[pb40 spoiler] Götterdämmerung: Destruction Is The Masses' Entertainment

[OT4E]

Ok I will try to join game and look at the dotmap tomorrow. We are not in turnsplit, yeah?

[Coeurva]

We have a peace treaty with superdeath that lasts to T49 iirc, thus no turn split with him. Charriu has played the turn and I don't have a PM from him, so looks like we're clear there as well.

[Coeurva]

Demographics / graphs dump, now that we have them on both our contacts. They contain at least one surprise:

It appears that superdeath just has one impi and wasn't the Rival Best soldiers?! The new Rival Best soldiers is likely Magic Science acquiring Archery, although I'm not sure on that. They signed peace, by the way. That definitely means we must watch out for impi... tempted to war-peace superdeath again and force him to declare his intent, but he could, of course, read right through that and bluff war. It's also a jerk move to force him into a turn split without direct conflict just so he can avoid showing his hand; it's a different story if his warrior hangs around, but he's turning him back now (which means nothing).

The silver lining is that he shouldn't even know about Neapolis and has no motive to attack the capital at this late date (especially since we'll show 4,000 by the time he gets graphs, then Archery thereafter), and that he should know it would be terrible meta to try to cripple two neighbours -- surely you will not outgrow them both by such maneuvres, and you would have to.

superdeath also settled city #3 last turn. His capital is at size3. Looks like the opening wasn't as costly for him as I'd thought, probably due to CHM whips.

[OT4E]

Dotmap is fine with me. Though of course we need to review it after horses get revealed. Small moments:
1) I would consider planting on stone directly. The city there is not very strong with whatever placement. But we wont need to plant it too early to get cultural expansion in honor to connect stone.
2) Wheat city can be placed further to the south though it looks like there are only deserts, but the final decision can be based on what is behind and what is the most safe against Charriu or whoever is there to the south.

Also I noticed that deers, wine and bananas are almost placed identically to the west and to the east. Plain cows vs hill pig are also the same quality 6 yield tiles. Not much it can tell us though.

[Coeurva]

I think a stone quarry is too good a tile to plant on. But if the schedule gets too tight to wait for culture, we can plant 1W to overlap the capital's clams; that's not a good city, but it's a new first-ring 5-yield tile, then a floodplain and lighthouse later. Could be worse. Agreed on wheat city not being fixed yet.



ICE SPOTTED, SWAPPED RESEARCH TO ASTRONOMY

In all seriousness, that's coast up there in the fog north of our capital, isn't it? The ice makes me think it isn't just Charriu's southern coast or anything like that. e: Even clearer are the ocean tile yields near the ice, which should be zero if there wasn't coast adjacent. Maybe they're random coast tiles in the middle of the ocean, courtesy of Commodore.


Rival Best MFG (and possibly GNP) is Charriu, but he lacks some food; possibly due to not having three cities yet (whipped his capital for 2 pop last turn, though, so the settler should be out). Rival Best CY might actually be superdeath, looking at graphs -- I'm no longer considering him as "target acquired", he clearly had an idea of what he was doing, although I'm still thinking he hurt himself in the long run with this raze. We'll see. His natural production is very low (could be Rival Worst in fact) because he relies on CHM whips, but that's not the worst plan.

PB38/39 spoilers

Which incidentally means that superdeath has rushed someone with a single instance of an Ancient UU to (threaten to) raze a city (but no more) for three games in a row now. Can't call him inconsistent

The moon shone with the blood of our enemies tonight...

[OT4E]

Map is cylindrical, not toroidal. Right? There cant be Charriu to the North.

Overlapped clam will only give 4 food, so its a waste imho. 1/5 tile is good but not incredible. It steals food and that city will simply lacks of it to become good in long term. Stone plant will give extra hammer to city center and saves 7 turns of worker labour connecting stone.

[Coeurva]

Animal Husbandry activates our horse sense. Two sightings.


Still not willing to orphan the fish (5f is a luxury), but obviously we have to shift X8 further towards Magic Science. Think it's better to have it on a hill since it's a frontier city. Might want to settle this before stone -- no need to build Gardens too early. Doubt the Pyramids are worth it here, btw, citizens grow too slowly on this map and Calendar provides enough happiness. Planting on stone looks like the best choice now (good point on the quarry's worker cost, too).

I keep forgetting the map is not toroidal. How does culture work with ocean tiles? We might be able to bridge the ice gap long before Astro.

No significant changes in demographics, but superdeath has caught up to us in MFG as well. I'll split EP between him and Charriu next turn. Canoel's warrior can unfortunately not go meet Magic Science -- we need him for happiness in 2t. But I'm not so concerned about the neighbour that's already been hit by a third party.

e: shallow_thought settles city #4. No surprise, I've been tacitly ranking him as our top competition in this game (although superdeath also seems to be doing fine, while MSci looked good until hit by impi -- if we had been Zulu's first contact, we would have had to tech Archery early, no doubt). RFS and Charriu seem rather slow to start.

[OT4E]

I would push X8 further. We are Rome! Who needs defending bonus there? Unlikely MSci leaves horses unclaimed though, but this can be first target for praetorian raid after all.

[Coeurva]

There's an advantage to knowing where any attack will probably be coming... planting Ravenna on flat and X8 on a hill could make MSci more predictable down the line.

I ran a quick test in WB: apparently third-ring borders at Canoel will expand to the ocean tile due north of the seafood, but none of the others. That's still enough to make a connection with the mysterious coast north of Rungholt. I think we can apply the principle of sufficient reason here -- this is not a random map; the crabs and far coast were placed so that we should discover this long before Optics; Commodore is an Explorer; the map is high on Calendar resources encouraging the research of Sailing. We should find a way to get more culture into Canoel when convenient. Probably a library, although it's worth noting that religions have not fallen yet and the Myst-starting civ was just attacked. We could really use the extra happiness for a whip buffer... I'm tempted. Or we chop Stonehenge at Neapolis on T70 because of all the newbie hate it has drawn






We grow 2 pop eot and settle Neapolis allowing Rome to work the sugar farm (8 surplus, 10/26f box), for a total increase of (9,5,2) (f,h,c)/t next turn. We were still ahead in CY for that matter, but I expect s_t to have improved his fourth city's food this turn. I might have misread the graphs and superdeath does have 2 impi -- hard for me to tell what that most recent bump amounts to, but he hasn't produced more "electricity" in a while yet (~10t, enough for an impi to reach us now if he wanted).

Charriu is still on two cities, but might have two settlers out. If not, he's starting to fall behind -- hope that means we'll get to the gold city site. Plan is still to have an axe and two archers holding it, two workers improving and connecting gold immediately around ~T72; then chop barracks.

[Coeurva]

Charriu has contact with superdeath now. 2,000 power added by Zulu. Capital will put 6/35h into axe, then swap back to granary; other non-Canoel cities prebuild archers next turn. Warriors positioned to all reinforce Neapolis (now Munsalvaesche, and it won't mind if I call it Mun) if necessary; otherwise the westernmost one goes to Rome. Might want at least one more cottage at the capital than initially planned, techs will be expensive.

Considered religion, but it'll take ~12t to research Myst -> Poly. Think we should just hurry to Calendar instead for happiness, unless the religions are still there on ~T70 (ie at completion of Maths). Also worth noting is that Charriu is shown on the victory screen as having 14% of the world's pop, we're at 20.8% (so superdeath has less than that, which means that while whipping impi forces us to respond with archers, he can afford the loss of pop less than us and pays 10h more per unit).