Turn 37

[Robi D]

TNT moved the warrior SE along our border and are now next to our worker, so Cruller is safe. I stuffed something up in taking the last turn as Springfield is rioting, so i'm very sorry about that. Also Philosophy is due in 1 so were going to have to make our minds up now whether we go for CoL or Mapmaking.

 

[zyxy]

Save is due in 3 hrs, so I'l just play.

2320BC:
Enemy is at the gate and Springfield riots

Curraghs explore but don't see anything interesting - just more elephants for the Greeks. Move warrior from Shelby towards Cruller for you-never-know. Will take three turns. Move warrior from Springfield to Shelby, hire a scientist in Shelby as it is wasting food and shields otherwise. With lux 20%, sci 40% we will have no riots, and philo in 1.

Notes:
- scientist should be fired next turn.
- I think shelby can be a 4-turn warrior-worker factory at size 5, making 5 spt every turn and alternately 4 and 6 food per turn. After the northern wheat is irrigated it will work at size 4, using the northern wheat once per cycle (and forest on growth).
- Once the grassland near Springfield is mined we can have a 4-turn settler factory there.
- Persia indeed knows alpha now. It's a fairly expensive tech, can it really come from a hut? Perhaps the "friendly tribe" is called Celts or Greeks .
- we are nr 1 in pop and 2 in land - that's something

We need to decide on our freebie. CoL, MapM, something completely different? May I have your votes please!

 

[Robi D]

i would go for mapmaking to trade with others, they study CoL

 

[killercane]

CoL is my vote. We wouldnt want to trade Mapmaking away quickly anyway. Do we have time to do a slow republic and then HBR, while building up chariots? I think so, but the Persians are a crafty enemy. We've gotta take the fight to them and not let those Immortals get close.

I think shelby can be a 4-turn warrior-worker factory at size 5, making 5 spt every turn and alternately 4 and 6 food per turn. After the northern wheat is irrigated it will work at size 4, using the northern wheat once per cycle (and forest on growth).

What would the long term plans for the warriors be? For upgrade?

 

[Rik Meleet]

lurker's comment: Please post more screenshots. Personally I am a sucker for pictures as it describes a situation so much better and can be analysed in 1 glance.

Is it too much to ask for at least 1 screenshot of an interesting location every turn ??

Thanks from all lurkers + non-playing members

 

[killercane]

Heres the mainland view.

 

[killercane]

And the curragh view in the east.

 

[zyxy]

CoL is my vote. We wouldnt want to trade Mapmaking away quickly anyway. Do we have time to do a slow republic and then HBR, while building up chariots? I think so, but the Persians are a crafty enemy. We've gotta take the fight to them and not let those Immortals get close.

Think I would agree. Don't know if we'll have time to do republic slowly, but there is little alternative. Doing it fast means we'll have no upgrade cash. We should trade for the wheel at some point.

What would the long term plans for the warriors be? For upgrade?

Good point. In the short term: with Springfield as 4-turn settler factory and Shelby as 4-turn warrior-worker factory, we can send a warrior and worker with every settler, which would speed up growth. Longer term, some of these warriors could act as sentries (we really need them soon, btw), while we build chariots to replace them in our cities. We don't have enough production power to start chariot-building just yet. I suppose Shelby could at some point be converted to an 8-turn chariot-worker-worker city, it will then need a rax though.

 

[killercane]

I would rather have the sentries up soon in the north. Keep warriors east and west of our lands to clear the fog of barbs. 4 warriors north to clear the fog and be sentries on those mountains. Then a barracks and 4 turn chariots from Shelby with the occasional settler or worker to control its size.

With a clear fog of war, we wont need any escorts for our settlers for a long time. 10 regular warriors to pair with our ten settlers in the next 40 turns is overkill if we slow research republic and have to disband several of them once we get there. Vets wouldnt be bad if we want to keep swords around for homeland defense in addition to MWs.

 

[Robi D]

need to get in touch with mia, see what they are offering, see if we can do a 2fer with tnt. If we go for rep, we i dont think we can do it slowly,

 

[zyxy]

As the save is being held up, maybe this is a good time to discuss our longer term strategy a bit. Here's what I think.

Trade

Perhaps this is a good time to trade away writing. It is essential that we sign trades simultaneously with the Greeks and the Persians. From the Greeks we should get at least WC+Wheel, I think our opening bid should be Writing for WC+Wheel+CB. Btw, we should quickly reply to the Greek messages now. They may consider it rude and arrogant if we keep silent.
From the Persians we should try to get Masonry and IW. They may consider that too expensive for Writing, but we may be able to add something (WC or CB) if we can get it from Greece.

Research

Free tech CoL, then min research on Republic. The biggest risk is that we may come under attack before the min run is done. Essentially we are taking a gamble that we will be left alone for another 50 turns. The payoff would be a strong position 50 turns from now. I think the risk is worth taking. An alternative would be to research HBR followed by Republic at max (assuming we trdae for Wheel and WC).

Diplomacy

We will not win this game unless we get at least one ally, in particular we don't want to be attacked anytime soon, and if we are we need someone to buy HBR from. Although I don't like to impose a lot of government structure, I think we need to appoint ambassadors, so that someone will feel compelled to take the lead on diplo. In particular, our diplomacy with MIA needs to improve. They may have good relations with Celts, while we are painting targets on our heads. I propose we appoint Robi D as ambassador to TNT. Any volunteers for MIA?

Expansion

We need some towns to produce military: barracks and chariots. I would first go east, where all the bg's are. Send some workers along with the settlers to improve the land and chop a forest here and there to speed up the raxes. After that, we can go west to get one or two shipyards. At some point we need to build an FP city somewhere north of the capital, in a productive central spot.

Defense

I prefer sentries some 10 turns away from our borders, that will give us decent time to react to threats. We may need to barter for a tech and upgrade units, so the mountain range may not be far enough. Probably we could start on the mountain range and slowly move north as we add more warriors. When MapMaking spreads we will need naval sentries as well, to the east and west, and perhaps also north.
There are barbs to the SE, so settlers going that way will need escorts or frontrunners.

 

[Robi D]

Trade
I agree we need to act quickly with MIA. Ask for a swap of writing for wheel/wc/cb, if they don't go for that even if we get wc/wheel its a small loss in the bigger picture as i am confident tnt would trade mason/IW for wc/writing leaving us ahead in the trade overall.

Research
A min run is risky, maybe we should do something slightly faster. I think were safe for at least 30 turns maybe more, especially since tnt moved their palace (the reason the gams stopped atm as they changed their city names to), but on the other hand we can be in an excellent position if take a chance and it comes off.

Diplomacy
TNT would make the best ally since it seems we share a continent, however MIA would be useful too. I think we should try to go with both, that way we keep our options open and if one of them trys to backstab us we can count on the other. Finally someone has to talk to MIA before they start thinking we are about invade, which isn't going to make them happy.
PS thanks for the endorsment im a better diplomat then i am a turnplayer


Expansion and Defence same as what zyxy wrote

 

[magnusmarcus]

We need to secure some military research sooner rather than later. If we don't we will get caught with our pants down.

 

[killercane]

Perhaps this is a good time to trade away writing. It is essential that we sign trades simultaneously with the Greeks and the Persians. From the Greeks we should get at least WC+Wheel, I think our opening bid should be Writing for WC+Wheel+CB. Btw, we should quickly reply to the Greek messages now. They may consider it rude and arrogant if we keep silent.
From the Persians we should try to get Masonry and IW. They may consider that too expensive for Writing, but we may be able to add something (WC or CB) if we can get it from Greece.

My thoughts exactly.

Free tech CoL, then min research on Republic. The biggest risk is that we may come under attack before the min run is done. Essentially we are taking a gamble that we will be left alone for another 50 turns. The payoff would be a strong position 50 turns from now. I think the risk is worth taking. An alternative would be to research HBR followed by Republic at max (assuming we trade for Wheel and WC).

We can mitigate the risk by getting some vet swords up for defense along with the lookouts. The reaction plan for a Persian SOD spotted by the lookouts would be upgrade those swords, evaluate how many Immortals are coming, and switch builds accordingly. I dont think they have enough time to get maps and build 5 galleys to get down here for a sneaky sea invasion in those 50 turns. Anarchy turns, maybe 51-56, are the worst time for an invasion. Delay HBR if we can and mass build those chariots.

What advantage did TNT have in moving their palace? Central capital location? Why on earth are they still ahead of us in score then? Popped settler?

 

[zyxy]

Some numbers to help (or complicate ) the republic-at-min-or-max debate: republic costs 840 gold. Btw, and in particular for our resident lurker , our map is small but the research costs seem to be for a standard sized map. Dividing 840 by 50 shows that we need to make more than 17 beakers per turn (bpt) for max research to be quicker than min research. We can currently do about 20 bpt, with lux at 10% (need a few more MP's for that) and science switching between 80% and 90%. That would make 42 turns, not impressive. Of course we can expect the rate to increase somewhat as we build more towns and as Cruller grows. (But Springfield and Shelby are more or less at their max size now.)
It's hard to say how much gold we can expect without a lot more calculation, but I would guess 25 bpt to 30 bpt on average, for republic in 28 to 34 turns at max research. I think the slower speed is more likely than the higher....
On min research we would save a significant portion of the 840 gold, perhaps some 750 gold (there is some waste so you spend more than 1 bpt on research). So the choice would be:
1. Republic in 50 turns, with 750 gold in the bank. The gold will pay for the upgrade of 25 chariots to MW, or half that number of warriors to swords.
2. Republic in 28 to 34 turns (roughly), with 0 gold reserve.

Take your pick! Or debate the numbers, if you like .

----------------------------------------------------

What advantage did TNT have in moving their palace? Central capital location? Why on earth are they still ahead of us in score then? Popped settler?

Maybe they wanted a more central (offshore) location? The higher score could be because they have more happy faces, perhaps they run a high lux tax or they have two luxes hooked up. I am not so worried by that (yet).

 

[killercane]

Looks like most people just want an apology from TNT, but Provolution strikes me as the non apologetic type.

 

[DaveShack]

Looks like they didn't move their capital at all, just renamed it.

Also, the next turn has been received, and there is a rather bizarre (IMO) email from TNT.

 

[killercane]

Wth is this?

TNT's email:

Growl.... State Gift to Iroq

People of TNT

 

[DaveShack]

The above is a photo of a dog of war!

Well, I'm pretty sure it's really a Chinese Hairless being forced to look like a "dog of war" but it is an awfully good likeness.