[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[scooter]

Wanted to get some thoughts on settling priority. I'm going to treat the east and west fronts separately as they will be supported by different halves of the empire. The eastern front has fewer cities and even fewer workers needed, whereas the western front has far more. So while I want to nail down priority, I'm not going to compare priority cross-theater, if that makes sense. I'm also going to name the islands, that way we can discuss them and not risk directional typos. Let's do the east first as I think it's much simpler.


S Island





4 cities need to be settled over here. I already have one settler in the area (you can see by Capustan), as well as Capustan/Cawn are prebuilding Galleons. Black Coral is a good settler whip option for a second, and we'll go from there. The workers are also running out of things to improve on this front, so it should be easy to transfer a couple of them along with the settlers. I do have a few spare units, although cities will technically be safe undefended for awhile.



I think the order here is pretty straightforward. I think it should go Blue -> Orange -> Black -> Brown. I'm gonna call it Brown anyway. Blue is killer with a few first ring tiles, and Orange is not that far off. Black is a fine fishing village, and Brown is an acceptable filler site to connect everything together. The main logistical issue over here will actually be work boat production. We will likely want to have cities in the area produce them and send them over.


I'm open to moving Orange 1W to let it start with the better seafood and be 1 tile closer to our core and harder to boat. In this case I figured the hill defense and more convenient canal were worthwhile, but I could see a case for that. Actually, 1N is not crazy either. Any strong feelings?



Skinny Island





(I am going to assume the next section is NOT accessible via Galley for the purposes of this post as I feel that is the most likely, but we can tweak ordering accordingly if I'm wrong.)

My feeling here is we should settle Red and Green first, then settle ice spots, and then circle back for Yellow once Red and Green are online. Green is the location I'm most undecided about. I'm not sure I love that it directly faces Superdeath, even though I'm trying to place it on a hill. There is an alternate config here - move Green 1NE onto the hill next to the Sheep, and then move Yellow 1N of the Incense. Of course, this means Yellow has no food, as it was going to take the Sheep, so that's the major downside here. Alternatively, we could move it 1N of the Horse if we're OK giving up the hill, but giving Superdeath a flashing "please land here" sign seems worse somehow. Of course, settling on Green Dot is not necessarily way better as there's still a hill adjacent to it.


In general, my concern about Green is the difficulty of ferrying units in from the core. What you really want on island fronts is to be able to quickly shuttle units in and out. For example, if Red and Green were on the east coasts, a Galleon stack east of Yellow could "defend" all 3 cities. A compromise might be to leave them as-is and use Forts to accomplish this. Or we just stack them all.


In any case, I think order here is Green -> Red -> <next section> -> Yellow.


Ice Island





The caveat up front is if I discover Green is Galley-accessible, I think we drop everything and settle it first. I think this is moderately unlikely, but entirely possible of course.


So assuming this island is pure Astro, I think these dots are pretty good. They are very close to Cairo, so I think we really do care about the hill defenses here. While it's probably also true for Skinny Island, I think especially for these cities we want to send Missionaries along with the settlers so that we can get all the second ring seafood in right away. It's vaguely possible we'll be in/near a second GA by this point I guess, at which point Caste Artists are of course a possibility. But also, these cities are high in food, low in production, and absent in forests. That means these will be hardcore whipping posts for the essential infra, and that means OR making that more efficient and religious happy will both be very helpful.


Now, there's a big alternative here to what I just said. While floodplains usually means cottage spam, there's a case to be made to workshop this whole island. This game may be over before there will be Villages/Towns here, and Watermills are too blah without Serfdom. The Workshops would be 2/2/1 immediately, but we are close to Guilds which would make them 2/3/1. Of course, the plan would be to have at least two more MoM GAs, which likely means a stint in Caste, which means 2/4/1, and in a GA that means 2/5/2. These will take an absolute eternity to build though, but I think it's probably worth the upside here. This would go a long ways towards making this island self-sustaining. Any thoughts on this?


Finally, I think the order over here - again assuming it's pure Astro island - is Blue -> White -> Orange -> Green. However, these cities are quite samey, so I'm not sure how much the order really matters.


A combined order for the western theater then would be Skinny-Green-> Skinny-Red-> Ice-Blue-> Ice-White-> Ice-Orange-> Ice-Green-> Skinny-Yellow. Something like that sound about right? I definitely need a million more workers as this will be the most worker-intensive area of the empire, especially if I want these cities online ASAP.

[scooter]

If we aren’t settling anything in the SE then I think I like the idea of that caravel heading S through the channel then W to help explore northern islands that might be Astro locked (or lockable) in Bing’s far north and NW, at least up to the point where we find there’s nothing but ice. Our SW caravel has a lot of stuff to check out still, e.g. find out if there is another Astro island W of West Island, and could probably use some help. After that our SE caravel could explore Bing’s current N coast and then keep heading east.

I guess it could check out the N coast of that marble island on the way. Yuris did go for Aesthetics and this seems like it could have been where their borders came into conflict.

I would be pretty surprised if there was anything accessible for us north of Bing, or really any other Astro islands at all. I suppose it's possible between Skinny Island and Superdeath, but it looks unlikely to fit. I am checking the Bing/Yuris front though with my Caravel in Bing's core that was watching his defenses.

[Zed-F]

Re: Caravels -- as you see fit as far as which caravel does what, just thinking that we need more scouting power in our west than our east right now, since we are giving up for the moment on settling anything to our SE.

Re: East core notes -- Is it worth trying to chain irrigation through the plains adjacent to Darujbistan up to the rice? I notice you have a workshop on one of the tiles we'd need to irrigate to do that, so maybe having hammer tiles available is more important than getting +1 food on the rice.

Re: Orange -- I guess it depends on whether it's valuable to have a length 3 road between Blue and Orange for easier troop sharing and having iron first ring for an improvable tile before borders pop, but these seem really minor since we expect to control the seas near here and plan to ship over missionaries (certainly for Orange) so borders should pop relatively soon. Probably settling on a hill is better than on flat, but I don't have a strong preference for which hill, & think the southern one for less overlap is fine as well.

Re: Skinny island -- I think we leave the dots as they are and put forts on the hill NE of Green dot and maybe the forest E of Red dot so they are Galleon-accessible from the east coast by a fleet NE of yellow dot. I think we'd rather not put forts on river tiles. Agree that if Ice Island is galley-accessible then this gets deprioritized in favour of ensuring we block the choke point(s).

Re: Ice Island -- Absolutely I would be thinking of making the island, or at least the west coast, a naval production center. If this island were not right on the border we might think about putting National Epic / Globe here instead and focusing on food, but given proximity to Cairo I'm not confident in this idea. Otherwise, we have way too much food here for efficient whipping if we tried to cottage all of these tiles, and we aren't going to be in Slavery forever. We might try to cottage a couple if we are worried about finances but I think mostly we want production. On the east coast, we don't have as much food or flood plains tiles available, so we might consider focusing more on cottages there, depending on what we find in the central mountain area. And of course Green Dot is probably not getting any of these land tiles once Orange is big enough to want exclusive control of them. I'd probably consider Blue - Orange - White - Green, unless we need to prioritize Green to block access, to get more food resources in culture sooner while we are still in Slavery. That said, the order of White vs Orange is probably a minor point.

Re: combined order -- Does ability to produce workboats locally matter for this? We are going to need workboats to make ocean crossings or be produced locally. If we need to produce workboats on Ice Island locally, it might be a good idea to slip Ice Blue in before Skinny Red so we have an earlier city there to help the others with workboats as more of them get settled.

Re: SE of Ice Island -- it's possible there's more we could claim here, especially if there is galley access to more islands in this direction. This could upset all these plans if true, so we'll need to confirm.

Re: W of Skinny Island -- if there is anything here, it's gonna be pretty small. Worth checking but only after we confirm there's nothing else near Ice Island we could reasonably stake a claim to.

[scooter]

Bulb time.






Hit both bulbs and Astro is in. My score is absolutely exploding right now, so there's not really any more hiding on what's going on.





I think I see what's going on between Bing and Yuris. Will get more clarity next turn, but these are some weird looking borders.





I discovered a small bug in the game! Of course, if you select a tech you cannot research yet, the game will select all techs on the path towards that tech, favoring the cheapest path forward. However, this does not account for beakers researched. So in this case, the game believes my fastest route is through Theology rather than Civil Service because Theology is a cheaper tech. Not an important bug at all, but still interesting.


Also, remember how I said I was going to be overflowing potentially too many beakers?






Never mind having enough to 1T 828b Paper at 0% science, we have enough to 1T 1380b Guilds at 0% science. There is a tiny part of me considering throwing this overflow down the Music line after Paper because Aesthetics-Lit-Music would likely all be 1T techs. If the Music Artist is still there after I finish Paper next turn, I think I'm doing it. The ability to build culture could be helpful for my next settling spree anyway. Plus it would get my consecutive turns completing a tech streak up to like 7T, and that would be very fun. I will be shocked if it stays there, but maybe I can catch Yuris napping here.





Two settlers, a Galleon, a Missionary, and some Workers are all here in the area ready to go. A Work Boat will be coming from Aren a few turns behind all of this. (Unta is working on generating some GPP at the moment as I realized my 2-man GA is potentially too far away if I don't.) That Pale Galley has enough hammers coming in to complete as a Galleon next turn, FYI.






Eastern front is not quite as stocked, but it has less to do. Cawn/Capustan will have Galleons coming out, and of course I have the option to upgrade this Galley to speed it by a couple turns. Ubaryd you can just barely see building a second settler for S Island. By the way, yes, I do plan to chain-irrigate the Rice over here. I built that workshop in the way for the Golden Age as it was really handy in GA + Caste, but yes the plains tiles will get farms now that I've finished Civil Service.

[scooter]

Re: Orange -- I guess it depends on whether it's valuable to have a length 3 road between Blue and Orange for easier troop sharing and having iron first ring for an improvable tile before borders pop, but these seem really minor since we expect to control the seas near here and plan to ship over missionaries (certainly for Orange) so borders should pop relatively soon. Probably settling on a hill is better than on flat, but I don't have a strong preference for which hill, & think the southern one for less overlap is fine as well.

Re: Skinny island -- I think we leave the dots as they are and put forts on the hill NE of Green dot and maybe the forest E of Red dot so they are Galleon-accessible from the east coast by a fleet NE of yellow dot. I think we'd rather not put forts on river tiles. Agree that if Ice Island is galley-accessible then this gets deprioritized in favour of ensuring we block the choke point(s).

Re: Ice Island -- Absolutely I would be thinking of making the island, or at least the west coast, a naval production center. If this island were not right on the border we might think about putting National Epic / Globe here instead and focusing on food, but given proximity to Cairo I'm not confident in this idea. Otherwise, we have way too much food here for efficient whipping if we tried to cottage all of these tiles, and we aren't going to be in Slavery forever. We might try to cottage a couple if we are worried about finances but I think mostly we want production. On the east coast, we don't have as much food or flood plains tiles available, so we might consider focusing more on cottages there, depending on what we find in the central mountain area. And of course Green Dot is probably not getting any of these land tiles once Orange is big enough to want exclusive control of them. I'd probably consider Blue - Orange - White - Green, unless we need to prioritize Green to block access, to get more food resources in culture sooner while we are still in Slavery. That said, the order of White vs Orange is probably a minor point.

Re: combined order -- Does ability to produce workboats locally matter for this? We are going to need workboats to make ocean crossings or be produced locally. If we need to produce workboats on Ice Island locally, it might be a good idea to slip Ice Blue in before Skinny Red so we have an earlier city there to help the others with workboats as more of them get settled.

Re: SE of Ice Island -- it's possible there's more we could claim here, especially if there is galley access to more islands in this direction. This could upset all these plans if true, so we'll need to confirm.

Re: W of Skinny Island -- if there is anything here, it's gonna be pretty small. Worth checking but only after we confirm there's nothing else near Ice Island we could reasonably stake a claim to.

Won't go blow-by-blow, but good thoughts all around and generally agree. Sounds like we agree on the big idea of turning Ice Island into a production pump.


The Work Boat question is going to have to be a mix of things. On Ice Island, the reality is most of the seafood is inaccessible prior to a border pop anyway, so in a lot of cases those cities may be doing 2 -> 1 WB whips. However, I definitely intend to build several work boats from the core and send them over the ocean. Pale for example can nearly 1T them at this stage. I think the short answer is I'm definitely going to send some WBs over the ocean, but there will be limits to how practical this is for all of them. However, the first wave of cities are pretty strong and can also chip in on producing WBs like you said. I'll look at delaying Skinny-Red in favor of Ice-Blue for this reason as it's not a crazy idea. The main barrier is just that it'll be a couple turns delay until a second Galleon arrives on this front, so there would be some waiting around.

[Zed-F]

Okay so if I want to evaluate the risk in going for the Music artist, assuming it doesn’t fall when we hit Paper, it seems kind of low, mainly because (a) we can interrupt the tech chain at any point if it does fall, (b) Aesthetics & Literature are cheap for us at this point, and ( c) we will be finished all our time-critical stuff so there’s not a ton of impact due to lost time if we get through say Literature and Music falls to Yuris. We are building a ton of expansion stuff so if we don’t get access to Castles for trade routes ASAP, that’s probably ok, we do want them soon but not necessarily immediately. So trying to steal Music might not work, but has limited downside if it doesn’t, and seems like a reasonable plan.

[scooter]

Okay so if I want to evaluate the risk in going for the Music artist, assuming it doesn’t fall when we hit Paper, it seems kind of low, mainly because (a) we can interrupt the tech chain at any point if it does fall, (b) Aesthetics & Literature are cheap for us at this point, and ( c) we will be finished all our time-critical stuff so there’s not a ton of impact due to lost time if we get through say Literature and Music falls to Yuris. We are building a ton of expansion stuff so if we don’t get access to Castles for trade routes ASAP, that’s probably ok, we do want them soon but not necessarily immediately. So trying to steal Music might not work, but has limited downside if it doesn’t, and seems like a reasonable plan.

Pretty much my thoughts. The worst-case scenario is we go Paper-Aest-Lit, and then Music Artist falls between turns. And even that wouldn't be that bad as Aest/Lit would mostly be completed with overflow - would be likely saving gold while finishing them before committing into Music. And because it's sequential turns, if we get to Music and it hasn't fallen, we'll get it. The upside is so huge - much easier 2 and 3-man GAs - that it seems like a no-brainer to not at least try. Risk/reward feels good now. (I do slightly regret the Feudalism research which could have been spent on this, but I honestly thought it was going to fall a few turns ago.)

[Zed-F]

I would have prioritized the sure-fire extra XP from Vassalage, which we know we need to research anyway, before gambling on the Music artist, even if we thought of this earlier. Unlike the GP generation for the second GA, getting into Vassalage while we could was more time-critical, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. It doesn’t really cost us anything if we miss the Artist and GA #2 comes a little later as a result; it just means we have a more developed empire when we do throw the GA.

[scooter]

Opened the turn to this from Bing.






Clearly he wants me to take the other side of their cold war. I moved some Caravels, and I believe I've unraveled the mystery of what happened between these two.





A LOT going on here. First off, the Music Artist fell, so that discussion was for nothing . Not a big deal. This is an absolutely bonkers city plant from Yuris. However, it netted him Marble which got him Great Library and another marble wonder I'm blanking on, so he probably feels it was worth it. Thinking back to past turns, it appears things unfolded like this.


1) Yuris settles Marble city in Bing's face, Bing responds by settling a city directly south of it on the same island. (It's possible the order is reversed or was near-simultaneous - remember the turn where Bing settled 3 cities in one turn.)


2) Relations deteriorate and Yuris elects to whip a million swords and ferry them over - specifically 10 units on 5 galleys. If I assume the war party was 9 swords, 1 axe, and 5 galleys as it appears, that is a hefty cost of 645 hammers.


3) Bing responds by beelining Feudalism. Well, by beelining I mean except for the turn where he lit an entire turn of commerce on fire to espionage spend. He also builds a ton of Triremes which appears to have been crucial.


4) Yuris shows up and somehow doesn't have enough? Either that or he did not expect to get stopped dead by Triremes. He doesn't even declare war.


(Note: turn order is Bing -> Yuris -> Me)


5) Bing now presses the counter-attack by declaring war and pushing forward with Triremes, threatening to wipe Yuris entire raiding party at sea!


6) Yuris responds by simply leaving his entire force in this awful culturally crushed city and just leaves.



So, Yuris invested north of 700h once you count the Triremes only to leave the attacking force behind to defend a bad city and go home. Brutal outcome from him. Also rough result from Bing, as he invested enormously to defend himself and beeling Feudalism. Absolutely fantastic outcome for me. I see no reason to get involved at this point despite the fact that Yuris' entire army is apparently stranded far from home. If my units were still on the east front, maybe I'd consider something, but I've already scattered them throughout my empire in anticipation of the upcoming settling spree. So I am going to take the unforced errors here and say thank you very much, keep my head down, and play my game.






I am not 100% sure yet, but it does look like this island is indeed Astro-gated. That would be great news, but I should be able to confirm/deny next turn. It does look like it will be the end of my Astro-land though.





Finished Paper EoT, and first Galleon rolls off the line in the west.





Meanwhile in the east, none could complete, but Capustan will complete next turn, while Hissar will the following turn. I am debating on upgrading the Galley next to Black Coral. However, it would only speed up settling the island by 1T at the most, if that, so maybe I won't bother.





Just to illustrated how much I overflowed tech-wise, it was nearly enough to also 1T Theology on another consecutive turn of 0% Science. My plan here is still Construction-Engineering - both of which will likely be 1T - but I'm having some doubts. My tech is speeding up so much that I'm still having concerns that Castles will simply not be worth it, in which case maybe I should instead be beelining harder. For example, heading straight towards Gunpowder would give me some options as well, not to mention buffing my workshops along the way at Guilds. Gunpowder would let me build Muskets, and also unlock Privateers which means I'm already ahead of the curve if/when someone else gets Galleons.


That said, Engineering is required for Chemistry anyway, and the bridges/movement would remove some major sources of annoyances, so I should probably just do the simple thing and grab Construction-Engineering now. In general I think bottom of the tree is the way to win here.

[Zed-F]

I think I would also stick with the plan to get Construction + Engineering next. I can’t really see Castles not being worth it. If winning by fighting until others are demoralized at the size of our empire, at some point we need a source of siege; in naval warfare that means Frigates and Chemistry. If winning by space, our time between tech completions will fall off in the long run without castles, and we're about to incur a whole bunch of maintenance costs by increasing our empire size by 50%. Either way it seems like the simple and clear call to make keeping our advantage easy. But I also agree that Guilds is next after that, and Gunpowder could well follow.

After Guilds our tech plan needs to factor in when our next GA will be, because we need to decide what civics we want to target to begin and end with during that GA, and whether we will follow it immediately with another. For instance -- how much better is Free Market for us than Mercantilism? That will inform whether we want to pursue it sooner or later. If our plan is to go straight up the bottom of the tree toward Steel and Military Science, and focus on a more domination-like path, the answer might be 'not enough better'. If we don't plan to actually attack anyone, though (read: Bing), then I don't know that the military beeline is really needed, when we expect to already have a sizeable military advantage and be able to easily keep it even while diverting for more powerful economic techs, splitting our attention between the bottom and middle of the tree. Regardless, we’ve got another 3 techs or so before we need another bigger chat about techs and plans and timings.

Absolutely agree that we should not involve ourselves in the Bing war. To be frank in his place I think he ought to have been happy with fending off the Yuris attack and not try to build up for a counter attack, since he’s already in the weakest position. Bing going on the offensive is awesome for us but we need time to finish our Astro expansion and tech up to stuff that kills medieval units efficiently before we can take advantage. And if we do decide to eat someone, Bing is the obvious choice, so there’s little point in antagonizing Yuris.