[SPOILERS - El Grillo & Charriu PB51] One step at a time

[Charriu]

OMG, that's the best thing that could happen to us.

Regarding WW: If I understand this correct, then Plemo was the only one who could start a combat right now. They must have fought in a place with no or almost no culture from Ramk. A defender gains 2 WW when he looses a unit in combat, so it's possible that Ramk lost 5 units. The power graphs will reflect that in a few turns.

[El Grillo]

Would the tiles around Ramk’s new city count as having 0 culture on them because the city hasn’t produced any culture, even though it exerts cultural control? Or does that mean it had to have been in neutral territory, since they couldn’t have been in Plemo’s culture, surely, since he was the one to declare.

I read some more about the mechanics and one of the only scenarios I can imagine is Ramk had two Workers covered by two units and Plemo had an opportunity to attack with two units of his own, which both won. That would yield 2+2+3+3=10 WW, and I can’t imagine the alternative, where both of them just happened to have 5 units in contact, such that Plemo attacked and won 5 times with 0 losses. That would require something like Ramk marching up 5 Warriors next to Plemo’s waiting stack of 5 real units, which would defy belief. I guess it wouldn’t have needed to all be in the same exact spot, but still.

Now this begs the question of why would Ramk have exposed that opportunity for a Worker snipe, but maybe it was a lowish-odds shot like 2x Axe vs 2x Skirmisher? Or maybe he just got complacent and unlucky, it happens. Or maybe I’m misreading the UI again and completely wrong, wouldn’t be the first or the last time

And yeah, this is amazing news for us.

[Charriu]

Oh yes the worker steal is also a likely scenario.

[El Grillo]

T72:

Important scouting info! Our WC in Indian territory has finally found evidence of what should be an inland sea.



With that, I feel (somewhat, a little bit, not at all) confident to present my guess at what the map looks like:


I think we're on a stretched donut with rotational symmetry designed to give each player more land neighbors than the PB2-style one. I'm extrapolating a bit from the scouting I've done to the southwest, which shows a large empty area to the west of Amicalola's start. Getting that peek of superdeath's culture across the water helps pin his location as well.

The green island is to landmass to the east of Springer Mtn and was designed to be contested between Amicalola and the unknown player C. Not sure if it's large enough to be Galley-accessible across the N-S wrap. Similarly, there should be an island along the N-S wrap between GKC and the southern player, who from Ramk's conquered city pretty much has to be vanrober.

Demos:

The Library and going to 100% on Mathematics is good enough for #1 GNP, if barely. Sure, I'll take it. Abroad, Ramk offered back rice-for-rice, and no additional WW was generated.

Graphs:

[El Grillo]

T73:

Northern scouting WC will move toward the NW where I expect to find the next player. Furthermore, revealing more tiles to the north has value for the toroidal-navigation race, where I think I have a good chance of finishing the E-W direction but the N-S direction could be trickier.



Southern scouting WC sees a tile of coast, and from free-camera fog-gazing I'd be willing to wager that it's one large sea connected to what we saw in the north.



Demos:

Abroad, Lazteuq gained 7 points mid-turn with no corresponding drop from another player, so this is presumably a barbarian city capture. The French score dropped by 7 points 14 minutes later, which I've written down as a 2-pop whip and not him taking a really long time to finally decide to raze the city. That capture brings Lazteuq to 5 cities.

Ramk and Plemo remain at war, but no additional WW was generated.

We're 2t away from getting graphs on GKC.

Graphs:

At home, the economic consolidation plan continues, with four cities growing next turn. I still need to check the map, but we might be able to 1t Priesthood with overflow right after finishing Mathematics for an attempt on the Oracle for Currency. Honestly, Calendar might be the better target since we only have +1c trade routes, but we're still lacking Sailing so that seems a bit greedy.

[Charriu]

Why would it be greedy? It's not like we finish the Oracle one turn after priesthood and Sailing isn't that expensive.

[El Grillo]

I was considering 1t Oracle in Springer Mtn right after finishing Priesthood with 3 chops from the Workers we have in the area and a bit of overflow. That leaves the other teams fewer turns to interrupt and allows Oracle to speed up both Great People in the queue.

That said, you have a good point and maybe it would be better to go for Sailing and then bulb Calendar. We have two Calendar resources in range already, and it would let us get started on the Mausoleum much earlier, making us the prohibitive favorite to win that wonder race. I’ll need to log in later to see how many turns it takes to get Sailing, I want to say it’ll be 3.

[El Grillo]

Ouch, I started sketching out a more detailed plan of what the T79 Oracle-for-Currency attempt would look like in the planning spreadsheet, and I already screwed up my Worker actions this turn, preventing me from finishing another cottage before the chop turns. Not a huge deal because I don't actually have a city ready to pick up those tiles just yet, but it's an indication of just how much potential output is just constantly slipping right through my fingers.

The good news is that the plan is entirely feasible, so it's just up to Mjmd (Hinduism founder) or giraflorens (only feasible other competitor with IND) to finish it earlier. The nice thing about the timings is that we don't need to put any beakers into Priesthood until T78, and of course the chops and overflow can just be a Settler instead.

Delaying Oracle for Sailing->Calendar would take 3 turns more of tech, and while the Workers can easily find things to do in that time, I'm just nervous that we could miss out on the wonder. I was happening to read through the ISDG thread where the RB team playing Egypt went for an Oracle play that ended up being beaten by a turn, so maybe that's being unreasonably paranoid, but I don't have great visibility on either of those players so I don't want to chance it.

[El Grillo]

Alright, here's the eoT79 Oracle plan. Full planning and tracking sheet is here as usual, on the Latest Plans tab. Not the most elegant work, and it shows my lack of polish, but I'm pretty happy with it. Maybe I can make improvements for later wonders like Mausoleum and Taj Mahal.

There are 3 critical components of the plan: research timing, Worker actions, and overflow. We would need to finish Priesthood immediately after Math, have 3 chops finishing the next turn, and have enough production to finish the build in 1t. Again, my reasoning for this timetable is both so that we're most likely to beat a competitor to the wonder, and so that we can change plans to not tech Priesthood and use the chops for a Settler instead. There's inherently a lot of uncertainty because Oracle is certainly buildable, even at a leisurely rate, by this point, and we lack the scouting and detailed C&D needed to make a better guess than that.

Research timing is fairly straighforward. We're currently a bit short, but thankfully our four cities all grow onto 3c tiles at the end of this turn, and all we have to do is not whip away all of it right away. That leaves us finishing Math in 5t but with a lot of overflow, easily enough to finish Priesthood at only 89b on the same turn that we deplete the treasury.

We have 3 Workers already near Springer Mtn, and they just need to move into a forest on T76, leaving them two free turns. As I mentioned earlier, I could've finished two cottages in this time, but I'll have to settle for one finished cottage and two tiles with incomplete cottages at 4/5 and 1/5.

For production at Springer Mtn, I'm building a 4t Worker right now while we're at the happy cap, and the plan is to start another one after that and 2-pop whip it for sufficient overflow. This admittedly introduces a couple of hiccups into the plan to run 2 Priests all the way to the Great Prophet, but the Oracle's GPP more than makes up for it. EDIT: Disregard, miscalculated. Updated plan is a 1-pop whip with max overflow preserving enough pop to work enough hammers to finish production on the next turn.

I don't see a good way to speed things up any further, and I'd certainly get value from having Currency ~15t earlier as well as the GPP, even if it would probably be less upfront value than Calendar. And while it wouldn't be gamebreaking, I'd prefer not to lose out on this opportunity either. What do you think, Charriu?

[Charriu]

I will investigate the plan more thoroughly after a good night sleep, but my gut feeling tells me: Go for it. Currency is worth it