[SPOILERS - El Grillo PB54] Staying home and stargazing

[NobleHelium]

T19:

I decided to move my Scout to meet Elkad to start putting EP somewhere and to get KTBs on Agriculture and Mysticism (thanks so much for this feature Charriu!). Elkad happened to play before me this turn, so I might end up double-moving him and not revealing where contact was made. That said, it might be better and fairer to intentionally play after him next turn so he realizes that this landmass is occupied.

I missed this earlier. Yes, you should not be double moving to hide your scout. If you did that then you should send him a message describing where your scout was and its facing.

[Lewwyn]

T19:

I decided to move my Scout to meet Elkad to start putting EP somewhere and to get KTBs on Agriculture and Mysticism (thanks so much for this feature Charriu!). Elkad happened to play before me this turn, so I might end up double-moving him and not revealing where contact was made. That said, it might be better and fairer to intentionally play after him next turn so he realizes that this landmass is occupied.

I missed this earlier.  Yes, you should not be double moving to hide your scout.  If you did that then you should send him a message describing where your scout was and its facing.

Tsk tsk, the problems that could be avoided with sequential turns!

[El Grillo]

Right, makes sense. I wanted to make note of it for myself since I usually play my turns ASAP with a flexible work schedule, which can lead to unintentional peacetime double moves.

[El Grillo]

T23:




Contact with giraflorens playing CRE/PHI Russia. I'm like 99% confident that he and Elkad are on the same continent, and I'd speculate further that I have a neighbor due south at roughly the same distance (i.e., just south out of sight, with that sheep being a very close first-ring city), and we're all on the western edge of oblong continents that we share with one other player... except for the fact that there are 11 players in the game. Presumably not then, though it could've been an interesting twist on duel islands. While some neighbors would get into early conflict, most civs would expand peacefully to straddle two continents and end up with multiple neighbors that way.

[El Grillo]

T24:




I noticed while assigning espionage points that Elkad must have moved T0 (he's made 1t less EP, reflected in the 98% ratio). He must've seen something pretty enticing to leave a 2h2c city tile, and judging from his culture he ended up being coastal. The other possibility is that he swapped into Slavery after opening with BW, but we can verify that isn't the case easily enough.

A Lion showed up in the way of our Scout, who I really really want to keep alive until I can meet my continental neighbors so I can start keeping tabs on their charts. Without a defensive bonus tile in range to draw the Lion into attacking, I opted to play it safe and not try to fight it on flat ground.




We're tracking with the sandbox without any discrepancies. I really hope KTB rounding doesn't bite us somehow when we tech Fishing, we finish it with exact beakers in the sim. Since we don't have any KTBs on Bronze Working, I think we're clear.

From here, we grow to size 4 as we complete the Workboat EOT24, put 1T of production into the Settler T25 as Bronze Working finishes EOT25, revolt on T26, then whip on T27. I actually do need to go back and document what I ended up doing in my EOT55 Great Lighthouse building attempts, I thought I took some notes but I can't find them.

[El Grillo]

Grumble grumble, I'm 3 hammers short at EOT55 somewhere in my reconstructed sandbox. Probably just the turn I swap from working food to mines. Meanwhile, both playing and taking notes can get a bit clunky. Maybe I should just OBS record myself until I figure out the route I'm happiest with, then play it back and take notes afterward.

EDIT: Alright, that worked reasonably well. I tweaked a few things after realizing that I was finishing TGLH with 21 hammers with no reasonable way to speed it up by a turn, so instead I can divert a chop into a Settler at city 2 and still finish the wonder EOT55 by one hammer, while improving the timings for the third city significantly. Now it gets its clams netted upon its founding on T53 and has its rice farmed on the turn that it grows to size 2. That's definitely a late third city by any standard, especially IMP, but the more I see of the map, the more powerful I think GLH will be, we don't have a neighbor breathing down our necks, and our cities will be well set up to quickly produce Settlers for cities 4 and 5.

[El Grillo]

T26:




We do have a neighbor after all! That's a nice city site for Mjmd of India with two food resources, horses, and ivory. Implausibly far (12 tiles along the diagonal, but much farther in practice due to the terrain) given the land numbers, so there should still be another player sharing the continent to my south, maybe a bit to the west. The Scout has overwhelming odds to survive the Lion and meet Mjmd next turn, and then we can promote and heal or keep exploring westward.

Domestically, we're in Anarchy this turn and will whip next. I'm curious to see after the game what kind of openings people went for, since we can't monitor whips and city founding dates. There go two tabs of my tracking spreadsheet (they won't be missed).

EDIT: Silly me, forgot to show where our copper is:




Well it's a good thing we're not in a rush to get that hooked up. The only city that gets it first-ring doesn't get pre-Sailing trade routes, which in turn wrecks the timing of everything down the line. I played a half-dozen turns through the sandbox with that site and it's so much worse between not getting +4c from routes and costing an extra 1gpt compared to the current plan. The upside is that that city will can stagnate at size 6 working lighthouse clams and 5 mines for 19hpt. That's a sweet production base for building ships, Settlers, Moai, and perhaps even the Colossus. That would be a steal if we could land that as well as the Great Lighthouse from under naufragar.

[El Grillo]

T27:






What a truly unwelcome time to get a low roll from the RNG... this lucky Lion means no contact with Mjmd, no info on his start and land, and worse, no way to figure out who else is on the continent with us. I would love to believe that it's just the two of us, and we could build in relative peace to a dozen cities each, but there's just no way. We're going to be in the dark for a dozen or more turns before we have spare Warriors, though I suppose our Workboat could head south instead of west...

It's just the uncertainty that bothers me. That could be vanrober/GKC showing up with Keshiks on T80, or someone like Miguelito/Rusten or scooter who we want to be very careful around, or superdeath planning a FIN/ORG Classical rush because why not.

At home, we whipped the Settler according to plan.

Abroad, Hinduism was founded in a distant land. That's pretty early, though with all the Mysticism civs it's not too surprising. The real question will be if we get notified of an early Stonehenge or Oracle, which would presumably be naufragar. If neither wonder has been built by the mid T40s, that's bad news for us because it makes it much more likely that he's focused on the Great Lighthouse.

[El Grillo]

T28:




Promising signs to the west. The first question remains: island or continent? The second is, if continent, do we make a serious effort to make a foothold and get ICTR, or just expand to the south and east per conventional wisdom? I swear, if this exploring Workboat dies somehow...

tiles that would've been improved by Incan Terrace: 4

No one else has whipped yet, though that could just be playing order within the turn. GKC, Miguelito, and Mjmd are the other IMP candidates. We seem to be getting 1 KTB beaker from Fishing, which is welcome but not essential.

[El Grillo]

T29:

We have graphs on Elkad, and his culture output indicates that he founded Buddhism. Also, why do I see that scooter has founded Hinduism?




I noticed the icon by the scores when I saw the 2.5x strength multiplier (no Bronze Working yet for him), but looking at screenshots it's been visible since T27.