TBS does a thread

[The Black Sword]

Some T75 economic comparisons first:






Decided to get the 2nd GP in my capital after all, I can triple chop out the market so it's the fastest to get to 4 specialists. Looking at a golden age at T90. Looking back at this plan I wonder is putting the hammers into the Temple of Artemis would have been a better idea, but the first chop is already away. Anyway, it will be my main military pump after that.



Hybrid city. Commerce infrastructure might be worth it eventually but for now it's interested in Forge/Cothon/Units.



For all my insulting of Hadrumentum is has managed to be quite useful. Long term it will be giving away most of it's tiles though. So infrastructure probably isn't worth it and it will focus on units. Currently going to whip the galley for the last island city.



Thapsus will probably sit at size 5 forever working these commerce tiles, at least until Cairo falls and it gets the crabs back. I think I prefer to give all the shared tiles to Ligurian to maximise multiplier buildings.



So this will be the 2nd major commerce city long term.



Leptis, once burned by the Dutch will be the main one. Going two 2 chop + 3-whip this market and keep growing.



Island commerce/GP city. It needs the market for happiness reasons. Plan was to let the whip unhappiness die off then grow to size 10 to 5-whip it in ... Not sure I'll have the time to grow back for the golden age though. Need to check that out.



Future National Epic city. Since the capital is getting the 200gpp there isn't as much hurry to set this up, so I'll save the forest for then. Instead we'll manually collect 30h before 4-whipping the market.



Got to work the citizen to complete the Moai this turn... There probably was an optimisation not to do that, but it would have been very far back. I think I put this Moai plan in place like 10t ago and this was the best I could do.



A very productive hybrid city. Will help grow cottages for Leptis. It will supply the settler for the island city, via a 3-whip to utilise it's big food surplus, then we'll focus on forge/units.



Latest city, with a pre-chopped granary and ready fish resource, off to a fast start. Can only do commerce long term. Unfortunately Cornflakes northern city has finally build a culture source, a Library, so I have to figure out whether I can chop out a Library myself in time to hold the fish, or if I just have to whip a monument. 

This city cost me 12gpt btw, and you can see it already makes 9 back thanks to Currency. That's why I decided to settle the last island city, which will even have 4g trade routes instead of 3gpt.

So, 11 cities, 71 pop and 10 workers.

On the topic of workers, I really agonised over building the last one. Once I stop settling new cities I often find it hard to convince myself to build more. But I also always find myself a bit shorter on worker turns than I'd like. So I decided to er on the side of 1 extra. He definitely hasn't been wasting them so far, so I'm pretty happy with it.

[The Black Sword]

In Geopolitics, scooter and Comm are building armies. Scooter has HAs and just started whipping chucklenaughts. I'm still trying to find Comm's stack, but I bet it will be over by AT. That's not a good thing for me. 

Scooter has communicated a desire to split Cornflakes instead, to which my response has been pretty lukewarm. It's just hard to see me getting anything but some cities swamped in enemy culture and an angry Dutch army out of the deal. From scooter's perspective, the front city is Rotterdam, holding GLH and MoM. He doesn't need any more progress to make a profit. My best unit is currently axes, and while Cornflakes has triremes, war elephants and catapults already. I'm very reluctant to start throwing meat into the grinder yet.

On the other hand, if AT is split, I will fall behind the other 2. Maybe I should just be trying to change the calculus, cripple Cornflakes for a long term meal, while diverting scooter's army so AT might be able to hold off Commodore. I can't decide. I did figure a way to send a signal to scooter though:


I guess I should make a call next turn. 

Some pics for planning purposes:

[superdeath]

What would you say you love, and hate about this map. And what would you have me change mapmaker wise in the future?

[sunrise089]

Any thoughts you can share about your city trade to Cornflakes TBS?

[The Black Sword]

He got quite a big stack together, and I'm pretty annoyed with myself that I didn't manage to sniff out its size when I had a scout in the area.

I did think he would be more worried about scooter, but it looked like scooter was going to stab me when Cornflakes declared, so there was probably some diplo going on there.

Ultimately I didn't think I could hold the city. It would take him a few turns to bombard down the walls but I couldn't get enough cats ready in time to deal with his stack by then. If it wasn't for scooter I would have held till he took down the defenses and then retreated. But scooter's units were way too coincidentally positioned, I was pretty sure he was going to attack me next turn. And I couldn't defend both. So I figured I was better off just giving up one city rather than two. 

Giving up the culture really hurts though, makes retaking very difficult and ruins my happy cap. (Btw, superdeath, since you asked, you forgot to give me calendar resources ).

Feeling like I probably can't win from here, and annoyed at CF and scooter, so I'm in the Commodore camp atm. Usually I cool down and try to figure out some path to victory after a few turns though.

[superdeath]

I did? God...damnit

[pindicator]

Feeling like I probably can't win from here, and annoyed at CF and scooter, so I'm in the Commodore camp atm. Usually I cool down and try to figure out some path to victory after a few turns though.

I feel for you. I would have found that very upsetting in your shoes, and would have to take some time to cool down as well. Hope you can find a plan forward towards victory, and if that is impossible then here's to finding the alternate victory condition to keep the game fun!

[The Black Sword]

I guess I must still have half a plan, otherwise I would have popped this:


I still have a good geographical position for 3rd place and 3p games are inherently unstable. Unless Scooter and Comm come out of the current setup extremely closely matched, one of them will be behind and be forced to make a move. Attack the other guy is good for me, or eat a neighbour and I can share the meal. I don't think I can do anything pro-active right now, just try to build and wait for an opportunity.

That building constitutes a golden age where I will try snipe the Aes-> Lit wonders from Cornflakes. He was a turn ahead of me to Literature, but he doesn't know he has competition. He's still probably favored, but I've got some good hammer cities, golden age, and I'll revolt to OR. Worst case scenario I trade 1h -> 2g in failgold.

[sunrise089]

TBS, it looks like you’re in/just went into a Golden Age, and you built some wonders. Any thoughts on that, AT’s departure from the game, or anything else related?

[The Black Sword]

I didn't get to say it earlier: GG AT!

It looks like a lot more exciting stuff is going on elsewhere between Comm and scooter, and Cornflakes is also popping off with Mom+Phi golden ages into probably all the era first-to boni. I still don't see much I can do externally to improve my position. I could maybe win a duel with Cornflakes(but quite probably would lose) but it won't help me get closer to scooter/Comm. I could for sure win a duel with Cairo, but we have the same problem. Even if I went hard to knights it's not going to be very cost-efficient gains vs Ballista-phants.

So I'm trying to find good internal development opportunities, while I wait for Comm/Scooter to do something, or I get to next era tech to think about fighting Cairo. I did manage to build the Parthenon and the Temple of Artemis during my golden age. Unfortunately Cornflakes took TGL, with either a GE or a very well prepared overflow chain. I also built the Great Wall, because I might as well in my NE city.

I'm looking at going for the monk wonders next to give me something to put my hammers into. I've been expecting Comm to build the AP for a while, but given the effort he put into the scooter fight I think he might not be. I've started working on it myself and next turn I'll complete Paper and go for Sankore. Nobody else has Paper yet at least.  If Comm completes the AP in the meantime I can hopefully switch religion to Hinduism and still get Sankore, I'll have the missionary ready. I'll probably have the golden age ready for such a swap in ~10t thanks to Parthenon.

For some reason I got out of Organized religion before starting these hammer-heavy projects. Don't ask me why (I was greedy for coins  ).