[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[williams482]

I assume it's something weird with shared visibility. That happens consistently with city states: the tiles in their first ring revealed by meeting them will have correct yields and correct info on mouseover, but won't show resources until you get actual vision on them.

[ljubljana]

aha! sounds right then, awesome! will keep my head down and see if it resolves over the coming turns

[ljubljana]

Turn 10 - Japan

We have reached land's end in the north at an extremely awkward time:



Look at the length of that west coast - it is JUST barely not wide enough to allow for three cities. Ugh. Guess we're just going to have to grow bigger, stronger cities with FtW, Meiji anti-synergies be damned . The east-west axis is equally awkward and seems unlikely to allow a third city anywhere either, and if it does it would be a weak inland plant. I have a lot of thinking to do once we defog this island, right now I am quite undecided not just about the final pinmap but even about where the second city will go 4SW of the capital would be a good try to accelerate the all-important pantheon choice, but it's off fresh water and we badly need to get a +3 campus up there before the era change to avoid messing up our Medieval Dark Age...

No change on the rankings front this turn, save team 0 regaining its culture tiebreak from Banzai's late city growth. So, yes, thrawn/krill have indeed followed suit in not opening a military unit, and it's possible Woden/Banzai have done the same. Next turn we'll know for sure, you can't hide monuments

Over/under on how many monuments finish next turn? I predict 4, including ours. But perhaps thrawn would rather open a builder for 3 chops at the capital into longships? That is 3 free longships when FT does come in, which does give a more explosive start than the monument open, albeit at the cost of a 10+ turn delay on Oligarchy if they can't turn that early fleet into culture pillages... I have to admit I will be a bit scared if it looks like they went for double builder though, FT will still come in for them around t25 with the boost and then they could in theory just throw 8ish combined ships at the nearest team immediately...

[ljubljana]

Turn 11 - Japan

FIVE monuments!!!!!

yup, you heard that right. The following players jumped to 9 empire score this turn:

- Banzailizard
- Chevalier
- TAD
- ljubljana
- thrawn

None a surprise, really - Banzai will want early ships as England, Chev will want to bootstrap to Mercs, and thrawn of course is going for longship spam. Woden finished the world's first civic this turn due to what I assume is a unit build, which represents a 2-turn pantheon acceleration for them over the field - I don't like that at all, and it might motivate the 4SW spot for the second city after all. I would REALLY like us to get the best shot at GotS we can scrounge up, and if Chev does take a culture pantheon, we probably have to get the second pick overall to snag it.

If anything, I am a little surprised to NOT see a monument from Inc for fast biremes. They apparently went for a warrior instead, as their team has taken the lead in domination rankings. And as for Krill...if they did open with a builder, they aren't showing the 4 ES I'd expect from a fast Ziggurat build. Maybe they will chop out the settler instead, or something? It is a bit early to work a tile that gives no hammers, I guess...

Scouting reports:





oh, and Incurian found a natural wonder! What in the heck Where could we possibly be expected to spot one from our home islands? Hopefully not just offshore from one of the coastal land tiles I didn't check out of obsessive desire to defog all the barb-eligible tiles

This is a bit bizarre though: somehow thrawn's team is now last in culture rankings. I'd expect them to be team 4 (us)-team 1-team 2-team 3, but instead they are 4-1-3-2. Any ideas, williams? Something similar happened in the science rankings too, which are now 1-3-2-4 instead of the expected 1-2-3-4....

[williams482]

This is a bit bizarre though: somehow thrawn's team is now last in culture rankings. I'd expect them to be team 4 (us)-team 1-team 2-team 3, but instead they are 4-1-3-2. Any ideas, williams? Something similar happened in the science rankings too, which are now 1-3-2-4 instead of the expected 1-2-3-4....

That's really weird. Probably it's just the game being silly, but maybe that bump in empire score isn't actually a monument? The alternatives as best I can figure would be a granary, which would finish at the same time as the monument, or a builder -> food chop for a second pop point. If all our starts are very similar both of those would seem like utterly bizare choices, but Thrawn is as Thrawn does.

EDIT: Nope, can't be extra pop or they would have jumped ahead in the science rankings, not behind. Huh.

[ljubljana]

I think it can't be a granary or a food chop for lack of the tech...pretty sure every food chop requires at least one research to execute, and nobody has any techs complete yet. But I have no idea what else could be going on...

I suppose amenities could be responsible, but then their science should be below ours, too...and I don't believe there are any negative amenity sources they could have access to this early...

[williams482]

Oh, duh. Neither of those is possible thanks to tech. Food growth is also impossible, Thrawn surely would have worked a 3+ food tile from the start if he had one, and even if he were able to buy a marsh sugar or something in the second ring, that wouldn't get a third pop point until t14.

Mystifying. I wonder if that ordering will persist.

[ljubljana]

yeesh, mystifying is right. my bets rn are on some kind of arcane rounding error :| but usually when i feel that way, the actual reason is some deeper mechanical misunderstanding so :shrug:

in other thoughts, i'm coming around to the idea that Open Sky may be the second best pantheon choice after all, if chev takes GotS, so we can accelerate through the no-pingala sadtimes towards the 4th and 5th governor titles. But that means accelerating the pantheon is absolutely paramount, since those will very likely be the first two taken. That probably means the second city should indeed go 4SW of the capital and work dyes immediately. With God King on t12 and the second city on t23, that should give a t30 pantheon, with the second city perhaps making a builder first to fix its housing crisis, hook up a boosted pantheon tile, and hopefully inspire Craftsmanship. Thoughts/feelings?

[ljubljana]

turn 12 - japan



yeesh. not looking much better here in terms of meiji i am seeing room for just 5 cities here due to the 4-tile city distance cap, a bad break as TAD's island seems to support 6. thus the major placement consideration will likely be making sure we can get all the strong tiles in the first two rings of at least one city, as anything else will end up basically wasted. but i'll think about this stuff more when it's not 4 am lol

abroad, no changes except woden/banzai finishing another military build. is that woden again, taking advantage of gaul's free unit culture to race on to foreign trade? fair enough, but a monument still comes out ahead of 2 gaul warriors in just 8 turns, and 3 land military units seems a lil suspect unless their barb situation is very different from ours

thoughts on god king vs urban planning? feeling faaairly confident about the former for now, GotS is looking strong and one thing we do have about this start that might be unique is the high pasture count of 5 (including 2 presumptive horses).

[ljubljana]

Turn 13 - Japan



Finish CoL and swap to Foreign Trade, which, just as for pretty much everyone else, will finish on the same turn the settler pops so we can start ships. I went for GK because I'm paranoid about our pantheon options, and because, while UP would speed up the settler by a turn, we can't start boats sooner than t20 anyways due to the Foreign Trade timing.

Hakuho will grab the jungle hill in 2t and likely immediately swap to it. We want the settler to finish on t20 with juuuust a penny or two of hammer overflow so we can do the first boat in 4t working the jungle hill (which makes 32 base hammers without overflow, one short of what we need). Growth margins are going to be VERY tight with no bonus food tiles and we might need to do a +3 campus in the capital instead of the GP, so microing for food instead of hammers in the capital early seems right.

Rankings:



The science ordering has resolved itself, no idea why. But culture has not? And I still don't know wtf Krill did with their builder (?), since their team is last in dom rankings still and they're missing any extra ES from a ziggurat. Maybe it actually is just sitting around waiting to chop into boats?

Chev's team dropped to second in religious rankings, indicating that they founded their pantheon and that, I guess, these rankings are determined by faith stockpile, not by faith per turn. Should let us keep decent tabs on how large Woden's lead is, at least. With only a 2t head start on GK, their ETA is t36, and we should still beat them handily if we work a faith resource at the second city.

In score news, all the monument nerds finished CoL this turn, and thrawn, krill, Woden, and Banzai finished their first techs. I expect that timing meant they all went for sailing first, but without any slowdown from wandering off towards Astrology like I did. What's interesting is that Chev/Inc did NOT finish sailing - I wonder if they, like us, had other ideas at first, before changing their minds once they met their own extremely killable city-states?

Oh, and Chevalier turned up with FOUR era score this turn, when I'd expect them to just get two from the first pantheon - huh? The only explanation I can think of is a very early camp clear - good for them, but it had better not respawn on one of our islands now :|. It's also pretty bizarre that Inc built a unit if Chev was the one dealing with barbs - I wonder if they might both have dealt with a homeland camp spawn? These little offshore islands at distance 7 from the capitals seem like the cause of pretty substantial variance in that respect, one that we have so far benefitted from bigtime...

I am still at a loss as to where Inc could have spotted a natural wonder from their home island.... and it looks like everyone else is, too, as there have been no other similar jumps in ES... Hopefully TAD's +1 sight warrior will disambiguate this soon...