[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Tarkeel]

Screenshot from some turns ago:

In my mind I see us taking at the very least Orinoco Flow and Humming. Part of the appeal to me is that taking Cairo's lands won't really expand our borders much, and if we get all of it might even make our empire more compact by wrapping around to the ice holdings.

[scooter]

Screenshot from some turns ago:

In my mind I see us taking at the very least Orinoco Flow and Humming. Part of the appeal to me is that taking Cairo's lands won't really expand our borders much, and if we get all of it might even make our empire more compact by wrapping around to the ice holdings.

Ok so the motivation for going after Cairo specifically at whale island is mostly that it’s nearby, not that we want whale island in particular, since we should have our own whales soon and we aren’t that worried about defensive depth there. What about his ice islands near our ice island, south rather than north? I guess it’s similarly close to our advanced forces, but not so close to any reinforcements.

I agree with Tarkeel about what fits best with our empire, but I think Zed-F has a good question here that I bolded. Because the easy answer to "what do we do with our standing army/navy" might actually be to use what we just did with Superdeath as a model. Some pictures from today's turn to illustrate.






Here's Whale Island. The challenge here is obvious. Sure it's got only two "good" defenders, but it is on a hill, and importantly there are upgradeable units, plenty of pop for dry whips, etc. It would not be easy to crack with the current army. Importantly, it would also be culturally crushed for awhile, which implies a need to actually conquest, which Tarkeel refers to above.





But I wonder if this isn't a more sensible set of targets? These cities are isolated, and them falling would make Ice Island much more secure. They wouldn't be culturally crushed afterwards, and it would take the wind out of another opponent - one who seems to be trying to use the distraction to aim for economic techs rather than tech Galleons - which is he still quite far from possessing. This means he can't really counter-attack either.


Or, let's consider Bing.





Yes, we could take another look at Hell's Gut or Cytosin. Maybe even Port Ceto. But these are all reasonably defended and somewhat far from our existing navy/marines.





Meanwhile, this has a giant "capture me" sign on it. A bunch of unpromoted Archers would absolutely melt to Cover Muskets, though it does appear some have promos available. And this would be a really good city that is far more exposed to Bing than it is to us. Hollow Earth could probably be a plausible follow-up capture, especially in the sense that it would not be culturally crushed.





This mostly fogged area around The Rig is also fairly tempting. I don't even know what's here, but one dollar says it's lightly defended given geopolitics in the game. His Axe makes me think he's in the middle of walking a settler up to the ice just north of it where there's a spot that could be claimed. These are spots that I bet are fairly open that we could reach quickly.





I did reposition units in order to possibly do this. We aren't committed to this by any means, but with SD taking peace, these units (right under tech indicator) were suddenly free, so I'm moving them in a way that preserves options.





Same here where a spare empty Galleon in the region allowed me to chain-move these 3 spare Muskets that were earmarked for Hovenkeep capture 8 tiles this turn.


Any strong feelings on these options? This would just be opportunistic fishing. I'm positioned more against Bing due to 1) geography and 2) Bing's tipoff of impending Yuris attack (), but it's not 100% clear that #2 is indeed happening. I could try to diplo with Yuris, but I'm hesitant to do so.


The economic side of the turn coming up shortly.

[scooter]

Some other things from the turn.





I whipped the settler up in Bastion (top of Skinny Island) which was slightly painful as it got off nice tiles, but it's in the interest of ensuring I win the settling race for this spot. I think it's well worth it. Trygalle's settler can be the canal filler potentially, or it could be a spare for a raze-replace if I have need of one elsewhere.





13c against 10g expenses - instant profit. I love it.





This is a bit more of a longshot. I do have a settler building that could be en route, but it'll be a few turns. It's possible this one does not work out. However, the Galleon it'll be on already has a defender and missionary on it, not to mention there are idle workers in the area, so it could at least be useful very quickly. Also, this OR a possible Bing expedition could give us a use for our world tour work boat that is still in the area.

Backup plan for the settler is that filler spot just to the west of this area.





Here's something I need to do the math on. Mercantilism is really good, but it's possible Free Market is just better for us pretty soon. During the Golden Age I'll be able to use the free specialist in every city thanks to Caste, but it is worth noting that right now in 13/30 cities, the specialist would be a citizen. Meanwhile, the +1 trade route would average almost 4c per city in every city - just an instant 100-120 commerce. I think we're going to want Mercantilism for much of the Golden Age, but there's a real chance Free Market will be the better exit civic.


(Using the free specialist to pop borders in some of the newer cities will be nice!)





Completed Economics end of turn with just a couple beakers to spare. Also, the Bank completion in the capital has pushed my 0% gold savings rate up to ~450gpt. My plan next turn is to do a round of whips before firing the GA in order to revolt into Caste/Merc/Pacifism. The Pacifism stint won't be permanent - I'm being a bit lax with my great person generation if I'm being honest. Needing the Economics Merchant to get into the 2-man GA has tampered some of my more starry-eyed ideas of perma-GA. However, I still have the Physics and Communism GPs sitting and waiting for me, so realistically all I need to do is generate one non-Sci/Spy while delaying Nationhood, and I'll get my 3-man MoM eventually. I definitely won't need 12T of Pacifism for that. In fact, I may stick in OR for 5T, then do the Pacifism stint, and then revolt out at the end. I'll figure it out. A quick Theology backfill for Theocracy later in the GA may make sense. Free Religion at Liberalism would not be crazy either.





Yuris is still definitely building units. His supposed attack on Bing is probably real.

[Zed-F]

Re: great persons: How hard is it to generate a couple spares? I’m not sure on how expensive GPP are relative to Pacifism and our current generation rate. I think even if we just get a couple extra merchants we could run trade missions / eventually found a corporation with, that might be better than staying in OR when this is likely one of our last real opportunities to make more GP. But in the long run, we would need Rep to even consider staying in Mercantilism; without that, Free Market or State Property would certainly be better.

Re: opportunistic attacks on Bing/Cairo - sounds good though we need a Privateer down by Cairo to see what’s defending there and we probably want a couple spare ground units for the Bing attack in case of unlucky die rolls. Of course we hit these from the fog.

Re: pink/black dot - still think this mainly depends on us having enough Frigates there to dissuade SD from doing more than grumbling about it.

[scooter]

Re: great persons: How hard is it to generate a couple spares? I’m not sure on how expensive GPP are relative to Pacifism and our current generation rate. I think even if we just get a couple extra merchants we could run trade missions / eventually found a corporation with, that might be better than staying in OR when this is likely one of our last real opportunities to make more GP. But in the long run, we would need Rep to even consider staying in Mercantilism; without that, Free Market or State Property would certainly be better.

The answer is that generating 2 Great People will not be that hard, but generating 3 would be fairly challenging. My next GP threshold is 600, which means a third one would be 800.


Reposting empire shot from a couple turns ago in spoilers for reference here.

So, generating GP. Each GP generates 3gpp/turn. In GA + Pacifism, this means 9gpp/turn. So, hypothetically, a city working 6 specialists would generate 54 gpp/turn during Pacifism + GA. However, this means it would take 13 turns to hit the 700GP threshold, which simply isn't good enough. So we're looking for cities that can comfortably run more like 8+. My empire really only has like 4 cities that even have the pop for that. And some of them can quickly be ruled out.


For example, Pale might be size 16, but it has a food surplus of 3 right now. By getting off the workshops and working all foods, it still can only run 5-6 GP comfortably. And I'm not really interested in starving the city. In addition, it's exactly the kind of city you want running at full capacity during a GA anyway. Li Heng is in a similar boat - it has a perfectly solid food surplus, but it's out of reach of shareable crazy food tiles. In fact, there's really just two cities that really hit the spot right now.


Unta

The capital can comfortably run 8 Specialists with its food surplus by getting off hammer tiles and working all foods in reach. This is good for 72gpp/turn without foodbox loss. Add on the buildings, and it gets to 84 gpp/turn. Factoring in the fact that it already has some GPP, it's looking at ~7T to hit the 600 threshold or ~8T to hit the 700 threshold. So this will be one of them.


Ubaryd

This city has quietly grown to size 13 - well above the other cities in this area. This is mostly because when this wave of cities were settled, it initially was given more than its fair share of food, which means it whipped all its infra early. Cultural concerns played a role here too. Since then it's given away food, but it's barely been whipped over the last 40T, so it's steadily grown. Irrigating its Rice also helped. When working the right config, Ubaryd can run 9 Specialists without starving at all. However, it's got no GPP buildup nor buildings, so it's starting from true 0 and generates 81 gpp/turn in this config. This means 8T to hit 600 and 9T to hit 700.


Past these two, it's hard to see another city contributing. And worth noting of course we're talking about 8-9T of Pacifism, so yeah, we definitely need to be in it immediately.



Caveat - Aren and Mercantilism

I wrote all of this up and forgot to factor in the free Mercantilism Specialist. And I don't feel like recalculating right this second. So if you want to mentally factor that and maybe a dash of mild starvation in, yeah it's not too hard to squint and shorten these timespans by a turn or two without much pain. Or maybe this + re-assigning a seafood from Itko Kan to Aren might make it possible for Aren to squeak over the 600 threshold, and then we're looking at Ubaryd/Unta for 700/800. Maybe that's worth it. I think it starts to get marginal around that point as I'd like to work tiles in these cities during the GA too, but I could see it maybe being worth it.

In the Aren example, I believe it can get to 7 Specialists with some small food loss, so that + Merc specialists means it could get to 600 in 9T. But that's really difficult and would require Pacifism for the entire GA (not necessarily a huge issue). Maybe in this extreme case it might even be worth starving the city to get it out in 8T, because when I said 9T, I really meant 8.3T. It currently has a nearly-full foodbox, so it has some food to burn. It should not be that hard to set up Unta/Ubaryd to complete GP in the 2 successive turns or close to it.



TL;DR: Yes it's possible to get out 2 GP without much pain, and I think it's possible to get out 3 with some mild pain. In addition, Ubaryd/Aren could be pure GPP pools. Unta would not be, though it would be a high % of whatever I choose.

[Zed-F]

So it sounds like we could get enough GP to theoretically launch our 3rd GA without using Communism/Physics GPs (not guaranteed) but getting a 4th GA would require some real contortions like landing Sid’s Sushi so we have enough food to grow big enough to have enough specialists. Contortions that are probably not too likely since the game should be over by then. I still like generating 3 GPPs if we think we can get good value out of them e.g. with trade missions or trying to land Sid’s eventually, but it doesn’t really seem like we should be thinking about saving a great spy for a 4th GA.

[scooter]

So it sounds like we could get enough GP to theoretically launch our 3rd GA without using Communism/Physics GPs (not guaranteed) but getting a 4th GA would require some real contortions like landing Sid’s Sushi so we have enough food to grow big enough to have enough specialists. Contortions that are probably not too likely since the game should be over by then. I still like generating 3 GPPs if we think we can get good value out of them e.g. with trade missions or trying to land Sid’s eventually, but it doesn’t really seem like we should be thinking about saving a great spy for a 4th GA.

I looked into it, and I'm just going to pop 2 Great People. The Aren plan is technically possible, but it involves generating the 3 great people on the 9th, 10th, and 11th turns of the GA respectively, and that's just too fragile. If something comes up where I need to swap out of Caste/Pacifism sooner, the whole thing falls apart. Not to mention it's a pain to tie up some of these cities for so long. If I had been planning ahead it would have been fairly easy - I did whip Aren a few turns ago - but it's whatever.


Instead using just Unta/Ubaryd, I can have them popped on the 6th and 7th turns of the GA respectively, and I could probably speed both by 1T if I really wanted to squeeze. Also, between these two + Communism Spy + Physics Scientist, the chances that 3 of the 4 will be distinct for a 3-man GA is extremely high. So I think this is the way to go.


I'm specifically going to aim for a Merchant from Ubaryd, where my odds will be ~93% Merchant and ~7% Scientist, and at Unta I'll aim for an Artist which will be around 90% with a mish-mash of other possibilities. If I land both a 7% Scientist from Ubaryd AND a ~4% Spy from Unta and draw dead again, well sucks to be me. If RNG goes my way, I can fire a GA with just Physics OR Communism. Or I could tech both, fire a 3-man with Scientist/Artist/Spy, and save the Merchant for Sid's. The latter would be the most fun, but I'm skeptical the game makes it that far if I'm being really honest.

[Zed-F]

Seems good to me. I do think we want at least the 2 great people so we have the best possible odds of getting unique ones, especially since we've already gotten a low-odds roll once already.

[Tarkeel]

Re: Operation Frozen Dreamland: I'm slightly annoyed that I didn't think of this, but it seems very worthwhile. Yes, the cities are fresher and not as developed, but also much easier to both take and hold. It should also remove their hope of outscaling us down the line.

[scooter]

I whipped a bunch of miscellaneous things in today's turn, and then I pressed the button.










First off, I seriously got a cultural revolt against me on the first turn this city was out of revolt. WTF. This meant me forcing two Artists here to quickly pop borders and settle things down is seriously delayed. In addition, apparently city flipping after conquest is allowed here? I thought I was secure from this.


Also, notice Cairo's Golden Age there. He was sitting on a few Great People. And houston, we have a problem.





Cairo completed Education - surely with bulb assistance - and then fired a GA and is teching through his gold right now. He is surely teching Liberalism right now. Fortunately, I can 2T it, so unless he can finish it next turn, I may be ok? However, his GNP is enormous right now, so I think he's got mass wealth/tech builds everywhere going on. His GNP is high enough that it seems vaguely plausible he may snipe it next turn. I guess we'll see. I am more setup to hit Bing's islands than his islands in Operation Frozen Dreamland (love the name), but if he dares revolt out of Slavery, I think I've got to wheel into his islands instead. I may want to do it anyway.





Good news is I'll get vision on this city next turn. I love these little ice paths that you can squeeze a boat through - I've found a couple of them now. I assume these were mapmaker built and not natural?





Meanwhile on the domestic end, obligatory GA picture. (I'm about to ferry a worker over to hook our Wheat at Kartool which will solve the impending health issue.)





Ubaryd doing some heavy lifting for Great People. I may speed it by 1T, TBD.





Meanwhile, Letheras is about to pop. 10F surplus and picking up these beautiful 2/5/2 Caste GA Floodplains Workshops. I love it. The last piece of critical infrastructure is about to finish, and this city is going to grow grow grow during this GA.





Empire shot. I tried to clean up as many signs as possible. I'm staged for Bing, and if his islands are still lightly defended next turn, I'll push in and see if I can get anything. If he loads up, I may just wheel around on Cairo. But I really do want the island just south of S Island (just out of sight here), so we'll see.





The Rival Best is Cairo burning at 100% tech in a GA. It's so high that he's got to be also running research builds. We'll see next turn if he's got enough juice to finish it. It seems somewhat likely the more I think about it. His Lib target is surely Astronomy. If not, I'll finish Liberalism and probably take Steel.


If he does land it, I should probably stop fooling around and just tech MilSci (~3T) and start building Grens. Not to mention wheel boats towards him and try to choke a little bit. If Yuris would just commit already to attacking Bing, it would make life a lot easier. Bing sent me another frantic diplo asking for help, which I ignored.