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

[Coeurva]

The galley will have to pick up some workers in the short term, who will probably chop the library first (horses are taboo as long as we can't protect our workers), therefore its path is quite fixed. We can try to trade maps immediately, though; maybe that will demonstrate that we're willing to work with them against Savant in the long run. I'm reluctant to show them the plains hill spot before we settle it, though -- they might not have seen it yet.

Would be nice to know more about the map, anyway. I'm thinking there must be some Astro islands with gold deposits, since nobody seems to have it; maybe they can be reached before Astro with cultural borders.

----

Choosing to vent (har, har) about the current sub situation here, rather than in the tech thread, because I'll probably not convince Q and it doesn't help anyone else:

Q has retracted his offer to sub after logging in, due to "complex decisions" and "time commitment" beyond his expectations. Alright -- I don't blame Q at all, it's a very generous decision to sub in the first place, and even more so in a difficult or dreary position.

But Ventessel had been playing all of his turns in under five minutes each for as long as Civstats remembers. I don't think anyone is expecting any greater time commitment from a potential sub, as long as the damn turn rolls at all, preferably not taking 96 hours.

I don't want to see this game break down because a few players apparently misplayed, lost interest as they realized they would not hallucinate another undeserved victory no matter their shiitake intake or whatever, convinced themselves that their sign-up was conditional on their own success, and vanished, to render this a waste of time for everyone else. There's only so many Yuris on this forum who are willing to take the burden of Atlas and save the toroidally-wrapped bacon others left on the stove (I think we should still have about 124 of those in reserve, but hell knows where T-hawk left the key to cold storage).

By the way, those "not how I approach a game" comments are starting to make me suspect that Ventessel was planning for a last hurrah by attacking Krill in retribution. Somehow he must have at least 70,000 soldiers across his estimated two cities, at any rate.

[Coeurva]

T86

This was both a really interesting and enjoyable turn... and the one on which I've realized we're probably not winning this game, but can make a good show along the way. Unless we can kill Yuri during the Classical Age. One of the reasons is that we seem to be spectacularly undersold on food resources -- almost everyone else has a double 6f second city site, for example. Maybe they're just hiding in the fog I've neglected to scout

It's late, so the report will be somewhat short. First things first: JR4 phoned us and offered map for map, which I accepted as discussed and revealed his land, Joey's, and dtay's in the process. No map of Savant for either of us, which is probably what we were hoping for. The map is indeed a double ribbon around the torus with islands interspersed; there is no Astro land (I think) but gold is on the islands; your hypothesis that we're all aligned in pick order is correct beyond doubt; Joey has indeed built TGLH; and JR4 somehow inhabits all four "corners" of the map. Toroidal is amusing.


Whatever happened to Ventessel leads to Joey having this land to settle at leisure. This is why we're not going to win without consuming either of our neighbours. We don't even have double 6f sites anywhere, unless you count post-lighthouse fish (60h are not trivial), or the plains hill that we couldn't settle because of Sorpigal. Of course, in hindsight, should have been faster there, perhaps... but Lifeblood is also a gem of a city, with even more food.


Joey's core, also not lacking in riverside corn (hrgh) although it has fewer cows for additional hammers than we do, which is a boon to us, especially thanks to IMP. The Khatunate is to the north, just off-screen; that city where we made contact is actually an outlier from their core, the GLH city is 8 tiles west of our prospective X11 (which might get promoted to X10; see below).


The Khatunate itself, apparently naming its cities after women of Mongol royalty (maybe there are also Cuman or Jurchen names; I only recognize two of these queens empresses off-hand, Börte and Bulugan). Settled two cities on this turn, bringing them up to nine, as many as we have. They have a bit less total pop than we do, but might be able to do more with them right now... Growing more curious about their graphs.

They settled dry rice as their second city, but only now claimed the corn/pig site slightly to the north-west of their capital, which leads me to believe their scout was eaten early as well. Brothers in misery...


These are our demographics. GNP is at 0% science. For once, that's actually looking good, although of course, we should subtract ~20h from MFG.

I've done everything I can with our food resources, and yet someone has 136 CY right now. There's still the pasture at X9 (whose name sucks right now), then still a few 4f seafood tiles to hook up and lighthouses to install, and cities to settle, and cities to grow... and yet I feel a bit gloomy about that. A few other civs are competing with our range (Joey and JR4, I'd guess from what's visible -- no, I didn't count, not that obsessive yet ).


Postponed the settler in Vermin -- Rhapsody builds the next one instead, which goes to the site west of Styx, with Woody III axe + chariot for garrison (Styx gets replenished with an axe in turn). It's not that close to the Khatunate, at least, and their naval focus seems to lie further north. Joey is quite far away and doesn't know about us yet (unless JR4 trades him maps again). The food/hammers that site can put out will make it worthwhile, not to mention the second ICTR at Currency. Eastern Ruins isn't really that great as a city and we're running low on money now (breakeven approaching 20%); our next growth spurt can come after Currency, I think.

That's the reasoning for Lifeblood as well -- ~14h of overflow into either galley or lighthouse next, but the base 6h converting into research do help a lot (across ~6t of saving gold; we need to hit ~240b by the end of this to 2t Currency on 100% sci as things are developing, maybe more, maybe less, maybe it takes an additional turn of 0% sci). The Academy will be worth ~20bpt, at least. We make 133bpt at 100% science with our current config, but lose 67gpt.

Graphs: No soldiers increases from either neighbour yet. Savant doesn't actually have as much food as I'd thought; he's stagnating again. Our GNP did a goddamn Dirac pulse when we turned on research, by the way; I'll grab a screenshot next turn.

dtay's land isn't that interesting, except for his naming scheme that utterly puzzles me. He's probably on 6-7 cities, two of which we can't see.

By the way, Bacchus, you can always log into the game if you want to. Password, if it got buried, is "babel".

[Bacchus]

Yeah, looks like I will have to login to catch up properly. Thanks very much for the reports, very detailed and I feel bad for not contributing commensurably.

Eating neighbours as a prereq to winning is par for the course in large games, and we seem to be in a string position to exploit any diplomatic headwinds, plus we lucked with CML. The richness in islands means that our ability to spam out settlers will continue to be valuable, and you've made good of it so far as the demos show.

Anyway, the next phase of the game is likely to be all about the race to the islands and then naval domination. It will very much be diplomacy driven, and of course getting out a Moai with Heroic Epic would help. We need to get pretty smart about identifying allies and enemies, and thinking about how our own expansion influences the neighbours options.

[Coeurva]

I feel bad for not contributing commensurably.

Bis repetita non placent -- but you should know by now that I don't share your assessment. The contribution I make, meanwhile, is to extol my basic motor ability to click Settler and sometimes Axeman; somehow I've managed to coast on this entirely while rambling on about weird micro that rarely makes it into the game, and getting extremely lackadaisical about pressing Alt-S.

Really, before you log in, I'll need to update the signs -- I don't think any of them has accurate information at this point. There's one 89 of Vermin which says "T86 >17 r, 2t cot", for instance. In fact, said cottage has 3t invested, and the worker moved 177 to get the plains hill mined 1t faster (starting work synchronously with the border pop next turn). Basically, my signage is one very elaborate Radio Yerevan joke practised on myself.

Besides, you're playing in PBEM VI-3. Here's some recontributional advice: Don't place your Varus inside a Westphalian woodland. That never ends well.

Eating neighbours as a prereq to winning is par for the course in large games, and we seem to be in a string position to exploit any diplomatic headwinds, plus we lucked with CML.

CML's ineptitude is arguably a bigger deal than getting 6f resources, that's true. The ultimate effect, though, was getting him replaced by Yuri, who is far more competent and has nothing to lose by playing desperado (more on that further below). The best city we've gained in the process is an aggressive plant four tiles from his capital and won't quite pop first-ring borders before our peace treaty runs out. Even if we hold it, with a stack whose composition he knows already, we'll probably find the sheep pillaged. For that reason we'll need siege units soonish, or at least Shock NumCav to hit his spears as top defenders before our extant units can clear the axes. Yuri will consider an attack, make no mistake; he'll want to exploit this last chance to stay relevant before NumCav appear inside the city.

See notes on tech below.

The richness in islands means that our ability to spam out settlers will continue to be valuable, and you've made good of it so far as the demos show.

What demos don't show, however, is growth potential. Everyone else might still have a lot of land / food resources to settle, while we're already looking hard-pressed for either (only 4f resources left on the mainland, except for some second-ring fish in the west -- another reason to settle the island west of Styx early, which can claim those just like Whitehall claimed fish for Styx). On a different leaf, the Khatunate has three cities sitting at its current presumed happy cap, which will all grow once they hook up their newly-settled gold.

We might also be the only team to go Alpha -> Currency rather than Maths, which makes our GNP look great now, but will have repercussions down the line (most people will have catapults and Calendar before us -- I'm actually thinking we might skip cats and get Machinery instead). Though if that's the case, we might be able to leverage our exclusive offers of Open Borders. But I'm digressing again.

Anyway, the next phase of the game is likely to be all about the race to the islands and then naval domination. It will very much be diplomacy driven, and of course getting out a Moai with Heroic Epic would help. We need to get pretty smart about identifying allies and enemies, and thinking about how our own expansion influences the neighbours options.

Gathered my mind:

CH: Ally, because everything that helps him hinders the expansion of front-runners Krill and GermanJoey.
Yuri: Enemy. Our plan is to roll over him once he's sufficiently backwards, which will inevitably happen. He knows this as well, wherefore he'll attack before that. We'll need a deterrent (probably archers, then NumCav). This deterrent can also be dtay, which would be the most efficient one, but also the least reliable.
dtay: Enemy because he'll be our next neighbour after consuming Yuri, but we're ambivalent in that while dtay will be trying to absorb Russian cities himself, he'll also tie down Yuri's army to defensive purposes. dtay will also likely prove a worse target than Dark Savant/ipecac.
Dark Savant/ipecac: Enemy, not least because their other neighbour is Gavagai, which practically means that we're Savant's avenue of expansion. We don't want to annoy them, though, because of the Cuban Missile Crisis situation that Fountain Head + circumnavigation has provoked. (Fountain Head's location, in turn, has probably been provoked by Whitehall, even though boxing in Harmondale wasn't actually the reason for its settlement -- it was the lack of trees 4 of it -- but Savant doesn't know that.) Also, we certainly don't want to border Gavagai. That means we should force them to turtle up with defensive units (longbows etc.) somehow, which is both in their and our own best interests.
Gavagai: Ally, because he can tie up Krill and Savant alike, but he must not succeed in consuming Savant. Otherwise, we'll be next. Even if not, his presence would ensure that we never attack in the south. I've noticed that "Gavagai" rhymes with "Chagatai" and refuse that this might be coincidence.
JR4/RefSteel: Allies. The best we might have, even. We need to make sure that they don't see a point in attacking our island cities to their south; we're not going any further north than the latitude of Styx, and their only city in the region is an outlier, with Savant to their east and Joey exerting pressure with twin cities over land. After that, they'll play for both Savant's and Joey's islands east and west of their position -- good news for us. They also border dtay, to delay his conquest of Yuri potentially. Furthermore, they have an interest in getting OB from us to compensate for Joey's GLH, I think; we have this interest not only for the trade routes, but also because they might spread Buddhism to us (I think OB give a bonus on spread chances; if that's wrong, correct me please). (The current distribution of Buddhism is hilarious, by the way: almost none of their cities have it, not even their capital situated four tiles from the Holy City, but Castle Ironfist does. 7% of total pop follow Buddhism, 8% Hinduism -- whose holy city we still can't see. Seeing as they have 30 total pop equating 13% of the world when floored, and the cities that we've seen as Buddhist have 18 pop among themselves, we can actually see all of the Buddhist cities right now.)
GermanJoey: Enemy as the favourite to win this game (unless Krill's position is even stronger), but probably doesn't care about us in terms of military conquest because he has so much other land to settle: land south of him, islands west of him, islands south-east of him... that'll keep him occupied for a good while. I don't think I've mentioned those western islands, so be sure to check those when you log in. They're... well... they're pretty good. Gives me hope that we might find a similar archipelago.
Krill: No idea. He could be needed as a weapon vs. Joey or Gavagai, or he could be the favourite to win this game and we'd need to try and stop him. That's bound to oscillate anyway. I think Krill is the furthest away from us, for what that's worth, although that might change if he's gunning for the sea to our east, where Ventessel's allotted islands must be located. He has the Oracle and very likely founded Hinduism, which means he can build a shrine a million nautic miles away from us.

Thoughts on tech will follow in the late afternoon or evening, but short version is that I'd like to get Archery after Currency (eta T94). Saving 10h on garrisons (and we'll need garrisons) will probably be worth 1t of 0% sci with two research builds (estimate after Academy + Curr + other stuff we'll have by then). After Archery, options are Metal Casting, Iron Working, HBR, CoL or Aesthetics roughly sorted by preference.

[Bacchus]

Had a look at the map. Very interesting. So China is to our west-south-west, which means this will be the least contested sea, as both Russia and China are out of the running for it. This should be our priority and we can get far ahead settling those islands with impunity. This will also be a crucial move for checking Greek expansion and allowing us naval access to Greek core on both sides of the map. Finally, if we have a fleet there, we can continuously roleplay House Greyjoy vis-a-vis any conqueror of Chinese land -- whether Krill or GJ.

Another thought is this -- Mongolia is already active in claiming the Stygian Sea, as are we. This makes it far more attractive for Savant to build out into the Sorpigal sea, which, incidentally, puts him into a direct contest for Greek islands. This is something we want to support and encourage. Of course, we also want to encourage Ottoman settlement there, but I agree that the primary task for Gavagai, from our perspective, is to check Krill. Unfortunately, the more he succeeds in that, the easier time the Greeks will have, which is why we really want Savant as a friend, especially at this, land claiming stage. I want to see Galleys range out of Sorpigal and disseminate its food surplus all over those landmasses. Longer term, we will deal with Savant via a coalition with Mongolia and Ottomans, hopefully.

Now, this is subject to massive availability bias, it could be that Krill is the major issue here, but even if he is, he is just too awkwardly positioned to be a major concern for us at the moment.

Once we get Currency, how about we give out some "let's be friends" loans on favourable terms? 18 gold for 2 gpt maybe, to Savant and Mongolia? If we see Yuris pushing for an attack, I would try to buy him off with gpt too. Basically, we just want a free hand to settle the Vacant Bay.

[Bacchus]

I've placed some signs for potential public works projects connecting the two seas. There is a fairly easy way to do it with our dotmap in the very south and the very north, a little trickier down the middle. In any case, seems like we will have to fort the jungle silver in the south, if we want to make use of that canal.

[Coeurva]

Had a look at the map. Very interesting. So China is to our west-south-west, which means this will be the least contested sea, as both Russia and China are out of the running for it. This should be our priority and we can get far ahead settling those islands with impunity. This will also be a crucial move for checking Greek expansion and allowing us naval access to Greek core on both sides of the map. Finally, if we have a fleet there, we can continuously roleplay House Greyjoy vis-a-vis any conqueror of Chinese land -- whether Krill or GJ.

I'm assuming you mean the sea at Lifeblood?

In that case, we'll switch Lifeblood over to building a galley (probably with a whip) once Sicil finishes the worker in 2t, and set Sicil to build research. This costs us the opportunity to build more units in the north, except at Whitehall, where we should be able to build (probably whip, unfortunately) one unit in time for the north-western island -- or rather, one unit to swap the Woody III axe with at Styx en route to that island. Given the situation, that must suffice to cover the settler initially, although I'd prefer to have an archer. Meanwhile, Vermin can probably finish another settler mostly during turns of 100% research, which can claim a spot in the Lifeblood sea.

In fact, because it saves so many hammers (because axes must always be paired with spears to defend well, 20h per city) and thus frees up build queues, Archery before Currency might actually gain us beakers. I'll have to think about that.

Russia isn't completely out of the running -- I don't know if Yuri has researched Sailing yet, but he'll certainly live to finish it.

Another thought is this -- Mongolia is already active in claiming the Stygian Sea, as are we. This makes it far more attractive for Savant to build out into the Sorpigal sea, which, incidentally, puts him into a direct contest for Greek islands. This is something we want to support and encourage.

The best way to encourage Savant to settle the east overseas is not to give him ground in the northwest, and keep our cities well-defended. This also goes for Ignis, where the capital's axe will be going.

He's still leaving that galley we can see 7 of Fountain Head, where I'm not sure if it fulfills defensive purposes.

I want to see Galleys range out of Sorpigal and disseminate its food surplus all over those landmasses.

Ja, Herr Bacchus, ich entdecke hierin ein Problem mit Ihrem Vater. The psychoanalytic method specifies this emergence of the id as the Helena Complex, whereby the aspect or anima of a lost lover (i.e. parent) resurfaces ("the face that launched a thousand ships"). As the leading cause, I suspect circumnavigation envy where, upon discovering that one's own galleys only have two movement points (which chains into the primal subconscious fear of even numbers), they are lavishly outfitted with Great General promotions to simulate the experience of raising a child past the Flanking and Navigation stages, by which the lack of a wide-range unit is compensated for; this goes along with a latent desire to attack the coastal cities of the archetypal explorer as if the bonus could be usurped, and imitating his reproductive strategy.

This concept has been derided as "thalassocentric" by my enemies. But did not Thales identify the materia prima with the snotgreen sea? the scrotum-tightening sea?

Ahem.

Once we get Currency, how about we give out some "let's be friends" loans on favourable terms? 18 gold for 2 gpt maybe, to Savant and Mongolia? If we see Yuris pushing for an attack, I would try to buy him off with gpt too. Basically, we just want a free hand to settle the Vacant Bay.

Keep in mind that we've already extorted Savant into spending 80g on a spear upgrade while pressed for cash by waving our empty galley around. I'm not sure if that will actually be understood as friendly -- I'd go as far as to gift him some gold first, then ask for something, and if he declines, just give him a cow or whatever to signal "that's fine". This is wonderful advice out of context.

For Mongolia, a loan seems like a fine idea to kick off more diplomacy, signal them that Joey is The Enemy, and that we don't mind if they settle the entire sea north of Styx. Just give us that one plains hill site. Perhaps we can tie this into an open borders deal.

I've placed some signs for potential public works projects connecting the two seas. There is a fairly easy way to do it with our dotmap in the very south and the very north, a little trickier down the middle. In any case, seems like we will have to fort the jungle silver in the south, if we want to make use of that canal.

I did have a fort canal in mind when settling Western Ruins. In the north, I'm not sure if it can be managed without breaking the projected chain of farms post-CS from the oasis, since Ignis will work three mines. Will have to look at what you actually planted, though.

[chumchu]

About ignoring construction and going for trebs before cats: I tried it in pb 34 and it did not work well. In MP you want to be able to hit stacks in the field and cats are about twice as cost-effective at doing that than trebs. Construction is also relatively cheap compared to machinery and the good techs after that so it is not much of a delay and you definitely want catapults as so as you go to war.

[Bacchus]

I mixed up east and west again at the start of my post. I meant the south-eastern sea, because Yuri has no cities on that coast at all IIRC. The south-western he is much more properly present in.

[Bacchus]

Ja, Herr Bacchus, ich entdecke hierin ein Problem mit Ihrem Vater. The psychoanalytic method specifies this emergence of the id as the Helena Complex, whereby the aspect or anima of a lost lover (i.e. parent) resurfaces ("the face that launched a thousand ships"). As the leading cause, I suspect circumnavigation envy where, upon discovering that one's own galleys only have two movement points (which chains into the primal subconscious fear of even numbers), they are lavishly outfitted with Great General promotions to simulate the experience of raising a child past the Flanking and Navigation stages, by which the lack of a wide-range unit is compensated for; this goes along with a latent desire to attack the coastal cities of the archetypal explorer as if the bonus could be usurped, and imitating his reproductive strategy.

This concept has been derided as "thalassocentric" by my enemies. But did not Thales identify the materia prima with the snotgreen sea? the scrotum-tightening sea?

Ich verstehe nür "Wiener".