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Babylon's Nebula of Cheddar(Phi/Ind)

I highly recommend The Expanse to all members of RB. Season 5 just finished coming out. It's much more realistic than your typical science fiction fare.
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I second that recommendation.  nod

RB naming schemes have pointed me in the direction of some really good content over the years. Commodore's Dresden Files naming scheme back in PB22 gave me lot of reading material!
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Demographics look particularly terrible btw, but I'm not ready to panic just yet.
[Image: AwB9iJC.jpg]

We're at a trough in our growth curve, with a bunch of pop whipped into items that don't show up here for a few more turns. Stonehenge also cost a lot of resources but the borders don't pop for a little bit longer. OH is top food, but a lot of that food differential is merely supporting the extra population from the tiles I whipped off. I also have his graphs and he's only making ~30hpt, he's not top hammers.

That means either Pin or Cornflakes is the top hammer figure btw, so it does look like one of them could be trying to put those hammers into the Oracle.

Still, while I'm not panicking, I'm only 1 level above that. wink

I've been top soldiers for a while now, which I'm a bit surprised by. I only have 6 warriors for 6 cities, which is quite tight. Both Sailing and Archery give power points, but it means probably no-one has any real units right now.
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Interesting demos analysis. I had the same mentality of ‘behind but not panicking’ in early 55, but I was wrong; it never really materialised. Probably because I hadn’t just whipped a bunch of pop at the time, which this was useful to realise. You are probably more correct than I was. wink

Overall, which categories do you look at when gauging how well other players are doing in the early stages of the game?
Past Games: PB51  -  PB55  -  PB56  -  PB58 (Tarkeel's game)  - PB59  -  PB60  -  PB64  -  PB66  -  PB68 (Miguelito's game)     Current Games: None (for now...)
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I'm mostly interested in finding out how much more or less resources my civ is putting out each turn compared to the others. Since food is the most powerful resource, followed by hammers, followed by gold, that's the rough order I look at.

There are a few things that disguise the output of the demo screen though. My civ is not actually making 54fpt, it is actually making something like 25fpt, the rest is essentially upkeep paying for my population. Some of that food is being multiplied by gardens too, while others are building food-hammer units. I've built Stonehenge, 2 Gardens and a Galley recently, I consider all of them to be good use of my resources but none of them have had a direct affect on the food or hammers in my Demographics screen yet. They actually reduced my numbers since I whipped them. If another player had put those same resources into population for example, that would show up strongly on the demographics screen. I should expect them to look better than me until my builds start doing something.

Land area and Soldiers are the other two areas to look at. Units are another resource, and how important it is depends on how effectively you can use them. Land Area says something about the long term potential of your civ. I don't think I worry too much about land area in the early game. While there is still land to settle I care more about the snowball and the top 3 numbers. When the land is settled though, land area can give you some indication whether you can sit back and develop peacefully or you need to go to war. Peaceful development generally favours whoever has the most land. 

Of course, civ is a complicated interconnected game, and these are not the only factors that go into my decisions. smile
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[Image: awai1DY.jpg]

I declared on Cornflakes and offered a peace treaty. Him stepping on the forest wouldn't be too bad, since my borders popping next turn would push him off it. But I'd really like not to
a) keep 2 warriors up here as I improve my resources
b) set up an emergency whip bowman in Firefly. That would delay the WB and the fish a turn.

I don't expect to be competing with him for any city spots in the next 10t. There is still a potential cost in trade routes. But open borders are at alphabet and my hopeful GLH build makes it less likely he'll give them to me. There's a chance he just keeps us in a state of war or cease fire, but it seemed worth the try.

The warrior by Pindicator didn't find any resources:
[Image: Ui1LxC7.jpg]

I think I'm just going to found on the plains hill as originally planned. One of the two Western tiles is tempting to leave the fish spot free. But it costs the city some snowball, so I'm just going to hope I'm fast enough to get 1 more city either West or South of this. The other plains hill would be tempting if it didn't almost orphan the gems.

I think we should be coming to the edge of our natural lands with the next few settles - south of Buffy and NW of Daredevil in addition to this area. Hopefully Pindicator has a similar dilemna at his other borders and can't get both locations here.
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[Image: V4lgUT0.jpg]

Good Omens founded. Cost me 8gpt, but gained back 11gpt from tiles and trade routes. First to 7 cities and the settler whipped for the 8th. The galley can now have a bit of a scout around this sea.

Nice plan set up for the northern gems/copper/cow spot from a 5-> 3 Daredevil whip. The Bowman will get up there a few turns early, hopefully OH will not be too close. Workers have just enough time to to pasture the cows, and get a key mine for Good Omen's Garden, before supporting the new settle.

Not sure on the order for the next settling wave in the south yet. It will probably be in the mid-50s and I want to figure out how many units it needs to be backed by. Still nobody is building any power on the demo screen.

The GLH completes T48, will be a pretty big blow if we're beaten to it. OH's large hammer total scares me a bit(he is in first now). At the same time, I'm also a bit afraid that it's not the best use of our resources with no clear 2nd island yet. If that's the case then surely non-Ind people won't be trying for it ...

I'm thinking we probably settle our first Prophet GP. Unfortunate that we can't do anything better with it, but Stonehenge was for sure worth it even without taking into account it will give me a settled Prophet 20t later. The only other option I can see is bulbing Theology. An Apostolic Palace plan with Ind does sound possibly decent, but my gut feel is that we'll have better things to do with our hammers. I will run some numbers on it nearer to the time to be sure though. A golden age will still be ~20t away, so we should easily generate another GP by then.
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Settled House, putting us at 8 cities to our competitors 6. Pindicator will set his border here soon too:

[Image: qYdf76A.jpg]

It cost us 9gpt, made back 3gpt immediately and the gems will be worth 6gpt, so we'll break even working them.

Cornflakes Oracled Metal Casing in the meantime. He didn't do it for expensive Forges, so he surely wants the Colossus to add to his Financial coast. We're still 10t out from MC, so he can almost certainly take it he goes hard enough for it. I'll try micro it as fast as possible regardless.  If I lose then I've built a half priced forge and got failgold at a rate of 1h: 2.25g. It is a very strong wonder for this map though, so I hope we still have a chance. It costs 263h for him and 172h for me, maybe he wants to push expansion a bit first after just putting 150h into tech? I doubt we'll be so lucky.

Here's a rare picture of a city growing with 0fpt:
[Image: oDifbpE.jpg]

Still plenty of time to get beaten to this too (missing the mine for a turn didn't hurt our eta). When I saw Pin and Cornflakes get big score increases, I logged in to check if they had completed a wonder. OH had a similar login, making me think he might be competition. His size 7 capital also seemed to potentially indicate he could be working a bunch of mines there. However he just 1-whipped it, and it's hard to see how the micro could work out for that to be good for a TGL build, though not impossible. It makes me feel a bit better at least.

We are past the point of no return anyway, the only thing I could consider to speed it up is whipping it. Might be worth thinking about actually. If we do get failgold it could speed us along towards the Colossus, so I should probably turn on research a bit early to play around that possibility.

End of turn demos have caught up, as Stonehenge resources and Garden-powered growths have come online. I'm still behind OH in pop btw.

[Image: Rz2nq7s.jpg]
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If I'm willing to throw enough workers at the problem I can 

T52: Complete Metal Casing
T53: Put overflow in a forge
T54: 2-whip Forge
T55: chop out the big bronze guy in Daredevil

That gives Cornflakes 12t of his own to beat me to it, needing almost 22hpt. My cap at size 6 can put out 19hpt. How many forests does it have left? I only had 2 besides the Ivory forest at my cap. He's somehow keeping pace in expansion, and building 150h wonders, with no early hammers from his traits. Surely he chopped some forests to do it?

He built the Oracle in his 2nd city, not his cap, but that doesn't mean too much with advanced start. 

Chopping the Colossus out in a relatively new city with virgin forests would be more difficult for him, since he has 100h extra to pick up from tiles after the chops, that I get from traits. Maybe he has the tech to reach Maths though? It's a tough call.
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(February 18th, 2021, 14:47)The Black Sword Wrote: Still plenty of time to get beaten to this too (missing the mine for a turn didn't hurt our eta). When I saw Pin and Cornflakes get big score increases, I logged in to check if they had completed a wonder. OH had a similar login, making me think he might be competition. His size 7 capital also seemed to potentially indicate he could be working a bunch of mines there. However he just 1-whipped it, and it's hard to see how the micro could work out for that to be good for a TGL build, though not impossible. It makes me feel a bit better at least.

PB58 spoilers
I whipped the small lighthouse with overflow into the great version, which can be pretty effective if you're unable to work production with your entire population, or just can grow back in time for it to pay off. Think I did the same with Colossus and Hanging Gardens as well.
Playing: PB74
Played: PB58 - PB59 - PB62 - PB66 - PB67
Dedlurked: PB56 (Amicalola) - PB72 (Greenline)
Maps: PB60 - PB61 - PB63 - PB68 - PB70 - PB73 - PB76

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data
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