[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[williams482]

Yeah, not an ocean. I'm not too worried about long term district placement, we don't have enough info to make sensible decisions about that anyway.

Opening builds are going to be tough. This is definitely a slow starting map, which will presumably be true for everyone and does make betting on a golden age just that much less reliable. Of course we do still need scouting units, and we need to make sure we don't get zerged by barbs, so a starting warrior isn't that bad.

That's a good point regarding the far superior second ring in the west (although I note that east does have seafood as a partial compensation). We don't know what the third ring looks like in the east, and because we'll be swimming in Portuguese gold tile purchases will be easier than they normally would be, and we'll get, at a minimum, a grass jungle hill and a plains jungle hill banana to purchase.

Ugh, I dunno. Neither spot is perfect, although I'm still leaning towards Japan in the east I'm much less sure now. Let's see what Archduke has to say, but we need to make sure we aren't holding up the game deciding.

[ljubljana]

nahh i think we're totally gonna get a golden age - just focus on circumnav and meeting all the other teams and that's 15 points right out the gate (including 2 from us each building a boat). We're both founding a pantheon, I should found a religion by t61, and both sites have +3 campi available too. if we can hit poliphil (that's a BIG if) i think we'll be ok even without camp clears. or i can do warrior-first after all and pretty much guarantee at least one camp clear...

The east does have what looks like many more feitoria-able tiles in total - i don't see a single one visible in the west! one does imagine Japan should get most such tiles with a city on the central island anyways, but it would be nice not to have to buy them or to race against the capital's tile picker. perhaps the eastern cap could stay small-ish at first and use the food to regrow from ancestral hall settlers? but small-ish here means SMALL, there are only, like, four workable hammer tiles in the east pre-construction and we'd probably pave over at least one

[williams482]

As for first builds, the monument idea is growing on me. It is risky and it sacrifices scouting (both bad things for sure) but it does get culture flowing faster (also relevant, the craftsmanship boost won't be especially easy here), and Monument -> Settler will have the settler on the map on t19 if we work GFH+PFH+GFH with the first three pop. Building a unit means we'll have to put hammers into something else for a couple of turns (probably another unit) while the settler is building, which is slightly inefficient.

Slinger/Warrior -> Settler gets the settler on the map t17 with an escort and allows our starting warrior to deep scout a bit more. My gut says the faster settler, increased security, and wider scouting are more valuable than extra culture this early, but that all comes down to the barb situation and exactly what is out there in the fog. Tough to quantify exactly.

[ljubljana]

one nice thing about the east for monument-first is that it is at least much more sheltered from barbs due to the shape of the mountains + lake (i do get the +5 from divine wind in lakeside tiles...right?). and our starting warrior is pointing NE which is probably where the second city wants to go for the 5-yield bananas. our culture is going to be just horrendously bad with no culture pantheon (they look pretty terrible here) and the pingala skip. and if we are NOT on separate continents someone will have to hard-research foreign trade. if i go monument first at least i can be that someone and boost it for TAD so we don't sacrifice anything in terms of boat timings, which i think is the main argument in favor. arguments against include that barbs will eat us, we're more likely to miss Astrology, more likely to miss the GA for lack of barb camp clears, etc etc. though at least towards the latter point i will have a CHANCE at t61 poliphil with monument-first, compared to probably zero chance without it 100ish culture from a turn 10 monument is literally worth all of (boosted) PP itself PLUS almost all of state workforce as well, not to be dismissed lightly under these incredibly culture-constrained conditions...

also we do have a ready solution to the craftsmanship boost problem - just make TAD research it after foreign trade, since his build order actually has room for builders

and wrt to scouting, this island is probably big enough for 6-7 cities tops. we should be able to defog it all with one warrior with time to spare, i'd imagine. that is unless barbs hit us bad but i may be willing to risk it for the economic biscuit, so to speak

but re working GFH+GFH+PFH with the first three pop to get the settler out fast.... well.... the eastern site doesn't even HAVE two GFH it would be monument t10 i think (t9 if we get the extra hammers from growing onto PFH on the interturn we grow?), then settler something like t19 working GFH + PFH. though really the west doesn't get the settler out any faster as it probably still wants to build it with GFH/PFH and regrow as it drops to size 1...

edit: so, ok, the GP i think has to go in the cap since it's the only spot where we're guaranteed double woods chops for the AH. so that means the cap will be at size 4 or so working hammer tiles to spit out AH settlers for a LONG time, and the second city will be pingalaland. so in turn THAT means it will need the feed the world food to regrow anyway (no magnus 2) and perhaps the lack of workable tiles won't manifest until TAD's close to feitoria anyways? that should be in the t90 range if we play our cards right, and it's easy to imagine not taking the AH capital off of settlers until at least that late. and then when it finally does hit size 7 it can slap down a +7 campus (with GP 1SW of the vent?) and just go crazy in monasticism.... and actually it would kinda be an unsynergistic nightmare if that western coast really has NO feitoria spots, right?

plus there has to be at least ONE of horse + iron in that second ring so perhaps the hammer sitch isn't quite as dire as i imagine...

[williams482]

Uhh, my bad again on that. On closer inspection I don't think either site has two GFH tiles, just one (with the other flat). On the bright side, though, that doesn't seem to affect the settler time at all.

I've set up what should be decent micro tools in the spreadsheet (linked earlier, but here it is again. I recommend bookmarking it if you haven't already). This is my spreadsheet, there are inevitably parts that are confusing or overcomplicated. I will try to improve it as issues are pointed out. 


For tabs I have:
- Calculator: bunch of generally useful calculations. Yellow fields are for human input, the rest are calculated. 
- C&D data input tabs:
    - IN - Ribbon: yields for each civ shown in the HUD ribbon. Fill this one out first, starting by adding the turn number for the next row. For turns 2 and on, this will autofill fields across all the input sheets with what I believe to be sensible default guesses which should be written over when wrong. 
    - IN - Resources: Each player's current stockpile of strategic resources. By default, each increments by whatever amount they increased by last turn. Best accessed from the global resources report.
    - IN - Score: The breakdown of each player's score in the detailed view of the score victory tab.
    - IN - Great People: The number of great person points earned PER TURN (actually the number they earned last turn) by each player. Again, this is per turn, NOT their total number of points.
    - IN - Rankings: Each player's ranking in the various victories. This is only useful prior to us meeting everyone, don't bother to update it after that. 
- Analysis tabs: Empire, Changes, and Military. These can be ignored if not interested; they exist for me to analyze the score tracking data and speculate about what it actually means. 
- Micro tabs:
    - Empire Yields: Tracking science, culture, gold, and faith accumulation for the empire. Links to sheets for individual cities.
    - Lookups: abbreviations and yields for workable tiles, used by VLOOKUP in the city tabs.
    - City Yields - 1, 2, 3, and 4: Growth/production/yield micro for four individual cities. Similar in concept to spreadsheets Thrawn has shared in the past, calculating city yields from tile yields (VLOOKUP'd from Lookups tab, as noted), inherent population yields, and "bonuses" denoting yields from any other source: city states, buildings, the city center tile, etc. 

This is recently constructed, and there are likely some bugs in the micro tabs especially. Ljubljana, I note that some of your projected times were different from what this spreadsheet predicted by a turn or two, which might be user error or a wrong formula on my part. Definitely feel free to poke around with these and try to use them if so inclined.

[williams482]

It sounds like both of us believe Japan getting the eastern spot is probably for the best. Archduke is surely asleep right now and likely won't be awake for a fair bit. I don't want to extend the delay any longer than necessary.

Ljubljana, I think you should strongly consider making the official decision now, in the event that our opponents have already done so and they are waiting on us.

[ljubljana]

thank you so much for setting up the spreadsheet!!!! it will probably take me some time to figure out how to use it well but i can at least input the required inputs

re starts: idk, i worry it would be getting off on the wrong foot in terms of intra-team collaboration to make a decision as important as this one without TAD's input. i really don't want TAD to feel left out or alienated before the game even starts :/ and, uh, also, while i guess i do favor the eastern spot for Japan, there's not much of a margin and i'd like TAD's input, they know the game way better than i do plus i'd also like TAD's input on what increasingly looks like my actual, ridiculous plan to open with a monument first to offset pingala skip.... and also on how the hell we're going to get all the science and culture in place to both spam Naval Infrastructure boats starting in the mid-t20s while not delaying Japan's essential holy site (perhaps with TAD opening with hard-researched Astrology?) and while both somehow remaining on track for t60 political philosophy...

[ljubljana]

miscellany: an early trader at my capital seems really important for snowball reasons... to 3-turn galleys, we need 11 hammers per turn = a size 3 capital. and for the GP and Early Empire boosts we need size 4 and we need it pretty quickly, probably around t40 if possible. but the cap itself has nowhere near the food supply needed to make that happen at least that will give us SOMEthing to make instead of boats should we fail to eureka astrology or we buy the trader early instead of the usual second city monument?

[ljubljana]

tried a test game w monument first + pingala skip. the result:



not too bad, huh? this is with hard-researching foreign trade, missing the astro eureka, AND slow-building the monument after holy site in the second city. boat numbers suffered of course but at least i could 3-turn them after sailing finally came in thanks to the builder i made in the meantime. in a real game i'd presumably follow this up with theology for monumentality and rec his to get pingala online in some order. and osaka would take over on boats duty (faith-buying the builder in production here) while the cap went AH -> settlers

[ljubljana]

cant sleep, thinking abt monuments

aaaah yup this is what pbems are like, i remember now

i hope i'm not too exhausted to make decisions tomorrow.... we might have an important warrior to move......