[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Coeurva]

T29. Slavery revolt. Our warrior survived at 1.7/2 -- I'll let him heal for 2t before exploring, since this is about the time that barb warriors begin to crowd the world stage on Monarch difficulty. "Just because they have a club doesn't mean they're organized."

International news: Someone now has 19,000 soldiers; Savant is in Slavery while CML is not; there's an injured panther to our south that might have snacked up CML's injured scout some turns ago -- or someone else's.

[Coeurva]

T30. Nothing much to report here, but Krill's capital (recognizable by founding date) has hit size4. It occurs to me that he might have two 6-food resources and two neutral tiles, as Rival Best in crop yield is 18.

Still left warrior on top of settler, even though I'm quite sure that invisible animals couldn't reach him due to the terrain, but at least he'll get healed, and I don't trust that I couldn't have overlooked some facet of the game that would result in the settler's spontaneous combustion.

I'll send the first warrior towards Savant after all, whose power graph confirms that he was the one to hit 19,000 last turn (overflow from settler into warrior, I assume); furthermore, we're tied for first in MFG with copper mined (9), and graphs were showing us tied without (5), so Savant may just have gotten around to it as well -- let's not aggressively poke around his capital, lest we provoke him into roading that tile -- although note that he's lacking Wheel, like us; let's see if that's his next tech, likely due next turn. Edit: The reason I want to scout Savant first is to get an idea of our possible third city's BFC and surroundings as soon as we can.

I should note that despite what I've claimed earlier, the capital cannot build a lighthouse, which requires access to a body of salt water with 10+ contiguous tiles, apparently. Doesn't devalue Sailing by a lot, and Rhapsody grows quite fast with a granary in place, but we're not going to have a six-food tile at the capital.

[Coeurva]

T31. Settle Dragonish Sicil, working the plains forest for a turn as planned. This has the side-effect of making our MFG look enormous by comparison, hopefully intimidating Savant at least slightly about our potential. Speaking of whom, he has managed to found his second city (Hermondale, I think it was called) on the same turn; meanwhile, CML has revolted to Slavery on T30, and might also found his second city when he plays this turn. Mutual graphs by T35, probably. Will update this post accordingly if CivStats shows further increases in score for anyone else.

Demographics reveal that Castle Ironfist is currently size2 (after a 1-pop whip, I presume), as Savant still has 19,000 soldiers -- if it was size3, he'd have 20,000 (1,000 soldiers for every 2 pop). No tech from him; I suppose he's still a bit delayed on that front compared to us (Bronze Working was 2t later for him).

Arithmetician will step onto the grass forest hill that's currently Land's End and finally reveal a few fresh land tiles to us. Ames-Ace (new warrior) is heading towards site #3 and Savant. I had pondered sending him towards CML instead for a good ten minutes (because even when I make a decision in my mind, I hover about it in-game), but resolved that I want to know more about our border with Ethiopia; in case Savant harasses our site with two warriors, we could still send the third warrior as reinforcements.

[Bacchus]

Dark Savant definitely should be several steps back on science -- working unimproved cow for the starting 10t is a nice headstart for us already, and I assume he then also worked something hammery to make a workboat. And all to plant the city only at the same time as we did, so things are going nicely. Can you post some screens, just to keep the picture fresh in my mind?

[Bacchus]

With all the RtR tech cost changes, how does AH compare in cost to a sixth of Writing? How many effective beakers are we paying after accounting for the 20% boost?

[Coeurva]

Sure, can do; here's T33:


Overview of our land. The corn farm finishes on T36, coinciding neatly with Wheel completion. The worker under construction gets whipped for 1 pop (abandoning the oasis) on T35.

The land bridge ends in a peak. It might continue past that, but that's not for us to explore for the time being. (Edit: In fact, now that I look at it again, it looks to be surrounded by coast.) A city at the northern corn can pick up fish in second-ring borders and overlap Sicil's cows (both of them). It's all rather marginal before we can inject culture, but a 5-food tile is a 5-food tile and we have local worker labor to spare, so city #4 is a possibility there.

Warrior #3 heading towards the south-west to scout for other such possibilities (don't want CML to claim land that we could just as well defend, after all). Pigs/silver needs to be #3, lest we cede too much land to Savant, and stall on research. Yeah, we need the silver or an equivalent tile in commerce to keep up with the plan.


Demographics. Other players who have two cities already: Savant (T31), CML (T32), JR4 (T32), Gavagai (T33) -- the EXP crew. Someone must have founded theirs in a very similar location to ours (CML?): Savant's second city is called Harmondale. CML's is just "Moscow".

The other players with size4 capitals are Krill and probably Gavagai (not much else would explain the delay). Dark Savant's Castle Ironfist is size3 again.

Rival Best soldiers is Savant, who researched Wheel on T32, then got a pop increase at Castle Ironfist and produced a warrior out of its gates this turn. Rival Worst soldiers is Krill (no BW yet).


Tech advisor. AH beakers are actually boosted by 40% for two prerequisites (Sailing takes 1t more). Writing costs 193b on this map, for comparison, that is, 2-3t longer. Can't tell you about effective beakers after Writing because I'm not sure what we'll be working on T55 (depends somewhat on city #4).

I'd want to research Writing before AH in any case, though, as all of our first three cities want libraries in place as soon as possible (Sicil less for the beakers or scientists, and more because it unlocks two more resources; can build 2 axes/spears instead) and we can get all of those in place by T65 with Writing first. AH before Sailing is an option, though.

Unless we go AH -> look/settle for horses -> Archery -> HBR, of course. HBR (~320 beakers, forgot exact number)+ Archery (64) is almost exactly twice as expensive as Writing, though.

Graphs, accurate for T32:


Gross National Product. Savant lags 1t behind us in tech (Wheel finished on T32).


Manufactured Goods. The spike to 13h looks hilarious, but we'll actually stay at 11h for the next few turns. Hopefully we've scared Savant a bit.


Crop Yield. We've had a more noticeable lead over Savant here, but we seem to have equalized.


Power. As mentioned above, Savant has four warriors (8000), Wheel (4000), BW (8000), Mining (2000), Hunting (2000), 4 pop (2 * 1000). By the way, an oversight in translation leads to the German version labelling this graph as "Electricity", which confused my friend and I when playing this game for the longest while.

We'll have graphs on CML on T34, I think.

Good luck in PBEM VI.3, by the way.

[Coeurva]

T34.

The north-eastern warrior has found no trace of Dark Savant yet.


Founding on this tile picks up clams, but loses overlap. Difficult dotmap choice to discuss once we can produce culture on the cheap. For now, irrelevant. Western coastline looks interesting; terra nova, or someone else's terra ferma (perhaps a neighbour of CML's) if the continent bends in a horseshoe shape?

The warrior has nothing left to do; should he go around the northern bay, or south-east towards the jungle? The fourth warrior is coming out of Sicil in 4t.


The sheep is the only tile within the 9*9 grid of our capital that we didn't manage to scout (including the capital's expanding borders). I'm not sure whether to laugh, but when in doubt, give. Most likely the best choice for city #4. Western body of water might make the lake eligible for a lighthouse.

Demographics: not much of a change, but we've dropped to #5 rank in Crop Yield at 20, Rival Best 23 (rice instead of copper). Skipping ahead to graphs:





CML's electricity grid seems prone to blackouts -- if I'm reading this right, he has a single warrior, if any. You know, we can probably send an axe his way if we delay some of the other micro; it just won't arrive before T50, which seems too late for a single axe to do anything much. This might also explain why he didn't declare to pass through our lands.

Other than that, he's currently ahead in food (but has a size3 capital; our early lead was enough to counterbalance the later drop-off), ahead in MFG on the whole, and ~1t of research behind in GNP.

Edit: Gavagai's second city has three tiles of water (Rival Best land area went from 33,000 to 39,000) and GermanJoey has founded his. Another unmet player's capital grew to size4. I'd say it's dtay, whose score increased on the turn-roll (the only other player to gain score then was Krill, and we know it's not him), and who started with Agri/Hunting, went for early Wheel (?) and picked PRO; there's both reason and opportunity for this to be him.

[Bacchus]

Thanks for the updates!

Thoughts in no particular order:
Gavagai could also have built with overlap, albeit his land would have to be quite different to ours for that to make sense.

I would send the warrior south from the peak.

A single axe makes no sense to send to CML, but maybe worth keeping at home. AH will take 118 effective beakers and save twenty beakers from Writing. I would make the choice on AH depending on whether we want to military up a bit -- could build some units whilst writing comes in. But if we feel safe in pushing directly to libraries, can also do that, several earlier turns of scientists and academy will make for a large extra yield.

[Coeurva]

T35. Whipped the capital; second worker out next turn, who will chop the north-eastern forest, road, and improve pigs at #3. Settler ready to move on T40.

Thanks for the updates!

No problem. Just tell me when there's something you want to look at in pictures.

Gavagai could also have built with overlap, albeit his land would have to be quite different to ours for that to make sense.

Perhaps overlapping the rice works out for him? In any event, we'll know better on T38 when his borders expand.

I would send the warrior south from the peak.

Disambiguation needed We could send him towards CML (south-westish), towards a newly-uncovered southern landbridge leading due west (north of the peak half-visible in the fog; probably not where CML came from), through the southern landbridge with the injured panther (next to bananas), or through the south-eastern landbridge (next to gems/sugar/clams). In any case, he's heading back diagonally towards the capital to keep all these options open -- this works due to the strange geography of a chessboard (you're probably familiar with this, but maybe someone reading isn't).

Could also send this warrior to fogbust city site #3, freeing up warrior #2 to explore further towards Savant and find Harmondale or Castle Ironfist. #4 might come out too late (T38) to ensure a safe journey for the settler, but I'll have to look at the map to determine this.

A single axe makes no sense to send to CML, but maybe worth keeping at home.

Alright. We don't have to delay anything for that, though, if we want the axe by ~T50. Right now, the settler has priority.

AH will take 118 effective beakers and save twenty beakers from Writing. I would make the choice on AH depending on whether we want to military up a bit -- could build some units whilst writing comes in. But if we feel safe in pushing directly to libraries, can also do that, several earlier turns of scientists and academy will make for a large extra yield.

Yeah, it depends on what our neighbours will be doing.

I've noticed that CML's graphs mostly look like staircase functions ascending staircases (except GNP, where the variance could come from effective beakers changing wildly). Savant seems to be swapping tiles around more. Edit: Obviously, all graphs are staircase functions because the domain is discrete... what I meant was that CML's MFG and food graphs are almost monotonously increasing (not strictly so), which is not the case for Savant.

We're working the oasis on this turn so that the Wheel finishes on schedule, which combined with the whip serves to make our demographics look mediocre. Next turn, swapping back to copper and working 6f corn will improve our economy again. I should note that, looking at this turn's graphs, we seem to be doing slightly better than our neighbours in all the categories right now (except Power, where Savant can build up his lead as he wishes), but both of them might have more workers.

[Bacchus]

You see, the only bit of south that was before my eyes was the newly revealed sheep, so to me "south" had an unambigruous meaning. Availability bias! In any case, given the potential city spot opportunity, that's where I reckon he should go, whilst #2 goes towards Savant and the hammy silver.

Actually, they could do the reverse #1 to fogbust and scout a little towards Savant, #2 towards the sheep, I don't have a good feel for the relative positioning of warriors at a large scale.