If there are requests ahead of the T100 report later (I will do a world map stitch), post them tonight and I will make sure they are included tomorrow.
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[SPOILERS PB71]Krill: By the numbers, when the walls fell (on everyone else)
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I'm going to be honest with you. I'm basically winging the workers at this point, and I have rep and three pre calendar happy so I have no happy cap issues. I'll do a full city work up though to show how I am using the excess happy though. I will lose the ivory on T101 so I can explain what effect that will have (short answer, very little except stops war elephant whips for a few turns).
What's your feeling on low quality, random maps at this point? You seem to be enjoying the game. Would you sign up for another?
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
I am less concerned about my ability to drag a poor start to a decent position than I am concerned that other players will screw up and then throw the game. Just look at what SD did with his start, and how he screwed up the PB69 position. That's really the floor in map quality I don't want to pass, and to be honest, I think this map is perhaps the hardest one to play out of the true random maps (including PB5).
I'd play another random map, but if players are of the calibre of SD I think we need a slightly kinder map.
I love Windows 11 Spech to text, but I’ve had to edit it so mistakes may have slipped through.
 So this is where we are at. It is the turn 100 report and lots of things are happening all at once. Unfortunately, I can only explain these and report these one at a time in this report. But there isn't really an order to how this is happening and how to respond to each other players actions. That said, Bing is the only player with military units in my territory. He has built a stack. It's not a scary stack but it is annoying. It's ancient era junk and it will die but it will only die cost efficiently if I have catapults. My vultures already get odds on each defending axe but not great odds. He has no way to take the city, there were just too many units on defence. He can't even get to the point where he will have maybe 20% odds in a battle. He has a decision to make and he has to make that decision based on what he thinks other people are going to do. He can try and walk past Olive and go towards Pomegranate. It will take him a while to get there and he has no 2 movers. If he wants to pillage, he's got to delay the entire stack or split the stack. And if he splits this stack, it will die very quickly. He's got those extra three units catching up and that just doesn't bother me. Realistically, I was going to need to use three catapults anyway to wipe his stack (as a minimum). Add those extra three units in it and it doesn't really matter, still need at least three catapult. The problem is I don't finish construction until next turn till end of turn. 101 so I can't build and then whip a cat for turn 103. So I can't move it to 104. By that turn, it can be on the Jungle Hill next to the marble. Then in Pomegranate. If he doesn't pillage any tiles he could cut off Olive. And he absolutely can pillage both of the happy resources there. But beyond that I'm not really sure what he can achieve. However, Bing might have done diplomacy with superdeath and with Pindicator. And if this were a three way attack then realistically I will struggle to defend. I'm almost certain I can defend two of them with a little bit of give and take. I can wipe out one, then I can go back and deal with the other. It hurts but against three players I don't think I can cover the third, but most players stuck in the middle wouldn't be able to cover everything due to hammer costs. I don't see how anyone could expect to defend against a 3 player dog pile at this stage of the game unless all those players were incompetent. Bing isn't incompetent. He's just not fantastic. Super death is untrustworthy but pindicators generally competent. Specifically, with regards to Bings stack, he's got. 4 axes, 4 spears and two Bowman and then he will add on one extra axe and two spears. The spears are just free experience to vultures. If I can get to them. Not all of his axis even have combat 1. So after the first cat attack realistically a second catapult might even get odds on the defending unitt. siege is absolutely the way to wipe that stack out. However, there is an interesting point that out of all the players in this game, Bing is the one player whom I would defend. from last. So if I were to be dog piled, I would essentially be put in a position of having to king make and I would actually defend against Superdeath first, then Pindicator. Bing is the one player that I've wronged here, so he's the one that defends from last but he's also the one that's easiest to recapture cities from.  I do not trust Superdeath. My gut feeling from watching him in any number of games is that you cannot really trust Superdeath. Even if you get an agreement to go to war with somebody, he will flake out when it suits him. He doesn't really do pain or at least tolerate his own pain and blames everyone else for his mistakes (external locus of control). We came to an agreement given that it's AI diplomacy that. he gets Yuri and Commodore ,I get Bing and Pindicator now he may say "Krill you reneged on that. You've not killed Bing". I would argue that that is not entirely fair. I did raze a city, declared war and stayed at war, So you can't really say that it's been a cold war. He's not declared on Commodore. I'm not declared on Pindicator. So we can't really argue anything there. And then he went and killed a scout outside Yuris last city so if anything. he's already betrayed a level of trust. Now I don't know what he's got or where I don't know what units he has and where he's put them. Yuris has now traded for copper from Thoth, completely expected. Thoth wants super death to lose a few more Keshiks. if anything I'm the closest person to an all that Super death has in this game and yet he still being really untrustworthy So he's put me in a position where I am going to have to be far more ruthless with regards to checking the border with him. Unfortunately I've only got one scout at this moment and as much as I want to build another one. Um. you know priorities.  This scout is just going round and round, checking the border areas. We know Thoth has iron working. We know he's chopping for the sugar. Don't know if he's got calendar. Doubt it though. He should be heading there. Commodore, he's hooked his horse. He's got iron working. He's got iron hooked up. He's built a sword. That suddenly becomes a bit of a threat. There's only two Spears in Cherry and it's possible to move from the fog onto the copper. I need a unit to check that forest tile. This is one of the problems of being in the middle. You've got too many angles. You've got to cover all of them and I can't cover them all without going broke. You have to spend more hammers and spend more gold to do it. So you always leave gaps if you're in the middle, The Great Wall dealt with that a little bit, but this is one of the issues I've got. I can't actually afford to lose cherry. Cherry is the one city I've got that's been on pretty much constant units and I want to build the heroic epic. It can use lumber mills on all the forrests remaining. It's got enough food. but it's not going to be easy to defend Commodore' prefered city location for that clam, which will push him up to nine cities. I've not settled for the grass cow as that must surely annoy superdeath. But Cherry gets hit from all angles here, It really does need a few more units to hold it. But again, if I've got units coming in from Bing, if Pindicator has just finished machinery, where do things give? What I would really want to see is Thoth actually being aggressive towards Commodore and taking that wine city. I think it is a joke in some respects that Thoth went monarchy and then didn't settle for his wines. That's really, really poor. So Commodore with no military gets to build the most cities, doesn't hook up any resources doesn't do anything apart from growing. He never gets called on it again. There's not much you can do about that when you're stuck in the middle. The only two players who could call him on anything was me and unfortunately I've got a deal with Superdeath to stop hinm doing a Kashik rush into my face. And even if you do take out Commodore you actually don't have a safe backline (unless it's Thoth, I just get another neighbour) and you just extend yourself even further the only two viable targets for Sumeria really were Pindicator and Bing  I double checked screenshots from last turn and Pindicator had an 18 point score increase at the end of his turn. I know that Pin whipped one pop off Steinitz or whatever it's called and then got the 18 points score increase. That could be two pop be growing. He didn't regrow two pop in the cities I can see (Could have grown a pop in the city I can't see) so I must assume that 18 points is machinery. So right now we are on the clock, we have a stack from Bing to deal with and we've got Pindicator building samurai. The real big problem is that if I shark fin pindicator knows it and I become a target. My military score will spike and Pindicator may think it's defence against him. He has no units anywhere near being able to attack Rhubarb. He does not know what Bing is doing unless Bing is saying something to him in diplomacy and they have no way to trade. They have no currency so they have no gold trading. They have no trade network connection. There is no way for them to communicate apart from to say war with Krill. So perhaps Pindicator knows some of the war ie Bings intent. but he doesn't know what's happening. He can't time any attack. He cannot see into Rhubarb. That's what I need to keep an eye on. He could road a tile and immediately run a sentry onto the plains hill tile adjacent to Rhubarb and see an awful lot of land, and see everything behind it so he would know what is available to defend. So I actually have to keep units on hand visible to defend against that. They need to be adjacent to Rhubarb because they need to be able to move on to that plain's hill to attack anything that Pindicator puts there which puts me in a really awkward position. Now Plum has its barracks its size one.Really it needs to do two pop whips so. I need to get it to size 4 which actually is not gonna work. I need the units now. It will take it 10 turns to regrow for to be productive. I also have to be very careful with Rhubarb because it's been whipped pretty heavily and we have to whip it even harder still. Unfortunately the only thing I can do with it are two pop whips I can't get three pop into anything except markets and Ziggs. The one benefit I've really got is. Pindicator doesn't have much whip potential due to the lack of two food tiles, he has the whip as soon as the pop is grown  I'll go through the cities one at a time to discuss the specifics of it, but this is not an easy area to hold onto. Mongola/superdeath is to the South and it's got an easy approach over desert into forests and jungles where it's really hard to deal with Keshiks. There was a way for me to deal with him if he'd invaded. but the correct way for Mongolia to invade is actually through the centred immediately South of Apple and try and split all of the cities. You can't fork them because they're too far apart. And if you do try and fork pomegranate and Apple, you actually had to get close enough to the road network that the entire stack could get attacked and wiped without catapults with catapults. It actually becomes far easier to defend, but the same problem occurs if he runs at Cherry, which is out on a limb and I can't really hold it. So I need time to get it to get units back to cover. And the only thing that really covers teh area is the horse arches. Unfortunately horse archers aren't going to work to defend because Super death specifically now has a bunch of more highly trained Keshiks, so all of his will have odds. I actually need war elephants, but if I have ivory cut then I suddenly get cut off at the knees and doubt I can get war elephants out until after the Bing stack is removed. Realistically, a couple of elephants would have neutered any threat from Superdeath and in fact there's no evidence that Super death is going to attack me. It's just my paranoia, but that becomes more of a problem and if things start to get badly for me, it's possible for things to quickly devolve as more and more people try and dogpile me. I'm not far from getting a great scientist for an academy and I have got a couple of cottages down being worked. There's actually two. cottages at the Capitol being worked by Apple and other three worked by Pear. There's three cottages at rhubarb being worked. It's not too bad actually with the Currency trade routes. Overall, the empire's relatively secure for being in the middle, but there's going to be questions asked by every player who invades that I need to answer. Should I have gone for currency or should I have just gone for Construction and played it safe? It's not something I can actually answer now. We'll only know in the next 10 to 15 turns. It's a fair question, but the same issue exists now as on turn 90: If I'd have missed Mids and I'd gone construction, my economy would be shattered and I'd be worse off than most other players. Currency at least means that no matter how hard I whip and how many units I build, I'll always have an opportunity to recover with wealth build and market.  Apple is really easy to understand. Once it finishes with the scientists, I put them onto actual tiles. I generate a bit more food and I grow to the happy cap. This is complicated by potentially losing happy resources. But ultimately, that's the strategy. If there are further challenges and I need more units and I'll lose had resources. You know what? I just have to whip units. Not ideal but that's the reality of the game. Apple really needs to be considered with pear at this point because pear is working cottagess for Apple. Pear can't really sacrifice itself anymore because it's the city with nothing but plains. For those who read PB5. What I'm essentially doing now is a variance of what I did in PB5 where I had Brennus, specifically charismatic. It's basically grow a capital as large as you can and then rely on bureaucracy and an academy. It's not exactly a new strategy and it has many weaknesses in this instance. If I can remain at peace The capital, I said. remain in a bit of war for the past 20 odd turns. but that city's probably the probably the most acting dedicate to research. given the fact that until I have a safe backline, it's probably going to be total war from now on. And so in a lot of respects, that Academy is an investment in the long term.  Pear is really not doing much. It has one job right now, and that is to build the Hanging Gardens. And I know there are lurkers out there saying, why are you building a wonder when you think you're facing an existential war and there's two points to that one? The great person points will speed up the second great person, which speeds up the potential golden age. Secondly hammer transfer. I've got stone. Even in considering the expansive aqueduct hanging gardens cost 240 hammers. It will give me a minimum of 210 back, if I can somehow get out another settler then I might squeak the extra pop to make complete breakeven. I also need the health in the long term. This is worst case scenario stuff right. worst case scenario, it should still pay back and it takes it adenies it. Takes it away from the industrious Pindicator who would whip that population into samurai. I do not want to deal with Samurai. After HG Pear will probably get whipped into the ground.  I've already talked a little bit about cherry. I am gonna whip away the two scientists In fact, after ending turn, I had a look. I do not think I have to run the scientists in either Pomegranate or cherry next to turn. The question is, what do I want to whip? The reality is that I right now need to get out a couple of cats. I need catapults to sit at rhubarb. I need catapults to deal with Bing stack. I didn't really want to whip here, but the reality is it doesn't help me that much work in plains forest tile so whipping is the right choice. It's got the library. It will get 3rd ringboards at some point. If Commodore settles for that cla eventually he will pop borders and he will potentially be able to one move into cherry at that point. At that point I am going to need a lot of units to hold cherry or more realistically I'm going to have to be really aggressive with Commodore but Cherry is already making four culture per turn. It will put four culture per turn into the tile to SE of the copper, If Commodore is very gentle, puts down a city, puts in religion then he may not claim the relevant tiles and the clam city is not a threat. but I doubt it as he is going to use the religious wonders this game so he will likely make too much culture. But that is not a fight for today. That is a fight for 40 turns down the line.  Pomegranate is such a challenging city. I really, really need to get iron working to chop some of these jungles to get another farm down, and to get the gems up. That's actually what I'm going to leave research on after construction, but I'm not likely to finish it anytime soon. With that in mind and with the fact that Apple really wants to steal the gems back when it's researching and to steal the grass on farm, Pomegranate doesn't have much left. And because it's got no food resource, I can't really afford to whip it below size 3. So you know, it's size 6. It's not got an awful lot it can work. The marbles like two turns from being hooked up and I need units right now. So again, it's almost certainly going to get whipped. I will do everything I can to keep the second grass farm there. I mean, thank God for the stable food really. I think best case scenario, I can keep it on like 5 to 3 size double whips because it's got a bit of food now and it's already size 6 and I'm going to whip out catapult first so it actually will be ahead of the curve a little bit with regards to growth. Pomegranate hasn't got barracks but that's partly going to be resolved by the fact that I'm chopping a forest two tiles west of the city. Walls almost completed here so I'm going to have to micro quite carefully in terms of the units that it builds. The spear sitting at 4 hammers I'm going to leave to be a potential double whip for a couple of turns make sure the the barracks is done first. Because when dealing with a non aggressive player who's got quite heavy on Spears that extra combat two really does help. Bing's also invested in barracks and he's got combat one spears it just helps significantly in the flexibility for attacking units in clean up. There's a ziggurut almost completed as well. I wish I'd finish that Ziggurat because the ziggurat in olive and in pomegranate it would really help just getting research visibility on a few players but you know that is what it is. so yeah chop the barracks whip out a catapult and probably a second catapult and then evaluate...  Rhubarb is in as good position as it possibly can be with regards to culture But it will not get its secondary tiles back from Staunton. Because of that, it's pretty much always going to be at risk of assault from Pindicator and he will always have one solid landing tile, which is a hill and then it's just a numbers game. Do I have enough units to kill whateverhe puts on that hill whenever he puts them there? Right now, the answer is no. But then again, he can't put anything onto that hill either. Two movers aren't necessarily a problem. Pindicator has hooked his horse. I don't know if he's got horseback riding, but unless he's got a stack of 6 to 8 horse archers that I haven't seen him build and aren't showing up in the power graph Rhubarb will hold. It's about to finish walls. It has a couple of units in there. The biggest risk is predicator coming across with some samurai and trebuchet. The best way. I can think of to manage that sort of stack is catapults. You need at least one catapult to every three hitters that he would have, and one elephant fopr each spear, and one horse archer per Samurai. It turns out that it takes more hammers to defend than it would take for him to attack because those are not cheap units. Unfortunately, there's no wayto do a zone defence because of the cultural position. Pindicator might try and bring some units like crossbows. put a crossbow on a hill with guerilla one and it's a bit of a pain as it will eat catapults alive, especially because they're protective but war elephants will do okay against them once they get hit by collateral. So, but that's 1 of the reasons why I'm going to have to get the ivory hooked ASAP at Olive if being disconnected, but also because if you look at the happiness in this city, you realise just how close it is to running into unhappiness. Unfortunately, I'm just gonna have to accept that. I will have to micro around working the hills for a short while though to minimise some of those issues. Once construction is completed, I have to build into a catapult, double whip it, and then show it to Pindicator and say "Ho ho ho. I have a catapult". You have to know what you're walking into. I would prefer to have done that with a War elephant, but Bing put paid to that.  Olive is actually really interesting, because if I don't need that gold, I can run it on a straightforward three pop to two pop whip cycle and just keep on whipping out units. It's never going to grow above size four until civil service is in and even though that is theoretically a beeline target for bureaucracy, I've got other stuff I need to do. So every point of unhappiness above size 4 does not matter to me. The city would deserve a market as well for plus two happy long term, Calendar. You'd want the theatre here and drama is actually relatively important to me because of rhubarb that would be another happy face. So basically this city could actually put out quite a lot of units. and I think it's going to have to. I could chop and whip the vulture and turn 101 but I will actually lose overflow. theoretically I can try and minimise some of that, but it's still gonna be a few hammers. Right now I have to deal with 13 units from Bing. Two Bowman are the only units that can be problematic to vultures and the reality is because the strength difference vultures beat everything in his stack. I have no need to build Spears and an archer here has no purpose and he can't take the city anyway, even without walls being in place. So I have to build only vultures and catapults here. There is a diplomatic question. regarding a potential peace deal with Bing, but I cannot be the one to propose it because he will view that as weakness. It's not really weakness. It's simply saying I'm OK with this. But then he replies I want something back in return. Even if he's happy to do that The threat has to be presented to him in terms of "Here is a catapult. I am offering you peace. Or I can kill your stack." Now if I kill a stack, I get a great general. I get a great general. I get double promoted aggressive units out of Cherry or a medic three unit. So not a massive amount, but enough that it actually matters. Double promoted archers out of Cherry would also be helpful, just as bulk defenders. I think it's going to take three catapults, how would I even get three catapults out? I've got enough hitters. but I can only get 150 hammers worth of units out of here really with Construction coming in on turn a 101 which I can't put into a catapult I would have to hold it behind wealth and then. to whip and I will get to one pop whips in easily enough so. I can realistically get out two catapults, but I can't get a third and two catapults is really dicey to deal with 13 units. I need to put enough damage onto the Spears with the collateral that the horse arches can then clean out everything that's there. I know I've only got four horse archers and I know there's going to be 6 spears, but the moment that happens, then the axes are completely unsupported. The chariots will get a decent odds on everything to clear out a bowman and then I can run him down. The only way to do that is numbers and two is not enough. Three is a bare minimum, but because all of my units are pretty close to getting odds anyway, thee is probably enough. four would definitely be enough and four catapults. You might even get three surviving cats depending on if an the axes with combat got hit first. So I'm kind of reliant on Pomegranate getting out to catapults. The units can't be in position before 106. Bings stack, if it moves towards Pomegranate actually could get hit from both sides at the same time. and then Olive just goes back to square one, hook the resources and whip for an invastion.  All of the micro that applies to olive kind of applies to plum as well. They've both got four food tiles. They've both got their food from the stables to bump up to five food per turn, even the horse versus ivory puts the hammers per turn pretty close at size two. The difference is that Plum can have farm plains, so it can more easily do a size four to size two whip cycle and just stack the unhappiness as high as it can get. It takes 25 food to grow from size 2 to size 4 if you've already been whipped. So every five turns you can easily get a catapult out here And then you use the overflow into something else. Realistically, that's all I want right now The problem is It will take a further 6 turns just. to reach size 4. I don't know if I even have that long before Pindicator can potentially come over the horizon at Rhubarb. But all the same. I want cats and I'm going to whip them out of this city and it's got to farmed place tiles it can use so. I just whip whenever I need it and stack that whip unhappy as high as it can get it. --- More to come tomorrow, run out of time tonight. (June 18th, 2023, 11:04)greenline Wrote: I'd be curious to see any plans for worker management / happy cap stuff at this stage of the game. Usually the mid game is my weakest point. I thought about this a bit more. The answer is essentially ignore the happy problems: if it occurs, triple whip a building to keep on regrowing. All cities will benefit from a market and Zigg at some point, and then arrest growth with scientists (so triple whipping a library is reasonable). Workers submit to the strategic goals: chop forests that I need removed as other players can't sit on the, hook and rehook the resources that improve yields the most (so if happy is needed elsewhere, hook puillaged gold over pillaged wheat etc). There is another point that "early, mid and late" game is meaningless, we should be more specific ie Classical, Medieval etc because this specifies the choices that exist in relation to techs and tile improvements. For example, someone might call this mid game, but it isn't. it's mid classical era. We have a bunch more eras to go through, and this game will have the slowest tech rate of any PB played on RB.  Unit cost is only gonna get worse as Iwill put pretty much all cities onto units. Maximum tax gives me 30 gold (if working the gold tile at Olive which is not a given). So you could say that's another 30 units I can run. But I am gonna get a little bit of cottage growth at the capital. I will get the marble hooked. bits and pieces here and there which will help out. You're looking at iron working in 10 turns if I don't really get horrific unit cost (Ed: Checked after Construction finished on T101, IW is a little more than two turns at max research without the Academy, at a cost of 100-ish gold). City maintenance, civic maintenance shouldn't really changebecause population is not going to grow at this point and no new cities for a short while. I can always build wealth if I really have to. But there are two Ziggs that are close to being completed that'll save me a decent amount each turn anyway like 4 or 5 gold if I get a chance to build them.  There is an argument for revolting to police states, especially if I'm about to whip out a load of units. But the reality is I'm definitely going to lose the ivory on T101. The gold. I mean, if Bing plays this right and doesn't split a stack, he can disconnect gold on T104. And then he's actually on rough terrain and gets defensive bonuses and I'm going to be reliant on the representation happiness for a short while. I've already got all the workers in position to hook those resources back up, but revolting police state would actually require that I whip hard enough to harm a recovery. . however, even if I do not land hanging gardens, the next great person is due out of Pear by turn 129 without working any specialists. If I really have to push that out by around T115. I just have to whip a library and work to scientists. If I clean out Bings stack and I don't lose any cities to Pindicator, and there is a GA, then PS might be on the cards with Calendar happy filling the hole left by the Rep happy. This would be to try and field two stacks, one for defense and one to finish off Bing: He's not actually a massive threat once that stack has gone. He's got very small cities as you can see in this picture. Size two at Sippar with no food resource. Size two at the The middle city. Opis has just got a monument to pop borders for the horse. It has got two food resources, but no granary. I mean, he can't really get much out from these cities now, so he leaves himself vulnerable. He's actually protected by Pindicator more than anything. But after Iron working comes in, realistically speaking, I could use police state.  The only interesting bit on the screen that is not shown is that Thoth is sending wines, and he is sending copper to Yuri, basically saying whip Spears. It's worth pointing out that this point if Super death does turn on me now. I have done nothing whatsoever to threaten him apart from play the game and everyone else is doing stuff to harm him more than that. And I think that that would be an unrealistic backstab. Very unreasonable. I don't think there's any other resource trades going on between players. I don't think anyone's even connected to a trade network.  Pindicator got Machinery.  Behold the greatest power in the game. really isn't much. Realistically, though, a vulture whipped in Rhubarb with significant overflow, enough to finish walls and have another 25 hammers left. There is another horse archer finished in cherry this turn. There's a horse archer due to be completed in Apple next turn because it's going to be chopped rather than chopping a market which have to much prefer to finish. But what you're going to do Or maybe I'm really stupid and I do finish the market anyway. Who knows? But when we talk about I can get to three catapults out of Olive, 2 out of Pomegranate. I've got another 60 hammers to whip out of Cherry whilst it continues to make 10 to 12 hammers per turn Apple's going to get more. I suspect that putting together a 20 hammer stack for Rhubarb is not exactly a problem, it is more the timescale that is the issue.  Tech is broken in this game. Five players have Sailing but I do not believe a single one of them has calendar. Nobody's gone to Aesthetics. Yuris is the only player who's got to construction, but that doesn't really matter much. No one else is really able to tech. I think it's probably a far better for Lurker entertainment that I am dragged back a little bit now by, you know, having some war served upon me. because realistically, I would be able to get most of thetech I'd need in the next 20 turns. Keep in mind that there is an Academy coming down shortly in the capital, which freeze up for food per turn for growth onto pre-grown cottages. Sailing, Calendar, IW would be done in fewer than 10 turns if I was not stuck dealing with Samurai, then Aesthetics, Literature and Drama would probably take another 10 or so turns. It would make the game boring. Blood for the blood god etc. I don't really have a long-term tech plan right now, partly because I have to respond to Pindicators Samurai threat. But beyond that, Commodore just requires that I put some units into Cherry and I have to hold together a decent sentry net against Super death. Bing can't actually threaten me. So I don't need to focus on military tech for defence by can focus on military tech for attack at this point (in terms of research, not unit builds.Units build absolutely are focused on defence). I don't want to wait till knights to take out Bing. especially given he has dedicated so many units to attacking me that I can wipe out now in a cost efficient manner. But put together a decent sized stack with siege in there and he can die and then they've got a safe backline and focus on the other borders. Realistically speaking, I do want literature. I do want drama. Music? If I've got the tech lead is an obvious choice, even just to stop Commodore getting it. I really do want metal casting, but that's very much a want, not a need. And engineering would be helpful, but castles ,even though they give trade routes and I've got stone do you require that have actual units sit behind them. But if I got an engineer from Pear, then it would build machinery and not engineering. It's something that I'd consider at the time, because crossbows are the defence against samurai. but they require you sit in a city.  I don't know how many cities have spread to, but looking at 10% you know, Commodore spreading his religion to all of his cities. He's got the shrine down. That’s obvious.  Thoth taking over the population lead partly because he's not gonna whip units. Well, he needs to build something to offer some form of respect to Pindicator. Thoth is a couple of pop points ahead, but he's got very similar food output so.I know what food resources I have, but then I also have flood plains. Thoth likely has more food resources than I do, but is limited to using coastal tiles with lighthouses (he also has some light house lakes which are essentially flood plains at this point and fall off). RealisticallyThoth is stuck with protective and creative. It's worth pointing out that he is paying full whack for everything so those. Labourers working slightly lower food tiles on average with slightly less yield output aren't gonna be that profitable so Thoth is going to have to get to courthouses. It's gonna have to get to go to Code of Laws and it really begs the question for him does he want to go to calendar before he goes on? how does he manage his military when bordering Pindicator with Samurai (and soon Xbows). Is he gonna go through currency? What's he gonna do? Thoth does not want to go to war. But the problem is that Commodore scales better than him. so building is inherently a bit of a mistake. but superdeath is on the other side of that Isthmus and doesn't like him because Thoth just given copper to super death's first victim. So all of this to me just screams Commodore is going to win because no one's gonna do anything about him.  "Score doesn't really matter". Yuri: gets attacked, is about to die so he has the lowest score. Superdeath: does the attacking. Doesn't build an economy or an empire to second to last in score. Bing: gets attacked, loses one city, whips out a massive stack. Maybe not massive, but, you kn ow, 3rd lowest score because he stopped growing and teching. Commodore: Built the Oracle without building an economy, Lacks a bit of land points because of that, even though his crop yields doing better And he's played very defensively. fourth from last in score. Pindicator: isolated from pretty much everybody but has no two food tiles to grow onto. Barbs going to run rampant and his nearest neighbour built the Great Wall to annoy him a bit more. Also has fewer cities for some reason, possibly because of Barbs so hence he ends up. fifth from last in score. Thoth: almost by process of elimination, has two early game traits and a relatively early unique building. Didn't get into war with anybody, doesn't fight doesn't have to compete with land really apart from just with Commodore and doesn't have to build military units. So ends up second in score. Krill: here I am in the middle of everybody having Barbs thrown at me left and right. So build the Great Wall, then have to deal with a Keshik rush before it arrives, plan around that after show to my sincerity by actually attacking someone I don't really want to attack, and hold the highest power because I've got so many sides that I need to cover. Somehow build two wonders (even with stone that's a lot of hammers) get the tech lead (maybe Yuris has more, think I have more beakers than Pindicator given Currency and beakers in Construction) have the highest military pretty close to the highest food, about to get a great person third one in the game whilst being half way to my second GP.  The three players stuck in an ancient hour war have awful tech. Yuris was decent when he had two gold at the capital. Super death is just broke but has capture gold to get him somewhere. Until he gets those few cities up and running, and frankly, they aren't going to do much for him apart from making him go more broke because they're so far away, even if he hooks him up to his road network, he needs to get courthouses. Even aggressive won't solve everything for him. Then out of the remaining four players. You've simply got one person with Mids showing hey, I have representation look at me on the other three saying I've got a GNP spike when I tech something. But horizontal growth is petering out simply because of costs for most players and the land is so harsh. So I wonder where the growth goes now, because the only thing that will really grow with cottages. Pindicator can only work plains cottages. Not too sure about but Commodore might have some green stuff down there. in which case he sits back. He grows a few cottages on grasslands and he's doing better than everyone else, especially with a shrine. My tech is going to fall off a clif though, or at least look like it. Although just working the scientists in Apple to get the great scientist is going to give me. I think probably close to 60 beakers towards IW. And everyone else has GNP graphs inflated by culture (at least compared to mine), so I'd suggest this graph is quite realistic.  Pindicator has dropped his MFG and we have to be very careful if he's got an increase in food. Looking head to the crop yield graph? No, he hasn't. So it raises a big question of where did those hammers go? The potential reality is that he started to working on another great person. I don't know why I do this if he's going to whip, he's going to work through tiles. If he's not going to whip, he's going to work the hammers to build samurai. So I'm keeping an open mind with this, but I don't see in this these graphs a samurai rush right now (ie prewhipped axes to complete samurai). It's going to land on my doorstep in the next 3 to 4 turns. I do see a library in Lasker, possibly an attempt to push towards 3rd ring borders there. It's gonna be a while. He's got barracks. He's got the henge monument. It's gonna push him on and then he's gonna try and hold the peak tile. It's gonna give him a good view over the pass. I know he'll hold the pass there as well. That's actually quite a defensive build. But that's a city with no two food tiles. So realistically, if he works two scientists there. he's down to making one food per turn. and that's 4 pop done. It's size 5 and he can only work at one plains forest that city's basically taken out of a rush completely by that decision (if this is the case). Superdeath has started to work a few mines, but it don't really matter. Commodore is pushing his growth and he's just working incidental hammers wherever he can get him. Bingis inthe same boat as Commodore. Mine is all over the place, but that's what you expect with working specialists and Thoth, I think, is whipping off hammer tiles yeah, the big one on here is what's indicated in that is a very steep drop. very, very steep drop.  There's not really a huge amount to say, apart from it is what it is. Thoth's trying to grow with a civ that doesn't scale. Commodores trying to get what food he can. Pindicator can't grow his cities because there's nothing to go onto. Bing has sacrificed to put together that stack and it's not really a stack that can do much, but now needs to recover.  You can see Bings rise, whipping stuff, building his ancient era stack, Thoth Pindicator and SD now will have very similar powers (Ed: note from T101, PIndicator has started to spike). The interesting part here is the SD last I checked still had half a dozen good Keshiks running around with promotions that don't show, but because of the promotions need a disproportionate force to counter. I keep on looking for spikes that could be techs such as HBR (IW I can correlate with other actions like chopping forests, F6 and seeing swords, but HBR I have to look for stables. I'm struggling to find stables for other players, so I wonder how many players have HBR other than superdeath and myself. I can't see IW or HBR for Pindicator, HBR for Thoth or Commodore. Bing might have gotten HBR or IW, but actually I thinkk he just finished a bunch of units.  The rate of increase of culture for me is less than Pindicator, Commodore and Thoth, for that reason I believe the GNP graph flatters them and not me.  No one has decided to run the espionage slider (I must admit to being tempted)     Here is the world map. It isn't fantastic. I'm not going to be researching alphabet, so I can't give you a view into Commodore core land. I can't see where Pindicator is 6th city is. I can't see Bing. somewhere in the back line, but I can see four of his six cities. I'll give a rundown of where each player is. I'll start with Yuri. Yuri will be dead to Super death's Kehiks unless Supe death decides that he wants to run those Keshiks towards me. I do not know how long Yuri has but with the copper trade and the bit of pop, I can see a good four spears in that city plus the 3-4 archers already there. The city will make walls at some point. and that might mean that Super death needs to get a good 12+ Keshiks and a couple of turns to whittle everything down. Superdeath is tied up with Yuri. He needs to get a ger into all the cities he's captured. But there's only three so he is stuck on six cities with no infrastructure. They're far away from his capital and he's going to go broke because he's taking cities that can't work cottages. Yes, he has two gold tiles. He can work them at size 3, but has no culture in the old capital so this is a long way away from happening. He needs to sit back and build for a little bit. But Super death doesn't know how to build so he'll probably just try and invade somebody else. That will probably be me. But the culture borders down towards Commodore are a bit weird. There maybe a few galley shenanigans that can go on, other than that he can backstab me and that's about it. If he tries to attack Thoth he's got to run into a creative city on a hill with walls. He can't flank and he can't run around so. that is a really bad idea without construction and his tech is so bad he can't get there. Frankly, no one can. stupid death is not a non entity. Super death is literally Barbs played by human being at this point Bing is invading me with a meddling stack that is putting down units, but not doing much else. Costing him an arm and a leg as well to keep the stack out of his territory. If that stack dies, Bing dies if my units are not pinned down by someone else. If he retreats the stack, there is a way for him to move from the ivory onto the gold and then back out through the fog of war into the unclaimed territories to actually get back to his core. Or you could try and move through there and threaten my pyramid city. The reality is there's no roads down in unclaimed territories. He's moving at one tile per turn and has to pause to pillage. I have construction as of the end of T101 that stacks not going to get that far. If he loses that he's got to rebuild with ancient era units to defend with but he'll be building a stack that can't defend from catapults. He's got culture into his horse city now but that's going to take a while, another 9 or 10 turns, I think to even claim the horse. His stack could be dead and I could have a stack of 10 horse arches threatening opi before he can hook his horse depending on how events go. We don't know how valuable that's going to be to it, but also he's cleared the forests out from Opis so it's possible for a fast mover stack to run through Opis towards Babylon. Unfortunately, all of those tiles are claimed by Babylon's culture. So he just doesn't help a slow moving stack moving through roads, but horse might just can do it. Pindicator, will either samurai rush me or he won't. That seems black and white, but the reality is he's the player who focused on metal casting to get an engineer to bulb machinery. He's got Japan, he's got protective and industrious. It's an obvious play and strategy and knows at the point where he's going to go and make it work and his choice is: do I go and invade the highest power on the map, who has horse archers (he can't know I have catapults for a few more turns), who finished tthe stables quest so he's got stables everywhere. He's using barracks to pop border borders. He's got pyramids, so there's some profit there if I can get it, but I have to fight into a significant army. Or do I settle over to my eastern claim a nice area with a couple of food resources, quite a few grasslands and coast. Nice big river and gold when he's got a very happy deprived area. Or does he just try and do both? Does he just try and flash a few samurai at me and make me play defensive and keep units in position? but really he uses most of his units to go and deal with barbs over to his east and kicked Thoth away from it? Who knows. But we have to treat pindicator as being aggressive and planning to invade Sumeria. You can see on this map that the area between Rhubarb and Staunton and this currently unroaded, but the two peaks guarded diagonals into rhubarb and this plain hill that Pindicator will land his entire stack on. Other than that, he walks through hills. Entirely visible and really slowly. He's put a library into Lasker, so he's going to try and hold the peaks either side of the northern pass and both of the hills. It's quite defensive, but it also allows him to sneak stuff around the north Unfortunately Plums on a hill and there's nothing else up there. And when Plum does pop borders from the barracks, it'll have vision and see everything coming through there a mile away. The threat from Pindicator is he hides stack on the copper and runs at Rhubarb. He roads forward onto the plains tile and then he just shoved a stack onto the hill and he says I'm coming to Rhubarb. What have you got? And then it's basically a numbers game. I hit his stack and then we see what is left. I hit with every catapult, I need one cat per three hitters. One horse archer per samurai. One war elephant plus spear minimum (that is hard with no ivory, but does suggest I should grab IW ASAP and hope for iron). And I want to keep vultures fortified in the city as possible because they're clean up units. The biggest problem is that he could promote the samurai up to drill 3 and takes 40% less collateral damage, but C2 horse archers reach 40% odds at around 85hp against D3 samurai, and over 60% odds at 72hp. Unfortunately D3 samurai kill catapults 60% of the time with flawless victories, and only take 14 damage from one catapult hit  It's actually a really interesting potential battle but the simple answer is that numbers win.If he doesn't want to take that risk, then he's got protective, which isn't going to scale, and he's got industrious, which, you know, it scales by the wonders you build and a bit of civic savings. I built Mids and he didn't. Can he get MoM? Great lighthouse is meaningless. He's already got Colossus for 7 commerce per turn. If he goes east he's got to play for the late game. But I don't quite know what the late game is, but it has to be said. He's got the land to fill. Sumeria plus Babylon gives more than what he can settle to hte east. But then again, Sumeria has absolutely nothing unique to it. It's just an early courthouse and an axe that is useful until muskets. So Sumaria doesn't exactly scale particularly well either. So who knows what Pindicator is going to do? I wouldn't gassy either way. Just have to prepare for the defence. And finally, that brings us to Commodore. Commodore has perhaps not got the easiest start, I wouldn't know but he played his opening weird. But perhaps he has got the most isolated. He's up to nine cities. He's extended past the neck of the peninsula he started on. He's taken some wines from Thoth. He's claimed an ivory that I could have claimed because of the culture in his second city. He's got the only leader that scales. He's got the only civ that scales. So he's happy to take it late game. No one can interfere with him apart from me and Thoth neither of us are gonna do that anytime soon so he can just sit there and he can wait. He can prepare to react to everyone else. Late game he's got charismatic to make things work a bit better in terms of units. and spiritual will always be valuable on a game like this where there's so many turns to be played that you're gonna get you have to bring every little bit of efficiency out of it. To me, Commodore's actually the player to beat in this game. sit back and watch. That's what he has to do. He bides his time. He needs to keep his power ready, but he doesn't want to spike. He doesn't want anything to spike and make it look like he's leading but he's actually the player that is best placed: he will go for the religious wonders uncontested even if the tech takes him forever to reach. Commodore wins because I'm constantly gonna get battered by every neighbour that I have apart from him. If it looks like I am making headway then he intervenes to slow me down, to make sure I remain surrounded. If I clear out Bing and then cut down each front I need to defend, eventually I get to a point where I can outbuild him, so he has to stop that from happening.
The only cities I have an interest in settling right now are the "Dried Fig" and "Raspberry" locations. It is possible to get them down before HG would complete, but I'm not planning on it (partly because the only cities that can reasonably get out settlers are Pomegranate and Cherry and I need both to build units). Dried Fig has no food and is only worth building to hold an approach to Pear and to potentially work a gold tile for a dozen or so turns whilst Olive whips itself into the ground, whilst also building catapults. Raspberry is just another five food whip city on a 4>2 whip cycle, working a few plains farms to pull it together. The plains hill plant requires a barracks to pop borders and I'd need to use four forests to get the necessary infrastructure in place. So it's three pop whipped out of a city, 9 worker turns to road to the city, 12 to chop the forests and 6 to pasture and road the sheep (27 total, so 14 turns with two workers).
It just doesn't seem worth the risk right now to push out these settlers. I reckon that both Bings stack needs to be dispatched, and I have a confident handle on Pindicators power. This is unlikely to happen in the next 20 turns. Right now, this is the order of priorities:
All this hinges on whatever Pindicator pushes towards me. The less he pushes, the quicker everything pivots towards Bing. To build the units I have to whip, but Apple wants to sit at the happy cap, but all other cities are fair game and it is only basic city micro to get the units out in the most efficient manner, balanced against issues of timeliness. |
