[PB75 Spoiler] Ginger and Civac's Outside Context Problem

[Tarkeel]

It does, but you need vision on the tile, and even then can big out. Remember Blow Boys and the hunt for Sankore from PB66?

Well, that was inconclusive or was it not?

It was conclusive in the end, but I found this screenshot of what it looked like at first:


Note how the two mines have smoke coming up; those are the only tiles it shows being worked. When I logged back in later that turn (without Mjmd playing inbetween) it showed all tiles as being worked, so it was just a visual bug.

I realize I haven't talked about our naming theme: we're doing the default list of Ottoman city names, and changing them all to their Greek translation 

You actually did mention that briefly somewhere, and I like it.

[Ginger*]

What about your hunt for Spiral Minaret? 

[Tarkeel]

What about your hunt for Spiral Minaret? 

For some strange reason we never had to hunt for the buildsite for that one :P

[Ginger*]

OB with Dreylin raises us to top GNP, a very comfortable 27gpt (and we just whipped 5 pop last turn)
Ljubljana whipped a library before granary in that Kirishima border city, which is really annoying. The horcher meter is rising, currently at 60%.
Two players have Masonry which is bodes ill. It's also about 15 turns for us to get Math. This is gonna be tight.

[Ginger*]

   


Math comes in 11-12 turns which means we're likely looking at a turn 83 or 84 Pyramids completion date, not great but not terrible. Also a minimal expenditure of resources if we miss as production is all backloaded in the last three turns of chopping

[civac2]

We got Mathematics on turn 79 already which we leveraged into an attempt to chop out the pyramids. Three forests and some overflow added up to 200 hammers into the pyramids on turn 79. But on turn 80 Mjmd completed the wonder elsewhere. From how I understand the mechanics, we were lucky and got our turn processed before Mjmd and so all those hammers converted to gold. This enabled us to get Currency prior to the second wonder attempt, The Hanging Gardens.

The timing lined up perfectly. Currency came in t88 exactly when the failgold ran out. Then we settled 4 filler cities (plus 2 more in previous turns) and chopped the last forest for HG. With 26 additional gpt from trade routes we are at +40gpt with full commerce configuration so lack of pyramid failgold would have delayed Currency massively. Still, in the medium term Representation would have been stronger. And Police State. I love Police State.

The northern filler cities:



Ginger still has to greekify (greek(?)) them. Notice the many forests you don't see around Constantinople. Konya's purpose is to secure the marble, and delineate the border to the Zulus maybe. Giantzep is a good production city with dry wheat, plains sheep and copper. Edirne picks up the cow. These 3 cities are likely get some lumber mills to remain useful throughout the game. Bursa and Samsun are cottage filler.

Southern filler city:



There was some space so we stuffed a city into it. Can share the clam and work some windmills. Also has jungled gems.

Outtakes:





Corners were cut.

[pindicator]

Well done!

[Ginger*]

Secret to civ pitboss is to have a really good partner win the game for you 
Top effective GNP, incredible tech lead, and best CY but its difficult to scry for a solution that can win us the game here. The map is simply a little too big for a convenient Elecat rollover or Horcher blitz. 
Civac wants to builder up with OR, Forges, Courts, Markets, etc. I feel like that's solid and safe but maybe too slow for our traits (unless we want to bet on Charismatic Knights).
I'm torn between trying to preserve the relative snowball with first to's or a military attack
In fact, I'll make another post summarizing all the various ideas floating between me and Civac on discord, because we are truly aimless atm. We can afford to be so for another few turns as build orders are pretty standard and we save gold.

The chief problem I have is that this just sticks out like a sore thumb:
   
This is as much commerce as our (currently un-bureau-ed) bureau cap, and a future shrine site to boot.
As much as the vast distances scream that a Construction attack won't work, Dreylin has a gold saving rate of 18gpt (take away his two gem mines and that's 8gpt). It is low slider, he's currently 2 turning Sailing so I'd guess his revenue is ~60gpt and his expenses are ~40. I do not want to let him get away with developing this land. 

If I were to pan the camera lower it becomes clear that Dreylin shares the east coast of the Pangaea with us, and his territory stretches long distances. If we wanted to make a good attack we would need Greenline to jump in or content ourselves with just shifting the border forward to steal the dyes. I'm currently brainstorming ways to efficiently perform a small injury
Our other neighbor Ljubljana is doing pretty well, strong expansion and respectable 26-28 gpt savings rate, and has expressed intent in going after GT. Considering GT is an easier target than us I'm inclined to believe him.


   
In our northern core we need more improvements, turns out our growth is just too good. So another 2 workers will be whipped (civac I'll welcome your protest), bringing us to a nearly 1:1 worker city ratio. That isn't great micro, mack/TBS/plemo could've done it better, but I'm only human. Two of the new cities whipped their HG nest egg into granaries, another 2 get it chopped, and the last 2 grow so slowly that they slowbuild it before stealing food from developed cities.

[Ginger*]

In the end civac won me over and we are teching MC for forges. If the engineers abroad were not floating around we likely would’ve gone for the Mausoleum. The Aesthetics line was simply too expensive. We’d have to build Great Library in a different city than the natural NE spot. And Paya/Parth are strong but just too expensive without industrious.

That left Catapults as the last contender, but Civac pointed out that forges move about as quickly

This also lets us get an engineer of our own, to be prospectively pointed at either Machinery, AP, Taj, or Sankore. More broadly our tech path is going to be focused on getting into Bureau and serfdom. Although skipping CS for guilds is a possibility if our neighbors look unstable.

[Ginger*]

Ljub lost the confu race, Dreylin starts on math with 30gpt.

I set a couple wealth builds in cities where a forge doesn't make much sense rn, and hired merchants in Prusa, giving us 66gpt savings at 390 saved. We need 500gold to make Machinery in 6 turns. Windmills are our next major goal as we set up all our cities for a serfdom swap in 20 turns. (Might do caste first at the start of the GA so ~25 turns)

The alternative was Aesth-Literature, but we would stunt our growth in a lot of outlying cities without windmills.
This is tricky because to play with our coming Engineer and tech advantage, we would want to tech something else. But I don't want to leave our workers idling and cities stunted on mines.