[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[williams482]

If Chevalier doesn't even have a holy site down in his second city, we definitely aren't going to be chopping Teutoburg. Right? Surely a second project is on the way, but he's rapidly running out of time to complete the third project he'll need to beat us to the punch.

I am 100% confident that the spreadsheet calculations for district project yields were correct as of summer of 2020, when I was building that spreadsheet and tested them pretty extensively in singleplayer. I highly doubt they have changed since.

FYI, if you're speculating on what empire score increases mean, you may as well put your guesses in the "Empire" tab on the spreadsheet. I've been updating it intermittently myself, but it's all guesswork and I don't claim any ownership over it. Please do check out the other tabs while you're at it if you feel so inclined, most of them are still not too helpful without having met anyone yet, but I've continued to tinker and added a few things that I think will be useful down the road.

[ljubljana]

For the first question, the answer COULD be yes, but I'm not seeing it. Double-checking does reveal that we at least have one more worker turn than I thought we did: we can go

t34 chop
t35 move
t36 move
t37 chop

which means we could chop either the Teutoberg or the dyes forest to finish a project on t37 if necessary. But the problem is hammers. Let's say we send the second chop to Hakuho and try to do two projects there. With 11h invested, Hakuho makes 11 + 12 (Urban Planning) + 12 = 46h between now and the start of t37, with a chop giving 29 to take us to 75, with 84 required for two projects. We can add at most 4 hammers by swapping tiles (from GFH to the new PFH), not enough. So we would need the fifth turn of natural production to get a second project, too slow.

Of course, we could do it with 2 chops at Hakuho, if Terunofuji is strong enough to finish a project by t37 on its own. How likely is that? The 16t ETA in the screenshot probably gives it away, but for completeness's sake, Teru's natural production is:

t34 - 4.5 (city center + PFH)
t35 - 6.4 (city center + urban planning + 2 bare plains hills, since this is the latest we could chop the PFH in a 2-chop plan)
t36 - 6.4 (same as above)

so at start of turn on t37 we will have 17.3 hammers invested, not even close to 42. One chop takes us to 46.3, two chops to 75.3, which is quite close to the two-projects threshold but again, I see no way to make up the 8.7 missing hammers with just 3 turns of natural production.

therefore, if all this math is correct (and please, please feel free to double-check it), I see no way within the game mechanics to get 3 projects by t37 even with two chops, which is what is needed to accelerate the prophet by another turn.

edit: and actually, if we do go with a one-chop plan, we should chop the dyes forest, not this PFH. Both cost us 1h in the medium-term, but we need to work that PFH now to speed the shrine to completion.

[williams482]

Your math looks right to me, I don't see a plausible way to get the third project done. Which is good as far as I'm concerned, Chevalier likely has similar limitations and we've got the head start. The fewer chops we have to spend on this the better.

I hate chopping woods off resource tiles, but accelerating the shrine is important enough to make that sacrifice. We might even get the hammer back in the long term with a lumbermill instead of a mine on that plains hill tile, but we'll see. Is there a plan for the third builder charge that precludes chop-mining the plains hill?

[ljubljana]

With respect to the 13 GPP project yield, this is important enough that I'm going to run a quick SP test juuuuuust to make sure - i will get exactly the same set of civics we have here and chop two projects to completion to finish on exactly the turn we hit 34 points. If that comes up ok, I will move the builder 1W and submit the turn.

The beauty of Divine Spark is that Chev needs even more than that - they need a second project and a third project AND a fourth project to match our t38 time. At 20 points as of this turn, they will top out at 28 points on t38, so two more projects takes them to just 52. They could finish off the prophet with gold, but it would have to be on t37 (since a bought prophet would spawn with 0 movement) AND on the same turn a third project completes (which requires a chop). They could still do it, but since I am already assuming due to their finished Craftsmanship research that they will need to buy a second builder for the chop, I don't see how their team can put together enough gold to ALSO buy the last 8 points of the prophet...

edit: For the third builder charge, I am thinking either a mine on the now-blank plains hill at Teru (which lacks two four-yield tiles to work with its two pop) or on the plains hill 2E of Geneva. Or we could buy the diamonds at Geneva and mine those to get the best ROI via amenities fixing, but I'm unsure about that as it would take forEVER to get the plains hill by natural cultural expansion. Idk, I'm still thinking about it...

[ljubljana]

tested this as exhaustively as i could - finished the second lavra on the turn 44, the turn we hit 18 GPP (= t34 for Japan):





three turns later, on t47, we had one 42-hammer project 1t from completion in the capital and a second choppable in the second city (with -1 amenities too JUST in case after I removed the truffle camp):







and on the next turn, t48 (t38 for Japan), we finish one project and chop the other to completion:





this looks like a go to me. one more pre-flight check and i'll submit the turn...

[ljubljana]

oh right, one more oddity i noticed:



why does it visually appear that we are NOT on track to boost EE to completion next turn if I swap to Craftsmanship this turn? shouldn't the boost be worth 70 * 0.4 = 28 clefs, and 43.8 + 28 > 70? i don't get it...

edit: submitted. and actually there is one more thing i have to check - we ARE going to be allowed to chop the dyes forest even though we don't have irrigation, right?

edit2: with respect to the third builder charge, it looks like it costs 9 culture to get the first tile, so IF geneva picks that tile first, it will take about 11 turns to get it with no monument. that's....hmm, i don't know about waiting that long to fix the amenities disaster. but then again, 3 tile purchases (180 gold total!) is pretty appalling. but then again again, under the 4 gold = 1 hammer equivalence, both tiles will pay for themselves in under 10 turns compared to working coast which is a crazy good ROI...

[ljubljana]

I'm pretty confident Geneva city should ultimately go to Japan, as it's one of our two best visible Feitoria spots. But who should strike the killing blow? If I do so, I'll get up into promotion range on one of my ships, which is invaluable both for eating other CS and for defense if there are Vikings about. But TAD's galley looks like our best candidate for a deep scout in the west, and it is at low health right now and can't heal in my territory, which makes it vulnerable to a snipe from one of our opponents. Embolon would heal the boat and make a snipe more difficult...OR we could take the never-used Helmsman promotion to create a powerful early scouting unit that can outrun everything that isn't a bireme :D

Leaning towards Helmsman rn, but first we need to make sure that you can actually give a CS to another player on the turn you capture it. If TAD needs to wait and wait and wait for its loyalty to creep slowly up to 100, I'm not so sure it's worth the lost yields...

[williams482]

No clue what's up with the weird boost value graphic, but graphics in this game lie all the time. Don't trust it.

I don't expect any problem from they dyes forest, the tile feature isn't connected to the improvement in any way. So it should be fine, but I've never knowingly tested that situation.

I actually like buying and mining the gems tile. Getting all our cities happiness neutral is a pretty nice boost right now, especially with a food infusion incoming. Also, the city sheets have a natural border expansion calculator built in, it's the rightmost section.

If TAD captures the city, it will be at 50 loyalty and won't be possible to transfer until it maxes. That's a no-go. Helmsman was a fun idea though.

[ljubljana]

i tested the dyes forest, sort of.... well, i actually tested a WINES forest because my test involved rolling maps until i got one with a woods plantation tile lol. anyways, the chop worked in that case, but maybe i should make sure dyes aren't inexplicably different

yeah, i'm coming around to the gems buy too. it is worth 2.6 hammers to geneva after amenities resolve, plus some at teru as well, plus 3 gold, plus lots of other yields. i guess the real question is whether we should ALSO buy the plains hill, as otherwise geneva's starting tile config will be the somewhat-garbage gems + maize farm + plains farm geneva is most likely going monument first (need to not miss poliphil), for whatever that is worth

after testing the loyalty thing, it appears that not only does TAD need full loyalty to transfer, but they also need the city to be at full health, which takes 5 turns at a minimum. that's sad and probably prohibitive for the helmsman plan

on the bright side, maybe scouting with a wounded galley will induce someone to DoW us and inspire DT...? lol i can dream right

[ljubljana]

WOAH woah woah woah earlier in this thread i was contemplating something UNFATHOMABLY stupid - we CAN NOT remove Geneva's maize until TAD drops a feitoria there. ok it's def opening monument - trader - builder in some order then