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

[Charriu]

Barb spawning mechanics (stolen from SevenSpirits):

Barbs are spawned for each landmass individually. The game will spawn barbs up to a max of one barb per 50 (on prince) unowned tiles on the landmass. This is why islands (smaller than 50 tiles) won't get barbs.

At other difficulties, unowned land tiles per barb unit:

Noble: 60
Prince: 50
Monarch: 40
Emperor: 35
Immortal: 30
Deity: 25

Also: how many barbs spawn per turn on a landmass? It's one, plus one more for every four missing units. So if a landmass supports 20 barbs, and there are currently 4 on it, then there are 16 missing, so 1+4=5 will be created.

[El Grillo]

Thank you Charriu!

[El Grillo]

T107:



Ramk chopped both forests but did not otherwise increase his base hpt, leaving him on track with the forecast. I did realize I fat-fingered the hammers from chops as 100 instead of 120, but it's not enough to change his ETA from eoT111 to eoT110, unless he either swaps off the rice to work another mine for two of the next three turns, or whips the city. In either case he can't make it better than a coinflip.

Vanrober moved his Impi east to a tile where I don't believe he can cause any issues moving forward, so that's a relief.

Scouting:

We have circumnavigation next turn, and found Mjmd's one coastal city, which is really hurting for a border pop.

Demos:

Everything is on track for our own Mausoleum build, and otherwise our cities continue to develop nicely enough. Our Market in Humboldt Forest just finished and is amplifying 17 base shrine gpt, and we have more cities of our own to convert to Buddhism, plus whatever passive spreads we can get. It's really helpful that the other two religions were founded by Mjmd, leaving a wider stretch of the map with cities with no religion yet.

That said, the other FIN players and Lazteuq are doing a great job keeping their tech rates high, and we still have lots of domestic work left to do in terms of settling cities, improving tiles, and growing.

Graphs:

Abroad, Plemo settled city #15 on T106, and Lazteuq settled city #12 on T106. So we officially failed our settling goal of being first to 15 cities, but Plemo's snowball was too large. We could've whipped out more cities to symbolically achieve the goal, but at too high a cost. I'm not exactly happy with where we are now, but at least we have a viable path forward, unlike some of the players who I think are just too far behind at this point.

Speaking of which, giraflorens seems to have been defending well in his war against GKC, who in turn seems to have been a bit overeager to attack into tech-equivalent defenders without Catapults.

[Charriu]

Just wanted to know I'm still with you and reading along. But so far there isn't much to add. You are doing a great job.

[El Grillo]

Moral support is very much welcome If you or anyone else reading has any questions or would like me to occasionally show other screenshots or make more paranoid analyses for your entertainment, by all means go ahead.

The next thing on my mind right now is how best to get out the 4 Settlers I want to finish plugging up our borders (the rice/iron I've put off literally forever, two floodplains sites, and a fish-fed site in the southwest). I'd also like to see if there's another site worth settling on the marble island, and if it'd be worth contesting Plemo/Lazteuq for the icy islands at the world-wrap. Circumnavigation and access to C1 Galleys from our Great General city could allow us to make some fun plays.

The current plan for the Settlers is to use some of the chops around the capital and Huangshan Forest (we still have 5t of enforced peace until T112, though I'm not 100% sure if it matters when the treaty was accepted and if that means we're vulnerable on T112 or T113), as well as some additional chops at Sunol Wilds. I really don't want to be whipping much more unless it's for military purposes, considering the planned Golden Age.

[El Grillo]

T108:

It appears we lost a coin-flip on circumnavigation to Plemo . Now that's a right kick to the gut, and the poor guy doesn't even know I'm going to bear him a grudge for it. I certainly could've emphasized this more by putting Workboats in the water earlier, but it is what it is. Oh, and I totally should've killed his scouting Warrior way back in ~t50, there's no doubt in my mind that that helped him complete the N-S traversal.



Moving on, because what else can you do... I'm going to guess that was GKC landing Code of Laws for ORG Courthouses, but it easily could've been Plemo as well en route to Civil Service, with the option of running Rep/Caste.

One potential source of good news of this turn is that Ramk seems to have swapped from a mine to two newly chopped cottages in Djenne, which means he's not trying hard to shave off the extra turn. Actually, the paranoid interpretation is that he's setting up a 3-pop whip instead. Anyway, I'm committed now so we'll just have to see. I'm finally adding in the Library at Springer Mtn so I can run Scientists to accelerate the Golden Age.



Scouting:

No unpleasant surprises on the marble island, please.

Demos:

Some people might look at a demo screen with this many 2nd place rankings and be pleased, but for me it's probably more stress-inducing than being at the bottom of the pack.

Graphs:

Unsurprisingly, Plemo at max research is head and shoulders the GNP leader. Mjmd is putting all of his EP on me so it'll be one more turn until we get graphs. Abroad, vanrober founded city #8 on T107.

[Charriu]

Well, at least it's not Superdeath or another neighbor across the sea, who got the circumnavigation. That would have been worse longterm.

[El Grillo]

Yeah I suppose, but I was really hoping to do something fun with 4-move Galleys with Theocracy for Navigation to raid Plemo before he gets EIM online. And now it's 5-move EIM, fantastic. We can write off trying to settle those islands, that's just a death wish.

EDIT: You know, maybe we take our Knight timing, whip down all of our cities, and just hit Plemo instead and raze as many of his cities as we can. It's probably not the right call strategically, but it might make me feel better

EDIT 2: Yeah, especially if we lose the Mausoleum, we change course and try to take Plemo down as many pegs as we can, and I get to practice warring against a competent opponent. Then we can concede gracefully and call it a day here, and Plemo can go back to winning PB88 and whatever else he has on his Civ agenda :D

EDIT 3: Techs needed for Knights:
- HBR (373b, 1 pre-req)
- Monarchy (448b, 1 pre-req)
- Feudalism (1046b, 1 pre-req)
- Metal Casting (672b, 1 pre-req)
- Machinery (1046b, 1 pre-req)
- Guilds (1495b, 1 pre-req)

Preferably, also Aesthetics (448b, 1 pre-req) so I can still make some Nav1 boats for surprise value, plus allowing me to skip Stables in most cities.

After pre-reqs it comes out to 4600b of input needed. Current break-even research rate is 81b, and I'd need to more than double that to finish Guilds by the end of two Mausoleum-boosted Golden Ages. Hmm...

Also, while I was logged in, Ramk declared war on GKC. Could be tension over the island city, or opportunism after GKC's failure to make inroads on gira?

[Suite]

I'm feeling you at the circumnavigation But you didn't lose a coinflip but rather it's Plemos ID - the bonus is given out per ID sequence. Well, seems you should exterminate all the Dutch until Astronomy, huh? :D

[El Grillo]

I thought that the player IDs were randomly shuffled every turn by the PB host to tie-break wonders and other first-to bonuses? If not, 1) well that's another kick in the gut, and 2) I guess I don't have the worry about a T110 Mausoleum coin-flip with Ramk?