[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

two extra points is actually potentially a problem for us as it means we will hit the two projects threshold on t38 with 34 points + two 13-point projects, not t39. on the one hand that saves the Teutoberg, but on the other it means chev will know our timings and be able to chop :| not much we can do if that's the case though as there is NO way we can shave it down to t37...

[williams482]

After testing further, actually acquiring the great person works the way it ought to. Exactly 60 points will be sufficient to recruit, and crossing the threshold mid-turn by chopping a project does allow you to recruit immediately.

[williams482]

two extra points is actually potentially a problem for us as it means we will hit the two projects threshold on t38 with 34 points + two 13-point projects, not t39. on the one hand that saves the Teutoberg, but on the other it means chev will know our timings and be able to chop :| not much we can do if that's the case though as there is NO way we can shave it down to t37...

Why is this a problem? If we only need one chop it can wait for the last moment, and we can always build something else in Hakuho for a couple turns while the project sits one turn from completion until we swap to it on t37.

[ljubljana]

thank you so much for testing that! do you happen to know what would happen if one player (say, us) hit 60 points on the same turn another player (say, CMF) was planning to chop out their last project mid-turn? i am hoping we would get priority - if so we should probably still chop ahead of time and just finish both projects with natural production on the interturn before turn 38.

sigh, well, maybe i am being paranoid, but having the 2 extra points seems like a problem because next turn chev will see that we will finish on t38 with two projects, while their capital can't finish their fourth project naturally until t39, and go "holy crap i NEED to chop to beat japan". ostensibly the nice thing about the Teutoberg plan was that it let chev believe they could beat us with just natural production, only for us to implausibly snatch the GP a turn early by finishing an extra project in Hakuho just to get those last 2 GPP. this is definitely a more efficient use of resources than that plan, but we do lose that element of surprise, which could make chev more inclined to chop to beat us than they were previously...

we actually would potentially have a plan to save one MORE turn if teru had grown just 1t faster, at the cost of the plains forest 2E of it. but the problem is teru's hammers are not quite sufficient to fill out the 26 hammers needed to finish 2 chopped projects in 3 turns...

[williams482]

There are no "ties" here. Chevalier will play his turn, and if he has enough GPP at the beginning of his turn, or after he chops out a mid-turn project, he will get the prophet. Then you play your turn, and if you accumulate enough GPP to recruit you can then do so.

Thus, if you and Chevalier both have enough to recruit on t38, Chevalier will get the first prophet by virtue of turn order.

I think I'll take my chances on Chevalier deciding to chop because we're two points closer. We haven't even shown our hand on projects yet, although Divine Spark is a bit of a tell. And running double projects like this is at least a little bit stupid, we all know it. Is Chevalier willing to wager a valuable chop on us being a little bit stupid? With proper timing he won't have any confirmation that we decided to run double projects until the first religion is ours.

And, we can't do anything about those "extra" prophet points anyway. We gotta play the hand we have here.

[ljubljana]

wait, isn't there weird behavior sometimes though when, if multiple people are over the threshold at the start of a turn, the game does not always pick who you would expect? i seem to recall something like this in PBEM20, when i thought china would have first crack at an admiral i passed on due to the turn order, but it went to Russia instead with china unable to recruit despite moving first. that seems to suggest that, at the beginning of a given turn, the game locks in one player who is over the threshold as "able to recruit" a given GP, then locks OUT everyone else. if that is how the system is implemented, we could indeed beat a player who plans to chop by getting over the threshold with natural production at the start of the same turn...

or does weird stuff like this only happen when GP are passed on, and the system for recruiting a fresh GP is different?

[williams482]

I think that's just the bizare logic with passing on great people, but I can't be 100% sure. I guess we'll find out.

[ljubljana]

did a quick little hotseat test and i think i figured out what i was misunderstanding here:

great people are processed sequentially, at the beginning of each player turn, not at the beginning of the round.

so with 3 civs, america, russia, and japan, with russia having one lavra and 10 GPP and japan two HS and 8 GPP, the way it goes appears to be:

america moves first and sees russia 10, japan 8
russia goes second and sees russia 12 (!), japan 8
japan moves third and sees russia 12, japan 10

so there's no such thing as chevalier "seeing" that we are at 60/60 GP and will get a prophet on our turn, and then chopping to beat us, because we wouldn't cross the threshold at the start of the round but at the start of our turn after production is processed. so it doesn't matter whether we chop a project to completion on t38 or finish it with natural production, just as long as it finishes sometime in our turn...

therefore if we are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CERTAIN that
a) our projects will give 13 GPP each
b) we will be at 34 GPP at the start of turn 38
c) chopping a project to completion lets you recruit that turn, even if the project takes you to 60 GPP exactly and
d) there is no possible way to get the prophet on t37
then the right move seems to be to save the chop until the last second and, if chev has not taken the prophet, complete hakuho's project naturally and chop teru's project to completion on turn 38 exactly and hope chevalier does not do the same...

in case norway comes though we do want to be careful to not sink too many hammers into teru's project, so that if we are forced to chop early by a longship, we will not complete the project early and alert chev...

[ljubljana]

i am, at least, cautiously optimistic that chev will actually need not one but two chops to beat our timing here. they do not have a holy site finished at their second city, so if they finish one this turn they would need to do a 4t project to catch us without a chop. this is possible if they grow to size 2 next turn, work two PFH with a plains hill plant in urban planning, and overflow at least 3h from the holy site, but i would not call it likely. and the capital is size 3 (and most likely just grew there) so the theoretical maximum they could work is 3 PFH (in starvation mode) + plains hill plant + palace + UP = 14 hpt. not even close to two projects in 5 turns. they could do it with 8 hammers of overflow but they would have to need to do that AND be in starvation mode, and if their capital only has 2 plains hills like ours and they cap out at 13 hpt it is flatly impossible without a chop.

a trader could fix one of these problems for them, but not both. and if they bought a trader, where are they getting the gold for a builder? and if they do need two chops to beat us, they will not learn this until their turn 35 when they see our holy site build, which is NOT a lot of time to line all that up if they aren't already in position...

[ljubljana]

Turn 34 - Japan

reporting before i actually submit the turn because i feel i still need more time to double-check the details on the religous front :|

For the first time this game, the major news of the turn comes from the scores, and it's not the news you're probably expecting (though we have been expecting it for a little while now):



Thrawn scores first blood and kills the world's first city-state. A few turns slower than would have been theoretically possible, but I can't really be too nitpicky since it is a new record for fastest CS kill in RB history  So this team will have six cities in a few turns to our five and everyone else's four. We should be cleanly in second place as far as expansion goes, with TAD about to swap to double settlers after I boost EE to completion for them (which I know nobody else is close to yet with their 3-pop capitals) and enough force in both the north and south to threaten city-states as we find them, once we mop up the remaining barbs.

You guys think that will be enough to shock the boatless ones out of their reverie? We are really really in danger of thrawn running away with the game on the back of city-state conquests here...

Speaking of which, at least one opponent is boatless no longer, with Woden turning up with the telltale +2 ES this turn. This leaves Banzai, Chevalier, and Krill as the game's remaining landlubbers.

Other stuff from the scores:

- Thrawn actually jumped 10 ES last turn, more than the 7-8 I'd expect from a CS conquest alone. Unless he captured a size 4 city with a monument, something else is going on here - hard to say exactly what, though...

- Woden has +2 empire score in addition to their ES. It could be two pop growths, but I doubt it - at 17 ES that would give them a size 4 capital and size 3 second city, which is implausible. It could not be two buildings finishing since they also finished the boat. That leaves a district. Surely they are not also going for an early religion, right? It would take some time to finish since the third prophet will probably be a 120-point one. I'd guess that the world's first campus is more likely. Whatever they're up to, I'm glad it's not a beeline for Iron Working...

- Krill has one more empire score, likely capital regrowth from the settler.

- We get 2 more empire score from the second holy site :D and, incredibly, our CS capture plus Teru's pop growth will actually bump us ahead of thrawn in total empire score...for whatever that's going to be worth

- Chevalier's all-important empire score is..............

.......still 18! That is 10 (two cities) + 1 (monument) + 1 (palace) + 4 (total pop) + 2 (holy site), the same as we had last turn, so no pop growth at the second city or second HS from them yet. Things are looking better, as I'm now confident that, even with overflow, the second city is not going to finish the HS and a project in just 4t without a chop. A 4t project at 39 hammers is possible; a 3t project strains credulity.

Thrawn is one turn ahead of our pace:



but I don't mind too much. We won't have enough gold to buy the plains hill at Geneva until next turn after my PFH purchase (and yes, I did beg TAD for their pennies this turn as well ) and I would gladly trade one turn of Geneva's first-ring tiles for an Embolon promotion on one of these galleys (which will earn 10XP from taking the city). I actually may save the promotion for healing, though - if we run into another CS in the south with only my two Japan galleys, the healing could make the difference in whether we pull off the capture or not.



And the reason I'm holding the turn (for like, the next hour tops): to chop, or not to chop. Is there ANY way to shave off another turn here by finishing 3 projects, OR is there ANY possibility that two projects completing on t38 will NOT be enough to spawn a great prophet? If neither of these things are true, we want to save the chop to get a few extra hammers at Teru from working the PFH. But if either of them IS true, we need to chop right now, THIS turn, or we miss our chance due to movement time for the builder. So...I'm gonna obsessively double-check. News at 11

note to future self: if we see Chevalier above the prophet threshold when we open the save t38, we should check to make sure they actually founded a religion - they could have just bought the prophet with gold, in which case we would still have a chance...

edit: For the second question, the answer SHOULD be no, right? I am seeing

t34 - 18 GPP
t35 - 22 GPP
t36 - 26 GPP
t37 - 30 GPP
t38 - 34 GPP + 2 projects (26 GPP) = 60 GPP

but if there is ANY possibility this math is wrong we need to know now... in particular I have a little bit of the fear of god in me with respect to the civ6 mechanics, though the spreadsheet has been 100% accurate so far. There is NO chance that a 42-hammer project will give us fewer than 13 GPP, right?