[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

SD continues to whip down too quick and not emphasize commerce enough, having the opposite problem of Cairo; SD is 100 score behind already. I wonder if his saving grace is the same as ours, being on the bottom of the W and consequently having more east-west expansion room than the northern spokes, providing we expand smartly to claim large back line territories. But having a lot of expansion room might not help if he doesn’t claim and defend it smartly before someone out techs him.

[scooter]

We may be in our first settler race. However, I believe we'll win it. First, that sign is wrong and it's actually 1T sooner, but also I'm shuffling over units. I'll be shocked if he has a settler AND defenders ready to go when he's just now dropping off a scout. Speaking of, we're about to settle 3 cities in rapid succession, so let's run through those.





First is TundraFish, which will actually be settled T93, not T92. (I delayed it 1T to speed up Red by 1T since the latter could be competitive.) There's enough food here to get the basic buildings whipped in, and the grass forest hill will likely want to be mined, so that's one chop for this city available too. Will probably slip in a Monument in order to bring the Horse in early so the Worker can move on.





On the same turn is this. Settler will get dropped T92 and settled T93. An Archer will be dropped over there next turn to "claim" the spot, and a second Archer will be available a couple turns after settling it. The southern Worker is hooking the Gold, and then it'll come up north to farm the Rice. I do have the option to share a seafood from Hissar, we'll see.






One turn later is ClammyDye. It will be initially protected by a Warrior/Archer pair, and Li Heng did just complete an Archer which could be added here. More likely that'll go in Aren for Mongolian reasons. A Work Boat is also headed up this way. This city will be very slow starting and kind of suck compared to the other two, but I think it's really important to have two dyes within our borders as well as have a foothold into the central ocean. If for example we ever decide to invade Cairo or Bing, it'll be massively important that it starts in our control instead of in theirs.





Getting close to circumnav. Obviously this holds no short-term benefits in CtH, but it'll be nice to check the box for future Cothon reasons. Speaking of, Currency is in, and the results are as expected. Here's our tech/income before/after:


Before Currency
100%: +100b -66g
50%: +50b -17g
0%: +32g


After Currency
100%: +128b, -68g
50%: +64b -6g
0%: +57g


We were not first to Currency as Bing and Yuris beat us there. I think Cairo maybe did too, though I don't remember. It helped us finish the tech 1T sooner on prereqs. The +57g at 0% is noteworthy, as most other players are saving gold right now. So I can see their (likely) 0% savings rates:


Yuris: +26gpt
Cairo: +36gpt
Bing: +32gpt


57gpt outpaces that by quite a bit, to an extent that I think I should try not to show it too much for a bit - save gold on 20% tech or something. I'm getting to a fairly strong position now, and the upcoming settler wave may attract some attention.





Demos after finishing Currency on not-quite-breakeven tech. The GNP is flattered a bit by virtue of being on a prereq-heavy tech while everyone else is gold saving, but it's still quite good. The open question now is how many techs to detour to prior to Compass. Masonry first is definitely going to happen. Past that though is up for debate.


For example, I could see a case for Monotheism-Monarchy for an OR/HR double revolt combined with unlocking all the wines and bumping my happy cap, which is still sort of limited. OR would make the Cothons even cheaper, although Expansive is doing most of the work there so it's really not that essential. I'll have to take a closer look in-game on what the actual timings would be.

[Tarkeel]

I think red dot should steal the fish from Hissar to whip out a monument ASAP; The plainshill between the wheat and fish is likely Yuri's backup or possibly primary site. Getting culture on it will be extremely important.

Agree that 20% saving is good to hide our strength.

[scooter]

I think red dot should steal the fish from Hissar to whip out a monument ASAP; The plainshill between the wheat and fish is likely Yuri's backup or possibly primary site. Getting culture on it will be extremely important.

Oh this is a good call.

[Zed-F]

There are a few points of view from which we can look at next techs.
- From a tech snowball point of view I don’t think anything beats IW - Compass. But if we are worried about attracting too much attention with Currency, this will attract more. It also opens up settling jungle to give us more defensive depth to our west. A natural follow up would be Calendar for plantations, getting dye, spices, & bananas at minimum.
- I don’t know that we get tons of value from OR just yet except in so far as it lets us spread religion happy & we may want a shrine someday. Monarchy though lets us grow pop in case we need to whip defenders in our core. Still, if we want happy, there are other ways to get it. To me, OR/Monarchy has less priority than other paths.
- Anyone wanting to seriously attack us will need a navy (& an army) — it’s much easier to defend than attack right now. Metal Casting would give us the ability to build triremes; a few of those would go a long way defensively, and unlocks forges for extra happy from our metals. As a bonus, it’s on the path to Optics, which IIRC we need fro circumnavigation to take effect. Building Forges would be a good reason to get OR… but we don’t need forges to build triremes.

I could see a case for MC before IW-Compass if we are worried about defense & attracting attention. I don’t think I would put OR/Monachy before either of these — they are on the list to get soon, but I think MC and IW-Compass-Calendar are more important, both for snowball and defending our snowball.

[Zed-F]

I think red dot should steal the fish from Hissar to whip out a monument ASAP; The plainshill between the wheat and fish is likely Yuri's backup or possibly primary site. Getting culture on it will be extremely important.

Oh this is a good call.

There is a case to be made that black dot’s settler should go instead to wheat island just to lock that down, since there is a fish to net in the area. But if we are sure we can claim that with a monument and lock it down before Yuris can get there that should be sufficient and we can get it in the next wave.

A good note is if we build that monument right away we will probably win the culture war for the fish even if Yuris does settle wheat island, making any city he puts there kind of pointless. Moreover we can always ship a warrior over to wheat island to make our intent clear.

[Tarkeel]

I think red dot should steal the fish from Hissar to whip out a monument ASAP; The plainshill between the wheat and fish is likely Yuri's backup or possibly primary site. Getting culture on it will be extremely important.

Oh this is a good call.

There is a case to be made that black dot’s settler should go instead to wheat island just to lock that down, since there is a fish to net in the area. But if we are sure we can claim that with a monument and lock it down before Yuris can get there that should be sufficient and we can get it in the next wave.

Yeah, that's a good call too. I didn't consider it before since we didn't know about the fish.

Tech-wise, I agree with what you said. One thing to consider is Feudalism and longbows in a timeframe before samurais.

[Zed-F]

Feudalism is a good thought, but Samurai are melee and we might prefer to prioritize Machinery for Crossbows and to get us closer to Optics for Caravels and circumnavigation. All of those are a ways out though. I could see us doing something like Machinery - Optics - Feudalism somewhere down the road to really solidify our defenses prior to heading toward Engineering for Castles.

[scooter]

There is a case to be made that black dot’s settler should go instead to wheat island just to lock that down, since there is a fish to net in the area. But if we are sure we can claim that with a monument and lock it down before Yuris can get there that should be sufficient and we can get it in the next wave.

A good note is if we build that monument right away we will probably win the culture war for the fish even if Yuris does settle wheat island, making any city he puts there kind of pointless. Moreover we can always ship a warrior over to wheat island to make our intent clear.

Oh this is a really good call. This is actually totally doable.





In this case it would mean chaining on T92 on the Fish via the north Galley which would result in us dropping on the Plains Hill on T93, settling on T94. It would be stretched, but being on a hill would be a really nice benefit for a front-line city. The one thing that would get tight is defensive numbers, but I don't exactly believe he's got a lot in the area given his front city was empty just a few turns ago. It's bold, but I think it might be worth it. Also, he has not really scouted this way much, so he doesn't know how far away this is from my capital, and I don't intend to sign OB, so he won't know for awhile. He may not think much of it.



As for tech, FWIW my very rough in-game estimates have IW-Compass taking around 12-15T depending on how expensive this next batch of cities are and whether I do any Wealth builds along the way. I think that's worth going straight towards after Masonry - agreed with the tech comments about prioritizing Compass before other diversions. Also, a few other details tech-wise:


* Mono-Monarchy would be around 10-12T. I agree it's not worth delaying Compass this long.

* One player has Calendar. Money is on Bing there due to his early scientists/bulbs.

* Nobody has Iron Working, so there's no fear of a Sword showing up from Yuris and hitting one of my frontline cities. However, he HAS hooked Copper, so Axes are still a concern.

* Only one player has Masonry and therefore Stone, and that's SD.

* Nobody has Aesthetics, so nobody is beelining down GL.

[Zed-F]

Ok this seems like a good plan for the current settler wave. One nice thing about wheat island is it’s not a very big stretch from red dot, Hissar, and Black Coral. We have a fair amount of local production to back it up; even if it’s mostly immature cities, there’s a lot of queues. A turn into an archer in each of these means emergency whips could get us quite a few defenders in a hurry, and we certainly won’t regret completing them later if no emergency arises.

Looking forward, after this wave I think we are going to be concentrating more on filling in gaps in our current borders and making sure our defenses are prepared for a bit. While we could conceivably continue to reach north from our core, this stretches our border defenses a lot more for each city we settle than does a city like wheat island, since everything up that way is relatively far from support and our salient is kinda thin. Grabbing white as a border fortress is one thing, and settling banana island as a westward defense fortress seems advisable once we have IW (or maybe once we are closer to Calendar), but I think we want to settle black and maybe yellow dot before we keep pushing further north. We probably have more scouting to do up that way before we send any settlers further north, anyway.