[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

Turn 259

Event log brought a bit of a surprise this morning.



That is a very early scientist for somebody. The only way to get one that early is with Philosophical, or perhaps a very early Library as Spiritual plus an immediate Pacifism revolt on T256. Compare that to our capital:



So it's not us or Dreylin for obvious reasons. It's not Pindicator, NobleGas, or ReallyEvilMuffin because their traits wouldn't allow for it. So it's either Donovan or Boldly Going Nowhere. The latter is only possible doing some truly crazy things, so I'm about 85% sure it's Donovan building an early-ish Library and working some extra specialists.

What's not clear is whether he was 1) working extra scientists in an effort to speed the Engineer, hoping the polluted GPP wouldn't hurt him or 2) he's racing for State Property, so he's quite happy about avoiding an Engineer. I'm guessing it's the latter because it makes more sense, but who knows. Anyway, hopefully it's him, and this hurts his growth curve enough that he's less of a threat to settle spots we want. If he can make it work, it could be a pretty strong play, but I'm skeptical it can be done well. I did try it in testing (taking Peter/India, racing for State Property while ignoring Steam Power), and it just felt like I was sacrificing way too much to get there. I am happy though to see some diverging strategies, because the wide variety of options is a big part of why I was excited to play this setup.



I put the Explorer here, hoping that we can move 1SW next turn and get sight on his city, then turn around and retreat back to the Tundra. Since he's not accepting deals with us, I don't want to give him the chance to pop our Explorer with a Rifle or something. Alternatively, we could offer him Open Borders this turn. We haven't actually offered him that yet - it was just map trades. Guessing he'll say no, but maybe it's worth a shot?



The plan over here is to figure out who is to the east of us, and how much we care about this isthmus. Simple enough.



Two more growths coming end of turn. We're not building any workers or settlers for a little bit now, so for the next 3 turns, we'll be getting 6 city growths.



I did end turn because I can't see anything that was likely to change this turn, but it's a Saturday, so I expect there to be plenty of chances to jump back in and change something if absolutely necessary. I won't be around all day, but I'll be around here and there if necessary.

[scooter]

But back to the current example. Scooter, I didn't make any attempt to do real worker micro, just used Build Research in Telegraph after the rifle/grenadier was done. I didn't do anything at all with Cotton Gin, only set that city to Build Research as well. It turns out that we have enough gold left over from my savings in Nationhood civic to reach Steam Power at eot 276, with the settler from the capital finishing eot 274. That works out decently as well, letting us finish the library while growing (which takes 2 turns) and then go right onto levee after that. If I remember correctly, I think we were looking at roughly Turn 276 anyway for a finishing time on Steam Power under the old plan. We simply get the settler done and grow faster under the current iteration.

Now there is a tradeoff here, which is that we're not building anything out of Telegraph or Cotton Gin by setting them to Build Research. However, we both consider Steam Power tech to be incredibly important, and likely worth this tradeoff. That levee in our capital will be simply amazing. So I think that's my answer: it's OK to delay a library in the capital and push growth -> settlers, by making up the difference with some research builds in the other cities.

Oh yeah, this is perfect . Let's do this. Not building anything out of Cotton Gin is not much of a loss, so that's okay. And a couple turns of Telegraph building research I think is perfectly acceptable given the benefits. The Galleon is too important not to build, so this seems like the way to go. So I'm definitely on board with this plan.

[Sullla]

Sounds good. I'm fine with ending turn, as I don't think we need to change anything else today.

With our explorers, I like the idea to step in and back out again to get vision on the Donovan city. It's worth the turn invested to have that knowledge. (Feel free to offer Open Borders if you want, but it seems really unlikely that he'll accept. It would only let us move our scout through Donovan's territory, and if he wouldn't trade maps, I can't see him letting us scout him out manually.) After that, I think we send that explorer northeast past the red dot location to see who our neighbor is up there. For our other explorer in the southeast, I think we meet Noble/Gaspar and then swing back north to be ferried over on the galleon to the island. We should be able to do that in the next 5-6 turns or so.

I don't know if I mentioned this previously. I think we send the first missionary to Cotton Gin, and the second one to the capital. That way we spread religion in both cities on the same turn, and get Pacifism into operation sooner, on the same turn we make the civic swap. Otherwise, Cotton Gin doesn't benefit from the first turn of Pacifism, which feels non-ideal.

On the question of who landed the Great Scientist this turn... well, we knew someone was researching Scientific Method and running Representation Scientist specialists because we saw one team consistently having a crazy high GNP in the Demographics. I think it almost has to be one of the Philosophical teams, as we've only had 9 total end-turn production cycles to date, and religion didn't pop until after end of turn 255. It would be awful tough to get religion in the correct city to take advantage of Pacifism in the 3 turns we've had since then. Also, it's not like teams can afford to run a ton of specialists, with no one having cities above size 4. So it's most likely a Philosophical civ that chopped a library immediately, followed by running double Scientist specialists.

Donovan is by far the most likely candidate for that setup, with his Peter of India (Phi/Exp) combo to go along with the Serfdom civic that we know he's been running. Revolt into new civics on Turn 250, finish a library with chops on Turn 251, then 7 turns of double Scientists = 7 *12 = 84 Great Person point. That's my best guess. If we see a lightbulb into an early Scientific Method, it will show up on the tech screen since everyone has Alphabet tech.

I'm also happy to see teams playing different openings, as it will make it more fun to compare results. Now that said, I also think that rushing through Scientific method by running early Scientist specialists is a mistake from a growth curve perspective, but we'll see what happens in time. I'm also pleased that two of our three closest neighbors appear to be doing somewhat weird starts: Donovan perhaps rushing the Great Scientist, and Dreylin doing... something with Universal Suffrage. We seem to be growing faster than them, and the food/production numbers look very nice.

[scooter]

Turn 260

I forgot to reply, but yes, I agree about missionary usage. Also, can you do the following tweaks to the spreadsheet?

1) Build Grenadier rather than Rifle in Telegraph starting on T262.

2) On T263 worker turns - can you highlight in red or something workers C and E? On two different occasions of playing the microplan through, I mistakenly moved a worker N-N before roading, resulting in a wasted turn and had to reload. I'd hate to make that mistake with the real turn, and I think I could use the reminder that I need the road first.



I'll start with this explorer, because we do need to make a decision here. I mistakenly thought I could get visibility on the city from this tile, but I can't. I've only used 1 of its 2 moves. We've got two options.

1) Give up and leave immediately so that we can get north sooner.

2) Stay here this turn. Next turn declare, move 1SW, then immediately retreat back to this tile. Hope Donovan doesn't have a second worker around to combat road and pop our Explorer with a Rifle. Then we'd head north. Goal here is just to get city visibility on a border city which has some value.

I'm on the fence about this, so I want to hear what you think. Donovan doesn't strike me as the type to poke the bear just to kill an Explorer, but I could well be wrong.



Should be meeting someone over here any time now.



I think we can get a quality city over here. West of the iron is uninspiring due to lack of land tiles, but we can get a high quality production city out of this little area. I think red dot is probably the ideal place to settle. When most of the contested land is gobbled up, we could then backfill yellow at our leisure, but I think it's a pretty low priority spot. The distance from the capital is more than a little awkward, but any closer to the capital, and it's a far weaker city.



Someone circumnavigated already. We weren't even close on that one. I guess most people are trading maps pretty freely - Donovan must be one of the few that are refusing. I did offer him OB and/or maps once more just in case, and he unsurprisingly said no. I guess it's good that neither of our immediate neighbors were the culprits.



Someone shifted into a very heavy hammer config this turn (the high was 23h last turn).



A pair of civs already have size 6 cities. One of them is almost certainly NobleGas just based on score. Maybe the other is Donovan.



I'd really like to know what he plans to do with all that gold.

[Sullla]

Yes, I can update the micro plan with those changes, no problem. If not tonight then tomorrow.

Definitely do not declare war on Donovan just to get city visibility. Seeing the center tile of a single city isn't worth it, not when some players do crazy things in response to war declarations. Let's just move on and head off to do more scouting in the north.

The red spot in the southeast would definitely be nice, although I think I downgrade it somewhat due to a lot of water tiles and a non-river location. We should keep it in mind for the future, no question.

Yeah, the circumnavigation bonus had to be a result of map trading. No one could get around both of the Toroidal worldwraps without that. If Donovan is refusing to trade maps with anyone, he's going to be really left out when everyone else has a good view of the rest of the world, and he's stuck with only his own vision. (Of course, he could be trading with others and not with us, for all we know.)

I'll be that the 36 production is from someone pushing an early settler out of their Bureaucracy capital. REM (Imp/Org) could be going for that play, and I bet he could get a settler done pretty fast. Work the pigs, crab, and gold tiles along with three hills and an Engineer specialist for 17 production/turn, multiplied through Bureaucracy and Imperialistic for 38 production/turn. That's a 9 turn settler, which can be knocked down to probably 7 turns with chops. Well, something like that anyway. I'm truly curious about how fast the first cities will be planted by each team. No one has trained a single military unit as yet, so it doesn't look like anyone is planning an early rush.

I'm pretty happy with our Demographics thus far, although everything other than Food and Military is going to look awful when we pop out of Bureaucracy starting next turn. Hopefully it will be worth it.

[Sullla]

For the lurkers, scooter did move our explorer back from Donovan's borders without declaring war. No bloodlust just yet from our team, sorry.

I noticed that we do have a trade route to both Donovan and Dreylin:



We can see any resource that they have connected. Keep in mind that they might have resources improved but not connected, as we certainly do as well. The exception is of course seafood resources, which are always connected if they've been improved. With Dreylin, this is kind of a non-issue, as we have full map visibility of his cities and can hover over his resources to see if they've been improved.



It's a bit trickier with Donovan, since we can't see any of his cities directly. The pigs and crabs have been hooked at this capital, and then he's improved two sheep as well. This is a clear sign that Donovan settled different cities than us, since we don't even have two sheep within our borders. He probably has the equivalent of our northern sheep that we aren't using, and then the city we can see is the mirrored version of our southeast peninsula. It's the equivalent of that red circle location that scooter was discussing earlier today, which is unfortunate for us since the city is directly towards our territory. If we're correct, there's some space between that spot and his capital.

The other noteworthy thing is even higher GNP in the Demographics for Rival Best, up to about 120 total. Scooter, my guess is that it's Donovan, and he used that very early Great Scientist to build an Academy in the capital. Together with the early library, that would be +75% research compounded with the Bureaucracy bonus. That's a lot more research power than we have, since we won't even be in Bureaucracy starting next turn, heh. The question is how much that kind of research-heavy start will end up hurting Donovan's growth curve (assuming of course that this is Donovan and not someone else). Probably not as much as we might hope, since he is Peter of India after all. Donovan has never been in Slavery civic and he's never whipped his cities. A whole bunch of Serfdom forest chops into cheap Expansive Fast Workers can do wonders for him. So this could be an excellent opening for Donovan, and I hope we can avoid conflict until our economy can take off 20-25 turns from now. Donovan won't have our flexibility to do civic swaps, and he still has no state religion or religious civic (likely waiting for a future Golden Age to do the swaps for free). Hopefully our opening will work out OK, and we won't all sit around cursing ourselves after the game is over about how overpowered Peter of India was for these settings.

[Sullla]

Oh, and I did update the micro plan with your suggestions, scooter. We should be good to go, and the grenadier replacement of the rifle works out even better, with maximum overflow into a settler at Telegraph on the turn that a forest chop finishes. (Need to sim that our further, but the basic idea is to put the forest chops into a settler, then finish it while the capital is doing its levee to keep expansion churning along.) We should be good for the next few turns barring something unusual coming up.

[scooter]

Good call on the Academy. I tend to think that's an iffy play since it's not that great without tons of cottages, but I don't know, maybe he can make it work. We should get graphs on him first, so I'm very eager to get a look at how well he's keeping pace while playing this weird opening. Obviously I hope it doesn't work at all given that he's our neighbor and all.

Also good catch on REM/settler. I think that's a real possibility. I have this nagging fear he could break the game open by racing out to a bunch of cities (he is the only IMP after all). Let's hope he isn't our eastern neighbor! I think there's a good chance he emerges as one of the top contenders. The combo of going whip-heavy and now early settler (if that is what's going on) seems like it would be a perfect choice for his leader.

Turn just rolled. Gonna jump in and see what there is to see.

edit: oh yeah, and thanks for updating the spreadsheet!

[scooter]

Turn 261

We met Gaspar!



Settling up to that lakefish will be pretty useful. That red dot may get tweaked depending on what we findf the next few turns. That tundra tile may be a very valuable spot tactically because it opens up boat access to that freshwater lake - making the inside of Gaspar pretty vulnerable. In fact, that's such a valuable spot that they may not let us have it. We may have other more important spots anyway - for example denying Donovan a similar degree of access to our land.



Gaspar is in Rep-Bureau-Slavery-Merc-Paganism. No real surprises. Being non-SPI, he elected to avoid the extra anarchy turn and ignore the religious column like Donovan did.



Lots to talk about!

1) In case it's unclear, that's Donovan's explorer.

2) To the west is the green border of Boldly Going Nowhere. He's very far away, and we'll meet him next turn. Only Pindicator's Boudica and REM's Julius have yet to be located.

3) Most importantly - that's a very early barb city! I thought they wouldn't show up until closer to T270. We'll need to keep an eye out for that popping up near us.



Finally, here's the other highlight of the turn. Easily accessible silver is a nice treat - on a grass hill for that matter. I think the plan is to load up the explorer next turn, and then drop him on the island the following turn. We already mostly know what we'll find by land, so we may as well explore the island. If we're lucky, Gaspar will accept the map swap, and exploring that portion of the mainland will be totally unnecessary.



Civic revolt this turn. 5 turns of pain as our mfg/commerce take a hit, but it should be worth it.



Demos reflect the shift in priorities. I'm amazed that someone has lower MFG than us in Nationhood. Maybe we aren't the only one not in Bureau?

[Sullla]

Nice reporting. My only comment for the moment is that I think turning on Barbarians for this game may have been a mistake. Capturing a barb city represents an incredible swing of fortune, given how expensive settlers are for these settings. If one team captures a couple of barb cities due to the dumb luck of them popping up near their borders, that could represent a swing of hundreds and hundreds of free production. For a competitive game where we have mirrored terrain and all that, it seems strange that such a gigantic RNG factor was left in place in the settings.

Fortunately, out of all the teams, the ones best positioned to capture barbarian cities are ourselves and pindicator, due to our traits. Hopefully we keep scouting the map and claim more than our fair share, with Aggressive trait + drafted Nationhood units.