[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[TheArchduke]

Well, I did not expect this:

   

[ljubljana]

Turn 14 - Japan

We have a lot to think about, but, to answer the obvious question, the Astro eureka is...



...JUST barely on time to start an HS after the t20 settler. It would have been late, but triggering it was ALSO the Geneva quest for a free envoy to put us just over the line. Now, whether we actually WANT to go for that is an open question, as it means punting the Geneva conquest by a few turns, probably 3 or 4 (unless perhaps the second city goes SW of the capital and starts a galley immediately, which also lets us see the horse before committing to an HS spot?). But a unique feature of our position here is that a fast holy site in my capital will accelerate not just my pantheon but TAD's as well, since their TR to my capital will grant them +1 faith/turn! If we buy the trader around t22, that is fast enough for TAD to beat even someone who works a faith resource at their second city. Given the map setup, I expect there to be very, very intense competition for whichever two of {GotS, Open Sky, Festivals} were not taken by Chevalier, and if our team can land both, it would be a huge coup

We could also get two exceedingly cheap holy sites placed at the first two cities too by sandbagging tech and civic discoveries until Astro comes in. With 1 tech and 1 civic finished, we are looking at a 29-hammer holy site, cheaper than a slinger and constructible in just 3 turns with settler overflow. But with a second civic the cost spikes by 5 hammers and that is 1/6 of a galley I do not want to throw away. That does mean our +3 holy site (needed before the era change) would likely have to come at the third city, but that should be doable with a chop and by abusing the GP.

re Galapagos, we will have to see what the land around there looks like, but to me this spot SCREAMS to be stacked with Monasticism. A city on the wheat can get ALL the Galapagos tiles in range and go holy site -> bought shrine -> bought temple and just go crazy under Feed the World. Or, more likely, I could send two Monumentality settlers to the wheat and the NW island and buy FtW buildings in both of them to get all the Galapagos tiles online ASAP. As for timing, I'd say whichever core cities can NOT be expected to get their campi up by t100 should be delayed until after the science bomb goes off which I would guess will make these my seventh and eight self-founded cities, roughly, and likely my first off the mainland.

edit: note to self, the warrior had better start heading home in the next turn or so to escort the settler in case a barb camp spawns :/

edit2: it is worth observing that several of these galapagos tiles are feitoria-eligible as well. if founding on the wheat does not remove it (need to check this), we are looking at a future 2f/1h/5g/4b galapagos feitoria tile...

[ljubljana]

Increasingly starting to like this fast Hakuho HS + second city 4 SW of Hakuho + boat first in second city plan. With two boats at the capital, the attack at Geneva starts as soon as the second boat gets there on turn 31. But the second city under this scheme would be founded on t23 and can do an 8-turn boat in Urban Planning (replacing the GK faith with one from the dyes), and since it's just 2t from Geneva that adds up to just one turn of delay on the attack. And in exchange both TAD and I will vault up to nearly the front of the pack in the pantheon race. Seems well worth doing to me.

The most significant cost is founding the second city off fresh water, but it's otherwise a strong site that works with either pantheon, and perhaps we can paper over the housing issue with builder love until Feed the World comes online, at which point we might not mind having founded the one mainland city that wants a granary way earlier than all the other ones. And for defensibility purposes, expanding towards the giant gaping weak point of Geneva instead of away from it should shorten both the length of the front we have to defend and the resupply distance to a Geneva defense fleet.

[TheArchduke]

I put down some city markers, we should have an ingame chat and analysis.

[williams482]

Settling on the wheat will preserve the resource, although it won't show a resource icon on the map or provide any extra yields to the city center tile (because it's just a 2f1h tile anyway).

[ljubljana]

Turn 15 - Japan

a barb camp has spawned, requiring me to take a break from defogging the north



you can also see that i have taken my first stab at a candidate pinmap. the north seems a bit better for the GP complex as it can be fully surrounded by districts without paving over too many useful tiles, plus the harbors can contribute to the campus adjacencies. i am not thrilled about how many hills we have to pave over for this to work (6 counting the sheep) but perhaps that huge raft of +6 and +7 campuses justifies the means...

not sure whether to approach the barb camp from the north or south. north is shorter but potentially allows a warrior to spawn on the marsh - south is longer but should be safer if the camp activates. idk i'll ponder this more when i'm less out of it lmaooo

weird news abroad - inc's empire score jumped to 9 from what looks like a late monument build? if so, ouch on the impact that will have on their settler timing. chevalier, meanwhile, mysteriously picked up 2 more era score from somewhere, after taking 4 on t13 that i can't explain either. 2 of these 6 come from founding the first pantheon, but the other 4 have eluded me thus far....

edit: nvm, chev of course got their ES from clearing the barb camp that respawnrd next to me

[ljubljana]

anyone happen to know if the side of the camp the barb scout spawns on is deterministic? naturally i should approach the camp from whichever side the scout is on if at all possible.

perhaps i should do a test in which i mod warriors to have 999999 sight and see what happens... i am hoping that such a test mod is more or less trivial to make but i am actually shockingly ignorant when it comes to modding

edit: next up, i will explore what happens if we put a city ON the geothermal vent amidst the campi, like thrawn's central city in the PBEM21 Heptagon.....

[williams482]

Building harbors in the inner lake does give some adjacency benefits, but we cannot afford to lock two cities out of building useful ships until we get Steam Power for the canal.

[ljubljana]

It's true, that's one of the big things about this map that needs iterating, that and stupid inland city 3 lol. i felt that one inland city in Demotic worked out fine for me last game, as i needed enough builders that i don't think i suffered a slowdown in total ship production. but two would be overkill for sure.

it is also true that any benefits that come online after harbors are ultra-longterm considerations.... realistically it is hard to imagine that we will ever have enough breathing room to make more than a holy site + campus in most of these cities... in pbem20 half my cities never even had time for Cothon + campus, and i was still perpetually behind on shipbuilding. hmm. need to think and iterate more, clearly

[ljubljana]

To my shock and relief, it appears from SP testing with debug console active that there IS a pattern to the barb scout spawns. and here it is:









Looks like they REALLY like the spot NE of the camp, and for some reason occasionally mix things up by spawning W of the camp instead. Of the 21 camps I looked at, the scout/galley spawned NE of the camp 16 times, and W of the camp 4 times.

and one time this happened:



from this data i feel quite confident that approaching the camp from the north is the right move

btw, all four instances of the western scout spawn occurred with a water tile NE of the camp, which our camp in-game conspicuously lacks. Perhaps the way this is coded is that, if a camp is near the coast, the game first decides whether it is a "sea camp" or a "land camp" and THEN picks the first eligible scout/boat placement, checking first the NE tile, then the W tile, and then presumably the others in some order? With respect to the sea vs land question, in all the examples I checked, a boat spawned if there were 4+ water tiles in the first ring of the camp, and a scout spawned otherwise....EXCEPT for that weird example above where the boat spawned 2W of the camp. Perhaps there is an exception to the usual rules that always produces a boat if the camp and its associated civ are on different landmasses?

Either way, it seems likely that a) this is a land camp and b) the scout is currently 1NE of the camp tile on the sheep. I will operate on this assumption going forward and approach from the north