[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

yeahh well, we are pretty likely to have an inland city ourselves judging by the shape of the land here. such a city will still be worth founding (i think?) and can contribute a holy site + campus, an endless supply of essential builder labor, and perhaps also the colosseum? i think exactly one inland city is still worthwhile even if it can't build ships, since we do need builders and it frees up other cities to build ships instead of those.

it seems possible that, in this position, early amenities actually WILL help us snowball, since we are literally going to grow into unhappiness as soon as the capital hits size 3, and the soonest we can possibly hook up a plantation resource is probably somewhere around t40 once we finally have enough ships and holy sites to take a break for a builder. but yeahh GotS is probably better unless the amenities situation is literally unmanageable otherwise. which it might be! we have only defogged enough (3) luxes near me for 4 * 3 * 2 + 2 (palace) = 24 total pop, which is not really enough to compete...

[ljubljana]

Turn 7 - Japan

still no barbs! pretty nice given the reckless greed of our opening. i think i underrated just HOW nice portugal's +1 vision is - we are almost done scouting with just the one warrior!



and i went the way i said i wouldn't go because i realized it reveals more camp-eligible tiles quicker (we should get two next turn)



some rankings have finally changed for the first time this game:



military ranking was 1-2-3-4 a turn ago when we all, presumably, had just the one warrior. so what does this mean? thrawn/krill are fighting barbs, and have NOT produced a unit yet, while chevalier's team has produced a unit? i'm not sure what it says about woden's team - they'd still be in first if they made the same number of units last turn as chev/inc, right, unless they took damage? so is the best guess that either chev made one unit and no one else did, or chev/inc made two and woden made one?

also, not sure if these movements indicate slinger builds (would have finished EOT t6) or warrior builds (EOT t7), since that seemingly depends on whether both unit production and ranking updates happen at the end of a turn or the end of a round (i know neither of these answers lol)

[williams482]

Milpower score increases at the beginning of a player's turn, prior to builds completing. So if a slinger was completed on t6, it would show up in the milpower scores (and presumably the domination rankings) on t7.

[ljubljana]

ok, cool, so we should be seeing a slinger from one of chev/inc and no other builds. standard so far, but next turn will be the big tell - do thrawn/krill finish a warrior or not? i imagine that, if i were them, i'd go for a monument as thrawn and a builder as krill for a ziggurat on the floodplains + two mines for craftsmanship. or something like that. 2f/2s/1c ziggurat floodplains is a bizarre tile for lack of snowballiness, but i'd have to imagine it's really strong for this early in the game, right? we are pretty lucky that the map is a) so fertile and b) so hilly, or ziggurats might be really really spammable :/

[ljubljana]

Turn 8 - Japan

found TAD's equal-and-opposite CS



feeling pretty good about the sailing swap. this one looks less feitoria-tastic than Geneva at first glance too, so probably west CS -> Japan, east CS -> Portugal will end up being the right choice. unless we want to just give both to japan for Maximum Feitorias, with CS further from our homeland (and therefore both less defensible as TR destinations and more in need of Crusade) going to Portugal?

domination scores still unchanged, so no warrior from the thrawn/krill team. seems about right. at least they, unlike us, are actually being punished for their greed lmao. where the heck are the barbs?? we may already be out of eligible tiles on TAD's homeland, or close to it - did they actually spawn on an offshore island?

we might be worried about missing the PP inspiration from bum-rushing all these CS. we MIGHT be, but i'm pretty sure i remember testing this and it just counts initial CS contacts, so even if we kill both these CS before contacting a third, we will still get the inspiration. can anyone confirm this, though?

[TheArchduke]

Back in business.

[ljubljana]

Back in business.

yayyy good to have you back

miscellany: it is painful to admit this, but the eastern isle really does have a much better shape for Meiji than the western one... Imagine three harbors in the lake, each boosting campi at the two vents to the east and west.

But Portugal could perhaps still do well with that approach. If there is room for a city 2E-2SE of the capital, and a canal city 3E-2NE of the capital, and the capital builds its harbor 3E of its city center, you can get one campus to +5 and another to +4. Pretty quickly too since you are likely going campus + harbor as the first two districts in every city.

[Cornflakes]

[Imagine three harbors in the lake

Wouldn’t this just trap all of your ship builds in the lake?

[ljubljana]

i am imagining a canal city on the plains hill NE of the lake (3E-2NE of the capital) so the ships can all escape

although, if that city were ever captured, we would have quite a problem lmao

[ljubljana]

sanity check: why was everyone so into jesuit education in earlier pbems, especially pbem4 where oledavy's japan rode it to victory? i have been obsessed with feed the world to bootstrap up to harbor size quickly, and have felt that JE would be unlikely to see use due to competing priorities for our faith, ie monumentality in classical, a great admiral purchase in medieval, monumentality again in renaissance, and GMC after that. but am i missing something here?

(right, what i'm missing is that monumentality and the GMC used to not exist lmaoo)