[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

I don’t really think we have the hammers available right now to put together an alpha strike; as you say we have enough else to do. Settling our islands and putting together a sentry net both take priority for me over putting together a strike force; we need eyes to see where to hit before we need fists to do the hitting. We’ll also want castles on our borders for defense and economy before we attack anything.

[Tarkeel]

Here's the tech overview based on what Scooter posted:


Notable takeaways:
Cairo and SD are the closest to Astro, in different directions: Cairo can research Paper, but SD is the only other player with Machinery for Optics.
Superdeath is missing the entire religion tree, including Monarchy/Feudalism.
Yuri is deep in the Aesthetics line, but is missing CodeOfLaws and Monarchy/Feudalism.

We have monopoly on quite a few techs, including Construction, Optics and Paper.

[Zed-F]

Yuris has avoided Code of Laws even though since he doesn’t have PRO he should theoretically want Courthouses for his large empire. Does that make sense? Does that affect his bulb paths?

[scooter]

Thanks for putting that together, Tarkeel. My main takeaway is Superdeath is the only one alert to the Astro issue, but he has no economy, so he's 1) beelining pretty tightly, and 2) still quite far away. But he is the closest by far.


Also would point out that Cairo having Paper doesn't actually put him closer to Astro. His scientist bulbs would be blocked by Philosophy/PP/Education. He does have PHI, so it's vaguely possible he could do what I did in PB70 and just generate a ton of GP and bulb it the long way. But overall, like the non-SD players he's still down the same techs - Machinery -> Optics -> Astro. Him, Bing, and Yuris are going to all have to go that route. Speaking of Yuris.

Yuris has avoided Code of Laws even though since he doesn’t have PRO he should theoretically want Courthouses for his large empire. Does that make sense? Does that affect his bulb paths?

You know, I believe you're right actually. There is technically a path for him by avoiding CoL and Drama. I think he could tech Alphabet now and then immediately bulb Astro if I'm remembering correctly. Assuming he generates 2 Scientists. However, that of course would not unlock Galleons for him - he'd then have to slow-tech Machinery -> Optics -> Code of Laws -> Civil Service -> Paper. Maybe scrounge up a 3rd scientist for Paper. I'm not entirely sure if that's actually any better than just teching Machinery -> Optics -> Astro. Well, it is fewer beakers for sure, but then he would still want those other techs, so he's going to find the commerce one way or another. I'm also not even sure he can generate the GP anyway.


Honestly? I don't think him avoiding CoL is Astro-focused. I think he just badly misplayed by wasting time with the Music path and Bing. I was a little worried that him getting to Music was a sign of a healthier economy than I expected, and instead this shows me that it's quite the opposite. He picked Japan, Oracled Metal Casting, and 100T after doing so he still does not have Machinery, let alone Code of Laws -> Civil Service. I thought for sure he'd either sandbag Oracle for Machinery, or use his UB to generate an Engineer for Machinery while beelining Civil Service, and he didn't follow any of those routes.


The truth of what's going on right now is nobody has any tech because FIN/ORG and almost all of the tech wonders were banned. Meanwhile, my combo has given me the poor man's GLH. The hallmark of GLH on a water map - even the nerfed CtH version - is that it's a total brain-off way to play. See land, settle land. The commerce just sort of takes care of itself. My tools here aren't quite that good, but they're the next best thing. I don't even think I've played very well here. I think Mao/Carthage was simply the best pick here, though I can squint and see it with a couple other picks if they were played better. (Pericles of America for example has clear win-cons that were completely missed, and Lincoln/Spain has a narrower win-con that also seems to have been missed.)

[Zed-F]

Yeah we do have the easiest combo to play, and it does seem like some of the other players underestimated just how hard teching would be and didn’t plan well accordingly. You say we haven’t necessarily played very well, but I wouldn’t say we’ve played badly either. We’ve generally made the right priority calls at the right times and are in a good position as a result. About the only thing I can think of offhand that didn’t really turn out well was getting Hinduism, but we’re about to make lemonade out of that lemon.

[Zed-F]

So, SD is in a GA but is still whipping, so isn't in Caste and isn't trying to maximize GPP from his specialists (despite presumably being in Rep.) This should make it more challenging for him to get a second GA or to use bulbs/trade missions to expedite his path to Astro. Seems like he's planning to eat the full cost of hard-researching Astro.

[scooter]

Yeah we do have the easiest combo to play, and it does seem like some of the other players underestimated just how hard teching would be and didn’t plan well accordingly. You say we haven’t necessarily played very well, but I wouldn’t say we’ve played badly either. We’ve generally made the right priority calls at the right times and are in a good position as a result. About the only thing I can think of offhand that didn’t really turn out well was getting Hinduism, but we’re about to make lemonade out of that lemon.

I was mostly referring to the fact that I haven't been as carefully attentive this game as normal. I think the macro has been pretty good, and my pre-game analysis I think holds up pretty well. But the micro has been pretty weak. I just was not as careful about worker/city management this game as normal as the early expansion phase came when I just did not have as much free time as expected. Basically I keep finding minor mistakes where I could have saved a worker turn here or there or shared tiles better, but yeah the overall game has been good.

So, SD is in a GA but is still whipping, so isn't in Caste and isn't trying to maximize GPP from his specialists (despite presumably being in Rep.) This should make it more challenging for him to get a second GA or to use bulbs/trade missions to expedite his path to Astro. Seems like he's planning to eat the full cost of hard-researching Astro.

Yeah I was puzzled by this too, but he must have felt he needed to get in a few last whips before swapping, because I saw this when I logged in.





So I assume he's going to try to generate some Scientists now to speed himself up. This was the only picture I took this turn apparently as there wasn't much going on. Next few turns we'll begin settling cities. Main highlights from the turn.


* Whipped some buildings into developing cities now that we're back in Slavery, and a few more will be soon. Cothons/Libraries/Markets.

* Queued our first Castle for next turn

* Queued 2 more settlers on the west front, which means we have 3 en route and 3 queued. That will be enough for everything except the Incense Yellow spot

* Figured out the timings of both cities on S Island and queued a second WB dedicated to that island.


The medium-to-long term problem is going to be getting to the 2-man MoM GA. I didn't get Unta quite as close as hoped, so it will take longer. Of course, the alternative is to just generate 1 GP (Malaz City) and then grab the Economics Merchant for our 2-man. A third option is eating a turn of anarchy for a Pacifism revolt at some point later after teching Philosophy. That third option sounds like it cannot possibly be correct, but honestly a MoM-GA with over 25 cities which leads to a third MoM-GA with over 25 cities which possibly results in a Taj build for another 8T of GA.... well, the rewards are so high, that it might be defensible.


Not sweating over it now because I've got a bit of time. It sort of depends on whether I try to keep zooming ahead with my land edge to claim another era's worth of first-to bonuses, or if I try to force a concession militarily sooner. That is a fork in the road I'll have to decide on in the next dozen-ish turns. Put another way, should I try to seal a win before or after metal boats? Not sure yet.

[Zed-F]

I guess the questions are (a) what’s fun and (b) what do you have time for? We could probably win either way. I like grabbing the first-tos ‘cause that should be easy & profitable & demoralizing but there’s lots of ways we could reasonably go.

[scooter]

We have settled two more cities - Bastion and Trygalle. Bastion has a worker in progress on the sheep, and Trygalle just had a worker dropped off. A work boat is en route for the Fish which will help Trygalle a lot, and the worker can improve the horse. I'm planning to drop off a third worker up by Bastion relatively soon, and I think I can get by with that.





Meanwhile we drop off a new settling party next turn on Ice Island. The missionary will ensure we can get the Fish hooked ASAP, meanwhile unlike Trygalle, the work boat will be on time here which is nice.





I missed a screenshot of the actual Galleon, but Ice Island is not the only island getting a settling party next turn. The Galleon on the corner of the screen here is dropping a settler/worker pair next turn, so we'll settle two more cities on T145. The second settler for S Island completed in Ubaryd this turn, and two work boats are coming out too for that island.





Meanwhile, the work is happening in our primary core to keep pushing Ice Island. The 3 other settlers for it are all coming out - the bottom two will slow build while Aren's will be whipped. Next to Pale is a worker/missionary combo ready to load next turn, while some of the 4 other workers here will be ready to go on the boat returning from Ice Island.


Walls/Castles are going up on all of my border cities right now that aren't contributing to the expansion effort. Ehrlitan is next going to build a couple CG2 Longbows to place in a couple border cities.





It's hard to underscore how pants-down the entire world is right now at my Galleons. This is two cities that I'm about to border with Galleons defended by a combined 1 Archer. I could burn and/or capture both from the fog as soon as 2-3T from now with nothing but spare units sitting around. This is not just Cairo. Bing's ice cities that are about to border S Island are almost entirely undefended. Yuris has some ocean-facing cities entirely empty. Superdeath has by far the smallest army in the game, so I bet his are even more wide open, and he's not even in Slavery.


You could make a case that the best play right now is to not even settle all of this and simply burn my way to concessions. I may load up a few spare units on a spare Galleon when I get a chance and simply fish for openings. I won't declare war just to burn a fishing village, but if a juicy target presents, it would be hard to turn down. I am currently repositioning Caravels in order to hopefully have one in each theater to be able to scout opponents better. My knowledge of SD/Cairo for example is badly lacking, and SD is the player I need info on the most IMO.





Yuris joined the Golden Age club. Everyone has been in one in the last 10T or so.

[Zed-F]

Yeah in this position against an AI, in a generic RTS, I would be splitting my focus between continued growth and opportunistic military raids. Our rivals are putting up similarly weak defenses against being boated. It seems perfectly reasonable to put together a couple raiding parties if that’s fun and seems profitable. I don’t think we throw over expansion entirely to do it, and we still want our cheap castles to help pay for all this expansion, but we should be able to put some of our attention into military sooner than later. After we’ve claimed our settlements I expect we’ll be able to amp up wartime production past raiding levels, if we so choose.