I'm
still having power today, so I want to publish the next part of the writeup right now too. It's very educational, so I hope you won't hate me for it, I really will try to keep it interesting
.
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So
775 BC, only 14 turns after having Oracled Machinery.
Iron is connected, De Gaulle and Pacal are in war, fighting each other and Brennus is still in WHEOOHRN. The number of the cities of the we have is still very limited,
the cities itself are however are well developed:
Showing the lol-amount of
that the capital is generating, and also demonstrating the
power of using clever overlap.
Bejing is going to be the city getting the Library, and it'll be the city having to employ the Scientists, therefor, it needs all Food it can get. Working the Gold would only hurt that Food, so being able to work it from
Shanghai is a big advantage.
Getting the first GP(s) from the capital, is almost always the right choice, as that city can simply start so much earlier on the GP-generation, that it's something one should do. In this specific case, there are even more reasons: The city is also getting 6
from Wonders already, which is as much as 2 Scientists would give, so GP-Generation is basically multiplied by factor 2 already.
Ganghzou is a city not having really many good tiles until now, therefor, it fulfills the role of a Worker-pump. At least it can be whipped 2 -> 1 with having a Granary, and getting a Barracks or producing Cho-Ko-Nu's without one doesn't seem very attractive with still having the need for more Workers. Having been able to work the hill it's founded on, would have been an advantage, and the mistake that happened in this case was, not recognizing that that hill is / was the only hill in the surrounding land, so 1S would have been very slightly better for this city. Anyhow, it's not gonna play a really important a really important role, so very very slight mistakes.
This city is important, it's the 2nd most important city named Nottingham! One could argue about it being the most important city because the Shrine is generating an amazing amount of Gold already, and the amount is still rising, due to AIs being so nice to spread that religion for me. Here it showed, that gifting Monotheism to the AIs even had further good effects than it only giving diplomatic bonuses, because the AIs wouldn't have been able to spread Religion as effectively without running OR. The city is still very small, but it only got a Granary recently, and it has double (weak) Food, so is not in a bad situation.
This is the tech-situation:
Important: Currency would be available already. There's no way I'm going to trade it from Peter now, as I wouldn't think of sacrificing my Machinery monopole for it, but this might change in near future.
Screen is from 700 BC, so as you've guessed probably, we are already moving.
Asoka researched Calendar, which is something, because we're having Calendar resources and Asoka trades techs with only 20% of the Civs knowing them, so it'll be easy to aquire it.
Pacal having Construction and De Gaulle CoL is something that could not be prevented, because many opponents means many Civs researching many different techs simultaniously.
Good though is:
Lincoln just researched Monarchy, and even with Mids, I'll trade it from him, because I've found that aquiring every tech that possible, assuming the trade is good, is something valuable, because the Civs are trading like idiots anyhow (
note to @ Tachywaxon: I know Civs trading is only a dice-roll, but in my games, I've almost always seen Civs trade anything possible for anything available immediately) , and
getting Monarchy for Metalcasting in this case means, having more Tradegood for giving away something that's no Monopoly, and it means that Lincoln can be so nice to build Forges in my future cities.
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700 BC. Basically giving away some information on the path of research on and what the cities are producing or respectively showing, that it's really
time to get go to war, and conquer some additional cities. We do want to have the HE asap, so we need a lvl 4 troop, we're in the best phase to start wars forever (we have Cho-Ko-Nu's, the AIs have Axes + Swords at most) .
Showing what we are expecting. Beautiful cities, with little to no resistance. Mostly unchopped Forrests, which will not change, because AI is really bad at chopping forrests if not being in war. London itself is a monster of city, it's got a river and 4 strong sources of Food, so is rich in production and rich in Commerce. This city is gonna play a major role in the round, because it't basically strong enough to fulfill multiple roles at once.
This is btw. what really happened in that round, I was already making plans with the cities and thinking about the next target, with not even having the Cho-Ko-Nu's for the first 
.
It's explaineable to make plans for a positive scenario though. Doing so maybe is still a little early, though the war against Lizzy isn't so far away.
Bejing again:
Library finished and 2 Scientists hired. Chances to get a Great Scientist are small with this much of GP-Pollution, but it's still the best choice taking this city for it, and cutting on GP-generation to create more Cho-Ku's would be a really bad tradeoff, because getting an Academy is just so extremely important.
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Excursion:
Posting this goes back towards me having written with one of you, and I also was asked similar questions in previous Replay:
Topic is: How to greatly enhance your games by calculating whips!
Now you're probably
:
Here is the example:
From looking at the screen we know, that 1 Cho-Ko-Nu is 90
on epic speed. A whip on this tempo is 44 Hammers, but in this scenario, we have the Mids and are running PS, and on top, we're building Forges in all cities city that are producing troops (and we'll not change on running Police State for a long time, so take the following values as fixed) :
44
(value of whipping away 1 pop) * 1.5 (150%) = 66 H / pop (when building a unit, otherwise would be 55 H due to PS not being applied) .
Remembering the base value (30 on Normal, 20 on Quick, 90 (!) on Marathon and 44 for Epic) , is the work you have to do, past that, all you and me need, is a calculator, or not even that, because doing all this can easily be done by mental arithmetics and by having a memory.
Now we said that 44 H is the base, and that 66 H is the value of 1 pop with applying the modifiers from our example:
Cho-Ko-Nu is costing 90
, so what would be a rough value for the Hammers that must not be exceeded, if wanting to whip
2 pop, something that is regarded as generally superior by many of the best players, because whipping 2pop while getting a heavy overflow into the next unit ontop, basically reduces whips by 3 times if compared to 1pop-whipping?
Super, super simple. If one pop is 66 Hammers, every time more than 66 Hammers are needed it'll cost 2pop. 90 H (cost of unit) - 66 H (hammers per pop) are between 23 and 24 H (I suspect a rounding issue there about which I'm not 100% sure atm. ) , so that is the value to remember for this unit, and also the answer to the previously formulated question. Whenever 23 H aren't exceeded, it'll be a 2pop-whip, really all that is needed is to learn is the value of 1pop, because it scales with speed, and the way to getting an answer towards the formulated question, (which amount of Hammers must not be exceeded for the whip to be 2pop), is to simply apply multipliers, and then subtract that value from the cost of the unit.
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Now you'll all want a break, so all we're doing 'til the end, is looking at some nice pictures: (No, not
Tachywaxon XD ) :
First, Freddie comes towards us, and we cannot tell, if he's on Drugs, or not *lol* :
Then,
Brennus DoWs Asoka XD . Yay XD :
As being a stupid pain in the neck (our reason for having the need to annihilate him too) , Asoka of course comes crying for help immediately:
And while we are waiting for Asoka to bribe the whole world against hate-guy Brennus,
Lizzy gets...
A GS! . Maybe Lizzy could be so nice to build an Academy for us in London?
Yes, the war is coming closer, here is the preview:
440 BC, a Great Engineer gets born O_o :
I use him to rush-build the Parthenon, other option would have been bulbing Feudalism, which sort of isn't attractive to me, because with having Cho-Ko-Nu's, Longbows are nothing compared to a 50% enhanced GP-production.
The military buildup continues and can be seen in the Power-graph:
I'm basically chopping the land clear and whip the cities as much as possible, with not sacrificing my long-term developement too much. The limiting number unfortunately still is, the very small number of the Workers that's available :/ .
Ok, now the Cho-Ko-Nu's are really rolling. (To those not getting the "Choo Choo" message on the screen, shown is the "CHOO-CHOO-NUUUU-Train" there XD. ) (Screenshot btw. also showing what I told, I'm chopping as many tress as possible and am whipping all cities except the capital down to minimum size. )
The tech-situation got slightly worse dumbass
Washington teched Machinery. Trading it to Asoka for Currency though is not attractive, because it'd cause Asoka to offer that tech on the free market, so the "monopoly" is somehow still "safe" , meaning that no CIV can get Machinery by trade atm. (read Civ Illustrated #1 if you're interested to read at which threshold a certain Civ is willing to trade a tech openly) , and with having only 4 cities, the benefit from Currency wouldn't be so great anyhow.
I btw. gifted maths to various Civs to further improve diplomatic relations, but with having the Cho-Ko-Nu's you see on that screen...
I realize, that the resistance that Lizzy is opposing, is actually a lot smaller that I would have expected (see preview on the war from before. ) ,
and I ask myself, what the heck I'm waiting for O_o . Explanation for me building so many troops and waiting so long, was having had really bad experiences in the game I played before that, a game using AGG-AI as an option, a game where I encountered stacks that were 120+ units big in size pre-Liberalism, but
the time now is 395 BC, so it's still really really early...
Read the next part, to finally read about what you're all waiting for, a war that won't end until the end of the round. It's gonna get bloody (again) , I'm gonna demolish every Civ on the map in a time that you and me find amazing ourselves, and I'll do my best, that it'll get funny too 
.
Hope you found this post to at least be interesting, and that calculating whips didn't screw your head 
.
Questions or critique welcome as always.
Sera
