Turn 88, 825 BC

[nbarclay]

To be edited by the leaders of the Scholia.

Status:
- Research at 60%, Feudalism in 9 turns (if the current rate is sustained).
- Luxuries at 10%
- ~291 gold cash, ~-1/turn.

Urgent questions:
- Do we want to suspend research and stockpile gold for a while?
- Do we want to go ahead and upgrade enough warriors once we get our iron connected that we aren't weak compared with Vox?
- Where do we want to settle next?
- How many units and which do we want to relocate towards the "front".

Military:
- Warriors other than our main three pickets withdraw to Hurricane for possible upgrade.
- WC in the western desert moves 8-8.
- Any other orders from our generals?

Economy:

- Worker 8 from Arashi finishes mine, starts mining other shielded grassland.
- Worker 7-7 from EotS moves 8-4-4.
- Worker 8 from Typhoon starts road.
- Worker on iron mountain joins roading effort.
- New worker in EotS moves 3-6 and starts switching Hurricane's grassland from mined to irrigated.
- EotS finishes worker, starts another. Make sure it's working two flood plains.
- Bolderberg finishes a war chariot and starts a spearman. Need to make sure it's working six two-food tiles.
- Typhoon grows. Works a mined wheat and either one unshielded and two shielded or two shielded and one unshielded mined grasslands, depending on whether the extra shield does it any good.
- Cyclone finishes a settler and starts another. Works the irrigated game and either two or three shielded grasslands depending on Typhoon's needs. (If two, it also works an irrigated plains or a mined grassland without shield.)
- Tornado finishes a warrior and starts a spearman.
- Switch Sandstorm to working a flood plains and a plains, vacating a flood plains for use by Arashi.
- Have Arashi work two flood plains and a grassland with shield. (Check whether Monsoon is benefitting from working the mined grassland with shield instead of the unmined one, and if not, give the mined one to Arashi.)


Diplomacy:

Thread library:
- Standing orders for workers

[Shiber]

Re: Turn 88, 825 BC

Originally posted by nbarclay
- Do we want to suspend research and stockpile gold for a while?

I would suggest that we follow the ideas raised in the Hoarding Gold thread, which basically means that we'll suspend research right now, use the money to build up our research capabilities with libraries and the such, and then complete Feudalism (at a much lower cost, since other teams will already have acquired it) and rejoin the race, only much stronger.

[zeit]

Maybe we can start asking around how much the other teams offer for the tech...
Don't forget we have a deal running with Lego- although i'm sure they won't be terribly dissapointed by this, as their idea of our tech relations is quick different (to them, it seems, all of this is just an agreement to "trade techs in the future").

But if we hoard gold- i don't think Libraries are what we're gonna build- more likely upgrading will cost us a fortune- and we won't be able to spare much...

However, I don't think we need to upgrade that much in the near future- we'll have a real production powerhouses up and running pretty soon- so i'd support a limited upgrade now, to make sure the Voxians don't get any ideas, and look for opportunities to whore Feudalism- we might get more than we expect, but if it looks like we won't, we could always stop and continue afterwards, like DeepO suggested.

Do i have a go for this?

[Shiber]

It's a good idea, but I'm not sure if any of the teams can really obligate on a price or give accurate predictions on what they'd be willing to pay in 10 turns.
Probing around is always a good idea though. I'm all for it

[Arrian]

Tornado finishes a warrior and starts another.

A request: can we stop building warriors? I'd rather we build WCs or Spearmen. Med. Inf are of very limited use, IMO, and I'd rather spend the shields on better units. Tech is moving so fast, I don't see the point in continuing to invest in something with such a limited upgrade path (guerillas don't much for me either).

-Arrian

[Shiber]

Let me join in on that request. It makes sense to have some warriors ready to be upgraded to Med Inf in order to attack Dissidentville and the iron colony, where knights wouldn't matter because of the rough terrain, but the rest of our forces should be mobile units.

[nbarclay]

Orders changed to WCs; we might want to consider whether we want instead to go with more spearmen while we can build spears for upgrade to pikes, though.

[zeit]

I also think a few more spearmen are in order, our defense is seriously lacking.

Has anyone tested how many troops we could build, up until the GA? it would be good to know when we can make ourselves adequately armed to make war on Vox possible, and how long into our GA that might be...

[Arrian]

I was actually leaning toward spearmen myself. We definitely need more. We have 2 now, right? I'd like more like 8 (5 for pikeman upgrade & use in invasion force, 3 for "homeland defense").

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Orders changed to two spearmen.

[Aeson]

We don't really need too many Spears right now. WC's are more likely to kill Immortals (or Swords/Archers), and can cover more ground. We will have 3 cities in our GA at 30 shields per turn, perfect for Pikes.

I'd like to see us build up our offensive capacity first, as it's our best defense at this time as well. The only point we really need Spears at right now is in Arashi (specifically 9 of Arashi) to force Immortals off of the Mountains so our WC's can hit them. We also have at least 5 turns warning before they could get there. Warriors on the Mountains near Hurricane can stop any landings just as well as Spears.

On a side note... did Dissidentville just build a Worker, a Settler, or pop rush?

[Arrian]

Ok, let's build 1 WC and 1 spear. I don't want any spears on those mountains yet so we don't give away our intentions to Vox, but I would like them up in the general area, ready to move into position as soon as trouble is sighted.

The only reason I suggested spears right now, Aeson, is that in a relatively low number of turns, we will be building pikemen, not spears, due to our impending discovery of feudalism. I gather we will be hooking up our iron soon too. Therefore, instead of being able to build 20 shield defenders that upgrade relatively inexpensively, we would have to build 30 shield defenders. So I figured we could pump out a few spears (say... 6?) and then go all-out on War Chariots. But a more balanced approach is probably wiser if we're actually worried about Voxian attack.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Question: I saw our palace cost just increased to 400 shields, and at first this might sound a good thing for us, as we can mask our wonder prebuild right up to the last turn. However, if other teams know the formula of palace cost (which I do not, BTW), they might deduce that we had over 11 cities as of ~800 BC.

Do we consider that a risk, do we want to hide our exact size? If so, we might need to switch to the Pyramids the moment we would have done it if we had 300 shield palaces, so in a few turns or so.

DeepO

[Dominae]

Does any team suspect we're building the Pyramids? I mean, do we suspect that another team suspects? If not (or almost certainly not), I think the benefits of keeping it a secret as long as possible outweigh the drawback of having other teams know how big we are. Notice that they will not know exactly how big; they will not know if we've got 11 cities or more. Hiding our true potential is very valuable, but other teams will get a good sense how powerful we are once we get the Pyramids, trigger our Golden Age and crush Vox (if we do). Once all that happens, we can pretty much expect other teams to know we're a big kid on the block.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Let's hide our wonderous intent as long as possible (until the turn before completion, then). If one or more of the other teams is smart enough to deduce our approximate size based on that, more power to them. They could probably figure such things out via careful watching of the F11 screen & power rankings anyway.

-Arrian