[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[aetryn]

ok, point taken on scouting and on military garrisons - i will order up a warrior and cross my fingers that nobody appears before we can do anything about it..... i do thiiiiink i want to defog some of the land between us and greenline as it could be important in a future conflict and once they settle it we may never get another chance to, but i will make it brief and then head either SW or SE in search of neighbor-neighbors

definitely not inclined to grumble about the map, we have some great spots here. if failing to hook up copper until the fifth city in the t60s kills us, that will be my choice and my fault [and if you think that is likely, i COULD research archery next instead of pottery, though that delays some, um, rather important things] i do think we'll want to prioritize the gold fairly soon (maybe city 6, assuming nothing else strong in the fog), as both the 8 gpt from working the tile and the one extra pop size from the happy seem crucial in forestalling economic collapse. but we shall see what is revealed

Oh we absolutely want to scout between us and Greenline, it's just down the list from scouting our near neighbors and getting a good idea of the geopolitics + accumulating more KTB options. I suspect the NE scout after finishing scouting our eastern neighbor and the contested lands between them can circle down to that. The NW scout seems stuck on screening duties for now but he can eventually go further west and see if GT has a western neighbor.

[ljubljana]

oh, i was assuming NE scout needed to go further east to find east neighbor's east neighbor.... hmmmmm lemme brood on it

how much are KTBs worth by the way? this article

https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strateg...explained/

suggests that it's only a 3% boost per civ, which would explain why we of fewer than 20 BPT weren't getting any acceleration out of it on animal husbandry...

[Tarkeel]

it is also true that we might just want the warrior in the west anyways to have better odds of preventing GT from delaying our city. then our defense plan if someone wanders in range of the new city can be to whip the mitakeumi chariot. either way, we are going to be very exposed for the next few turns and will have to not get immediately called on this plant. that.....makes me very nervous, but is it just standard practice for this stage of these games? how do yall not get second and third cities sniped constantly by wandering warriors if it is? MAN is it nerve-wracking for cities to not be able to defend themselves

Let's just say that it isn't common to send settlers out unescorted. The first city is usually on the border of the capital and early enough that you can get by with a scout, but after that you want either multiple warriors or proper unit (axe/spear/archer/chariot) escorting it. Here's a look from our PB66 game:


We had two warriors trailblazing towards the next city-spot, and the barbarian warrior in the way obligingly suicided on them. We had a second for cleanup incase we got unlucky. Similarly we had pre-placed units to fogbust before the other cities were settled.

how much are KTBs worth by the way? this article

https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strateg...explained/

suggests that it's only a 3% boost per civ, which would explain why we of fewer than 20 BPT weren't getting any acceleration out of it on animal husbandry...

IIRC the article is slightly wrong. KtB is calculated as the fraction of civs alive that know the tech divided by civs alive, multiplied by 30%. So in the early game here where everyone is alive, it will be 3% per contact that knows the tech.

[ljubljana]

oh look, if it isn't exactly the same turn we're on

yeahhh ok i'm starting to sweat / regret my greed here. in a no-barbs game with 19 tiles between capitals i guess i thought it'd be early enough that i shouldn't be paranoid about it (and in fact should, in the interest of producing the kind of variance a first-timer will likely need to be competitive, farmer's gambit as far as is reasonable), but if we lose the game because of this i will richly deserve it

btw, in a true emergency situation (say we neighbor Gav), we could accelerate copper hookup into the mid t50s by chopping out a settler in the third city (probably going to do this anyways, in fact) and settling on the east copper. wasteful, of course, but less so than dying

anyways, we have until Mitakeumi's warrior pops (2 turns) of complete exposure (such that if a warrior walks into view at city 3 we can't stop them from walking into it). if anyone thinks we had better delay or move the city because of this, i could maybe be convinced

[ljubljana]

dang, something seems to be really going on in Ginger/civac land..... first civac logs in/out, then posts, then ginger logs in/out, then posts, and they still haven't finished the turn. well, if someone we don't neighbor is worried about one of THEIR neighbors, that is at least a decent sign in the direction of us not needing to be worried

[ljubljana]

Heads up all, we should be on the lookout for a chance to snag a late Buddhism/Hinduism after this Mysticism research.... neither religion has fallen yet and it would be a huge help in this happy-constrained early game, plus should save us at least one monument at the holy city. We could have it around t52 if we go right after Mysticism tech... this delays Pottery but not to the point that any of our cities/workers would lack for useful things to do

remind me, it always costs a turn of anarchy to convert to a religion even if it's one you founded, right? and you don't get the happy otherwise?

[aetryn]

Heads up all, we should be on the lookout for a chance to snag a late Buddhism/Hinduism after this Mysticism research.... neither religion has fallen yet and it would be a huge help in this happy-constrained early game, plus should save us at least one monument at the holy city. We could have it around t52 if we go right after Mysticism tech... this delays Pottery but not to the point that any of our cities/workers would lack for useful things to do

remind me, it always costs a turn of anarchy to convert to a religion even if it's one you founded, right? and you don't get the happy otherwise?

It costs a turn unless you are in a Golden Age, SPI, or I think have the late-game Cristo Redentor wonder, but I don't actually remember if that works for religions, and it won't matter anyway. Without making the religion your state religion you get culture but not happiness, and you can't use any civic oriented to a religion (but can get bonuses from Apostolic Palace if someone else builds it and ties it to a specific religion).

[ljubljana]

got it, ok, very likely not worth it then i think.....

wow, ginger and civac are STILL spitballing something...... could they be getting WC-rushed already? i logged in to double-check the demos to see if i missed rival best power-spiking...



oh shit, it's US

[aetryn]

Hmm. Well, they came from the east, so they're either a SE neighbor or our direct eastern neighbor. Or maybe even farther east, I guess, but seems less likely. Longer pause suggests immediately to the east, but really they could be deliberating about several things, and with two team members they could just be waiting on a response for something totally unrelated.

Either way, definitely not safe to have cities with no defenders around now, so let's fix that post-haste.

[ljubljana]

What could possibly prompt such a flurry of discussion and 6+ hour turn hold just from contacting a neighbor? Especially since, from the scout's positioning, they HAVE to have been able to see our borders in the fog last turn? Maybe they mistook our yellow for that of Gavagai's Egypt, with the trees in the way of the only tile of border they could have seen if they came from the SE, and are now switching a bunch of spear builds to axes? Or were they planning to attack their neighbor in the fog, and are reconsidering it having seen that it's spiky TokuZulu? I am tempted to switch our EP from Dreylin (about 1/3 of the way to graphs) to these guys, this does not seem suggestive of trust and good intentions.... I am also realizing that instead of taking a Polytheism flyer before Pottery.... maybe we'd better just get archery then instead, if we really feel we can wait another 5 turns for cottages and granaries... we can have it by around t51 if we do so, which should be in time to beat back chariots from ginger that leave now unless they're already on the way

Either way, definitely not safe to have cities with no defenders around now, so let's fix that post-haste.

yeah. i can only hope they don't have a warrior about to appear on our doorstep. i assume it's not worth delaying the third city founding to wait 3ish turns for an escort, right? at least contacting us from the south is at least suggestive that they don't ALSO have another scouting unit wasting time by trying to scout towards the same opponent from the north

One thing to note is that Ginger has turned out to be the mysterious civ in the fog with a size 5 capital already, so there's a good chance they're the food leader as well. That is not suggestive of a bunch of whipped axes of course, but it could be suggestive of a bunch of several slow-built chariots or something. then again if their capital has THAT much food i'd like to at least hope they are lacking for production?