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

[Bacchus]

Oh yeah, on whip cascades -- don't whip consecutively. Pre-build one thing, whip, switch build to another thing. Less overlap -> shorter unhappy.

[Coeurva]

On expansion, I've thought about it and I'd say we can settle the western wheat before the fillers, as we will pick up incense and sugar shortly. It's just a tad early to start sharing the clams, particularly since Westward still enjoys the benefits of the rice.

Settler-streaming will then produce the filler settlers. Sicil is suited to this. Lifeblood, too. Vermin will shortly have other tasks -- I think we can already set up some OF for the Heroic Epic.

Oh yeah, on whip cascades -- don't whip consecutively. Pre-build one thing, whip, switch build to another thing. Less overlap -> shorter unhappy.

Good point. The only advantage of consecutive whips is that we don't commit early -- if all of the wonders fall before we can start the cascade (unlikely; for one, the ToA will be available if nothing else), we're not sitting around with too much overflow to put into anything. I don't think that's worth it.

I have to say, I still prefer the Parthenon, simply because the capital is one of the few cities that doesn't want to be working specialists for its wealth of good tiles (same for Vermin, but more for its lack of food), and therefore might not pump out a GP before Whitehall or the NE could/would. Without the GPP generation, GLib is "just" 10bpt that don't scale at all before Education, while the Parthenon scales with each food resource (if delayed).

Of course, if it falls to Mongolia, we can change plans to build the GLib as well.

In any case, we're teching Poly -> Masonry -> Aesthetics -> Literature.

[Coeurva]

T105 played. No extensive report, just a few unsorted impressions, many of which have been revealed by Gavagai's map:

* German Joey is going for his western islands (towards Dark Savant) and has a lot of space there. The Vacant Sea is really not in contention between us and Donovan at all, but between us and... Krill. No wonder he wanted our map, although he's somewhat distant at least.
* The Khatunate has a hilariously far-flung colony in its western islands, and will probably settle for the second gold resource there at some point. It's alright, though, because Joey has grassland gold within second-ring borders of his city of Sea Ape Island, and if his own expansion strategy is to go west (where there is a lot of room), he'll probably not mind our recent claim-staking in turn.
* Krill's capital is also hilarious and fully worth the 3t delay he took at the beginning (though he guessed well on choosing the direction that was not "towards Gavagai"). I won't spoil that discovery to you, except by noting it has the Heroic Epic inside. And his second city is where everyone else has their capital.
* Without any wealth builds, our break-even rate is exactly 30%. We might not be able to sustain the upcoming expansion if we go for the Aesthetics wonders instead, unless they actually fail, or we'll have to sacrifice tech (the one area where we're good right now, but then horizontal expansion is probably more important on this map). #cities maintenance is quite a problem, which probably prohibits filler cities while there are still good islands to settle. On the other hand, at 100% sci, we 1t or 2t every Classical tech.
* Savant offered us 80g for his map, but most of the missing bits were those we've just received from Gavagai so that's another offer I declined. -- His economy is improving (46 gpt), and Yuri's 100% sci GNP is only higher due to his Stonehenge culture output at this point.
* Gavagai has built the Pyramids inside Samsun, which is close to his border with Krill.
* Gavagai settled his third city pretty much up in Savant's face, where it contends with Castleview for cultural control of a corn tile, among others. The land is three tiles in width at their mutual border.
* Finally, he has a good lock on the island regions both west and east of him especially if Savant's growth falls behind, so attacking Savant is probably not a good idea for us, unless it became clear at some point that he couldn't compete with Gavagai no matter what.
* Donovan seems to have pushed for settling towards Joey and deny him at least one pig resource (other than that, Joey's dotmap looks exactly like you'd expect). We can contact him within 1-2t, but we can also turn back the galley for more scouting and faster access to settling the east.
* dtay is settling the islands east of him and has already sealed off Yuri in that area, but competes with Gavagai.
* With Savant seemingly willing to de-militarize, I've queued up a work boat in Whitehall after the archer finishes, and might build one more. Even with the barracks, we somehow manage to lose ground (1%/t) to Savant's 3 culture / t on that fish tile (?!)
* We need to push more strongly for the eastern sea.

[Bacchus]

Expectedly, but annoyingly, the seas we contest with Krill remain the black spots.

On the culture, the split accounts for the total lifetime plot culture, so it will tend to the ratio of production. So, if we are putting 5 cpt and he is putting 2 cpt into it, he should (asymptotically) get to 29%

[Coeurva]

T106

Made contact with Donovan via his work boat sailing up to Savant's borders... and finding our galley. He's on five cities and makes 24gpt, doesn't have contacts with most people (we're his fourth contact, Savant has also met him), and we've found out that Ventessel declared war on Krill, not the other way around. This is visible in Krill's graphs, which are actually rather awful (not as bad as Yuri/Donovan, but about halfway between them and us). If you were wondering who was #7 in Crop Yield, there you have the answer. Krill didn't lose any cities, but he seems to have struggled; there's a considerable power dip around the time when we built our impromptu defense () against CML.

Savant is settling on the island north of Styx, which is good news because JR4/Ref can attack that, and Savant could have forked it with naval units anyway if we had settled it.

JR4 annoys me by ignoring his EP spending and my implicit offer to split 43/43 (I've set ours against Krill to cap at 43 EP this turn). Either that, or he actually wants to spend EP on us, but that's annoying as well.

Now we only lack contact with German Joey. Funnily, he's the only player that always greets me when I log in and he's around (which is aces, I think).

Domestic stuff. T107 will bring the following changes:
* Barracks prebuilt to 55/60 at Rhapsody; swap to Market. Don't want to whip the barracks quite yet (I think it's best to whip at size13).
* Settler finishes at Sicil; pass a mine to Whitehall to complete the work boat eoT107 (for Sherry once it pops borders eoT110, so we can net fish at once)
* Vermin keeps building wealth, but by ~T113 we want to phase it out of that duty and use Sicil/Lifeblood instead when they're not on workers. Maybe Whitehall as well. Build a few 2t swords.
* Lifeblood's settler 1t from completion (that's X16, which goes onto an isle in the west that has deer + second-ring fish, or alternatively deer + second-ring pigs on an island culturally and militarily vulnerable to Yuri, I don't like that option as much)
* Ignis keeps building a barracks while nurturing a village overlapped with the capital. I'm considering a switch to galley before the barracks are done, but I'm not sure when we can actually build the next settler for the eastern sea (and supply him both economically and with workers).
* Whitehall goes max hammers (I think it needs to pick up a plains tile). Or alternatively whips the work boat and overflows into the next one, which might work even better. I'm not sure yet.
* Westward whips a lighthouse on T108 for 2 pop (to regrow immediately). There's a barb warrior running around that isn't a threat in itself, but forces me to keep the archer outside the city while refusing to actually attack the archer (on jungle). I'm adding the chariot that will garrison X13.
* Styx grows onto the bananas (currently being improved by two workers, covered by Woody3 axe) while slow-building a lighthouse.
* Sherry whips a granary on T107 (we've been working the 130 forested horse; free grass mine!) at 12/24f and looks forward to popping borders for two fish (of which one goes to newly-founded X15)
* X11 whips a monument and connects incense on T109; the workers proceed to improve deer at X16. Will have to keep the galley in the area to shuffle them back and forth, since X11 can also use a granary chop.
* X12 switches to bananas as soon as they're improved.
* The X13 and X14 settlers move into position for settlement on T108 and 109 respectively. Edit: X15 also on T109, more or less. X16 on T110, I think. Yeah, let's not waste time, we're still IMP, the economic advantage compared to other traits can only come if the "free turns" saved on settlers at old cities and getting up new cities earlier give us meaningful yields. That's actually the interesting part of IMP as I see it, it's not a "flat" bonus like Financial where you get rewarded for working commerce tile X, but rather you get rewarded for any per-turn bonus you choose (but choose well).

Demographics haven't really changed since I last posted them. Crop yield is 182, but that's still #5 (rival best 210) and so forth. Research set to Polytheism, 80gpt at 0% sci. If GermanJoey pressed F9 while I fiddled around, he might have seen Rival Best GNP 283 (which is what would happen if we went 100% sci on Masonry right now, misleading due to the 40% multiplier), although I kind of hope he didn't.

[Coeurva]

Judaism still hasn't fallen, even though just about anyone has Masonry. I think everyone thinks everyone else will get it first.

Edit: Somehow I forgot to mention this, but dtay has built the Colossus (in a city with seven water tiles, one a lake iirc).

[Bacchus]

Shouldn't we 1t Mono?

[Coeurva]

Sure; but it takes us 4t to get to the point where we can 1t Mono. Save cash to eoT108 (240g), tech Poly and Masonry at 100% (-115gpt), then Mono eoT111 at breakeven with overflow from Masonry. The trouble is that Joey, JR4, Gavagai, Savant, and dtay (well, not sure about dtay off-hand) all have Masonry already. This is assuming stable gpt / bpt rates; we'll likely have to balance the settling spree with wealth builds there.

But since we can use both Poly and Masonry anyway for other purposes, there's only one turn on which we have to gamble, and we might as well go for it if Judaism is still hanging by that point.

I don't know if our opponents have Poly, though. JR4/Ref will surely want OrgRel sooner rather than later since they're SPI with a self-founded religion. Krill obviously has Poly, but perhaps not Masonry, and might not have much interest in OrgRel due to the anarchy cost (he's also not in his religion yet). Poly really only unlocks Literature (lol ToA), so others would have to go for Aesthetics.

Edit: With our map knowledge at this point, I'll make a short list of strategic / wonder resources that everyone has, can easily settle for, or will have a hard time settling for. Next turn.

[Coeurva]

T107: Judaism fell to JR4/Ref (who have 14 cities by now) and they revolted into OrgRel. The holy city is one of the few we can't see.

We've met GermanJoey (also on 14 cities) via our work boat stumbling into a spawnbusting warrior on his mainland. Savant supplies Yuri with free gems, Joey props up Donovan with silver, and Savant/Joey share a fish/fish trade, which is either directed against the Khatunate, or against us. In either case, we're probably out of options to align with anyone but Mongolia in the long run. We're also the last team to make contact with everyone who isn't hopelessly behind.

We'll found cities on each of T108, 109, 110 and 111. Western Wheat has been demoted to X16 because the border pop at Sherry actually occurs eoT110, and I don't want to settle X16. The worker can land earlier to get some work in on clearing out jungle, either from a grass hill or from the bananas. X14 will just have one worker for support, but starts with a 310 tile and 2h centre at least.

Offered a map trade to Donovan, although I suspect he won't have much information, but maybe he knows a bit more about Krillandia and its islands.

I didn't feel motivated to make the strat resource list. I also didn't whip Whitehall; I'd rather keep the cottage now. Sicil builds another worker, not wealth; we can afford that. He'll reinforce the islands in the west, or cottage at Sicil/Ignis (perhaps to free up the current Ignis worker for the eastern sea), probably both, but not sure on the distribution. Also turning back the galley from Donovan and homeward again, to explore east of our ivory and ferry a settler to the east soon enough.

[Bacchus]

Logged in to see an offer from GJ for an exchange of OB and maps, which I declined.

Studying the map, it really strikes me how GJ only has a single city in the sea looking out to us, and that's Seven Mysteries with the GLH. I think we really need to capture either a Shrine or the GLH, and the lay of the sea is really favourable to the latter. Not in the immediate future, but straight after getting Astro, which I'm thinking we should prioritise (which plays well with the GLib plan). Conversely, I am again worried about the vulnerability of Westward and Ignis, but hopefully we can found on the proximate island, and we are actually lucky that Savant decided to push so far and found Regna, it's an excellent shield for us. Too bad it's also such a great city.

Do we have time to get Music before Construction, if production centres are busy with wonders/expansion?