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[PB70] The Cartographic Correction Committee convenes
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While we wait for Oracle to complete on a day where we surprisingly have had only 1 turn, I thought I'd give dotmapping a little more thought. Let's run through some options.
Note: it may sometimes seem like I'm talking to myself, and... ok I mostly am. But Ginger is following and occasionally replying to me with his thoughts via Discord. So this is really meant to be a planning launching point.  (Apologies for not turning on resource bubbles for this shot.) Green dot is going to be settled in 7-8 turns or so. That'll give us our third western port, which is good because our west side body of water I think will be more important as it's the one facing Mjmd. The city is a little underwhelming long term, but short term it should be a solid whipping post. Black dot has two configs really - the alternative is 1N. The advantage is 1N is it claims a bit more land and gets both resources in the first ring. The downside is it makes tile sharing with the capital or really any other city practically impossible. The reality is we probably aren't settling another city north of this, so 1N makes some sense to claim a few more tiles. Before settling this we'll definitely defog the land NW of this and that might influence things. Finally, you'll notice the ? mark. There's a Fish up here W-SW of that question mark that I expect may be a point of debate with Superdeath. It's closer to us, but it requires us settling a little towards him to claim it either on the ? mark or 1W of it. Just something worth keeping in mind for now. I'll mention in this section that at some point we do want to slip in a Galley so we can settle the Stone island. The IC routes will be huge, but we've been pretty occupied with other stuff that's delayed Sailing.  I think the south is more interesting and pressing, and I expect it to be the focus of our next few settlers. White is a very natural next choice. We could slide it 1W in order to maximize forests, but this config will be a little better for tile management. Blue and Yellow are also worth discussing. Yellow is pretty obvious and will be a fast starter - there's a Clam up there at the edge of the screen that it can share with Nanjing. The downside of Yellow is it doesn't really claim land super well even if it's maybe the fastest starter of this group. Blue is really important because we definitely want to claim that Corn. Finally, over on the west coast there's a few ways we could handle it. Getting the Fish first ring is hard to do because it makes the Wheat city awkward. Also just in general, that spot will be very much contested. In fact, that southwest spot is 10 tiles from Beijing and 6 from Bing's capital, so it's probably a pipe dream. That's why I've sort of prioritized pushing into the core of this area instead. White and Blue are 6 tiles from the capital, and their second ring goes right up to the midpoint. Now is a good time to mention the big surprise - Bing is out to 5 cities - shortly after Mjmd. Given that we have a deal/understanding with Superdeath and no such agreement with Bing, I think the next 3ish settlers should all go down here. (Also, it doesn't hurt that there's no jungle belt here.) As a result, I think the settling order should go something like this: Green -> White -> Blue -> Yellow -> Black - with the caveat that the island city gets slipped in at some point too. Thoughts? There's definitely alternative ways to settle. White could go 1E and we could use it to settle Wheat with an inland city or something like that for example.  Unfogged a Charriu city a couple turns ago with a Library in it to confirm my assumption that he’s doing something with Scientists. Anyway, Priesthood came in end of last turn, so it’s time.  I really hate the effort it takes to line up a 1T build, but I do admit the result is satisfying.
As promised.
 Now we're officially on the clock, because we do not want a Great Prophet just yet.  Superdeath got superreligious, and Charriu got what has to be one of the earliest scientists in an RB game in a long time? Also Superdeath got his 5th city too. Speaking of, time to fix our growth curve.  While we've been busy building a wonder and chopping forests, we've been bleeding a little bit on the growth curve. I can huff some copium and say "well we just whipped a bunch, we have granaries, and our food is supporting less population," but we are objectively behind. Whether we could have delayed Oracle by 5-6 turns and been better on this front is the big question. The concern isn't so much about Oracle itself as much as what comes next. Namely, we're delaying our Great Engineer by 5-6 turns by doing that. If we're looking for a bright side, 3/4 cities have a Granary, and the 4th...  Has an Assignment (and will get that Granary shortly). We have the food, granaries, and happiness to do some 4 -> 2 whip cycles in Beijing and Guangzhou, so let's do that.  Guangzhou hit size 4 and came back onto the 20/100 settler. That'll take 2T to clear the 40/100 whip threshold, and that settler will plant on the hill on T63 with 2 workers ready to build pastures. Also you can't tell in this screenshot, but two cottages will complete next turn (floodplains and 1S of Beijing) which will help with some of the improved tile crunch that's going on thanks to the Oracle detour.  Next is the south which will get a settler out of Beijing. The other worker pair will be headed down here to quickly improve the cow and deer and get this area productive ASAP. 6 cities by T66 on a map this lush isn't incredible, but I think we can claw our way back. The good news is the map is a major help here. In the north, the jungle belt splits us and Superdeath pretty evenly, so we're not really at risk of not getting enough land. The south is more of a race, but even so, we really don't need to push further south. We could settle just these 3 dots plus the question mark and still get to over a dozen cities without breaking a sweat. Early triremes will allow us to be fairly aggressive on the water which is a plus. So, I think we can pull this back.
Quick diplo update because this one was interesting. I’m not gonna paste full chat logs in here, but they’re all available in the discord linked in the first post of the tech thread. Charriu reached out and asked if I knew where Bing’s 5th city is located. I’ve been sending a Warrior down towards him for a bit now to try to determine if he’s settling towards us or not.
 I sent this screenshot to Charriu. I can tell by hovering that the Fish and Copper are not hooked. It does not appear the Pigs are hooked either, but I realize it may not be possible to tell until Animal Husbandry completes end of turn (?). Anyway, the reason Charriu was asking is because cities 2-4 have gone exclusively in his direction.  Charriu marked where he believes each city is located. He ruled out the 5th being an island due to not having Sailing early enough, and the city was settled long enough ago that I’m pretty confident it wasn’t Fish/Floodplains because why would it take this long to hook the Fish. So Charriu suspects the 5th also went towards him. That Fish/Cow plant way down there is particularly aggressive. The city center itself is 9 tiles from Bing's capital and 7 from Charriu's, let alone the actual resources that are 10/6. This is overall good news for us, and if he’s right and the 5th city also went towards Charriu, it’s fantastic news for us. To our north, Superdeath seems happy with NAP + even land split. So I think this affords us the opportunity to push hard south and try to claim more than our fair share. I’m considering sending both settlers south and delaying the northern site. I would have to decide by this next turn tonight. I’m also debating just reaching out to Bing to see if I can find out if this is accurate, but I also have the feeling of not wanting to do or say anything to shift his focus.
A promise is a promise. Thanks El Grillo. I like to imagine my offer put it over the top even though I doubt it. So, where we left off, I said the following.
(April 6th, 2023, 10:03)scooter Wrote: This is overall good news for us, and if he’s right and the 5th city also went towards Charriu, it’s fantastic news for us. To our north, Superdeath seems happy with NAP + even land split. So I think this affords us the opportunity to push hard south and try to claim more than our fair share. I’m considering sending both settlers south and delaying the northern site. I would have to decide by this next turn tonight. I’m also debating just reaching out to Bing to see if I can find out if this is accurate, but I also have the feeling of not wanting to do or say anything to shift his focus. It turned out to not be totally true. Bing’s 5th city went for the Fish/Floodplains spot we picked for Guangzhou. However, it got the wheels turning. It made me wonder whether the Green/White settling plan was correct. Ginger made a brief appearance via chat, and after some brief discussion about rerouting the northern settler, he threw out this idea. Ginger Wrote:Pinkdotting the Corn/Sheep/Banana to the southeast would be great Here’s what he’s referring to. For context, that spot is 9 tiles from our capital and 7 from Bing’s. And of course, the Sheep is 10 tiles from our capital and 6 from Bing’s. However, we know he just did this same thing to Charriu, so this might actually be plausible. Some things had to be figured out. Can we protect it? Can we get it up and running with worker labor? So, I put together a plan that involved delaying the northern city and doubling down on the south instead.  The happy “accident” that made this really click was the work boat. I had queued a WB to slow build in Nanjing. The purpose was to have the work boat do a quick scouting ring around the eastern island that’s barely visible, and then return just in time for the clams to be in our borders - either via Monument or settling yellow dot. This allowed the WB to be quickly repurposed for blue dot. I also could get 3 workers down here without much pain quickly to get both cities up and running fast. The next puzzle was actually protecting it. Bing has Mali and Archery, although I don’t *believe* he has built a Skirmisher yet, I could definitely be wrong. So, we need something to protect it. I was able to juggle tiles in Nanjing to get an axe whipped out quickly. There would be a 2-3 turn window in between the settling of blue dot and the axe arriving, however our warrior can hang out down by the southern mountains and give us pretty lengthy warning. Finally, Bing’s warrior was wandering in the fog, but he appeared at Shanghai’s border yesterday - far away from the plans. So it’s a go.  I was able to speed Blue Dot aka Xian by one turn with the workers. Crab gets netted next turn, and then these cities are just generally really strong very fast. Xian is getting a Monument, as much as I hate building them. This will bring the Deer into play more quickly without having to prioritize settling Yellow Dot - instead we can let it be a very good backfill.  Second settler on the way. I was able to figure out a way to speed Pink by 1T too via worker roading. Side note: I’m not 100% sold on White’s location anymore. Also, this plant will be expensive.  Wider shot for context. It’s a gambit of sorts, but the hope is we can get more than our fair share of land and use that to make up for being a little behind the leading growth curve. I think it’s definitely an aggressive enough plant to be worthy of Pink status. I’m pretty sure nobody in the world has more than a warrior, so it should be well-defended too. I think this overall plan of gobbling up the south will work too thanks to the increasingly infamous Jungle Belt.  Superdeath reached out today to ask about wonder coordination. He wanted to make sure we didn’t target the same wonders. He was being a little understandably coy initially, but we quickly dropped the pretense because it’s quite obvious to both of us that he’s targeting GLH and we’re targeting Pyramids. So, agreeing to not race to either was a ceremonial agreement, but a good way to build some trust. He also was wondering about the land between us (which he apparently has not even defogged), so I shared this screenshot with him. As a result, we both agreed to settle elsewhere while deprioritizing this area. Which is great, because that’s what we were already doing. The only real question about this area is that west coast Fish. It’s closer to us, but only barely, and both of us are interested in a city that claim it. Superdeath floated a couple variants though, one where he gets the Fish, and we get extra land east, and another where we get the Fish by settling 1NW of the Cow. I didn’t commit to anything yet, but it’s pretty likely we can agree to one of those options, and we did agree to not race to it or settle it prior to further discussion, as we both have bigger fish. I’m really curious about this jungle belt. I don’t know enough about the map to know how many of these there are, but it’s a little strange on a map that is so heavily otherwise almost-mirrored. It’s a little bit of an advantage for us because it creates an early game backlines given that us and our neighbor aren’t super interested in settling it, and it creates easy land splits.
I mean, your culture is pink, so you just have to do at least one pink dot!
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
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As a French person I feel like it's my duty to explain strikes to you. - AdrienIer |
