[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[El Grillo]

I can neither confirm nor deny that my lurker thread comment has any connection with your posts today. Thank you for the thorough reporting!

[ljubljana]

hahaha well, quantity over quality i guess... "obsessive" might be a better word than "thorough"

if we do go for open sky, i am thinking along the following lines:

- buy builder in teru now, sheep tile as soon as we have the funds
- improve fish and sheep
- swap to mining and CHOP teru's holy site to gain at least SOME kind of acceleration over chev
- monument -> builder in teru afterwards to hit size 4 for the campus

thoughts/feedback/criticisms? inability to pave over that sheep will make us big sad long-term from the lost campus boosts but at least it does leave festivals on the table for TAD and is not weedy like divine spark times pingala skip likely would be

[ljubljana]

i mean, i could just NOT skip pingala, right? and go for a VERY early shrine in hakuho and drop pingala there to make up for the GotOS culture? with DS and a chopped HS in teru we would get a religion REALLY freaking fast, maybe fast enough for two shrines to be our get to size 4 plan?? actually i surprisingly don't hate that

[ljubljana]

ok, we are at 4 prophet points now. mining finishes in 5, at which time we can chop teru's HS to finish on t33, when we would have 16 prophet points. religion is then due on t44 so do shrine NEXT in teru after HS (begging TAD for gold to buy the monument as well), hak times the shrine to finish on the same turn (so after 2-3 more galleys most likely). then both cities have +5 food surplus and no housing problems with 15t to grow before the era change and even some bonus faith to funnel into monumentality?? actually that sounds really really snowbally and cool! just by getting the religion 15t earlier DS could kick us substantially up the growth curve in a way i hadn't considered before, and there is NO freaking way chev beats us with full-cost 1 prophet point holy sites (right?). and a t44 religion threatens a t44 DotF/crusade which might prod thrawn in a different direction....like towards an indonesia who is building full-cost holy sites INSTEAD of early ships and chev would basically have to finish the second HS this turn and start projects in both cities to beat us which i imagine is pretty unlikely with vikings on the loose

williams, if you don't stop me now i think i'm gonna go for it :D

oh and i think teru's holy site goes to its NE (with any plan) for +2 out the gate and, more importantly, to block mean mr thrawn from opportunistically turning our FtW off. our stretch goal of an otherwise-strong pinmap with zero coastal districts is actually looking quite viable as of now

[ljubljana]

Turn 27 - Japan

After hours of agonizing, I went for it - Divine Spark + chopped HS in Teru + two FtW shrines on turn 44 is now The Plan. Begged TAD for all their gold for the builder and swapped to mining, due in 5 (and you'd better believe I regret not doing this before AH now ). Next turn I will lock in the HS cost at 34 base hammers - after we get our fourth tech in Mining, the chop should yield 29 (williams, please tell me amenities don't affect chop yields...) for a 1-turn build. The other two charges are looking like the stone quarry and one of fish, plains hill mine, or HS chop at Geneva, depending on how I'm feeling.

Screenie post-pantheon, with accurate boat timings:



I admit the these logistics were bungled somewhat - Teru's galley open was slow enough that it's not really saving time on the "two galleys next to Geneva" breakpoint. But it IS getting us a third galley for the attack, which is not half bad either as it can salvage the situation if a longship appears at a bad time. Getting Geneva's HS up by turn 44 for the free spread is, admittedly, probably going to be a total nightmare  At time of conquest it is looking like a 39-hammer build, barely doable at 4 HPT...but the city will start at 50% loyalty and that could mess things up. We do really want the free spread if we can swing it though, saving 180 faith from a missionary is huge and we could threaten to put DotF in the city right there on t44 if thrawn is to our west. It might be worth looking into buying the plains hill if the city comes with a monument just so we have time to repair that first...

If we land FtW and a t44 shrine, Hakuho should easily hit size 4 before the settler finishes, so we can cross off that problem. Teru will be more of an issue - with 58 food needed it will take 12t to hit size 4 at +5 surplus, and even with the discount I doubt it will finish a whole campus in just 5t. Our most plausible answer is the capital's jungle chop, but that requires Bronze Working tech which otherwise does very little for us. Idk, I'll brood over it a little longer...

Hilariously, TAD found the active water camp...four tiles from my capital! That is utterly terrifying - according to my earlier research, I believe I was only spared from certain doom by the shape of the coastline:



Careful fog-gazing suggests that 3/4 unexplored tiles next to this camp are water. With 4 water tiles in the first ring, it spawned a galley scout - with even one more adjoining land tile, I believe a land scout would have spawned instead, and I would have faced a potential camp activation on turn TWO. Wow 

One of these days, I will figure out that it's better to look at the scores BEFORE I commit to my plays for the turn. But this is not that day

- TAD finishes Astrology, and, after being last to one tech, AH completion makes me first to three techs
- Chev gets a second tech, which HAS to be sailing this time, right?
- Inc does too, and is still on one city... but they must be starting CelNav next so I have no doubt they'll catch up in time. But hopefully this slow start means they will only be catching up instead of blowing everyone out of the water with settler spam.

Well, I did not expect the first agonizing multi-hour turn to be turn 27. But, at least for now, I'm more or less satisfied with this one

[williams482]

All right, I can buy FtW having enough of a snowball effect to justify using Divine Spark to secure it.

Chops are not affected by amenities so no problem there. Just be careful not to limit wasted overflow given the +100% modifier. Also, what tile are you chopping? The stone would be the best, except that's not possible until Masonry comes in.

[ljubljana]

I'm thinking the PFH 1E of the city center. I actually may keep the stone - it's a weak tile but turning it into even weaker grass represents a loss of 2hpt in the midgame, vs just 1 hpt from chopping a forest hill. Plus, yeah, we're gonna, like, NEED some walls and therefore the masonry eureka . I may go for masonry quite fast (like, right after mining fast) depending on, what else, the thrawn situation...

We should be good re overflow as the chop won't quite cover the full cost of the district. Luckily I think we will only be short by roughly one turn of Teru's production. We will have to decide whether to delay the galley one turn to complete the HS mid-turn on t32 though - not sure if GPP are processed before or after production but I think after...

More troublingly, I do think CMF could still beat us - they would have to start projects ASAP in both cities, but I think they could do it mathematically if we have no further acceleration. And while that seems a little self-destructive if thrawn is nearby, I don't really see CMF as the kind of player to meekly accept defeat in a religious race if they really have been planning around the RG/FtW synergy from turn 1. But I'm hopeful that we could close that out with a project in Hakuho if it seems likely. I'd like the capital's next builds to be galley-galley-shrine but if they have to be galley-shrine-project it's not the end of the world. Just as long as we don't forego the Geneva insurance galley...

[ljubljana]

As TAD would say, this warrants closer analysis...

Let's spot CMF a monster second city, like TAD's Master of the Mississippi (henceforth MOM) in the fog, with no amenities problems thanks to River Goddess. It was founded on t23, and let's say it immediately started an HS at 5 hpt (banana + plains hill + Urban Planning). At that point, CMF had 1 tech and 1 civic finished, so the base cost was 58 and they've put 25 hammers into it so far. Let's spot them a chop as well - right now they're at 2 techs and 2 civics, so the chop gives 25 more. At the end of next turn, it grows onto PFH and adds 5 hammers, and the following turn, t29, it would finish. CMF would have 4 GPP at this point and start making 2/turn.

Now let's assume that, starting this turn when they see I took Divine Spark, they do nothing but make district projects for the rest of forever until they land a religion. Right now, they cost 35 hammers and give 12 GPP. The first one finishes in the capital on t31, to take them to 16 GPP. Then on t34, they finish 2 projects, one in both cities, taking them to 16 + 24 + 6 = 46 points. They would get the religion with a fourth project in the capital, completing on t38 or so. So that's our rough worst-case benchmark for the fastest CMF could possibly get there (within reasonable assumptions), if they really go all out for FtW.

What would it take to beat that time? Let's say we finish the current builds, then chop the HS in the second city to completion on t33 - at that point we will have 16 GPP. With no further acceleration, religion comes on t44, significantly too slow. Our projects will be more expensive at 42 hammers since we'll be up to 4 techs by that point, and they will give 13 GPP. So Hakuho can finish the first one on t36 (growing partway through), at which point we will have 28 GPP, with the project taking us to 41. Another project in 3t from the capital (assuming 11 hpt and some overflow from project 1) will finish the religion on t39, too slow And Teru is not really going to be able to change this math, as it can't finish a project until around t39 anyways.

This means that, under pessimistic but not unreasonable assumptions, we do not control our fate with respect to religion if we finish the current builds. Even with Divine Spark and a chopped HS, Chevalier could still beat us, and fairly decisively at that.

Teru can't go faster than that, but what if we swap Hakuho's galley to a project this turn and chop out the HS at Teru a turn early, delaying the galley? The project would take 4t to finish and complete on t32, taking us from 14 -> 26 GPP. If Hakuho immediately starts a second, 4t project, it finishes on t36 to take us from 42 -> 55 GPP. If we can find a way to squeeze in an extra penny somewhere (most likely buying PFH and chopping the HS in Geneva), in the absolute best case we can finish on t37, just BARELY fast enough to beat our benchmark. Our assets at that point will be the warrior, 2 galleys, 2 holy sites, and half a shrine in Terunofuji - starting a shrine in Hakuho will see the core "activated" around Turn 44, the same as our time to the religion with no acceleration. In exchange for 7 turns of acceleration, we would sacrifice 2 galleys from Hakuho to the gods of Holy Site Prayers.

Is this viable? Well, 2 galleys is enough to take Geneva under absolutely perfect conditions - so no last-second galley spawn, no intervention from an enemy scouting unit, no anything at all going wrong. It also leaves us with just two galleys vs thrawn, although Chev would be in an even worse place with zero galleys (era score says they haven't finished one yet - I imagine they just started their first in the capital now). So it's still possible to achieve the dreamy maximally-Japan-leveraging early game of a CS conquest AND a religion in the first 40 turns, and it's unlikely Chev can stop us, but only if we are REALLY committed and swap Hakuho to projects immediately, gambling that a longship won't stumble upon our little Geneva attack and totally wreck our gameplan.

Okay, but obviously we REALLY don't want to have to run two projects if we can help it. Are there signals we can look for from Chevalier's camp to suggest that they're going to fight for it? The big one is the HS in their second city - I expect they started it immediately, and with no chop it will finish on around t34, indicative of a non-distorted gameplan. But with a chop they will likely finish in the next couple of turns, and that means they're coming for us with everything they have. If that happens, we'd better put Hakuho on projects immediately as there is no reason to execute on the chop unless they had done the math and knew they would beat our time if all we have is 2 HS (Chev probably has the same ~t32 estimate in their thread for Teru's HS, not including the chop but assuming we started immediately). Similarly, if Chev finishes an HS project in the capital (which I did not check for last turn, stupidly), they did the math and are going to beat us unless we do something. Worst case for us, they lull me into a false sense of security and then finish HS and a project on the same turn (say t31), at which point I'm not sure we'll have time to catch them without chopping projects. It could happen! Chev has two choices when they get the save - accept Choral Music (and they MUST know we're after FtW as Japan), or whole-ass it and go absolutely all-in to beat us. With the River Goddess pick, I think there's a real chance they go for it, the synergies might just be too compelling to let slip through their fingers... We have the luxury of not needing to whole-ass ourselves as Divine Spark Japan (and a third city on turn 34 is a really compelling reason not to!), but we would still need to make significant sacrifices to beat a whole-assed opponent.

One thing is for sure - I am NOT immediately spending those extra builder charges. I really hate to say this, but there is a nonzero chance we'll have to chop projects with them even with Divine Spark (is that even allowed?)

edit: I also THINK Chev doesn't have mining yet, as they just got a second tech this turn and I'd have to imagine it's Sailing as it took 11t to research and that's what I would do if I thought I was racing against a non-insane Japan and had a decent amount of cushion. In that case we do have a bit more time than this suggests, although not by much...

[ljubljana]

wait, 29 (chop) + 4.5 (teru hammers) < 34 (HS cost). can't fix it w overflow either as i MUST work the PFH all 5 turns to not slow down the galley. ugh. i could also chop the fish i guess??? that is SO wasteful but like

[williams482]

Chopping projects and sacrificing galley builds in order to beat a worst case, all-out effort from Chevalier seems like an extremely bad idea. Remember that Thrawn is still out there, with very powerful ships, a crazy synergistic teammate ability, and likely a game plan of wrecking everyone else's everything. Chevalier knows this too, and as much as he likes to emphasize "whole-assing" things, there is a limit to how much one should be willing to sacrifice towards an objective. We need those damn ships and so does he.

If we were racing for Work Ethic, that would be one thing. The gap between Work Ethic and the next best is gargantuan, which is why it's banned in the first place. But we're racing for Feed the World over Choral Music, both of which are pretty good, neither of which is truly game breaking. Feed the World is better, but if we come up short we will hardly be crippled. Unless we also burn up valuable chops and builder charges in the process.

My recommendation here is to plan on ONE project at Hakuho, timed such that on the turn it completes we can finish the job with faith. Commit the remaining resources to security, expansion, and infrastructure development as appropriate.