Discussion, Turns 141 - 160

[peter grimes]

Wow, Exciting turn!!

It's a good thing we escorted that settler! If he were unescorted, and I were Innovia, I'd declare war to eliminate the settler. Unless that's impossible because of the minimum 10turns thing on Open Borders.

I'm not going to hold my breath on a Northern Passage through the ice, but it's certainly nice to think about

So how do we plan on preventing Innovia from scouting too far north? He'll be able to peek inside Sunrise Citadel after it's founded next turn, but then I suppose we'll have to close Open Borders once he gets close to our Core?

 

[Memphus]

Wow, Exciting turn!!

It's a good thing we escorted that settler! If he were unescorted, and I were Innovia, I'd declare war to eliminate the settler. Unless that's impossible because of the minimum 10turns thing on Open Borders.

You can still declare war to end Open Borders.

I'm not going to hold my breath on a Northern Passage through the ice, but it's certainly nice to think about
?

Looking at that screenshot relative to the land it looks pretty promising to me

So how do we plan on preventing Innovia from scouting too far north? He'll be able to peek inside Sunrise Citadel after it's founded next turn, but then I suppose we'll have to close Open Borders once he gets close to our Core?

We cancell Open borders After 10 turns, irregardless where he is.

 

[peter grimes]

Will we still cancel after 10 turn regardless of where our explorer is in their lands? Could give us a nice teleporting boost!

 

[Memphus]

Will we still cancel after 10 turn regardless of where our explorer is in their lands? Could give us a nice teleporting boost!

Or could teleport us into a corner...

I plan to be to the other side before 10 turns is up

 

[DaveMcW]

I plan to be to the other side before 10 turns is up

Try to aim for the Aloha peninsula.

 

[General_W]

RE: Innovia's land being nicer than ours – all those floodplains are a bit upsetting to see, especially since we could have made super good use of them with our Financial trait.

However, Innovia does have a lot of just plain old useless desert tiles as well. This has apparently forced them to farm some of those floodplains (rather than use cottages) just to get enough food to overcome the health drawbacks and work some high hammer tiles.

I'm still a bit jealous – but I think overall, we likely have more useable tiles in the long term than Innovia has.

 

[DaveMcW]

In the long term, they will be our tiles anyway.

 

[DaveMcW]

I.E. do we start to focus on Libraries / Universities so that our capital can build Oxford?

We need 6 universities to build oxford. There is no point building them in our best 5 cities if the 6th city won't complete it for 40 turns.

 

[classical_hero]

Well there is still a point in having them since they do increase our science output in each of those cities, even though we might not be able to build Oxford.

 

[Memphus]

Actually now that I look at it courthouses would help alot

 

[DaveMcW]

How about a State Property beeline?

 

[peter grimes]

Spies would be useful

As for the Oxford bit - I can't see that 5 of our cities are generating enough commerce to make the massive hammer investment worthwhile. After all, we're looking at wars to break out in 20 to 40 turns, and those hammers need to be offensive hammers.

Courthouses (120 ) cost just over half of what Universities (200 ) cost, so we could get all 6 courthouses for the price of less than 4 universities. Of course, even there, I'm not sure how much we'd be saving... 10 gpt, 20gpt? Anyone know?

Back to the Communism beeline: That could work out well. After we go through all the swaps with Piffle, we will only need to pick up Scientific Method before going to Communism. Then we'd be in a good spot to go Railroad while Piffle goes Assembly Line.

 

[peter grimes]

Okay - I know that I said that I'd try and come up with a 'Military Budget' this evening, but I ran out of time.

I wound up going over some of the Innovia map. Maybe this stands better in the Innovia Embassy - I'll be happy to move it over there, if so

Some things really struck me:

Magadan is setted in an odd location. They didn't settle to take advantage of the hammer bonus from the copper. I bet they found their Iron, and settled to acquire it in their fat cross, or their second border expansion. Or, there's some other treat up there, like Silver, or Marble.

The way they name towns, the one that's unseen NNWesterly from Glasport could be either Sinsburg or Chowderton. My bet is on Sinsburg, seeing as we know that city has Pigs (which are haram, as are Crabs )

Wheelville, in my opinion, is likely to be found to the West of where our explorer is, on a separate tongue of land. We can see a road crossing a mountain pass heading SW into the fog - and I think that's the only city that could be down there.

Chowderton is likely to be coastal, with crabs (again, haram, but that didn't seem to stop them ); I think that's the town we're about to see next turn.

BIG SURPRISE: Piffle's warrior on the hill NW of the silks that are south of Glasport. Can't see him now, as we've moved away. He's not inside their cultural boundaries.

BIGGER SURPRISE: We're No.1 in Land Area I really didn't think that was going to happen. Unfortunately, we're last in MFG. Innovia is highest, and when you look at their graph, it seems they are reorienting for a big push.

 

[Memphus]

We also now have the most cities...

We are back into first for GDP

We are in second in Food.

As for don't worry as we have granaries.

And a huge tech lead...

 

[DaveMcW]

Our population is really suffering. We need bigger cities and workers to improve the tiles for them.

 

[Memphus]

Do we want to build the Taj Mahal?

Could be timed with our War (or just before it)

 

[peter grimes]

Personally, I've never built it. At the same time, I'm not nearly the caliber of player of some others here.

The Taj simply initiates a Golden Age upon completion, correct? At a cost of 700 , 1/2 cost w/ marble... which we don't have.

To me, 700 seems tastier when it's in the form of things that can move around on the battle field

Especially with Innovia pumping out Level 3 units, I'd rather have more Military than a Golden Age.

Full Disclosure: I have yet to trigger a GA in any of my single player or multiplayer games

 

[Memphus]

Well what you need to look at is cost beneft ratio. (Do we have any accountants on the team?!? I am but a engineer in training )

In any event the place to build it would be our Capital as it is the only one with remotly the capability in the short term. (Immortal Keep would eb a good choice too but then we lose 100% bonus for military)

In any event 700 for us it would cost 467 (50% bonus)

Now what do we get for 467 we get 8 (or is it 10 on normal speed?) of Golden age in which every tile we have a or on get 1 extra of each. So here is where the math comes in. How many tiles are we working with at least 1 or 1 (both works as well)

If the generated in the next 8 turns (10 maybe) => 467 then it is a good investment (as we also receive the bonus )

So until I know that I can't answer

 

[peter grimes]

I'm pretty sure that it's an 8 turn GA in this game...

so that would mean that we'd need to be utilizing more than 58 per turn to make a GA worth while. (that's simply the cost of the Taj / hammers)

We are currently drawing in 46 per turn, spread amongst our several cities. So I don't think a Taj makes sense under these circumstances.

However, as I've said before, I'm not really sure that I'm capturing all of the important elements here

 

[DaveMcW]

We only have 21 tiles eligible for the hammer bonus right now. That's 21 x 8 = 168 base, or about 240 with production bonuses factored in.