantage due to IMP.

Yuri doesn't have Sailing yet, and we're probably better-placed than dtay to take most of his cities later (if we can).

I had thought the map could be centered with us being on the middle strip of the ribbon around the torus (when projected onto a plane), but you're probably right that this leads to problems with spacing; Gavagai must be north of Savant, and thus would have to be south/east of dtay as well, which places Krill at the "wrong location" (east of us, not Savant).

EDIT: Although if Krill took a bite out of Ventessel, then he might be east of Savant after all. And Savant would know, due to the scout boats he must have used for circumnavigation.

(singing) Western Ruins are the way to go / Raze, then resettle: that's our M.O. / Land spreading out so far and wide, etc.

EDIT: Lifeblood will have to build a galley after its work boat, obviously. We'll mine the plains hill to make it less reliant on whipping.

----

Some more words for city names, units, etc. -- I'll just make this post our repository for those. Supply is much higher than demand here, of course.

Coeurva

T84

Settled X8 ("Stygian Terrace"). Turns out it works as a canal, even on a hill -- and a helpful one at that. Woody III axe, chariot, warrior (C1) inside that city; axe (10% fortify) + chariot (C1) inside Whitehall, 2t before reinforcements. We lead every demographic category that matters, but none of them by much (excluding the misleading Population stat), so let's keep up.

Spotted a grass forest deer on the island north of Stygian Terrace, but that's probably Savant's domain, unless he really takes his time.

He's built a stele inside Fountain Head, which I don't understand; he could build AGG barracks for the same price and strictly superior effect (for now). In any case, though, he'll reclaim his first ring at some point. The chariot has vanished and might be loaded onto the galley (to attack into our Woodsman axe after we'd settled, maybe? or to attack Whitehall?)

Mismanaged the workers because the 96 hour pause made me forget about what's going on, i.e. that we want to settle western ruins (even though I had just confirmed that yesterday), and moved one worker to chop the work boat for eastern ruins, because that site was still marked "X9". smoke

Doesn't really matter, though, we really just lose the opportunity to road a mine -- there's almost nothing useful to pre-improve south of Sicil (dry plains cottages? no thanks). X9 founded next turn, still need to decide on a name if I don't just take "Oscorbidulchos".

Yuri is teching Writing, and we can keep our research visibility on him if we split EP 3/1 on him/Savant. Amusingly, he can't complete a library before Stonehenge pops him a Great Prophet, although bulbs or GA will help him as well (and unlike an Academy, cannot be captured).

100% sci 111 bpt, -61 gpt (127 reserve)
0% sci +24 gpt
~30% sci breakeven

CY 112 (111) MFG 57 (55) GNP 89 (80) soldiers 134,000 (123,000); Savant still 12,000 (or 20,000? I'm bad at reading these without a scale) soldiers behind in graphs; our cap is the only size9 one (will be size10 on T85); cities build units and/or granaries/libraries/work boats (i.e. whatever increases food).

We still have 9 workers, but that seems to work passably; haven't hit the happy cap anywhere, and can keep up with growth in constructing new improvements. The map isn't highly forested, the southern cities need no labour at all right now (time to expand) and the northern cities should be able to get by. Biggest concern is actually covering the X8 workers against Savant; still need to produce more units.

Now that the settler has found its target, we need to end that turn-split with Savant; it's getting burdensome and delayed this turn roll by about 12 hours, even got me a (friendly) PM from Krill that I'm last to play (I replied thanks without mentioning the split).

This is what I'll send him:

Quote:Hi Dark Savant,

our team would like to end the turn-split between us, effective immediately, if your team agrees.

Coeur

Coeurva

Savant's reply:

Dark Savant Wrote:Okay, fair enough.

Well, that's the end of that. I'll still let him play T85 first if he ends turn before 21.00 of my time, just to make sure that he doesn't feel taken advantage of. I'm ending the split because no amount of mutually enjoyable (?) galley maneuvering for tactical advantages justifies dragging out the turns even longer at this point... The settling race is finished, and his Sentry chariot still hasn't whacked our warrior observing (the fjord of) Harmondale.

"Fair enough" always sounds somewhat reluctant or begrudging to me, but I'm not sure if that's just my non-native understanding of English. Back to the game:

Alphabet should boost our breakeven rate to roughly 50% (effectively) if we can get ~55 bpt from research builds and some more commerce. I'm not sure if we can, though -- do you think Vermin should produce a few more units, or is our presence enough? (6 axes, 4 chariots, 1 spear distributed across 4-5 cities, but most of them can stay at Western Ruins, as Yuri has no cities and thus no galleys on his eastern sea)

Regarding the south, we have two options for Western Ruins after it's settled and the sheep improved. Worker labour isn't an issue for either plan.

* Chop one forest into granary, whip; chop one forest into work boat for eastern ruins, whip; overflow into barracks. Settle eastern ruins, build galley first, one chop, one whip (or if Sicil's copper can be spared, use chop on work boat instead, improve Western whales)
* Chop both first-ring forests into galley; then whip granary -> library (using a grass farm for support -- every size below 3 regrows 1t faster when you go from 5fpt to 6fpt). Settle the island marble for X10 as Currency comes in for another 20 commerce/t (actual margin 10).

While marble island is the more useful city to our empire as a whole, I'm quite convinced that we can still produce two settlers over the next 10t (at Rhapsody, then Vermin). Therefore I like the first plan the best, but what's your thoughts? (Work boats can be swapped in build orders depending on when exactly we'll need them; don't have it all in my head right now.)

Coeurva

T85

Here's the self-styled Kipchak Khatunate. They have seven cities, a size8 capital (one of two in the world; there's also a size9 city, and our size10 city, and Gavagai at size6), 13% of the world's population (us: 15%, Savant: 12% 1t ago), and they've met Savant already. What they don't seem to have is the Great Lighthouse, which I suspect is GermanJoey's -- good news, since we might both benefit from Open Borders at Currency. (Before that, we'd just give them benefits from our own island city for free -- no thanks.) More information when we get a trade route and graphs -- I've allocated all our EP to them, of course. Savant doesn't invest against us right now (maybe he just met them as well?) and Yuri's research isn't all that important to know.

This image gives me ideas about a possible X11 -- build library, whip boat, needs only 5t of worker labour (move into forest, then camp), not counting travel time. Fortunately, Mongol fleets will always sink in very opportune storms. Right?

What Savant should like to settle is no less obvious; maybe we can at least get to that northern deer, but his forking threats are bad enough as they are, and I don't want to give him a vice grip on our units. We'll see.

The galley will return in time to pick up workers for Styx.

[Image: ihOFstE.png]

Spot my most egregious mistake: T85 edition. In fairness, unhappy citizens don't consume food while building fh units, but Sicil shouldn't have been unhappy in the first place; reason is that I moved the last unit out of it, saw that no unhappiness had appeared, pressed 7 again, and the next second, the game deigns to update the state and informs me that the people have become very dragonish. Still on me, though: there's a million other ways to check for happiness and I was just too lazy to use them. Result: loss of 3h into that worker. Since we can repair the situation next turn, we should still get a 3t worker here, despite what's being advertised. After that, just build two more units while growing to size8.

Rhapsody builds that axe to 34/35h (out of necessity). We can get a chop and whip off a mine next turn for huge overflow into another worker, then slow-build a settler while the unhappiness wears off, and regrow. Could also forgo the whip, which is probably better unless we need that worker right now. Don't feel like that's the case.

Lifeblood whipped off its grass mine for the boat, so that we can work the 402 tile as soon as possible, and its food bin was convenient (24/32, +6 surplus before whip).

Vermin builds another settler -- for Eastern Ruins this time. I've noted that the boat chop works kind of beautifully with the completion of Western Ruins' pasture, so that's what we'll do. There's probably not such a rush for the marble site, it's not as though Yuri can reach it yet.

Styx builds a spear until it's at 6/35h, just in case, then switches to work boat (not library; too few hammers to get benefits from CHM; library gets chopped/whipped instead once two workers are ferried over; already on the way).

Note our gold reserve: T74 (also known as Full Cottage Madness) did pay off!! If we could actually build research anywhere without neglecting something more important, that is. (Okay, I'm exaggerating: Lifeblood and Whitehall can both do it, for about 12 bpt right now, unless you'd rather have us build galleys there -- that's viable as well.)

Moved the spear out of Ignis, so as to cover the worker improving the silver mine (which will complete 1t before the GSci is finished; we'll need to reconfigure that city fast after that job is done, to make it productive and build more defenses against Savant).

Someone has 125 CY (!) and it might even be Savant, looking at the graphs (he was on par with us last turn). He's swimming in food resources.

Bacchus · July 30th, 2017, 16:48

Sorry, I've been moving back into a place I haven't lived in for a year, clearing up and receiving guests, will catch up in a short while.

Coeurva · July 31st, 2017, 02:14

No problem. If you're looking for something to meditate on, we'll have a lot of options for tech after Currency, but need to start gearing our civ towards our choice right now; should we want to take Iron Working, for instance, we'll need to focus on settling the south-east, popping Westward's borders (jungled gems), and shuffling workers into the area.

Another major issue is city placement, managing maintenance costs/research builds (those two are interlocked), and settling order -- I want to build about 3-4 settlers over the next 12t, not counting Western Ruins; Sicil, Vermin and Rhapsody can all produce them, but they'll have to share that duty.

The rest that I've mentioned are details; salt peanuts. The kind I enjoy and yet tend to mismanage with astonishing leisure.

After X8 pops second-ring culture, which we'll need for the clams, I'm considering a map trade with JR4/RefSteel. Certainly not before, since they can't see the city's borders yet and we haven't seen any galley of theirs; I'd like to keep it secret.

Bacchus

(July 31st, 2017, 02:14)Coeurva Wrote: After X8 pops second-ring culture, which we'll need for the clams, I'm considering a map trade with JR4/RefSteel. Certainly not before, since they can't see the city's borders yet and we haven't seen any galley of theirs; I'd like to keep it secret.

I actually think getting a map right now would bring lots of value to us, as our galley's path would become much more meaningful.

The higher level questions, yeah, these require some meditation.

Navigation

Extra Menu

About us