[Spoilers] Grotsnot massively inflates his own View count

[Banzailizard]

If you are worried about a roman attack you can built the walls to within 1 turn and hold them there. You may not be able to get the production benefits of Limes but at least if he goes to attack someone else instead, you can get the chopping benefit of Limes.

St. Gloriana is strategically important but honestly there is so little production and maybe one chop its questionable placement. I get that the idea is to use it to build a mega city, but that matters little if cannot build the districts, nor even pay back its initial investment cost.

[Grotsnot]

Yeah, that's the idea. Having the +100% boost to actually build the things would have been handy though. And yeah StG's limited production was disappointing. I got my hopes up when I saw the horses. But now it's likely gonna have to be city 3 or maybe even 4. The strategic position and possible district synergies with Ooarai make it still tempting, though.

Anyway, turn 9:
https://www.chapelcomic.com/27/

Wait no, not that, this one:

Barbs a'comin. I suppose I should be glad it took them this long, I've seen the bastards on like turn 5 before. And if they're coming from the frozen wastes they're unlikely to have horse archers. Silver linings!

Rome looks to be having a good day:

Picked up God-King and met my City-State! The nerve. Haven't seen their warrior so I'm guessing they wandered north and met up with Yerevan. Wish I'd thought to take the CS screencap last turn to know if this was a new development. Not that I would know how to turn that into actionable information anyway

And speaking of Good Days, here's the scores:

As predicted, everybody got their Pop 2 on turn 8. But lookie, Chevalier got a Civic already, too   Rome obviously got theirs so early from the free Monument. A cultural resource isn't enough to do it this fast so England would have had to meet a Cultural CS on turn frigging 3 in order to get CoL. Lucky  

And in "Maybe I Should Reconsider Voting For CQUI Next Time" News, we can see from the Swords that Chevalier and AlZ led off with Scouts and Marco's already gotten in a scrap with some barbs. Not sure whether they finished the scouts on turn 6 or turn 7, the strength rating has a 2-turn delay but dunno if that applies at the top of my turn or theirs. I certainly hope it was turn 7, otherwise they've had a 2/3 tile this whole time

Warrior continues the scout path, finds even moar Gypsum. Kind of gets in the way but I guess it's okay? We'll see what the rest of the clay looks like

Anyway, I reran some numbers and decided to work the newly acquired Gypsum to finish up the Builder next turn. It was going to delay pop 3 by a turn but those projections included buying my 2nd wheat tile which I'm not sure is a good idea. And the impact won't be felt for many turns off into the fog, so lets grab the Builder now before barbs show up to ruin my day. Gotta get the Warrior looped back north for guard duty... I want to detour around the south to check for possible sites but I also don't want to delay getting back too long and have the barbs pillaging my stuff.

[Grotsnot]

We've arrived at double digits! Turn 10 state of the world:

Bringing up the bottom of the pack!
Strictly speaking, we're tied with TBS and Marco. Currently looking like they went with Builders for first build, too. Unless Marco lost their warrior and replaced it with something, I guess, but that seems unlikely. Could also be one of them has a small production disadvantage due to working a tile with faith or culture instead. But I'd bet especially TBS going with Builder first, since the Civ 4 meta favors Worker first so heavily. Interestingly neither of the vets went Builder first: looks like Chevalier got a Scout and Alhambram got a Warrior (or maybe a Slinger, I gotta check what the power ratings on those are). I think I still made the right call since I'll be able to get all my worker's charges used with only maybe 1 turn of waiting for techs. Maybe it means Chev & AlB have plantation or camp resources - this is why I wanted Quarry-able resources in my pre-game post   - or maybe it's that with all the stupid exponential costs the marginal yields don't matter as much in 6?   We shall see! Looking forward to reading their reports (Now if I was a smart person I would have more thoroughly read their previous game reports but whatever, too late now)

No other global news. I'm obsessively watching Rome's spy-able yields and Yerevan's Relationships now but nothing's changed since last turn.

Anywho, workerbuilder completes and farms the wheat. Ōarai swaps over to the freshly farmed tile and begins work on a Slinger. More on that later.

Before that, have some big news down south! Several items, in fact!

1) RIVAAA   Also coffee. South city (tentatively Kuromorimine) is shaping up to actually be pretty good! Also it looks like this river might connect to the one up by Saunders. Would make a nifty defensive line if so.
2) Praise be unto Settler Lens, we can see there's someone not too far from us to the south. Please be a city-state, please be a city-state, please be a city-state... Another civ this close - looks like 11 tiles from my start - would be obscene  So I think we're just praying we still have time to get to the CS first Have plotted a couple exploration routes for whether we can meet them from our side of the river or not.
3) Another barb scout. Yaaay... Let's hope this one heads south and gets his camp breaking against the city-state.

(A and B detour paths depending on which way the river turns)

And now we come to decision time. I've been mulling over for a while whether or not I should buy Ōarai's 2nd wheat tile to accelerate our pop growth. Here's my outlines for with and without the wheat tile:

These are the "continue running Urban Planning" versions, I'm also spreadsheeting out to weigh that vs switching to Ilkum once I hit Craftsmanship
Buy + UP

Don't Buy + UP

(oh hey found a mistake already this one should have Builder 2's "go to Saunders" note the same as Buy's - I forgot to update it after copying from the Ilkum plan which delayed the Saunders HS a turn

Focus is mainly on the capital so that's all I've included in the Excel screenshots. With Saunders still covered in fog I have them just working the Gypsum tile and chopping a Holy Site. Pop growth with that tile is anemic so if it has some better food options there's a chance Masonry would arrive a turn sooner or something, but the overall picture won't change much - even with 1/turn it grows fast enough to get the Early Empire boost in time. (Side note: I've been assuming I won't get the Astrology or Foreign Trade boosts due to the sheer random-ass luck involved. But maybe we'll get lucky and can accelerate a couple things). Also I didn't forget about the district discount for the Encampment, I've just been assuming it would go to City 3 or 2 since the capital is better equipped to build one at "full" (yay Hojo) cost. Also also assorted caveats about my spreadsheet formulas not being perfect

So, pros and cons.
Buy Wheat:
+ More citizens more faster. Get to start on the Encampment sooner and overall nets approximately 12 citizen-turns over the Don't Buy plan. Results in a small advantage of and though not enough to be a driving factor.
+ Faster 2nd Settler, faster Encampment, slightly faster Holy Site
+ Masks 1st Settler's completion date. I think this will only really matter if for some reason I go for St Gloriana first after all and don't want to risk Rome having troops nearby that could intercept. But it's always nice to feel like I'm being sneaky Slough All the Techs!
- Costs 50 and I'm expecting to need to buy ~3 more tiles for chops and district sites
- Uses up another early worker charge. Planning on improving the wheat in both cases but with Don't Buy it can be delayed to Builder 3, leaving a charge on Builder 2 to improve something at City 2.

Don't Buy:
+ Extra Slinger. Working the sheep instead produces a surplus over the -heavy plan which can finish the currently-under-production Slinger and crank out a 2nd one to Agoge-chop for the 1st Settler. Since the limiting factor for Settler 1 is Craftsmanship both plans get City 2 out at the same time. But the Slinger does come at the cost of...
- Slower everything else. Those Slinger cogs gotta come from somewhere and the surplus isn't enough to cover it alone. Plus the citizen-turn deficit. It'll delay City 3 by 3-4 turns and the lack of food will delay the Encampment as well.

Right now I think I have (mostly) dissuaded myself from buying the wheat. I want to buy the tile and get the snowball rolling a little faster but I think not buying is the more responsible play. That extra+early Slinger will be useful - would hate to buy the wheat only for those northern barbs to surge down and set it on fire. And I should probably be more conservative with my than in single player...

Any thoughts?

[Grotsnot]

Also, expecting to see everyone else have 2 shiny new tech points from this turn once it gets back around to me. I'm curious what's up over by Alhazard though. CQUI says he met a Scientific city-state a while ago and so should have finished Tech 1 on turn 8. So he either switched around (maybe sloughing, maybe a mistake like I did - though I absolutely would have paused Mining until I needed it ) OR he's gunning straight for Astrology. The latter would, in my opinion, be an odd choice when paired with building a Scout. Why get a Scout if you're going to hard-research one of, if not the only, tech that benefits from faster exploration? I mean there's FT and PP but still, seems wasteful. So I think it's more likely to be tech switching. Maybe he's trying to keep the Scientific CS under wraps and doesn't know that dicks like me who pushed for CQUI can see it anyway

[Grotsnot]

Turn played. Did not buy the wheat and defied another freaking barb scout by heading toward the Gypsum anyway. Will post up screenshots and such either later tonight or sometime tomorrow. Sucks to slow things down but all these barbs makes me want the Slinger around and to not risk getting my Builder captured and/or tiles razed.

[Banzailizard]

Sorry I could not comment in time.  I've been busy and Tuesdays are particularly bad for me.

Here are my thoughts in an ordered list, itself having no particularly relevant order:

1. Not buying the tile was the right call I think. You went builder frist (which I also support based on your lackluster base tile yeilds) and you need to protect that investment.  Further you will want to kill those barbs both for the archery and iorn working boosts.

2. There maybe be other reasons to hold tech back to hold back district costs until you can place the bases and lock that cost in.  This early though, makes more sense to unlock the techs to unlock capabilities.

3. I love the spreadsheet.  I keep meaning to set one up for my game but instead I keep making ad hoc calculations to weigh my options.  Maybe as I learn python and R for my degree I will do that.

[Grotsnot]

No worries Banzai, I'm glad I went with the right call Glad you like the spreadsheet If you want I could post up the spreadsheet template - though it's still pretty rough around the edges and might not be the most user-friendly seeing as it's naturally tuned to my own idiosyncrasies. Reminds me I need to start on is a Cloak & Dagger tracker before too long...

So, turn 11:

No new notifications, though as mentioned there is a 3rd barb scout wandering over by the capital. Bunch of jerks. I decide to run with not buying the wheat tile and send the builder on his scheduled route to Ooarai's Gypsum. Hope the stupid barb goes away or I'm gonna be stuck with the worst of both options  Also Yerevan has a Warrior come to visit, hopefully they stick around to help with the barbs.

More minor inconveniences down south, as we learn the city-state (thank goodness) is across the sea from our warrior. Would need to take another turn of detour to guarantee meeting them. Can tell from the border color it's a Commercial CS and luckily from the Settler lens (possibly just from the border, even) we can determine exactly where it's situated.

"Commerical"   

On the plus side, found some tasty tasty cotton down here. Tempted to throw an ambitious colony down that way. We'll see how the rest of the west shapes up, not sure if there's enough room between me and everyone else to make a play for it. Also have to see how its districts would fit in.

In global news, everyone but me and Alhazard got their first tech. I pause Mining for a turn for shits and giggles and will finish it off to align with when the Builder needs it. Which will be next turn unless the barbs are total dicks. I suspect AlZ is thinking along the same lines of pause-until-needed but we'll have to wait and see.
Also, from last turn I confirmed Rome's power rating means they got a Warrior. An interesting leadoff choice, since Slingers contribute more to boosts, but makes sense for Rome upgrading to Legions

State of the Empire with paused Mining (@23.7/25 ) and improved Wheat:

The unfortunate thing is that if I'd decided on not buying the wheat sooner I should have been working on Animal Husbandry from the beginning like I originally slotted Live and learn. At least now I have the spreadsheet mostly worked out to get plans up faster next game.

I'm kind of annoyed at giving Rome the Writing boost. I'm not likely to get over to that part of the tech tree for a while since I want to gun for Bronze Working, Masonry, and maybe Archery first. Still very happy I got resources that let me stall Pottery for a while and focus on the bottom half of the tree

Still not 100% on the St Gloriana City Center choice, but decided to plot out some districts to see how it'd go. This gets a nice prickly front against Romans coming down the main pipe and a tower on the north coast of the lake. Would also get the Sailing boost for Yerevan and allow building a Galley to intercept a naval invasion a la PBEM1. The alternative would be to place StG where the TS is currently marked and plop the Encampment over next to the 2 Rices. I think even with the southern clay shaping up well I'm going to want this to be City 3 so I can get the Walls up before Alhambram comes knocking.

The campus should actually say +6 Hell yeah Hojo. I had the pin originally placed with only 3 districts/city since 7 pop is a lot easier to get to than 10, but decided to slot in Ooarai's TS. Was having trouble deciding which of StG's districts to not include in a set of 3 but at least have plenty of time to decide.

Think I have enough pins?

[Grotsnot]

Turn 12:

Barb scout comes down to play with our warrior, thankfully leaving the builder room to go build a quarry.

More wheat! Saunders and Kuromorimine keep getting better Still hoping for a 1st-ring forest @Saunders, but might be pushing my luck    If I'd have to buy a tile to chop the Holy Site there I wonder if it'd be better to just grab StG after all. Get it up to speed with the Encampment faster and get some district adjacency boost going with Ooarai's HS. It'll still have pretty lackluster production but City 3 wouldn't be too far behind... Still plenty of time to decide.

Nothing to report this turn in global news, scores remain the same. Interestingly still no tech for Alhazard yet. Not that I have any room to talk

One of these days I'll borrow someone's template for a stats table. And steal your graphs, Banzai For now, y'all get screenshots. I'm tracking Rome in more detail too but nothing worth posting since they got their Warrior. I started on my C&D tracker, nothing presentable yet but I'm beginning to suspect that Rome met a Military City-State They finished the Warrior only 1 turn after Chevalier & Alhazard got their Scouts, which is ~5 to account for. Rome (the city) grew at the same time as everyone else so either they got a bullshit start with either a 2/3 tile or a Plains Hill City Center (remember the delay reporting power means they got the Warrior before pop growth) - or they met a Mil CS.

Anyway, for exploration, I decide that I've gotten exceedingly lucky with my Builder already and a Commercial CS isn't really worth rushing over to so the Warrior should cover them instead for now. I know exactly where the CS is so I'll meet it before PP for sure - and more than likely with enough time to knock out an Ancient quest. Don't really need multiple envoys in there for quite a while - unless it's Zanzibar in which case I will be sad. But it's on the water so it's probably stupid useless Lisbon. Or at least so I tell myself to justify the I'm losing by having the Warrior protect the Builder instead. (inb4 "uhh barb Scouts don't capture Builders on Prince, Grotsnot..." ) Once the Builder is headed back toward safety the Warrior will head south and hope the delay didn't cost me the first contact bonus 

Also switched back to Mining for the Builder to throw down the Quarry next turn. And cleaned up the pins a little Neat little trick: you can put icons in pin descriptions with things like "[ICON_Capital]" and "[ICON_Science]". It doesn't save anything on the character limit but does look less cluttered on the map.

[Grotsnot]

Quick update for turn 13. Have been trying to work through a few mechanical confusions so not so much analysis right now

Turn start:

Barb scout ran away to the forest so I have the liberty to plop down my quarry and Ooarai switches over to working it and we'll have the Slinger out in 2 turns

For the warrior, I don't see much point in going right back into last turn's forest tile so I cross the river with an eye to moving south along the river the following turn

Also scores: Marco got a civic, so probably has a + resource tile

14 will be up as soon as I can get my thoughts organized. Seem to be getting ripped off on Science overflow   (foreshadowed from this turn actually)

Overlay says 4 turns (which agrees with my spreadsheet after an update)

But tech selector (and tech tree not pictured) shows 5. What the hell?

[Grotsnot]

Ok well I'm still grumpy about getting ripped off nearly a full turn of so let's just get this turn reported and sleep on the distress and talk about spreadsheet planning milestones tomorrow. This sucks, I thought I had the kinks worked out and if overflow doesn't exist in VI then it's going to add a really obnoxious layer of micromanagement to minimize wasted beakers.

If anyone can weigh in on this, I'd appreciate it. Here's my calculations, the BPT of the first 13 turns (not 14 as highlighted, oops) total to 41.265 Even when I truncate the BPT to the tenths place displayed in the game's top-left (which, might I add, does not agree with the City or Report screens) it totals to 40.6, so Animal Husbandry should be at 15.6. Which, being only 9.4 away would easily finish in 3 turns. However, the progress circle is barely half full and is apparently going to take 4 turns. It clearly doesn't truncate all the way to whole numbers, on turn 1 it showed 9turns for a 25 tech @2.8/turn. What the hell happened to my 3.4 beakers?!

I did previously have an error in the spreadsheet with 0.6/citizen because the City UI is a lying sack of shit but once updated to 0.7 (also dangerous to trust the Civilopedia but does seem widely reported elsewhere too) everything up through turn 12 worked out just fine. But starting last turn it's gone all stupid. I know it's only 1 turn difference but these things add up and the unpredictability is super frustrating. I can't afford to wing it with this crowd...



Anyway, this turn Alhazard finds us and sends a delegation! I accept and send one back - with Rome next door it's nice to get some good relations going. I decided against sending Rome a delegation when I met them because I didn't want to risk giving them a 50 net swing but I'm happy to send one back when it's offered to me

On the downside, they obviously already met that Commercial CS, so I head northwest toward Saunders. We'll be back south with time to do a quest. Find a forest, a mountain, and a 2nd river. Interesting. I wasn't intending this to be a border city but it's looking like the geography would make it a good one

Scores haven't changed. Having met Greece there's some new data available but I'll dig through it tomorrow. Still rather discouraged from detailed planning right now since the ever-so-wise folks at Firaxis might just throw it out the window