[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[williams482]

Projects under production DO increase in both cost and yield as techs/civics are discovered. If the current cost is essential, do not allow craftsmanship to complete.

[ljubljana]

oh shit, thanks for the heads-up! yeah, in that case discovering either craftsmanship or pottery will escalate the cost from 42 to 46 and the yield from 13 to 14, as well as boosting the chop from 29 to 30. i think we are still fine as hakuho is on 34/42 hammers and making 12 hpt....however, this does mean we can save 7 net hammers by putting our clefs and beakers somewhere else this turn. does that seem worthwhile? it is roughly a half-turn delay on poliphil and etc but it does save us resources in total

we are also EXTREMELY close to finishing craftsmanship next turn......close enough that, if asanoyama's loyalty increase processes before our culture income, we may not have a choice in the matter D:

[williams482]

If it doesn't mess up the religion timeline, I think I'd rather get Political Philosophy as fast as possible. 7 hammers really isn't very much, one extra turn of oligarchy is probably nothing but could be vital.

[ljubljana]

hmm, seems like this requires math. let me check if the savings translate to finishing either shrine a turn early. i think you are right in a vacuum but i am significantly more worried about meeting our foodhammer benchmarks by the era changeover (+4 campus at Teru in particular is looking REALLY dicey) then i am about hitting PP :/

will play the turn soon, i just got back from an Inhaler Quest ™ to fix my early-morning asthma and am going to take a few minutes to become a cognizant human being lmao

[ljubljana]

Turn 37 - Japan

With bated breath I open the save.... if they went project - project in their capital they HAVE TO have at least a second one by now, unless their capital is making under 10hpt...



...oh! well. obviously this is good news, but let's not celebrate yet - they did get a fourth tech this turn to escalate their project costs to 42, as well as an empire score bump that I assume means a size 3 capital. so if they have a chopped project 1t from completion in the second city AND have 1 hammer to go on a project in the capital right now, with 29 hammers from a chop they would have to overflow 13 hammers from the capital project to chop out a third one next turn. They COULD do that if their capital is at 14 hpt, just barely possible if they run a food deficit for one turn. But their plan would pretty much need to be exactly that, or we would need to screw up next turn somehow...

although wait, would that even work? i guess the overflow hammers would be processed in the production queue on start of turn 39, right?

anyways, here is the setup, with us at 30 GPP = 34 at the start of t38. if anyone can think of a way for this to fail, please feel free to let me know and crush my nascent dreams beneath the cruel heel of reality



ok, i lied and this is not QUITE the setup as i ultimately put this turn's production into the shrine in teru, just in case by some disaster they do beat us (in which case we don't want to finish this project). but at 18/42, a 29-hammer chop should put us over, and the builder does have its chop button illuminated and apparently clickable rn so i don't believe we will run into tech issues.

after thinking about it i went with the snowball play re clefs vs hammers, once i realized i could drop the turn of culture into D&P and therefore not cost us anything on our ETA to Pingala. we do not shave a turn off hakuho's shrine, but i think we do shave one off the trader to follow, which means an extra 2f + 1h in teru. the math on teru's shrine is close and i didn't work it out exactly... i think with trader + amenities hookup we might just maaaybe save the turn, but we'll have to see...

TAD finished off the visible barbs in the north, yay :D i am not quite sure what i will do re scouting. i may send the promoted galley west next turn (ugh) just to get a head start on contacting anyone who might be that way... then once the galley in geneva heals, it can go north up our west coast to at least give us a chance of making all three team contacts... and this way we are sending the galleys out in order of priority as we should - NW first as a team that way would be the furthest away from us, then W to start on circumnav, then N because we don't need it for circumnav and also it would imply a relatively short inter-player distance...

edit: eeeew actually we might have to do 3rd city settler before the trader if we want the +3 HS up in time :| i guess teru can make its own trader if we really have to.... or we punt slightly on the gp. idk i'll math it out tomorrow

[ljubljana]

re beliefs: if we do land the first religion, Feed the World + Crusade seems cleanly correct to me. FtW is non-negotiable as the cornerstone of our gameplan and as for Crusade....i think the foreign policy benefits in terms of how likely other teams are to pick a fight with us, and with portugal in particular, are difficult to ignore. it hurts to give up tithe, but +3 gold per city is really 3/4 hammers for us instead of 3/2 as usual as TAD will provide all the gold for discounted upgrades (the most efficient way to spend it) that we will ever need. at that rate, other founder beliefs are comparable or stronger, especially cross cultural dialogue and stewardship which will multiply by monasticism (and CCD even multiplies by FtW ). they surely won't both be taken so i'll likely backfill one of them around when the monumentality period ends (assuming chev does go for tithe)

[ljubljana]

um.... please excuse my idiocy and mentally swap city 5's holy site and campus in all of my pinmaps...

also i believe i see a way to preserve city 5's coastal access without killing a feitoria - details to come later

no insights into how asa can squeeze in feitoria 9 though...

when do we unlock the "plant fish" builder action again?

https://imgur.com/a/agH3kMQ

[ljubljana]

Turn 38 - Japan

well, i promised myself i wouldn't call it this...



...but we all knew i was lying

chev has no project this turn either... and what they do have is 2 ES, this time almost certainly from a boat. i am guessing they backed out of the race somewhere around either when we got our second holy site (less likely) or when thrawn started eating city-states (more likely). probably the right call, and now i expect their team to start catching up on ships and, somehow, on expansion despite us sniping their synergistic belief. and i guess we had better do the same...

let us see if crusade can prove its worth in jong-deterrent over the board. with crusade and oligarchy and twilight valor and divine wind it is my joy to report that our victor-galleys will absolutely beat the shit out of jongs, fighting at 61 strength in Portuguese lands and 56 strength around my own victor city. and likewise if they do take a japanese city and try to hold it, it will instantly become a death trap, so unless they annihilate our navy they will probably have to raze conquests. all of which means there is no freaking way chev's going to attack us...right? unless we really did take both their first-choice beliefs, in which case perhaps we will earn a well-deserved spite murdering...

i will allow exactly one (1) slight moment of being proud of us to observe that, with our ridiculous multi-step overreaction to chev's one holy site project, this is actually the fastest religion at RB that i can find record of - roland's China and TAD's Russia both got religion on turn 39 exactly. ok, now back to the relentless self-criticism...



look at that wild graphical bug - +30 faith from excess great person points? bizarre. there's no way we're actually going to be credited with that...right?

i am big sad about terunofuji's holy site, btw, which was supposed to be a cheap +2 plant safe from pillaging from the sea that did not require any tile buys....and is now a garbage +1 plant that will never get any better or boost any other districts. already sensing a pretty major mistake there :| but not as major as missing our beliefs would have been, i am willing to bet

i do not really have a convincing build order that both gets the third city founded soon enough for the +3 holy site (which requires settler next in the capital) and that gets teru to size 4 for the campus (which seems to require trader next). not to mention we badly need to resume shipbuilding with the other teams starting to wake up. but i'll worry about all that tomorrow.

edit: incapable of worrying about things tomorrow, i guess i will swap to colonization next turn in preparation for the settler, then get the settler 2 hammers from completion in 6 turns @ 18 hpt, then discover SW, place the GP, swap back to urban planning, and overflow from the settler into the trader all in the same turn. teru will start galleys around the same time and we'll pre-move victor so he will be ready to promote the first one as soon as the GP pops

the right side of my thinkpad has been possessed by the ghost of TAD's portugal:



foreign policy: woden and banzai have 4 civics - cool, so do we but for 0.2 clefs. thrawn picks up 3 ES from somewhere which smells like another camp clear... and chev's boat and pop growth at banzai and that's it! i guess that's what passes for a quiet turn at the foreign office these days

[ljubljana]

with no free religious spread in asanoyama, i am contemplating skipping the holy site there and opening campus - harbor - theater. obviously TAD would much rather have +1.5 clefs on 8 TRs than +1.5 faith, and i'm not sure boosting a +4 campus for 40 turns of monasticism outweighs that... not using FtW is a shame but realistically it will be a looooong time before we can afford a missionary to bring religion here anyways

on the other hand with 8 feitoria this city has 12 or so workable tiles so we want it big asap, which can only mean ftw since it actually kinda lacks seafood. ok hmm hmm i'll worry about it later

[williams482]

Huh, I wonder where that alleged 30 GPP is supposed to be coming from. Some bizare overflow thing, probably. I won't be surprised if it's real enough to find it's way into our coffers though.

No HS in Asanomoya doesn't sound like a bad idea, honestly. Where are you going to be placing those districts? The city right now has a fish and an irrigated maize, and will likely claim another fish with it's first expansion, not terrible for early growth.