[PB63 Spoilers] Ginger and Lazteuq find a way to peace

[Ginger()]

I've been thinking about what direction to develop. I was bemoaning my split priorities and lack of early traits in previous posts but that has been more or less idle stress relief, I think Gandhi is a great leader who will pay off if this game lengthens. But what I do regret was the combination of Rome and Spiritual, to take a religion starts approaching the beaker cost for IW very quickly. The same thing plays out with Writing and Phi but to a lesser degree because Writing has benefits to all traits not just Philosophical dreams of academy. Writing would benefit any leader of Rome if it wasn't for the map geography. The number of additional cities we need to make and the availability of internal ICTR makes it pointless. I do not see this as a detriment to PHI, GPP production is quadratically retarded, slowing down as you get more. So if PHI stops working specialists for 20 turns it's not a linear loss like Financial missing out on 20 turns of cottages. As soon as the Capital swings its pop to the river tiles, I'll make sure to have the academy ready, until that point, I doubt it's worth it.

Assuming a 50% slider and capital producing 20 commerce, the Academy is 5 gpt. Lets be generous and say 8 because the library should count too. If that is delayed 20 turns that is 160 lost beakers, roughly the cost of Poly or Mono and half IW.

Whereas the roughly extra early tech (Writing becomes Sailing or Masonry), extra settler (Library 90H), or extra worker (7 turns of specialists worked would be 56H of plainshill mines). Now its not like the tech, settler, or worker are appearing out of thin air in this exchange, no, we do need to get libraries, specialists, and tech Writing eventually (Fun fact, writing is one of the few techs that you can narrow down to being the only one left available to research, gating the rest of the tech tree). But the question is, which is of greater benefit for us to have 20 turns before the other?
In essence, is 160 beakers worth 20 turns of city growth and 20 worker turns? I don't think so.

Tl:DR I don't see a need to go for early Writing this game, at least not until the Capital stops producing Settlers/Workers and starts growing onto Cottages around the late turn 60s or early turn 70s.

So where do I take my tech? I think my sim up to turn 41 is set more or less in stone (I've also mapped it out to 2 more settlers turn 49 but that is predicated on a skimpy military, barring any surprise displays neighborly love. I found 1st city by copper and cow turn 30, and found 2nd by the wheat turn 38, make my third worker turn 40, and start improving pigs and cows turn 41 when AH rolls. After AH the likely answer is probably pottery. Even if I don't build granaries immediately and prefer to get some military, and even if my workers have plenty to do improving resources, it's probably just unwise to get too clever by diverting for earlier Sailing or Religion. Maybe one city wants a granary early or one worker has spare time to cottage. The eta for Pottery being finished is turn 49/50 depending on tile micro.

The more I think about it, the more the obvious next target is Sailing, even before Mysticism. Currently hypothesizing Sailing -> Mys -> Masonry. With probably Writing -> stab at Mono -> IW. Or maybe Writing before Masonry, depending on when Antium(copper/cow) is ready to start the pyramids.
Sailing gives the same commerce boost as writing, and more importantly allows trading with my two neighbors. I think opening diplomatic relations first is probably going to be a handy advantage in our little triangle here. I can start spamming that fish for fish nonsense* or try and pawn off my silver for Bing's gems or Mjmd's gold. Likewise, if there are any furs or ivory, it'll probably be found among the islands as that seems to be the fashion in map design. I will especially want to signal peace if I grab that Cow up by Mjmd, which I will either make the 4th(turn 50) or more like 5th(turn ??) city, though that particular order of operations will depend on where horses appear turn 41.

*Why wait until trade connection for fish for fish? Start your Diplo today with new Morse Code Espionage! Since BUG handily displays how much EP your neighbors spend, you can send intermittent dots and dashes

[Ginger()]

Eeehhck both Bing and Mjmd have warriors, the former positioning his towards the latter and the latter moving towards me. I should be fine barring double move DoW shenanigans. I’m probably going to have to start playing after Mjmd starting turn 30 as all my production micro revolves around the ability of whipping defenders to serve as deterrent while I farmers-only my way forward. As long as I can’t be knocked out I don’t think Mjmd would be dumb enough to start warrior choking. As a newer player Bing might do that so I should be wary.
Interestingly Mjmd’s border with Bing is even richer than his border with me, lots floodplains and an equidistant gold mine.
Bing is also dumping all his EP into Mjmd, which might just be him forgetting to swap to me

[Lazteuq]

I logged in, I see Cornflakes has appeared. I see the sign, how do you know he's to the west?
Everyone's start seems to have a hill pig, an oasis, a forest banana, but the other food is fish or wheat? I guess that's reasonably balanced, since Agri and Fishing are similar cost and both lead to Pottery. Agri leads to AH which you want for the Pigs though, while Fishing leading to Sailing is less immediately useful.

If Mjmd rushes us, I hope Bing rushes him and then we both instantly die, that would be a fun start and end to the game.
The idea of having to play second to survive by whipping sounds questionable and I don't like it. I also understand there isn't really a way out though. You've been really good about playing turns quickly so far, you might have to cash in some of that goodwill with the other players now.
Bing and Mjmd might have met very recently, so Bing might not yet have graphs on Mjmd even if he's been spending the whole time. We know Mjmd wasn't scouting Bing, maybe Bing went East or West and also didn't meet Mjmd for a while. Or I guess now that we know Cornflakes exists, Bing might have spent on him.

In an attempt to come up with fresh ideas, I initially didn't look at your sim saves, but I wasn't able or dedicated enough to improve on any of it. When I did look at the saves, I was impressed. It's weird that we get BW early and are SPI but don't actually whip early. I don't see a real problem with that, it's just weird.

You make a good analysis of Writing and Academy. I was too carried away with "can we?" to think much about "should we?". I think your tech priorities sound good.
Writing+Sailing still does have a trade route benefit on this map: A internal overseas route is 2c, but a route to a foreign island city should be 3c. At least I think that's how it worked in PB60. So in that way, a neighbor building an island city is more helpful than our own island.

I played around with your t48 save and the value of Sailing is even more obvious now. The economy crash means Mysticism actually causes a serious delay, and I don't think we need it. Earlier Sailing means an earlier island city, and those traderoutes are big. I made a huge mistake in PB59 of not researching Sailing earlier.

Another form of EP diplo would be tuning the number to be a specific amount per turn. You can send 0,1,2,3, or 4 so it's 5 possible bits of information per turn instead of ~0.4 like you get with Morse code. That's nearly "thirteen times the detail!"

[Ginger()]

The characters in unit icons face the direction of their last move. From the way Cornflakes scout was facting he probably came from the forested hill deer unless he zigzaged.
Everyone also started with two water tiles in the capital, which points to the possibility of Coastal capitals. For example Mjmd had irrigated wheat instead of deer, but had Crab instead of fish.
I met mjmd in game as the turn rolled and war/peaced him moving my scout to get info. But really I just wanted the 10 turn peace timer. We can breathe until 38. Ideally I would’ve done it later because I settle my third city naked on turn 38, but oh well. Also this turn I saw his settler and have seen all the land near his second city site, so the only way I’ll miss an extra horse hammer (the updated yields should appear in fog, right?) is if it was in the few remaining unscouted tiles of the Capital or if it’s on a flat grassland city plant.

BING and Mjmd likely met in turn six and Bing has done nothing but spend EP on him, though just last turn he spent 1 point on me (??).

Sure you could increase your information density. But if you wanted to send a signal with no prior warning, you’d need it to be both easily translatable and recognizable as a message :P
Speaking of EP Diplo I feel good about the EP ‘truce’ Mjmd and I have, though I surely have Bing to thank for that.

Yeah we’re not using SPI and we’re not using PHI until quite late, but I don’t feel too bad about it, Our settler is only one turn later than Mjmds and we are up a worker so I’m feeling good with our current measure against the competition. Granted his traits haven’t kicked in yet either and he hasn’t chopped 3 forests like I have.

[Lazteuq]

Nice job warpeacing Mjmd. While writing earlier I thought about recommending it but was too afraid of the consequences and dismissed it as too risky. But I realize now that it's only fair, and actually not very risky. I'm glad you did it and the intel from scouting is great.

Yes, I'm pretty sure the yields will update in the fog.

I figured it was just as likely that Cornflakes zigzagged and is in the southeast. We'll probably find out soon enough.

Do you know why there might be hostility between Bing and Mjmd? I didn't see any clues.

What do you want to do with the scouts now?
I think settling city 3 naked is safe enough if we do the coastal wheat spot as expected. We can at least plan to have a scout monitoring the border midpoint area on T35 or so. If we see any dangerous unit, then we'll have time to change plans.

[Ginger()]

Someone has a size 6 capital, and someone has 6000 population total
I’ll post global demos before and after the turn ends, see if there’s any changes after play

[Ginger()]

Here are the demos as promised, first pic, only Fabled and I have played, 
   
last pic, only Cornflakes, Bing, and JackRB remain to play
   
As you can see, we look like shit, but that's to be expected, the extra worker can be attributed as 5 extra MFG per turn, albeit forests are a non-renewable resource and our neighbors have yet to tap into theirs. I'm not worried about GNP, we get all the techs we need in time in the sims, and it should be faster with KTB in game. BUT, the limp through Mysticism to Masonry will be a PIA and can't be helped. I really don't see us starting Pyramids earlier than turn 60s, given the priority Sailing has. It's going to be a tight thing  if we get it at all, and I'm pretty pessimistic tbh. If I save 3 forests for it and work 17 raw hpt, (the max output of Antium at happy cap 5 no whip anger), it will finish roughly 16 turns after I start building it. It doesn't have enough food or more importantly, happy cap, for a proper overflow cascade. If I get a maximum of 30H raw overflow it doesn't compensate working the Plains Hill for the 10 turns it takes for   to go away. Oh well, the failgold is considerable at the least and will power us to Monarchy as a consolation. The good news is I think we have a free hand to execute our turn 49 farmers gambit. 
   
No mysterious horse hammers in sight   Notice the orphaned fish two tiles off Mjmd's east coast. Oof, I think he missed that with his scout.
Our other neighbor, BING, I rate high on the risk of a poking one of my early settlements, but I doubt he will go for an all-in rush. Maybe the last pitboss inspired him? I hope for both our sakes he's been thoroughly traumatized by PB61 and PB62 ancient era warfare that we both sim in peace. Gandhi is all about peace, you know.

[Ginger()]

 Second city, yay! 
   
This is going to be the site of our bid for Pyramids, chock full with production and eventually growing to size 6 on Cow, Copper, Corn, and 2 hills.
Regrettably it's going to stagnate on size 2 until turn 50 when the capital borders pop and the corn is able to be improved, but at least that coincides nicely with the construction of the granary and unlock of more efficient growth. Admittedly I am making a sacrifice for early security here by immediately settling the copper, one that my neighbor Mjmd is not making as he settles for food instead of strategics. Ironically it actually makes me less secure as I am unable to produce a warrior before our peace expires because it queue upgrades to a more expensive spear. Unless someone throws a serious wrench in my sandbox, this is looking like a 0-warrior game   Bit of a misplay I think, I would've wanted a couple for nothing more than MP. Well, you live and you learn and I like the second scout that we bought instead.

[Lazteuq]

While it's slow growing, we can also look at settling for copper as an advantage. Mjmd didn't settle for Horse and also won't have copper until around Turn 40 I'm guessing, so even on T50+ he may still be lagging behind us in military. We could send an axe and/or spear up north to intimidate him a bit. Maybe even that first spear we build, depending on how Bing is acting. Not so much aggression to ruin his game but enough to make him settle for a conservative border? If we manage to convince him to do an inefficient axeman whip, we have already succeeded. If we nullify his CRE advantage by making him settle 1 tile back from where he otherwise would, that's great too.

To metagame a bit, Mjmd is more experienced than Bing, so we probably want Mjmd to be weakened somewhat. It's in our interest for those two to be evenly matched instead of Mjmd dominating Bing. Of course this is not just a 3-player game, I'm pretending it is. Who knows what Cornflakes' AGG/CHM might do to Bing? And we don't know who else may neighbor Mjmd still. Hopefully they're not too green.

It doesn't help with MP right now, but later we can pile up some whip overflow and/or chops and then intentionally disconnect an inland city from trade routes. I've done that before in singleplayer to grind out a warrior every turn for a while. I think I did it in PB59 semi-accidentally too but I don't remember.

For Pyramids: I think completely ignoring Mysticism is viable.
I started with the T48 sim you sent, added the Stone Island and played out Pyramids T80. I'm unsure how competitive that is. I played it sloppily in about 20 minutes, so it can certainly be improved.
I 2pop whipped the Galley out of the capitol, while Cumae built the settler. I founded on the stone to save worker labor mostly, and the timing of founding the city right before Masonry worked pretty well. I threw in a 2pop whip at the end to complete the pyramids. And I chopped every forest near Antium, even though some were outside the borders. Did some early cottaging around the capitol.

I think getting that northern silver mined soon after T50 is a big priority, potentially even more important than improving the cow or corn. That silver is a huge boost to research for getting Sailing and Masonry earlier. Research is definitely the bottleneck for us, not improving Antium. I think mining the silver before pasturing the cow or chopping any forests is somewhat reasonable, maybe even with 2 workers! Roading the silver is good too but maybe not as important.

I'd feel really bad if settling on top of the stone orphaned seafood, but sacrifices must be made to the Big Trongle.

[Lazteuq]

I did some reading of recent games to find Pyramids dates:
PB48-T91 Raskolnikov
PB49-T103? Superdeath
PB51-T96 Plemo
PB52-T105 Superdeath
PB54-T88 Miguelito/Rusten
PB55-T90 Lewwyn/Noble/Gaspar
PB56-T93 Civac
PB58-T120? Superdeath
PB59-T92? Mackoti
PB60-T99 Lazteuq/Civac
PB61-T75 Vanrober! (He wasn't even IND!)
PB62-T72 Naufragar/Rusten (Also wasn't IND!)

I didn't realize how unusually early the mids dropped in 61 and 62 until now. I don't know what to think about that.

This map having stone on the island should account for a small delay compared to most maps, but the starts being very fast probably cancels that out.