[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

yeah, i think you're right. it hurts me down deep in my soul but if i'm considering chopping TAD's settlers so we can start boats sooner (an appallingly bad use of a chop that doesn't even pay for the two builder charges needed to chop + mine) i'd better be willing to make comparable sacrifices myself

and yeah, we are in maritime industries, and no doubt will never leave it for the whole rest of the game....

[ljubljana]

ohhhh man i sure love opening saves.....

and get no anxiety whatsoever from doing so...........

i have about 90 minutes tops to play both turns today so let's hope nothing important happens

[ljubljana]

i have about 90 minutes tops to play both turns today so let's hope nothing important happens

man, why do i even say stuff like this?? you'd think i'd have learned my lesson by now

Turn 42 - Portugal + Japan

Well, I found Norway...



That's as unambiguous as it gets short of a direct contact. Norway/Sumeria are our neighbors, and since their other neighbor is CMF/Incurian, we can probably assume Woden/Banzai are roughly to our west. I decide not to scout around too much with TAD's galley, as we'd better delay contact with them until we take Hong Kong, at least, or they will interfere with the conquest, at which I imagine they'd have a fair chance of success. Our attack here starts in 2 turns - let us cross our fingers and hope that is fast enough...



With the Norwegian revelation, I think I will queue up another round of galleys in TAD's cities before starting the settlers - sorry in advance, TAD TAD's capital is working on the settler only because of overflow issues - at 9hpt we will waste hammers if I start a 4t galley this turn, but next turn it grows to size 3 and can then do a 3-turn galley working 11hpt. I also emphatically swap TAD to mining research, since if Norway comes around the corner, Portugal is going to want to at least have the tech for chopping in case we have to chop or die.

You can also see that a barb quad has either spawned or moved up from the fog and attacked my warrior, in conjunction with the camp spear. The positioning is extremely awkward, and with perfect movement there is no guaranteed way to save TAD's trader....unless I sacrifice my warrior to take out the camp this turn. Is throwing away a 27 hammer unit better or worse than taking a chance of losing a 47 hammer unit? I think long and hard about it...



I decide to save the warrior. Look how the trader moved 1E between TAD's turn and my turn - the quad will have to act with unnatural intelligence to actually kill it. If it moves onto the trader's current position, it will die horribly - TAD's new galley will get a first strike from the east, and the trader should move between turns right onto the same tile and therefore to safety. The quad has to move to the tile 1W of the galley to actually kill the trader, which is a sufficiently intelligent move that I am willing to gamble on the barbs being too stupid to make it, especially because with Norway close by, my settlers will really need a warrior escort to avoid being sniped from the sea by a longship... Even if the quad does move optimally, the galley will get a first hit in, and I could bait it with both the galley and the redlined warrior and hope it goes for one of those instead. But TAD, if this move kills your trader, I am so, so sorry

With Norway to our east, and therefore not on the doorstep of Asanoyama after all, I strongly consider leaving Teru on the shrine. But...no, I think I'd better get the galley anyways, since now that we know Norway is our neighbor, the need for more ships generally has been intensified. It should take 5 turns, not the 6 shown here, since Teru is at 6.3 hpt and will jump to 7 when we hook up the gems in 2t. But I am not sure if that amenity boost will register before production happens on the turn we hook it up or not....it shouldn't matter as 6.3 * 3 + 7 * 2 = 32.9 which is JUST enough to finish in 5t, but I'm a little paranoid about this kind of thing so maybe I'll do it anyways.

In the best case, this new galley can scout west for Woden/Banzai and contribute to the increasingly desperate era score situation. And in the worst case, it is one more Crusade ship to throw at Norway. We could buy a missionary in Hakuho's new shrine in 9 turns, just in time to escort it with this galley. It's impossible to overemphasize just how destructive that would be to our snowball, costing us a full settler in Monumentality...but if it has to be done to save MoM and Hong Kong, then so be it. On the bright side, such an early missionary should be able to convert all three of TAD's cities by itself, which would then let us get the rest of their cities with natural spreads alone, if we are careful. That is presumably still not worth the cost of a full city in all but the most desperate of Norwegian situations, but since there is a fair chance we are in such a situation, maybe I will do it anyways. TAD could even then build exactly one holy site and shrine somewhere themselves and start using their trade route faith to buy some Crusade missionaries while I dump my faith into Monumentality - plus, since Feed the World is a follower belief, like Work Ethic, it should apply in TAD's shrine city as well.

Also, it looks like there does exist a plan that, at least theoretically, will still allow us to get the campus and holy site ES, following your idea to do the campus in Hakuho - we could put the campus 2W-1NW of Hakuho, on the tile currently earmarked for city 4's campus. This is a pretty nasty option that would cost us 150 gold with Hakuho 19 turns away from the next border pop, but at least it's an option, and it's better than missing Monumentality, of course. And the cost to our midgame adjacencies is really not too bad - the GP would just go 3NW of Teru, where it actually boosts 3 campi instead of 2 as currently pinned, and city 5's holy site would get bumped 1W, which costs us a hill at that city but regains it at Hakuho. I'd rather do the GP if we have the era score headroom to get Victor up ASAP, but I'll try my best to not rule out swapping to this plan if it looks like we're going to need it. I switched research (again) to Writing, due in 6, to at least give us the option to lock in the campus cost.

At least with Norway almost right on top of us in the northeast, we should be guaranteed at least ONE contact before the end of the age, which should guarantee Monumentality with the campus (2 contact + 3 HS + 3 campus + 1 PP + 2 Oligarchy + 3 camp = exactly 14).

Foreign policy update today is highly significant once again - incurian has a third city! What's more, it looks like a big one - did they capture a city-state?? If so, I must be way off about that team's ship numbers, which is a very encouraging sign. That also means I was off about Woden's numbers too, since they are ahead of Chev/inc in dom rankings Speaking of Woden, they were first to a fifth civic this turn, presumably putting Gallic mines to good use and now having fully recovered from their lack of a monument opening. They will not have a huge window of Oligarchy access before thrawn gets there, but if they make good use of what they do have, perhaps they can do some damage...

note to self: I have to test how ships behave when they are kicked out of a CS's borders after a DoW. Depending on the answer, it may cost us a turn on the VC attack, unless we are willing to be greedy and DoW before our ships are all in place, potentially attracting intervention from their galley...

[ljubljana]

ok, so let's think about the next major ship production breakpoint - what would we need to get 2t victor galleys in Hakuho? that benchmark is hugely sugnificant for optimizing victor as he can always promote a galley every 3t by jumping around, but having a city that can make galleys in 2t multiplies his impact by 3/2. Hakuho is at 11 hpt now and needs 17 to two-turn a galley - we can do that at size 5 with Urban Planning slotted and two builder charges for the stone quarry and plains hill mine. We can get there around turn 60, I'd expect - not exactly thrawn speed but better late than never i will therefore advocate for a high-impact builder in the near future to make this happen. that also means we reeeeeally really really want the GP up by the era change but if monumentality is on the line there's only so much we can do to make that happen unless we are willing to go completely off the deep end and stick the GP in Asanoyama (!). that means no ancestral hall for a long long (long long long) time but in monumentality that doesn't pay for itself anyways until after the third free builder. and delaying the AH opens up an utterly insane Audience Chamber play which could actually be worth enough anenities in the midgame to potentially outvalue the AH with our setup...

the next benchmark is 1t galleys/2t quads, which both hit around 30hpt, but that's not happening for about one billion years until we hit apprenticeship/construction. those are strong medium-term tech goals but not at the expense of our cartography rush, i would imagine.

[ljubljana]

The utterly certifiable Asanoyama GP plan would look more or less like this: the discounted GP is a 37 hammer build, which Asa can do more or less whenever it wants, perhaps before finishing this galley/monument to get Victor up ASAP while freeing up Hakuho to start 3t galley builds as soon as this settler completes. Then at some point it must spend 6t finishing the second half of the monument to work up to the plains hill. Then, at let's say 8ish hpt starting at let's say t60, it will spend one billion turns (editor's note: approximately 19 turns) grinding its way up to the second-tier government building, which will take forever but which does free up Hakuho for endless 2t Victor galleys, while also finishing right about when we need it for culture pingala, while ALSO dropping a holy site for the GP in an eight-Feitoria city

long-term adjacencies will suffer but it's not as bad as you'd think, actually - we are trading a boost on 2 campuses + 2 holy sites for 1 campus + 2 harbors, a bad trade but not an unduly destructive one. it would be reeeeally important with this plan to stick the first trader in Asa, but that's not an awful place for it anyways since it is far from the housing cap. and finally we would have a mighty need to get the campus up there ASAP for recorded history and to add science to TAD's traders, which i suppose translates to swapping back to monument either now or very soon and then having the build order basically be monument - GP - campus - tier 2 government building - harbor.

opening up the GP to norway pillaging is horrifying, but we are already going to need to defend this city heavily to protect TAD's traders. and it would be a big snowball setback compared to dropping the GP right next to two holy sites for an immediate +4 faith/turn. but on the whole it seems not insane, right? and it is the only plan i can think of that combines victor ASAP with the era score from the Hakuho campus...

[ljubljana]

tactical considerations re VC: what happens if you DoW on a city state with a partially-moved unit inside its borders? here is what happens:



highlighted longship is at 3/4 movement, and as a control group, the right longship is at 0/4 and the left longship is at 4/4. after DoWing we have:



longships all teleported to the nearest accessible square, no movement points consumed. this saves us a turn on the VC attack as follows:



it is not so easy to see from this screenie, but here is the plan: next turn, advance all three galleys 3 spaces, so the injured one is SE of the city center. then, on t44, move the injured galley 1W and THEN declare war. hopefully, that galley will get teleported 1W again for free, then can use its 2 remaining movement to attack the city from the west. this is the only plan i can think of that gets all three galleys attacking the city center right then on t44 without risking an early wardec, so i think we'd better go with it even despite the risk that i have messed up on some of my assumptions here and will actually condemn us to some kind of tactical catastrophe in doing so...

note to self: actually do the asanoyama monument math tomorrow. i have a bad feeling the PP calcs will be closer than we think and asa may need to swap back to monument even if we're not putting the GP there...

[ljubljana]

ok, fine, i'll do a rough calc right now. let's say we start PP from scratch on t47, the turn SW completes. it costs 110 * 1.2 * 3/5 = 79.2 clefs with the boost, a 16-turn research at our current rate. to get that down to a 13-turn research, we need to save ~12 clefs over the next 18 turns so the cost after savings is 67.6 clefs or less. so if we are getting those savings with just asanoyama's monument, it has to complete on, sigh, no later than turn 54, and that is if we're fine with having ZERO wiggle room on the culture numbers. with a 10t eta as of now, yeah, we do have to swap back really soon if we don't want to be dependent on a VC conquest to pull off PP :|

perhaps with norway to TAD's northeast and a galley coming out of teru that is feasible, especially since it opens up the asa GP plan in case we need Hakuho's campus for era score. but that does't mean i have to like it :|

[williams482]

I definitely don't love putting the GP in Asa, the added vulnerability and less useful adjacencies are significant downsides. Unfortunately it does sound like it's worth consideration.

[ljubljana]

yeah, thankfully we don't have to decide for another 5 turns or so. maybe, um, exactly woden and chev will roll exactly one galley by us in that time and then we'll know we don't need the campus era score? i do think GP @ Asa is sadly better than GP at Teru, that will just take way too long to get Victor online and he is the overriding reason to build the GP this early in the first place...

as far as the extra vulnerability goes, well, if someone can get ships next to Asa in the midgame and pillage the 8 Feitoria there i guess we're pretty dead regardless of if they also pillage the GP... at least the GP vs holy site consideration for TAD's TRs is, i think, pretty reasonable - if TAD sends 8 TRs to Asa that is 8 * 3 * 1.5 = 36 marginal gold per turn, which i'd say is worth a bit more than two beakers from boosting one extra campus. except...something like harbor/campus/theater/IZ would do pretty much the same thing and 1.5 * 8 = 12 hammers from the IZ probably does beat 36 gold...

we definitely want to stick with the Hakuho GP plan if we can get away with it IMO, the fast and significant boost to our faith income pre-monumentality is hard to ignore. not to mention all these hakuho campus plans seem to run through buying a third-ring tile at a pricey 100g that i promised TAD they could use on a trader. but i wonder how confident we are going to have to be about hitting Monumentality to commit to that, which we have to do in, um, 5 turns by my count, on the, um, one turn hakuho will spend at size 4 between now and t57 :|

[ljubljana]

horrible fact #2 - weeee mighttttt need a builder in hakuho after the settler to chop the stupid +3 holy site, or in teru after the boat (before the shrine! ) to hook up the dyes. at 6 hpt the HS costs 46 hammers, which at first glance we just barely have time for (settler pops t49, founds t52) except....not if amenities break the wrong way at the third city which would leave us barely short.

this would be fixed as long as we don't grow teru, is what i would say if we weren't about to possibly acquire another amenity-devouring city

well, ok, we actually can afford 3 turns with the third city unhappy, so if we get the builder out t53 i guess we can fix it with a cotton plantation and not need to chop? and then that can be the builder that hits the stone and mines to hit Hakuho's big breakpoint?

but anyways, any plan where we are forced into a builder after this settler in Hakuho will be what's known as "not fun" and will make that asa GP look much better by comparison :|