Turn 161 : 460AD

[DeepO]

Indeed... this looks mighty impressive, all those units walling off our coast.

CH, if you have any workers to spare, and want to do some MM, here's an idea I mentioned to Nathan months ago, while we were waiting for aquaducts to come on line: with 12 workers, you could get an instant shield pump going on about every grass and plains tile. Just plant forest, chop, and mine or irrigate. You could get the same with only 6 workers in two turns with a little fiddling, but with 12 it has no effect on distributing the workforce.

It's not really needed to do this, but it will give about 1spt per worker allocated to this, which can be significant. To do it right, it takes a lot of MM, though.

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

So is that 5 to forest, 5 to chop, and 2 to replace - or does it take 3 to mine?

[DeepO]

On plains it takes 3, on grass 2 IIRC, it's been a while since I played this game. every tile can get this bonus only once, and around cyclone some chopping already has been done. If you want to do this, I can send you a map of the early turns, to see where forest was present and has been chopped.

DeepO

[Theseus]

Tremendous job on getting the seawall into place and converting us to builders, CH!

Sorry for the absence, but the holidays were crazy and I was a bit burned out as well.

It seems to me the task now, in addition to economics and science, is going to be on the diplo front. First, to trade our way to glory, and second, to finally and hopefully take the Machievellian reins of the game away from Lego.

Odd that ND of all teams should be the most communicative lately!

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Theseus
It seems to me the task now, in addition to economics and science, is going to be on the diplo front. First, to trade our way to glory, and second, to finally and hopefully take the Machievellian reins of the game away from Lego.

On the trade front, when the ND deal comes online in two turns from now we will be exporting furs to Lego, ND and GoW - and receiving Dye, Spice and Wine respectively. That leaves our Incense to trade with each of them.

ND and GoW are probably sharing the 'Bobian Five' - Wine, Gems, Spice, Silk, Ivory - or will do once settlement & expansion is sufficient. Lack of surplus is down to lack of exploitation (unsettled / unroaded) and presumably a feeding of the Blockheads.

As long as Legonian Knights guard the GoW coastline, it doesn't look like the infernal alliance is breaking. Our first move might have to be to persuade RP to make peace, if that's what's needed to break the alliance.

Beyond that, I don't know what pro-active move we could make other than to initially try and find what the others are up to - specifically, what GoW and ND plan to do about Lego, and if not, why not. They may need not only peace on their eastern front but assurances too.

As far as chats go - and we probably need them with RP and GoW, it'd be good if our people in US time zones could take a lead in this - especially with RP who are mainly PST and way out-of-sync with my timezone.

[Arrian]

Excellent work, Cort. I agree with the idea of using old wonders (or large improvements, if available) as bank-prebuilds. First we need to know how fast RP could get to banking, though.

Let's think hard before we trade any lux to Lego. If we really benifit from the lux they would send us, fine. If it's not much of a boost, however, why help the strongest civ in the game with happiness?

Are we going to chop the forest between Typhoon & Sufa? I'd say yes.

RE: diplo stuff:

1) Lego's military presence on GoW's coastline has to make GoW wary of messing with them until they are sure they have the firepower to do serious damage.

2) Also, I'd imagine that Lego has at least a partial sea wall of their own. Add to this the likelyhood that neither ND nor GoW have much in the way of navies.

3) I have no particular desire to keep trying to get other civs to hit Lego. We've pointed out the facts: Lego will win unless something bad happens to them. At this point, we've gone builder and cannot really assist in any Lego operation until Navigation. I say let ND/GoW do what they will.

4) Regarding RP and peace with the Bobians... do we know if GoW ever took our "advice" about giving some sort of token thing to RP for peace? Even if they didn't, I think we should (gently) push RP to make peace soon.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

RP and Banking : I think I've indicated to Togas that faster Banking would be good - but no reply yet, and if they're going 40-turn - especially if 1 scientist 40-turn, it might not happen any quicker. In which case we either wait, research it ourselves (6-7 turns), or consider trade from elsewhere - hopefully AATW will be analysing whether someone else has it.

Lego : I don't want to trade a second lux to them either atm - in fact, a world-wide trade embargo has its appeal in the medium term.

Chop : I think I was planning on letting Sufa's aqua finish then chopping that forest for the next build - to time it with growth - though maybe the chop could be sent into Typhoon now that it's off cats.

As for Arrian's points on the diplo - I agree with much of that. By accident or design, you gotta hand it to Vondy - he's got a firm grip on the game. I was thinking too about the lack of a Bobian Navy. We may even have sunk much of it when ND sent their little expedition round the coast. A GoW galley is researching RP's coastline.

We do have some capacity to project power though. We could have navigation in maybe six turns, and with a dozen caravels, two dozen knights and a dozen footsloggers could contribute a claw or two to a joint assult on Lego - assuming they haven't got a sea wall up - and we'd be naked. I'm not advocating this, though, unless exterior conditions changed dramatically and quickly. Two dozen Cavalry would have the sharper teeth required to be effective against Muskets.

There was no reply from GoW (now there's a surprise) to that hint about offering a token to RP, and although the active RP-ers have a fairly sensible and co-operative outlook, some of the voters in the gallery seem to share with GoW a keen indifference to the colder analysis.

As for that cold analysis - we have indeed indicated clearly to GoW and ND what needs to be done. I think Arrian is right - there's no point in reinterating it, they know the score.

[Arrian]

Yeah, I figured they might be doing 1-scientist research, which means little to no chance of speeding it up...

If they are doing it that way, let's have them give us what GPT they think they can spare (surely they want to keep some of it to do a little rushing in their new cities?), while we research towards the Industrial Era.

Speaking of which... the industrial era might not be that far off. We have little reason, IMO, to research Military Tradition, given our lack of SP and our relative detachment from world affairs. Democracy would be something for Vox or RP to do for others. We don't even really need Navigation, IIRC: magnetism will provide galleons (though if we did want Magellan's, Navigation is needed). Given that, we need to start thinking about factory prebuilds in our major cities, not to mention a ToE prebuild.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

So if we are waiting for RP to complete Banking, that leaves Chemistry, Metallurgy, Physics, Magnetism and ToG.

We can slipstream Chemistry next, then do Physics. Our commercial and research power will be growing steadily during this time. If we trade Physics for Metallurgy to ND/GoW perhaps that leaves two more techs to research. At 7-8 turns each that's about 30 turns, and we may have Copernicus in about 20.

[Arrian]

Exactly: the Industrial Age is not far off.

Chemistry at max, followed by either physics or metallurgy, if we can work out a trade with someone for the other... assuming we're not so far behind that people are already researching those techs.

If we're doing heavy research, not having banks isn't that big a deal, since it's our universities which will be most benificial anyway. Hopefully RP is building markets.

Major cities should build cathedrals now, and then (depending on the timing) they build banks or they use banks as prebuilds for factories, and then build the banks.

-Arrian

p.s. Please, RNG, let us have coal!

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
p.s. Please, RNG, let us have coal!

Please RNG, let Bob be without coal, or rubber

As to the rest: is it time yet to start a prebuild for the ToE? We need that wonder badly, if we want to get back to the top. Once Lego starts its GA, we can't outbuild them...

Could it be possible that the 3 powers have some kind of pact to research faster then we can, trying to get us out of the game like that? E.g. go to marines fast, and invade us. They know that we don't need SP, it only crosses any invasion plans we might have. We're perfectly defendable without it.

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by DeepO
Could it be possible that the 3 powers have some kind of pact to research faster then we can, trying to get us out of the game like that? E.g. go to marines fast, and invade us. They know that we don't need SP, it only crosses any invasion plans we might have. We're perfectly defendable without it.
DeepO

but ND and GoW would surely be mad if they think that a continued alliance with Lego to destroy us is their priority.

[DeepO]

Perhaps... we've seen it before. Apparently, taking out the strat forum guys is sometimes a higher priority then winning the game.

I don't really believe it, though. ND are not really this vengeful it seems. But I'm sure we're not exactly their best friends either, after bothering them in their 'quest' on destroying RP.

DeepO

[Arrian]

How many shields is ToE? 600?

What is our best shield producer? Tempest? It's around 21spt, right? That's 29 turns to build ToE. However, this will be affected by other things, like RR's, if we have coal.

Lego, however, will most likely be in a GA (I expect them to build Smith's). And I'd expect them to have a prebuild timed out to be ready as soon as they have Scientific Method. So our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to a) beat Lego to SM; and b) have a prebuild ready to complete ToE the very next turn.

So, right now we figure we're ~30 turns from the industrial era. We are likely to then fall behind a bit, because Vox will get a free tech and give it to Lego. Whether we're able to trade for it or not is anybody's guess.

IIRC, Scientific Method requires researching Medicine, Electricity, and then SM itself. Of course, we're going to want Steam Power and Industrialization as well.

The timing of all this is very questionable. First, I don't think we can count on tech trades in the Industrial Era, at least pre-ToE, to work the way they have worked in the past. Everyone's going to want ToE and Hoover (800 shields, or 1000?).

-Arrian

p.s. How big is our "palace" build? If we don't have enough cities, the palace will be too small to use as a full prebuild for some of the largest wonders.

[DeepO]

Is there any chance we can snatch Smith's before Lego does? It would make life a lot easier.

And I agree on not being able to trade in the industrial era... plus Hoover would also be a nice wonder to have.

DeepO