[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

yeah ok guys, if we REALLY push it and are supremely lucky in that it does not fall in the next 20 turns, some unbelievably degenerate shit is possible with the hanging gardens from this position

[aetryn]

Ginger didn't stop Espionage spending at 42/whatever is stable? That's ominous. Generally people go for everyone's graphs first unless they are either specifically paranoid about someone or gearing up to attack them.  Or they've run out of contacts to get graphs on if they underexplored or something. Who do we have graphs on and who are we working on now? We should consider putting EP back on Ginger to deny research visibility and make sure we keep graphs on them.

I agree with not reaching. Let the southern folks keep Greenline nice and busy and maybe sometime when he's stuck into a war and doesn't have a lot of troops on this border we can take it over then. We need to consolidate now. Garrisons everywhere, at least two Impi at all border cities to deter Horse Archers. Beeline to Currency and then we can think about what to do next. Choices after that are probably Monarchy, Code of Laws if there's still a religion there, Metal Casting if we can end up with silver from somewhere (or gems in trade, I suppose), Construction for safety and roads that don't suck near rivers.

It's highly likely someone had a HG play lined up with chops included, so we will be at a disadvantage in the chase with most of our forests gone. I think that was the right call though - wonder strategies are a bit finickier to get the timing right on and if you miss, you turned you forests into gold, but that's not always what you need since you can't buy production for 95% of the game. I think we were probably well served to use the forests to power expansion and forgo the fancy tricks.

[ljubljana]

yeah. i think geopolitically we are going to be in a dangerous situation soon.... both our neighbors are looking squeezed on land, and when that happens i imagine fighting your way out is really the only option, so they will both be heavily incentivized to reach out to the other about a 2v1 vs us. i do not know what kind of tech edge, if any, they would need to turn that 2v1 into a conquest.... ginger can probably beat us to catapults if they prioritize them, but i don't know if GT can. even though we took tokugawa specifically to have better odds in this situation, i am still not sure if we can survive a 2v1 in a competitive position if it actually does materialize... but i'm also not sure what we're supposed to have done to forestall it, NOT try to claim more than our fair share of land? do you find that in general the dogpile dynamic is prominent enough that someone who is in second or third place coming out of the landgrab phase is MORE likely to win than someone in first? if so, maybe i'm going about this all wrong and the right move is to deliberately NOT optimize for fastest snowball speed so people feel less compelled to attack us......

re EP we have graphs on all 4 of our neighbors. i am currently putting points in naufragar, as i think it's important to track their power to have some warning if they decide to attack GT (so we can pile on, ofc). but i am down to stop doing that and dump them back into Ginger if you think they might be, like, watching for us to delay construction so they can come kill us

on the other hand it might not be ominous that ginger is still spending on us, it might just be math.... we have 4 neighbors (or will when the dreylin/ginger border solidifies) but ginger in their corner start has just two, us and dreylin, aaaaand given our sociopathic picks and behavior it does make some sense that they'd try to get research visibility on us even if not planning an attack. of course, it should still shift our priors in favor of them planning an attack....

techs: if the CoL religion is gone i may just go for calendar after currency. i increasingly think we have a compelling setup to try for MoM - we have a filler city planting around that time with the magic 10 forests in its first two rings, a crapton of workers, and land that demands serfdom but a geopolitical situation that demands that we be able to swap out of it on command..... although i guess that is anti-synergistic with toku being nominally good at drafted musket attacks but does anyone actually do that...?

well, our HG plan has chops lined up too - kirishima's borders expand to bring 4 into range at juuuuust the right time to funnel them into HG. they are not enough for the full cost of the wonder but perhaps we can do something sneaky with overflow to make it work - overflow 19 hammers into the aqueduct so the triple-whip hits the wonder, have 4 hammers of both an axe and impi in queue so we can double whip into HG, that kind of thing. if people are at math already though we are probably too slow..... but turning chops into gold would actually be really well-timed too as it hits right as we finish currency and have about 4 techs that all desperately need to be researched at once. i am going to try for it if HG is still on the board in 12 turns when we bulb math, even if the odds are long.... i just hope ginger doesn't build it on turn 85 with like 7 cities or something

[ljubljana]

hey guys what is an "overflow chain" and how do we do it lmao

[pindicator]

I'm not too well versed but the basic idea is that you line up build overflows of progressively more expensive units to be able to 1-turn a wonder. Probably involves putting hammers into these builds and leaving them incomplete until the final payoff.

[williams482]

I definitely agree with settling the copper/floodplains site with the upcoming settler, and spending those "wasted" worker turns making the road to our gold site actually useable.

I'm not super worked up about Ginger spending espionage on us. We're AGG/PRO Zulu, we made threatening gestures at them when they settled their copper city, we're #1 in soldiers and even with the leaders in city count. They also have a relatively small amount of territory with really excellent land; a good target for us to hit hard and fast and expect big rewards. I'd be "paranoid" about an attack in their shoes, and I don't think that should even count as paranoia.

[Commodore]

I'm not too well versed but the basic idea is that you line up build overflows of progressively more expensive units to be able to 1-turn a wonder. Probably involves putting hammers into these builds and leaving them incomplete until the final payoff.

Correct. Simplest is the classic axe->settler, where you whip an axe to 70/35, and whip+overflow into the settler to get 200/100 on the settler, netting you a full 100 hammers. Longest overflow chain I've done was I believe explorer 80/40, knight 180/90, market 300/150, bank 400/200 to net a 200h dump into Taj Mahal the turn Nationalism landed.

[El Grillo]

Yep, the way this works is that you can have a partially pre-built item in the queue at 99/100h, and the game will let you whip 30h into it, plus receive overflow from another item completing. Whipping directly into wonders is penalized, but overflow is fair game, and it's a lot easier to whip one pop over and over than it is to whip 8 pop all at once.

There's also research overflow, a less common trick where you get a bunch of techs 1t from completion (either naturally cheap techs, or deliberately not finishing them), then research a tech per turn while accumulating overflow beakers (which are not capped) to finish a more expensive tech in 1t, in order to surprise an opponent who has been tracking your score increases or has research visibility.

[Tarkeel]

Here's how we set it up in PB58:

Turn 158-159 (980 AD)
We've been knocking out techs towards Nationalism, and this turn we're finishing Philosophy on overflow alone. We were afraid that Nationalism would take three turns, but it looks like it will be closer to one than three. Assuming it takes two turns, here are our overall plans for Project Blizzard:


159: Meditation completes; Produce 17 hammers into market, putting it at 59 total; Cancel orders for Thunderflare
160: Philosophy completes; Whip baray in Hoth; Cancel orders for relevant workers; move Thunderflare
161: Hindusim spread; Whip market; Move relevant workers
162: Nationalism completes; Start Taj; Chop forests

This resulted in:

The trick is to have the most expensive thing finish last, since overflow is capped to whatever that costs.

[El Grillo]

I'm very impressed with the planning to get exactly 750h into Taj, but why does it say the Temple of Artemis is giving +2 hammers in the second screenshot?