[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

Yep, swapping off FT to save on the HS cost is indeed my (tentative) plan, hence the (ambiguously-worded) pin on Hakuho's city center tile, lmao. I think we will swap to Cratsmanship (?) when FT is 1t from completion, then back to complete it on (I think) the turn we settle the 2nd city so we can start getting +100% on boats immediately. We could also wait one more turn and accept a 1t delay on the galley in exchange for getting to place the second city's HS before the cost increase, though I suspect that's not worth it since accelerating the Geneva kill by 1t is worth at least 4 extra foodhammers from its city center tile anyways...

Wait, where are you getting the 63h base cost for the HS district? I have finished zero techs so far (with Sailing paused 2t from completion) and just one civic in CoL in preparation for this, and I'm seeing a cost of 58h in the spreadsheet with 1 civic + 1 tech finished once Astro comes in. If that's true, I think we should need 29 base hammers to complete it (?), so with 4h overflow from the settler I think we can finish in 3 turns if we work the PFH for one of those (and, yeah, I did swap to the PJH the turn it was acquired).

Also, I'm not really sure I understand how the pop loss from settlers really works, lmao. There is 10 food in the box right now, so there will be 16 when the settler finishes, enough to "regrow immediately" in RB parlance. But I'm not sure how this works in practice - will the city spend a turn at size 1 with a full food box, or will it drop to size 1 and regrow in the same interturn, and therefore not spend any turns at size 1? Either way, I think we can still get the 3-turn HS, we'd just have to work the PFH for all three turns instead of one turn in the former case to account for the lost 2h from the size 1 turn.

[williams482]

Yep, swapping off FT to save on the HS cost is indeed my (tentative) plan, hence the (ambiguously-worded) pin on Hakuho's city center tile, lmao. I think we will swap to Cratsmanship (?) when FT is 1t from completion, then back to complete it on (I think) the turn we settle the 2nd city so we can start getting +100% on boats immediately. We could also wait one more turn and accept a 1t delay on the galley in exchange for getting to place the second city's HS before the cost increase, though I suspect that's not worth it since accelerating the Geneva kill by 1t is worth at least 4 extra foodhammers from its city center tile anyways...

Wait, where are you getting the 63h base cost for the HS district? I have finished zero techs so far (paused Sailing 2t from completion) and just one civic in CoL in preparation for this, and I'm seeing a cost of 58h in the spreadsheet with 1 civic + 1 tech finished once Astro comes in. If that's true, I think we should need 29 base hammers to complete it (?), so with 4h overflow from the settler I think we can finish in 3 turns if we work the PFH for one of those (and, yeah, I did swap to the PJH the turn it was acquired).

Also, I'm not really sure I understand how the pop loss from settlers really works, lmao. There is 10 food in the box right now, so there will be 16 when the settler finishes, enough to "regrow immediately" in RB parlance. But I'm not sure how this works in practice - will the city spend a turn at size 1 with a full food box, or will it drop to size 1 and regrow in the same interturn, and therefore not spend any turns at size 1? Either way, I think we can still get the 3-turn HS, we'd just have to work the PFH for all three turns instead of one turn in the former case to account for the lost 2h from the size 1 turn.

Wait, we haven't finished a tech yet? Oops. 

With a 58h HS, 9 base hammers per turn, 4h overflow off the settler, and +100% production for Japan, that's a 3t build. t23, nice! All overflow is wasted, of course, but nothing to be done about that except complain. 

(EDIT: actually no, take that back. If we stick on the jungle hill until t22, then swap to the plains forest hill for the last turn, we complete the HS in the same three turn period with the same zero overflow, but pick up a little extra food in the process. Marginal, but worth it)

As far as I can tell, the city handles production ahead of food growth. So it completes a settler, subtracts the population, applies the net food income for that turn (including food produced/consumed by the removed citizen), and checks if the food box is full enough to grow again. In our case, we'll be at pop 2 with 13 food in the box on t19. On t20 we complete the settler, drop to pop 1, add two more surplus food to the food box to bring it to 15. 15 is the amount of food needed to grow to pop 2, so we will instantly regrow the lost population without spending any time at pop 1.

[ljubljana]

Wait, are we supposed to finish techs in this game? i just like watching the little blue bars fill up

right, thank you for reminding me that our +100% boost to hammers will mean wasted overflow - i was hoping to overflow 1 hammer into the first boat so we can finish in 4t without working the PFH. but that's fine, we should still be able to make two boats in 4t each, one will just have to be a PFH turn. i will attempt to complete the HS to the penny in 3t with no overflow, if possible, to maximize banked food

thank you for the explanation re settler pop loss! i will run a test in SP to verify what happens if a settler finishes on exactly the turn that exactly 15 food is reached, but this conforms with what i've seen in less-specific tests so far

[ljubljana]

test results look good! with +1 food surplus, my observations are:





i also realized that if we want the cheapest possible HS at the second city as well, we will also have to delay sailing until we can place the district. that doesn't mess with our boat timing at the capital, thankfully, but again it does mean we'd spend 1t working on something other than a +100% boat in city 2. since every turn of delay on that boat is a turn we don't have Geneva, i guess i'd say that's probably not worth it UNLESS there is a way to do so without affecting the second city boat timing, which i doubt...

edit: no, it DOES mess with the boat timing at the capital, which will finish the HS on turn 23, when the second city is founded and places the HS. so delaying sailing to t24 costs a turn at both, so nope, not worth it imo.

[ljubljana]

i think i'll swap off foreign trade THIS turn, because i'm paranoid and it would wreck everything if i forget next turn. but onto EE or onto craftsmanship? well, we will need EE on roughly t39, by my estimation, when i expect the capital to have finished 4 boats and be ready for the fourth city settler (5 boats total is the sweet spot i think - one to scout west for circumnav + contacts and two CS wolfpacks of two boats each). but if we CAN finish craftsmanship before then, we probably want to do that ASAP in order to swap to Urban Planning (unless it could be worth it to buy a civic swap when the pantheon comes in - do you know how the cost of those is determined?)

we need 66 base culture to finish both with the boost, which would take 19 turns - with 2t left on foreign trade we should BARELY have enough time. so craftsmanship it is, i think? ideally we can finish on or around the turn we conquer our way to the inspiration. that's assuming Geneva gets its butt together soon and makes a fishing boat - how does city-state teching work again? i thought the check occurred once more than half the civs have sailing, which is probably already true, so hopefully the boat will appear soon?

also, question: can allied civs make improvements in each other's territory? it had better not be possible for krill to send their builder TO THRAWN and mine their hills and/or straight-up chop out longships with them :|

[ljubljana]

Turn 18 - Japan

got emmmmm:



Good thing I rolled all those test maps Unsure about whether to kill the scout or the camp first. I'm inclined towards the former, as otherwise it might take a while to hunt the scout down and it could try to pillage our capital's holy site. But that does mean a few turns of delay in attacking the camp itself, which had better not be enough time for it to spawn a warrior

As for the pinmap, the one here is the one that maximizes strong immediate yields in the new cities (I think?). Unsure about some of the details but seems like a plausible baseline. I'm getting a little worried about the GP placement for flood reasons - a flood that takes out the GMC and AH at a critical time could be devastating in a hypothetical future war. Will try moving it SW tomorrow and see how the yields react.

Here is the sitch at Hakuho, which I swapped back to the PFH this turn:



Does this look right to you for our 3-turn holy site build? Seems consistent with regrowing immediately, as this city will look identical to the "before" picture in the test above next turn. and indeed I think we're on pace to overflow 4h into the holy site when the settler pops.

We are also gonna have to come up with SOME kind of way to catch Hakuho back up on growth after all these PFH turns - it DOES need to hit size 4 ASAP, hopefully around t50, for the GP = Victor 3 after all. Maybe we should buy the third-ring fish if we land GotS, or consider an early jungle chop?

Lots of movement in the rankings - thrawn and krill somehow passed us on culture despite no Sumerian monument?! And us and our two warriors have crept into second in domination rankings . Presumably that has something to do with the barb camp Krill seems to have killed this turn (which had better not ALSO respawn next to us ) But the big surprise is in the scores: incurian has TEN empire score, which I can't read as anything other than a size-3 city! They must have pooled their gold with Chev to buy the second-ring PJH - very interesting move! Wish I had thought of that

Hey TAD, where are you planning to send your settler? I am a bit nervous about the second city spot here



which has weak first ring tiles and will be hard to defend - the city NE of the lake, for instance, is much more sheltered and will get off to a faster start. I think the pinned second city might make more sense as a third or fourth city, when the era score from founding near Galapagos and the extra science will start to outweigh immediate snowballing concerns. Although I guess the pinned second city is close to Mogadishu which we do have to defend anyways, so it has a reduced front length going for it.

Also, I sent you all 100 of my gold to buy the trader. Feel free to do so as soon as FT comes in for the visibility, but I think we should not actually start the trade route until you have a galley escort out. There is an activated water barb camp in the north and if our first trader gets pillaged by barbs on t20 we are so, so unbelievably dead

[williams482]

Portugal's pinned city #2 won't get era score from Galapagos because it's three tiles away from the wonder itself. The PFH 1SE of the pinned tile looks to be the only city on that land mass which would give that era score. How much do we care? Not sure.

I agree with Ljubljana, the Portuguese "4th" pin looks like the best second city site. Slightly longer walk, but stronger first ring and much more secure. It's campus is also 2nd ring instead of 3rd, in the event you try for that as the 1st district.

Looks like the Japanese settler is on track to finish with 4 overflow and instant regrowth on t20, working GFH and PFH. Excellent.

For the "conservative" pinmap that gives up a possible geothermal city, we should probably consider swapping the plaza with #6's campus. That will eliminate eventual 5th and 6th adjacent districts, but it makes it a 2nd ring tile instead of 3rd ring, and it will boost the holy site adjacencies a bit, to further help our monumentality snowball. I think regardless of if we want the geothermal city, though, Cities #2 and #3 should be planted in their non-forest spots. Doing so does not interfere with district placements or other possible city sites and gives significantly better first rings, at the expense of a little security at city #3 which we can compensate for by settling it slightly later (if that's even necessary, we will have at least five ships on the water well before our third settler is complete).

[williams482]

Reaching pop 4 is definitely going to be a hurdle. If we swap back to the PJH after the holy site is done, then grow onto a 2f tile, we'll hit pop 4 on t50. Not ideal timing at all for our third governor title. Options to speed things along are pretty limited, but some combination of buying a trader, buying+improving the fish, and/or chop-mining the jungle hill are plausible solutions. Hell, maybe a granary would be worth building?

If we do opt for a jungle chop, we should be able to time it such that the chopped food takes us to pop 4 while the production goes directly into the plaza. With four civics such a chop would be 15f+15h (not exactly a huge return), and would allow us to hit pop 4 on t42. Five civics would be 17f/17h, pop 4 on t41.

Oh, also Feed The World. +2 food from a monument would go a long ways, that's definitely worth investing in.

[ljubljana]

yeahhh, i have been eyeing the trader for a while now, but it may be some time before that's a better buy than a crazy Portuguese one. but maybe i can squeeze in a trader /build/ somewhere?

the crucial milestone is that we need to hit pop 4 BEFORE the second settler pops, so i can at least lay down the GP foundation and finish it at size 3 after the settler. i'm thinking we should start settler #2 in Hakuho after 4 boats = the late turn 30s, so likely t45 is roughly the deadline we're looking at here. then the cap goes GP-AH while some other city does victor galleys......if needed maybe we can delay the settler slightly for a builder who then chops the jungle into the settler (times colonization) to partially pay for itsel? idk

you are right about city 2+3 i think. maybe there is one alternate position for city 3 that makes some sense, inland on the hill NE of the pin, which avoids killing a Geneva feitoria if Geneva is shaping up to be TAD's main TR location. we'd probably want that to be our only inland city if so, though, and to basically make only builders forever while the others spam ships. i think one dedicated builder city should be roughly enough to provide for everyone if needed, and can be supplemented w monumentality if it comes up slightly short. but it would be awkward and bad from a policy card perspective, since builders really want to be made in waves so they can all benefit from Ilkum/Serfdom......

re era score for TAD, i don't think it'll be THAT tight, they are at 5 and will get 10ish from all the contacts, 3 from a campus, 1 from pantheon, 3 from PoliPhil, and probably 3 from others' natural wonders since we know basically where we can expect to find them. that is enough for a GA, but there is def an argument for at least keeping the PFH spot open in case something goes wrong w that math.

edit: also i'm weirdly obsessed w feed the world at this point but i think the +3 food, +2 housing, +3 faith 70-hammer shrines are extremely efficient builds (compare that RoI to a granary!) and we will want them everywhere asap. only problem with using that to bootstrap the capital is that i don't think we can get the religion up in time

[williams482]

Shrines are only +2 faith, so +2 food. Unless I'm missing a bonus somewhere.

For micro stuff, I'm going to toot my own horn and recommend checking out the city yield tabs of the spreadsheet if you haven't already. There are four tabs for the first four cities, all linked up to the Empire Yields tab for calculating accumulated science/culture/gold/faith. Yields from the city center, buildings, and policy cards should be tallied and placed in the "Bonuses" section, while tiles worked by the city are handled by putting an abbreviated identifier for the tile under the relevant population column in the "Worked Tiles" section, which looks up yields against the contents of the "Lookups" tab. Tiles included there are non-exhaustive and more should be added whenever desired.

As an example of how nifty this thing can be, I can tell from plugging in the appropriate values that Japan will get 25 faith for a pantheon (actually 25.6) on t23 if it builds the HS after the settler, and works the dyes as the opening tile in the second city.

Obviously I made this, so it makes tons of sense to me but may not for you guys. Please ask questions if you are interested in using this tool but confused as to how something works, and definitely let me know if anything is inconsistent with the numbers shown in the game or otherwise potentially incorrect.

Finally, it's currently only set up for one civ (Japan). If Archduke is interested in playing with spreadsheets or wants specific micro suggestions, it is super easy for me to duplicate the relevant sheets so we can do the same stuff with Portugal too.