we should be able to make decent-to-good use of RG - the only probable city site that is incapable of a riverside HS is the one we're about to found. Geneva has one, as does the island to the north, as does a hypothetical city on Mogadishu Island for Galapagos beakers. we could even fix this as city 2 by moving it 1W, although that move is Feitoria-killing at Geneva so I'm loathe to recommend it
one issue we will likely run into though is that most of our good riverside HS spots involve wasting hills. but...well, the cities for which that's true (3, 4) already have pinned HS that waste hills :| i am really starting to worry about hanmers in general under our current plan - everyone will be wasting hills for good campus spots it looks like, but if we ALSO waste a ton of hills for HS we will have the worst production in the world, especially without GotS
interesting re festivals - i have always thought of open sky as the stronger of the two since pastures are great early-game tiles while plantations are pretty bad. and with open sky we could finish AH, buy the sheep tile at city 2, and then no longer need to worry about a monument, whereas plantations are a bit down the road. we also likely have 5 pastures (assuming 2 horse) to 4 plantations, though some of these sheep are currently earmarked for districts and would be a bit awkward to preserve
one thing seems clear though - the amenities sitch will be bad, bad, bad in this game and we need SOME kind of plan for it. ideally not a plan that can be measured in galleys foregone in an early war with thrawn, as giving up GotS can be. but we have way more food with FtW than Russia had AND seemingly only 2/3 the effective lux supply with no duplicates to trade, so if Russia ran into bad amenities problems in the midgame, Japan's are shaping up to be catastrophic
i think i am still planning max faith until we get the pantheon in case GotS is still on the table, though. we are giving up urban planning hammers but 3/8 of them (at the capital) would be lost to overflow anyways as 8hpt and 9hpt produce a galley in the same number of turns, and there's no quick way to get up to 11h (with 8hpt admittedly requiring one PFH turn to 4t a galley, hence 3/8 instead of 1/2)
My logic is basically that every city except 4 has a first ring plantation tile that we will want to hook up ASAP for luxuries anyway, while only city 4 has a pasture in range. There's a decent chance of a first ring horse at 2, but all the other spaces are second ring. And one of those plantations will go on a 3-1 banana tile, although you're not wrong that the dyes and cotton are pretty meh tiles while the incense is just bad.
Confession time - in the earlier discussion about the yokozuna promotion criteria, I elided an important detail. It is true that two tournament wins, or a very narrowly-defined “equivalent performance”, is necessary for promotion to sumo’s highest rank - but it is not sufficient. There is also a second, subjective requirement - a yokozuna must display what is known as hinkaku, a word usually translated as something between “dignity” and “grace”. A yokozuna must always act in accordance with a sense of honor commensurate with the sport’s history as a military training method for samurai, both inside the ring and outside of it, and in return they are granted the privilege, unique in the sumo hierarchy, of immunity from demotion - for performance reasons. But when a tabloid reported Asashoryu’s physical assault of a restaurant employee, he was forced out of sumo due not to his recent records - he had won two of the past three tournaments - but to a lack of hinkaku. Asashoryu had acted dishonorably, according to the members of the Yokozuna Deliberation Council and the sumo establishment at large, and sumo is all about honor.
Oh, and there is one other hurdle a would-be yokozuna must clear - their consecutive tournament wins must both be earned at the second-highest rank of ozeki. An ozeki is in many ways sort of a mini-yokozuna - where the rank of yokozuna is most typically translated as “grand champion”, an ozeki is simply a “champion”. To become an ozeki, a wrestler at sumo’s third-highest rank of sekiwake must display a level of consistent performance analogous to, though less complete than, the sustained dominance expected of a yokozuna. Typically, a sekiwake must earn 33 wins over a three-tournament period to be guaranteed promotion, averaging 11 wins per basho in a sport where a 12-3 record can sometimes be a first-place score. These wins need not all come at sekiwake, but typically at least the final two tournaments of a campaign for ozeki take place in the so-called “named ranks” of sekiwake and the next rung down, komusubi. In borderline cases, sumo elders like to see an upward trend in a wrestler’s performance during the promotion run, and a tournament victory doesn’t hurt, either.
In exchange for meeting these requirements, an ozeki is extended a less-generous version of a yokozuna’s immunity from demotion. To drop from an ozeki back to a sekiwake, a wrestler must post consecutive losing records of 7-8 or worse. After one losing tournament, the ozeki is referred to as kadoban, and if a kadobanozeki cannot attain a winning score, they are demoted to sekiwake on a provisional basis. At this point, they can regain the ozeki rank with a strong winning score in the following tournament, but the threshold required is higher, with 10 wins needed instead of 8.
After more than five years as an ozeki, and just a year removed from a thrilling tournament win that had sparked yokozuna speculation, Kotoshogiku faced such a predicament in March of 2017. Knee and foot injuries had forced a withdrawal after a 1-5 start the previous July - which is treated in the sumo world as a 1-14 final record - and he had narrowly escaped demotion with 9 wins that September. And then…in the next tournament, he went 5-10, and just like that faced kadoban status for the second time in less than a year. In January, he beat the tournament winner, ozeki Kisenosato, who would be promoted after his victory - but with just 4 other wins, Kotoshogiku would be sekiwake in March for the first time in 32 basho. He would need a 10-5 record or better to regain his rank.
Hakuho was out with an injury, a good omen for a rikishi who would win just 7 of 63 career matches with the yokozuna. But in this tournament, for the first time in decades, Hakuho was just one of four active yokozuna after Kisenosato’s promotion. Since a yokozuna is traditionally matched with one of the lowest-ranked members of the named ranks on a basho’s opening day, Kotoshigku (in blue, on the right) faced a daunting date with yokozuna Harumafuji:
…and won in classic Kotoshogiku style, leveraging a strong left-hand inside grip to shuffle Harumafuji across the ring, little by little, until the yokozuna’s footwork failed, yielding an emphatic force-out!
On day 4, 2-1 Kotoshogiku faced his second yokozuna, the undefeated Kakuryu, in a match that is difficult to find footage of in a form compatible with RB video embedding:
Kotoshogiku was clearly performing at an ozeki level, and finished the first half of the basho 6-2, needing just 4 wins from 7 remaining bouts for repromotion. But a ninth-day loss to Kisenosato, the third and final yokozuna, broke his momentum, and he started dropping matches to lower-ranked opponents. Entering day 14, he was 8-5, with the 10 wins necessary for repromotion requiring perfection over the final weekend. His opponent, in a match so famous that its English-language commentary is actually available on YouTube: ozeki Terunofuji, who at 12-1 was tied with Kisenosato for the tournament lead.
Utter heartbreak and devastation. With that split-second defeat, Kotoshogiku’s fate was sealed - he would finish 9-6, just one win shy of repromotion. Worse, after failing once to regain the ozeki rank, the promotion criteria for a fallen champion are reset. In March, 10 wins at sekiwake would have sufficed, but starting in May, Kotoshogiku faced the stringent default criteria of 33 wins over 3 tournaments like anyone else, as if he’d never held his exalted former rank at all.
So in a sport that’s all about honor, how does a former champion react to the shame of such a fall from grace? Well, it depends on the rikishi. Ozeki Goeido fought back from kadoban status no less than eight different times, often digging deep down into his soul while clearly injured to scrape by with a bare-minimum 8-7 record. When he finally dropped in January 2020, the world found out why - he had privately vowed that the day he lost ozeki would be the day he retired, and had leveraged that fear of oblivion to stay motivated through his long years of struggle. Other ozeki fight on in the top makuuchi division, enduring the shame of demotion in exchange for a salary and the long-shot dream of earning repromotion the hard way. Actually achieving that is all-but-unheard of, though, with only Kaiketsu in the 1970s having ever done so. Kotoshogiku’s case was more typical - he bounced around the middle of top division for a few years as age and injury slowly accumulated, and finally retired in 2020 after falling to the second-highest juryo division. That degree of shame, it seems, was just too overpowering for him to withstand.
All in all, though, Kotoshogiku is remembered not for his period of decline but as a successful ozeki with powerful grappling techniques and a fearsome initial charge. He still got his name on the stone - not the yokozuna stone, of course, but a smaller stone reserved for ozeki that sits in the corner of the same monument in Tokyo. Sumo turned out well for Kotoshogiku, and he is currently well on his way to a second career as a sumo coach. In the grand scheme of such things, Kotoshogiku’s is a success story.
But this is not his story.
Ozeki TERUNOFUJI
According to the ancient traditions of sumo, a bout is supposed to begin in accordance with a specific prescribed pattern. After purifying the ring with salt and drinking a ladleful of ceremonial power-water, the opposing wrestlers warm up facing the crowd, taking care to not meet one another’s eyes until just before the confrontation. Then, at the referee or gyoji’s instruction, they about-face, assume a squat, and spend a few long seconds sizing each other up in an intense staredown. At last, one wrestler slowly lowers his fists to the clay - often the lower-ranked competitor, in a show of deference. When his opponent follows suit - hakkeyoi! - the match begins with a shout from the gyoji and an initial charge, or tachiai, at which both wrestlers crash head-on into each other and begin shoving and grappling for an advantage, and will continue until one or the other is forced to the ground or out of the ring entirely.
The match between Kotoshogiku and Terunofuji, uh, did not follow this pattern. First there was a matta, or false start, when Terunofuji charged his opponent before Kotoshogiku’s knuckles touched the ground. Not exactly what you’re supposed to do, but it’s typically viewed as overexcitement about the initial charge, not as some kind of trick - to be too eager to meet one’s foe head-on is not dishonorable per se, and matta are not uncommon. But…what Terunofuji displayed here was not overenthusiasm, but cunning. This matta was a bluff, and when the actual charge came - Terunofuji jumped to the side as Kotoshogiku barrelled forward, and slammed the shocked wrestler to the ground almost immediately.
This is called a henka, and outside of specific contexts it is considered highly dishonorable. A smaller, lower ranked wrestler may sometimes resort to such tricks to upset a favored opponent, and be met with little more than murmurings from the crowd. But it is far, far beneath the dignity of an ozeki or yokozuna. The 6-foot-4, 400-pound superstar Terunofuji did not need to leverage his agility to beat the declining Kotoshogiku. And he did so as a tournament leader on a yokozuna run, and in circumstances such that this specific loss was decisive in solidifying his onetime fellow ozeki’s permanent demotion. That is not hinkaku. That is a heel turn.
In this one, split-second bout, Terunofuji went from a promising fan-favorite to the universally-recognized archvillain of the sumo world.
The day after his infamous henka, 13-1 Terunofuji faced 12-2 Kisenosato, who had just two days earlier suffered the shoulder injury that would ultimately end his career, and had dropped his last two bouts as a result. A win for Terunofuji would claim the title outright; a win for Kisenosato would force a winner-take-all playoff match with the championship on the line.
In what might seem apt given the deep religious roots of sumo, cosmic justice came swiftly for Terunofuji. In retrospect, that moment two days earlier after his last “clean” win, with Terunofuji exulting in front of the crowd with an 11-1 record and yokozuna Kakuryu defeated at his feet, was one of the great high-water marks in the history of the sport. His promotion run died right here, with this playoff loss - in the next basho, his 12-3 record was good for just second place behind a resurgent Hakuho, and two runner-up finishes is never enough to merit serious yokozuna consideration. And then it got worse. Much, much worse.
With six divisions of rikishi, a limited ceiling for promotion even from a perfect tournament, and a Swiss-like matchmaking system in the lower divisions that pushes most wrestlers towards a 50% winrate, spectacular rises through the ranks are rare in sumo. Hakuho took four years to even sniff the top makuuchi division, and consistent mid-tier performers there often have a full seven or eight years of lower-division experience behind them. The recent rise of Hoshoryu, nephew of Asashoryu, to sumo’s upper echelon in only two years is considered exceedingly fast. Clawing your way to a winning record over and over, with ambitious opponents plotting to exploit your weaknesses every step of the way, just takes time.
But…because withdrawals from tournament matches are treated as losses by the rankings committee, a fall through the ranks can be meteoric. After May 2017, Terunofuji underwent surgery on his knees, and had only partially recovered in time for the next tournament, where he went 1-4 before dropping out. Now Terunofuji was kadoban, but his next tournament was no better, and he dropped from ozeki with just two wins in two basho. In December, he needed 10 wins to regain his rank…and earned zero in five days before another withdrawal, this time with an ominous meniscus tear. With no ozeki rank to shield him, this was treated as an 0-15 record, and he plummeted halfway through the top division.
By mid-2018, Terunofuji’s comeuppance for his half-second of dishonor had far exceeded any threshold that might be considered karmically retributive. Suffering from not just knee injuries but kidney stones and diabetes, he fell to the second juryo division after effectively going 2-58 over his last four top-division tournaments. In May, he lost all eight of his matches in the second division before withdrawing yet again.
Faced with the prospect of becoming the first ozeki in history to be demoted below the second division, Terunofuji, just one year removed from two runner-up performances at the very pinnacle of his sport, formally requested that his stablemaster grant him permission to retire.
Things have happened. Working on EE next, I think (contrary to what this screenie indicates) because a) we are certain to boost it with the capture of Geneva instead of merely likely and b) TAD's doing it next too and likely needs the boost due to their capital's slow growth. I stuck to AH after a ton of debate between it and Pottery-Irrigation, as revealing a horse will boost Terunofuji regardless of if it's at Hakuho or Teru (in the former case, Teru will take over Hakuho's PJH as Hakuho swaps to horse). Warrior is ready to promote and will clear the camp when I feel like it (eg, when my paranoid fear of a scout pillage subsides). I decide to stick to God King as stupid amenities misallocation means Teru is unhappy this turn, which in turn means dropping GK will lose us two turns on the pantheon instead of one, and I'm way too scared to do that
In today's daily dose of troubling news abroad...
The following players founded cities:
- TheArchduke
- ljubljana
- Woden
- Krill
- Chevalier
Banzai has a tech, their second. A bit weird that it's so late since they seemingly opened with Sailing? But perhaps they were torn between multiple options and have beakers in both...
and the big news - thrawn gains 7 era score, which can mean only one thing...
here's hoping I don't run into longships on the doorstep of Geneva
btw, thrawn's been on just one tech done for aaaages... i'm guessing they just opened sailing - shipbuilding to get ocean movement for their longships asap
A galley will beat a quad if it gets the first strike, but if any other barbs swing by the galley is dead. That quad also won't take return damage attacking a city, but it's attacks will be five damage weaker which helps somewhat. It's probably worth taking a chance settling the city, but it is a gamble. Ugh.
yeah, we are going to have to make very careful use of the terrain here. the galley can't safely engage the quad in the open as you said, but there are a number of one-tile chokes the quad could wander onto where we will have better odds.
at least the barbs are just moving randomly and not coordinating their attacks. if a human controlled the barbs we'd just be dead here lmao. just gotta get this under control before anyone else shows up, without losing a city, and without compromising our growth curve by, eg, foregoing the geneva attack. what could be less complicated than that
if the quad and the galley do attack at once and with optimal play from the barbs i think we are dead though... they would put the city on roughly a 3-turn clock and TAD's galley can't kill the quad fast enough to save it i think. we'd have to bank on the galley distracting fire from the quad, and surviving the battle, and no third barb unit showing up :|
i dunno, i said it was ok to found the city last turn but i'm starting to rethink that, maybe we shouldn't have risked it with two barb ships nearby. this is a really scary situation and i can't wait for it to be over...
Lots of era score changes abroad this turn. Interesting stuff.
My first thought was to wonder if Woden/Banzailizard met Thrawn/Krill this turn? Neither of Woden/Banzailizard (Team Europe?) could have had a boat before this turn for lack of era score jumps, while Thrawn/Krill (Team Friendship?) couldn't because they've been dead last in military for a long time. That does rule out most avenues for a meeting, but Thrawn got 7 era score, Woden 3, and Krill/Banzailizard one each. Barring continents being extremely close together (doubtful) or a suzerained city state taking a very early galley very far afield (also improbable) I don't see how that could have happened.
It is noteworthy that Woden/Banzailizard dropped from 2nd to 4th in the religious victory ranking, with all other civs except us (and our boost in faith income from the new city) holding steady. That strongly suggests a pantheon pickup, which would explain Banzailizard's one point of era score. Without goodie huts turned on, those are few and far between this early.
Now, how did Krill get one point of era score? A pantheon is a possibility here too, likely accelerated by faith from a barb camp. They could have kept the top ranking in religion by beating all of us in faith per turn thanks to city state meetings and maybe faith tiles of their own. I'm much less confident in this one though.
Either Woden's three or Thrawn's seven surely contains the +3 ES from the first boat. Probably that's Thrawn, with Woden scoring a barb camp kill? The alternative is Thrawn picking up a +1 somewhere, which seems hard to place. Could they really both have scored a pantheon without a religious ranking drop?
![[Image: 9Isk4HCDIeCZlRD2M5y1qFgqAulyK3eGO9p5OTBp...NZB0WNJfxg]](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/9Isk4HCDIeCZlRD2M5y1qFgqAulyK3eGO9p5OTBpMfxqqoDxuC7RN14mfijEmD7YOHbe2D9YtDfXSubOzx2HRFNvkEMPrextj1SyHD85zejin_Jko6D1OvtVw28GW9iB9WJlGb8jRrx9DHL5uOE0e1FNH3YYLEqD21kK0QrLsRIh8-KvNZB0WNJfxg)
