[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

^^ yesyes this seems correct i think i'll default to that for now, while keeping an eye out for any signs that chev is going all-in (eg chopped HS, project that completes BEFORE it would finish off the prophet). i am cautiously optimistic that the best move for their team, with no ships between them as of yet and a Phoenicia still on one city, is to decide that racing against what are now effectively Lavras is a lost cause and start desperately building an anti-thrawn defense force. i mean, best estimates are that thrawn has two longships out already and will be up to four in just one or two turns - if 4 longships show up on chev's doorstep while they are chasing religion they are just dead, right? if switching to ships IS the best move, chev is too good a player to tunnel-vision onto religion like that...

Sad that we never got to see a REAL work ethic race before it got banned iirc everyone who got it did so without any real drama

i do see a post from chev this morning with NO accompanying turn played, which is unusual for them in a game where they are mostly communicating w inc over discord

that says to me that they feel the path forward here is non-obvious and we should assign a non-negligible probability to either move from them. it also says that the optimal thread management strat is to post so excessively that no one can read anything from your activity level

[williams482]

It would seem the two of us have that particular tactic nailed down.

[ljubljana]

thrawn has been gaining on us lately though which makes me a little nervous... maybe we'd better take the pantheon that makes each of our forum posts count as two forum posts

[TheArchduke]

Well, I am really more busy in October then expected.

Right now I can chat strategy per Steam and do my turns but lengthy posts is really another matter.

I hope you are not disappointed.

[ljubljana]

I hope you are not disappointed.

omg, no, not at all!! i love having you as a teammate and am rly excited to crack some skulls w you in a couple dozen turns :D

i hope my spamming the thread is not creating more work for you  i can summarize stuff in the thread over steam if that helps

doing the turn now btw. i'm about to lose my top spot on turn times to woden again  but since that represents my brain getting over its latest insomnia episode by actually sleeping at midnight last night i can't be too upset abt it

[ljubljana]

Turn 28 - Japan



Having not much else to do this turn, I redid the Feitoria pinmaps on the channel islands. The central island has 7 Feitoria spots, by my reckoning, while the northern one has 7 visible spots, with potential for one or two more in the fog. But the two are mutually exclusive as a big cluster of spots are between the two cities and can only be held by one city at a time. I imagine we will want 2 Feitoria cities in total, so TAD's 8 free TRs and lighthouse TRs from the 8-ish cities they will have at Cartography can all go to a Feitoria city. Right now, Geneva + one of the island spots are looking like our best bets, if we can defend them...

At Terunofuji, we have an extremely awkward micro problem that I'd welcome feedback or suggestions on:



30/65 hammers in the galley means it will finish on t32 if I work the 4.5 hammer configuration for four turns (30 + 4 * 4.5 * 2 = 67/65). But if I trade even ONE hammer for a food by working the PJH, we will come up just short due to amenities (30 + 4.5 * 3 * 2 + 3.4 * 2 = 64.8/65 ). So the city MUST work the PFH for all four turns to finish on t32.

But the holy site math is awkward too... 68 hammers required if I lock it in next turn, and we will get 29 * 2 = 58 of those from the chop. That means after one turn of Teru's production, we will be at 67/68 hammers I can't add an extra hammer by overflowing from the galley, so unless there is some kind of micro solution we are looking at a 1t delay on either the Geneva attack or the second HS completion.

I can think of two ways around this. One is an early fish chop (next turn), which will definitely get us there but has long-term consequences (although not prohibitive ones as Teru has no real issues with food supply). The other is to revolt into Urban Planning somehow in the next 5 turns. I can't finish any civic unboosted in 5t....but what I could possibly do is finish the galley before the HS, get prior damage with my existing galley on Geneva's city center by DoWing before the attack is ready, then taking the city ON t33 with the second galley's extra attack to boost something to completion, revolt mid-turn, and pick up one extra hammer to push the HS over the line on t33. Risky with Vikings about (of course), but this plan does have the added advantage of getting Embolon on my first galley, and perhaps it can be pulled off fast enough that the risk of someone finding us in time is minimal.

There are other problems though. Right now I am working on EE research:



20.3/70, with 42 needed to finish with the boost. In 5t, we will have (20.3 + 3.8 * 5) = 39.3, one turn short. Also, I am not sure if Geneva will lose one or two pop on capture - if it's two, we won't have 6 pop for the boost anwyays

Or, I could do it by swapping to Craftsmanship and finishing that. Here's how that looks:



10.8/40, with 24 needed with the boost. If I swap next turn, I will have (10.8 + 3.8 * 4) = 26/24, just over the line. But this is problematic too because TAD is working on EE right now and NEEDS the boost from me, with no way to get EE finished in a reasonable timeframe otherwise. I guess the question turns on how quickly I can get the EE boost myself - if it will take 5t or so after I conquer Geneva anyways, it's not a big deal to finish Craftsmanship first, but if not, I don't want to cost TAD 5t on the pair of Colonization settlers they have planned.

Of course, the fish chop would fix all these problems in the short-term. I could finish the HS with one turn of Teru's production, which means I can chop it to completion on turn 32 as Mining comes in. The extra pop point means I am guaranteed to boost EE by capturing Geneva, so I don't have to swap to Craftsmanship and can get TAD the boost ASAP, and it even gives me the extra penny I need to finish EE a turn early. But losing 2f + 2g from the fish tile could be consequential long-term, and it does not pay for itself by opening up another Feitoria spot...though it DOES give Teru an easy +5 harbor, +6 with a district 1W of the city center, which is indeed stronger than the other spots available...

Abroad: no signs of desperation from CMF this turn. What I do see are a lot of pop growths - for thrawn, krill, woden, and incurian. I am a bit concerned that my slowing Teru's growth to get the ships + HS out faster will punt me awkwardly down the growth curve...FtW would fix this if we can get it, but if we settle for CM Teru will be size 2 and housing-capped into the late-t40s. Ouch...

Even though Krill has no boats built yet, we are still second in milpower with TAD's second galley completed. So it is as we feared, with at least 3 longships out already and thrawn spamming them at their best possible rate... On the other hand, at least Krill has no boats out yet - if they were really going for a super-early player conquest, I'd guess they'd both be all-in by now instead of just thrawn. That's cold comfort though seeing as maxed-out longship spam can beat down an entire team's navy by itself with good tactics... I'd imagine the approach in which thrawn a) conquers 4-5 CS ASAP and b) razes everyone else's CS conquests would lead to a quick victory as well...

[ljubljana]

ok, so it looks like you need CelNav for fish chops anyways so that plan, foolish though it was, is also impossible :| back to the drawing board ig

thinking about it more i am a little skeptical of the fast geneva UP swap plan too. our first galley can attack the city on t31, with galley 2 1t from completion in Teru. then we get one more attack on t32 as Teru's galley completes and moves in range, then the double-attack on t33 is supposed to finish the city off and boost a civic to completion for UP. however...i don't think 4 attacks over 3 turns is enough to take the city, especially if the warrior stays inside (it has been alternating between 19 and 24 defense strength for a while now) - in testing 4 attacks can sometimes work over 2 turns, but the 3rd turn tends to necessitate a fifth attack. messy, messy.

if that's the case, our options appear to be

1) chop HS on t32, finish galley t34, hit geneva t35-t36. this does at least have the advantage of syncing the Teru galley and the Hakuho galley such that they arrive at the city on the same turn, for added security in case of thrawn. but the 2t delay has a troublingly high likelihood of translating to Geneva not finishing its HS on time for the free religion spread
2) finish galley t32, chop HS t34, hit geneva t33-t34. 2t of HS delay = 4 lost GPP, a big deal in a race situation. but can we make up for that by finishing Geneva's HS pre-religion? let's stipulate that we buy and mine the plains hill at Geneva and start the HS immediately NW of the city. base cost is 39 hammers, and in UP minus amenities we are making 5.4 HPT for an 8-turn build, not accounting for loyalty. with a t45 religion with no further acceleration, the answer is...maybe? but if we do a project in Hakuho that drops to t42ish and the answer becomes probably not...

faster Geneva attack seems cleanly better UNLESS chev is taking this race seriously. but there is a good chance we will not know if that's true until it's already too late :| if chev is even considering pursuing the race, i'd guess the fast HS is better to discourage them from doing so. they will only get ~26 GPP from completing projects in both cities, so if they can't get to ~30 GPP before we finish the religion (which should be the case if we beat them to the second holy site) we may even be able to escape running a project in Hakuho...

[ljubljana]

next question: what are some plausible worst-case estimates for when thrawn might show up at Geneva? last game, the sea distance between me and TAD, my closest neighbor, was 27 tiles = 9t for a longship. i am betting distances between players are a bit longer here because teammates have capitals 6 tiles apart, but Geneva is not exactly right at my capital either. so if those two effects roughly cancel each other out, thrawn got their first longship t23, and could be here by t32 D:

one longship shouldn't be enough to stop a 3-galley attack as we can block its attack vector with a galley NE-NW of the city center. but a second one could show up around t35 and that would mean trouble. that is exactly when we would be attacking Geneva in the HS-first plan so those two turns might very well be the difference between "it is not possible for our neighbor to intervene" and "it is unlikely but possible for our neighbor to intervene if we get unlucky". and sadly, unlike in PBEM20, it will be pretty easy for them to locate geneva as they will know my island contains a player as soon as they sight it (from the ring of plains tiles on the perimeter), and will correctly assume they can find our CS just be following the coastline...

i do not THINK thrawn will take the most direct route to messing with us, though. i'd imagine it's optimal for them to kill their nearby CS, and likely krill's as well, before seriously attempting to hit the other players. best guess is they are 5 turns ahead of me on an otherwise identical attack plan on their CS (3 from the HS, one each from norway's 3t longships compared to my 4t galleys), which would mean they are getting their second longship into position now, and we can expect it to fall in the next turn or two. hopefully that will set the alarm bells ringing in the other capitals, if they aren't already... it is deeply concerning to me that we are apparently the ONLY other team with even one boat out yet, if i am reading the era score correctly... if we secure all four of our home CS but each other team gets 2 sniped by thrawn, that is good for our team but bad for the world as a whole's chances of stopping a longship-spamming thrawn with 8 cities in the ancient era...

if we are lucky, maybe taking a fast CS will have some amount of a deterrent effect re the vikings... they are reading the ES too, and know that not only are we the only opponent with boats, but we both have at least one. if i take a CS, that will probably be read as showing that i have at least three boats out, and for all they know TAD may have more than one as well. perhaps if thrawn is using feature names to long-range fog-gaze for the presence of opposing teams (as is their habit), they will see a japanese or portuguese ocean name, realize we have at least four boats and nobody else has any, and turn in the other direction... well, i can dream at least, can't i

btw, thrawn's capital will hit 2t longships once it has 13 hammers/turn - impossible at size 2 but easy at size 3 with a plains hill plant, working PFH + 2x GFH, and with a TR and Urban Planning. the second city needs 7 hpt to 4-turn them, which i'd guess we can expect as soon as it grows to size 2. so i'd expect that in the next 5t they will take a CS and grow both cities, and will be pumping roughly 1 longship/turn, with ocean movement due soon from a sailing-shipbuilding open. if that's the case, the other teams had better get their butts in gear - if thrawn shows up with 700 milpower on turn 60 while we have 400ish combined and everyone else is chilling on PBEM20 numbers, they will just eat ALL the CS and grow to 16 cities in the classical era, and that's definitely GG

[ljubljana]

now that i think about it, i am really concerned about krill's activities too. WTF are they building? they have no districts, no monuments, no boats judging by ES, and if they have a builder they haven't even made a ziggurat... they have JUST two cities, likely one size 3 and one size 2, making SOMEthing that hasn't shown up in the scores yet....and all i can think of is war carts for an amphibious landing behind thrawn's longships. or perhaps builders that are sitting around waiting for military tradition and the policy card + magnus to come in so they can chop war carts.

they have two techs researched so they didn't go sailing-shipbuilding like thrawn did at least. but that could just mean they don't want to waste hammers on galleys and are letting thrawn boost it for them, in which case sailing-mining-shipbuilding makes sense so they can chop and mine stuff while they wait on militrad. the only thing they've done suboptimally is no early monument as far as i can tell - they could be AT militrad by now but don't even have craftsmanship. but maybe they calc-ed it all out and the builder plan yields more war carts by invasion time. if they have 6 woods chops at their first two cities like i do that is not implausible...

edit: actually their ES bump at t26 reads more like a 6-turn monument build than pop 3 in the capital, so hopefully they are not all-in on warcarts, at least not yet

[ljubljana]

read of the other teams:

chevalier went monument - settler - holy site and just got their second tech and civic, which seems like foreign trade + sailing. i am hoping they realize the danger and are now making boats instead of doubling down on religion. incurian went unit - monument - settler and as a result is now substantially behind, with at least a 6t delay on their second city. they do have the only size 3 capital but no boats yet, which is a little peculiar since if they had started after the settler they would have one by now. maybe they went builder first for the celnav eureka and are NOW working on their first biremes. or at least, i hope that's what they did...

woden, i think, has two size two cities and opened warrior-settler judging by their fast CoL time. whatever they have done since, it hasn't shown up on the scoreboard - best guess is one or even two builders to work 4 mines for the culture. so sailing first, then mining, and probably bronze working next - their culture and production will explode shortly but right now they are a bit vulnerable. hopefully they are doing boats now and not monuments to lock in their culture advantage. banzai i think went sailing - astrology, but curiously they have no ships yet either, probably because they did a CelNav builder first like incurian. i really can't think of anything else compelling for them to be doing (why start a third city settler when you're <10t from early empire?) so i would bet that they too are on their first boats now.

all in all, we are the best prepared for thrawn/krill as of now but we had better watch carefully for signs of that slipping away. hopefully we can contact other teams soon so we can get a more precise read on the situation. in particular i could reeeally get us in trouble in the short term by putting 2 cities on FtW shrines and running a project in Hakuho if everyone else spends those hammers on 5 galleys... teru will be free for galleys post-religion at least, but maybe we'd better 3-turn a couple in Hakuho too pre-third city settler

having given up on a culture pantheon, i'm now pretty undecided on Pingala skip. Pingala is the standard for a reason and would accelerate us towards a really fast PoliPhil (= fast oligarchy = fast militrad for support bonuses), especially with a FtW shrine growing our capital substantially larger than everyone else's. but in the meantime we will lose out on quite a few galley promotions - 30ish turns worth of no Victor = perhaps 10 galleys that don't get Embolon! and theology is pretty mandatory for us after militrad so it could be some time before he is up and running unfortunately we do not have much time before we need to commit as EE research is coming in like 10 turns - we really want to know if thrawn is our neighbor before deciding but that now seems unlikely. oh and, tech-wise, you'd better believe I'm going pottery - irrigation - writing and then following TAD to Cartography as fast as my doubled +5 campuses will allow

we also really need to find or at least identify our neighbors in the next 10t or so so we can figure out whether crusade or DotF is the more relevant anti-thrawn pick...