[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

Yeah, I dunno about the OB from SD to Cairo. I'm sure he has his reasons. No idea if they are *good* reasons. From a mapmaker PoV, does it make sense that SD would be due west of Cairo? We were arguing before that the players should likely be in a M or W shape on this map. If we were right, then the ocean should be ending soon and we should find SD's core somewhere to the SW. It doesn't *seem* like he'd need OB to scout the edges of Cairo's claims, like we have been doing. Maybe he wants a closer look than that? If so, why? It's a bit of a mystery.

Glad to hear about food at WineIsland. It's not a priority to settle there at minimum until we have Monarchy as it's purely a backline location, but it'll be a nice addition at some point. Based on previous comments I'm guessing that WB is going through the canal at Capustan and then NE from there.

It certainly seems like our workers are running out of great things to do on the mainland (barring potential wonder plans) and are having to settle for merely 'ok' things, so that second galley definitely feels needed.

[Zed-F]

We’ve had a couple turns pass…. how goes it? What does the area around stone look like?

[scooter]

We’ve had a couple turns pass…. how goes it? What does the area around stone look like?

Busy few days, but I will do a proper update tomorrow. Until then, one noteworthy thing with some signs spelling out the options.

I think "safe" simply sucks way too much to be viable

[Zed-F]

Agreed, the 'safe' spot is terrible. I'm gonna guess we're going to want to share that fish and clam with another city on the next island to the east. Do we settle fish+reach and immediately chop a monument? It's a better city long term than 'greedy' (& safer, being on a hill / more easily reinforced) and means we might not need a monument in Y'Ghatan. It is slower to get started, though, and that does feel significant. But getting resources in culture for potentially up to 5 cities of various likelihood of being settled soon (planted city, Y'Ghatan, potential city on island to east, potential fishing village N of Y'Ghatan, potential fishing village 3N1E of Capustan) has a lot of utility.

Alternative of 'greedy' seems quicker starting & doesn't immediately need a monument, which makes it more defensible in the short term but less so in the long term. We might have to build monument in Y'Ghatan in that case if we are still failing to get natural spreads, and we are much less likely to get the northern fish in culture anytime soon.

Without hill defenses, I would probably choose the faster starting city. With hill defenses being at stake, I'm less sure. This could easily wind up being a border city.

[Zed-F]

It looks like Cairo settled city 5 on T76 and Bing settled city 6 on T77. No change yet from Yuri or SD, but we should be about to complete our own settler from Unta. Not sure what our other mainland cities are working on; Pale should have completed a workboat for Li Heng's fish by now (unless something else snuck in first) and Lighthouses at our northern cities should be long finished. Maybe the Galley at Aren too.

[scooter]

Ok time for an update. No turn yesterday, but had one today, so let's catch up.





Scouting SD some. I may offer OB since we're both PRO and don't benefit, but he may not accept until he's about to scout me too. And I'm also sort of inclined to just not let anyone in to scout us.





So here's the core. I queued a settler in Pale, and I delayed the Unta settler by a turn to line up the settler with Pale. The Galley is going to transport TWO settlers over to the east island. A second Galley comes out of Aren 1-2T behind and will transport some combo of defenders and worker(s). Li Heng got a Hindu spread on the exact turn the Monument finish, funnily enough. Pale will supply it with a WB next. Ehrlitan is finishing a WB for one of the city plants, and Y'Ghatan will do at least one too. Here's the two spots I think should come next.





(note the Hindu spread)

I think the Stone city should be Yellow. I don't love a potential border city on flat land, but keep in mind we're PRO and have Stone, so Walls/Castles are a no-brainer, not to mention our defenders have promos. This spot simply comes online way faster than the others, so I think it may be worth it. I already have a Warrior in the area, and the plan would be to transfer an Archer over here ASAP.





This in contrast is the "safe" site. Two foods to get it online quickly and whip in the basic infra. It'll also mean when I settle east of this, that city can come online quickly too by borrowing the Deer. Open to alternatives, but I think I like these two spots best, and I'll just need to stuff a few defenders into the north spot.






I stuck tech on break-even to show how far we are from Currency. The open question is whether to delay it or not. Some basics missing: Masonry, IW, Monotheism, and HBR. I think my lean is Masonry-Currency, then either Monotheism or IW after that so we can start settling jungle islands. We also got graphs on Cairo, so I'll dump those in a spoiler tag.

TL;DR: He's a bit behind due to the Stonehenge build, and he added some real units very recently.

[Zed-F]

Observations:
1. Good to get that Hindu spread, it does reduce the attractiveness of fish+reach. If we did really want hill defense we could settle on the forest, but that's effectively a cost of 60h since it removes the forest and mandates a monument to get the fish in culture. We lose the ability to put a fishing village 3N1E of Capustan, but now the only way to get the northern fish is to put a city 3N1E of Y'Ghatan, and there would be less overlap with yellow. Or else we give up the northern fish to Bing if they settle nearby.

2. Regarding our western fishing boat, it would be nice to get through to see if we can find out if there's someone to his west. I think the only player whose start position we don't know is Yuris, who could be to our east (in the south) or to SD's west (in the north). Figuring this out could be important... but perhaps our eastern explorer WB will resolve this instead. There's a question of whether we want to use open borders with SD as a means of signalling a potential to ally against a common natural enemy (i.e. Cairo) but it may be too early for this to matter. Another problem of course is SD is notoriously unreliable as an ally.

3. Transporting two settlers at once to opposite ends of the island might mean one or both settlers gets to walk a significant distance. Would it be better to take one settler and a worker/defender to the north side and the second boat take the second settler and a worker/defender to the south side? If not, where do the settlers get dropped off? Either way, we probably want to hop the scout over to the next island as part of the process. I agree with both of the proposed city sites, though the southern one probably nixes the potential for a 'Mids-via-chopping plan.

4. Settling (later) 1N of furs means we get to use the deer and don't need a monument, but can't share horse and can't use the crab -- i.e. we'd need another city on the island to the SE to grab that. Maybe that's fine. The potential alternative would be to settle for furs on the ice, net the crab, and share the horse instead of the deer, then plan to settle a city in between furs and Capustan at some point, but this doesn't necessarily seem markedly better and does rely on a monument at grey dot, which we might not otherwise prioritize quickly.

5. Our eastern exploring WB is pretty far south. Do we want to come up N and get contact with Bing? We know he's working on a part of the tree that we could get some KTB on as we follow him there, and have had some discussion about whether we want to compete for wonders we think he might be pursuing, so seeing what his progress is could be helpful info. Or is it better to see whether there is another ocean boundary down in the SE, like the one between us and SD? If there is, we could then head north along it and get to Bing eventually anyway.

6. Masonry-Currency gets us our stone (and further toward potential HG if that's in the cards), and can double furs/ivory in select cities that we want to grow large like the capital, so seems reasonable. Monotheism gets us access to OR and leads toward Monarchy, but are we ready to do a revolt anytime soon to get into it? After Currency it seems like IW-Compass would be a bigger priority; we are behind on commerce more than on infrastructure buildings.

[scooter]

Yeah, I spent a little bit of time figuring out the timings. The double settler transport isn't quite as tough as it sounds, though there is a little delay. But here's how it works out.





This spot would get settled T84. It lines up perfectly as a WB makes it to the first ring Fish on T83, which means it would immediately be working Fish. That should get early growth moving fast. There's also not much inefficiency with the Galley because it works via dropping settler on the desert hill during the Galley's T83 move, which then immediately swings south. Also, a second Galley is coming roughly 2T behind which will have a pair of Archers so we can properly stock these islandsd. The scouting WB along the south is going to scout this island to the east and hopefully spot the neighbor in that direction so we can get a sense of how safe we are. If I spot a roaming Galley for example, I can delay things if it feels necessary.


Also yeah, Bing contact could be the next thing it does potentially, but in the short term I really want to know where our east neighbor is. Unless our "east" neighbor is also the "west" neighbor in Superdeath, which would mean we have a lot of breathing room. This gets into a little bit whether the player spread is M shaped or W shaped. If W, we likely have a lot of breathing room east. It's sort of surprising nobody has made contact from that direction actually, which lends some credence to the possibility. Honestly, I haven't thought too hard about the player distribution.





This would then get settled 3 turns later on T86. I haven't worked out the precise timing, but I think Y'Ghatan can produce a WB for the Fish close to immediately, and one of the workers is going to road his way south and improve the Deer. I think this plan works fairly well.

[Zed-F]

It sounds like galley 2 will dump archers on our northern border cities, and should hop the scout to the next island east, and probably peek N to make contact with Bing before coming home for its next job, whereas galley 1 might be coming back immediately to ferry workers where needed (Y’Ghatan horse, stone city or tundra?) after dropping off the second settler.

Then our SE fishing boat can concentrate on eastward exploration without needing to worry about coming north until it becomes convenient to do so.

[Commodore]

Man, I always undervalue Creative for archi maps, your dots show the pain.