[Spoilers] Gröt and Bänzai lose several screws assembling a Sweedish Strategy

[Banzailizard]

I fiddled with some citzens.  Let's see what I remember:

1. Had Ulea work the deer.  Means zero growth this turn but gets the granary done next turn which I figured was more useful.  We need to remember to swap back next turn.
2. Dyrr stole the wine from Neapolis which was not working it anyways.  I swapped off the farm from Dyrr.  Hmm now that I say that, it might be a problem.  I think Neapolis needed the housing but it might be ok. Need to check that next turn. Did score us 3 gold this turn should not prevent us from growing Neapolis at least once before game end.
3. Attalea took a farm from Miklagardr.  Each had 0.5 housing so that rounded up Attalea 1 giving it an extra growth and rounded down Miklagadr not doing anything at all.
4. I thought about playing with Treb but realized that we want it to grow in 3 so we can chop then regrow pop right away.
5. Swapped a 2 food tile at Voronezh for a 1 food 1 hammer.  Drops growth by 2 turns, but we were not expecting more than one by end of game. Drops horse to next turn to go help with barbs.
6. Odessa is working 3 plains tiles now, still growing in 1 turn, but 3 more production means the watermill might be done in a relevant amount of time.
7. In general I qued up buildings that we have discussed as next on the list such as harbors, the CH in Smolensk, etc.  I queued up one or two traders we can discuss next turn.

We will grow 5 pop next turn for 300, and then settle a city for 85 VP. Unless Norway grows 5 or more pop, or gets more TR somehow (they have been building harbors to be sure) we should pop out ahead of them. 5 more pop growth the turn after that, and at least 3 the following turn.  Might be more, Wolin for example has been resetting to grow in 3 turns each time.  Some screenshots of the map and a score graph below.  Overall status still the same; we are behind but our trajectory looks like a winning one:

[Grotsnot]

Norway is stubbornly keeping up with us. They gained I think it was 250 Trade VP this turn. Which prompted us to finally go through and figure out the post-patch weirdness with calculating Trade Routes. Turns out having one of Harbor+CH gives 2 TR, due to Hacksilver, but having both gives 3... somehow.

Actually I'm not sure if it's a thing from the current patch or not. Might have been from the one that made +TR a one-of-CH-or-Harbor deal. Either way, nice job maintaining your Scenarios, Firaxis

Unfortunately not enough time to capitalize on it. So that kinda sucks for us but whatever. Assuming they remain at 21 cities, Norway is only ~300VP away from their absolute maximum Trade VP and, assuming we execute our chops properly, we have 500 of CH&Harbors coming online by the end of the game. So we're still gonna net gain ground from the Trade theater

Also Banzai wanted to zero in on the citizen micro so here's the mostly-EOT save

[Banzailizard]

I DL the turn and took a quick peek this morning.  We are now ahead with a score of 14290.  Norway flatlined for a turn.  Next turn our growth is mediocre at like 2 or 3 pop, but in 2 turns we are going to add 11 new pops of growth, fully 660 VP.  Norway has surprised us before so I want to be careful in my optimism, but damn I really think we are coasting to victory here.

[Grotsnot]

Yeah this turn we took the lead and things are looking pretty good to keep it   

(reloaded EOT to update the score+growth displays)



Over the next 3 turns we're poised to found Onega and get another 23 growth!





I also tried to do some excel projections on growth for the end of the game. If we buy a couple lighthouses and a couple builders, we can get 3 more cities and ~20 more growth on top of that  

Oh also this turn we got our first Future Civic and swapped out Naval Infrastructure for Thing. Costs us ~320 over the next 8 turns but enables an extra growth in both Apuole and Miklagard, so 100VP is way better than 32VP
Combined with our 10 trade districts coming online by End of Game, I too am starting to feel pretty good about winning this thing 


Also @Banzai here's an EOT save and my chickenscratch excel in case you wanna play around with anything. If it's too idiosyncratic to easily do anything with, that's fine too, it's just late so I feel like vomiting things up onto the internet

[Grotsnot]

We kept the lead this turn with 4 growth to their 3, and a truckload more due next turn



Here's something I think is illustrative



Norway has seemed content to bank their for the past while now whereas we've been continually reinvesting. Squeezing 1 extra growth turns a profit all the way up to a 590 investment - and Builders cost a fraction of that. We've built and purchased a ton this game and they're only now exceeding 200/ea. Settlers are worth 85VP minimum, with an extra 60VP if it grows (we should end the game with only 1 size 1 city) and 50VP if the city it's built in gets an "extra" growth out of the deal. Norway naturally doesn't have as much land to work with as us but they could have made a play for Lappland or sent a couple dudes out to the northern isles. Probably wasn't enough time to reach Greenland but there is a surprising amount of land over there. Sure, most of it is shitstink ice but there's enough resources to get 3 or 4 size 2-3 cities.

Not to harp on Norway too much, though. They played an astounding mid-game. I think all the way into the 20s we were worried about Denmark running away with the game with conquest but then the Norwegians somehow utterly drank their milkshake. And then did it to us a couple times in Italy: that Corps GG has been nuts and they got a crapton of EXP chewing through France and Spain to get multiattack Zerkers. Well played, fellas And it's not over yet, I'm giving Team Sen ~70% odds right now 'cause there's still room for them to pull something out of their sleeves.

Really I think our biggest advantage has been our surprisingly consistent co-playing the turns. It has certainly been an effective, if time-consuming, experiment. The constant scheming communications keeps us invested in the game and fully up to speed if IRL means one of us has to pick up the slack. 8/10 would recommend

[Grotsnot]

Looking good this turn, we're up 720 points. Just fussing about with citizens and trying to fit the pieces together to maximize growths.

At Helsingfors it's impossible to grow again, so we gave its food resources to other cities. Buggered up the math a bit though. Thought it was worth giving up a pop there to work the HS but forgot about the 10 empire VP we lose until after already uploading the turn  
Was originally gonna post up here as a pre-commitment to not use the starve-regrow exploit so I guess just stuck with net loss of 8VP


Didn't want to waste a citizen working a crappy 1 tundra but woops

[Banzailizard]

So apparently an inch of snow calls for a 2 hour delay. Since I had the time I took a quick look.  I settled our cities and chopped out the marsh.  Final score for the turn? 15890 us. 14540 Norway.  We are 1350 points ahead.  I did not see a 10 point decline for Hels unless we also lost 50 for religion. Next turn will be slow in terms of growth but in 2 turns we have a wave of harbors finishing and pop coming in.  Also we have traders which are done construction or just finished a run.  I sent everyone to Norway for trade and we are making over 400 GPT.

[Banzailizard]

Let's go on a tour of the world.



Norway has made a lot of progress on growth.  I mean just look at Ultrecht and Paris. Aachen (Alix-La-Chapelle) is also set to grow at least once or twice judging by the housing and food it has. That being said, one or two growth per turn is likely not going to be enough.

Our chops of those marshes near Keiv and Gnez are each worth 1-2 pop and that is just the tip of what we are getting. So as a quick rundown:
Next turn 5 growth.  300 VP. A settler will be planted in Crete as well. 85 VP. Total of 385 Norway might close the gap a bit especially if they finish harbors. 
in 2 turns. 4-5 harbors (depends on the chop next turn) and a CH come online for 250-300 trade points. In addition 4 pops at least, might be more depending on the LH and garnaries we buy. Either way a minimum of 250+240= 490 VP
in 3 turns chop another marsh or maybe 2 for 2 pop growth, Salona willl grow, Genz finish its CH. 230 VP.
Total up to this point 1020 VP more.
Hopefully turn 60 will match up with Grot's spreadsheet and we should just get a further tidal wave of growth across our empire to cinch the win.

Right now our faith = their gold and then some in VP. Our gold will be minor though since we keep spending.  The stuff we are spending on has a higher ROI than leaving it alone, but it does mean our raw points difference must exceed whatever Norway has saved up in faith. As an example if the game were to end this turn, Norway would need to have 6750 faith saved up to win. Considering how much raiding they did and how well developed their cities are they should have a lot by end game. That being said I doubt it is almost 7k saved.  If we can keep a spread like this we should win.

[Grotsnot]

@Banzai I had the time to go through the turn this evening. Not many major decisions to make - just citizen min/maxing - so gonna go ahead and pass it along. Hope you don't mind >_>
Unfortunately it turns out we chopped at Smolensk too soon. The CH was slated to finish in 4t and wasn't able to squeeze it down to 3 with natural production. So had to buy a Builder to chop again On the plus side, that also gives it the bandwidth to grow again so I think it's a net gain.
Not too much left we need to buy either. Made a couple notes. Ulea can get a growth with a LH and Onega needs its Granary. Can afford both next turn and then save our gold for a couple turns.

On the whole, things are lookin real good. To start with, we're up by about 1600 points



And, uh, the next 3 turns are gonna be real good




We have at least 24 more growth coming in by the end of the game. Pretty happy with lining all those up I'm not sure exactly how much we'll be able to squeeze out of the 3 Marsh chops but I'm expecting 4 or 5. With Cilicia's city center, that's approximately 1700 VP all told! Plus we have 8 TR Districts coming online for another 400 VP, bringing our expected gain in the next 3 turns to 2100 VP 

We'll also end up in the neighborhood of 4000 and 1000 which comes to about 900 more points.

So we're gonna fall short of 20kVP but not by much! I'm probably jinxing it by saying so, but considering Norway needs to pull off ~4500VP I think it's about safe to call this in the bag. We've come a looong way from our position at the start!

[Grotsnot]

Gained more ground this turn! Only 2 to go and we're gonna get like 22 growth on T60
Also with citizens moved around to optimize (and for gold-producing District projects) our gpt has gotten crazy