scooty moved the zerk out of the city. It could have killed a couple of HA, but it’s not unreasonable to want to save the unit and not give away GGG points, I suppose.

 

 

Nothing scary on the water that I can see, but if there is stuff in the FoW, I could lose my navy if I hang around. Because of this, I moved everything onto the boats that I could and retreated with the boats this turn. The lone HA I will pick up later after walking it through Nazul’s land to pick up in a safer location.

 

 

That one tile island wouldn’t be atrocious if I was in US and could rush buy a light house and granary…nine fpt is perfectly reasonable, and with the amount of resources I have it could definitely grow vertical and provide decent trade routes for me.

 

 

End of turn positioning against scooty. Not at risk of losing the HA.

 

 

The attack seems to be going well for Pingo, not losing many units according to their soldier points. Only time will tell if yuris can fight them off…

 

 

A close up of the now invisible city.

 

 

F6. Not great. Someone asked me recently to discuss my tech path, and that’s a little bit difficult, because I don’t really have one. My game has been more focussed on holding land than researching techs and abusing them. I have tended to abuse the concept known as quantity, instead of quality.

 

Banking is a one turn tech, but is held only by scooty. Education I can have at any point but I don’t see why I should double bulb it, and I can’t research it without having 2,000 gold in the bank, and I will not do that for a tech that I don’t need. PP affects about 30 tiles so I don’t care about getting that. Gunpowder is being researched by both Pingo and Commodore so I should try to trade for that. DR is over 3K beakers with prerequisites and will not pay back until the game is decided so that can be ignored. Philo I don’t need until I try to get Nationalism or Liberalism, as I already have access to Pacifism but it would bankrupt me to use that civic. Drama is irrelevant with Sistine and a well spread religion and SPI, as temples are cheaper and give more culture, and I will not need the artists slots as I shall use caste, and the culture slider would bankrupt me as well. Astro is the only other viable choice IMO, to force scooty to tech it to defend themselves and obsolete the Collosus. Observatories are better than universities as well, as they are cheaper but they do not unlock OU.

 

So it is Banking or Engineering or Astro, but I need to save gold to research either Engineering or Astro. I’ll research Banking because that unlocks a gold multiplier I only really need in two cities, and will build in a third, so isn’t difficult to use, and then save gold on either Engineering or Astro. I would save it on Engineering if I intended to research that ASAP, or on Astro if I expected to research that next and save Engineering for when other players have researched it and I get a better known tech bonus when I come to research it.

 

 

The worker positioning through out the empire…I could still do with another dozen, twenty workers.

 

 

I thought I finished this temple on T191, but obviously not. I actually finish Banking this turn (with a research build in Opportunism) so I can overflow into a bank.

 

 

Just keep on trudging along.

 

 

Onwards Buddhist soldiers…maybe you guys have caught on to the problem…

 

 

Only a stables to go…though I’ll start making 5XP knights when some people can build muskets. Things might get intense. My main advantage is azza will not be able to flank away my cats.

 

 

Boring.

 

 

I still hate working that ocean tile. Note that I kept on moving the labourers around between GNAp and Crapital so I wouldn’t trust the work force layout that much. Roughly right though.

 

 

I have started to trickle the workers to DP to workshop the tiles, but they will not complete for a few turns. I might have 42 workers (over 2500 hammers!) to play around with every turn, but I do have over 30 cities as well. Two things that won’t get improved are the desert hills, they are not useful tiles until I get RP, which is so far away that I’m just going to watermill the grass farms, and later on I can farm them again. I will not need to regrow as i’m doing that now, I will just move pop off hte coast and onto the land tiles as they start to give better yields.

 

 

This is the only city that I needed to build research in to get banking in one turn. I will be left with limited gold so I hope that I will not get a bad event next turn…

 

 

Gave p on the monastery. Just generally clicking on stuff and not being rigorous. Though I was probably thinking about getting some knights out asap to deal with azza before someone gifts him gunpowder to screw with me.

 

 

Growing at seven fpt is reasonable. I will cottage the grasslands and grow onto them until size 15 when I’ll start to grow SMS onto plains cottages. Once SMS is at size 16, I will cottage the remaining farms. That probably happens with the workers I bring east from CPH and SG, the ones that I need to send to finish the workshops.

 

 

Looks like I’ll get this missionary out and then one turn a final missionary before going onto a stables. This missionary will probably have to be used immediately to allow the one turn missionary to be a legal build. But that isn’t that difficult, there is a city six tiles away that needs a religion spread.

 

 

What to build next…a forge? Would take ages. A library? It is cheaper than a market, so I can get the %age modifier in play sooner, and I don’t care too much if I’m working six merchants or six scientists. A bank would be pretty nicer but 200 hammers takes over 30 turns to accumulate.

 

 

I want that damned grass hill from Pingo, and the grass farm. Size 12 is not difficult to reach and SG is a little light on the hammers. It would be food neutral and 30 base hammers. Though if I workshopped the ivory, with a windmill I could get to 32 base hpt and commerce neutral, just lose two ivory that I’m currently gifting away. Probably not worth it.

 

 

Still not figured out the problem yet? Don’t worry, it won’t take long to realise it.

 

 

Not long to go until I have a beast of a hammer city. My only problem is that it’s coastal, and on the front lines. Not a city I want to build the IW in, and I need to think of where I want to build that NW. Get a stables and I’m going to be throwing out so many knights it is unreal. Might even drop in a temple and monastery to try and control the plains hill to make the city easier to defend.

 

 

I need to grow By-Tor. It just isn’t growing fast enough and I lack the worker labour to both irrigate BT and then workshop over the tiles afterwards. I really need BT ready in case I need it to build constant galleons.

 

 

See, I said I was a bit low on workers…

 

 

And yes. This is a problem. Nazul’s borders expanded and took my wheat, and I don’t have any spares hooked up, putting my cities into unhealthiness in a few cases. My solution to this was fairly straight forward. First off all, I cancelled my resources gifts to Nazul and re-offered them in exchange for wheat. The other one is somewhat simpler. I waited a few turns, realised I had a wheat at Greed and went to hooked it up. If Nazul accepts the new trade I can move the workers over the wheat efficiently instead of running them straight there to road it. The third tactic is that when I revolt into caste I will run a bunch of artists to pop borders and try to regain the wheat, putting at least 21 culture per turn into the wheat tile. Hopefully I will get it fairly quickly but I am not hopeful.

 

 

Just keep growing…

 

 

Saffron is going to have a bunch of merchants to work, and try to get that court house down to save me some pennies. Each turn sooner I have that court house is 5.5 gold saved, which is almost two merchants, never mind the EP. Probably worth working the desert hills to get it down quicker then if it shaves half a dozen turns off the build time.

 

 

Forge or library next? I’m thinking library, forge will not pay back until after the NE is built and I kinda want the NE down to start pumping out the great people for golden ages.

 

 

Boring…

 

 

Hills do start to drop off at this part of the game, don’t they? Still, I need to improve all of the tiles, and now I have the workers in position to do that. I think.

 

 

No, you idiot, don’t grow the city! Fool. Now you have a real problem stopping the city from starving.

 

 

Bad forest chop…should have saved that one and chopped the coastal forests for better safety, instead of hte one SE of the city tile.

 

 

Definitely forge next but growth is more important I think.

 

 

I’m surprised I still hold this city TBH. Now I need to start turning it into a fortress.

 

 

Tile improvements are hard to come by in this neck of the woods. As are woods, come to think of it. I really ought to put a road from FS to MP via DBP so scooty can’t land and cut off the road, making reinforcing impossible. I will be watermilling the two river tiles, to try and slow growth a little bit so the tile improvements can keep up with pop growth.

 

 

Forge and barracks…

 

 

Next turn work the gold and the silk.

 

 

Trying to save as much food as possible in the granary…next turn work the farm to save the full 13 food possible.

 

 

Still boring.

 

 

Still cold, but there is the whales hooked, just waiting on the road from the silver and I will finally have put this ice cold PoS to work. Not that I really need the happy.

 

 

Civic cost is going to go sky high very shortly…

 

 

Note my trade routes, in the Export – Import row. That is going to start falling when Pingo start removing the cities I have trade routes with. Oh well. And first in GNP…we’ll ignore the fact that scooty are saving over 400 gold…