[PB66 Spoilers] Miguelito and Ginger split the bill

[Miguelito]

Is it that bad, really?

• Orange may not need a monument. I suspect that it has chipper on that plains tile,  so we should have it ready to whip the turn we hit BW, but otherwise it may not be super necessary.  Just get the mids bonus hammers a bit later / focus that Gwaihir hammers on expansion as we probably should anyways
  
• Violet needs one (unless we somehow manage to land Hindu there around t55, quite unlikely ).
  
• Blue doesn't need one if violet comes first or shortly after,  and we need to lock that down anyways
  
• Green doesn't need one.  If we want sugar instead we probably wait for a missionary
  
• A city south by the forest incense may or may not need one
  
• Rice/ incense filler east of cap doesn't need one
  
• Yellow doesn't
  
• Greedy border north doesn't,  unless to maintain its first ring against Zara (not wading we should build it necessarily
  

I see Mono helping with a lot of our problems:

• Raises our happy cap 4->5 much faster than Calendar can. Granted that costs hammers. With cheap priesthood we get another happy face at 40h, although we probably don't want that everywhere
  
•  New cities need no monument
  
• OR bonus is at least very handy for mids, but also new cities' granaries, and the occasional barracks or library. Btw Asoka loves it because he only pays half of the high maintenance .
  

You said that it comes too late - I haven't simmed it,  but I imagine it coming around t60-65. Is that too late in your opinion? When would you expect for calendar to come in if we beeline it? Mind that that needs Sailing as well.

I really don't know why we'd want to whip courthouses with a happy cap of 4, in the middle of our expansion phase. Or run caste for that matter.

[Miguelito]

Amica founded, and it wasn't towards us. That's great. I also think they haven't scouted our immediate vicinity (or did in the early turns, but sneakily avoided contact - but if they didn't follow it up with a rush it makes little sense). Makes me feel more optimistic that we get away with our minimum security opening.

Curiosity got the better of me and I went further into the dark with the scout. You are not going to love it:


Should we really try and steal that fur...?

How enthusiastic do you feel about the bird theme? With playing HRE it occurred to me that we could go for a Holy Empire theme, name the cities after saints, and cheaply copy pics and snippets from Wikipedia. I think there are a good number of interesting/fun/crass hagiographies, and maybe people have their personal favourite saints?

[Ginger()]

Ha, I logged in before I saw this post and left a note on the gold. Yeah, I think we steal the fur if Vanrober lets us. The border doesn't look half-bad if we fill out that chunk, so he might agree to it. I'm looking and looking and I still see no good spot for "the" pyramids city, best seems to be Sugar blue dot, but it needs border pop. I'm actually mildly concerned we might lose it to PHI Engineer. But iirc only Magic Science is running PHI.

not very enthusiastic about the bird theme, but your saints theme also seems like work to research. I'm happy with either, just not big on the extra effort of a naming theme in general (civ is hard enough). I hope I don't discourage you by saying this, and I'm happy with whatever theme you feel fit—I trust your taste.

On a side note, counting the rice between us and Vanrober, we have 4 unirrigated grain resources. CoL/Civil Service beeline (after Calendar) just keeps looking sweeter and sweeter.

[Miguelito]

For mids I'm pretty clear that it's gonna be Gwaihir/2nd city/St Peter (?). It has access to two 5-food resources, the horse, enough hills for mines, at least some forests, and crucially it can be set up and ready to go by the time we have masonry.
Even in the worst case - chopping without maths, no OR, no whip overflow, size 4 - by just working mines and horse for 14 hpt it can get the mids out in 20 turns from the moment stone is connected, which I'd hope is around t60-65. That should be early enough for the wonder, and actually I think with whip overflows, OR and possibly maths (t75-80 doesn't sound unrealistic even if we go for Mono) we should do much better. There are places with more forests, but they will not be set up in time I believe.

I would look up the saints, or take suggestions from lurkers.

[Miguelito]

I like the theme. Giving cities person names doesn't feel quite right though, how about famous cathedrals? Although the saints backstories can be fun.

Followed up on our chat.

I've been wanting to make a list of when everybody founded their second cities, but vanrober (and GKC) still haven't, huh. And Mjmd, with JC! did only this turn 35.

[Ginger()]

Yeah this theme works, I have no scrupples about people names :P

We were a turn ahead of Gavagai and Plemo. Vanrober and GKC founded just now. Yeah I'm surprised by Mjmd's imperialistic tardiness, but he sims extensively and usually has close to perfect micro, so I'm sure he did something worthwhile.

As far as my dream of an Amica pig pinkdot goes. You're right it's probably a bad idea and we're not playing the combo for it, but two objections come to mind: A) we're not guaranteeing ourselves peace if we cede it, and B) it's a great place to make a stand. That's my two cents, but maybe playing PB64 next to Gavagai/Comm/SD has poisoned my sense of how to properly handle neighbor relations. The counter objection I would remind myself is that good neighbor relations are worth a lot of F/H

It also seems that the best expansion spots for snowball also happen to be in inoffensive directions to the south, southwest, and southeast

Edit: the point is probably moot anyways as Amica should be able to settle that spot well before we get copper units

[Miguelito]

Second city timings for lurkers:

1. us - Asoka/HRE - 28
   
2. Plecadilly - Toku/Rome - 29
   
3. Gavagai - Sury/Aztecs - 29
   
4. Alhazard - Nappy/Egypt - 31
   
5. Magic Science - Sully/Greece - 32
   
6. Tarvac - Mehmed/Spain - 33
   
7. Jack - Liey-Ye/Carthage - 33
   
8. Amica / Washington/Khmer - 33
   
9. superdeath - Hammer/Vikings - 33
   
10. GKC - Kublai Khan/America - 35
    
11. Mjmd - Julius Caesar/Zulu - 35
    
12. vanrober - Zara/Mongols - 36
    

Mjmd baffles me, as mentioned. Even MS's 32 seems late for Imp. Notably as well only MS whipped the settler, but for just 1 pop. We know that a number of people have coastal starts, and a lot have grown to size 4 - their capitals must look quite different to ours.
By t41 we'll have the first chariot. And with our neighbours settling late and having to connect their resources yet I'm somewhat relaxed.


Even if we can hold the pig hill against Amica I just can't see how they could ever give us peace with that, and then just someone else wins.
As you said, probably they settle there first. Also, let's wait for the copper location.
I give you that the orange/violet pair is not quite easily defendable. Although any 1-mover stack that tries to bypass violet would get caught on flatland by the violet garrison. 2 movers are dangerous though. We also should be getting a KTB beaker on Mining

[Miguelito]

current teamchat:


1 - change EP again next turn
2 - with the low HC I suspect cottaging the plains might for once be better than grassland. That worker should be available to start preparing a westwards settle when we get BW. Instead of cottaging he could alsostart roading maybe?
3 - van seems to be respectful, but this position lets us cover all critical tiles. If we want to be really careful we log in after him this turn and play after him next
4 - not pictured: the scout could go west to innvestigate the opening between mountains and see in the west, or croos the empire and find the neighbours to the S/SE. Your preference?

PBspy news: Alhazard founded his 3rd city on t38 (t36 would have been feasible for us if we stayed at just one worker). Vanrober whipped 2 pop. Probably a settler? At least it isn't a chariot, that's what we care most about atm. Overall I have registered just 4 whips so far (2/2/1/1). Makes me feel more ok about our late BW.

Demos look worse than I'd expect, tbh:


Well actually we're exactly average with food and hammers, so maybe I'm exaggerating.
7k pop is probably van after whipping his cap.

[Ginger()]

I think we should granary the capital. It has +1 happy from palace and we can do our settler production there with 6->3.
The other cities I agree a granary is spurious without a luxury, they should be size 4 and working improved tiles (juicy river cottages) and slow building. Hell, we could whip the granaries with OR bonus

Alternatively, CoL *does* give a religion too and with a couple cottages our early tech looks promising (yes I'm nagging on Oracle again, idk how I got here, I guess it's Godwin's law of Ginger's early game)

If the Margaret steals the pig from Thomas for one turn, we can grow Marge in 3, and the worker timing out of Thomas is not affected
Nvm capital gets the deer back in 2

I did swap Thomas from the 1/1/0 to the 2/0/1 since we don't change the worker time with 1h overflow.

[Miguelito]

Yes, capital granary for settler whips makes sense. with so much food shared we can fine tune growth really well. Should Thomas have a granary when it starts on the pyramids? That way it can grow back to 3 quickly after a 2pop whip, although it still misses out on 10 turns of working a mine, so comes out with less hammers into the wonder. Whipping the granary with OF the turn before the stone comes online might be a good move?

When, where and how would you build the Oracle? I give you that none of the picks screas for it, so it might not come super early (although eg superdeath might just because). With super early caste you can do crazy stuff like getting a merchant in the 70s , and I also accept that since we really want all of Calendar, CoL, Construction and Currency, CoL might come a bit late if researched naturally. With a missionary Confu is a good religion if it comes that early. Do we drop mids if we go for it?

I am still in the camp of focusing on mids. I really like early OR, Judaism also gets a missionary, and it also feels a little lame to just replay the ongoing game of one of our competitors, and moreover land it at a much later date (my suggestion is pretty much a replay of our own PB54, but we could divert from that later - eg pushing CS as you suggested).

It appears sensible to me to go Poly first if Hindu isn't taken after we've finished BW. In that case we can decide pretty late on which wonder to focus.

Thanks for correcting the tile in Thomas. I was too lazy to count yields and just went for max hammers, but if the worker isn't delayed this is better. After Margeret grows I think we can work pigs and FP, and the new cottage will also come in - just need to make sure that Marge has the settler on 40/100 when the whip becomes available.
I think we do need the 2h overflow. Turn 41/42 we will get 11hpt into the worker, and only after the cap has grown on t43 we can take the FP for 12hpt. Am I mistaken? If yes correct me, but I think with 2h OF we finish the worker 60/60 on t45.