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

[El Grillo]

T79:

Thank goodness, the math wasn't wrong:


Just need to see if we might still need to win a coinflip.

On the scouting front, vanrober denied Open Borders again, so I pulled that WC back to begin the scouting plan from last turn's report. Meanwhile, we found giraflorens' third city, which has its Granary and Barracks completed.



Demos:

We're starting to fall behind the leaders in CY, which is always a bit concerning. Our next two cities will be floodplains-dependent and lack a food bonus, so it'll take them a few growth cycles before they really build up a food surplus. That said, some of these players will presumably soon be hitting a pretty sharp increase in costs, while we already have both the Currency plan and the Shrine plan in motion in anticipation. I'm going to set myself a challenge here: I want to be no later than third to 10 cities, no later than second to 12 cities, and first to 15 cities. Keep me accountable on this, Charriu

Plemo founded city #8 on T78, GKC founded city #7 on T78, and Lazteuq founded city #8 on T78. Even with the barb city capture, that's pretty impressive, and I'm looking forward to meeting and getting his graphs. If that Great Scientist from a few turns ago was also his, then well played indeed.

Graphs:

On one last note, what the heck is this?


My best guess is that this is an example of the bug where PBStats used to combine multiple score changes if they happened very closely together, and this was Ramk 3-pop whipping two cities.

[El Grillo]

T80:



We are now the proud owners of The Oracle and Currency. In my excitement, I forgot to take a screenshot.

Otherwise, it was a fairly quiet turn. Plans to chop out the next two Settlers continue, and I 2-pop whipped a Worker from Point Reyes with minimum overflow to finish the Workboat. I also 2-pop whipped the first missionary out of Humboldt Forest with max overflow, which in this case will be another missionary but in the future will be used to build the Market and other gold multipliers to go with the shrine.

Demos:

Demos look pretty bad after the whips, and I expect to settle the next two in 5 and 6 turns so they won't be stellar any time soon. I'm actually thinking of using the new Workboat from Las Trampas to contact superdeath sooner and get trade routes from him, at least for the immediate future. I'm sure he's desperate for commerce, maybe I can even charge him a slight premium

Graphs:

Abroad, vanrober started putting EP on me and 2-pop whipped. I'll be keeping a closer eye on his activity along with Ramk's and Plemo's.

[Charriu]

Awesome.  

This will also help to fogbust the south, because Springer Mtn pops borders sooner.

[El Grillo]

T81:

Plemo's spear defogged a river trade route, so we can see that he's done a really good job of connecting food and luxury resources:


No wonder his lead in CY has been so pronounced! Even accounting for food resources that don't need to be connected to the trade network right away, it's quite impressive. Plemo has also turned research on, burning through ~120 gold saved up. My guess would be Mathematics, perhaps? I am well aware of all the 5+ yield tiles near me that I haven't settled for yet, but looking back I think the economy would've actually ground to a halt if I hadn't settled for the floodplains cottages first. Perhaps I can delay the Library and second Great Person out of Springer Mtn and just produce a few more Settlers out of there first.

Otherwise, it was a fairly quiet turn. I decided to overflow the first missionary into an Axe just in case Plemo's scouting Spear decides to get frisky and probe Tuolumne Meadow's defenses. We'll finish Sailing and look to pick up some foreign trade routes next turn.

Demos:

Graphs:

[El Grillo]

T82:

My tracking spreadsheet isn't loading right now for some odd reason, so I wanted to first think about something I posted a couple of days ago:

I'm going to set myself a challenge here: I want to be no later than third to 10 cities, no later than second to 12 cities, and first to 15 cities. Keep me accountable on this, Charriu

It's goal-planning time! Our rate of expansion is clearly too slow (just wait until you see the latest Crop Yield graphs ), so something needs to change from our current course. I'm going to talk through my thought process here so feel free to ask me if something seems unreasonable to you.

I've said before that while hammers can be invested into new cities via chops and missionary spreads, food can't, so the only way to catch up in CY is to get more cities planted sooner, working higher-food tiles.

How do we get more cities planted sooner?
1. Whip Settlers. This is currently not feasible as we're already a bit heavy on whip anger, and our largest cities would leave strong tiles unworked if we 2- or 3-pop whipped Settlers anytime soon.
2. Chop Settlers. We have 4 Workers currently chopping around Springer Mtn. While I would normally prefer leaving cities with forests to chop into their Granary, this is perhaps a scenario where we could front-load output by settling to bring forests into borders, then chopping them for more Settlers. Do we have any such sites available? We sure do:


These are two sites I marked earlier in the dotmap. I've only drawn in their first-ring borders (plus the tile Springer Mtn will pick up via 3rd-ring borders in 7t) to emphasize what front-loaded output we can get from them. I had planned to settle them later in favor of getting the floodplains cities up and running more quickly. However, if the goal is more cities earlier, then these become prime candidates. They won't have much commerce potential, but can work their improved tiles, shared with Springer Mtn, and build themselves Workers while our current force just improves their resources, chops their forests into Settlers, and then moves west to focus on developing the floodplains. This plan also segues nicely into eventually exploring and settling the island for ICTRs, which my earlier plan just kind of dropped entirely.

In the north, I thought about trying a similar thing, but the only site with enough forests and a food resource would be the border hill pig site, which I am absolutely not going to try and claim until I can show Plemo I have Catapults. He's adding Barracks and continues to be top in Power, and my main source of deterrence at this point is not showing him any tempting targets. He could march his troops 4 tiles deep into our borders for the hope of taking a 60%-defense capital city that I would have plenty of time to whip to defend... or he could focus on the much closer and exposed target, Ramk's forward city, which has yet to pop its second-ring borders.


As a result, and because our Workers are already pre-roading, the capital's Settler will still head for the gold. We really do need the luxury to keep things running smoothly, and this way there's a balance between settling front-loaded growth cities and a scaling commerce city. That city will also require its Workers' attention for quite some time, so we'll need more of those as well soon.

So with all that in mind, here's the latest plan:
1. Capital Settler finishes eoT82 and founds on the gold hill T85, bringing us to 7 cities.
2. All four chops at Springer Mtn will be funneled into Settlers, instead of 2 being used for Blacksand Beach's Granary. Three chops will land T83 to finish the first Settler eoT83, with overflow and another chop into another. The first Settler will head east to the wheat/copper site and be founded T85, bringing us to 8 cities.
3. The second Settler out of Springer Mtn will finish eoT86 and settle the wet corn on T89, bringing us to 9 cities.
4. After finishing the Settlers, Springer Mtn will manually build a few more Workers and send them north, finishing some incomplete cottages and building a road connecting the two city clusters.
5. The two Workers at the wheat-copper site will need 10 turns to improve the resources and chop 2 forests, which will be roughly a eoT97 Settler.
6. Ditto for the two Workers at the wet corn site, roughly a eoT101 Settler.

That leads to a timeline of founding city #10 somewhere around T100-103. Think that'll be quick enough to meet the challenge?

I'll edit in or post separately the demos/graphs and score analysis from this turn, once the spreadsheet loads properly.

EDIT:

Demos:

Abroad, Ramk founded city #5 on T81, giraflorens founded city #5 on T81, and GKC founded city #8 on T81.

Graphs:

I also moved my Workboat to make contact with superdeath this turn and offered Open Borders, but he had played before me so we'll have to wait to see his response. I thought for a little bit about whether or not to charge him gpt for our routes, but I figured a straightforward approach would be best here. There's also a chance that he has yet to tech Sailing, in which case charging gpt would certainly be refused.


Superdeath has also hooked up two happiness resources, one being an ivory at the coastal site we made contact through. Also, he has iron hooked already, so fun times ahead for his neighbors.

[Charriu]

I understand what you want to accomplish with the settling challenge, but I just wanted to say that in the end your economy decides how many cities to found.

[El Grillo]

T83:

I agree, and I think we've invested enough in getting the economy ready to support more cities, between Wealth and trade routes and the Prophet we're 3 turns away from (add 4 turns of walking to the Shrine). Also, another factor of deterrence is city count and pop: when attacking at tech parity, you need to bring overwhelming numbers, and would you rather try that against a player with 8 cities, or 5? It's muddied a bit because Ramk is defending with PRO Skirmishers, but I want as many factors dissuading Plemo as possible.





Our WCs should be able to finish defogging a coastal route to GKC and giraflorens in 5-8t. It seems Ramk is a bit tightly squeezed for land, especially with the jungle belt that separates us. It's noticeably thicker further to the west.



Ready to be settled on T85. I think we'll want one floodplains farm here at size 1, and then cottage the rest for a healthy food surplus. I sketched out some Worker plans for the wheat-copper city and they look good so I'll be proceeding with that as well.

Demos:

Plemo whipped away 5 more pop on T82, not that it's cutting much at all into his CY lead. We'll get charts on vanrober either next turn or the one after.

Graphs:

[Charriu]

I did not mean to say: "Don't do it", rather be cautious and observe the economy.

[El Grillo]

T84:

So I clearly miscalculated how exactly foreign trade routes work, and evidently they aren't 1:1 with having diplo resource visibility, because I now have foreign routes from Ramk, GKC, and giraflorens in all of my cities That being the case, it's definitely full speed ahead on more cities!

Also, mea culpa. Before I realized what had gone on with the trade routes, I accepted superdeath's offer of Open Borders for 2gpt. I thought I was still several turns from getting the others and figured I could just cancel these once 10t had elapsed. Ah well, perhaps he'll consider it a token of friendship and a seed for future cooperation.

Ramk's capital,



Demos:

Graphs:

[El Grillo]

T84:

I evidently don't fully understand how foreign trade routes work, and apparently they aren't 1:1 with diplo resource visibility, because we now have 2c foreign routes from GKC and giraflorens filling all of our slots That being the case, the next cities will have +4c from founding, more or less paying for themselves, and it's full speed ahead on the settling plans.

Also, mea culpa: before I had figured out what was going on with the routes, I saw and accepted superdeath's offer of Open Borders for 2gpt. I figured they would tide me over until I defogged more tiles, but now due to player order I'm not yet getting any benefit at all! No matter, my next cities will make use of them at some point, and hopefully superdeath will view this as a token of goodwill and an investment in future cooperation.

Our WC found Ramk's capital. He has an Axe and Skirm on his copper so maybe he was afraid that I would declare war on him. Also, you can see a couple of barbs coming from the jungle that have dislodged Plemo's sentry Spearman. My WC will eliminate the Axe once it moves to a dumb tile.



Lazteuq's borders have updated in the fog. Talk about close borders sparking tensions. I think I'm going to move 1N with the Workboat to make contact, then turn around and head south in an attempt to contact Mjmd (and also eventually bring the Workboat back).



Demos:

We broke 100 GNP and briefly have the score lead. Far too soon to celebrate with the average CY and need to grow taller onto more improved tiles, but small victories are still worth recognizing for what they are. Also, a lot of that GNP is culture and 40% prereq bonus on Masonry, so take it with a grain of salt.

Abroad, Plemo fired off 2-pop and 3-pop whips on T83.

Graphs:

We now have graphs on vanrober's AGG/CRE Zulu. He has 4 cities, low GNP (especially for CRE) and CY, middling Power, and very high MFG. In fact it looks like he might be #1 global MFG, which is interesting. That presents the potential to build a large Impi army using natural production, but that's something that'll be easier to track and respond to than, say, a 10-city civ whipping out 20 Horse Archers.