[SPOILERS] ljubljana embraces the dark side

[ljubljana]

You're not the only one who got a lot of era score - it seems like Ioan did so as well, because his overall score jumped from 95 to 105. He spent 90 gold (probably closer to 100 gold if we factor in his gold income/turn), but probably didn't make a legion because his military score barely changed. I wonder what happened.

Now that you have a campus, you must be earning Great Scientist points. The last time I asked this question, you said that one of the more useless scientists (Aryabhata or Euclid, I can't remember) was available before Hypatia. Is that still the case? Even if we can't get her, it should be important to keep track of who can.

Ioan's big jump this turn breaks down as follows:

+7 Empire (fourth city founded + free monument)
+2 Technology
+1 Era Score (presumably from the city location)

Thus, there probably still aren't any legions out. Obviously, this won't still be true on t83 when our DoF expires, but I'm nonetheless optimistic about our chances to hold this site if Ioan attacks. A sword fortified on the stone hill, once it's within our territory, will defend at 36 + 6 (fortify) + 3 (hill) + 3 (Matterhorn) + 5 (DoTF) = 53 strength(!) and can't be 2v1ed. Our archer will confirm this next turn, but the shape of that lake's shoreline as it bends off into the fog suggests to me that the plains hill in the west forms a similar chokepoint. My understanding of MP tactical combat is pretty limited, but that position seems very difficult to crack even with 40-strength legions, especially if we can successfully block them from picking up the Matterhorn promotion.

The available GS is still Euclid IIRC; the closest to a GS now is Archduke with 14 points, still at +1/turn. We're the third to a campus, behind them and Ioan.

Hmm, I wonder if I actually should put our Mysticism envoy into Mohenjo-Daro, just so we'll have somewhere to put our excess envoys once we can no longer contact new offshore city states due to the Dark Age requirements. That's silly, though, as MD suzereignty does almost nothing for us, since our upcoming push for city parks (yes, I'm planning to take your advice to heart and do nothing else with our next 4 governor titles ) rather obsoletes the need for Theater Square builds IMO.

Also, a miscellaneous observation: ideally, we'd like to start the campus at RS before we discover the Theater Square-enabling civic, such that it can be successfully discounted. This is a very ambitious goal, as it requires growing the city to size 4 and completing the Lavra in just the next 10-ish turns (!), but I'm trying to devise some fiendish, chop-heavy plot to make this work out (maybe involving chopping out another builder pre-Lavra, who will then go on to chop yet another jungle?).

[ljubljana]

Turn 57



Oh, hello there! That means the camp must be just out of sight in the fog, which in turn means we actually have great odds on taking it out in the next 4 turns before the era change! I decide to let the vulnerable archer take a spear hit in order to kill the scout, who could otherwise cause us a world of trouble simply by stepping forwards to see our borders then backwards to return home.



Here's the fiendish plan up at RS. I'll have our builder chop next turn, then move SW, then chop again. This second chop should hopefully finish a builder (which I did start in RS, despite what that screenshot claims) mid-turn, which will then move SE onto the grassland and farm on what should be the last possible turn before the era change (chopped builders can, in fact, move on the turn they're finished, right?). Finally, the builders will spend the next few turns scurrying around chopping more jungles as needed to finish up the Lavra and boost the city up to size 4 just before we finish Drama and Poetry. We'll also need another civic or tech research between the Lavra completion and DP discovery to update the discount formula, but that should be easy, since we have Masonry almost completed and want to get the horseman-boosting policy at Military Tradition fairly soon anyways. Meanwhile, we'll buy a missionary in Scythia as soon as we get its shrine up to spread Work Ethic up here and power the campus construction itself. Ambitious, haphazard, and more than a little silly, yes, but I think this plan just might work, and would get RS off to a roaringly fast start if so . RS itself will likely go builder - Lavra - campus - granary - walls or something like that to bootstrap up to size 7 for an encampment as soon as is practical.

Also, I know I wasn't supposed to do this...but I proposed 2 GPT to thrawn for peace again. I'm increasingly worried that they may have just been going for the city state, without designs on core CMF territory; if so, their armies will be looking for another place to make noise right about now. I'd gladly pay 60g (which is now covered by our lucky barb camp discovery anyways) to ensure that their eyes turn in a direction other than ours, especially now that we've likely made an enemy of Rome in at least the medium term.

[ljubljana]

Turn 58

Thrawn accepted our peace deal! I immediately offer a DoF as well, which, if accepted, would really free us up to start settling westward in earnest once Monumentality comes in. I doubt that'll happen, but I'm still very happy to have bought any amount of security on that front for what amounts to just the price of a barb camp clear. Either way, I'm tentatively hoping to settle the Peipus/Lagoda area with our next few settlers due to its crazy faith-snowballing potential, perhaps with a quick push to MT to follow if we get a DoF or can scrounge together a horse escort. Actually, 1 SW of that little mountain range (next to Lake Mweru) could be a great fourth city site - it's very defensible, it gets a big MT-adjacent Lavra on the rice as well as a ton of breathtaking woods tiles, plus (crucially) it's not within 2 of the natural wonder, and so does not compromise our Dark Age margin. I'll have to check the appeal math on this, but I think that's a solid early favorite for where our first city in this region should go. It's a bit lacking in the food department, since it can't share the sugar with Scythia, but the capital urgently needs that food anyways to grow up to size 7 for its campus, and we can always compensate by quickly routing a trader here.



Speaking of which, our archers clean up the barb spear and discover the camp, which we're indeed on track to (barely) clear before the era change (3 turns from now) barring any unexpected setbacks. The wounded archer is now promotion-eligible, too, giving us a nice boost to our defenses in this theater. Moreover, I think after the camp is cleared, I'll use this peaceful interlude to send these archers north to obtain their obligatory Matterhorn promotions. Meanwhile, that builder is now free to use its last charge not on a chop but on the Wheel eureka, which is our next technological priority after HBR-Masonry. This, of course, is because it's required to eureka our real next tech priority, the awesomely powerful (with this woods-heavy setup) Construction! The requisite watermill will likely go in Hungary post-settler, both because it's the only city with an opening in its build order in the next 6 turns and because it has the most pressing food problems of our three cities.



In the north, we put our RS plan into action . The chop gives somewhat fewer hammers than I expected (only 19), but with the 5 production from the city itself (after a tile reshuffle) we are just barely on track to chop the builder out two turns from now. The Lavra would likewise be 11t away if we started it now, but a few more chops should just barely cut that by enough to start our campus on time.

It seems pretty clear to me that, should we place a city SE of RS, it'll want to go on the jade, which is the one spot in the region that can achieve both a +4 campus and a +4 Lavra. I'm not sure how high a priority this city is, though - the tile yields are a little lacking pre-Apprenticeship, and it doesn't do all that much for our landgrab, but it does come with that nice cluster of amenities resources, and would be a big help with any Dark Age-induced loyalty issues we may run into at RS. I do think our RS spot was pretty on the money as far as invalidating any decent cities between it and Ioan, though, as the remaining land between them looks pretty marginal from what our archer can see. Ioan may plant there anyways, of course, but hopefully such a city would be small enough to not contribute much to any future loyalty problems. I suppose I could also try to push for a city just SW of that lake in the west to completely rule such a city out, which might be worthwhile depending on the terrain down there.

Note also that we have iron at both RS and Hungary, nice! That's not quite as relevant to our needs as Russia as duplicate horses would be, but it definitely helps with our resource situation writ large. Actually, I should check whether RS's borders will expand quickly enough to eureka The Wheel here instead - I'd greatly prefer to spend this builder charge on a deer camp or (depending on the settler timing) an Ancestral Hall chop, if those options are available to us.

Also, I need to remember to check on how long the religion will take to naturally spread to RS. I assume the answer is 'too long to delay the missionary', but we certainly want to keep an eye on this for future cities to minimize the number of missionary purchases we ultimately need.

[marcopolothefraud]

(yes, I'm planning to take your advice to heart and do nothing else with our next 4 governor titles smile)

Ooh, this seems like a high-risk / not-so-high-reward situation. Shouldn't you at least get Magnus' first promotion to help with jungle/marsh chopping? Like at Religious Settlement, I anticipate having to chop a feature before placing a district down. Plus, when we inevitably end up at war again, we will want some hammers very quickly.
(Then again, it looks like your cities only need to situationally chop resources like deer or copper, and swapping out Magnus every five turns might be cumbersome. This is something to ponder.)

ideally, we'd like to start the campus at RS before we discover the Theater Square-enabling civic, such that it can be successfully discounted. This is a very ambitious goal, as it requires growing the city to size 4 and completing the Lavra in just the next 10-ish turns (!), but I'm trying to devise some fiendish, chop-heavy plot to make this work out (maybe involving chopping out another builder pre-Lavra, who will then go on to chop yet another jungle?).

There seems to be a clear trade-off here: if you delay Drama and Poetry, you'll save some hammers and earn a little more science with an early campus. But if you rush it as quickly as possible, you'll also get to the Scripture policy card earlier, which would double the +2, +2 and +3 holy sites and give you 8 faith per turn and 8 production per turn. Maybe you could calculate the cost of the campus-discount and weigh that against the Scripture policy card?

Ditto on the Lake Mweru city - we could call it Mongolia for the pasture-able tiles around it (though unfortunately there seems to be no horses).

should we place a city SE of RS, it'll want to go on the jade, which is the one spot in the region that can achieve both a +4 campus and a +4 Lavra. I'm not sure how high a priority this city is, though - the tile yields are a little lacking pre-Apprenticeship, and it doesn't do all that much for our landgrab, but it does come with that nice cluster of amenities resources, and would be a big help with any Dark Age-induced loyalty issues we may run into at RS.

I think it would be medium-high priority, and probably should be our fifth city. The meta in a Gathering Storm game seems to encourage carefully balancing forward-settling with science-spamming, and it seems like a Dnieper city could do the latter very well.

[ljubljana]

(yes, I'm planning to take your advice to heart and do nothing else with our next 4 governor titles smile)

Ooh, this seems like a high-risk / not-so-high-reward situation. Shouldn't you at least get Magnus' first promotion to help with jungle/marsh chopping? Like at Religious Settlement, I anticipate having to chop a feature before placing a district down. Plus, when we inevitably end up at war again, we will want some hammers very quickly.
(Then again, it looks like your cities only need to situationally chop resources like deer or copper, and swapping out Magnus every five turns might be cumbersome. This is something to ponder.)

So, maybe this is not actually a good plan, but I'm actually expecting to chop almost all of the choppable (ie, non-campus adjacent) jungle at RS in the next few turns to bootstrap our campus there. Other than at that city, I'm not sure there are enough choppables around to justify Magnus 1, since almost all of the woods in our territory need to stay up to maintain our faith income. I certainly at least think Liang 1 is the best choice for our next promotion, since we're going to badly need builder charges soon to crank out lumbermills. As far as the wisdom of a push for city parks after that, I agree that it's a little suspect, but a) the promotions along the way are good stuff, giving +30% to the expensive Grand Master's Plaza and to Lavra/Campus bootstrapping in new cities with enough micro (which can partially replicate Magnus 1 anyways if most of our chops go into Lavras like they probably should), and b) it looks like they boost the appeal of all surrounding tiles by two each, which is crazy good - that could easily be worth 6-8 faith per builder charge in some locations! Idk, we can see what our priorities look like further down the line in that respect. Note that City Parks also give a little extra culture and +1 amenity each if they're next to water, the latter of which is true for most tiles on this ridiculously lake- and river-heavy map and could go some ways towards ameliorating what is often a significant midgame snowballing constraint.

ideally, we'd like to start the campus at RS before we discover the Theater Square-enabling civic, such that it can be successfully discounted. This is a very ambitious goal, as it requires growing the city to size 4 and completing the Lavra in just the next 10-ish turns (!), but I'm trying to devise some fiendish, chop-heavy plot to make this work out (maybe involving chopping out another builder pre-Lavra, who will then go on to chop yet another jungle?).

There seems to be a clear trade-off here: if you delay Drama and Poetry, you'll save some hammers and earn a little more science with an early campus. But if you rush it as quickly as possible, you'll also get to the Scripture policy card earlier, which would double the +2, +2 and +3 holy sites and give you 8 faith per turn and 8 production per turn. Maybe you could calculate the cost of the campus-discount and weigh that against the Scripture policy card?

Ditto on the Lake Mweru city - we could call it Mongolia for the pasture-able tiles around it (though unfortunately there seems to be no horses).

So, my dream is to have it both ways by spending 3-4 jungle chops at RS this turn and in the next 5 turns, such that the city can hit size 4 and finish its Lavra without having to delay DP and Theology, which should also let us get the campus done quickly enough to blast through Recorded History afterwards. I'm not sure we'd actually be able to make it happen in practice without any delay, but the math seems to work out for pulling this off quickly enough to be worthwhile, since, with the upcoming builder, it is in fact possible for us to hit 4 jungle chops in the next 5 turns. That seems like a pretty high-leverage use of chops, too, since it'd substantially accelerate our growth curve while allowing us to hit multiple boosts to important items that we'd have to delay or miss otherwise. I'm a little nervous that there may be better uses for builder charges, especially since the city now has an iron to mine, but I still think the benefits are substantial enough that it could be worth doing.

Is Mongolia on the banlist, though ? Admittedly, I'm already starting to run out of ideas for city names, if we're going to be that strict about it. We have at least

- Gran Colombia
- Venetian Arsenal
- Nan Madol
- Tactical DoW
- Goody Hut

remaining, though some of these are better flavored for the coastal cities that I'm unlikely to build anytime soon, if ever. That said, I'm open to the idea of expanding our criteria somewhat, and I think there's enough space on this map that we'll probably have to if get a strong enough landgrab.

should we place a city SE of RS, it'll want to go on the jade, which is the one spot in the region that can achieve both a +4 campus and a +4 Lavra. I'm not sure how high a priority this city is, though - the tile yields are a little lacking pre-Apprenticeship, and it doesn't do all that much for our landgrab, but it does come with that nice cluster of amenities resources, and would be a big help with any Dark Age-induced loyalty issues we may run into at RS.

I think it would be medium-high priority, and probably should be our fifth city. The meta in a Gathering Storm game seems to encourage carefully balancing forward-settling with science-spamming, and it seems like a Dnieper city could do the latter very well.

Yeah, something like fifth - seventh city seems about right to me. It probably depends on what the still-fogged tiles to the NW of Hungary/Scythia look like, which we should know much more about in a few more turns. I have to admit, though, I'm going to miss our Hungarian squid friend .

[ljubljana]

Oh, wait, I see now that Liang's promotions in GS are noticeably weaker (only +20% to districts and then the very weak Reinforced Materials, though I guess we do at least have one unusually disaster-prone city in RS, which is also the city that most needs the loyalty). That could change the logic there somewhat, depending on how many strong City Park locations we actually have in practice.

Also, I realize now that I forgot to mention our PoliPhil choices - I went with Classical Republic due to our ever-present amenities and housing problems, and swapped policies to Colonization + Agoge (since we're building both a builder and a settler) + Conscription + Charismatic Leader.

Man, our faith income is really far behind where Archduke's PBEM17 game was at the same date (in the 30s already). Admittedly, some of that difference is due to not working faith tiles this turn for micro reasons, but I guess it's mostly just a natural consequence of our delayed settling of the prime Earth Goddess-snowballing territory west of our capital; hopefully we'll be able to close that gap in the next 15-20ish turns.

[ljubljana]

Turn 59

Thrawn accepts our DoF, awesome! We're now totally safe from foreign aggression until the mid t80s - what a turnaround from the perpetual state of anxiety in which we spent the first 50 turns of this game! I'm quite confident that 30 turns of a DoF are well worth the 60 gold we paid, since we're now free to make a dedicated infrastructure push until our bill comes due with Ioan.

Also:



Hi there! Antananarivo is well-positioned for a conquest geographically, but the city site looks pretty terrible from what we can see, so I'm undecided on its fate until we can get a few more scouts up here. I may start moving our whole army up proactively, though, since it now has nothing better to do (other than picking up the Matterhorn promotion, which we now have plenty of time for) and could have decent odds on taking the city if we act fast. That said, I also drop the first envoy here for the free +2 culture, which will look like a mistake if we conquer the city, but not a huge one.

The north:



RS's borders will claim the iron in just two turns, so this will indeed be the site of our Wheel eureka.

The south:



I'll decide next turn whether to use that builder's last charge on a chop for the AH or some kind of +gold improvement, doing the former if it's required for our very late fourth city to at least get a free builder. The second horse down there immediately draws my eye, of course, but it's in an exceedingly awkward spot with respect to our western settlement plans, which otherwise want strong MT-adjacent holy sites with a minimum of tile purchases. We should have enough defogging done to pinmap this area in just a few turns.

Archduke and thrawn now both have fourth city settlers out, which makes everyone except us, so we are now a full five turns behind everyone else's expansion pace. That's pretty scary, but not totally unexpected - all of these Lavra and campus builds we've been doing have come at a short-term cost in settlers, but should start paying off very soon once Monumentality comes due and we can immediately buy several and start accelerating our snowball.

[ljubljana]

Turn 60



Uh oh, thrawn conquers another CS, and has Pítatis looking to potentially move into position around Anantanarivo as well. That's a smart move, and probably has the best odds to win of the various Pítati leverage plans that were available to them. Additionally, CMF has a fifth city settler out, too - we are officially behind on expansion, and given our sluggish faith income I'm starting to freak out a little. I think next turn will likely see a chop into the AH and a settler faith-buy somewhere, such that we can at least get a fourth city down in 6 turns rather than 11.



In the north, we pull off our little micro plan and manage to successfully waste the 1 ES from improving after a natural disaster. Lavra in 9, but I'll funnel two more jungle chops into it in the next 3 turns, so we should be able to finish DP with only one turn of delay (which we will spend unlocking the horseman boost policy) and still lock down the discounted campus. Our warrior also reaps the first concrete benefit of our Matterhorn grab by wrecking this scout's day .



In the south, we clear the camp, wasting 3 more ES, and defog a bit more. The land down here still looks very awkward with respect to a future horse-grabbing city, since any city that does that would be just out of range of a super-powered MT-adjacent Lavra. Something like 1 E of the nearest point of Lake Mweru would be a strong city on its own merits, but would lack a strong Lavra spot and would completely wreck our plan to cluster multiple Lavras around MT by ruling out a bunch of the best city spots for doing so. We may just need to accept a weakish filler as our sixth or seventh city just to lock down the second horse that we'll need to credibly threaten a Cossack attack... We also buy our missionary - I was hoping to find a way around having to do this, but I think it's necessary, since RS is now large enough that a natural spread there would take some time.

So, how far behind are we? If we didn't have our world-leading culture and Monumentality + Theology coming in the next ten turns, the answer would be "very, uncompetitively far behind". I think we might be able to start really making up some ground soon, though, with our faith income about to skyrocket from new cities, Lavra completions, Theology, etc. Hopefully, that'll be enough of a boost to our snowball to keep us in this thing...

[ljubljana]

Turn 61



We take Monumentality, as is obligatory, and immediately spend 195 faith on a settler in Hungary, chopping the AH at the capital as well to time its completion with the settler's arrival. The age change bumps down the cost of our techs and civics, which actually throws something of a wrench in our plan at RS; oops. We now have to delay Theology by 2 turns to get the campus up at the discount. The discount's worth ~30 hammers, though, and Theology's only worth 8/turn + 8 faith/turn, so I decide that's worth it anyways, especially since the discounted hammers are saved in our newest and lowest-production city. We're still getting Theology on t66 with that plan, which is actually pretty fast relative to my test games, in which ~t70 usually seems to be more typical. Also, I just realized that our Construction beeline might just result in me actually hitting the Games and Recreation eureka for the first time ever .

Thrawn declares on Anantanarivo, and I don't think there's much we can do to stop them from taking it. I guess we made a pretty serious mistake by not scouting this area sooner. That'll give them 5 cities, plus any settlers they may have in production or already on the board, and what looks increasingly like a wide lead over the field.





I finally try my hand at pinmapping - what do folks think? I'm a little dissatisfied with the horse city, as I've mentioned before - there's no obvious way to grab the horses with a city that has anything resembling a decent Lavra. We could move city 6 one tile east to make it slightly less exposed and save a good tile, but that would push the horse city substantially to the east into a much weaker location. Unfortunately, I think we do need this horse city online before Cossacks, but hopefully we can at least deprioritize it somewhat relative to the stronger locations here.

Cities 4 and 5 seem like obvious choices for the next two plants for faith-snowballing reasons, and because they're slightly less exposed than the ones closer to thrawn's frontier. I'll probably faith-buy the trader in city 4 once it's planted, or manually build it somewhere else and rebase it there, to get that city's growth bootstrapped quickly. I'm a bit less sure how to do that for city 5, though, which is a very weak food site. It's positioned the way it is because that Lavra takes fully 3 tiles up to breathtaking, and because it's just far enough away from Anantanarivo to allow another plant between them if need be. I might move it a bit north despite that though just to at least get some cows in range or something...

There are also two tile puchases in this plan, which is a bit annoying - the campus tile at city 7, and the Lavra spot for the city NW of city 4 (oops, I somehow managed to accidentally turn off all the location names, which I'm just noticing now). I don't think we can avoid the former, but maybe there's a way to get four MT Lavras without resorting to the latter, which would of course be preferred if possible, though the shape of that lake seems to make it difficult.

[marcopolothefraud]

I think your city plans are great overall. I don't think you should move city 5 to be closer to cows, and I don't think there's a good solution to the food problem, seeing as we don't want to work any farms and food buildings are not very useful. I don't think we should settle city 6 yet, because its main purpose seems to be just denying the land from thrawn, but it's not even that lush. Plus, we could end up in a two-front war against thrawn and ioan, and then city 6 would be easily razed - and city 7 is a way better location anyways, with the 3/2/1 foxes and the 2/2 stone.

I might harvest the cattle at city 4 for a little food boost (the loss of a potential 3/1 tile isn't too bad in the grand scale of things) and put the trader in city 5, though.