[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Miguelito]

I started the libraries, but will likely not whip them, and will not wait with maths at least for them, because boosting chops seems more important.

Next two plants on my schedule are fur island in the south, and coppercorn in the east (by Mjmd, or would you prefer the NW by Elkad? Seems like a further stretch):


I'm not sure if 1 archer isn't too little. Of course he'll likely not be in position to attack right away, so I hope if we have a bit more trailing it'll be ok. Tbh the archer is not quite clear yet, Lavandeira will whip a worker next turn, then finish the granary, THEN the archer can get queued. But we also have an unpromoted one who could do the job for a start, hm. In fact it would not be bad to send a galley ahead of the settler with archer/worker to start cutting jungle. We could even set up a bit of a galley chain, the problem is just that the current plan includes a worker from Iemanjá that we somehow have to get off that island.



Here I can't help but be tempted to settle 1W of the hill for first ring fur. Of course it's wrong and it will not happen. If we find seafood, do we swap the archer for a workboat and dare to found without a garrison?


First Fin villages, yay!


Still no Colossus graphics though

[Miguelito]

Crosspost.

Regarding growing to the happy cap, I assume we keep on whipping workers and settlers (say general expansion material) as always (well I am letting Bonfim grow some more for example, but Lavandeira and Paraná will both go 5->3 next turn if you don't object).

If we want a GA soon we will need to set up a city (Paraná?) for that, unless you want to use the GE/GM from the cap (GM I can see, although trade missions are nice, GE we've discussed although inconclusively). Would likely need forge and library for 3 slots, and that will take some time (in particular if we whip that worker).

I assume Confu is an empty hope, so yes philo bulb should be on the cards, although we might also come late to that.

[Rusten]

If we find seafood, do we swap the archer for a workboat and dare to found without a garrison?

Probably.

I added some responses in notes ingame yesterday evening.
That city order is OK, but I do feel the NW island is important too.

Further point on the coast vs grassland cottage debate I didn't have time to type out earlier: My dream endgame here is rush-buy with Kremlin (and possibly Cristo Redentor + mining inc), so that means running the cottage civics. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time and it seems ideal for this particular game. We can grow cottages quickly with emancipation so for me it feels much better to work our supercoast while we have it. Earlier guilds and musketeers = earlier conquests = earlier everything. Boosted cottage growth will yield villages in almost no time at all. It just takes too long for a non-river cottage to match our coast. Those could be farms instead (or saved worker turns).
Chances are this game is over before then, but that's how I'm reading the game.

edit: I was thinking we'd use the capital GP for the GA.

[Miguelito]

If we find seafood, do we swap the archer for a workboat and dare to found without a garrison?

Probably.

I added some responses in notes ingame yesterday evening.
That city order is OK, but I do feel the NW island is important too.

Further point on the coast vs grassland cottage debate I didn't have time to type out earlier: My dream endgame here is rush-buy with Kremlin (and possibly Cristo Redentor + mining inc), so that means running the cottage civics. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time and it seems ideal for this particular game. We can grow cottages quickly with emancipation so for me it feels much better to work our supercoast while we have it. Earlier guilds and musketeers = earlier conquests = earlier everything. Boosted cottage growth will yield villages in almost no time at all. It just takes too long for a non-river cottage to match our coast. Those could be farms instead (or saved worker turns).
Chances are this game is over before then, but that's how I'm reading the game.

edit: I was thinking we'd use the capital GP for the GA.

Dono settled our island. ON the fur, the madman . Will have to reassess everything. I'd say that the Viola settler should secure the border spot in this case. The galley can help with coppercorn, so the cap can build something else useful. NE coppercorn is a prize, but it's also pretty reachy for us - most likely between Elkad and someone else. We should still try for it of course. But I think the eastern one has priority, also considering that Mjmd has expanded steadily (faster than us due to Colossus) so that may be a race.

edit: we can also try to go for both coppercorn islands simultaneously, with 3 galleys, but seems quite risky and inefficient at the same time (really need to ferry over 2 workers straight away)

The coppercorn island E of Lazteuq has no seafood to its north, so I don't expect any.

Settling deer city showed civac's borders bleeding in from the fog, he's close. I had thought that maybe there was a central island that had the incense monopoly, but apparently not.

Offered OB to TBS, he has no reason to take it, but who knows.

Why do you feel pessimistic about the game ending early?

[Miguelito]

Ok, I left signs for a plan to settle both coppercorn islands simultaneously, founding 95 (east) and 97 (NE). There is some big risks involved: We'd drop off 2 unprotected workers in the east where Mjmd can likely see them, and only get a unit on that island the turn after. I hope Mjmd is not as good as TBS who has a chariot on his equivalent island (and who also is Catherine).
If you have a look at it let me know what you think.

Bonfim will whip the settler for the donovan border 8->6. This settling push will take most if not all of our resources during the next ~ 8-10 turns, but then I think we reach the maxmimum of peaceful expansion and have just 3 backfill sites left, well that and the wine island.
In fact the incense may be on some central island which civac might just have happened to settle.

5 people have masonry .

[Rusten]

I put 1 hammer into a couple of archers to enable a potential emergency whip. You can switch back from them this turn.
TBS offered back open borders after having a think about it and I accepted. We've got more 3 commerce routes than we can fit in right now, currency is going to be massive.
I think we should chop at least 1 forest for library on fur island. I'd even be tempted to chop the furs tile, it doesn't outproduce our supercoast by that much anyway. But just a suggestion, I don't feel strongly about this.

Why do you feel pessimistic about the game ending early?

I'm referring to post mining inc and CR here, which is pretty late. Decent chance someone will have carved out a winning advantage by then, but not certain of course. But cottages and rush-buy is how I wish to set up our empire long term. If we add CR for situational whipping then we're at a huge advantage.

[Miguelito]

I put 1 hammer into a couple of archers to enable a potential emergency whip. You can switch back from them this turn.

Elkad next turn has the chance to raze something important next turn, but I hope he wants to play nice. His border is demilitarized now, that is good. But I suppose for the archers you rather had appearing boats in mind. It's good to have the reassurance, certainly.

TBS offered back open borders after having a think about it and I accepted. We've got more 3 commerce routes than we can fit in right now, currency is going to be massive.

TBS's OB are awesome yes. He's Catherine and well, TBS. Likely one of the city count leaders, and might fill all the new routes from Currency him alone. On that note, I was surprised to see this (although I could have known from fog bleed and the mirror last turn already):


If he's founding treasures like this one already he sure must have covered the mainland well already. Well his lack of a naming scheme gives us a bit of extra intel here; Baoding is no. 13 on the list. I actually would've expected for this spot to be rather something like 15+

I think we should chop at least 1 forest for library on fur island. I'd even be tempted to chop the furs tile, it doesn't outproduce our supercoast by that much anyway. But just a suggestion, I don't feel strongly about this.

No issue with chopping the furs, if we count 1f = 2h the difference is 1c, and growing faster on coast gets us more commerce from more coast. Now, regarding the other forest I'm a bit more hesitant, because that would also be a nice lumbermill, considering we want to develop Marinheiro as a hammer city. I get that you are really aversed to 2pop whipping that city? If we were growing it at 5 food surplus instead of 4, would that make a difference in your assessment? Want to switch from trireme to library btw? I feel like 2pop whipping the trireme into library. The library would not require another whip, either because we chop twice, or we work the fur for 10 more turns, given that a worker is far away anyways (all are busy)

I've got some concerning international news:




Civac declared on AT a couple of turns ago, and AT, whose graphs we just got, apparently lost an army and a major city. He's at 6 cities with Justinian. If civac can eat him cheaply with classical units he becomes a superpower on our continent, which I'm now fairly certain is a ring that goes us-Elkad-civac-AT-Dono-us . Not much we can do at this moment though, besides starting to scout civac's coast.

Elkad meanwhile has founded three cities in three turns, good for him. I hope that means we can settle coppercorn unmolested, as he should be recovering from that wave of expansion. I also now think that he should be our friend and a bulwark against civac. I think we have a beneficial border for both parties.

I'm referring to post mining inc and CR here, which is pretty late. Decent chance someone will have carved out a winning advantage by then, but not certain of course. But cottages and rush-buy is how I wish to set up our empire long term. If we add CR for situational whipping then we're at a huge advantage.

Yes CR is bananas, as is currently being demonstrated in the civforum worldmap game. Btw, if we land our pie in the sky and get CR and Kremlin, would you then not prefer Sushi over Mining for whips?
More relevantly, you talked about Emancipation. Do you think we'll be able to afford to run it for extended periods of time, sacrificing slavery/caste? With Emancipation you still take 35 turns growing from a fresh cottage to a town, and if we go for US/FS we really want towns, right (also FS denies us drafting)? I can see emancipation being worth it for a period between 2 GAs or so, for a boost on growth, but not sure if that's enough to make it worthwhile to start cottages after Astro.
Fwiw I don't want to start cottaging bare grasslands either, save maybe a selected few in the capital's and Bonfim's BFC. But I can also still see us just workshopping those tiles long term.

Also you said you were planning on the cap's GP for the GA; also if it's an engineer?

[Miguelito]

Elkad researched alphabet:


How interesting. It can't be a bulb since he doesn't have maths. So somehow he decided that he wants to go that route. For our friendship that's helpful I suppose, as it indicates that he won't get construction very soon. Still puzzling.

Fwiw, I think before our push towards Feudalism after Currency, we should definitely clear Calendar (we have 2 spices, the sugar and hopefully 2 bananas). Probably Construction as well? And CoL for a GA, in particular if Confu is still available when we've saved up after Currency.

I don't see the library in Canoa soon, we have to take care to keep up with settlers and workers and right now we have a lot of infrastructure projects. For now it's started on a workboat, which is supposed to scout a bit before netting the clam at Madeira.

[Rusten]

Also you said you were planning on the cap's GP for the GA; also if it's an engineer?

Yeah I think it's much better than bulbing machinery if we are in a position to swap to caste and run scientists for a philosophy GS and be able to swap into all the civics+religion we want at the end of it. That's going to be HR, caste (start of GA) -> slavery (end of GA), pacifism, vassalage and Taoism. We'll get a free missionary to spread to our main GPP city (Paranaue) for the bonus.
I added a sign earlier about making our capital a 3rd (hybrid) GPP city. It has free GPP from the colossus already.

Capital GP triggers GA and Paranaue completes a GS during the GA to bulb philosophy and adopt pacifism. We can then easily produce a 3rd and 4th GP for our second GA later (during which we should also aim to create #5, 6 and 7). Alternatively (and possibly stronger) is make more scientists to bulb towards liberalism, take nationalism for free and use the Taj GA instead. Either way, I'm confident we want a golden age when we reach CoL. So many civic swaps plus religion to do.

If we somehow get Confucianism we can reconsider, but I think golden age and philosophy is still the play. We'll be behind on religion, but pacifism only requires spread to a select few cities to be very useful.

Delaying library in Canoa is alright, we could use a settler.

[Rusten]

Overall game is going very well. We have the #1 economy in the game (if not already then at least the potential for it), and the demos are looking better and better too. Add in Elkad seemingly being peaceful (for now) and Donovan being so far behind and I don't think I'd trade places with anyone. Colossus is so big (with fin).

Completely agree with befriending Elkad, we have a very nice border wih him. Prop him up against civac.