[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

Hopefully our galley can ferry over the worker/warrior, unload in city 5, then ferry our scout over to the stone island before coming back to grab whatever settler we build next. Or something like that, anyway; I’m assuming our WB can take care of scouting N of dyes since that seems likely to be another channel between islands.

[scooter]

Finding food is good! I guess we need to find out if we get it from the hill N of stone, from the plains N of horse, or from the island in the fog NE or fish. My guess is the former but time will tell.

N of horse is a hilariously high-resource city but it's a minigame to actually hook them into the trade network.

That is a prime spot for a city that looks like a great idea until you give all of those resources to other cities.

Hopefully our galley can ferry over the worker/warrior, unload in city 5, then ferry our scout over to the stone island before coming back to grab whatever settler we build next. Or something like that, anyway; I’m assuming our WB can take care of scouting N of dyes since that seems likely to be another channel between islands.

Yes, that is the exact plan. Galley should have just enough time to peek over, drop the scout, and then return to pickup a settler for whom we'll have hopefully found another spot for by then.






Settled the city of Y'Ghatan as a city that is the closest I can think of to being in a desert on a hill, though I think we're taking some liberties by calling it a hill. No olives nearby, so we're safe on that front. Started a Granary. More importantly, time to play the fun game of Instant Profit City. Here was our beaker/gold rates before settling:

0%: 17g
50%: +14b, +3g
100%: +28b, -11g

And here's our stats after settling.

0%: 21g
50%: +18b, +3g
100%: +36b, -15g

Instant profit is always so satisfying. We're up to 3c routes in every city. Time to beeline Currency, then go unlock Cothons.






The empire after settling Y'Ghatan. I held off on whipping Aren's WB because the tile sharing has resulted in some weird assignments, but it will go onto Granary next. It will want at least one of its seafood netted in 7T, however I figure I can decide which one based on which WB has the most promising scouting. One can return to net seafood, the other can scout a little longer.


In the south, I queued up another WB in Unta. For once this one is not earmarked for a specific seafood, but we generally need to get going on the global scouting, so there's no real reason not to. I will want a Lighthouse soon though. Pale I decided on a 6T settler. That will give the Galley enough time to do a little poking around and return in time to pick it up. It will also provide the time necessary to find an actual spot. Note that Y'Ghatan showed us some Gold, so there's a good chance that's where we'll want to settle next if we can find some food in the area. Perhaps even if we can't.





Nice spread. Would have preferred it spread south, but beggars/choosers.





Looking good. Nobody has any military to speak of, so we should still be safe from a cheesy sea-gank if anyone meets us soon.

[Zed-F]

We have 4 workers total now, 3 on the mainland and 1 at Y’Ghatan, correct? Or did Pale build a granary instead of a second worker?

I found Yuris settled city 4 on end of T57 so it’s just Cairo still on 3.

[Tarkeel]

I'd expect the GNP gap to be bigger if we were the first to settle on another landmass. As it is, the lead is mostly down to religion + PRO bonus. Rival worst is likely lack of ICTRs though.

Although the second place could be bing with boosted CRE culture...

[Zed-F]

We kind of already had reason to suspect that one or more other players have already settled off their starting islands due to settlement timing.

[scooter]

We have 4 workers total now, 3 on the mainland and 1 at Y’Ghatan, correct? Or did Pale build a granary instead of a second worker?

I found Yuris settled city 4 on end of T57 so it’s just Cairo still on 3.

Yes, 4 workers. It seems a little light, but given our seafood reliance, it's not that crazy I don't think. We aren't working any unimproved tiles save the Cow for a few turns in Y'Ghatan.

I'd expect the GNP gap to be bigger if we were the first to settle on another landmass. As it is, the lead is mostly down to religion + PRO bonus. Rival worst is likely lack of ICTRs though.

Although the second place could be bing with boosted CRE culture...

We kind of already had reason to suspect that one or more other players have already settled off their starting islands due to settlement timing.

Yeah I definitely suspect other players settled overseas faster than we did as it would explain why there were some long gaps in between 2nd/3rd/4th cities. I think a lot of players settled city4 on islands rather than city5. It's all about when you pause long enough to build the Galley, and I waited as long as possible to do that. When considering GNP, keep in mind Cairo is getting 13-14 culture from Stonehenge, and that might very well be Rival Best too. I've mostly ignored other players, but it might be time to start considering other players, BECAUSE.





Those are the American borders of Bing. I think this is a good neighbor to have as he's one of the few players with no real military levers to pull. Here's a question: should I make contact or wait? I don't THINK I want to do something crazy like a First Contact Loaded Galley Special, but it's not bad to retain the option. More realistically though, it might be good not to alert him to the possibility of contested land. I want to make sure he doesn't push and settle on one of these visible islands. It's hard to know if he would even consider it because I don't know if I'm running into a core city or a far-flung island. Keep in mind he is Creative, so second ring only means these borders are at least 5T old. This is noteworthy as he actually settled a city four turns ago, so this is likely to be core-ish.





Also, the presence of Bing at that distance makes me suspect this island may be contested as well by some second neighbor on the east side of it. Claiming both the Gold and Stone backed by real defenders seems imperative to me. May need Archery after Writing.





One bonus of the Hinduism spread is that Aren will pop its borders a couple turns earlier than planned. I decided not to whip the WB a few turns ago, and I'll instead I'll use the pop growth on a Granary whip. This means our westward scouting is a bit slowed in favor of better growth, however the border pop will give me some vision. I'm counting on the Jungle belt being a lower priority for other players.

[Zed-F]

That jungle’s going to be a problem for us, too, it looks like. Our dye region near Y’Ghatan doesn’t seem like there is seafood to support it except by sharing with Aren, which really lowers the urgency of grabbing it before we unlock the ability to build a plantation. We might wind up settling the northern dye city first, it at least has new seafood we could net.

Do we know about how many cities we are supposed to have room for / how much distance there is supposed to be between civs? Does that support the island to our east being a site for competition? It seems like we have ocean to our west, at least south of the jungle. I wonder if there is land to our west but we can only reach it easily via the poles/jungle belt, or if that is meant to be an Astro island area. Being a bit behind on exploration compared to our rivals might be hurting us here. At the same time, though, we haven’t found anything super awesome to be fighting to expand toward before someone else does — we’re still just seeing decent sites, not fantabulous ones. That suggests we perhaps haven’t quite found potential contested resource areas just yet.

I don’t see any reasons to make contact with Bing unless you think we can benefit from known tech bonuses. He’s not someone we’d be interested in opening borders with unless he pays us for the privilege (even if we were able to.) I agree that he’s a good neighbor to have but I’d prefer trying to out-REX him rather than putting together a gank attack. He certainly has other neighbors and we don’t want to be paying hammers to make Bing weaker for them until we are confident we can get the lion’s share of the spoils.

[Tarkeel]

I support not contacting Bing; it's unlikely to give us much KtB and we don't need the foreign trade. If we do make contact, we could swing in from the north as a misdirect?

[Zed-F]

Misdirection on angle of contact doesn’t seem like a good use of exploration time before we net Aren’s eastern seafood. I tend to prefer avoiding contact and just looking for our own good sites to settle. I expect Bing will have his own scouts out in due course and will find us long before we are ready to launch any kind of serious offensive play.

[Zed-F]

I feel like SD has been whipping a lot. Maybe too much. Sure he has CHA happy, and whipping is a good source of hammers for expansion, but if all his cities are constantly tiny, is that really the best way to build an economy?

#whips since T48:
Us: 3
SD: 8
Cairo: 3
Bing: 3
Yuri: 3