Screaming Orange Pumpkins - RR16B - It's tax day again ...

hmm we probably need to take peace with Ragnar and DoW Willem and India next TS.

Seeing only 1 archer in The Hague tells me that willem doesn't really spam troops, so Utrecht can have ~3 archers as defense, the problem being hill

can it be india doesn't have copper? we have few turns before vultures from nidaros get to the place (like 3-4 turns of scouting)

Looking at the maintenance we probably could afford to hold onto the already improved Haithabu, but that's no blame on you pigs, more like on team not thinking clearly.

Alpha->Currency clear target.

Who's up? can it be L?

Ok...I'll take a look at things more closely later. Pigs - Not sure I understand your thinking on what you did with the scientists specialists and not sure it was worth doing that the turn we would have finished Sailing. I would have rather had Sailing earlier. I've never heard of a loss of GPPs before.

Did Eridu starve down or did you whip it?

Is it possible to calculate DOM possibility with current viewable land?

Yep, we need to hit Willie now and he has Alpha, so we can get it from him. Actually makes me think we can delay war with India for a bit. Rags has Iron in that SW city, so I'd like to relieve him of the city.

I saw we hit Utrecht and hopefully get Alpha, then ceasefire with Will. Also, hit Rags iron city asap. Once we get alpha from Rags we can send some spies to his remaining city.

Also, I think we should switch to Maths now as I think we have enough beakers in Alpha to extort it.

If we can figure out Dom % then we can start thinking about the end game. However, not sure we can do this without knowing the size of the other landmasses.

I was fine with razing H-town.

Best point to hit Willie looks like just north of Eridu. Our vulture are not position well at present, so it will take a few turns to be ready to hit.

well I am sure that Churchill will take the area sooner or later if we don't.

Calculating the number of land tiles can be done with the percentages from T0 etc. Calculating land tiles of visible continent is meh , not sure I want to do it.

We have to finish scouting though since lakes don't count into domination limits.

Eridu didn't starve, it started pop 5 and shrinking, its still pop 5 but growing.

L, you really haven't come across this before with 2 GPs? Its true, pop 2 GPs in one turn you only get 1 GP and lose the GPP in the other city, its a pain in the neck and well worth 3 beakers to speed up next GS by 17 turns.

Yeah...I think we whipped Eridu earlier come to think of it.

No, I haven't heard of that issue with GPPs. I've actually done some many times and it seems to work out well for me getting the next GP. I do this with GA city starving.

I'm going to test it now. I have to see it for myself

Having had another look at the save we can get 10-12 vultures from the north in 4-5 turns if we ignore Eridu's rax and whip Amsterdam which is starving and working poor tiles anyway, which leaves our southern army intact. This includes a couple of garrison vultures that we don't need in the short term and will be replaced by chariots in the near future. I'd reckon keep at war with Rags until we have alphabet which ain't far away. Certainly worth pillaging that suspicious grassland mine (which I didn't notice while I was playing ) in the next couple of turns.

^^^I agree. I was thinking of whipping Dam indeed and ignoring the Rax

Pig:

Attaching 2 saves (before and after of first GS pop), which I believe disproves your theory.

WB 2 cities running 2 scientists at 6gpp/t. At turn before GS pop in Uruk, both cities have 96gpps. Turn after Uruk has 2gpps and Eridu has 102gpps. There is no loss.

Not sure where you are getting this 100gpp loss. I assume you are referring to the fact that the global GPP cap is raised to 200, but that is standard and just reflects the cap for the next GP among all cities in your empire. It has no reflection on actual accumulated GPPs for each city.

With the crunch on Amsterdam's tiles, I agree it is time to swing north. The only question is it worth keeping the holy city. So far I haven't heard about the Jewish shrine being built.

I say we keep it at this point. Will is building some wineries for us. Very nice of him At least the city is close.

Well, I'll be hornswoggled .

I think someone pulled a fast one on you, Pig.

lymond said:

I say we keep it at this point. Will is building some wineries for us. Very nice of him At least the city is close.

Click to expand...

if I remember right they won't provide happy until we research Monarchy, but the tile yield is of course available.


I say hold on to Utrecht. If you can afford I would like some scout around the rice+copper area

Yep, strictly thinking in terms of commerce at this point and the city actually paying for itself.

I plan on playing this evening. I've given some thoughts laready on what I'll do, but planning is getting pretty simplistic at this point without much to build.

As mentioned, attack Willie and take Holy City plus hopefully Alpha at least. I will keep this city. Northern cities will focus on primarily on dealing with Will. Southern cities on Rag.

I will take Rags iron city. I may keep this city since it has iron, but will know more when I see it. Ideally I will stay at war with Rags and harass him until after we extort Alpha from Will. This may allow us to grab some techs from Rags in the peace deal.

I will continue road to the west as should have been done previously.

Ultimately end up with a good stack near India.

Man, I feel we should be filling in some land, but just can't afford to do it until we get Currency.

we have pretty cheap libraries and running 10 cities 2 scientist means 75 bpt ;-), but I think we would go broke with 10 cities haha

I know...until we can actually build wealth it's just crazy. Imagine the no scientist/no anything variant.

If we could confirm Dom, then I'd say go for broke, but I'm just not sure. It would be a risky move if we end up not affording it and then lose all our extortion partners...ha

on a more serious note

hmm currency is 628 beakers, means 28 turns with current speed, but we are not using full potential for science (like some cities don't have libraries yet)

we have 950 gold banked. 2 more cities I expect would move us somewhere close to -15 gpt meaning we would have like ~70 turns of research and still at least 17 cities for conquest gold

the question is how long we can keep AI's from strategics and catapults.

when we're at it Asoka could soon land Longbows... with GLH and Mahabodhi he certainly has options open.

Churchill can field Horse Archers right now...

the military options start to close a bit.

These are good points, V. We just have to keep doing the best we can with the various options we have for getting techs and monitor Asoka and Church. Asoka is now a good target to extort currency.

@V

Don't forget that a settled GS gets 15 bpt combined with library and 2 scientists and we have a GS due this set. It doesn't really make a difference where its settled as long as the city continues to run its scientists.

I'm less worried about Asoka with LBs than Churchill with LBs, a point I have raised before. Once again I'll say: kill the english (this from me is high treason of course).

Alright, turnset played.

Took a few turns to get in position to take Utrecht. Utrecht's borders continued to press on both Dam and Lagash. In fact, for some reason we lost access to copper, so I had to stop the horse trade with Church for a few turns.

Willie had iron. It popped NE of Hague, which I found with a chariot I rushed in after I had killed an axe. Will made some stupid moves with his axes. I killed them off with chariots and then pillaged his copper.

Utrecht was pretty painful. Lost 3 Vultures to just 1 Sword which is ridiculous, but that is cultural defense for you. Hague went down without a loss. I debated keeping Hague, but decided to keep it simply to block iron from Will. Will has a potential spot to the West to settle, so we may yet extort from him again.

I got Maths and Alpha from Willie (sorry meant to take a screenshot)

I took Rags Iron city a bit earlier, which I kept (good city), but stayed at war with him until I got alpha from Willie. I got IW, Poly and Archery from Rag (see screen below). So overall a good haul.

Church came along and requested something of us that I was hoping either him or Asoka would do. I accepted without question. We are now Buddhists. Both Church and Asoka are Pleased with us, so that offers some opportunities. I hope to beg the important PH off of Church.



Rag peace:



Rag: He has one crap city and will be nerfed for a while. Potential to settle NE in the jungle or dump something off in our SW territory.

I'm thinking EPs on Rag is worthless at this point. We should start focusing on Asoka or Church. We have enough to steal something from Rag later, but it will be a long time before he has anything for us to steal I think.

Great Scientists: We popped one in Eridu which I put on hold for discussion. Another one will pop from Uruk soon. I see 3 options:

1) Bulb Compass and trade for Construction
2) Build an academy in Uruk and settle the next one for some decent residual beakers over time
3) Hold on for better bulbs later. Things like Optics or Astro may be of use here, but we may get more GS's later.

Also note that if we can get a temple or two up soon in Nidaros we may pop a Great Prophet for a shrine later. Something to think about.

Personally, I like the Compass>Construction trade as it makes us militarily viable for some time.

Attacking Asoka/Church in near term, with both having construction, would be painful. We can always settle the next GS or bulb with it. Bulbs may be of more value this game.

Currency is queued up, but we may want t turn or 2 into PH for a beg. PH is a very important tech for us obviously. Neither Asoka or Church currently of Currency, so not sure an immediate attack is worth it, especially without construction.

If we get Construction soon with Compass bulb, we can beg PH off Church and attack Asoka without worry of Asoka bribing in Church, which could be a big concern. (Church has HBR as well).

Lot's to think about, but we are making good progress. We may end up teching most of Currency ourselves.

Also, we might want to get out a few settlers to place in potential spots up North that might get taken by the AI. We don't have to settle yet, but just keep an eye on it. And with IW the jungle is now feasible to settle and we definitely want those gems and Vandal.

I fear we can't trade Construction. In my experience AI's need a higher "other people know this tech" threshold before trading Construction than typical (as opposed to Monarchy and Alphabet which they trade even if only they know it). I don't have definitive proof but something I've seen in many games...wait one more turn to see what becomes "Can Trade" perhaps.

Re: later bulbs - well means we should do the domination count and figure out if need to cross an ocean or not. There are 909 land tiles on the map. (hover over score), so 582 needed for Domination, 412 outside of our borders (looking at our current demographic, not the score as it doesn't count recently acquired tiles). Peak tiles do count as land. We need some safety margin to account for a few lakes potentially hidden in the fog.

I started a count, will finish tomorrow. good to have one more person do it as a check.

I would rather just tech PH now and save the begs for gold down the road. Zigs too important (EP for resarch viz useful as well as the savings) and it's really cheap. Can't remember how the "beg credit" works, guess we can wait one turn and try before switching tech to it. (maybe this is exactly what lymond meant)

Re: war - I don't think attacking Asoka by himself would be bad at all even lacking Construction, he doesn't really build units.
At least Churchill doesn't have Ivory for war elephants.

LK is up and I'm on deck correct?