[PB70] The Cartographic Correction Committee convenes

[scooter]

Well, I managed to play almost 20 turns of this game before realizing/remembering Slavery is not nerfed in CtH. I had 30/20 whips in my head when planning. Net effect is third city is going to be 1T sooner, and the whip is even better with all this food we're drowning in.

Also, speaking of Slavery. Bing finally settled his second city. He did not revolt to Slavery. I guess he forgot? He definitely has had Bronze Working for awhile. Seems like we have good neighbor luck.

[scooter]

First, a diplo thing happened. I was talking with superdeath about a couple minor game things, and Ginger was able to delurk for a few. That led to the following.

scooter
oh there's Ginger
Ginger
I’m lurking ?
Superdeath
NAP till t100? ?
Ginger
?
Let’s see our borders first
Also probably want the stagger NAPs
scooter
admittedly the guy with war chariots offering a NAP feels nice
Superdeath
Well I figure borders should probably be along the band since if it's anything like the desert one, should be easy to settle along the edge
Only thing I can complain to tarkeel about.
Ginger
Fair enough, how does a t80 NAP sound?
Superdeath
Basically "set border region"
Sounds fine to me
Ginger
Okay deal ?
scooter
done and done

NAP until T80, which is another 40ish turns. In practice, this is just Idiot Insurance for both parties as I would have been pretty surprised if there was any actual conflict prior to here. The borders are still fairly distant. But it was promising that SD offered it himself. The one good bit is I think settling land between us will maybe not be super contentious?





Midpoint marked. The Sheep and Fish are clearly ours and the Jungle Rice is his, and I think that's all fine and good. I don't know exactly what's in the fog, but it's not hard to imagine fairly amicable borders here. I think this is overall pretty good for us, especially if we have a slower neighbor to our south. T80 of course is when we hit a power spike, so options are still on the table, but I'd be happy for a friendly northern border beyond that if it makes sense.





Scout got trapped, but superdeath provided directions through his gold city. The diagonal striping is starting to take shape on the minimap.





Guangzhou settled 1T earlier than planned due to my whipping moment of discovery, so the Fish gets netted next turn. This is fine as we have enough shareable tiles to borrow the Deer instead. Beijing looks awkward on a worker, but there was a fair amount of overflow that I didn't want to dump into a warrior. Shanghai is more interesting. I worked out a plan last night to settle 1N of the cow on roughly T48, and Shanghai will produce that settler.








Finally, we got graphs on Charriu, so here's Food/Mfg. Sort of funny how tightly mirrored our food chart is in particular.

[civac2]

Agree to NAP, immediatly declare a phony war. The wonders of diplomacy.

[scooter]

Agree to NAP, immediatly declare a phony war. The wonders of diplomacy.

NAP-stab Any% New WR

[scooter]

Pottery in. I think Mysticism will be next. I think we can delay Animal Husbandry. I can see none of the 3 players we’ve met have Mysticism yet, and I’m guessing Mjmd doesn’t either given his even faster expansion. It means we can’t immediately improve the cows, but we can get away with delaying that slightly between the shared deer and copper. Will think about it a bit more. City 1N of the cow will be settled on T48. I could maybe speed it by a turn with some weird roading, but it’s hard to do due to the river, so it’s not going to happen. Anyway, quick buzz through each city.





Swapped back to growth on a Granary. The ivory (once connected) and gold combined with the high food means the whipping here can be pretty ridiculous early on.





Shanghai is the most interesting city right now. The banana over gold might look a little weird, but 1T of that allows me to get within whip range 1T faster (14 + 13 + 13 = 40/100). I landed on the 1N of cow location largely because despite all the tile sharing, there’s still just too many good tiles, and that’s before I get some cottages down on this river. Making that killer 5/1 deer shareable by 3 cities is especially useful.





This can be a cottage cheese whipping post, or I can think of a wonder that would turn this into an absurd PHI-boosted specialist site. Stay tuned on that.





FWIW, research on and gold worked and our GNP is near the top.

[scooter]

It’s been a couple days which is an eternity on this turn pace. 6 turns later, here we are.





Nanjing was settled this turn. Superdeath’s Imperialistic leader got him to 4 cities first on T45, followed by Mjmd on T46, then me on T48. I’m sure Charriu will be anytime now. Also in important news, Beijing completed its granary, and they’ve been started in all 3 other cities. I do have visibility on two of Mjmd’s cities including the capital, and he doesn’t have a granary yet, so that made me feel a little better about his very quick settling pace. I was thinking of starting Nanjing on a Monument to get those clams online quicker, but there’s a small chance it could become a holy city in a few turns, so I’m holding off just in case we get lucky there.

When we had 1T left in Mysticism, nobody had teched it yet, so Buddhism looks very likely to be ours. PHI gets double speed monasteries in CtH, so that’s noteworthy too. I don’t expect us to necessarily go wild on religion in this game, but it’s nice to snag it on the way to Priesthood/Oracle. Will probably divert for Animal Husbandry between Meditation and Priesthood, but it seemed ideal to lock in the religion while it was freely available.





Guangzhou is growing onto what will be a cottage next turn, and will continue to push growth in order to double whip the Granary on T52. Really trying to prioritize getting them up and running with all this food abundance even if it means we’re one step slower to city 5.

[scooter]

I forgot to take sufficient pictures for T50, so we're gonna have to settle for a T51 update. Let's just pretend we're Civ6 and we're slightly off the satisfying round numbers.





There's a lot going on here. First, we're about to become Buddhist this turn barring something very unexpected. Upon re-reading Charriu's holy city guide, it seems like Shanghai/Guangzhou have nearly equal odds, Nanjing is the underdog (but possible), and the capital is impossible. I think growth processes before tech, which means for purposes of calculation, Guangzhou will have 1 point more from pop going into the RNG round while Shanghai was settled first and would win a tie-breaker. That makes them roughly equally likely. Nanjing loses out on pop and settling order, so it needs a good dice roll. So just to pick out some wild numbers, 40/40/20 odds seem about vaguely right for odds. Maybe closer to 45/45/10. Either way, I'm hoping for some luck as Nanjing would be the most beneficial for culture reasons. While we're talking percentages, there's also a 50% chance none of this is correct, in which case there's a 100% chance one of you will tell me immediately.

After that it looks like we're headed towards Priesthood, as after looking at this for much too long, we can get by the extra 5T without pastures. Then things should get more interesting very quickly.





Beijing is going to size 4, then it'll swap to a worker and setup a juicy double whip overflow. Workers in the vicinity are going to start descending on Beijing to get some chops lined up too.





This city is just generally a bit more awkward to whip. The main reason is the Gold must essentially be worked at all times. The reality is the maintenance on this Toroidal map is showing signs of being pretty rough, so the Gold is the engine that makes it pretty bearable. Combine that with the solid but unspectacular 5F surplus when not sharing tiles, and there's just going to be less of it naturally.





Guangzhou is being allowed to borrow the Deer, and that makes things pretty blazing. It'll be my second city to complete a Granary, and it has some of the best self-sufficient food potential around. It'll definitely be a specialist city in the future.





We've been working the capital Deer here, but I had to return it this turn. Copper mine is going to let us skate by ignoring the Cow for an uncomfortably long period of time due purely to the fact that we can whip this Granary pretty much exactly when we hit size 2. I'm hoping to get very lucky and pop Buddhism here in order to open up going straight onto a Work Boat next, otherwise a Monument detour is likely necessary here. The start of this city is slightly compromised by the Oracle plan, but there's some good reasons to desire Metal Casting 5-6T faster.

One awkward detail - mining the copper hooks it since it's on a river. I want a couple more cheap warriors, so I have to delay connecting this city to the other cities by a few turns. This'll cost a few commerce, but it's worth it in this case.





Some interesting things here. Keep in mind we have some Creative civs spiking the GNP. I'm nearly positive that huge food leader is Mjmd. What can I say other than well done. He is CRE/ORG, so while CRE helps a little in city placement, he doesnt have one of the super early multipliers either. If I'm looking for ways to feel better, I do see two cities of his at size 4 that lack Granaries, which I suspect I'll see him whip soon, while I already have one and will finish another next turn. I'm curious how hard he'll push. My 5th city is nearly 10T out still, though I could speed it by a few turns if I really wanted to go wild. I did reconsider my Granary-before-Settler decision in Guangzhou today to get to 5 quicker, and I came away still convinced it was correct. Also, his ORG trait looks like a bigtime winner on a Toroidal map, so he's going to have some enduring edges here. Great Lighthouse makes a ton of sense for him with that in mind, so I wonder if he's the guy who has Sailing. Overall, I think he's looking like our top competition early on.

I'm otherwise fairly happy to be second in food given our lack of an early game trait. That puts us ahead of Superdeath's IMP, for example, while Charriu is still on 3 cities.





As I mentioned, one player has Sailing. I think that almost has to be a GLH play by whoever did that. Not tracking this closely enough to see. I'm surprised only 2 of the other 4 players even have AH. Whoa, as I type, I just noticed someone picked up Writing already. That's interesting. I wonder who that is. Actually, one dollar on Charriu. Writing is an uber tech for him as he benefits from both cheap Libraries and Philosophical. Would bet he's making a play to pop a Scientist early. Academy? That seems a little underwhelming here. Bulb Maths and get good chops faster? Settled? No idea. Maybe it's someone else.


Anyway, that's the state of things. Let's build a wonder this week and start trying to do cool things.

[scooter]

I'm nearly positive that huge food leader is Mjmd. What can I say other than well done. He is CRE/ORG, so while CRE helps a little in city placement, he doesnt have one of the super early multipliers either. If I'm looking for ways to feel better, I do see two cities of his at size 4 that lack Granaries, which I suspect I'll see him whip soon, while I already have one and will finish another next turn. I'm curious how hard he'll push. My 5th city is nearly 10T out still, though I could speed it by a few turns if I really wanted to go wild. I did reconsider my Granary-before-Settler decision in Guangzhou today to get to 5 quicker, and I came away still convinced it was correct. Also, his ORG trait looks like a bigtime winner on a Toroidal map, so he's going to have some enduring edges here. Great Lighthouse makes a ton of sense for him with that in mind, so I wonder if he's the guy who has Sailing.

Just remembered that when my Scout was getting through his territory, I saw a worker of his pasturing a Cow. So he's one of the players with Animal Husbandry. It's nearly impossible for him to have teched both that and Sailing, so Sailing must be someone else. That would be ideal - I really don't want the guy out-expanding everyone getting the Free Expansion wonder.


If Charriu got Writing, it also wasn't him. Bing is generally behind, so I'd guess it's not him because he's got more pressing things to handle. So that leaves Superdeath. IMP + GLH is a good combo, and when I passed through I did notice a well-forested coastal city, so maybe it's him.

[scooter]

We are Buddhist as expected. This doesn't really change anything for us in the short term, but it's a nice thing to have for the future. Not much else to note, but I picked up Superdeath's graphs, so I have everyone except Mjmd. Quick look through the big ones.





Confirmation here that Mjmd is the one with the food lead, because I'm definitely second. Charriu's dip there is interesting. He did do what appeared to be a 3 pop whip a couple turns ago, which I thought at the time was really odd because I didn't think he had a size 6 city. I assume this is a blip from Charriu, because up until that cliff, things looked about how I expected.





Superdeath went into a full hammer config. He's IMP, so I wonder if this is him slow building a settler on some mines. Alternatively, could be a hammer config for Great Lighthouse if I'm correct about him having Sailing. Worth monitoring for sure.





Here's a clue as to what's going on with Charriu. His GNP has been quite high due to Creative, but it just went through the roof. I wonder if he finished a Library and is running a pair of scientists while backfilling a well known tech? That would do it for sure.


Current Rankings

I'm going to take a stab at what I perceive to be the current rankings right now. It's mostly an exercise to gauge threat levels. I'm working with pretty incomplete info here, but I'm attempting to factor in both current position and how leader/civ help translate current status going forward. I will include us in the list.


1) Mjmd (Cre/Org America)

Here's what I wrote yesterday.

I'm nearly positive that huge food leader is Mjmd. What can I say other than well done. He is CRE/ORG, so while CRE helps a little in city placement, he doesnt have one of the super early multipliers either. If I'm looking for ways to feel better, I do see two cities of his at size 4 that lack Granaries, which I suspect I'll see him whip soon, while I already have one and will finish another next turn. I'm curious how hard he'll push. My 5th city is nearly 10T out still, though I could speed it by a few turns if I really wanted to go wild. I did reconsider my Granary-before-Settler decision in Guangzhou today to get to 5 quicker, and I came away still convinced it was correct. Also, his ORG trait looks like a bigtime winner on a Toroidal map, so he's going to have some enduring edges here. Great Lighthouse makes a ton of sense for him with that in mind, so I wonder if he's the guy who has Sailing. Overall, I think he's looking like our top competition early on.

I'm less sure about the Sailing bit now, but in general you have to put him first. He's expanded the best without anything to explicitly speed that, and I think ORG is the best trait on this map by a fairly wide margin. While I suspect many of us will hit Toroidal maintenance issues before long on a map that allows a lot of cities per player, Mjmd will be able to blow past that once he hits Code of Laws, and ORG will also give him pretty large civics savings. He's our top competition now. I think we want to start gently reminding other players of this.


2) Us (PHI/IND China)

I'm very happy with our position. I think we're second in growth with 4 cities, a pair of granaries, and a wonder about to fall that will bump us forward to a power spike tech for us. While I don't think either of our traits are as good as ORG, I think they're both better than CRE here. CKNs look to be quite powerful here too which is a nice perk. If we can execute a strong sequence in the next 20-25 turns as planned, we'll be in business, but it's impossible to rank us higher until we actually do that.


3) Superdeath (PHI/IMP Egypt)

Hasn't exactly blown away the field here with IMP, but his pace has been good, and I suspect he's not far from a good play in GLH. This is partly based on that expectation coming true, otherwise I'd bump him down a spot. I also think the extra roominess of this map is helping to suppress his worst early game tendencies, which is clearly a positive.


4) Charriu (CRE/PHI Russia)

I really considered bumping him up a spot. I only kept him down here because I don't quite follow what he's up to. His expansion has been a notch slower than ours and two notches slower than Mjmd. In fact, he's now the only player to not get to 4 cities, surpassed by even Bing. His GNP spike makes me think he's trying something with Scientists, which seems ill-advised to me. However, my read of what he's actually doing could easily be way off as I haven't looked super closely.


5) Bing (CHM/PRO Mali)

He hasn't really seemed super dialed in here. He has gone on a settling spree the last dozen turns catching up to 4 cities, but he's still noticeably behind in most stats. I think he's playing pretty casually, and everyone else seems to be putting in real effort, so he's down here almost by default. I don't think it's unreasonable to think he might climb the order, but I don't really see any scary power spikes upcoming in his traits either. Overall I'm happy with him as a neighbor, but PRO Skirms will be annoying to crack if we want to conquest prior to them being outdated.


Overall takeaways:

* We're in a solid position. Play our game and I think we'll be good.

* Need to make sure Mjmd doesn't get too many friends that let him expand fearlessly

* Superdeath and Charriu appear to be doing interesting things. Keep an eye out for the results.

[civac2]

CTH has reduced maintenance on toroidal maps to be equal to cylindrical maps. (Possibly RTR also has this modification, not sure.)