[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

Thrawn's seven is, I think, almost certainly 3 from first boat + 4 from longship. This is the turn we'd expect it to pop if they started the turn they finished the settler, which was probably 3t ago like us, and it's hard for me to imagine them making anything else at the capital after that, so I have to imagine that's most likely.

But that rules out contact between two teams, as there's no way for that to happen without thrawn taking an ES point (I think?). The religious ranking drop could be a pantheon for Banzai, but I'm not really sure how they could have done that so fast as they only got CoL on turn 13... They would need to have finished a quest for a religious CS on turn 8 to pop a pantheon this turn, which is possible but seems unlikely. Also, if they have been closing in on a pantheon these last few turns, I have a hard time explaining how they were only second behind thrawn/krill in religious ranking instead of first outright, especially since thrawn/krill did NOT drop this turn....

Best guess for Woden/Banzai's ES is that it relates to Woden adding the natural wonder back in this round, as mentioned in the tech thread. I guess the game just gave their team the usual 3/1 pattern for discovering one, despite all the strange behavior it's been displaying otherwise...

Where does Krill's +1 come from? I dunno... it had better not be a pantheon :/ They did found a city this turn, so I'm guessing it was on a flood plain, near a volcano, or within 5 tiles of thrawn's capital (which the game counts as an "aggressive settlement", lmao), each of which would give 1 ES.

Honestly, I'm really confused about why our religious ranking went up, anyways. We went from fourth to second, jumping ahead of Woden/Banzai and Chev/Inc, but we only earned 2 faith this turn, so if religious ranking is determined primarily by amount of faith banked, I'm not sure how that's possible as Chev's faith income MUST be at least 2 themselves and they can't have spent any since they have a pantheon already. So it presumably relates instead to my faith income spiking by 2.9 from the dyes + holy site...but surely our team's faith income is now first in the world, so if that's the primary determiner it doesn't make sense that we're still BEHIND thrawn/krill. idk man...

i wonder if thrawn's plan is to pillage their way to the second pantheon via a city-state? that'd be neat, but probably one turn or so too slow to catch Japan due to travel time. hopefully one turn too slow, anyways

also, lest anyone worry, i will not be conceding or giving up mentally even if barbs really do eat our banana city there is no civ in this game whose unique bonus is LESS dependent on civ size than portugal's - all they need is 8 traders and to eventually make it to 5 Naus for feitorias and they'll be pretty much online economically. it'd be a dire situation for sure and one that should immediately get the vultures circling, but if we are somehow NOT attacked in the first 100 turns, perhaps because thrawn ignites a dogpile from the other teams, i think we would still have winning chances.

[williams482]

I think they met a religious city state a while back, if the non-first-meet civ completed a quest (or krill is working a faith tile, like us) that's four faith per turn for the team and should top the religious ranks.

You're almost certainly right about the natural wonder situation, and floodplain/volcano does seem a more likely explanation for krill too.

[ljubljana]

do we get first-meet envoys in a team game, though? i don't think our team has been getting them - i only have one for Geneva because their quest was the Astro eureka, and neither of us has one with Moga...

the krill thing is probably cope on my end as i'm really committed to this cutesy fast pantheon move hahaha. but on the other hand, if they got faith from a barb camp clear, it would be 20 faith, which is the only eligible amount that would not immediately give them a pantheon. they finished CoL on turn 16, and what we assume to be their barb camp clear was on turn 18, so if they got 20 faith from that their pantheon would come on t21, not t23, and envoys + faith tiles would only accelerate them further. so i thiiiink i can't see a plausible way for the timings to make sense, thank goodness.

hm, i have a feeling i'm more invested in this pantheon race than it really deserves, tbh  my second-choice pantheon is River Goddess for goodness' sake, why am i compromising our geneva attack timing just to accelerate it? GotS is really strong and seems like the obvious pick for anyone who is not culture-hungry indonesia or sitting on all the camp luxes, but maybe i have committed a few too many resources towards making a push for it...

*ps thread title will go back in a couple days, it's just a lil teaser for the other teams to chew on *

edit: also i'm really having fun microing hakuho's PFH and PJH back and forth in this game switched to the PFH again this turn for a ninth hammer, then will run 3 turns on PJH to finish the boat. once we get the pantheon i think i'll swap teru onto the PJH on hak's PFH turns to pick up some extra pennies in food. almost feels like a civ3 start out here

also also: builder is rising in my mind as a potential alternative buy to monument at teru if we have a first-ring horse. it is cheaper, will get the city growing again faster, and will let us start the holy site right after the boat, which we do probably want to make sure the religion comes on time. and, on second thought, we don't want it just by turn 61 but by as quickly as we can reasonably get it so we can threaten DotF or whatever if thrawn comes calling, so most likely we want HS in teru after the boat and in geneva as the first build (maybe after a monument repair). only issue will be grabbing a fourth tile for the housing to hit size 4 but we'll figure something out.

builder is just 200g so with the camp clear, we can probably get there on the same turn as the pantheon pops and waste literally zero time stagnating at size 2 for lack of housing

[williams482]

Wait, New Frontier Pass doesn't have first meet envoys? The hell? I though they just reduced the reward for a single envoy from two yield to one.

Buying a builder is interesting. It's definitely the stronger foodhammer play, but it doesn't give culture and won't accelerate Political Philosophy much at all. On the other hand it does accelerate the subsequent monument (which I assume we would hard build after the Holy Site in that scenario) and it saves some gold for the next purchase. Assuming the first ring horse, I can get behind that.

[ljubljana]

i think the first-meet envoy thing might be a quirk of team games rather than nfp? idk, this game changes so much it's hard to keep track of

re builder yeah, my thoughts exactly. after the hs we probably want to hard-build monument if we buy builder and hard-build builder if we buy monument. the main issue is teru is already a problem child due to housing and will stagnate at size 2 until we get the builder out, and even with a lot of PFH turns it will grow way before holy site + hard-built builder. it's one thing to kinda slow-roll growth to size 3 working something like grass horse pasture + pfh, but i think it's another to sit around not growing at all and wasting fractional food due to housing :|

after the first monument we probably need a SECOND builder to hit size 4 btw, and after THAT it might already be time to chop the campus... we need the sheep tile for both of these so i do think one build is about as far as we can delay the monument. a 10t-ish monument delay does cost us 3ish turns to PP, but with a monument repair likely coming at geneva we should be in time for the era change......though if we are in time for the vikings is another question :/

[MJW (ya that one)]

How did you damage your screen like that???

[ljubljana]

like an IDIOT, i used my backpack as a cushion when sitting on some wet grass with my laptop inside :|

i'm so stupid and totally deserve this LMAO

[ljubljana]

Turn 24 - Japan

this setup is awkward but salvageable. mostly staring up at the big screen just hurts my neck a little bit lol



NO BARBS attacking TAD's second city (yet) is the huge news, so we get the trader up and running. not sure if the galley should prioritize standing on the trader tile or running forward to the tile NW of the city to cut of a possible barb double-attack. also, looks like the scout for TAD's camp is about to activate - if it does so next turn, we should probably chase it by going east around the lake to try to cut it off, otherwise we will never catch is.

quiet turn internationally too - only developments are a second civic from Woden (which i presume is FT but no way to know for sure at this point?) and incurian has a settler out. none of the late founders rectified that this turn and i'm a bit concerned thrawn did something weird with the opening again instead of making a settler like a sensible person

[williams482]

like an IDIOT, i used my backpack as a cushion when sitting on some wet grass with my laptop inside :|

i'm so stupid and totally deserve this LMAO

Oh, okay. That's much better than going ham on it after booting up the turn and discovering three barb galleys attacking TADs city.

[ljubljana]

lol that is totally something i can see barbs making me do though :|

btw can we talk about wtf is going on with amenities here? teru is sitting at -1, unhappy, and hakuho is at +1, and after two turns they are still refusing to reallocate for some reason?? ugh