Our first explorer sets sail:
About time. It's turn 55 and our sole contact in this 25 player game is still Elkad. I want to scout around the big island, to be sure we have no competition there (somebody else taking it would be catastrophic) and to spot the assumed seafood, then move SW. We'll get another WB from Marinheiro not too far in the future. Note that in this version circumnavigation requires Optics in order to give the benefit (even if it were possible to circumnavigate on coast). For now the goal should be to make as many contacts as possible, and check out the surroundings.
Our scout saw Elkad's border pop:
We've looked here before, so that must be his third city. Amazing that he found something better for second. With Cre we could maybe have gone for the gold?
F6 shows that he has Mysticism (first time in 20 turns or so that I've looked, so no idea how long he's had it. More on that below.
In general news, did I mention the Oracle being built (t50)? Quite early. It quite likely was the same person that got Buddhism t13, as any other one would surely have gone through Poly- but Charriu only founded Hinduism t54
. Caveat - Somebody might have lost the Buddhism race early on (he's Ramesses and revolted immediately). Now an interesting question is who was it, and what did they take?
The first suspects would be the Ind players, which are Charriu (Ramesses of Greece) and Amica (Roosevelt of Ethiopia). I don't think either is likely. Neither can have been the Buddhism guy. It would be totally weird for Charriu to go to Priesthood via Med and then research Poly afterwards, and strange for Amica not to attempt grabbing Hinduism.
So, who got Buddhism? Expected would be Spain, which is Donovan Zoi's with Sitting Bull. I think it would well be in character for him to do something like that play. The other Myst starters are:
Jowy -Kublai Khan of Byzantium - surely not?
naufragar - Joao of India - possibly
Mr. Cairo - Darius of Aztec - don't think so
Ramkhamhaeng - Cyrus of Arabia - nope
superdeath - Charlemage of Inca - maybe?
The comments are mostly referring to them beelining Med, but also the Oracle play. Joao has early hammers to spare, as does Charly to a lesser extent. Both players I can imagine trying it. But I still think Donovan is the most likely.
The next question is, what did they take? In particular, was it Metal Casting? That requires pottery, so, is it possible that they had both priesthood and pottery by t50? Maybe, if they ignored Hunting/AH. We've seen some pretty high commerce numbers in the demos, although I'd expect that this is not the same person who is chopping a wonder at the same time. It could always have been monarchy as well.
The reason I'm elaborating is because I want to pick up a discussion that we had before the game started, and which now starts from the question what do we research after Sailing?
I brought up the idea of trying to steal Colossus. The general idea is that with Fin we have a strong economy and don't need to beeline currency straight. The big boy is probably the best wonder for us to achieve at least before Taj, although it has the nasty side effect of making one want to delay Astro. But there absolutely is a significant possibility for the attempt to fail. The question then is, can the forges alone justify the tech?
I like the idea of early forges: we already have the gold, and get gems on top with IW. Then the production bonus can't come soon enough, and we have enough food to 3pop whip them rather easily in most cities. We'd add a production advantage to our commerce advantage, which sounds good.
The tech is very expensive however on this map, even after Charriu's reduction. 22-25 turns at current breakeven! Which I expect to improve significantly with the gold, lighthouses, and increasing levels of cottaging, but still. We'd most likely just save gold for a lot of turns before we need to commit.
If we do want to go in that direction we'd also have to figure out where to build the wonder. Might in fact be the capital, which has just 3 forests left.
The other route that I see is the maths line. Curreny for obvious reasons, but also Calendar is quite attractive, as we don't have that much other happyiness available. Although we have argued against MoM before, because we want Nat rather early.
Finally we are still lacking the player analysis for Elkad. Luckily we have not met anyone else, so it's still in time.
Elkad playing
San Martin of
England (Chm/Cre/fishing/mining)
Good omen, we conquered him last game!
Elkad I think is a solid player, who does not care too much for planning and micro. His biggest weakness might be slow expansion, in PB54 this was very visible. If you read his threads, his recurring theme and trauma is getting conquered by knights, so he's pretty paranoid about that. When he faced our Byzantium he beelined Engineering, which could have blocked us, but as said he was underexpanded, and I also think his tactics did not do him too many favours. In the last big game, PB46 he played Churchill of NA for a maximum turtle factor, which worked out in that OH had to wait until cannons to take him over. In PB88 he won an axe grudge war, but had fallen behind by then and got conquered subsequently.
My first thought about San Martín was that he his the one truly antisynergistic leader. Chm is a lot about monuments (in Cth moreso than in vanilla), while Cre makes them unnecessary. Otoh, he now gets 2 100% modifiers on monuments, so that's the cheapest happy face in the game. Does it also work to cheese out gold via overflow? And while Cre already makes for a nasty neighbour, Cre with 3 culture everywhere makes those third rings pop extra fast for increased annoyance. So there appear to be some possibilities. Of course the traits lack long term potential.
We surely would have taken England if it had been on offer, if for the techs alone. Our mission is to conquer him before the uniques become relevant. Because make no mistake, our path to success in this game very likely leads through him - although of course we don't know yet whom else we are bordering. Given his paranoia about horse attacks and the map layout, I feel that we should try something different, with a heavy naval component. Maces maybe, but I can also imagine that we can afford to wait for the musketeers. Of course gunpowder would mean to pick up knights on the way .... or? I'd consider Gunpowder through Education rather a meme for Phi leaders, but with our projected Rennaissance key techs - Gunpowder and Nat, possibly through Lib - it could make sense. Probably still not feasible.
For now we should aim to outexpand him, hopefully grabbing a favourable share of the border region. The visible target is the fur island. Will have to survive his swamping culture though while doing so, somehow.
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