[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[scooter]

Ok, time to adjust the plan as suggested and prioritize this island ASAP. I strongly suspected that Stone "belongs" to Yuris (east of Bing we're assuming) when I saw it, which would make this island contestable. So the second settler will go to Fish/Gold, and at least one more in the next wave will go to the north end of this island. We can backfill the Tundra afterwards. Speaking of Yuris, confirmation of my suspicions came the very next turn.





Again I think I should delay making contact so as to not alert him he might be in a settling race for this area.





Bing made contact with us. He has since gotten a second Great Scientist, so he's playing a very interesting game so far with America.





Finally settled Hissar this turn with instantly improved Fish. I had plans to Quarry the Stone, forgetting about missing Masonry. I may just grab it real quick as it's more or less a 1T tech, and it opens up Moai at Pale which I think is worth it to begin building. Y'Ghatan is pumping Work Boats and the one it's building now is ticketed for the Clams which should be ~1T after growing. We are first to 8 cities, though with the long gap between 7-8 I was not totally sure it was going to happen. I am confident we'll be first to 9-10-11 though.





Galley en route on Plan B which is settling FishyGold on T87. It'll be defended by just a warrior for like 2T, but an Archer is coming over right after along with a Worker. Can also see the WB for the first-ring Fish.





Here's a look at builds ongoing. Aren is slow building a settler because 1) whip anger and 2) needed to wait for Galley capacity. Unta similarly is happy capped. Pale is producing a third Galley which is badly needed. In general we want a situation where there is one Galley in the sea between our main island and Y'Ghatan Island, a Galley in the sea between Y'Ghatan and Capustan/Hissar, and a Galley east of there. This will allow much faster transit as that's our current bottleneck.


Y'Ghatan is pumping WBs, and Ehrlitan's Library is largely due to the fact that it needs a good whip and we have enough queued settlers. Would be good to get a Library or two in before burning down Currency, but they're still sort of a luxury as the actual beaker output is light right now. That will change once the trade routes start flowing.





Still holding well on our early lead. GNP jumps to second when research is on, and the top GNP I'm fairly certain is Cairo. Most notably, we're nearly at top army with our Galley pair and Archer pair, so still nobody has any real military, which is great. Also, Superdeath is still handing out 18 commerce for literally no reason. Cmon man.

[Zed-F]

Looking good, and feeling good about the settling plan in the near term! It would be nice to settle furs, but that really depends on whether we put that city S or N of furs; if N then we need to settle FishyDeer first. And making sure we secure our north-eastern border is probably more important in the short term.

Looks like we might be close to circumnavigating, though IIRC in this mod we have to get to Optics for that to matter? And we'd have to gamble that there's a way to get south of Yuris's territory to reach SD's territory so we can link east with west without making contact with Yuris. Not sure how well he is expanding or if there is any ocean out this way -- I would have thought there ought to be ocean between us and SD on this side like there is on the other, but if there is, I don't think we've yet found where it starts.

I guess you could ask SD to stop trading with Cairo. Who knows, he might listen.

Tentative game plan: get big, get rich through trade, get powerful, smash Bing & take his wonders before he can bulb his way to Galleons & Frigates? That’s a long way to gaze in a crystal ball but seems like the natural course since all his stuff is relatively near ours and would make for compact defensible borders. Exact timing subject to revision based on whether we can keep pace with his tech.

[Tarkeel]

It almost looks as if Bing is trying to follow Charriu's diplo-game America plan: Generate early scientist for academy and settled specialists. Any thoughts on trying to kill his scouting WB if it gets too close?

Circumnavigation requires Optics to trigger, and harbors to actually take advantage. Good thing we're Carthage of the super-harbors with an EXP leader to build them cheap.

Not sure I'd ask SD to stop trading with Cairo, it will show up as a diplomacy hit (negotiated a trade blockade) and in this setup Cairo and SD are our "friends" even if they are enemies of each other.

Edit: He's only giving out 6 free commerce; 6x3c instead of 6x2c.

I think our position looks very strong here, and I'd favor the slow and steady instead of taking too much risk. Expanding through Bing does seem the natural route, as Yuri will have samurai online in the expected timeframe.

[Zed-F]

Good points about the SD trade situation, I agree it’s probably better not to stir the pot & hope tha SD figures out to stop trading on his own.

Hopefully by the turn we have Compass, we will have circumnavigated and Optics will be an easy choice shortly afterwards to start building toward local naval domination and further boosting our income and ability to tech. It’s an even more critical tech for us than for our rivals, who aren’t incentivized to build Harbors. Of course we wouldn’t be able to get it immediately due to the Machinery requirement. We probably wouldn’t have sufficiently built up our economic and military advantages over Bing to start tussling in earnest until we have a Caravel navy anyway, very possibly later.

[Zed-F]

When Li Heng pops 3rd ring borders it looks like we should get access to Astro land through our own culture borders, correct? Or does culture not spread over ocean tiles?

Wondering if we should be thinking about getting a north-exploring WB now that we have contact with Cairo & Bing.

Looks like Yuris settled 3 cities last turn! Nice spree, but I think he’d fallen behind so this just means he’s second to 8 cities. Wonder how this impacts our race to fishygold island and surrounding regions, if at all.

[Tarkeel]

When Li Heng pops 3rd ring borders it looks like we should get access to Astro land through our own culture borders, correct? Or does culture not spread over ocean tiles?

Culture will only spread two tiles away from the landmass the city is on, so that land should remain out of reach.

Looks like Yuris settled 3 cities last turn! Nice spree, but I think he’d fallen behind so this just means he’s second to 8 cities. Wonder how this impacts our race to fishygold island and surrounding regions, if at all.

As long as those cities didn't go into that area, I think it will have a positive impact as he's not likely to have a fourth settler on the way out.

[scooter]

Yeah, the Yuris news is actually fairly good news for the reasons Tarkeel mentions.





This is his only city in the area, and it's completely undefended. So he's being far more lax than I am. In addition like Tarkeel said, it's unlikely he has more settlers on their way places, while I have 2 more loading up on a Galley in the next 3-4 turns.





Settle 9th city next turn and immediately begin mining the Gold. As a result I sent SD two trade offers - first asking him to cancel trading with Cairo, and then a Gold for Gems deal. He returned a clam-clam deal earlier, and I'm hoping he'll react positively to me spotting him a happy for a few turns before the Gold comes online. It's mostly symbolic as I imagine with Chm he doesn't really have happy issues.


I'm not totally sure how to settle this island. If I want the Fish just south of the Peak, it requires settling on Floodplains, which is sort of painful. It also appears that there is Astro-land just beyond the Fish so maybe it's reachable there? Hard to say. Anyway I obviously want to also settle a city up by the Rice, so one of the settlers minimum will be going there. Also, part of me wants to consider doing some sniping on Yuris with my Galley if he's still wide open like this in a few turns. But honestly I'm not really sure I want him as an enemy, so it's probably not worth it.





Currency is finally coming soon, so that will be a huge boon economically.

[Tarkeel]

I'm not totally sure how to settle this island. If I want the Fish just south of the Peak, it requires settling on Floodplains, which is sort of painful. It also appears that there is Astro-land just beyond the Fish so maybe it's reachable there? Hard to say. Anyway I obviously want to also settle a city up by the Rice, so one of the settlers minimum will be going there. Also, part of me wants to consider doing some sniping on Yuris with my Galley if he's still wide open like this in a few turns. But honestly I'm not really sure I want him as an enemy, so it's probably not worth it.

My gut-feeling is to ignore that fish; floodplain cottages are better here. But settling for them is hard; my best suggestion right now is to settle N of the rice first, then the FPH 2S of the rice can borrow it until it has culture and claims the floodplains. Very very slow plan though but a killer commerce city down the line, using the island as shield.

[Zed-F]

Yeah it seems we will likely win races to settle things over here as long as we prioritize what we want smartly. If we have 2 cities on fishygold island, Yuris could theoretically settle on the floodplains between them, but he'd be a fool to do it, since such a city would be choked for workable tiles and indefensible. Same for any southward exploration Yuris might want to do, with fishygold island claimed solidly then the southern waters become clearly our backyard. We may want to settle that floodplains eventually to get the fish (and possibly mountain visibility, if Yuris doesn't settle on that stone), but we shouldn't need to rush it if we have better opportunities elsewhere. Theoretically we could settle 1W of that floodplains if we know we are going to settle an astro island for that fish, but we'd probably need Optics to figure that out, and that's quite some time in the future.

I agree we don't really want to make Tarkeel an enemy for no reason since we'd rather not encourage him to interfere against us when we eventually go after Bing. I guess that questions: in the long run, do we want Yuris to border Bing or not? This could have an impact on whether we go for that wheat island NE of fishygold island with the other settler in the next wave. If we leave that island to Bing/Yuris then it seems likely they will border one another. OTOH, we don't know the lay of the islands north of there, so it's hard to say how defensible such a reach would be with the info we have on hand, or to what extent it would interfere with Bing and Yuris's expansion plans. Settling wheat island ourselves would also make it hard for Yuris to profitably get that stone tile, so could be considered kinda hostile from that point of view. Still, we can't exactly avoid competition for resources. Even just settling 1N of rice on fishygold island and building a monument could prevent Yuris from settling the hill on wheat island and make it hard for him to get the stone in culture, but clearly we need to settle a city thereabouts regardless. Maybe we build it NW of rice instead if we want to be more neighborly and retain green land. Bottom line though -- unless there's some amazing seafood nearby, wheat island is more important and valuable to Yuris than it is to us, so we should consider whether we want to prioritize settling it in that light.

Hence -- does our east workboat keep going east, trying to circumnav, or do we need it to explore the area between Bing and Yuris first? I'm not sure, though I'm leaning slightly toward continuing east. It does seem like we are at the point where we need a 3rd exploring workboat to start clarifying the area north of our current borders to see what claims we should be prioritizing (Iron Working is probably not too far off) and where our neighbors might come into contact/friction.

Currency before Masonry means we aren't making HG a priority but otherwise seems fine. We'll just have to see how things shake out regarding wonder races, since we are prioritizing settler races instead. We probably want to minimize the number of techs between Currency and Compass, but there are potentially a couple cheaper ones that we could consider. Apart from Masonry, do we want Priesthood to try to generate a prophet for a shrine, for instance?

Trading with SD also seems great for us. I dunno about his happy situation -- he was whipping an awful lot earlier and seems happier to tolerate smaller city sizes than we would be. I have to imagine he's at the bottom of the scoreboard in part because his population base is much smaller than everyone else due to all that whipping. I haven't continued to check his whips to see if he's still whipping up a storm, but I guess we could do that C&D if we thought it would be helpful. But as he's at the bottom of the scoreboard and not a direct neighbor... I can't really see how trading him happy could be bad for us, whatever he does with it.

[Tarkeel]

I agree we don't really want to make Tarkeel an enemy for no reason

Agreed