Turn 54, 1675 BC

[notyoueither]

Why sacrifice Settlers for Workers? That has always mystified me. New cities can build their own worker. They cannot easily build their own vet units and take a long while to build a settler.

If we have settler pumps, let them be settler pumps. Building workers is not an effecient use of these pop points IMO.

[nbarclay]

If a new city builds its own worker, that makes it that much longer before it can start work on a barracks, library, or whatever other improvement will help it serve its ultimate purpose. Not only does it lose 7-10 turns of production (albeit likely at just one shield per turn), but it ends up with one less population, further compromising its ability to build useful things. And as if that weren't enough, it's working unimproved tiles the whole time.

Sending workers from higher-growth cities makes it possible for new cities to reach a useful size sooner and (if the workers can be sent quickly) gives the new cities improved tiles to work sooner. If that compromises settler production too much, the solution is to set up an extra growth-oriented city or two so you can build both settlers and workers from high-growth areas and still REX at an acceptable speed. That's why I want Tempest as a worker pump so much.

This approach is actually quite viable even in a relatively pure REX, because while building workers in the pump cities slows down their settler production, other cities only have to grow two points before producing a settler instead of three (one for their own worker and two for a settler), or can build a granary and then really take off cranking out settlers. With a border treaty in MP, or on an island by yourself in SP, the technique can be even more useful because there's less urgency to getting all the cities settled and the cities that are delayed are relatively corrupt while the valuable core cities get up to a useful size faster.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

By the way, EotS has an additonal argument in favor of workers over settlers to the extent that workers are needed: it can build workers without compromising its growth rate, but cannot do that with settlers. It's actually a more efficient worker pump than it is a settler pump.

[notyoueither]

OK, but how soon can we have a second Barracks? Assuming of course that Hurricane proceeds to a Wonder?

We really do need a higher capacity for building vet units than Bolderburg gives us.

[nbarclay]

I'll try to get some precise projections for what will happen when pinned down by the end of the weekend. There are enough cities to juggle, and few enough workers to spread between them at the moment, that projections tend to be a bit complicated.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Aeson
In a recent OCC game (Romans, roaming barbs, Emperor)

OCCing as Rome, with two completely (under these circumstances) useless traits? That sounds like Aeson.

[Dominae]

Aeson, we know that Barbs are not sedentary on this map, as a camp appeared up North a few turns ago and a Barb Warrior popped out of it (the same turn, I think). But you're probably right that the rate of production in Barbs camps is much lower at Chieftain.

Edit: I see what you're saying now: that Barb camps never produce an additional Warrior if at Sedentary or Roaming level. Too bad.

Depending on the location of the camp, we could put a Vet. Spearmen and Vet. War Chariot next to it and hope for promotions. The only real problem is that this would be a very "small scale" project.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

To the extent that we try to get promotions from barb camps, I'm a bit more inclined to try to get our regular warriors promoted so they'll be more worth upgrading to swordsmen.

[Aeson]

I'm not sure about never, but it's at least 20 turns between spawns unless there was something really messed up about my game.

[Harovan]

Turn is here.

Vox offered Warrior Code and Mysticism for Writing. Stupid, I had "accepted" Writing last turn, I am very sure. But since they "accepted" their offer too, it's deal now.

We have contact to the Glory of War.

[nbarclay]

According to a message I just got from BetaHound, we forgot to accept their (null) offer last turn.

I went ahead and opened my copy of the save so I can get a better view of what's going on.

[nbarclay]

I just caught something I missed in my turn orders. We're about to finish our new mine by Cyclone, so go ahead and move Cyclone's second laborer to that tile and have Bolderberg work the game forest again at least until Cyclone is ready to grow again.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by nbarclay
According to a message I just got from BetaHound, we forgot to accept their (null) offer last turn.

I saw, that they offered "nothing" and accepted their deal, but didn't realize what this is good for. Why should we accept a "null" offer? And if it has a logical sense, why was it not edited in the first post?

[Harovan]

Team Scores:

94 (+2) Gathering Storm
103 (+2) Demogyptica
81 (+1) Glory of War
100 (+2) Role Play
76 (+1) Vox Controli
73 (+0) Lux Invicta
115 (+2) Legoland

Making a research cost analysis now...

[DeepO]

Just made the same comment in the Vox thread, but without discussing it (I think that belongs in the comments thread), there is one diplomatic issue to solve: Vox asks us for 8 gold, as a deal for contact with ND.

DeepO