500BC (140):
Preflight check. Stopping Disquietude's worker action (farming the grassland), as we have a ton of work to do, and farming grasslands is not on the list.
Taking a peek in Moscow, we are hard building the Mids in 21ish turns (to be sped up of course). Growth next turn, and there will still be growth next turn if we move off the silks onto the riverside mine, so do that. Go from 26 to 32 hammers per turn, so we win 6 hammers (since growth is stalled next turn anyways).
We need towns, but the Mids wins us a happy cap fix and, well... already dumped hammers into it, so don't really feel like aborting it. Feeling a bit uneasy, as Rammy and Nappy are both Industrious, and we're not, so if they have stone, our attempt is toast.
First in line to pick up the slack will be St. Petes, as it's been up the longest, and has some serious worker turns put into it. Not sure why we are not working the cows in this town, so getting on that posthaste. We can grow and stagnant at max size in 6 turns. I might be evil and drop a whip here, as courthouses are major in towns paying 4gpt in maintenance.
Nova is size 6 and at max size. No need for the temple here at the moment, we also want another courthouse first. A 3-pop whip is 135 hammers, so I'll need to work on the courthouse for 7 turns before being able to drop the whip on it. That's fine.
We're going to pull the worker whip BS at Rostov when it grows in 4 turns. We'll have 15 hammers into Rostov's granary at that point, and then about 8 or 9 turns before the worker. The farmed rice will certainly speed things up.
Disquietude is going to head back to Moscow to help with the Mid's via chops. Need to get that thing out the door so we can get back to settlers to fill our dots.
St. Petes doesn't really need any more work at the moment, so Chagrin is going to head up to finish that road to Nova, and then perhaps move up to Rostov to assist there. St. Petes can build another worker if we need it (which we will).
Let's take a quick peek at the diplomatic screen to see why an upcoming war is both unnecessary, and ill-advised.
This is the foreign advisor, basically showing everyone's attitude towards each other at a quick glance. If you take a look at the first row, you'll see everyone's attitude towards us. Basically, no one is angry at us for any reason right now. Notice that the AI's have already accrued some "Worst Enemies" based on religion obviously.
A quick read of the screen. Basically, read down the columns to find out how each AI feels about someone (that's why there is only a row for us, not a column). So Wang, Fred, and Rammy aren't real big fans of De Gaulle, while De Gaulle and Boud aren't on good terms with Fred.
This is a peek at the "sit-rep" screen from BUG's military advisor. Basically, it simplifies things by showing who is who's worst enemy.
As the cards are lined up right now, the AI's will prefer to divide along religious lines and declare war in that fashion. Since we wisely did not adopt Confucianism as our state religion (staying with no state religion), we have avoided antagonizing anyone.
Another thing we may want to do is avoid trading with anyone's worst enemy. This is due to that silly diplo modifier "you have traded with our worst enemy". Absolutely absurd, but we'll have to deal with it.
With all that said, there's still some things we can do.
I swap Alphabet for CoL. Code is the more expensive tech of the two, but we have little else to leverage (read: nothing else). As well, Alphabet will allow us to trade with all the other AIs, so it is worth grabbing. Considering this is also Prince, and the AI usually doesn't trade fairly, we are getting a decent deal.
Getting our hands on Alphabet also discounts Currency. Previously at 70% sci (break even), it would have taken us 22 turns. Now it's only 19 turns.
485BC (141):
We're going to have one more peek inside the foreign advisor as we start this turn, as it now shows us all the techs that were unlocked for trade last turn.
You'll notice that some AIs have techs that they aren't willing to trade. AI's have three reasons (that I know of) for not trading techs.
-They have a Monopoly on that tech.
-They are building a wonder associated with that tech. (They will outright say "We have our reasons.")
-They fear you are becoming too advanced (in this case, the AI will not trade any of it's techs with you).
In the above case, De Gaulle with Metal Casting clearly falls under the category of having a tech monopoly (he could be building the Colossus, but that seems unlikely seeing as he would need a functioning forge as well).
De Gaulle and Fred both have Poly, but aren't willing to trade it. The attached wonder to Poly is the Temple of Artemis. It is highly likely that these two are building ToA. I am not 100% certain, because they are not using the "We have our reasons" dialogue in diplomacy, but there isn't a whole lot of other reasons to be hiding Poly.
In the case of Boud and the Burger King, they are both certainly building The Great Lighthouse. Both give "We have our reasons", while everyone else who has Sailing is willing to trade it.
Ok, well back to the actual game...
Two Great Prophets popped in far away lands, expect a shrine or two soonish I'd guess.
Moscow grew, and the governor was smart enough to place the new citizen on the high yield mine (even though we disabled the governor, lol).
So we are now stagnant with 40 hammers a turn going in the mids, shudder. What a hammer pit! Moscow also got another border pop, such that there is a lot we can do with the land now.
470BC (142):
Boudica shows up and wants to trade us Archery for our Meditation. Archery is 3 turns for us to tech, but the techs are cheap, and we are unlikely to get anything else for Med anyways.
Disquietude starts a chop into the Mids. Since we have Maths, this chop will be worth something like 88 hammers.
455BC (143):
The Kashi Vishwanath is BIAFL. That's the Hindu Shrine for anyone keeping track. So one of those Prophets belonged to Fred then.
At the same time, Fred suddenly won't trade Sailing. So he's building the Great Lighthouse as well. Too bad he didn't get the memo that he ISN'T Bismarck, and everyone else started before he did!
Rostov is growing next turn, so going to get that worker cranked out.
We get Chagrin started on that last segment of road near Nova.
440BC (144):
Rostov grows, and upkeep lurches up by 1gpt, sigh... Switching to that worker...
Waiting for whips, lol...
425BC (145):
The Great Lighthouse is BIAFL.
By Celtica. Boudica will now trade us Sailing, lol.
Nothing else of excitement this turn.
410BC (146):
St. Petes hits size 6.
The courthouse gets whipped on account of this city costing a ton. It will rapidly grow back, not to worry. As you can see, BUG is very helpful in the fact that it will alert you to when you can do whips, and even show you how much overflow you'll win (admittedly, it's slightly off since it counts current production, which will drop as citizens die).
S.ilver
ed and forgot to move the axes from St. Petes to cover the road.
Meh, might need a repair crew soon. That would be bad...
The obscene chop also hits Moscow this turn.
128 hammers? Sign me up! Disquietude will start working on a road to Black Dot next, along with getting the wheat up in preparation for the settler.
395BC (147):
Whoever had the option took the second one, as there is a -2 due to past events between Wang and Fred now. They are still cautious though due to Open Borders diplo.
Courts finished off in St. Petes, and we're still booming with food. Going to order up a Confucian Monastery for the extra culture while we rebulk on population (for a worker or something).
Nova can finally whip the courthouse, so do it.
380BC (148):
Burger King shows up on our doorstep and wants to swap Sailing for Writing. They are surprisingly fairly close in value. I mull over the decision a bit. Writing is a big gateway tech, but Sailing is important to us since we have Calendar resources that we'd like to take advantage of. I eventually pull the trigger on the deal.
Nova finished whipping out its courthouse in the mean time, so getting on a Confused Temple to raise the happy cap. We'll dial another worker here in 3 turns when it grows (burn anger time and net some more workforce, yay).
365BC (149):
A barb warrior attacks Trotsky, who is watching the road. The barb bites it, but there's another barb axeman coming in.
Got workers basically working this turn. We finished the rice farm, so extra speed for the worker at Rostov to finish. Going to spam some mines there before shredding the jungle.
Adding one farm to St. Petes, as I realized it has an odd amount of food when working the gold the way it is.
350BC (150):
And the barb takes the bait, but we are down to 0.8 health, ouch. Running Trotsky back to Nova to heal.
Nova hitting size 4 next turn, so worker stalling is in the cards.
335BC (151):
We're still really big.
Poor Burger King is in a bad way, being boxed in by De Gaulle.
Boud wants OB. No.
Bad luck strikes this turn.
Hilariously, this brings back memories of FS-1.
Thinking only Liq will get that reference
.
Meh, ok. So we lost the Mids. To De Gaulle, an industrious Civ. Since we know it's lost, I'm going to switch it out this turn for a settler so we can get back to the main priority, REXing. Not wonder whoring. S.ilver and Liq tend to get all this stuff confused
.
Let's take a look at it first though.
60 hammers short. I regret not putting another chop into it now, although since we are making 40 hammers a turn, I think it would have just resulted in another wasted forest.
We have 690 hammers invested into it, but we really only invested 345 raw hammers (thanks to the stone). We'll check back with this later when the game gives us a wad of cash for missing the Mids.
Anyways, swap to a Settler which is 5 turns. We have troops around already.
Nova grows, and will grow again into unhappiness in 4 turns unless we stop this, so start up a Settler. A 2-pop whip will yield 135 hammers for us, due to Imperialistic. A settler is 149 hammers. That means we need 14 hammers into it. Working it for 2 turns will allow us to whip it.
320BC (152):
De Gaulle adopts Representation to thumb his nose at us, clearly.
Ok, so we just won 690 gold from the Mids. This is a completely equal cash conversion for hammers (1 for 1). The difference is that we have stone, so it's really 2 gold for every true hammer we invested. So we pocket a ton of cash and can now boost research.
So dial tech back up to 100%. Bleeding 8gpt, but Currency is in 5 turns.
Trotsky just got back to Nova this turn, so 5 turns of healing incoming...
Can now whip the worker at Rostov, so get it done.
Minor overflow hitting the granary. More importantly, the mine/chop will also hit the granary.
305BC (153):
De Gaulle wants to Open Borders, and I tell him to sod off after stealing our Mids.
Cathy's "Abashment" is done a Rostov so going to help finish off the mine first, before we get to other things.
We have our hammers into Nova's settler, so dropping the whip!
Note that you usually don't want to do this sort of thing, as it doubles up the whip unhappiness. However, since we are Imperialistic, it is a VERY GOOD conversion of food to hammers, and we don't yet have the workforce to get Nova past the mass food stage, so this is a way to get great production out of it. We can also stall growth by slow building a worker (which won't be THAT slow considering the abundance of food here).
St. Petes hit size 5 this turn, so dial up a worker.
290BC (154):
The Temple of Artemis is BIAFL. Actually, not so far away, Ramesses put it in Thebes... Well, this creates the minor problem of a cultural see-saw in St. Petes, sigh... need our shrine up...
The Settler finished in Nova, and we're back to a Confused Temple. Going to have to continue to stall growth here while anger wears off. We'll grow to size 3 before worrying too much about it though.
Rostov's mines are both done this turn, and the Granary only has 19 turns left. Uh, switch to a mine to make it 5 turns, as there is little point in accumulating food without the granary in place.
275BC (155):
Moscow's settler is due next turn, and Disquietude is working on the farm for the future Black Dot, where Vlad is covering. Nova's settler is heading to Orange, where Franky will be the temporary garrison.
Abashment peels off from the workers at Rostov to head to Orange and being roading and such. Chagrin and Fobile will start with worker abuse! (slashing jungle)
260BC (156):
Fred pops up and he wants Open Borders. Uh, he is worst enemies with some folks, so no.
Moscow's Settler is done, so we are ordering an Axe to replace our beaten out military. The settler heads to Black Dot, but will be hampered, as S.ilver
ed on the road building, putting a road across the river on the hill, rather than on flat ground.
245BC (157):
Tentatively set us for Calendar, due to our many Calendar resources.
Found Yaroslavl' on Orange Dot.
We start a Granary since a worker is incoming anyways.
There's an opportunity up to trade with Fred.
Fred has both Monarchy and Polythesim up for trade. Monarchy is a useful tech for us due to having wine in our borders (and as such, fairly easy happy). Missing the Mids has also made getting some form of government tech more pressing, so Monarchy does this as well by netting us Hereditary Rule.
Netting Polythesim is less obvious, but it is the prerequisite for Literature. Lit contains the Great Library, which is a very nice wonder, but even if we weren't considering it at all, you still need Lit to build your National and Heroic Epics, and those can't be ignored (unless you are crazy).
So, we are best off taking both off him.
It's a net loss of around 70 beakers for us, which is very good considering the AI's stubbornness. Also, it's a fairly even trade, so we shouldn't incur penalties towards his worst enemies (they are on the other side of the continent anyways).
Going to end the turnset here.
Ok, let's summarize. We lost the Mids. Boo. But all is not lost. Remember that your strategy should never be "do or die" in regards to wonders. They are great to have, but you should always be able to live without them.
That being said, we did benefit from a 2x efficient cash injection as compensation for losing the Mids. So this will allow us to tech at maximum speed for quite some time.
We now have 5 workers, with another on the way in 5 turns, so the worker crisis is starting to reach it's conclusion. But we are nowhere near done REXing, so we'll continue to need more as our empire expands and our improvement options increase.
We pop a Great Prophet in St. Petes in 6 turns, which we'll use to get our Shrine up. After that, we can and should fire the priest working here, as we won't need another Prophet unless we land another holy city. Which may actually happen... Surprising? Read on.
It's now the perfect time to begin hiring scientists in Novgorod. We've got a ton of food here and a relatively low happy cap. Nova can support 2 scientists (our current maximum) with the food from the two flood plains, so we should get those guys up and running as soon as we can afford to. The reason is we want to pop a Great Scientist to bulb Philosophy. This will likely land us Taoism if we're not too slow (hence another holy city), and at the same time will advance us to the Medieval Age AND give us the crucial prerequisite for Liberalism.
In many games, the Liberalism beeline is a staple in getting yourself ahead in tech (since we are already relatively ahead in tech, we'll simply be doing the Liberalism run as practice). Mind you, even though we could run straight to Liberalism right now (without needing to side track except for Phil, which is bulbable), it's not generally wise to do this while missing staple techs like Metal Casting and Calendar (the dynamics of the game change DRASTICALLY when you hit the highest levels, but obviously we are nowhere near that caliber so we won't be discussing that).
So, even though we're going to try for Liberalism, we'll need to outline a tech path of stuff we want before getting there (as an aside, the tech we want from Liberalism is Astronomy; bonus points for anyone who explains it in depth. The hint is that we want to play the map).
For tech path, we have a bit of a choice ahead. Calendar is set right now, and it's amazing as it will unlock our two calendar resources (add in the dyes for much later if you want). Considering our happiness crunch, this is major.
Aesthetics is the "wonders" path, as Aes->Lit->Music is nothing but Wonders. Drama gives us Theatres, but those are largely only important if you're going to war and need to lean on the culture sliders (our dyes aren't up yet anyways).
Construction is in preparation for fighting, as Cats are basically a requirement for taking cities at this stage. Also unlocks elephants, which we are unfortunate enough not to have while our nearest rivals appear to have them. Is also the gateway tech to Engineering and scary Trebs. We may also need the pikes to deal with Elephants.
Metal Casting gives forges, which everyone loves, and will boost the happiness from gold and silver, which we have. Workshops can start getting Rostov up and limping, and this tech is also a gateway into more violent things hidden in Machinery and Engineering.
Compass is basically pointless until we've acquired the Machinery prereq for Optics, which we do want relatively quickly to secure the circumnav bonus.
Feudalism cheapens Civil and leads us to the Medieval age. It really doesn't give us anything at all useful. Longbows, which are passive-defensive units (not what we want), vassal states, which leave you a big diplomatic liability (again, not what we want), Vassalage, a somewhat useful, but expensive, civic for boosting XP levels, and Serfdom, which is useless unless you are Spiritual and for some reason want to save money on your Labour Civic (same upkeep as Tribalism but actually gives you something). So not much to write home about. Unfortunately, it is a hard prereq for Guilds, which is a core tech. Fortunately, the AI loves to tech it, so we'll find no shortage of people looking to trade.
Civil Service wins us macemen for smacking some people, Flexible Farming for Epic Irrigation Channels, and Bureau, which is an expensive civic that I am usually not a huge fan of.
Obviously there's much to discuss when it comes to techs. I will tentatively say that Calendar should be our first priority. After that, well the team needs to discuss the direction. Keep in mind that the Aes line will basically commit us to trying for more wonders, while the Metal Casting line will help out our city development.
Further thoughts. Dotmap wise, we are ready to settle Black Dot in 2 turns when the settler finally has move again, lol. After that, we need to spam out a settler to seal the gap at Sally Dot. Magenta Dot is after that, and then we've got Cyan Dot and Forest Green Dot. Can do those in either/or order as Forest Green has floods, but Cyan has Fish! They both share the cows, but we don't care, as cows are bleh.
Poor White Dot can be filled out semi-last, and if we've still got positive cash flow, Purple Love Dot is honestly the last city that we are seriously looking for. Any dot west of Black Dot is marginal and wins us nothing except increased maintenance.
After we have finished REXing out our own lands (or possibly during), we will need to launch a boat or two from Rostov to take a look at the islands that seem to stretch from around our dyes, all the way to north of Hammy's lands. These are likely worth settling for the intercontinental trade routes.
Oh, and revolt to Hereditary Rule, as we lose nothing but a turn and gain happiness. Since we are playing to tech breakpoints anyways, this will give goblinmarine an extra turn to play with workers
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Roster
1. S.ilver <-- Just Played --
2. goblinmarine >> Up Now <<
3. Diamondeye <-- Out Until Mar 20 --
4. sturick
5. Liquidated
6. PeteyP
Alternate: Arlborn <-- Tentatively On Deck --
