Savant can land troops next to Styx from the fishing nets. Maybe he himself is having ideas about strike power of naval swords? That's a bit of a scary thought as we have a lot of the seaboard exposed.
When is our first Galley coming out into the eastern sea?
I might go archer over granary inside Styx. Still not optimal for prevention, but the 2-strike axe is at least still in there. Whitehall can also build 3t archers, but that delays GPP generation if the market is the plan.
East-south (Zodiac) will take another 10t before the barracks culture envelops the third forest. Thus the answer is T102, as Zodiac Spire will lack tile-yield production before then (no granary, either) and also needs to finish a whaling boat. East-east (Westward/Ignis) will take a bit longer, depending on whether we should build an archer or wealth inside Ignis instead after the lighthouse has finished. Otherwise, if prioritizing the galley -- let's say T105. Possibly, building a galley will motivate Savant to build one of his own, but what I don't want to encourage is a land unit presence in Sorpigal.
Westward could double whip a galley right now, but by delaying the library that brings in clams and gems -- probably not a good idea to torpedo IW.
Erm, I'm sure we don't need to push Savant to build a galley of his own in Sorpigal, he is certainly doing it anyway, or has done it. Where did his workboat go? I assume it had to go past Westward and Ignis, and what do you think an ungarrisoned city with a built granary and library will make him think :D
He will be so confused that a city named "Westward Ho!" is on the eastern shore and general torus madness that he'll mismove the galley? I've changed the queue to an archer now, though.
While I doubt that even his work boats are that fast that he could have learned of the city by now, if Savant does a genuine OT4E move and goes full Viking with a 3-move galley + two CR1 swords at this stage, because someone always leaves open the 100th window, I think I have a new favourite play of the game, even if he razes any city of ours (although obviously I'd be rather pissed at first, but mostly at myself).
He'll build a galley on his own, I'm sure, but I think he'll whip because Sorpigal's production from hammer terrain isn't that high (unless there's invisible iron that I've overlooked in checking tile yields), and it seems like he's growing the city at max speed instead. He was a bit late to his first galley considering that he teched Sailing a good 6t before us, but of course that doesn't mean he'll repeat it.
EDIT: Natasha isn't parked on the clams, but rather 36 of Fountain Head. He can't actually reach Styx with it. More likely, he's blocking the Harmondale approach from our own 4-move galley.
Good morning RB! Yuri will only be able to play in the evening, so we can take some more time for musing.
The dwagon paya thing appears to cost 450h, which is far more than I'd expected. If we want to build it at sensible speed (i.e. not 15t), we'll need forges. They actually don't take that long at the relevant cities if we can afford to double-whip them (Sicil yes, Whitehall yes, Ignis yes, Vermin... eh, although if we can go for Calendar right afterwards, regrowth will be much easier), and running an engineer at Whitehall would be kind of cool even if the GEng odds will be rather low. We should be able to build a market afterwards and still run the fourth specialist, without much of a delay.
Whitehall, after taking the fish, reaches a surplus of 8f (no lighthouse required) from corn/fish + double plains cow (or equivalent) neutralizing double grass mines, to stagnate working 4 specialists happy-capped at size10 after we connect either gems or gold. Surprised that it works out so exactly, won't pretend that I had planned for this on first settlement.
Maybe we should take Metal Casting after all, right after IW. (Workshops could also render CoL more relevant due to the Caste boost, at least, but they're not really important.) I think Krill has a lock on most first-to bonuses of the Aesthetics branch, unfortunately, but Paya is great for us even if it failgolds -- best h->g conversion rate we'll find right now, provided we can afford to delay the reward. (Aside: one of the best changes in RtR has to be disabling failgold exploits such as building Moai everywhere.) And not that triremes will stop Savant's galleys in themselves, but the threat of getting his seafood pillaged everywhere could make Savant more hesitant to sword us.
MC also raises happiness in forge cities by +3 -- we'll have gold, silver and gems.
I also want to attack Yuri soonish (think T140), whose heart is probably not in this game (understandably) and who hasn't actually added soldiers for about 10t now, but who can make our job much harder if he reaches Construction. We can't conquer him without ample defense against Savant and probably a (somewhat loose) coalition with JR4/Ref + Gavagai, though. Swords + cats should be enough for Yuri, his cities are tightly packed and I think we won't see lbows/xbows from him by that point.
I'm thinking Myst -> IW -> MC -> Maths -> Cal -> Construction, maybe switching around the last two. Then go for Aesthetics -> Literature and OrgRel, or perhaps CoL if Confu hasn't fallen yet.
We finished Currency and settled X10 (still unnamed), ripping off JR4/Ref over their Open Borders in their process (we're making 6c more from trade routes than they do). I gifted them 18g, and they accepted; here's hoping we'll hear more from them. We also have their graphs and credit information now (they don't have ours yet, but will within ~5t since I've put all our EP on Krill now), here's their GNP graph:
You think that could be Alphabet? Could also be Currency via Maths, but I think we'd be even on Imports/Exports if so. They also have a ton of money in the bank (nearly 200g) that they're burning through at 100% science right now, same for Krill. Savant and Yuri have like 30g right now, and Savant makes ~20gpt iirc (I should look again next turn) where Yuri makes... 9. Hopefully for him, that's his break-even rate. In Savant's case, I think he's sandbagging his GNP a bit and this is closer to break-even, not 0%, but maybe he really crashed as we did earlier.
The Khatunate's power is halfway between ours and Yuri's, so ~120,000. Their food is almost tied with ours right now, and their MFG is below ours, on par with Savant, and has been stagnating since the last time I posted the graphs.
Savant is unilaterally trading copper/pigs/silver to Yuri, but Savant also has a +2 "fair and forthright" modifier towards Yuri, so he must have gotten something from this deal or earlier.
EDIT: Forgot the most interesting news about Savant -- our WB found an irrigated-rice city on his mainland, located due north of Fountainhead (no vision), and directly east (~3t) of a nice island... which is also 3t south from the Khatunate's closest island city (Radnashiri). Could become an apple of discord between them.
Our slider is actually at 40% (24 gpt, 70 bpt) because we want to gift Savant 18g next turn as well. My prediction that Currency would push us to ~50% break-even was correct (as long as we can sustain some wealth builds, at least); trade routes roughly compensate for city maintenance on every turn of tax, while civics/units are paid for from wealth builds. Whipped two archers; Whitehall builds the work boat for the Stygian clams next, allowing our other boat to look for Gavagai, and with these units, we can cover the worker for pasturing the horse 8 of Styx. Savant's galley has retreated to 7 of Harmondale, by the way.
With X10's worker and to a lesser extent, the city itself, we'll have to rely on JR4's goodwill (or failing that, indisposition) for now, unfortunately, but I think they won't declare war for a single worker. The archer should be able to hold the city against two units.
EDIT: Those 10h cities can reach 13h with different configurations iirc, to make better use of forge modifiers if we pursue those.
(Accurate for 50% sci.) We actually used to have 147 CY ranked for #3, but I whipped it off so I can continue complaining.
Techs we can feasibly research next, and how long they'll take at 50%:
* Masonry, Medi, Poly (2t)
* IW (3t)
* Maths, HBR (4t)
* Aesthetics, Metal Casting, [Construction, Calendar] (5t)
* Code of Laws (6t)
Of course, we've all but decided on IW already... but that's also a good baseline for future research planning.
I'm not sure why you are gifting gold. My idea was to ask for GPT in return, and sure enough 18 isn't that much, but you know.
Logged in to look around. I'm really worried that we don't know what's three tiles east of Westward. I also suggest taking a detour with the NavII galley to scout gold, put a sign up.
Overall, I've spent a lot of time looking at the map shape and Sorpigal. Sorpigal bay is a really awkward sea for Savant, much like the sea we share with Yuri is for us. That jungled protrusion breaks access in a major way. However, Sorpigal is a monster city, and if left unchecked can actually settle that entire bay and lock us in. Which would be awful. So I'm now thinking we need to push to build a naval advantage in that bay. I think getting carried away with building infrastructure in Westward was a bit premature.
Need to sleep on all this.
Otherwise, it seems we have a very strong GNP advantage over Savant, I know share more of your fears towards him. We should consider whether there is a time attack available to us based on this advantage. Again, we have Sorpigal as quite a nice target. The problem is, there really isn't anything much better than Swords for naval city assault. Maces, maybe, if we can get them before he gets Feudalism, but that's a serious ask, I don't think our advantage is that big.
(August 9th, 2017, 17:20)Bacchus Wrote: I'm not sure why you are gifting gold.
Mainly for two reasons.
1) If they haven't had the same idea, this might inspire them to cultivate us with a small favour later, if we retain common strategic interests. It's not even about repayment as such, more about convincing them that an alliance can work -- that allowing someone else to grow (within limits) so that they become or remain an autonomous check on some other nation. Savant is actually doing the same with Yuri, as it seems.
2) They know that we're practically getting 2gpt more from the OB deal, due to Currency trade routes. There's a small difference, as we're not actually taking their gold, but the point is that the deal is skewed in our favour right now. I want to show that we're thinking bigger even when I fail to remind myself to do this. 18g means rather little either way, but it was the whole remainder of our treasury (thus it might have "symbolic" value) and obviously, if we'd had 20g less in the bank, we would have taken another turn to reach Currency (see also: Academy pushing us just over the edge).
It's not really a gift, because these don't (or at least shouldn't) occur in strategy games. It's an investment into intangibles.
Longer version, which probably includes some earlier concerns repeated:
In consequence of a successful early war that everyone knows about, we're starved for allies -- much more than for food -- and somehow, it has begun to look even bleaker as more contacts have been made between players. Namely, Krill might just be giving some kind of sporadic welfare to Yuri because he knows we can't prevent it, and has now confirmed to himself that we distrust him in-game (of course, offering a map trade just to gauge a diplomatic standing is precisely what I'd expect more from Krill than most others, because eidolon etc.) German Joey has TGLH and absolutely no reason to work with us, but could persuade the Khatunate into a joint strike at our northwestern islands at some point (those city walls at Zijin make me hopeful that their relations aren't the best for now, but what couldn't happen). Savant is at least aligning with Yuri and providing him with safe copper -- that's actually a brazen move on his part, he shows that he doesn't fear our retribution at all -- and probably doesn't think too well of us (in-game, at least) for forcing the costly warrior upgrade at Fountain Head via my ambiguously-insane galley move. Gavagai remains the same, still uncontacted and he must not become too strong, which requires a tough Savant: the cure and the disease. Finally, dtay still continues to struggle for mysterious reasons (if score can be trusted) which gives him more of a reason to build up against Yuri -- land can nearly always equalize (see also: REM in PB27).
We were probably the Khatunate's first contact with Alphabet, but if they've teched it themselves as I presume, it's still early enough for them to reconsider their foreign policy, close borders, and align with Savant or dtay if they see fit. That must absolutely not happen. I'd easily give them 18gpt if I could get their unbreakable promise on imposing an embargo on Savant and challenge his western border for the rest of the game; I want him to be surrounded by dangerous enemies while we devour Yuri.
X10 at least counts as contested territory, and they can see its borders. The gold gift would have been laughable if offered as compensation for any city, and I doubt their view would differ, but maybe they'll find the acknowledgment of their current local strength placating. More importantly, attacking the city, even if the returns might be greater than whatever we throw at them, would require much more effort on their part, invoke the fear of the unknown (Savant knows what and where our units are, but they don't even have graphs; and we know they're much closer to the average in soldiers) and probably devolve into drawn-out complications, especially if both sides would be forced into action with only scrambled preparations. The CML war took about 20t of units crawling across the map before anything decisive happened, which was exhausting to play out; I imagine that a naval war with the Mongols would prove much worse. If we keep shoving over some florins on more-or-less regular occasions, they might develop welfare khatun laziness and give us a pass on our expansion in distant lands (amusingly, that would resemble the actual Golden Horde's lenience vis-à-vis the rise of Muscovy as the predominant Russian policy in the late 15th century; I do hope we won't need to stand off against them across the water, though). Long-term, I hope the full bloom of sustained trade routes will provide the mutual disincentive that will befit sovereign nations much better, anyway. Short-term, their lower power ranking might mostly consign this silver spoon to the cabinet anyway. No need to overdo it.
(Well, add the inofficial reason that I did, in fact, parse your intentions wrongly. No such gift to Savant then.)
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Re eastern seaboard:
Quote:Overall, I've spent a lot of time looking at the map shape and Sorpigal. Sorpigal bay is a really awkward sea for Savant, much like the sea we share with Yuri is for us. That jungled protrusion breaks access in a major way. However, Sorpigal is a monster city, and if left unchecked can actually settle that entire bay and lock us in. Which would be awful. So I'm now thinking we need to push to build a naval advantage in that bay. I think getting carried away with building infrastructure in Westward was a bit premature.
Hm? Carried away? The only building inside Westward Ho! is a granary (the library has all of 5h invested right now iirc), which might have delayed the first galley, but will speed up all the following ones if we can keep adding happiness and food. Perhaps you had meant Ignis, though. Whether that's the case or not, we're not strongly committed to the lighthouse enqueued at Ignis. That's a cheaper baray in disguise, meant to free up more workers for chopping the jungle and to slightly speed up regrowth after whips, which I'm expecting to conduct a lot at this city. If you'd like a galley or anything else from it right now, that can surely be done. (Another possibility: building a spy. See next section.)
We can also ponder if/when/how we can scout and settle the eastern dry wheat island, if you think it will be important soon (even if just as a stepping-stone); I've simply been assuming Savant wouldn't contest that site and we'd "just fill it out", but that might have been underestimating his ambition or strength in the area.
If you want us to build a galley before the library at Westward -- I'll argue we shouldn't. By popping second-ring borders, we'll strengthen our defenses, production (clams) and field of vision at WH! more than by building a galley, as I imagine Savant would just slip past it anyway; the shore is too indefensibly wide. What's more, I'd like to grow our tallest cities again soon, Rhapsody in particular, for which we'll require the happiness from gems and thus a library double-whip. WH! would also benefit from a lighthouse; not only for the clams, as that lake looks juicy as well. I'm aiming to supply both cities mostly with units from Ignis, whose tiles are much more whippable starting at size6 already, but which has lots of happiness to burn through, and respectable forge potential / sufficiently-slow regrowth to alleviate stacked anger later (I'm quite mindful of forge happiness right now).
I think we can possibly get ~4t of scouting/watch-keeping from a whipped work boat at WH! -- we'll need one for the clams, anyway.
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Quote:Otherwise, it seems we have a very strong GNP advantage over Savant, I know share more of your fears towards him. We should consider whether there is a time attack available to us based on this advantage. Again, we have Sorpigal as quite a nice target. The problem is, there really isn't anything much better than Swords for naval city assault. Maces, maybe, if we can get them before he gets Feudalism, but that's a serious ask, I don't think our advantage is that big.
If maces are out of the question, I can just see two: Construction if he really delays it (seems unlikely), or a strict Guilds beeline, which might run into mass-produced Formation spears if he lands an empire-wide XP bonus (most likely Theo or Vassalage), but could have chances if not. The immediate trouble with AGG is that Savant's (potential or actual) Shock axes everywhere make swordpult much less appealing, so I suppose our best option for the Classical Age would be Shock NumCav + siege + a few axes to deny spear sallies. Going straight for Machinery -> Engineering and building an early-Medieval xbow/pike/pult (treb?) stack, while very hard to dislodge, would still look rather awkward against longbows.
I suspect, however, that our research alone can't create any major opportunity; it all depends on Gavagai. Even Yuri manages to tie down eight units at Zodiac Spire simply by maintaining his army. We have no idea yet (but we will know, we must know) how broad the Savant/Gavagai frontier might be, or which forces are tied up there, or how well those front cities can supply themselves.
By the way, we might want to build one or two spies against Savant, particularly if he's not too keen on opening borders with a scout boat and Sentry chariot right across them, and that's ignoring our other... relations. They're weaker in RtR, but apart from mapping out his city locations (I doubt he gave his map to Gavagai), gaining sight on Sorpigal by first putting a Sentry chariot on the hill, then retreating it again as we slip a spy inside the city, might prove quite the cute play "psychologically", to see how much our seeming lack of observation might contribute to his plans at Sorpigal. In fact, if his GNP wasn't so low as to preclude Alphabet (along with apparent IW research and his lack of Open Borders), I'd be suspecting him of the exact same move at Ignis.
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Loose ends again:
A useful fort could be built 1 of Whitehall, arguably more so if Savant learned of its presence; I'll place a sign next turn if there isn't.
I'll see if we can use the galley to scout, as per your suggestion. Our naval logistics are currently awfully tight in that we own exactly one relevant ferry and I've been looking to rebase two archers (Stygian archer into X10, immediately replaced with an archer from Whitehall), along with worker/settler transit concerns; but I think those maneuvers can wait for a turn. Alternatively, we can scout after dropping off the settler, since we'll be in the area anyway.
After the gold rush, we should have more opportunities for building galleys -- the need is certainly there, but we currently need everything else as well :crazyeyes: and I still want a few archers first (X11 can probably risk warrior + chariot as garrison instead), as well as the granary at Styx.
Savant's stone city most likely grows on forested deer in addition to clams, as new map info from our own stone suggests (our marble site also has it). Hope you didn't actually take me up on that bet earlier. Masonry remains curious, though, and indicative of Moai, world wonder plans, or Construction.
On Ignis, I actually forgot to comment -- yeah, I think the Lighthouse is superfluous. I would also like to use the Lighthouse to carry some large overflow into something expensive eventually. Too bad Ignis isn't particularly suited to Moai. Anyway, a galley would be much more interesting than the lighthouse.
On Westward all I meant is that it probably should have put out a work board first, and then gone on to do everything else. I was also taking into account the yet upcoming library build as a part of "carrying away", because by now I think I agree that the library is more imminently useful. But consider how different our knowledge would have been if Westward started with a WB (not bitching, just a topic for consideration).
On diplomatic front, I agree with your thoughts. We can always offer the map back to Krill though. If he is actually using this for the diplo probe, then he probably traded with Savant, so we may well get Savant's map. My only concern with the gift is that it may appear pleading or "compensation", as you said, which is why I prefer mutually beneficial trades or those that at least have a plausible appearance of such. "We have some spare money, want a loan?" has such an appearance. Gifts, OTOH, may promote speculation and overthinking. But I think in the specific case of Mongolia, going for a bit of reciprocity fostering is OK. Definitely not to Savant though.
Westward's first build was a WB. I just burned it almost immediately on the whales at Ignis, to improve our commerce. I agree that we could have used it for extra scouting instead, but I thought the domestic improvement more valuable (basically, every turn of scouting would have cost us 4c, and possibly 1g of unit upkeep -- not sure if the boat's cost was covered by pop at the time)
I know you're not bitching. To consider how differently we would have ended up with more scouting, I need to look no further than Savant, who built two boats around T40 and sailed around the world. Or the tip of Hammerhead, for that matter. Instead, we waged war while also trying to build up our civ for more commerce, to recover our nearly-crashed economy (it really was quite close at the time we were teching Alphabet).
Unfortunately the lighthouse will be at 31/60h, but in RtR, we can actually get more overflow (and more efficiently at that) by 1-pop whipping it (which is why it's more important to whip with regularity in RtR -- try to put items close to full hammers as the cool-down ends), so I'll keep that in mind. I'll swap the build to galley and whip it for speed at 21/50h; that takes 4t to complete and should immediately regrow to size4 (with granary).
I agree that the gift carries a danger, in that we shouldn't appear too pleading. With Savant, I'll try the loan now, but we'll look silly if he uses it to tech Construction. (Same goes for gift, of course.) We could instead offer 5gpt for OB, which should be substantial to him at his current gpt.
If Krill has Savant's map, even in parts, then we should trade, but if he doesn't, we probably shouldn't because he'll broker it to almost anyone. Of course, Savant probably doesn't need the map at this point and Yuri probably can't use it (in any case, he knows of all cities south of Rhapsody/WH!, and if he traded maps with Savant, then also the others). Difficult. I think I'll give him the offer next turn, though.
Some more ramblings, (over)thinking how I should approach the game at large:
This whole mythological mode of thought has to leave my head. The way to defeat anyone in this game will be (should be) to play the mechanically-better game of Civ. You don't improve at chess by practising to stare at your opponent like Tal did; those are matters of personal style -- the 'human element' -- whose effects might surface in-game but which can either not be relied on, or take the strategy (and fun) out of the game by taking it to the level of manipulation. Precisely what I want to avoid. I could indeed see Krill feeling insulted by what I wrote earlier, if he ever read it. The reasoned situative response always carries much more weight than intuitive inclinations and memory's fingerprint on your mind. Besides which, nobody from the outside has business to trifle with that texture, whereas reason is res publica.
And I've been inconsistent or volatile with such choices myself -- zero-defects overprotection on one turn, then leaving a city undefended on another just to bluff a very opportunistic galley attack; now what kind of player am I? While I think I'd quite curiously like to read about how my intangibles get assessed by any of the players in this game, as well as most anyone who finds something special in this site, that hasn't actually always been the case for me either with other people, in other cases (if harmless ones) -- and doesn't imply that it's fine with anyone else in the first place.
Simply put, an information advantage in-game is not psychological. Savant's ability to anticipate our game plan is based on two input values: a) the intel he gathers about us by observing our in-game actions, b) his general experience with Civ allowing him to correctly extrapolate from observations, including connecting them back to the bigger picture (that was how we both at least considered Aesthetics->SoZ when Krill built the Oracle). Whatever 'image' we project is as likely to be true as it is wrong, at least as long as our position stays flexible.
Tying these thoughts into what I'd like to find in diplomacy for this game, I want alliances to result out of in-game situations and dissolve along the same lines. In a sense I hope for JR4/Ref to be as "cold-blooded" in-game as not to consider anything close to "we can't attack Carthage, they gave us gold way back when" -- rather I want them to think, for instance, "we can't attack Carthage, they might give us gold again" (or help us attack X down the road if we leave them alone, and so on). The former is just blackmailing by twisting past events, whereby the most unscrupulous actor is also most likely to win. The latter expects weighing future options against each other, i.e. strategizing.
It would be insulting to give someone gold early because you'd expect them to feel honour-bound on a more abstract principle, even when the actual trade that occurred meant almost nothing. More so if you expect this behaviour from them, rather than guessing it might happen.
What's difficult to assess is whether stuff like the spy trick vs. Savant I mentioned would be valid. I think it would, for the same reason that combat lures are allowed, and you'd have to assess: would your opponent want to spend 40h on finding out just how much you're currently concerned about him knowing your plans for city X? In turn, for said opponent, he'll have to consider if 40h is enough. -- Or let's assume Krill did indeed offer to trade us the map primarily not due to interest in our map, but in our (and his) more general current diplomatic standing. I wouldn't count that as manipulation, either, since while he'd be forcing us to make a decision (yes/no/negotiate), he'd not actually be forcing or even influencing us into taking any of these options over the others. So that's more like putting a few two-movers close to someone's lightly-defended border city and see how they react.
I've changed the queue to an archer now, though.
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