[Spoilers] Lazteuq and RefSteel's PB51 Adventure

[Lazteuq]

Before T99:

I think we will have 4 turns of reaction time if he starts moving a stack toward any of the border cities.
That's not really enough time, because it takes at least 5 turns to research construction, whip a catapult, and use it.

I'm trying to position units close to Enchilada, so they are equal distance from any part of the front.
I did a little worldbuilder simulation to check visibility. He should only be able to see our 1 axe in Fajita. So if he invades, he'll be marching against unknown opposition. This is good for us, because if he goes for one city, we can rearrange forces to leave the other cities lightly defended without him noticing.

Right now, a GM would bulb Metal Casting for us. In order for one to bulb Guilds, we would need the prereqs for Guilds itself, plus Code of Laws, Alphabet, Civil Service, and Paper. Of note, if we get Metal Casting, Alphabet, and Code of Laws before the religious line, a GM would bulb civil service....

Ok, that was a total thought. I've been playing singleplayer K-Mod lately, it rearranges the tech tree around Civil Service a lot. I do kinda like the guilds path because knights are fun, and knights+musketeers is more fun. But that's not important yet. 

I definitely see the attraction of Caste+Golden Age+Philosophical, so I like Code of Laws next, but of course after construction we can save gold for a few turns before committing.
And civil service always seems pretty good, stacking bureaucracy on the capital's academy would make a lot of beakers. And macemen are cool of course, a way to thoroughly obsolete praets. I don't think we have any real need for irrigation but whatever.

Cool; thanks. I imagine it will want to pause the settler in 3 turns to grow some more then?

I was thinking that, until I instead decided to work both corn tiles, which lets the settler complete in 3 turns. Tortilla was growing too fast anyway and has cottages to work instead, so I see no harm in redistributing the corn.

[Lazteuq]

T99: The diplo train has no brakes...
First saw this:

I think its a mostly symbolic offer, but I declined anyway. I guess this is what happens when you get currency.
Then saw this....

Wow, Plemo is desperate enough to sweeten the deal. Still declined.
Then saw this...

Accepted the cow trade, because I see no cost and I don't want war. Declined the corn-fish trade because we have no health issues at all, while I think Superdeath probably does, with those jungles. 

I agree with your thoughts about construction, so we will have it on T102. Really flexing our GNP muscles here.

Aside from the diplo, nothing really happened other than whipping a library out of Chile Relleno. It was about to grow past the cap, and has plenty o food. Brought a worker back up to improve the land between Quesadilla and Salsa, starting with that mine we started long ago. Fur will connect in 3T.

This is what we know of Plemo:

Not a soldier in sight...For someone with so much power, it is strange to see undefended cities. We could even assemble a couple galleys and cause some mayhem....not much benefit in that though.

[Lazteuq]

T100:
Check out these power increases! Good thing we have cats soon.

El Grillo must be busy as well. Currently putting espionage on Mjmd.
What do you think are the odds that Superdeath has Construction?

I see no bridge over the river in this picture. Does that conclusively mean he doesn't have construction?
Logging in before Superdeath lets us see a newly built praetorian in Plymouth Cuda.

I wonder if Enchilada should keep running 2 scientists for eternity now that it has an academy?

Now that we have stone, it is really easy for a border city to get Walls quickly.

[Suite]

You can check all river tiles of Superdeath. Bridges are built with Construction on adjacent tiles with a river in between (not diagonally though).

[RefSteel]

I think we will have 4 turns of reaction time if he starts moving a stack toward any of the border cities.

He can get a Praet stack from the fog to Fajita or Chile Relleno on the 3rd turn of a war, at least if he has Workers in his stack. With a proper road network and a defensive stack on the plains hill 1NE of Gordita, we should be able to defend effectively against that. That said, I don't think he's planning to attack us right now. (Wait for next turn's random aggression die roll though...)

Note that until we have a defensive road network across the south, that's a bad tile to put a stack on though. The defensive road network needs to go from Gordita through (for instance) the northern spices to the west, and through the plains hill, floodplain, forest plains hill, and plains-hill-NW-of-Fajita's-wheat to the east.

This is good for us, because if he goes for one city, we can rearrange forces to leave the other cities lightly defended without him noticing.

Cool - but be prepared for speculative attacks even when he doesn't know a city is lightly defended!

I do kinda like the guilds path because knights are fun, and knights+musketeers is more fun. But that's not important yet.

100% agree!

I definitely see the attraction of Caste+Golden Age+Philosophical, so I like Code of Laws next, but of course after construction we can save gold for a few turns before committing.
And civil service always seems pretty good, stacking bureaucracy on the capital's academy would make a lot of beakers. And macemen are cool of course, a way to thoroughly obsolete praets. I don't think we have any real need for irrigation but whatever.

Maces also require Machinery, and chain irrigation would help Fajita, irrigating the wheat via farms on e.g. the river plains W-NW of the city and bare grassland 1W of the city. Apart from that, I agree.

I was thinking that, until I instead decided to work both corn tiles, which lets the settler complete in 3 turns. Tortilla was growing too fast anyway and has cottages to work instead, so I see no harm in redistributing the corn.

Sounds like we could really use some more happiness then!

I think its a mostly symbolic offer, but I declined anyway. I guess this is what happens when you get currency.

I don't know; I've never seen so many loan requests before. Do players not realize how much trust and good faith needs to be built up before it makes sense to give them gold they need now for the potentially-empty promise of slightly more gold later? Even if they think they're negotiating in good faith ... so did (I think it was) Elkad in PB46. Other players loaned him money to help him fight eventual game winner Old Harry, but then self preservation ended up leading him to wardec-cancel his repayments and give his ill-gotten gains away to Old Harry in exchange for a stay of execution!

(Even if none of this were the case, of course, we need our gold now to finance our current teching....)

Accepted the cow trade, because I see no cost and I don't want war. Declined the corn-fish trade because we have no health issues at all, while I think Superdeath probably does, with those jungles.

Definitely makes sense to me! We should have fish of our own soon in any case, right? Hilariously, what we interpretted as attempted extortion might have been a completely insane and disproportionate attempt to get us to pay him for open borders. That, or he really is an Erratic Master of Orion AI in human form, and his decision-making RNG came up with wildly different results two turns in a row. So we may have gone for Construction too soon after all ... but it'll still be a good tech to have! (And definitely worth finishing if we're through 2/3rds of it already!)

Really flexing our GNP muscles here.

That's great to hear!

Not a soldier in sight...For someone with so much power, it is strange to see undefended cities. We could even assemble a couple galleys and cause some mayhem....not much benefit in that though.

True. We'd need more exploration to judge what we could gain and/or get away with. If we knew for sure those were island cities, it might actually be worth taking them (or those that are) - if we also knew what Plemo's army consists of and/or what it was doing. But right now, he's our only source of international trade routes, and I don't suppose we're close enough to second place to want to take it upon ourselves to trim back the game leader's ears.

What do you think are the odds that Superdeath has Construction?

Very low. Why tech Construction when you have Aggressive Praets?

I see no bridge over the river in this picture. Does that conclusively mean he doesn't have construction?

No, unfortunately that's in no way conclusive. I think maybe if we could see a road on both sides of the river, directly vertically or horizontally, that might tell us, but I'm not sure. False negatives abound with bridge scouting in my recent experience.

I wonder if Enchilada should keep running 2 scientists for eternity now that it has an academy?

When tech is at 100%, if we have river hamlets or any villages or towns available, we should definitely work those instead. Same will go for river cottages or any hamlet when in Bureaucracy. When we want food (or foodhammers) more than tech, that's also a consideration. But when tech is at 0%, yeah, capital scientists seem like a good idea right now.

Thanks for the reports - and congrats on reaching Turn 100 in what feels like a very solid position in spite of set-backs earlier on and the self-proclaimed AI Montezuma of MP right next door playing Aggressive Rome!

[Lazteuq]

T102:Just another day, no diplo surprises.

True. We'd need more exploration to judge what we could gain and/or get away with. If we knew for sure those were island cities, it might actually be worth taking them (or those that are) - if we also knew what Plemo's army consists of and/or what it was doing. But right now, he's our only source of international trade routes, and I don't suppose we're close enough to second place to want to take it upon ourselves to trim back the game leader's ears.

It looks like they are NOT island cities. I'm questioning if this map is even really a traditional donut, because I don't see the kind of curvature I would expect from Plemo's outer shore. Its such a long continuous piece of land though, it seems absurd for that to be a huge island. I don't really want to cause trouble with Plemo, but I should point out that we are also getting trade routes to El Grillo's cities.

We should have fish of our own soon in any case, right?

Yeah we have clams, fish, corn, sheep, cow(haven't even needed to connect wheat and deer) so health is the least of our problems.
Construction is done, and it certainly gives peace of mind. Even if he attacks right now, our ability to at whip catapults should help a lot.

He can get a Praet stack from the fog to Fajita or Chile Relleno on the 3rd turn of a war, at least if he has Workers in his stack. With a proper road network and a defensive stack on the plains hill 1NE of Gordita, we should be able to defend effectively against that. That said, I don't think he's planning to attack us right now. (Wait for next turn's random aggression die roll though...)

Ahh, good point about workers making surprise roads.
I'll make sure to let him know we have catapults by positioning on a tile he can see.

Settler for site 7 is moving, will found on T104. I'm chopping the city tile's forest so it doesn't go to waste. 

Note that until we have a defensive road network across the south, that's a bad tile to put a stack on though. The defensive road network needs to go from Gordita through (for instance) the northern spices to the west, and through the plains hill, floodplain, forest plains hill, and plains-hill-NW-of-Fajita's-wheat to the east.

OK, makes sense. I'm planning the next city after site 7 to be site 2(Plainshill 3E of Gordita), which means we will have workers improving that area anyway.

Thanks for the reports - and congrats on reaching Turn 100 in what feels like a very solid position in spite of set-backs earlier on and the self-proclaimed AI Montezuma of MP right next door playing Aggressive Rome!

Thanks! This has turned out to be even more fun and intense than I expected.

Superdeath's power actually went down last turn, maybe thats just deleting an old warrior, or maybe thats combat. All I know for sure is that there is NOT a stack of praets on the border. And that's all I need to know.
Unless they're simply worried about us, it seems like Gira is busy dealing with someone else (power has increased dramatically). I see in the overall thread that GKC is interacting with Gira, I think they're at war. Good news for us. 

If both neighbors are as busy as I hope, that leaves us with an opportunity to grow large and prosperous cities with lots of specialists, so we can get a tech advantage.
With our large land area, I think peaceful growth is a reliable way to get an advantage. Even El Grillo, who conquered another player, has less land than us!
I'm thinking of Calendar then Code of Laws. I don't think we can afford to leave the +2 or 3 happiness alone, even though calendar is basically a dead end.

Here's the domestic advisor:

Tortilla's colosseum will be chopped. Quesadilla unfortunately doesn't have enough forests to chop a market, so it will probably need a big whip. 2 wet corns make that pretty reasonable though.
Enchilada is frustrating because its got so little production and not quite as much food, but as we discussed earlier, we want to keep it running cottages or specialists. Could do a 4pop whip(9->5) after some more production.

[Lazteuq]

T103:
Spotted this galley; I think this is a small chance of a boating attempt on Ceviche. Rearranged some units in case, 2 praets shouldn't be able to win, especially if he tries doing it amphibious.

Actually I'm not even sure if Superdeath knows where Ceviche is... but paranoia can't hurt.
His border cities are still minimally defended as usual.

Through foreign advisor, confirmed Gira is at war with GKC (even though I haven't met him!?)
Plemo and El Grillo are at war, that certainly explains the buildup.
Coastal raids on Plemo might just strengthen strengthen El Grillo, who has already eliminated someone!
Speaking of Plemo, he shows 81 GPT in the diplo screen. I don't see how he could get that much without either a)building wealth in lots of cities, or b)getting gpt from other players. For example, we only get 38gpt at 0%.

On the other side, if Gira starts suffering, we could probably get away with a limited war, maybe taking Girapolis or Micropolis. So far, their power graph is stable, so GKC hasn't done anything decisive yet.

Here are demos at 0%:

From the victory screen, we know Plemo is the #1 population.

[RefSteel]

It looks like they are NOT island cities. I'm questioning if this map is even really a traditional donut, because I don't see the kind of curvature I would expect from Plemo's outer shore. Its such a long continuous piece of land though, it seems absurd for that to be a huge island. I don't really want to cause trouble with Plemo, but I should point out that we are also getting trade routes to El Grillo's cities.

I hear that. As mentioned earlier, "Looks sort of like a fritter" doesn't sound to me like a traditional donut map; I'd love to get some more exploration in and get a better picture of the world!

I'll make sure to let him know we have catapults by positioning on a tile he can see.

Sounds good. Just make sure it's not a tile he can attack right away, and (relatedly) not a tile that's threatening to him!

Settler for site 7 is moving, will found on T104. I'm chopping the city tile's forest so it doesn't go to waste.

Should help a bit with Enchilada's Market, too.

OK, makes sense. I'm planning the next city after site 7 to be site 2(Plainshill 3E of Gordita), which means we will have workers improving that area anyway.

There might be better island options if we have a chance to explore them, but this sounds fine to me. (And site 2 does take care of one of the road lengths I mentioned on its own - which means, depending on where and when the settler is produced and how we're doing on worker labor, we can either save three worker turns or - perhaps - found the city a turn sooner!)

Thanks! This has turned out to be even more fun and intense than I expected.

Wow, that's great to hear!

Superdeath's power actually went down last turn, maybe thats just deleting an old warrior, or maybe thats combat. All I know for sure is that there is NOT a stack of praets on the border. And that's all I need to know.

Heh - indeed! If the drop is small enough it could just have been a warrior, it might just be from whipping (assuming he whipped a settler or worker or some kind of infrastructure - I don't know if he actually whipped that turn.)

With our large land area, I think peaceful growth is a reliable way to get an advantage. Even El Grillo, who conquered another player, has less land than us!
I'm thinking of Calendar then Code of Laws. I don't think we can afford to leave the +2 or 3 happiness alone, even though calendar is basically a dead end.

If we tech Calendar right away, especially if we don't know anyone who has any Calendar resources hooked, it would be fun to make a plan for the MoM, since we have Marble (and are Phi, with a Scientist already waiting to launch a GA when/if we land the wonder!) - do we have a good place to try to build it?

Enchilada is frustrating because its got so little production and not quite as much food, but as we discussed earlier, we want to keep it running cottages or specialists. Could do a 4pop whip(9->5) after some more production.

Yikes - but a 4-pop whip is very efficient, especially in a city with a 10 food surplus at size 5! And I guess we can grow on the Colosseum to help tide us over on happiness until the whip anger runs out.

Spotted this galley; I think this is a small chance of a boating attempt on Ceviche.

I seriously doubt it, but good job covering all angles anyway! He probably does know where Ceviche is since his workboat should be able to see the borders via tile bleed. I'd be tempted to build a galley in Ceviche in the hope of settling the silk island.

Speaking of Plemo, he shows 81 GPT in the diplo screen. I don't see how he could get that much without either a)building wealth in lots of cities, or b)getting gpt from other players. For example, we only get 38gpt at 0%.

Remember, he's Financial. Partly for that reason, he may also have been working more cottages than we have, for a longer time. You may be right, but it's hard to overestimate the power of the FIN trait in unmodded BtS.

Here are demos at 0%:

Those actually look quite good, especially considering where we were earlier in the game!

[Lazteuq]

T104

If we tech Calendar right away, especially if we don't know anyone who has any Calendar resources hooked, it would be fun to make a plan for the MoM, since we have Marble (and are Phi, with a Scientist already waiting to launch a GA when/if we land the wonder!) - do we have a good place to try to build it?

I really like this idea. Nobody else has calendar resources yet, I bet we could do it.
Carne Asada has the best continuous hammers and still 2 forests, while Tortilla has poor production but 4 forests. Both have grass hills which could be mined, that would help. I think Carne Asada would be better, and we would lose less commerce by doing it. Or maybe there is another city I'm not thinking of. I guess Salsa or Enchilada could do it but I don't see why.
We can get Calendar on T109 or 110. I haven't actually connected the marble yet, but it should be possible in time. 

I hear that. As mentioned earlier, "Looks sort of like a fritter" doesn't sound to me like a traditional donut map; I'd love to get some more exploration in and get a better picture of the world!

Oh, you're right, I guess there never was a reason to think it is a traditional donut.
It feels more square than circular, which I guess is good from a mapmaker point of view because then every civ has neighbors just across the sea, where on a traditional donut, the people at N,S,E,W positions have close coastal neighbors, while those on diagonals from the center don't.

I did the Enchilada market whip. We are back to having no unhappy cities.

Huevos has been founded (site7). Granary of course. It is using Enchilada's cow, but I'm not sure if it should give the cow back and work the previously unused floodplain instead.

Disturbingly, Superdeath's galley has moved directly toward Ceviche. I wonder who will log in first next turn...

[Lazteuq]

T106:

Looks like Superdeath is just going to leave that galley lurking ominously. That's pretty smart because I have no way of knowing if there are troops in it. Worst case would be if he lands 2 praets on the forest 1E of Fajita.

Our workboat has moved past Plemo. Now travelling through El Grillo's coast, we met Ramk and accepted open borders.

Ramk has met all of our contacts except Gira. He hasn't been fighting with anyone we know.
City Counts:
Plemo: unknown because he's logged in right now.15?
El Grillo: 13
Us: 12
Superdeath: 9
Mjmd: 9
Ramk: 8
Gira: 6