[PB66 Spoilers] Miguelito and Ginger split the bill

[Miguelito]

I hope to order my thoughts and respond to wonder plans, as I don't want to just callously block off the Oracle suggestions, although I still don't see the value in it to justify the investment. But I did not understand this part:

The reason I am so bullish on CoL is that it invalidates the need for happy cap to escape the expansion tech trap where you waste food by not growing—that's a non-issue. You can dump that food into more cities without fear, or more courts if you bump up against the happy cap. With religion and temples to supplement the Food->expansion wave, we'll be at Calendar before it becomes an issue again.

Do I understand right that you want CoL to solve the problems around happy cap and overexpansion? How does that work? I don't think you want to massively employ caste specialists? Without Rep or Phi they are pretty bad if not used for a very quick GP. I feel like I'm missing something.



I understand that you want to follow through with the dye plant, and I can see your point that Amica doesn't know the scale of the offense. However the question is indeed, is the city so close to them that it's just unacceptable? It's like 1.5th ring, isn't it, with the city square 6 tiles from their cap?
And what do you think of my reasoning that dye-E might be better than dye-SE after all, given our specific situation?

[Ginger()]

I hope to order my thoughts and respond to wonder plans, as I don't want to just callously block off the Oracle suggestions, although I still don't see the value in it to justify the investment. But I did not understand this part:

The reason I am so bullish on CoL is that it invalidates the need for happy cap to escape the expansion tech trap where you waste food by not growing—that's a non-issue. You can dump that food into more cities without fear, or more courts if you bump up against the happy cap. With religion and temples to supplement the Food->expansion wave, we'll be at Calendar before it becomes an issue again.

Do I understand right that you want CoL to solve the problems around happy cap and overexpansion? How does that work? I don't think you want to massively employ caste specialists? Without Rep or Phi they are pretty bad if not used for a very quick GP. I feel like I'm missing something.



I understand that you want to follow through with the dye plant, and I can see your point that Amica doesn't know the scale of the offense. However the question is indeed, is the city so close to them that it's just unacceptable? It's like 1.5th ring, isn't it, with the city square 6 tiles from their cap?
And what do you think of my reasoning that dye-E might be better than dye-SE after all, given our specific situation?

For the dye city I feel like long term defense isn't much worse dye SE along the river than dye E. For short term defense I think it's actually better dye-SE as it will be off to a faster start with first ring corn. 

Pyramids gives 3 things. Extra happy for early growth/more cottages worked early, bonus beakers to specialists for later in the game or crawling to Currency, and Police State for go-time. 

I think that the latter two late game buffs are probably the strongest card that Pyramids has. Bonuses we get to keep and use all game and will continue to pay off. However, I am a little skeptical about the value of the happiness when we still have so much land to expand into. We can keep converting food into workers and settlers for a considerable amount of time going forward and avoid the happy cap that way. Furthermore, with two competent neighbors we will need some credible defense.

Normally that kind of reckless expansion would be terrible as you bankrupt yourself and miss out on the significant opportunities that tech-snowballing offers you. First tos, Currency, Monarchy/Calendar happiness, etc. etc. However, Oracle lets us get away with that, because now each new city can dump its extra population into Rathauses and we'll be easily afloat to reach Calendar. If Oracle was the same cost as Pyramids, I would never suggest it. But I think that we could easily use an additional ~180 hammers to consolidate some of our more ambitious claims.

If you believe that the hammers are a non-issue and we can defend and settle our dotmap freely, then I would be comfortable buying the Pyramids. But when I hear you focused on Pyramids and also fretting about the integrity of our F/H and power situation in the next 20 turns against Cre Vanrober and Exp/Cha Amica, then I wonder if the burden is worth it. 
In essence, I view Oracle as the cheaper hedge with less payoff, and Pyramids as the big bet that might cost too much. And the powerful long-term nature of our leader/civ slants me towards the former. 

Fwiw I think Caste is useful to skip monuments/delay missionaries, but I don't plan to use it to make early GP. Ideally, we probably temple/priest in the Oracle city to get a shrine going, 12 player game is relatively high player count and the map looks generous with city count, I think the Kashi Vishwanath will pay nicely


t57 login edit: Amica has tech vis on us and we've lost graphs

[Miguelito]

Fun is abundant:


(I added the sign on the stone. We speculated earlier that our stone might be compensation for no luxuries. But apparently that's not our unique advantage. Must be the indefensible terrain and the offcoast start then. (the latter has actually been quite useful in that we have not needed those techs, while everybody else has at least fishing)


Missed this the last time

Van's GNP wouldn't necessarily be masonry because he wouldn't research mysticism. My guess is pottery or writing.

You're right, it's got to be Writing (better hope that it isn't Pottery, because if he has that GNP without cottages he's got to have like 3 goldmines already)

For the dye city I feel like long term defense isn't much worse dye SE along the river than dye E. For short term defense I think it's actually better dye-SE as it will be off to a faster start with first ring corn. 

So my argument for dye-E instead of SE is purely short term. A shorter supply line for reinforcements from Thomas, and we can't improve the corn quickly anyways because we lack the workers. Instead dye-E can work the quarry for a 5-yield tile, for monument, walls and then a unit (chops supporting). Now the lack of workers isn't an issue if you convince me to kill my baby and drop the mids plan, so the quarry becomes a secondary priority.

t57 login edit: Amica has tech vis on us and we've lost graphs

I changed research to Writing, as it doesn't delay the quarry anyways.

If you're worried we don't have enough hammers to afford it all, you know what I'm going to suggest...
I know that Pyramids is very very good, but cities and units as SPI/ORG are also going to be critical, and pyramids is very, very expensive and very juicy a target.
And if you don't want to give up on the pile of rocks, I'll issue my last plea for at least a sideways tag-along attempt at Oracling, Priesthood-Writing after Masonry?
[though I realize this doesn't solve the hammer problem, just makes it worse]
Delaying Judaism/Mono might also give us more time to random spread Hinduism and save hammers on missionaries if the religions aren't competing. The reason I am so bullish on CoL is that it invalidates the need for happy cap to escape the expansion tech trap where you waste food by not growing—that's a non-issue. You can dump that food into more cities without fear, or more courts if you bump up against the happy cap. With religion and temples to supplement the Food->expansion wave, we'll be at Calendar before it becomes an issue again.

Pyramids gives 3 things. Extra happy for early growth/more cottages worked early, bonus beakers to specialists for later in the game or crawling to Currency, and Police State for go-time. 

I think that the latter two late game buffs are probably the strongest card that Pyramids has. Bonuses we get to keep and use all game and will continue to pay off. However, I am a little skeptical about the value of the happiness when we still have so much land to expand into. We can keep converting food into workers and settlers for a considerable amount of time going forward and avoid the happy cap that way. Furthermore, with two competent neighbors we will need some credible defense.

Normally that kind of reckless expansion would be terrible as you bankrupt yourself and miss out on the significant opportunities that tech-snowballing offers you. First tos, Currency, Monarchy/Calendar happiness, etc. etc. However, Oracle lets us get away with that, because now each new city can dump its extra population into Rathauses and we'll be easily afloat to reach Calendar. If Oracle was the same cost as Pyramids, I would never suggest it. But I think that we could easily use an additional ~180 hammers to consolidate some of our more ambitious claims.

If you believe that the hammers are a non-issue and we can defend and settle our dotmap freely, then I would be comfortable buying the Pyramids. But when I hear you focused on Pyramids and also fretting about the integrity of our F/H and power situation in the next 20 turns against Cre Vanrober and Exp/Cha Amica, then I wonder if the burden is worth it. 
In essence, I view Oracle as the cheaper hedge with less payoff, and Pyramids as the big bet that might cost too much. And the powerful long-term nature of our leader/civ slants me towards the former. 

Fwiw I think Caste is useful to skip monuments/delay missionaries, but I don't plan to use it to make early GP. Ideally, we probably temple/priest in the Oracle city to get a shrine going, 12 player game is relatively high player count and the map looks generous with city count, I think the Kashi Vishwanath will pay nicely

Ok, I think I can see now what you're on about. Rathauses basically eliminate our costs, so we can afford to coast to Calendar on sad little sz 3-5 cities, and just keep throwing out settlers. Is that about right?
Now little sz 3-5 cities of course have the disadvantage of being sad - underdeveloped with only a few cottages grown, probably few granaries, no libraries, and so on. But your plan has consistency and is a possible solution to our problem.

Where I don't agree is your assessment of pyramids' short term benefit. While the Rep happy allows more growth in cottage (or mine) heavy cities, it also allows to properly granary-whip your cities during the latter part of the expansion phase and early consolidation. If of the 3x5 happy you invest only 5 into an extra 2 pop whip, you already recover nearly the whole raw hammer investment (yes that calculus is very flawed, but can you agree with the general idea?). So Rep in my mind does not only allow us to sustain Commerce but also production.

If we can manage to settle and hold both the vanrober pink dot and the Amica corn border spot, I think there is no further spot where we really need to be first to (although there will be some where we will wish we are). It is in that timeframe that I think investing hammers into the big wonder is acceptable, although not as an all in. I have talked before about how I would like a granary in Thomas to effectively whip units or workers supporting the expansion, even though it will cost some hammers into mids. Now the last 10 turns have thrown us back a whole lot, although demos and city count suggest that we're not quite desperate.

Now, let's say we do build Oracle. That's... something like a t75 finish? (remember that we have a dearth of workers in the area). It seems very unlikely; others have oracled Currency in that timeframe before. Of course a t85-90 finish of mids also carries a great risk, although I think the general interest in mids is lesser.


Side notes - 1) I am not too interested in a shrine. It could be nice, but with OR we can take care of spreads, and the gold is just very little initially, compared to a bulb or the effect of an engineer. If at some point a prophet falls out of the fortune wheel then it's an option to be considered, sure, just wouldn't aim for it too hard. 2) I have a fantasy of using Spi to switch between Hindu and Judaism, depending on where the happy (and culture) is needed, if Hindu doesn't spread more and weget like 2 cities with each religion. Time whips so it works. So that's why I have little issue with early Mono. But it's probably a silly idea.

Decisions:
nothing very short term, I believe.

• I refrained on holding back the warrior completion in order to queue upgrade. I think 16 hammers into a spear would not have come amiss at all, but if we don't have to pull back the fogbuster by Thomas that can also save a lot of hammers. So he better do his job well. So far with all the scouting we've been doing we have not seen a single non animal barbarian (contrary to PB54 and 59 where metal barbs would terrorize us during the 50s), so that's good.
  
• dye city location. Should ideally be decided by t61 or so
  
• pyramids, oracle, both, or nothing. I think we are understanding each other better now, but it still seems unresolved, and with how shitty the last 10 turns have been I am also not sure anymore what to do. My current position, subject to change, is to try for mids at half or three-quarter steam
  

[Ginger()]

Quick thoughts:
-I realized the argument about compounding religions is dumb because the same thing happens with Oracle

-I think queue upgrading is a 20-hammer misplay as we will end up using a perfectly good Axe or Spear as an MP unit in an internal city later down the line, tsk tsk

-You might be underestimating the potential for competition for the Pyramids, it is a 12-player game and it has been established that stone is available for others (but perhaps not all). There are also multiple IMP leaders with extra hammers and an Emperor economy to afford. Also, it's just generically good even if SPI is what makes it extra viable.

-going half steam for a critical wonder is a sure way to either
A) auto-win the game lol because you had your cake and ate it too
B) cry

-Also I'm pretty sure we could have the Oracle faster than t75 if we committed for it, but in that event, whipping a settler for the Dye would probably be a mistake, and a worker to help mine/chop it out in either the capital or Thomas would be preferable.

-yes of course our demos and worker situation is terrible, we just walked away about 5-8 worker-turns and roaded 7? with several more roads planned... Duh it's not pretty. But we get to define our borders as a result.

-I'll look again at what dye location entails and try to come to a solution for that

[Miguelito]

here we are, with our plan getting first contact with the enemy:


Good thing we didn't try to settle there without metal units, but are instead pinkdotting vanrober

This is a result of a double move, and the units are facing south. It seems pretty clear that they are there to prepare a settlement. It's nasty, in particular if they settle on violet and claim the corn. But as mentioned it's closer to their cap than ours so I can't really be mad - which does not mean that I wouldn't try to take it from them. But for the moment it seems like we can't do much about it.

Amica has whipped 2 and 2 pop t57 and 58 (current), but so far world top power remains 2k above ours. Keep observing.

I changed Nick back to worker from axe, mostly because I want to work the plains cottage. In the unlikely event that Amica moves straight on the city we can still prebuild and whip an axe in time, although the second would be lagging, so we'd have to defend against the spear with a warrior. But as I said I consider it unlikely.

Whipping the worker and moving to quarry the stone seems pretty ballsy though. Maybe slowbuild him instead?
We definitely need 2 axes in the area rather soon.



In light of the above this is old already, but still

Quick thoughts:
-I realized the argument about compounding religions is dumb because the same thing happens with Oracle

I didn't understand this one

-I think queue upgrading is a 20-hammer misplay as we will end up using a perfectly good Axe or Spear as an MP unit in an internal city later down the line, tsk tsk

Yeah but that's going to happen pretty far down the line, considering we already have like 5? warriors. I was pretty much on the fence about this. Having 17h into a spear could be quite useful at this moment.

-You might be underestimating the potential for competition for the Pyramids, it is a 12-player game and it has been established that stone is available for others (but perhaps not all). There are also multiple IMP leaders with extra hammers and an Emperor economy to afford. Also, it's just generically good even if SPI is what makes it extra viable.
-going half steam for a critical wonder is a sure way to either
A) auto-win the game lol because you had your cake and ate it too 
B) cry

Yes, true. Atm it matters little; we have no stone connected yet and Thomas has no mines. I would look at the completion date - with t85 we'd be pretty early compared to recent games I believe (but far behind PB65). t90 should still be competitive; after that it gets dicey. However if others have faced similar problems as us maybe the game is shifted a bit backwards in comparison to others. Amica's development at least seems to indicate that to a degree (or they just have monument and granary in every city an we're dead).

-Also I'm pretty sure we could have the Oracle faster than t75 if we committed for it, but in that event, whipping a settler for the Dye would probably be a mistake, and a worker to help mine/chop it out in either the capital or Thomas would be preferable.

Yah those plans are already down the drain. Let's see how things look after Masonry.

-yes of course our demos and worker situation is terrible, we just walked away about 5-8 worker-turns and roaded 7? with several more roads planned... Duh it's not pretty. But we get to define our borders as a result.

Demos actually don't look that terrible, we are slightly above average in CY and MfG. GNP is distorted by loads of factors like Cre players, our holy city, us paying upkeep again, researching a two arrow tech, and so on. Probably we are not doing very well, and if every other player has one or two luxes at their disposal it's no big surprise. Carry on

-I'll look again at what dye location entails and try to come to a solution for that

Which spot would you expect Amica to take to claim dye?

[Ginger()]

Does it matter which spot Amica takes? they're all dumb lmao

I'm already getting ptsd from the PB64 earlygame, how on earth do they expect to keep it?
I think they haven't fully scouted because this pink dot on us makes no sense as far as borders go because its super extended and out on a limb and splits us in two with that lake/corn city divorced from Nicholas. Also it's separated from the core by hills. Hills that can be camped on and roads choked.

We should be whipping 2-3 Axemen pronto to... prevent or correct this.

[Miguelito]

Considering that we have observed them rather thoroughly it's quite likely that they haven't scouted the area very much, yes. Unless they did it in the first 20 or so turns.

So, goodbye expansion, whip axes in Nick+Marge? I'm not even saying that I'm strictly against it, although we'd still need a settler to realize a claim.

Edit: Or can we live with it? Eg if they settledye-N and share the pig (yes, wishful thinking). Dye-NE seems very stupid. Dye-E makes sense for them, and we could live with it maybe and steal the corn with caste artists. Dye-SE we'd have to really think hard if we can afford to cede it (remember, we might have troubles up north as well), but it's also very exposed, and at the same time messes up our defenses big time.

[Miguelito]

Amica moved south. No settler in sight yet.


My current thinking is to whip the worker with enough foodhammers into him (probably t60 at 29/60) that the axe finishes the turn after, and do the same with the settler in the capital. Probably Amica has settled by then, so we'll have to decide for another dot.

That's not the tensest situation though:


van might be a bit unamused by our choice for settling spot . This can end absolutely catastrophically, but what do . I'm sending the third chariot towards the area (the fourth is finishing in Thomas). If he puts a chariot/spear combination on the wine hill that seems sort of problematic for us, doesn't it?

[Ginger()]

Good plan with worker/settler whip. I'd forgotten that micro heuristic of maximizing growth turns by always trying to whip civilian units

This is delusionally optimistic, but is there a non-zero chance that Amica is scouting with Axe/Spear and paranoid of running into our units? Nah that's way too much resources to be anything other than staking a claim.

I think there is a benefit to creating more military units for the moment because while they don't snowball like civilian units, they will also need to be purchased down the line, so it isn't a waste. If there ends up being peace, we've bought all the MP and security that we would've needed anyways after spamming settlers.
Furthermore, doing it proactively before we've been poked shows the neighborhood that we are serious.

Yeah Van will be unamused at the loss of the plains hill plant, but if he's pragmatic there is a very easy pivot to the to that forested grass hill south of the cow. Of course we will need axe(s) in order to encourage that pragmatism.
It's a pretty stable border arrangement so I'm not miffed. Although with culture on the wine hill as Cre, he will have a 2-mover fog strike open to him. Good reason to sign OB with him in the near future (maybe even right now, march our warrior up?)

It's a bit late for me to dredge this up now, but why did the looming confrontation make you choose Pyramids and turn on tech for Masonry? I would've thought our urgent hammer requirement would make Oracle far more appealing
alea jacta est

As for Amicalola, I have a couple thoughts. We should settle the blue dot soonish, it kind of demonstrates to him the unacceptability of him holding the dye. We would have 3 fronts.
Furthermore, if he does settle it, I don't really see a lot of reason to provoke ASAP. He can't really stack defenders there because there is another front to the north.

Also, I believe that we should still go Math and 3Cs over HBR. Too much value tied up in Calendar and Currency with this map. Horse Archers are great but too expensive for cracking one hill city, and the deterrence threat of switching the stack in between different fronts for endruns/razes is reliant on our opponent recognizing the deterrent and not ignoring it. Ignoring a Horse Archer threat means they lose their capital, and we gain nothing, ignoring a Catapult threat means that we gain the city we wanted anyways.

[Miguelito]

Good point on OB with van. Do you have a chance to log in and offer him? I don't until ~11h from now. With the settling party we should observe the turn split of course.