RB7 - Winter Wonderland

[Sirian]

Just on this subject, is there a Civ-3 like cost modifier for whipping a project from start to finish in 1 turn?

I wish it wasn't there, since it's a pain in the butt, but yes, it's there. So except in emergencies, you need to let an item get a turn of production under its belt first. (Even one shield is enough). Sound gamey? It is, but that's the best way to work with it.


- Sirian

 

[Griselda]

I see it. I'm home sick tomorrow, so if I'm coherent, I'll play.

 

[Sirian]

The cool thing about having had you in my Civ3 Training Day game is that I feel no inhibitions about using the PROD. That's awful, I know, but you signed the (invisible) contract, along with poor TBC, Rowain, ChrTh, and Zot. The provisions of that relationship have no sunset clauses, meaning that you are in for the direct treatment from here to eternity.

I'm sorry that you're not feeling well, of course. Etc etc. So... now is your opportunity to gather what coherence you have and press onward.

If you can't be productive at work...


- Sirian

 

[Griselda]

Plus, I'm the only PROD player who couldn't say I didn't know what I was getting into, since I came in late.

I played most of the way through, but have to stop now. Will finish and post tonight.

 

[Griselda]

I can blame any in this round on incoherence, right?

IT - We have a ton more cities than we had last time, plus a new religion. Focus for this round is going to have to be on getting those cities up to speed, plus spreading Judaism. I also have the suspicion that the world is small enough that peace won't last for long.

Make a note to whip Apache in 3. That requires running lower food than I'd like, but culture is more important there at the moment, and at least we have some in the box.

I'd like to see some more galleys and fishing boats. Especially if we are light on military, then we need to be able to move units quickly.

BT- Tekedda Theatre-granary (queued). Awlil gets Buddhism.

(1) 1160 AD - It seems like we would want a lighthouse before a granary in stagnant Tekedda, so I swap it. I'm keeping the granary first in Awdag, though, because they will have food coming online with the border expansion.

Workers arrive on incense tile. I have to chop an extra forst in Timbuktu's radius to bring irrigation down, since the tile 1W of Timbuktu is chopped already. Other worker starts on irrigation line.

Julius is heading up north of Apache with a settler. I wonder what's up there?

My worker on Walata Isle can't bring irrigation to Tekedda until its borders expand. I move to another tile that will eventually be the LOI to the south, but will swap back to the Tekedda line after expansion.

Peter has Civil Service, and Liz has drama. However, he doesn't have anything that anyone wants except for Fred, who doesn't have anything he wants. I think. I'll keep an eye on it- I hate to give up civil service for optics straight up, and theology isn't worth enough.

BT - Timbuktu Jewish Missionary- Jewish Missionary. I wonder if we should go for something else with chops, but Sistine seems too costly with marble not close to being hooked up. Speeding missionary builds isn't the worst thing in the world, either, even if they are cheap. Gao longbow - work boat. Need infra but will wait for Judaism. Awlil theatre - lighthouse.

(2) 1170 AD New longbow towards SE colonies. Missionary towards Djenne.

BT - Qinky wants Civil Service for Optics and 20 gold. Sorry, I was just hesitating to make that deal with my good buddy Khan!

Khan wants us to cancel our open borders and fish-wheat deal with Liz. I agree, although we will really miss the health.

Kumbi War elephant - library. Judaism spreads in Tadmekka.

(3) 1180 AD Convert Djenne to Judaism. Offer Khan the same deal that Liz wanted (optics for civil service and 20, and get it). I have to fire an engineer in Timbuktu because of the health. We can slip a harbor in, though. Those crabs become a major priority! Whip theatre in Apache.

BT - Timbuktu Jewish Missionary - harbor. Walata longbowman - galley. Apache theatre - jewish temple (well, we will start this on the new turn after conversion).

(4) 1190 AD - Convert Apache and start temple.

BT - Deny open borders to Qin. Gao work boat - galley. Awdawg and Tekedda expand.

(5) 1200 AD Work boat heads towards crabs. It will take awhile, though! In hindsight, this was probably a dumb place to build the workboat from.

BT - Guilds - banking (considered Philsophy, but Liz has it). Djenne longbow - missionary. Awili expands.

(6) 1210 AD Convert Gao

BT - Peter wants us to gift him Guilds, which afaik is a monopoly tech of ours. He's behind in score, and I might have given him something else, but this is too much to ask, I think.

Niani granary - library. Apache's borders expand. At least its own tile is now 96% Malinese instead of 50%.

(7) 1220 AD We are finally scouting Russia. I unload a couple of units by Tadmekka. Peter has engineering now and will even trade it. We are only up drama and guilds, and guilds is a monopoly. He has 100 gold, though. Maybe our best bet is to see what things look like once we have banking, though.

BT - Timbuktu harbor - Jewish missionary. Kumbu library - Jewish missionary. I will spread these around any maybe alternate infra.

Peter adopts Bureaucracy and Theocracy. Julius adops Bureaucracy. Djenne loves its Monarch.

(8) 1230 AD I misclicked and gave Tadmekka's longbow drill 1 instead of city garrison 1. I decided not to reload, and just used its other promotion for city garrison. Hopefully this won't make a difference in some critical battle down the road, or it's for Gris. Start improving spices.

BT - Peter calls up and offers Engineering and 110 gold for Guilds. Now, we have a monopoly on Guilds, but we've had it for a while, plus Peter is the least "solid" of our Jewish friends, plus the techs are equal in beakers. I accept.

Gao galley - harbor.

(9) 1240 AD - A misclick sends our fishing boat backwards a tile. That *is* worth a reload, so I reload from autosave. Timbuktu chop completes.

BT - Timbuktu Missionary - work boat. Maybe for the SE? Walata galley - work boat.

(10) 1250 AD - Mongolia gets Zoroaster. Walata's galley steps off shore to be a bridge for the war elephant to walk over. SE galley drops off a longbowman in Awili. We badly need a worker or two down there. We could self build, or ferry one, I guess. Missionary heads SW towards Niani or Walata.

We could whip the temple in Apache if we wanted. It's only one culture, so it might not be worth it, though.

We badly need infrastructure and improvements, and also some more military. Clearly, we can have the civics to do one or the other (but not both) well at a time, but luckily Judaism is spread around enough that we cab build infra at a reasonable pace. Getting grocers going with our spices, and getting those crabs with Walata's work boat will be a huge help. Plus, we'll need courthouses, libraries, markets, and banks. Egads! Let's just hope the AI don't pick on us for being on top in the next little while. Oh, and we could stand to settle Sirian's dots, too.

 

[Dwip]

See it. Prolly closer to tomorrow than today.

 

[Dwip]

[0] 1250 AD - Well, here we are. We are relatively vast. Banking in 2. We could use lots of things, and we'll see what we can do about them.

[1] 1260 AD - Timbuktu Work Boat->Market, Kumbi Missionary->Market.

Move some stuff around.

[2] 1270 AD - Banking comes in, start on Paper. Djenne Missionary->Bank, Tadmekka Lighthouse->Worker.

Move some more stuff around.

[3] 1280 AD - Tekedda Lighthouse->Granary.

Stuff, as is custom, gets moved.

[4] 1290 AD - Walata Work Boat->Work Boat.

Various things of a work boatable nature are work boated, in a work boatlike fashion.

I'm not sure that work boatlike actually...works, shall we say, as a word/phrase/whatever, but that's ok. When one's empire is run by squirrel aliens, one can do these things.

Also, I moved stuff.

IBT - Fred gets Sistine.

[5] 1300 AD - Move some stuff. Things were feeling left out by all this stuff moving, so I moved some things, too, to make them feel better.

[6] 1310 AD - Paper comes in, start on Education.

Timbuktu Market->Bank, Gao Harbor->Bank, Apache Jewish Temple->Confucian Temple.

Is it bad that whenever I think of Apache, I think of it as "Fort" Apache?

Can't quite afford it (-7 gpt) yet, but I nudge science back to 60%.

[7] 1320 AD - Kumbi Market->Bank, Awlil Lighthouse->Granary.

Work Boat the crabs, for great healthfulness. Timbuktu and Kumbi get Avoid Growth turned on to avoid random plagues.

IBT - Qin comes demanding Drama. Uh...no.

[8] 1330 AD - Walata Work Boat->Temple.

A nice 90 shield lumberjacking of a random forest tile SW of Timbuktu that it can't work will let us finish Timbuktu's bank next turn.

I know you won't believe this, but I moved some stuff. I know. It defies belief. But I did.

IBT - Fred comes wanting to trade Music for Paper and 70 gold. I decline.

[9] 1340 AD - Timbuktu Bank->Grocer. If we could then start rushing out those monastaries, Timbuktu would be really really nice.

In a stunning reversal from the norm, I move stuff.

IBT - Qin urges us to convert to Buddhism, which, while highly amusing, isn't happening. We're racking up a pretty good list of negatives with our boy, here.

[10] 1350 AD - And then, to be different, we lumberjack ourselves halfway to Timbuktu's Grocer.

In the end, stuff was moved, and moving stuff was the end.

 

[Griselda]

Hmm, wasn't the plan to save most of Timbuktu's forests, only building a line of irrigation out to the SW?

 

[Sirian]

Hmm, wasn't the plan to save most of Timbuktu's forests, only building a line of irrigation out to the SW?

Apparently that's not the plan any more.

Various pigskin-slinging contests are slated to consume the bulk of my attention in the short term. This particularly includes the rain-soaked left coast affair that kicks things off. ETA on my Snow Flakes results is "not today".


- Sirian

 

[Griselda]

So how is it that you always manage to be up on the weekends, which would be better for most people, but isn't so good for you?

 

[Sirian]

Playing these short roster games, the turns come around more often. I may get two in in a week, or three in two weeks. I don't think I've had a disproportionate number of weekend games. I certainly haven't had weekends where the WHOLE THING was taken up by football. But, it's the Playoffs now! Only two weeks out of the whole year when there are four games on over two days that I'm interested in watching. That just happened to be last week and this week. Next week, it's back down to one day.


- Sirian

 

[Griselda]

Hey, I am not complaining about how long it takes you to play. The last thing I need is to PROD the PRODDER . Plus, I may need some leeway come basketball playoff time (ONLY FIVE MONTHS AWAY!!!111).

I was just talking about how Murphy divides up weekend vs. weekday timeslots in the game.

 

[Dwip]

Wherein, the whole time I was playing, said repeatedly to myself "So what really important thing am I doing wrong? Because there's gotta be something."

Whoops. Not sure how I missed the thing about the trees, but I did. :|

 

[Sirian]

IT 1350AD: I looked around our cities to start, and found lots of

There were cities working regular coastal plots instead of Netted Fishes.

There were cities working on some projects that made me go Hmm.

We have paper but have not acquired anybody's maps.

I think Dwip a little TOO bored by moving ships around and lulled himself to sleep.

The main thing I was very pleased with is our military situation. It's solid.
Also cranking is our religion. It has been spread all over. And we are building half-cost banks.

So I try to keep in mind that we have met many of our recent goals.
Plus Jaffa went for a wonder, which is big in that we got it and they didn't.
The wonder was worth two forest chops. Heck, the health from it replaced the lost forests!
Some of those extra chops, though... We only have two high shield cities!
Blunting one of those... I dunno. Could make things interesting.

Anyway, with Banks being built in the core, and the colonies struggling...
...this will be a round without many noteworthy highlights.

Please don't chop any of these forests!



You're looking at our Ironworks city, I believe.
(The capital needs to run National Epic and probably Wall Street.)

As shown in the above pic, we've reached the Health limit...
...so I MMed the city to max shields and halt growth.


Colonies with seafood are major candidates!
Having gone 20 and 30 turns without whipping up a Work Boat is nothing short of

The basics of a Fishing Village are:
1. Culture (to pull in all seafood and resources).
2. Granary. (Granary before Lighthouse in all cases, because of Slavery!)
3. Lighthouse.
4. Forge. (Forges increase slavery production as well as normal production).
5. If running Organized Religion civic, the state religion. (Increases slavery on buildings).

Then you can crack the whip on bigger projects for multiple pop points.
It's really the only way to make shieldless Fishing Villages(TM) productive.

Cities with literally no high food tiles need to AVOID the whip at almost all costs.
You have no choice but to let them crawl along. Whipping actually hurts them.

 

[Sirian]

Dwip: I would recommend that you reduce your usage of Avoid Growth.
If you want a city to avoid growth, turn off the governor and MM it.
The Avoid Growth button is generally for situations where the city won't EVER grow again.
Anything less than that and you're better off MMing, as Avoid Growth is not set to run things efficiently.

I think a lot of the head-scratching issues with city tiles are leftovers from Avoid Growth.
That one item where a fish was not being worked was just amazing!

I really am pleased with our religious and military situations, though.
I'm going to lean on straightening out these colonies while the core builds up.
Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure on this round!


1350AD: I trade maps with Frederick, then buy any pieces of maps from our other friends.
Most of the world lights up:





If you've never seen Ice Age map before, it's shortened by larger ice caps.



So at full width but shortened height, plus lower sea levels, makes for a unique experience.
Combine that with the arid and chilly lands, and it can be a real adventure!
Cottages are harder to come by because grasslands are in shorter supply.


Early: Our two good shield cities finish banks. Start Settler in Tim, culture in Kumbi.

Middle: Trade Guilds to Caesar for Music and some pennies.
Got our remaining seafoods hooked up.
Got our colonies focusing on The Basics. Forges especially are on order.

Late: Trade Banking to Germany for Philosophy. This puts the Merchant at Economics at risk.
However, I'd rather lose that than to lose the Free Tech from Liberalism.
I'm really gambling that we can get both.
If Economics still says First To Discover gets a Free Great Merchant then take that with the Liberalism freebie.
Get both freebies in one swoop, and deny them to our rivals.

We discovered Education, started on Liberalism.
Banks completed in our other cities. I pushed our tech rate, started Universities.
Settled Light Blue Dot.

Negotiated for Copper. (Trading Incense and Crabs for it.)



We already had Iron, so the Copper is just for half-cost stuff we might build.
Not sure if we will need it, but we didn't need what we're trading away either. *shrug*

I got our colonies cranking along much better. This one still lacks both Forge and Religion though:



If we had both there, Slavery cost would drop by a third!


THIS city looks like a good one for training lots of Missionaries for us:



It should at least be able to train Jewish missionaries for our cities who lack.

With Forge and Organized Religion in place, each forest is worth 3spt on buildings!
So this is not a place to whip any more. Work all the forests, and grow at 2fpt.
OrgRel bonus won't apply to missionaries, but at 11spt they will only take 4 turns apiece and not tie up core cities.

 

[Sirian]

Now here is the most amazing thing. We've got a HEADLESS HYDRA!



No shrines built? How did we get to 1450AD without a shrine!

That is probably at least partly my fault. I did spend a prophet on Christianity.
Still, no prophets since then?

We may have to set up one of our two-seafood fishing villages with four religions and four temples...
...then run four Priest specialists for a long time, to get some Prophets!
Or we might get lucky and pop some from low-pecentage odds...
...but I'd not suggest that we rely on THAT as our only hope.

If we don't get at least two shrines before the modern age, man, that is going to be sad!

As you can see above, since our forests are gone at the capital, I put up extra cottages.
They are thin now, but if we invest in them and run UniSuff later, they will be sweet again!


I mentioned the Liberalism possibility. Not sure if we will, but would be nice to get both freebies.

We need a Forbidden Palace in Walata!
Would be nice if we got that started before my turn comes around again.



I built nary a military unit, no missionaries. One settler, lots of buildings.
I think I gave our colonies a good kick in the pants.
Lots more whipping still available for some of them, though.


Jaffa's up now.


- Sirian

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

The basics of a Fishing Village are:
1. Culture (to pull in all seafood and resources).
2. Granary. (Granary before Lighthouse in all cases, because of Slavery!)
3. Lighthouse.
4. Forge. (Forges increase slavery production as well as normal production).
5. If running Organized Religion civic, the state religion. (Increases slavery on buildings).

Well isn't that (#4,#5) handy.

With #5, you are suggesting that the village build it's own missionary, rather than having one bussed in?

 

[shadow2k]

As you can see above, since our forests are gone at the capital, I put up extra cottages.

They are thin now, but if we invest in them and run UniSuff later, they will be sweet again!- Sirian

Lurker's comment: You cut your irrigation line with the cottage on the river.

 

[Griselda]

Is there any point in still trying to settle the hill SW of Timbuktu? It would be a canal and work wasted tiles, but I'm not sure that's reason enough. Thoughts?

 

[Sirian]

Lurker's comment: You cut your irrigation line with the cottage on the river.

Woops, you're right. I was thinking that the city was on the lake.

The thing to do here is to put the farm back on the Plains tile NW of the city center. That will reopen the irrigation line. (The cottage along the river is more mature and more valuable).


Gris: I still think that city is worth doing. Post-biology, with two farm plots, it can work the gold mine and still grow at 2fpt. Until then it will limp along a bit, but being financial adds value to all water plots worked.


- Sirian