I'm back for one game at least

M60A3TTS · Mar 15, 2020

After my 10, I believe that the Incans are down to their capital and Vilcas. Pacha would be willing to take peace and go 0CC. If Vilcas was 1 south it would be perfectly located for our use, but alas tis not.

Not a bloodless set by any measure, it took a couple swords to eliminate Machu Picchu and 2 vet swords were lost clean against first defending reg spear in Vilcas. :cry:

Right now it has a couple spears and an archer.

Ottomans completed GLight in Istanbul on my turn 7 (900BC).

We settled Atlanta and Duluth and a settler from Norfolk is now in Florida. He can SIP next turn or go 1E, although in doing so he then loses the fish until culture pop.. Seattle got re-named Des Moines just because. Boston auto-abandoned as expected and happiness adjusted as needed prior and re-adjusted after. Town was re-settled on the furs as discussed, now Albany.

Incan tundra town of Huamanga was auto-razed without loss and 32g to our coffers.

With that neck of the woods now cleared, our troops are heading back, all 0-3 tiles from Albany.

I wasn't sure if the swords by Cuzco and what is now Bath (Maine) were anti-flip insurance. I put a spear in Cuzco and left one sword outside. Bath has 2 swords still outside.

What we are left with at the moment is a need for more cats. I don't want to needlessly throw away more swords. I have 5 cats building now, which should be sufficient to deal with what remains of Pacha.

For Cori, we have up to 6 swords and 3 cats. Near Albany are 3 swords and 2 cats. Near Duluth are 3 swords. They are showing a pair of archers outside their two cities. I did kill a pair of chasqui warriors lingering west of Cuzco and AFAIK there are no other threats.

CoL is in and we have Republic is in 25 @-7gpt with only 57 in the bank. I have lux @ 10% only because it is building a cat @ 7spt due in 3 and it can't do that at 0% happy. This will require some tech slider work going forward, but we seem to be doing ok. We won't bother pointy stick research with the Incas, we'll see about Korea later.

Wang has currency but wants way too much for it. We're up CoL and Philo over him and he still has his wheel and HBR.

If you want to road Norfolk now, go ahead. We really can't afford 60g sword upgrades nor do we need them at this point.

One note, please avoid fortifying workers now. One sat in Boston after it autorazed and I stupidly missed him just sitting there almost the entire turn set so there are a couple unimproved tiles lost.

And the empire minus Albany and Bath:

M60A3TTS · Mar 15, 2020

In terms of more settling, you can decide whether or not to keep Vilcas if it becomes an option, but I like the spot 1S of it better. This is almost certainly our springboard into Korea and we can't let Pyongsong connect up that iron long once it culture pops. We can also settle on the ruins of Machu Picchu that would just tie into Cori. But beyond those two and Florida I think we should hold off on any more settling for the moment. We're at 10 cities now, Florida would be 11 with 2-3 others pending. That should be more than adequate to work with.

M60A3TTS · Mar 15, 2020

vmxa said:
Lurker:

"In due time they will be happy to tell us all they know" that cracked me up.

Well we will do our best to keep all the lurkers entertained. I'm pleasantly surprised we get this many views in 2020.

tjs282 · Mar 16, 2020

M60A3TTS said:
Not a bloodless set by any measure, it took a couple swords to eliminate Machu Picchu and 2 vet swords were lost clean against first defending reg spear in Vilcas. Right now it has a couple spears and an archer.

Damn, that stings. Sounds like you got most of the SOURs on this one...

M60A3TTS said:
We settled Atlanta and Duluth and a settler from Norfolk is now in Florida. He can SIP next turn or go 1E, although in doing so he then loses the fish until culture pop.

If you have no preference either way, I'm inclined to grab the Fish right now. Faster initial growth (7T per pop-point instead of 10T) = more commerce/shields sooner.

Under Republic, with a Courthouse, Lib, Duct, and Harbour (not necessarily in that order!), that town will be able to rake in large amounts of water-commerce/ beakers despite being 2nd-ring. Obviously we'd wait for Republic before we start building most of that infra, but I think it would be worth starting on the Courthouse now, and chopping the Dyes-Forest into it, with the expectation that the build would be finished shortly before/ around the same time as we learn/switch to Republic.

That location will be far enough from the action that the build should be safe (until Wang learns MM, he'll have to go through Atlanta first), we don't need anything else built there yet (our Rax-towns can take care of unit-production, our food-rich 2nd-/3rd-ringers can build our Workers and Settlers), and having a Courthouse already up will speed all subsequent research/builds, whatever we eventually choose to build there.

We should also probably start thinking about where we want to (pre)build our FP. Of the cities/locations that we have so far (or will have 'real soon now'), I like New Vilcas, with Duluth (or possibly Des Moines) as runner-up.

M60A3TTS said:
Incan tundra town of Huamanga was auto-razed without loss and 32g to our coffers.

What?!? Where (the hell) did Pacha get all that cash from so suddenly? He had nothing for most/all of my set. Did he and Wang swap some more tech?

M60A3TTS said:
For Cori, we have up to 6 swords and 3 cats. Near Albany are 3 swords and 2 cats. Near Duluth are 3 swords.

That should be enough for me to finish them off, now you've used up all our bad luck!

So I'll start bringing most of the northern forces south, leaving only a skeleton defence against e.g. marauding Chasquis. Because once Cori and Vilcas are ours (or gone), anything Pacha had left in the field will go poof anyway...

M60A3TTS said:
One note, please avoid fortifying workers now. One sat in Boston after it autorazed and I stupidly missed him just sitting there almost the entire turn set so there are a couple unimproved tiles lost.

Sorry about that, guess I should have noted that in the handover: I left that Worker in Boston specifically to re-road the ruins, and get the Furs re-hooked 2T after abandonment...

M60A3TTS said:
I wasn't sure if the swords by Cuzco and what is now Bath (Maine) were anti-flip insurance. I put a spear in Cuzco and left one sword outside. Bath has 2 swords still outside.

Yes. Most of those Swords were low on HP after capturing the towns/mopping up, so I left them there to heal — and recapture if necessary — while the still-healthy units moved on to the next town.

(When I set up a new game, I usually leave Culture-flips switched on; but I wasn't sure if you'd done that here, and didn't want to risk it)

M60A3TTS said:
In terms of more settling, you can decide whether or not to keep Vilcas if it becomes an option, but I like the spot 1S of it better.

I'm assuming that Vilcas was founded by the Settler-pair I saw, so it's been there nearly your whole set, right?

That means it must now be pretty close to growing to Pop2 (and finishing its second Spear-defender), but even if that happens before we're in position to attack, Pacha will almost certainly whip that new citizen into an Archer immediately, putting it back at Pop1, so it will still likely auto-raze. Which is fine, because the spot 1S is indeed better.

And in the unlikely even that Vilcas doesn't get razed by our victorious armies, I can simply chop that Forest-tile into a Settler, and move it over.

M60A3TTS said:
We can also settle on the ruins of Machu Picchu that would just tie into Cori.

Agree, that's a great spot.

M60A3TTS said:
But beyond those two and Florida I think we should hold off on any more settling for the moment. We're at 10 cities now, Florida would be 11 with 2-3 others pending. That should be more than adequate to work with.

Disagree here though. More cities = more everything. And until we go Republic (giving us more oomph from the LUX%-slider), happiness will continue to be problematic, so it makes more sense to turn unhappy citizens into Settlers than Specialists.

I'd therefore also like to put at least one more town 3W of Duluth, on the north bank of the Missouri(?), to close that gap between Cori and New Vilcas and straighten our border from Cori to Atlanta. With a road all the way along the river, being able to shift our units back and forth quickly will also make it much easier to decoy/defend against any stray incoming Korean units (though there shouldn't be too many of those, once we've mopped up Wang's initial stacks and are going on the offensive ourselves).

M60A3TTS · Mar 16, 2020

Don't disagree. More is better but we need these wars over soonest.

For planning purposes, let's keep Chicago, Philly and Washington building troops. We want Philly and Chicago at 7.5spt which they can do now so we can build 4-turn swords and 3-turn cats so let's not pull settlers from there. Washington is at 10spt, so we should leave that be as well. We have potential 4-turn settler pumps in Cuzco and Des Moines, both have granaries in the works as well as future star city. You can also switch Norfolk to a settler if you want.

Another town 3W of Duluth- ok but may want that last in build order.

M60A3TTS · Mar 16, 2020

Would someone out there kindly point me to a good forum post on OCN or at least give me the numbers for the govts? Thanks in advance.

M60A3TTS · Mar 16, 2020

tjs282 said:
We should also probably start thinking about where we want to (pre)build our FP. Of the cities/locations that we have so far (or will have 'real soon now'), I like New Vilcas, with Duluth (or possibly Des Moines) as runner-up.
What?!? Where (the hell) did Pacha get all that cash from so suddenly? He had nothing for most/all of my set. Did he and Wang swap some more tech?

As a dark horse candidate, I would offer up 1N of the last unclaimed iron. 2 irrigated plains cows+iron, hills etc would make that an awesome prod center. The disadvantage is of course it's a bit distant. For the moment. :evil:

tjs282 said:
(When I set up a new game, I usually leave Culture-flips switched on; but I wasn't sure if you'd done that here, and didn't want to risk it)
I'm assuming that Vilcas was founded by the Settler-pair I saw, so it's been there nearly your whole set, right?

I don't recall but it was not there at the beginning and has been there at least though my turn 7.
-----------------------

For city specialization going forward, I have this as a general plan:
Military Production (work towards 8-10SPT on all)
Washington
Chicago
Philadelphia (may rename that Pittsburgh since it isn't on the coast)
Norfolk
Albany (crank out spear MPs for the settler waves moving west)

4-turn Settler Pumps
Cuzco (re-name Detroit)
Des Moines
* City (Boston)

2-turn worker pumps
New Vilcas and/or Duluth

Other
Bath builds boats
Atlanta and Florida (St. Petersburg?) TBD but maybe cheap cats for now.

tjs282 · Mar 16, 2020

M60A3TTS said:
Would someone out there kindly point me to a good forum post on OCN or at least give me the numbers for the govts? Thanks in advance.

Alexman's corruption thread lists all the factors and the numbers affecting corrruption, if that's what you're looking for?

But OCN is set in the .biq, and (for epic-games, at least) is set larger with increasing map size.

However, I don't know offhand how the game executable decides which OCN to use, when presented with a "preset map + Firaxis rules" scenario like this one. I suspect it might just use the OCN for whichever World-size you last started as an epic-game (i.e. on a procedurally generated map), before starting the present game.

vmxa · Mar 16, 2020

Lurker:

Marla is set to ocn of 14 for republic.

tjs282 · Mar 17, 2020

Spoiler TLDRlog 750-550 BC :

Not much to say here: as of 650 BC, the Inca are no more. Unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) both Cori and Vilcas (whipped Archers and then) got auto-razed at Pop1. Still, at least we made >130g out of them...

Our troops had no time to celebrate their victories, though: Colonel Paine reported that we're STRONG vs Korea, so I marched them all south, and they're now lined up on the Korean border, ready for you to give the word (a few are still healing, but should be ready to move next turn). I'd let the Settler-pair near Pyongsong move 1N onto the Grass before DoW-ing, though (for the 2 more free Workers)...

I know you said build more military, and I have, but Washington was also about to start wasting food at Pop6 (no Construction/Duct yet), so I popped out a Settler, who is about to reach the NewVilcas site (which I think we should name Chicago! Old Chicago has already been renamed). I sent him south because of the Korean Settler-Pair, but the next time Washington's about to fill its food-box, that Settler could go and found Montreal, up on the St. Lawrence Estuary (Hills 3NW of Bath).

Philly will also hit Pop7 just as its current Settler completes (and can then go back to doing 4T-Swords at Pop5-6): that Settler should go and found (New) Boston in Massachusetts (*-site). Des Moines now has a Gran, so is building a Settler(s) to replace Nampo and Cheju (both of which will auto-raze if they don't get to Pop2 before we get there). Duluth needs to run a Geek at Pop3 for now because it has no MPs, but we will have units available to leave Detroit from next turn, to force that Geek back to work on the land.

Other new/outlying towns are building Grans + Courthouses rather than units, to avoid overloading our military-support budget before we have more towns to increase our free-unit allowance (or Republic, for more cash): feel free to switch those builds if you suffer more unexpected losses, though.

The first northern Curragh has just reached Greenland, so can now make its way south/east to find Britain; a second is following it. There is a third one heading south through the Caribbean, to map the South American coastline.

We are only 11T from Republic, and time-to-research may improve even further once (New) Chicago and New Boston are founded. Depending on how the Korean war goes, we may be able to revolt as soon as we get it.

Good luck.

M60A3TTS · Mar 17, 2020

My luck was significantly better this set as no losses were taken. Wang was not quite as fortunate.

I waited the first turn out as suggested. Reviewing some geography, Duluth is now Green Bay. Old Machu Picchu is actually where Duluth ought to be.

Wardec'd Wang on T1 then auto-razed Pyongyang next turn (510BC). Just one reg spear defender taken out. Worker captured and a few trinkgeld for the treasury. Founded Chicago. Set about mining the nearby cow so we can get the settler pump cranking in Des Moines after the dyes are hooked up.

T4 turned science off for a couple turns. Cuzco, now Erie, getting positioned as a second 4-turn settler factory.

410BC Little Rock and Boston founded. Both start granaries.

Captured Cheju, again no losses. Wang sent a pair of reg warriors to re-take the place. We appreciate the training as both are killed along with a reg archer.

Got the FP message. I still like that tile north of the last iron for the FP city.

T9 Hooked up the dyes.

T10 Captured Pyongyang without losses and a few coin once again. Just a pair of reg spears there. Set science to 80%

43 in the treasury, -5gpt and Republic in 2. And done.

Erie is building temple in 3 and is then our second operational 4-turn settler pump. At this point we can start looking at our rapid expansion, within reason. Wang has his capital +7 cities. We can see 4 of them. You can take what you need from the Pyongyang group and take out Hyangsan and I think what is Inch'on to the south. That will allow you to time to pull in the swords and cats near Des Moines-Little Rock-New Orleans and then march the whole gang on Seoul. That includes about 11 cats. There also may be a town in the fog 2S1SE of Pyongyang.

We may have enough to do the job with what we have, namely 22 swords and 16 cats but maybe another 4-6 swords would be good insurance. Beyond that, we can do our settler thing. One in Detroit is ready to go next turn as is one in Philly. They can found (New) Duluth @ ex-Machu Picchu and Montreal.

New Opportunities Abound

M60A3TTS · Mar 18, 2020

Dotmap for discussion. Potential FP site went 1E to make this work.

A potential city 6 could go where the sword is 2SW of the iron and could tie in with the Pyangsang location.

tjs282 · Mar 18, 2020

Looks pretty good. Did you do you any food-mapping, or just eyeballing it?

I only ask because since GreenBay will need to steal shields from all its neighbours' BFC-tiles, Chicago will likely need its SW BFC-tiles for food/shields — and LR's citizens will likely need its western BFC-tiles, to also allow New Orleans' citizens some land to work! So Site5, being quite close to Chic/ LR/ DesM/ Site4, will have to harvest its southern/western tiles (and Site 1 looks like it will have to go east for its food), which in turn squeezes Site FP.

So what do you think about moving Site4 onto the Hill 1SW? That would eventually give it access to the Floodplains near Hyangsan and Pyongyang, making up a little for the food-poor Deserts (which Site5 will force it to use).

M60A3TTS said:
A potential city 6 could go where the sword is 2SW of the iron and could tie in with the Pyangsang location.

Not really in favour of that (at this point).

SiteSwordsman (=Phoenix? Las Vegas? Albuquerque?) would be fairly food-poor before we can irrigate + rail its Deserts, and it will also need a Duct to reach Pop12. If Settlers are walking that far, I'd rather they go a little further and settle the west coast, and then backfill this area later if we still seem to have space (preferably founding on a watered tile(s) if possible!).

Pyongyang and Hyangsan themselves can both go up in flames, as far as I'm concerned. Although they are on rivers, they're also both 1 tile away from the coast — stupid Wang :rolleyes:

I think Pyongyang would be better on the Plains 1SE (= Corpus Christi?) staying on the river, but also getting coastal-access; with New Hyangsan maybe on the Hills 2SE of Hyang's current spot.

M60A3TTS · Mar 18, 2020

Eyeballed it. Tried to keep consistent 3-4 tile distance while situated on a river.

Site 4 1SW- sure.

Not crazy about 6 either, it's weakest of the batch and knew would need a duct. But for distance purposes, it fit. We have time to ponder this, it is not a priority city.

Pyongyang. Yeah, I thought about razing it as it belongs on the coast as you say. If you want to settler disband and move it, go for it.

Hyangsang. Yes, probably better on the coast, do feel free to torch it.

On the temple in Erie, I'm aware of your opinion on the general topic of happy buildings. We can change the build, let it finish then sell after culture pop, or keep it. I needed something that would take time as it wasn't ready to be a factory soon. Could have done wealth or cats I suppose. In any case I think there will be a couple cities like Detroit that will need to be considered for happy buildings but that again is for later.

tjs282 · Mar 18, 2020

M60A3TTS said:
On the temple in Erie, I'm aware of your opinion on the general topic of happy buildings.

Gosh, has my reputation preceded me...? Am I ... famous...? :lol:

M60A3TTS said:
We can change the build, let it finish then sell after culture pop, or keep it. I needed something that would take time as it wasn't ready to be a factory soon.

So if the Temple is more intended as a placeholder while the town grows, than because we really need Erie's borders popped, how about switching it to a Courthouse for now (and reducing the FPT + SPT), as a Lib-prebuild?

We're only 2T from revolution (give or take), and we should be able to get Lit pretty quickly afterwards -- it's cheaper than MM, Currency, and Construction. And we'll want Libs in most/ all of our 1st- and 2nd-ring towns anyway -- even if only to speed us to Gunpowder + MilTrad in the Medieval!

M60A3TTS · Mar 18, 2020

Courthouse in Erie is fine provided we don't need the happiness of a temple to operate the settler farm w/o the 2MP we get in Despotism.. If we need a temple in Erie we probably need to do the same in Des Moines.

M60A3TTS · Mar 19, 2020

Let's see how quickly we can get a pair of worker pumps going. Boston can do it at pop 4 once the granary completes with the two wheat and two game tiles. Little Rock should be able to do it at pop 4 with the three food tiles, two of which need mines along with the BG 1SE also needing mine. The needed workers as it so happens are not far off. I'm seeing Boston as a long term pump as it's not going to be shield rich due to the city spacing.

tjs282 · Mar 19, 2020

Mid-set report:

I played 7 turns yesterday evening (current save is dated 210 BC).

When Rep came in, I didn't revolt immediately, because the Korean War was ongoing, our units were (by necessity) scattered and off-road, and I wanted to be able to build reinforcements if necessary (and get them to the front). Also, time-to-Lit was predicted as only 6T, and that estimate dropped over the next turns: I think we actually got it in 4T! So builds have been switched to Libs in some of the northern core towns, and I've started on Construction.

However, Hyangsan, Inch'on and Seoul have now fallen (Seoul was taken intact, the others auto-razed), with insignificant losses on our side (only 1 Sword, skewered in Seoul, IIRC). We also now have a complete road to Seoul, and our leading stack of Swords + Cats is about to cross the southern border to the next Korean town(s).

Since our current military should get us a lot further south (all the way, if we're lucky!), I'd now like to build/switch to Settlers (and/or Workers) out of each of our larger towns — especially Erie, which I set to harvest food+commerce instead of shields, to ensure the prebuild wouldn't overrun (it would have just finished its Lib last turn — if I'd noticed beforehand that it was in danger of rioting as it hit Pop7 :wallbash:

), and then hit the Big Red Button once those new Settlers are in transit to your dotmapped sites. Otherwise, quite a few of those pop-points will be at risk of starvation during the revolution.

I don't know how many turns of Anarchy we'll draw, but we already have quite a few towns, so it could be high. Would you prefer me to shepherd us through it before uploading the save?

Re. Boston:

My priority under early Republic is to maximise commerce (for fast research/ tax-gold), not shields, and since we get most of our commerce from the core, those towns should grow to Pop7+ ASAP after the revolution (also increases our free-unit support). But Grans can take quite a long time to build, especially in high-food, low-shield towns, so may not be finished in time to help with that (and even though they will give us faster growth from Pop7 to Pop12, first we have to get to Pop7...). I/we should also avoid building Workers/ Settlers out of core towns, unless to maintain happiness: we can use more outlying towns for that instead.

So I'd rather put a Duct in Boston (and other dry towns) than a Gran, at this stage. We have lots of Forests which we can chop for 'essential' builds like Courthouses and Ducts, and once we're a republic, we can cash-rush Ducts if they otherwise won't finish before the food-box fills at Pop6. Coastal towns like Boston also need a Harbour more than a Gran, to allow citizens to exploit the water-tile commerce, while still feeding themselves (Boston will make an awesome Uni-town later; especially if we can get Cops+Newtons pre-built there!).

Re. Temples and other happy-buildings:

Once the war is over, and we're running under Republic, LUX%=20-30% should be enough to replace the lost Despotic-MP effect, and still provide lots of SCI% and/or TAX%. And if we can locate a third Lux(?), a Market is a better happiness-generator than a Temple.

To reduce our military-support post-revolution, we should also disband obsolete/ injured units into e.g. Courthouse-builds in outlying towns, e.g. in ex-Korea. Assuming we have no other neighbours further south, then once Wang is done, most of our Cats can probably go the same way. If we control the Americas before Astro/Navi becomes widely known, we won't ever need (to upgrade Cats to) Trebs; and when we want Cannons/Artillery to begin our invasions in the late Medieval, we can build them from scratch: shields and gold should be a lot more plentiful by then.

M60A3TTS · Mar 19, 2020

Sounds like great progress you've made so far!

Re upcoming anarchy, if I understand the question, I prefer we stay with the 10 turn cycles. I can manage what remains if we are revolting now.

Big towns to settlers/workers- yes let's do it.

Re Boston, I'm not sure I share your optimism, too many neighboring core towns are going to need shields at some point. That said, I want to keep an open mind. My preference is to stay with the gran so we have two worker pumps, but Boston also isn't centrally located and that is a considerable drawback. Chicago probably can relieve Boston of that duty once the full BFC is in place with the nearby cities going in and a couple tiles improved, then we can see what Boston can do with a duct. Meantime we're both seeing the opportunity of major expansion and we need workers for that. If Chicago can be set up as a worker pump within a few turns of Boston's granary coming in, I'm ok changing Boston's build. Fair enough?

Agree on the disbands, a chunk of the military can go into the furnace at the appropriate time, for the Boston duct as an example.

Definitely want markets where appropriate in peacetime.

We're almost doing too well with warfare, Not enough chances to pull off an MGL for HE. Oh well, that will come in due time.

M60A3TTS · Mar 19, 2020

Just to keep all our options open, I would point out that the GIUK gap can be safely crossed with galleys. So conceivably we could go into Iceland or Ireland if we want an early springboard. Iceland would likely be safer as a near zero flip risk option.

I'm back for one game at least

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