[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Fintourist]

Turn 113

Let's start with scouting update:




Brown borders N of pindcator, could be WilliamLP (that we have met), but looks more like TBS. Make sure by moving E-NE or try to make contact via Cyneheard's lands?




10 axes, 3 spears, sadly all visible to Mardoc so probably there is no aggression coming? I offered OBs for Mardoc let's see if he accepts. Orange had 3 CG Archers + one axe inside it.




Not much to say here! I try to hug the coast mostly so that there is a chance to meet new civs.




Your infra calculations kept bugging me until I realized that you had not taken the Bureaucracy bonus into account. Consequently, Alfie has more time to get necessary things together before Guilds comes in and I decided that the city can produce two (or at least one) HAs first.

Butterscotch, Daisy & Gertie are all waiting for increased happy cap through silks. Next turn these cities can be released to grow as silk will be connected during the turn 115.

Marmalade pops borders and will get fish to work next turn.




We founded our 17th city, Quentin. We might actually be leaders in city count now as dtay is still at 16 cities. He has more pop than we though, which I think is caused by having a more generous surroundings when it comes to luxury resources. He has 8 luxuries connected while we have only 5, luckily silks + HR + religion will help us in getting our cities to somewhat higher sizes as well.

Quentin is working a caste artist in order to get sheep inside its borders. With sheep + 2 farms the city could stagnate at size 6 working three plains hill mines, or at size 7 with lake tile thrown in. Or at size 9 with an additional farm and stolen horse tile.

Lucky also pops borders at the end of this turn and can work whales next turn.

We also have settlers ready so that clam+deer city can be founded next turn and "City S" in the very SW on the island appears in two turns. After that we have 19 cities and still room for at least 3 filler cities. Two of them will actually get a food resource (crabs & clams IIRC) and the third one will be a pretty much useless city in the SE just that we get Marble inside our borders. We probably don't want to settle too aggressively (and contest CH's crabs) and just settle on marble? Well, that can be decided a bit later anyways.




Working quite a few specialists hurts our food stat. If we turn tech on we are just ~20 units away from lurker civ GNP. So close! MFG leader is now probably out of his Golden Age. That stat is still very very respectable. Well, we just need to compensate by one-pop-whipping HAs+stuff and use them to get more land..

[Old Harry]

I'd rather head onwards to uncover new territory - it looks like we can contact TBS (I think you're right) from Cynheard's land anyway (if that isn't a 1-tile island).

on the Bureau bonus...

- the Forge will be 120/(12*1.75) = 5.7 turns
- the Monastery will come after the forge so 60/(12*2)= 2.5 turns
- the Aqueduct is 100/(12*2)= 4.2 turns
So before Guilds we want about 13 turns of Infra built here. I think your estimate was that we'd take about that to get to Guilds after the GA finishes, so I'm happy to wait until we have OR for building infrastructure .

Have we had any other religious spreads? We could try to time overflow or a chop to complete a missionary from one of our Buddhist or Hindu cities on the last turn of the GA (when we've revolted to OR), spread to a nearby city the next turn and again have overflow or a chop complete a missionary and so on towards the capital...

I was going to say something about our land area stat improving with all the borders we'll pop in the next few turns, but they're mostly grabbing water .

[Fintourist]

Have we had any other religious spreads?

The only Buddhism spread is in Lucky and we have a total of 3 hindu cities. Buddhism only has 4 % coverage of the world (Hindu 8 and Judaism 15 %). I think Mardoc hasn't been too lucky while dtay should really file in the lottery ticket.. Of course that is probably due to geographic etc.

Pro Hindu:
- Easier to spread, 3 cities already on main continent will get missionaries quick to core cities
- We don't support Mardoc in case he builds a shrine

Pro Buddhism:
- Only our island city has it, the start will be slower
- Significantly higher chance to actually own the holy city (and shrine)
- We would not support pindicator

I'm slightly leaning towards Buddhism because of the chance to own the whole continent and the shrine, but feel free to talk me into Hinduism..

We could try to time overflow or a chop to complete a missionary from one of our Buddhist or Hindu cities on the last turn of the GA (when we've revolted to OR), spread to a nearby city the next turn and again have overflow or a chop complete a missionary and so on towards the capital...

With Hinduism I think a chop could be organized. With Buddhism I think the gig goes something like that:
Last turn of GA: Lucky starts Missionary
GA+1: Missionary whipped
GA+2: Lucky starts a 2nd Missionary
GA+3: Lucky whips a 2nd Missionary, Izzy gets Buddhism and starts a Missionary
GA+4: Izzy whips a missionary
GA+5: 2 missionaries available at Izzy, one probably heads for capital, 2nd one maybe towards Cornelius
GA+6: Izzy whips its 2nd missionary..

As said, Hinduism starts much quicker, Jelly Bean has a forest that can be chopped into Missionary (I think we can manage to create required 10 base hammers as well), which means that Alfie would get the spread on GA+1 (with Construction) or GA+2-turn..

So it's really a battle between short-term and potential long-term benefits.. Damn I wish we would get at least one further Buddhism spread somewhere..

I was going to say something about our land area stat improving with all the borders we'll pop in the next few turns, but they're mostly grabbing water .

Yeah Actually we add a decent amount of land tiles during the next turns as well, but they are mostly plains, tundra or ice so I'm not sure whether we should really feel better about our improving land area ranking..

[Old Harry]

If it works the stone and horse Izzy can 1-pop whip the SA and overflow enough to complete the Buddhist missionary a turn earlier. Otherwise that plan sounds good.

If we only have Buddhism in one city by the end of the GA I'd be inclined to just take Hinduism and hope someone else (Cynheard?) takes a bite out of Pindicator for us. Helping Mardoc out before we've conquered the shrine might even be the worse move...

[Fintourist]

Yeah, maybe we just take both shrines..

[retep]

Actually you already met William inside Pindicator land, so is safe to assume that the border is from William. It would be werid if he border Williand and TBS.

I think that the MFG leader must be Dtay or BGN. Did you have graphs of Dtay? I think maybe the lurkers would apreciate to see pictures of the graphs. (Actually they can see everything, but I do want to see the graphs )

[Fintourist]

Actually you already met William inside Pindicator land, so is safe to assume that the border is from William. It would be werid if he border Williand and TBS.

Yeah, but somehow that brown just looks more like TBS.. Well, it's still more likely that it's WilliamLP and my eyes lie..

I think that the MFG leader must be Dtay or BGN. Did you have graphs of Dtay? I think maybe the lurkers would apreciate to see pictures of the graphs. (Actually they can see everything, but I do want to see the graphs )

We might have CH's graphs this turn and that would be a reason to provide a new set of graphs.. So incoming! (Our SAs are starting to do some serious work for our EP situation). We don't have dtay's graphs, but I'm pretty sure that #1 MFG isn't dtay, because those values look very much like GA had just ended and we would have got a notification it it was dtay (and he would surely have revolted into new civics + adopted Judaism). So maybe it's BGN, that's at least a decent bet.

[Fintourist]

Turn 114

This is probably the most interesting pic of the turn:




1. We met Dhalphir (white borders), who is not doing too well. I think 8 or 9 cities IIRC
2. There are a handful of units in Nothing at All and a CR III Great General Axe NE of the city. Maybe Azza wants to make something happen here after all...

Domestic pic:




We founded city number 18, Rocky. This time our WB is not quite in time ready to hook up those clams, but soon.. There are no big plans for this city, improve deer+clams, get granary, get lighthouse, get barracks, whip e.g. some cats and work coast.. Something like that..

Note that I put our research onto 50 %. I think we would like to grap Medi+PH before Monarchy as we want those Monasteries in Alfie. The overflow from this turn is probably enough to finish Meditation and maybe even enough to finish PH as well (while saving gold and waiting for Academy). Azza is ~5 turns from Construction, I think we wait for known-tech bonus and 1-turn Construction just after Azza is finished with it. (let's hope that Construction is put to good use on Azza's western front..)

Btw, I offered our extra crabs for WilliamLP's extra rice. Cyneheard has extra bananas, but we don't have any additional health resources that he lacks and we won't need that extra health for a while either so I did not try anything too clever. We have now surplus whales, but I don't think anybody has any interesting surplus luxuries. I'll double-check that next turn and maybe offer something like Whales for Furs with someone who lacks whales. One can always try although I doubt that people are too keen to help us unless they get tangible benefits for themselves..

Below are the graphs as requested by retep! Probably the most interesting observations are the food and power drops that Cheater Hater suffered in Whosit's hands.

EDIT: And that CH was doing okay food-wise (on par with pindicator) before the Whosit conflict, which dropped him into Mardoc/Azza group.

[Old Harry]

Hi dhal!

Surely the delayed wb for rocky is deliberate to allow it to work an artist for a couple of turns?

I'm slightly inclined towards saving cash to slightly suppress our score (in an attempt not to spook Azza), make our path to guilds a few hundred beakers cheaper and possibly disguise our research speed later on. I don't feel very strongly about that though, so if you think the beaker savings justify it then carry on. Similarly, trying to suppress our power by nearly finishing units will be important later on too.

[retep]

Thanks for the graphs Fintourist!

I forgot about the GA thing
So is probably BGN then or maybe the land area leader (which I still think is Krill)

About the religion spreed, I don't know if you know but Judaism has slightly better chnaces os spreading than the other religions, I don't remember quite well why, I think it has something to do with being first on the list of religions when the game checks for spontaneous spread, anyway is showing more in this game because of his size.