[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

@aetryn i think you have convinced me to at least send our western and eastern scouts along specifically the coast to look for neighbors, as otherwise it may be some time before we have trade connections w these north coast nerds. remind me, do international TRs do literally nothing for PRO civs unless they are intercontinental? even if not sailing coooould still be worth it before calendar but probably only if they have lux to trade (which seems unlikely this early)

also re rivers: in order to defog a route to their capital, do i also have to defog the tiles in their border along the route, up to an including the capital city center? that could be a tough ask so i kinda assume it isn't that but could be wishful thinking

[williams482]

The PRO bonus is +100%, maximum peaceful foreign trade bonus is +150% (+3% per turn of peace). The base value of trade routes is based on city population and distance apart, bigger being better for both. So a trade route with a distant capital after 50 turns of peace will likely outperform the internal route it supplants, even for a protective civ.

[aetryn]

The PRO bonus is +100%, maximum peaceful foreign trade bonus is +150% (+3% per turn of peace). The base value of trade routes is based on city population and distance apart, bigger being better for both. So a trade route with a distant capital after 50 turns of peace will likely outperform the internal route it supplants, even for a protective civ.

Yeah, the best case for PRO seems to be Pangea + islands, where your own island cities will outperform international domestic routes (and you can't expect to fill all your trade route slots with foreign island cities because international routes can't reuse destination cities, but domestic routes CAN). So far this looks like a Pangea without islands, so theoretically after 34 turns of peace a foreign route will outperform a domestic one with PRO. Obviously we won't have that with Ginger anytime soon, but by the time we have Writing we should be in that territory with GT. The base value difference (i.e. distance/size-of-destination city modifiers) only matters when cities are over size 10, which nobody will have for quite a while. And practically speaking, until the base level goes to at least 1.4 because trade routes round down and can't be decimal, PRO will give exactly the same results. So basically, PRO will be equal for a while but eventually big cities will be better internationally.

I believe you need to be able to see a connecting square to one of their cities that is connected to the capital. i.e. as long as you can trace a valid trade route to a square that is in the internal trade network of the target civ, you can trade with them. So if we can reach a river in his culture that he has connected to his capital (either because he has sailing, the entire river is in his culture, or he has a city on the river connected by road to his capital), we should be connected. Or if we reach a coastal tile in his culture that is connected to a coastal city, or via rivers he can trade on, etc. It generally shouldn't be challenging, basically.

[ljubljana]

ok, so i guess for us what that means in terms of early-game snowball is we want to skip sailing if we can, because we DON'T have to research it on the way to our next econ breakpoint and don't benefit enormously from lighthouses.

btw guys, i'm starting to take monarchy more seriously than currency as the next big econ target. this should be a great setup for HR, with excessive amounts of worker labor to cottage the river valleys, AGG for halved garrison cost, a strong unit to spam in impis, and an otherwise sort of tight and inconvenient happy situation.... the one big missing ingredient was food supply but i think our core cities at least are strong enough to evade that. and we should get there much faster than currency and with a GS in tow to make the swap. thoughtsfeelings?

oh and misc question: should i be able to see a little monument graphic by squinting and zooming in on the city center once ginger builds one? i forget which generation that started in

[aetryn]

ok, so i guess for us what that means in terms of early-game snowball is we want to skip sailing if we can, because we DON'T have to research it on the way to our next econ breakpoint and don't benefit enormously from lighthouses.

btw guys, i'm starting to take monarchy more seriously than currency as the next big econ target. this should be a great setup for HR, with excessive amounts of worker labor to cottage the river valleys, AGG for halved garrison cost, a strong unit to spam in impis, and an otherwise sort of tight and inconvenient happy situation.... the one big missing ingredient was food supply but i think our core cities at least are strong enough to evade that. and we should get there much faster than currency and with a GS in tow to make the swap. thoughtsfeelings?

oh and misc question: should i be able to see a little monument graphic by squinting and zooming in on the city center once ginger builds one? i forget which generation that started in

How are you planning to get into Heredity Rule or Serfdom? Eat another turn of Anarchy? Generally most people will try to avoid that, but one more turn of anarchy isn't that unheard of (though for most people it's swapping to a self-founded religion). How are you planning to get back to Slavery if you get attacked and need to whip? More anarchy? Civ 4 civics aren't like Civ 6 where you get lots of opportunities to swap things in and out. Unless you're SPI, you generally want to stay in the same civics between every Golden Age unless it's a dire emergency. You can afford a couple swaps early, but you should plan on your choices being long-term here. This is one thing I prefer in Civ 6, even if I might like it to be just a little less gamy with avoiding completing research to time the swaps properly, or even somewhere in between in terms of difficulty, in Civ 4 it's just too costly to switch civics much. Civ 6 just lets you experience more of the game space in a single run.

If you have vision on the city center you can see buildings there, even if it's in the fog, as long as you've seen the city center at least once after the city was founded.

[ljubljana]

we'd do writing first, whip a library in one of these high-food cities (likely Kirishima for the culture), and spawn a GS to swap to HR (and possibly finish off the research) with a very early golden age. re serfdom um, i think i'm just going to ignore it for now in favor of riverside cottages - pre-CS i think we won't reeeeally have the number of farms needed for serfdom to outperform cottage eco...

[ljubljana]

Turn 49 - Zululand

today's first move will err on the side of being the least stressful



so.... no bonus food down here we missed from scouting. our side of these mountains is looking ROUGH from a border city perspective, we don't have much chance of grabbing the sheep without being Unnecessarily Aggressive i think, and if we do ginger probably tries to take it with a settle 3 tiles away. i may try anyways though as the defensive terrain is amazing (obviously, with no way to bypass the city center tile lmao) and, well, zulu reasons. between there and kirishima, on the horse looks decent to at least get the lake tiles as almost-food (can you still build a lighthouse if the only water tiles in range of your city are lakes?) not sure what priority level either of these spots should have relative to the northern fish and southern gold though as they're pretty poor cities and will piss off the ottomans more



in the west, we can see the beginnings of a road suddenly appear through the wilderness as a Plan Comes Together

and ok, no more avoiding it:



Ginger's chop completes at the end of next turn - they have 7 turns left to get the axe/spear pair in here that they'd really like to have. they should barely be able to grow working the sheep and whip the spear, so they need 35 hammers from somewhere else if they want an axe as well.... chop + city center tile looks to be BARELY enough if they chop into a unit, so hopefully they will do that and we have a chance to beat them to the monument here. or they could go for the monument, in anticipation of which i am very undecided about if we should whip ours next turn to go for the 50/50 on getting our culture in the second-ring tiles. if we can't do that things are kinda bleak, we can't even see inside the city and will be never be able to feel secure about there not being a huge stack just out of sight :| but of course it sets the city back badly and forces it off the cow for a full and very painful 3 turns. thoughts/feelings? (bolded for spottability within the mountain of text)

i have to admit though, the snowball hit they are taking from settling on copper AND chopping before the pasture AND giving up food to the east is looking pretty hideous. maybe we actually will end up having accomplished something with our zulu lunacy (ljunacy) (zulunacy)

also, while playing this part of the turn we got an interesting little message at the bottom of the screen as you can see.... AWKWARDDDD

or



maybe not so awkward, and a chance to indicate through cordiality that i at least don't hate ginger as a human being. i feel VERY weird that pitboss allows for this kind of thing (in contrast to PBEMs which are truly no-communication) and moreso that it's actually the norm to chitchat like this - even if we are talking about nothing it still seems to violate the spirit of AI diplomacy, and has some chance of accidentally leaking information, or worse, of influencing more psychologically-motivated (read: rage-motivated) players to hate us less as people and therefore want to kill us less badly. but equally i don't want to go out of my way to NOT do it and be a dick to people, especially in conjunction with the objectively dickish actions i've been taking towards the ottoman team in-game

and as i post this there is another turn already. i guess i have to think about this monument thing but i will play as soon as i am able and also definitely tonight

[aetryn]

I figure Ankyra will get road connected to the rest of the Ottoman Empire soonish, and some other city will supply the second unit. They could have a warrior prebuilding that will convert to an axe when the road network completes, and can then use the road network to reach the city on time. Maybe the scout can show that's not possible, but without evidence I'd assume Ginger has a plan to keep the plant or he wouldn't have made it, especially with the extra threatening message you sent.

Re: immediate need for a monument - I doubt the long-term outcome of the culture war between these two cities over two middling tiles is both consequential enough and actually likely to be decided by who is first to a monument to be worth stunting the growth curve. Someone will build a library (we will, for sure, in time, with this many river tiles), or a temple, or one of the other many buildings that produce culture, and the fate of these tiles thus will not rest on who builds a monument first. The value of the tiles is primarily in staging a one-turn attack with 2-movers - as production tiles, neither is great - but that's not likely until at least horse archers and we're a while out from those. I'd still build the monument, and build it fairly soon, but I don't think I'd whip off bonus tiles for it. Being able to see into the city would be nice, but it's not strictly necessary for good relations. If we have Open Borders with Ginger, we can cycle a scout around in his territory that will tend to spot military build up, and fish-for-fish and equivalent trades will signal good will. We can also analyze the geostrategic position to get a sense of who else Ginger can attack and how likely he is to be on the warpath against us soon. Basically, no need to panic here. We want culture in this city, sure, but we'll be better placed to defend if the city is stronger sooner and can contribute more to the empire than possessing those 2 tiles for, I don't know, an extra 20-30 turns when we're trying to get in position to signal peaceful intentions anyway.

Re: early golden age for Monarchy. Sure, this is possible. But since each Golden Age gets progressively harder to make (need more Great Persons of non-identical type and each Great Person gets more expensive to produce), you probably only get 2-3 in the game. Maybe 4 if you build Taj Mahal. Using one to switch ONLY to Monarchy and not, say, also a religious civic, or Vassalage/Bueraucracy has an opportunity cost. It's fairly normal to use some of the GA turns to run specialists to generate Great People for the next GA (since GPP are doubled during a GA) - would we be prepared to do this or are we pushing the second GA out even farther?  I'm certainly no expert on Golden Age timing, and it COULD be right given the light happiness available on this map so far. But it certainly feels earlier than normal. I'd at least try to plan to get into one of Vassalage or Organized Religion by the END of the Golden Age (you can switch at the beginning and the end of the GA for free, so you can swap into Monarchy at the beginning, discover a tech that enables a new civic, and swap into the new civic on the way out of the Golden Age). I still think, especially with PRO, Currency is the normal play here. If we were SPI, Monarchy suddenly makes a ton of sense because we can freely swap into commerce-farm Serfdom, and only swap to Slavery when we need it (and obviously swap to HR at will).

[ljubljana]

Ok, cool, I will chill on the monument despite my urgings lol. i think we still want it to be the first thing we complete here to get that city defense bonus online ASAP (maybe monument -> ikhanda -> 2 or 3 CG2 archers to wave in front of Ginger as a peace offering?) but i guess i can wait to chop it, and we can potentially change our mind depending on whether or not ginger is indeed chopping into the monument there.

re GA: well, orgrel is on the way to monarchy so we could do that too, yes? and that gives us some chance at the monotheism religion too which would be a strong pickup. i will sim out both when we are closer to decision point (after pottery is decision point i think) and then we can figure this out. there are STILL no religions in the world yet which is another thing that somewhat counsels in its favor

[ljubljana]

turn 50!!!!!!



there is a full-on MOAT between greenline and whoever is to their west, in the second most important piece of water-related news this turn. here's the first



ohhhh fuck. they are looking REALLY boxed in all of a sudden. is this bad enough that they're going to think the only way for them to compete in this game is to absolutely go ham with an all-in rush against us? i mean, we can stack quite a few CG2 archers in that city if they try it, which get odds on axes, but perhaps they could cut off our food supply and wear us down through superior hammer trades from uh actually having copper hooked up. they can see our demos this turn which could go a few ways, including 1. ok great zulus are a paper tiger we don't need to panic and 2. ok great zulus are a paper tiger we have a chance to eat them. yeesh.

two pieces of compensatory information as well though. one is the zero roads between the now-presumptive capital and copper city - unless the worker delays the sheep pasture at the new city (possible but eeeew) i do not think there's time (6 turns) for them to build roads all the way to the copper city, whip a unit in the capital, and get there in time. they could maybe whip a /chariot/ but i think the only copper units we can expect to face in 6t will come from the new city.

and here is the one to watch actively



ginger capital is size 5 - what do they do with it? if it grows to size 6 and then disappears, we can breathe some sort of sigh of relief at the presumptive settler whip.... otherwise they're whipping units at an enormous hit to the growth curve which would come close to mandating an all-in play yes?

we are 3 turns from ginger demos at which point we'll know more. but if they do plan a dedicated rush in 6t we may be past the point at which that could meaningfully alter our defensive strategy.

starting to wonder if we should regret not going for the kill with the all-in chariot/impi rush. there is still SOME kind of chance to pivot to chariot spam at least but we'd have to act fast

edit: in my sudden pivot to panic i forgot:



the magnificent and very dumb trans-zululand non-railroad, with settler ready to found next turn and chariot 1t behind it. and yeah, worker #6 on the way in the capital, a ton of chops just came online and we are not even close to having the level of worker labor needed to optimally exploit them

労働者五番の秘密仕事が完了

edit: ok, i forgot that in theory they could hook up copper with sailing tech. so more copper units out of the capital is possible but would require some pretty specific permutations

edit2: note to me - investigate safety turn into chariot in keisho next turn

edit3: at kirishima we will have 4 chops + 2 whips + a little natural production (maybe 30, some already invested), to play with at DoW time. that is about 170 hammers = monument + ikhanda + 3 archers and a chariot, roughly, and mitakeumi will probably contribite a chariot as well. surely that is enough to hold here right..... right?