Turnplayer Thread #2.

[Zeviz]

Should we switch idle research to Aestetics for now to avoid investing into techs we might buy? (I know that it's just a few beakers, but every beaker counts. )

[Sullla]

Imperio accepted our trade! And Templars contacted me in-game and made the Polytheism/Sailing swap. Woot.

What a crazy turn T82 turned out to be. And to think that there were initially no score changes, ha! Here's a full recap as we get ready for the next turn:

- RB traded Archery and Iron Working to PAL in exchange for Alphabet. (This opened up the floodgates of tech trading.)

- PAL traded an Ancient Age tech to Rabbits for Meditation and Priesthood. The most logical guess here based on position on the tech tree and tech costs is Writing.

- RB traded Fishing to Templars in exchange for Mysticism. This sets up the following trade of Sailing (RB) for Polytheism (Tem).

- RB traded Archery and Sailing to Imperio in exchange for Masonry and Meditation.

Let's look at some Winners and Losers, 'cause I have a few minutes to kill here and it will be fun.

BIG Winners

Realms Beyond: Gained Alphabet, Mysticism, Polytheism, Meditation, and Masonry. Also traded for Writing on T81. The clear #1 winners in this series of exchanges.

PAL: Gained Archery, Iron Working, Meditation, and Priesthood. Also traded for Sailing and Polytheism on T81. PAL did extremely well, just not quite as strong as RB.

Treading Water

Templars: Gained Fishing and Sailing. Also traded for Writing (?) with PAL on T81. Templars did pretty good, but the techs they got were mostly low-value stuff. Getting locked out of Alphabet prevented them from joining in on the big deals.

Imperio: Gained Archery and Sailing. Better than being left out completely, but locked out of the big trades.

Rabbits: Gained Writing (?). Pretty sad haul here, really starting to fall behind.

Left Out

Banana: The big losers. They were completely locked out of this round of trades, unless they turn up with something PAL needs. (Not likely, unless they turn up with Monotheism! PAL has just about everything cheap already.) Banana ends up with nothing.

Scoring! (beaker value of techs gained)
RB: 1042
PAL: 856
Tem: 371
Imp: 228
Rab: 171
Ban: 0

I'm not trying to beat this to death, just highlight that I think this was a CRITICAL sequence over the past two turns. If we go on to win this game, this is one of the turns to look back at as a turning point.

EDIT: Zeviz, our 1 beaker/turn is going into Priesthood, our next tech to research. Indeed, every little bit counts.

[Zeviz]

Wow. This went much better than I could have expected.

Instead of researching Priesthood and Poly ourselves, can we arrange a deal with somebody? Is there a comparable value tech we could research that somebody is still missing?

[Sullla]

We have Polytheism already. Imperio has Priesthood, and Templars have Monotheism. Since we've used up all our trade chips already, I'm not sure I see us being able to get either one. Naturally, we can't trade Alphabet - nor would we want to.

Priesthood is absolutely dirt cheap; I wouldn't fret about that one. And we probably want to research Monotheism ourselves so we can trade it to PAL (along with Monarchy) for Code of Laws. Feel free to suggest a trade if you see one though.

[regoarrarr]

What's our status on the library at the capital? Seems like we should be turning on research again here in a turn or so?

[sooooo]

Hey guys, just wanted to say great work in all this trading malarkey! Looks like we came out very well.

@Regoarrarr: Sullla's eta for the library is turn 85.

[Sullla]

regoarrarr, indeed.

T82 turned out to be enormous for our team. If you missed the big dealings, check the posts above for more information. Anyway, time to move forward and report on the new stuff in T83:

- Cape Town has finished its galley! Christened the RBS Discovery, it begins its long journey to the eastern continent with Jennifer (one of our old warriors) aboard. Here is the path, for those who can't log in to the game:



The idea is to pick up Sharon at the end of that run and move her to the eastern continent as well. Hopefully she can make it up to the frozen north at about the same time - I think it will work out.

- What to build next in Cape Town? I suggested military, but more team members wanted to go right onto a barracks. I've left the build as barracks for now, but this is still open to discussion.

- Sharon has already found some interesting info on the Grand Tour:



First of all, Imperio seems to have a really crummy road network. I'm not even sure if Mutal and Lakamha are connected! Obviously they aren't MP guys, heh. Even if they were going to attack us, they wouldn't be doing it quickly. Secondly, by spotting a chariot and holkan, we were able to identify two of their 4000 Soldier point mystery units. Currently, we know that they have 2 holkans, 1 chariot, and 2 remaining unknowns.

Last of all, looks like we found Templars' captured barb city. It's right on the Templar/Imperio border, a good sign for us. We'd like their teams to butt heads here and ignore our side of the map. Sharon is going to head SW-S next turn to check it out, then probably head back north to meet up with our galley.

- Now, a view of the capital:



Chopping the grassland forest knocked the ETA of the library down to 2 turns. In fact, it knocked it down so far, we actually don't need to use our other pre-chop! We can save it for something else, like, maybe, the Great Library? (Marble + 4/5 chops = big prize!) I'm going to have Winston go ahead and start building a cottage on the cleared tile next turn, so we can work the maximum 4 cottages at Airstrip One. Parsons, the other worker at China Beach, is going to start building road connections from the capital to Pink Peaks, as already agreed upon.

- regoarrarr, you asked when to start research. The correct answer, I believe, is in two turns (T85). We will complete two libraries on that turn: one in Airstrip One, the other (whipped) in China Beach. We'll also have enough cash in the bank to run about 12 turns of research at 100%, which should get us all the way to Monarchy, or very very close to it.

- We also just finished a spear at the capital. Where do we want her to go? The two choices are Cape Town or the forthcoming Pink Peaks. I favor Cape Town personally, since it's more isolated.

- Barbs: there's a barb warrior wandering around to the north of the capital, which the Templars should take out for us with their exploring quechua. If they somehow don't, we can use the archer at China Beach to take care of it.

There's another barb warrior in the south near Pink Dot, which Betty Hur is going to handle. She has 5XP already, and it would *REALLY* be a good thing if we could get her up to 10XP to open up Heroic Epic. We may be able to farm the tundra north for barb experience if we don't get 10XP naturally.

That should be all. Great work over the past few turns everyone, so let's keep it rolling.

[Krill]

Well played guys, you're certainly keeping me entertained so far

[mostly-harmless]

The RBS Discovery on the way?
Also I am delighted that the Grand Tour fulfilled its purpose so quickly. Sharon will continue south for a bit and then cut the Grand Tour short by a few turns to guarantee the pick up by the galley.

It is pretty clear that the former barb city of Libyan (now renamed Damaskus) sits between the wheat and the cows in a central spot.
The place is not ideal, as it leave very little for other cities in that area (they are all reduced to fishing villages now, really). But I guess with Libyan a too good an opportunity to pass by and this area being perceived as contested its ok for the Templars.

In the light of the recently relaxing atmosphere (tech trading and all) I believe it is safe to go for barracks first in Cape Town.

I have a whacky idea for Airstrip One. How about we go for our Unique Building next and get a stele there after the library. With the culture from the palace, the lib, the stele and the 25% culture bonus(!) we can pop Airstrip One's 4th ring significantly earlier to claim those additional southern vineyards without another city. That would be great trading material for Imperio's gold!
Thoughts?

EDIT: From C&D: Rabbits settled their 4th city. More shortly in the C&D thread.

mh

[Zeviz]

I'd keep the spear in reserve for now and reinforce Pink Peaks the moment we found it. Imperio doesn't look like they are preparing for an attack, so we can focus on Templar border at least until Imperio NAP runs out.

EDIT: The reason I didn't comment on most of the rest of the post is that saying "good job" and "I agree" gets repetitive after a while.

PS Should we build another cottage at China Beach to let the city work 4 cottages when it reaches happy cap?

[sooooo]

Originally posted by Zeviz
I'd keep the spear in reserve for now and reinforce Pink Peaks the moment we found it.

Yep, and the spearlady may have to deal with the barb warrior in the north if the quechua runs away.

PS Should we build another cottage at China Beach to let the city work 4 cottages when it reaches happy cap?

I don't think so because we want to run 2 scientists here.

[sunrise089]

"Britney's Spears"...LOVE IT!

[regoarrarr]

What's our culture at currently at the capital, and what is our current cpt? It seems like it would be an awful long time to pop those borders but it's worth running the numbers to see how building a stele would affect things.

Once we get the 2 libraries, can we get a bpt readout at the various percentages so we can see if we'll have enough to make it all the way to monarchy?

[Zeviz]

Another trade idea:

Monotheism to Imperio for Priesthood + a missionary.

They get a beaker advantage, but a missionary will be very helpful and is probably worth more than 60 beakers.

[Sullla]

Good advice all around. We'll keep Britney's Spears where she is for the moment, at least until the barb warrior issue resolves itself.

As far as culture in the capital goes... Airstrip One currently has 324/500 culture, and is getting 4 per turn. Borders expand in 44 turns. I definitely like the Stele idea; here's some numbers:

Current: 4 cpt, 44 turns to expansion
With Library: 6 cpt, 30 turns
With Stele (and library): 8.75 cpt, 21 turns

Assuming in all cases that these buildings magically appeared on this turn, which of course won't happen. However, I am going to suggest that we build a Worker in the capital next; we really need more of them, and it's a perfect time to build one since Airstrip One will be growing into unhappiness otherwise. Perhaps we can slip the Stele in after that?

Zeviz, I like the proposed trade. Do we want to send an email to Imperio right now and see what they think? Probably better to allow some time for them to respond, if we're going to go for it. We might as well, since we lose nothing by researching Monotheism first if they refuse. On the off chance that we trade for Priesthood, I shifted our 1 beaker/turn research into Monotheism.

regoarrarr, I've been trying to run some imaginary research numbers myself. If we set research to max right now, with no libraries, we would be getting 40 beakers/turn. So what happens when we get the libraries? Here's my estimate:

- Airstrip One gets 22/turn currently, which becomes 27.5 post-library. (Note: this will continue to go up as cottages mature.) Gain of 6 beakers, we'll say.

- China Beach get 8/turn now, and will be getting 11 beakers base with the tile configuration I plan to use (center tile + clams + floodplains cottage + one Scientist specialist + PAL trade route), so that becomes 13.75 beakers. Gain of 6 beakers.

Thus we'll be getting at least 52 beakers/turn, and probably more than that, once we start researching. Now, let's look at the research multipliers:

Priesthood (85): We get a 1.1 multiplier for PAL and Imperio knowing this one, and 1.4 multiplier for having both pre-reqs. That would turn our total research figure into (52+1) * 1.1 [round down] * 1.4 [round down] = 81 beakers/turn! This one is cake to research.

Monotheism (171): We get a 1.05 multiplier for Templars knowing this one, and only a 1.2 multiplier for having one pre-req. (I don't think Masonry counts, since it's not optional... not sure on this.) That would turn our total research figure into (52+1) * 1.05 [round down] * 1.2 [round down] = 66 beakers/turn. Done in three turns.

Monarchy (429): No bonuses for other civs knowing it, but a big fat 1.4 multiplier for having both Priesthood and Monotheism. That would turn our total research figure into (52+1) * 1.4 [round down] = 74 beakers/turn. 6 turns of research on this one.

All told, we should research the three techs in 10 turns if I'm right. It definitely shouldn't take longer than 12 turns. Now, will our money hold out? We'll have ~182 gold in the treasury to start. At present, we lose 11gpt at 100% research, but that will definitely go up when we found the new city. It should be very close, but we'll likely have just enough cash to get it done. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.