[SPOILERS] Chevalier Mal Fet and Marcopolothefraud lead a Soviet Down Under

[marcopolothefraud]

Crazy thought, marco: What if you took Desert Folkore with your eventual pantheon? That would make the desert for you a lot like the tundra for me, with the drawback that feeding cities in that area will be hard. But you will have about 3-4 cities adjacent to the big desert, and if you stack DF + Eye of the Sahara + Australian appeal you could build some wondrous holy sites out there. Getting the sites up initially would be a challenge, but after that those cities could build anything. 

Too bad China's in the game or Petra would even be on the table. 



I also added an Order of Battle tab to the spreadsheet, since Woden finished another longship. I estimated each player's military as best I could, so we don't get blindsided by attacks. That should also set our own force requirements for defense and, eventually, attack and conquest.

I have to admit, I'd be very surprised if Desert Folklore isn't taken by now. If it's on the table of course I'll take it. If not, probably something production-based or faith-based. 

Surprisingly enough, I think Petra still might be competitive. Roland is a newbie, and doesn't know how much desert is in my lands. We don't know how much desert is in his lands either...if it's less than 3 tiles it might not be worthwhile. He might rush for Great Library or Mahabodhi Temple (2 free apostles can go a long way), because in most situations those two wonders are probably better than Petra. It'll be a big gamble to get Petra, obviously, but it would buff MBDTF by a lot. 

Re:the Order of Battle tab...it looks like it could be useless busywork, or seriously important intel that could change our planning and strategy. I'm already spending a lot of time on the game as is, but I guess I could devote 5 extra minutes every day to fill in that tab.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

You don't need to fill it out, I can work out most things just from strength fluctuations. Don't worry about it. I just don't want to be blindsided by things.

[marcopolothefraud]

Turn 55

Nothing to report. Natural Philosophy will be researched by turn 65, but my settler will be finished by turn 61. That means I will lose out a little bit on Urban Planning, wasting 12 production in the process, but gain +11 more science per turn by t65. That'll be really nice.

[marcopolothefraud]

Enter Jay-Z 

I was *so close* to naming my second city Reasonable Doubt, after Jay-Z’s debut studio album. It’s Jay-Z’s best album. I like it more than Illmatic - more than any 90’s hip-hop album, in fact. I think it comes down to two things. First, it contains near-perfect boom-bap instrumental beats that I can’t find anywhere else. Second, Jay-Z’s rhythm and flow is so delightfully weird. He breaks off his sentences, pauses mid-measure, and abruptly doubles or halves his tempo seemingly at random.


Oh, crap, I guess I forgot to introduce Jay-Z himself.

Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter) might be the archetype of the drug-dealer turned rapper. He grew up in the Marcy Projects public housing complex in New York City, raised by a single mother, and turned to selling crack cocaine to support his family. According to his lyrics, it apparently worked tremendously well. He learned crucial business strategies from his drug-dealing days on the streets...though he really was one-in-a-million not to lose his life or be imprisoned by such a risky job.

When he transitioned into music, he was determined to continue using his business talents. He co-founded his own record label, Roc-a-Fella Records, and released all his albums himself - taking care of distribution and marketing along the way. He had an insane work ethic, too.

Between 1996 and 2000, Nas only released three studio albums (plus one collaborative album). Jay-Z released five: one for each year. Imagine that! For each album, he had to release at least 2-4 singles and shoot music videos for them, so that he could market it to prospective customers. He had to prepare live tours and festivals, to sell tickets and merchandise and make even more money. Most of all, he had to make sure the music was good: he needed to carry enough lyrical and musical ideas to make quality songs that were worth relistening to.

I think it paid off well. All of these albums still sound great to this day, even if none of them are as good as Reasonable Doubt. Vol. 2...The Life and Times is hailed as a hip-hop classic (it won a Grammy Award), though personally I like Vol. 1 more.

In these four years, I can safely say that Nas’ star was falling while Jay-Z’s was rising. Illmatic was still critically acclaimed and sounded great, but many people thought that Jay-Z could make an album to rival it - hell, he might already have rivalled and surpassed Illmatic. The two hip-hop legends would finally cross paths in 2001.

Heh, remember when I did these little write-ups? Sorry about falling behind.

The Blueprint

"Hov is back, life stories told through rap. N****s acting like I sold you crack, like I told you sell drugs, no, Hov did that. So hopefully you won't have to go through that. I was raised in the projects, roaches and rats. Smokers out back sellin' their mama's sofa, lookouts on the corner focused on the ave. Ladies in the window, focused on the kinfolk. Me under a lamppost, why I got my hand closed?"

- Izzo (H.O.V.A.), the lead single from the Blueprint.

The Blueprint saw Jay-Z become more braggadocious, charismatic and (somewhat) more introspective than ever before. He'd been biographical before, rapping about selling crack and making it big in the music industry. But The Blueprint might've been the first time he sounded so dominant, so far ahead of everyone else. In "Izzo", he calls himself Hov, as in Jehovah. As if he's the God of rap.

Of course, that meant that he had to attack Nas.

"I know you miss it, Nas, the fame, but along with celebrity comes 'bout 70 shots to your frame...Smarten up, Nas! Four albums in 10 years, n****? I could divide: that's one every… let's say two, two of them shits was due. One was "nah...," the other was Illmatic. That's a one-hot-album-every-10-year average.

"A wise man told me, "Don't argue with fools", ‘cause people from a distance can't tell who is who. So stop with that childish shit, n****, I'm grown. Please leave it alone, don't throw rocks at the throne. Do not bark up that tree, that tree will fall on you. I don't know why your advisers ain't forewarn you."

- Takeover

"Takeover" might be one of the best songs on the Blueprint. I can only guess at how shocking this must've been. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people loved Nas' "four albums in 10 years", and respected him as one of the greatest rappers alive. 

Next time, we cover Nas' response to Jay-Z's Takeover, and examine why their feud became one of the most important in hip-hop history. If you want to read my previous writeups, I've put links to them on the first post of this thread.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Archduke is up to his old tricks - he conquered a city-state on his turn. His empire score is as high as mine, with no districts! I'm getting 8 score from districts, so that's 1 more city and 3 more pop/buildings (figure 2 pop and a monument at the city-state?). I'm about 10-15 turns out (depending on the second galley out of KS) from my own attack on Hong Kong.

Nothing else to report on my turn - IA grew to size 2 and swapped to max production, getting the holy site out in 5 turns (the same 9 turn completion time as if I'd worked the production tile from the beginning, only now with more science/culture/etc.). There is something funky going on with spreading FWHW there, though - the city now doesn't show a conversion time at all, but I should flip it in in 7 turns. Don't know what's going on, I'll check next turn to see if the pop growth just caused the interface to fritz out.

[marcopolothefraud]

Turn 56

My builders were hard at work this turn. One placed a mine at Illmatic and another placed a mine at the Blueprint. I also researched Archery, which opened up a big chunk of the tech tree:



Construction will be very useful for me, because it will turn some of my forests into 2/3 tiles or even 2/4 tiles. (It's generally frowned upon to put lumber mills on forest hills, right? Better chop those forests instead.) However, we're still in the Ancient Era, and researching future techs will give me a 20% penalty if I remember correctly. So I spent one turn researching Masonry instead.

The two missing techs are Iron Working (build an Iron Mine) and Shipbuilding (build 2 Galleys). Shipbuilding will be very useful, unlocking Quadriremes, but Iron Working will only be situationally useful - maybe just to increase my city's defensive strength or fulill a city-state quest. I hope Iron Working is a leaf tech.

Ideally, we want to get to Horseback Riding as quickly as possible, because it's a bottleneck technology. CMF has already boosted Celestial navigation. He's also well on his way to boost Mathematics and Shipbuilding. That leaves Engineering for me.

I think it's a good idea for me to build Ancient Walls, probably in Illmatic because of its high production capacity, and use it to boost Engineering. Machu Picchu would be nice to have, and feasible because China can't use its wonder bonuses on a Mountain-side wonder. Then again, I'd rather put my production towards some military instead of a Wonder.



Here's a brief overview of Russia. Look at the minimap; if you squint a little bit, it looks a little like real-life Iberia and France. I suppose this makes Andalusia barren tundra and Benelux a desert wasteland. Or does it resemble Japan, if all of its islands were fused together?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Enter Jay-Z 

Heh, remember when I did these little write-ups? Sorry about falling behind.

The Blueprint

"Hov is back, life stories told through rap. N****s acting like I sold you crack, like I told you sell drugs, no, Hov did that. So hopefully you won't have to go through that. I was raised in the projects, roaches and rats. Smokers out back sellin' their mama's sofa, lookouts on the corner focused on the ave. Ladies in the window, focused on the kinfolk. Me under a lamppost, why I got my hand closed?"

- Izzo (H.O.V.A.), the lead single from the Blueprint.

The Blueprint saw Jay-Z become more braggadocious, charismatic and (somewhat) more introspective than ever before. He'd been biographical before, rapping about selling crack and making it big in the music industry. But The Blueprint might've been the first time he sounded so dominant, so far ahead of everyone else. In "Izzo", he calls himself Hov, as in Jehovah. As if he's the God of rap.

Of course, that meant that he had to attack Nas.

"I know you miss it, Nas, the fame, but along with celebrity comes 'bout 70 shots to your frame...Smarten up, Nas! Four albums in 10 years, n****? I could divide: that's one every… let's say two, two of them shits was due. One was "nah...," the other was Illmatic. That's a one-hot-album-every-10-year average.

"A wise man told me, "Don't argue with fools", ‘cause people from a distance can't tell who is who. So stop with that childish shit, n****, I'm grown. Please leave it alone, don't throw rocks at the throne. Do not bark up that tree, that tree will fall on you. I don't know why your advisers ain't forewarn you."

- Takeover

"Takeover" might be one of the best songs on the Blueprint. I can only guess at how shocking this must've been. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people loved Nas' "four albums in 10 years", and respected him as one of the greatest rappers alive. 

Next time, we cover Nas' response to Jay-Z's Takeover, and examine why their feud became one of the most important in hip-hop history. If you want to read my previous writeups, I've put links to them on the first post of this thread.

I'm glad these are ongoing! I've absolutely no familiarity with the genre or the personalities at all, so your writeups are going onto a blank slate. 

how common in rap is it for artists to directly call each other out in their albums? I'm not sure I know of any other artistic genre with that level of entanglement between works from different people. 

Turn 56

Russia had a quieter turn, as we have no builders and won't until our Golden Age is assured and the Hong Kong attack force is in the water! 




In the south, our warriors push into the high southern latitudes, above the tree line now. Thick blizzards howl across the frozen wastes, the sun circles the horizon without ever setting in summer - but vanishes entirely for months at a time in winter. There is no plant life and little animal life to be found, but our brave men subsist on seal meat and push deeper in search of foul barbarians, bent on invading the more hospitable lands around Imperator Aleksandr. 

I've actually managed to come between the scout and his camp, which must be just out of sight to the southwest. That hopefully will allow me to prevent an eruption - although this warrior might be a sign that said eruption is already ongoing. With discipline slotted until I get foreign trade, I go ahead and take a whack at the barbarian warrior:




Near Knyaz Suvurov, we reach Cape Cheyulskin and leave the land behind. There's no sign of the Indonesians, but I spot a reef with turtles just to the north. Possibly a small island? I will venture there next turn. We boldly go where many men have gone before! 




Here's my tech tree, marco, with eurekas:




The Wheel wants only a builder out of Imperator Aleksandr, which can mine the silver for the eureka. Mathematics will come when I finish the Plaza at Aleksandr a few turns after that, and Celestial Nav waits on the builder out of IA and the next builder out of Borodino (since my nets were not just pillaged but destroyed utterly.  ). I'm leaving techs 1 turn from completion until the era rolls - you don't get a research penalty for "ahead of time" techs, they just cost more. So the investment of beakers is the same, but I can save by leaving the ancient stuff until turn 60. I'm dumping my beakers into the useful Celestial Nav, which Phoenicia I note already possesses, in order to open up my own harbors. 

Same story with culture:




Dumping research into Defensive Tactics. We MIGHT be able to inspire this one - a war dec by one of us results in the other partner getting the inspiration. Hell, we both might get it. It might be worth thinking about declaring a phony war on someone non-threatening (ie, probably China and Indonesia), waiting out the 10 turns, then peacing out if we can. Phoenicia's high culture might also mean they already have Defensive Tactics, in which case they'd be a good choice if we're willing to risk longships and biremes. That doesn't have to happen soon, or at all, it's just a card in our hand to think about playing. 

Once costs come down, I'll head back over to Foreign Trade (assuming I don't inspire it before the era change), then Theology. Hopefully I can find PP soon! Need one more city-state...probably off one of our northern coasts. 

Overview of Russia:




Last concern is converting Imperator ALeksandr. It'll take 14 turns at current rates, far too slow for my tastes. I could build a shrine at Borodino and get my missionary out. One charge at IA, then head over and convert The Blueprint? Has to happen eventually, but I want to save my faith for settler purchases. I'll see if I can work out a budget so I can get all 5 remaining spots on my island settled between natural production and faith purchases. 

Abroad, Archduke finished civic #6, Kaiser #5. Both have very strong culture games. I'm going to take second place in science in the known world next turn, behind Australia, so our team overall will lead in beaker rate. I'm doing okay on empire score and expansion, factoring in the Hong Kong assault followed by 2? settlers (KS+Borodino), then whatever I can faith purchase. All remaining settlers will come out of IA, more or less constantly on that duty with perhaps one pause for a Campus in there.

[williams482]

Dumping research into Defensive Tactics. We MIGHT be able to inspire this one - a war dec by one of us results in the other partner getting the inspiration. Hell, we both might get it. It might be worth thinking about declaring a phony war on someone non-threatening (ie, probably China and Indonesia), waiting out the 10 turns, then peacing out if we can. Phoenicia's high culture might also mean they already have Defensive Tactics, in which case they'd be a good choice if we're willing to risk longships and biremes. That doesn't have to happen soon, or at all, it's just a card in our hand to think about playing. 

If that works, wouldn't you also get Australia's +100% production bonus in the bargain? I'm not sure if that's a point in favor, or a point against on the grounds of it being too gamey.

[marcopolothefraud]

Ah, I think I understand research now. Until the era changes, I think I'll research Construction (completely without the eureka), and then beeline Shipbuilding once we find it. Quadriremes are significantly more useful than Galleys are, I think.

I agree with Williams482 that a phony war is a bit explotitative. I thought Tactical DoWs were banned, and this strikes me as resembling one.

Don't worry about converting The Blueprint anytime soon. It's not going to have a Holy Site for another ~15 turns.

Turn 57

I finished Craftsmanship, slotted in the Agoge policy, and I'm currently going for Natural Philosophy for the campus adjacency card. (+11 science from that card will always trump Urban Planning, Ilkum and for the most part Colonization, right? I just don't see any production bonuses that can compete with that much science.)

Otherwise, my turn was uneventful. Woden's Norwegian civilization founded its 3rd city, I think.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Finished my +3 campus, for 2 era score. I also found another continent, which did NOT get me an era point like I expected, so, uh, fuck. 

Right now, the only idea I've got is to knock out a bunch of birds with one stone and declare war on Woden. He's probably distant from us, I'm kicking out galleys like no tomorrow anyway, and by declaring war on him we get the boost to Recorded History, which he won't get (already got it from ljubljana), I meet ljubljana and get that era point, and we're not gaming the system to proc Australia's gimmick, we're chasing era points and inspirations. It's a play we'd make even without Australia, so I don't see that it's verboten. 

Unless there's another era point to be scrounged in...4 turns?