[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Coeurva]

Much appreciated -- I didn't get around to posting my thoughts. But here's some.

HBR also requires us to tech Archery before NumCav can be produced (stables before then, though), giving further incentive to teching it right now, so as to save turns spent on building garrisons, and thus gain turns spent on research/settlers -- if these turns can weigh up the beakers so that Currency isn't delayed, we'll be strictly better off. Still have to think about the actual numbers, though.

Non-ORG courthouses are not quite that great just yet, similar reasoning as you provided with forges -- they still take 8t at our best production cities, during which they cannot build wealth which returns far more gpt right now (courthouses save about 2gpt), which will be needed to push our breakeven back to 50%, although at the considerable cost of blocking build queues. Closer to ~20hpt I'd consider building courthouses (Rhapsody will hit that, but also has the lowest maintenance and probably benefits more from building a market first); earlier if we can afford whips. The real appeal of CoL is the religion (plus holy city, probably on some relevant border) and subsequent OrgRel/Theo benefits, perhaps indeed from the Paya. Depends on whether we can get a Buddhism spread, but odds aren't that great.

Disagree that Calendar is kinda useless (except before IW); it returns a whole lot of 5f tiles. Count the bananas we already have or can claim, and consider chumchu's strong suggested National Epic site in the south. Sugar is another +1 happiness, allowing us to delay Monarchy further.

Regarding Maths, do you think delaying the Academy (~20bpt on 100% sci turns, relevant to Currency research) will be worth the returns of Philosophy? I'd rather use Caste to generate the GSci for Philo, unless we go Maths right after Currency, which feels rather wasteful with the other options (all of which involve first-to bonus races) right in front of us.

I'm very doubtful of the Hanging Gardens, at least right now, since I assume we'll hit the happy cap at most of our cities before we could actually finish them, and we have about 1 worker per city with just enough improvements everywhere, which means the pop might really only go into Slavery, thereby returning 30h per city... which is lower than the cost of the Hanging Gardens plus aqueduct without the 50% bonus from stone. Even considering the redistribution of locally-focused hammers, I doubt that is worth as much as other stuff we could build, e.g. if SoZ allows us to capture cities later.

Construction would be useful right now, make no mistake. If I had ~10 catapults in addition to our 11-unit axe/chariot stack, I'd feel quite confident about attacking Yuri here, even without horse archers or swordsmen. Problem is that it's locked behind Maths, which isn't very useful in itself since we've chopped all the forests already, and we still have peaceful avenues for expansion that will always be more cost-effective (we are IMP, too). The deterrent effect of siege may not be so high compared to that of NumCav, which are also very customizable (taking Shock or Formation as needed). I'd rather spend less beakers on military tech when we're positioned and motivated to pursue economic advantages.

I think we can keep Fountain Head's culture output in check for a while with the libraries in Whitehall and Styx, the latter of which will finish in about 5-6t. The stele isn't even relevant before Savant adds a library, which he probably won't want to build before a granary; this delay will counterbalance his slightly-higher growth rate (5 cul/t).

I think that monasteries are very weak buildings for their yields at this stage of the game; the real reason to build them is to spread religion when OrgRel isn't available yet (due to tech path or anarchy cost), because OrgRel is very powerful. Even Rhapsody will only gain ~3bpt after building a monastery.

If we want to pursue religion + OrgRel + Bureaucracy, we'll need to think about where we'll get the Golden Age from; I don't think we can afford the anarchy.

Judaism hasn't been founded yet.

Suggestions:
a) (Archery ->) Currency -> CoL -> HBR -> (Myst -> Poly -> Mono depending on religious situation) -> IW -> Maths -> Calendar -> Aesthetics -> Literature. (Construction flexibly slotted in after Maths.)
b) (Archery ->) Currency -> CoL -> HBR -> (Myst -> Poly -> Mono depending on religious situation) -> Aesthetics -> IW -> Literature -> Maths -> Calendar. (SoZ path with an emphasis on the Epic cities)

Obviously, there's little value in Myst/Poly/Mono if we fail to land the religion either at CoL or Mono and don't get Buddhism spread to us, although Myst is needed for Masonry to unlock the wonder doublers. (Which I haven't included on the tech path, since it's cheap and the timing difficult to predict -- no use teching it before settling stone/marble, the Pyramids aren't something we want).

Might also delay HBR, but don't really want to. IW is an important economic tech for us (+1 happy, +7cpt from gems; vital to salvage our Crop Yield later), but quite dependent on timing.

As appealing as the SoZ looks, we also have to consider that Krill oracled a Classical tech that didn't found a religion (Aesthetics? Monarchy? Currency or one of its pre-reqs?)

EDIT: I'll also have to look up what the different ARTSTYLE definitions cause cities to look like across the ages. We can see that the Khatunate has already hit the Classical Age as well, for instance, and Joey hasn't because he's ARTSTYLE_GRECO_ROMAN -- which, for some reason, Carthage uses as well. Probably because it's only employed by three other civs: the Greco one, the Roman one, and the Greco-Roman one.

[chumchu]

You have softened up CML/Yuri. I think the question is if you want to push military at this tech level or not. When is it most efficient? When is your economy ready? Usually that means when you can get to currency to pay for the new cities and when you have a tech advantage. However, the earlier and the stronger you push the better as you will to fight more units later on unless you can surprise him. If you want to do it now, a fast currency followed by building wealth for HBR or IW seems like the path to start putting hammers into good military units. After that you will go a bit slower to Construction as you are building units instead of wealth in most places. If you can catch him before he has cats and elephants you should be good to go.

If you do not want to, you can build settlers and infrastructure, getting org rel, forges, courthouse and ending with Bureaucracy. Then you are looking at a medieval push...

[Coeurva]

I think it's impossible to predict the most opportune time to attack Yuri right now, except that it will come after Currency has finished. Much will depend on what city sites we might discover or settle during the next 15t; how fast Yuri himself will expand; how many and which units he'll build as seen on the power graph; whether dtay will attack Yuri (or is attacking him already?); whether Dark Savant will attack us; whether we have iron in the first place (not a given, since everyone has copper at the start and Mardoc has already put some "nice-to-have" resources exclusively on the islands). The tech path I've suggested includes the key military techs such that it's flexible enough to allow the switch into full military build-up, should the time prove right.

I agree that we fundamentally have to decide whether we want to take out Yuris in the Classical or Medieval Age, and that Construction would be the key defensive tech that we have to deny him in the former case, if only by attacking beforehand (he could be teching Writing -> Maths -> Construction), which is why I'll try to keep research visibility on Yuri at least intermittently, after we have the Khatunate's graphs. They're only investing 2 EP/t against us (suggesting that the other half is going into Savant).

Regarding Yuri's current situation, his military probably consists of ~2 spears and ~8 axes; he doesn't have horses connected. His economy looks dire; he has no granaries at all, a single cottage across his entire realm, no silver mines / whales, last researched Archery, and is currently saving gold to tech Writing after spending 80g on a warrior upgrade. Due to Stonehenge, he'll inevitably receive a Great Prophet as his first GP on T102 -- which means he doesn't have the options of an Academy or, more pertinently, a Maths bulb to reach Construction faster.

CoL would be very strong if the religion is still available; I think it takes precedence over military tech in that case.

[Bacchus]

Krill wouldn't get Monarchy as he is Chm and probably has Hindu, and there is tons of happy around the place. SoZ for Agg/Chm is awesome though, so Aesthetics very likely. And he warred early, probably getting that other GG, so SoZ would let him build 8XP land units with an instructor and 5XP sea units.

I don't think Philo is worth it, Academy seems better to me.

[Coeurva]

As though this game needed another argument to strengthen my resolve never to play a Pitboss again, not only did two of the players vanish without a warning, but also the game host, apparently. Why not? That barely surprises me at this point.

Is there anything we can do, other than restart the game on a different server or something similarly extreme?

A restart as such is obviously impossible, due to two players having dropped out, map knowledge being asymmetric, etc. -- at the very least, the remaining players would require a new map. Might as well be honest and call that new game PB38. I know for damn sure that I wouldn't play it.

If we can get a save somehow and pick up the game from there, I'd suggest migrating this game to Zulan's server (who is also hosting Pitbosses at civforum.de right now, and who responded very fast to the last server-side issue in late July). Until then, I'll keep quiet (i.e. keep it in here) because nothing I could say will improve the situation.

EDIT: From what Krill wrote, looks like it wasn't Caledorn who vanished. Someone else is in physical charge of the server and hasn't restarted it yet. Thus Blame Caledorn was in full effect on me. I take back that we should move hosting, and I'm sorry about my snappy post. Which I'll still let stand here, obviously.

[Coeurva]

T87

I like the fort suggestions, except for two of them: I've transformed the sign 988 from "fort" into "filler", and I think we shouldn't regularly fort the jungled silver -- the tile yield is too valuable for that, even in the National Epic city (which will have enough food to work that extra tile). We can certainly pre-fort it whenever we can spare worker labour, though.

Decided against Archery, but might yet switch to it if Sicil can build enough research for us. We'll have enough units to escort the settler to X10, which is the main issue here. Said settler will finish with 100/100h at Rhapsody in 2t; I've swapped away one cottage for a grass mine for 1t to make that happen.

Savant appeared in the south with a surprising work boat, probably one of the units he used for circumnavigation. Not only did he gain vision on X9 and thus our units in the south, but he's also made contact with Yuri, so he'll know if war breaks out and might already have sent him copper/copper or whatever. Wonderful. We need to meet Gavagai and offer him copper/copper; if he accepts, that will hopefully intimidate Savant; if he declines and sends copper/copper back, we'll also decline and observe the situation; if he declines flat-out, he'll still notice our intent, which is better than him having to guess (if he takes this as a sign that he can strike at Krill freely, that's also good for us).

At the same time, we need to improve relations with Savant if possible, and in a subtle manner suggesting strength, as you've already noted.


City growth is working out well for once; the plains mine at Lifeblood will finish just as Vermin grows to take the grass mine; the mines at Ignis shall finish just as the GSci is born; the worker at Sicil will finish improving the sheep as the city grows to size8; all that. I want these granaries now.

About X9 ("QRTHDSHT") -- we'll use two chops and a whip to build a barracks there on T91. The barracks will be more useful than a library here, I think -- this city will always be on the front lines or right behind them -- but of course, we'll be delaying the cultural defense bonus and giving Yuri more time to exploit his direct avenue of attack. He hasn't added soldiers in the last few turns, though, and his capital is down to size3 (settler whip?).


For the record, 119 food would have been ranked #5 at this point.

Savant is closing the soldiers gap still. I think he's approaching 130,000. His low GNP gives me hope that we've pulled ahead of him, but he's still very competitive with us in food and MFG and might gain Alphabet himself any turn now.

I've also had a look at the Khatunate's land; I've counted 6 cottages (us: 10) but their gold mine will certainly compensate; they don't seem to be pursuing a Great Scientist, as I couldn't find a library (I might have overlooked it), but they have granaries up in most cities. dtay has ikhandas and granaries in every city we can see (the capital lacks an ikhanda, though). The Khatunate's map info on Joey is too outdated to draw any conclusions.

[Bacchus]

This looks really good. We have a nice curve of mature and growing cities, Vermin is a superb city (if nothing long-term on Sorpigal, which might also get Moaied), and the cities will be at a good point of maturity by the time we start agressively pushing for the island settles.

Diplomatically, we really want to get Savant on side and suggest a race in expanding out, not in building units. He has circumnav, and I'm sure he'd rather be using that then get stuck in a classical war. Our numids dissuade him further, and I don't think he will seriously war once we get HBR. Archery might be a useful thing to get though, as it has that deterrent value on top of the beakers-for-hammers trade.

Really unfortunate on your first wider Pitboss experience so far, but that's exactly the risk with new players. We are gonna have to move RB to the cloud for hosting as well, I think, which shouldn't be difficult in this day and age.

[Coeurva]

I only wish Vermin would grow faster; look at that food surplus. We might be able to add a grass farm, although the workers at X9 will be occupied with the chops before that. Its hammer output is certainly dreamy and the silver mine doesn't hurt.

I think we can 1t Archery next turn using research builds and perhaps some scientists on extremely short contracts (come for the Civ play, stay for the insightful social commentary), so that's what I'll try -- both Whitehall and Rhapsody could build archers next; both have reason to do so. Agree that we need HBR, but it would be painful to forgo a religion at CoL in its favour...

I might move two chariots inside X9 north within view of his work boat (if possible), just to signal Savant that he can forget about two-pronging us.

What's worrying me is that Yuri immediately logged out when the turn rolled. We still have an enforced peace to T93, so that would be a strange advance warning if he intends to resume war against us... but what I fear is that he's now in a war with dtay. I doubt he built these ikhandas for maintenance, and perhaps not for the culture either (although that's certainly possible, especially since Gobwin Knob lacks one).

Surprise, there's a new turn. If no one logs in right now, I'll play it.

[Coeurva]

T88

Set research to Archery with Sicil and Rhapsody building Research (the 1t settler delay doesn't hurt us here, I think) -- just enough to 1t it. Working a hamlet over the clams for this turn, solely because Rhapsody is at the happy cap and therefore doesn't benefit as much from food/growth (and we don't want to whip for 50h in this situation). We'll retake the clams for building fh units afterwards, which is what I think Rhapsody will be doing over the next turns until we can add more happiness. But it's not the worst task for it, since it frees up our other cities for growth.

JR4 offered us Open Borders, and I accepted. They might actually be less inclined to offer them once we've researched Currency, I thought; we want to show them that we support them against pretty much each of their neighbours (Joey, dtay, Savant); we want to build good relations so that they don't attack X10; and finally we do gain extra commerce (2cpt right now) -- they have a size8 capital and size9 Holy City, as well as productive island cities, so we're not getting shafted just because Rhapsody is larger. Nobody else has open borders, by the way.

Lifeblood swapped its build to a galley, its contribution to research isn't needed (last turn it was handy to push our bpt to a multiple of 5). We could whip it, but Lifeblood has built such a whip counter that I think slow-building is better.

I've also loaded the warrior inside Styx onto the galley. We'll unload the second worker into the second forest next turn, then use the warrior to explore the southern island.

We've dropped to third place in food. Dear me. We manage 108 in GNP at 0% science, though. Of course, almost half of that is research builds.

Savant now has eight cities and built the ninth settler in Harmondale with a double-whip. He's fierce at keeping up in city count, which makes me think he must be close to Alphabet, or he must have researched it already -- something must be keeping him afloat in GNP. My understanding of IMP isn't that you have to race out more settlers (since commerce will still limit you) but rather that you have more turns on which to build things not named settlers, and thus also to grow your cities. His work boat will probably spot the two chariots heading north; but all the better.

[Coeurva]

T89

We're overcompensating for the usual turn pace; I'm not complaining. Dark Savant only ends turn after we play; I'll add two archers to Ignis asap.


Lifeblood grows in 2t and has 22t of whip anger; it will build the X11 settler after the galley finishes, for whom I have some new ideas, see below. Styx is working a jungled banana, sadly the highest-food tile in the first ring. I'm still not trusting Savant not to snipe our workers (or work boats), which is why I'm not improving the horses -- we don't have the units to cover them. He's probably moving his units, if any, either towards Sorpigal or towards his new cities, because the garrisons we can see are quite underwhelming (Harmondale is back to spear + warrior).


We have struck gold. We're not bricking the deer or giving up double fish for it, though. I hope there's some other way to work the gold; we'll find out soon. The southern island looks workable, if a bit marginal before we have any options to pop borders cheaply, but irrigated wheat + plains horses with options for fish and banana? I could ask for worse; that's one possible X11 spot.


Here's the other one, along with an idea for later. The stone island city, once it pops borders (which is why it's not going to be X11), could put some pressure on Yuri, as we could use it as a base to fork Seattle and Constantinople by galley, whereas his cities are all on the wrong side (although he can leave galleys in the water, e.g. 89 of Seattle). Even the threat will suffice to divert some of his units, widening his front.

The X11 idea is to settle next to the dry rice, taking crabs from the get-go, and hoping for seafood on the western coast of Hammerhead, which is where Lifeblood's galley will scout -- or the chariot that's going to whack the barb axe, which will gain Sentry if it wins. Fingers crossed.

It's too late to comment on demos and graphs, but I'll leave them here. Note that Import-Export is still ranked at 0 despite our OB with JR4, which I'll take as an indication that we've struck a fair deal. (We have three trade routes each worth 3c with their cities right now.)





Yuri isn't adding Power, which is a relief to see.