[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

yeah. if they're attacking us anyways in 5-10 turns, i suppose we might as well go for it.... although the city will need to live for 7 turns to "pay back" by putting > 100 culture on the tile, and if the plan is to leave it undefended i doubt it lives that long in this scenario. and if they are NOT going to attack us on that timeframe, it offers significant border security and has enough tiles to be worth having (which in my mind means: enough tiles to be draftable lol). i'm not sure it would pay back quickly, exactly (probably needs to at least get through the mandatory granary and ikhanda builds before it can reasonably be said to start chewing into the 110 hammer investment) but it definitely would eventually

i guess the question is, how large is the chance that settling such a city would represent The Incident that changes their plans from "not attacking" to "attacking" (which may be a pretty close-run question in their mind rn)? rationally you'd THINK it's not important enough to do that, but it does seem like semi-poachy border cities like this do tend to punch above their weight as casus belli around these parts, for some combination of metagame hygiene and just pure rage reasons. it probably depends on who the otto turnplayer is - if it were ginger i'd be pretty worried, civac i know much less about. not sure if the benefit is large enough to take a significant risk of that.... but IS the risk significant? idk.... maybe it will more clearly make sense if we actually do manage to take control of the hills, such that the city at least appears to be more about maintaining control over them than actually stealing them...?

fwiw, i guess the fact that the area remains unsettled means that they also never thought a city here was worth the risk. would i have attacked if they had tried it? hard to say.... certainly not during one of the eras when they had clear military superiority, but i suppose i'd have thought about it, like, 15 turns ago when it was just cavs and rifles vs cavs and infantry?

[ljubljana]

quick geostrategic check-in - what do we think the ottoman path to winning is from here? if they're going to get a fresh turnplayer soon, probably they will do such an analysis upon signing on and we can likely expect behavior to shift somewhat in the direction of, um..... whatever the answer is

i don't trust myself to be unbiased but.... i guess first pass is that they become favored if

a) they kill zulu while india fails to kill one of their neighbors
b) india collapses due to a dogpile
c) india overbuilds military and they can wealth-build to space

all of which require a pretty different approach to the next, um, rest of the game number of turns such that they probably need to commit to one pretty soon

if i'm them, i'm initially skeptical of going for c) because india can probably hit culture faster than space from here, but... maybe there's still play there? say india turns on the slider and tries for culture, then ottos are first to nukes and can nuke and burn the legendary cities as they emerge? probably requires a commando factory though, so maybe i try to fight a low-cost war in the meantime just to get a GG? that's not what attacking zulu looks like, but maybe it means organize a coalition or even, like, invade SD via galleon...?? similarly i don't think they win a wealth-race to space with india's higher mfg ceiling, but maybe what they can do is win a naval arms race, burn the coast/strong part producers, THEN win the wealth-race?

a) has some pretty obvious problems too of course... namely india is somewhat stronger than ottos (in terms of mfg anyways) while sd is much weaker than zulu.... so i'd give myself good odds of taking out zulus in a 1v1 (now, at planes, or at nukes) but really really bad odds of doing so more efficiently than india can kill one of rome/america, esp if india has troops to spare to support zulu at the same time as attacking their target

as for b), does india even die to a coalition at this point...? none of their neighbors can really hurt them, so it would be dependent on the neighbors distracting them while i, the otto player, builds up naval superiority and burns their coast..... this could work, but only if zulu joins in and they've given no indication that they'd even consider doing so. still it's probably worth reaching out to zulu in diplo to test the waters, but only if we have ruled out option a) of course. and then once the coalition appears on track to succeed, then stab zulu as brutally and effectively as possible to take the win

completely unrelated edit: is there a world in which we prioritize astro -> physics -> electricity before assembly line? it represents a roughly 200 gpt increase just from our enormous raft of windmills, with no hammer investment required, and it unlocks bomb shelters.... not really sure how good those are, but at 100 hammers i can see them as worth building in every strong city once someone finishes the manhattan project. and airships from physics are extremely powerful for scouting ofc

[williams482]

What's the pure beaker ROI for grabbing those three techs?

I do feel like airships will be good for your peace of mind, guaranteeing that any plausible invasion will be telegraphed at least a turn in advance.

[ljubljana]

yeah, they'll be good for my peace of mind, for sure. but uh.... maybe i need to invest some, like, out-of-game energy into improving that instead of actual real beakers

i did forget something important about the AL path, which is that it runs through corporation - i think we have around 30 uncastled cities that will get an extra trade route from that, each worth around 3 gold, so around 90 raw GNP - not in the same ballpark as electricity but, of course, AL being one tech away significantly sweetens the deal

253



we have 136 windmills as of now - they are not all worked, but most of them are, and i think we'll probably add another 10 or so as well between now and elec. so say 150 raw gnp, times mayyyybe 1.25 on average = 187.5, and the total cost is 3220 (astro) + 6440 (physics) + 7245 (elec) = um, almost 17k beakers.... so only a 100 turn payback horizon  i mean, these are all required techs for the nuke path so it's not quite as bad as all that, but probably still not worth diverting from AL i suppose



radio in 5, making 1k gpt.... ok, now THAT is really interesting. that's similar to their industrial beaker rate, and probably indicates that they HAVE NOT switched all their cities to tanks :O radio is also conspicuously off the nukes path.... it does provide bombers once they also have flight, but all things being equal i'd prefer them take that route over nukemaxxing. if they really do not start to spike in milpower over the next few turns, i will consider coming off of cannons for some economic builds.... don't get me wrong, we are still going to want a bigass defensive cannon stack and i have no compunctions about building it now as opposed to in a little bit, but maybe we can pause at 30 cannons instead of going all the way to 50 or 60

levee? levee levee levee?



sweeeet. it's only 40 hpt pre-overflow buuuut that's still pretty sweet ngl



suddenly we have unhealthy faces everywhere sooo.... we can try to get our deer back i guess? and maybe grab some hit musicals in the bargain?



overflowing 56 GPP into the next great person, who we can make at 50 GPP/turn as long as this one does not hit the 13% merchant chance. so that's a 15 turn great person, if we have the food to support it.... which we don't, 8 specialists will mean -1 food surplus and we will have 12 in the bank after this turn. but we can afford to run ONE turn of +2 food surplus instead since we will have 6 extra GPP from this turn's overflow, which enables 2 more turns at -1, for.... holy shit..... omg there's no way........ do we seriously have EXACTLY enough food stored in this city to hit 800 GPP EXACTLY, to the penny, in 15 turns???? that can't be right.... and of course i didn't plan this at all

(but if i'm wrong on that and we do have to starve this city for a turn i do think that's probably better than delaying the GA)

[ljubljana]

despite all our drafting, after a few 20-city growth turns like this last one, we are starting to get a few cities that are all of a) capped on useful tiles b) have no slots for useful specialists and c) have too much unhappy to keep drafting. but i still want to keep them on military builds until ottos have a permanent turnplayer who is displaying non-aggressive intentions..... so um



does this qualify?



+33 from last turn, accumulating slowly enough that we can keep spending turned off for the moment without risk of losing our lead.... watch this space

i think that if, 2 turns from now, we still see no sign of tanks and they still are supermax-ing towards radio, i will then feel comfortable transitioning to economic builds again

[williams482]

Why are we trading our only rice for deer? Rice is +2 health with a granary, while deer is only doubled by supermarkets. Do we have another rice we haven't hooked up for some reason?

[ljubljana]

oh it's because naufragar has been sending us rice for wheat since rougly turn 75 lmao (and their rice doesn't show up in the trade screen for some reason; our native source is at Ouch!)

but yeah i guess should they decide to suddenly cancel that deal i will have royally screwed us...

btw i have discovered an extremely unhappy 2% chance that we whiff and fail to get our golden age (( abi can pop an artist next turn, and then since the national epic produces artist GPP, we can then do no better than a 96% chance of non-artist from the next great person..... i kinda think future versions of CtH should consider making the natepic produce typeless gpp, it sucks that we're facing a 2% die roll to end our game this late  (assuming i can't come up w a plan for a backup GP in a reasonable timeframe)

[ljubljana]

mjmd came at us with this counteroffer



yeah, that's what i was afraid of.... i'm not thrilled about feeding their cereal mills snowball, that's 0.75 food for free to every city they have with it.... which, ok, after looking around is apparently just 4 or 5 cities as of now, them having prioritized mining inc? we actually get more food out of resolving the health problems than they do, at least for now, but i'm also not super thrilled about tying our health to a deal from which they are getting 0.75 food everywhere from the wheat

anyways, idk if i am allowed to accept now, as that would give me mechanical benefit from logging in multiple times during a turn (since i proposed before they moved, logged in after to look around, and there are some unhealthy cities that would gain an extra food at turn roll if i accept). and i need to think about it. but maybe i'll reoffer to them next round idk

(and tbh this is a good reason for me to STOP logging in multiple times during the turn... because now i have to reoffer and it's going to be this whole annoying thing where maybe they change their mind between turns.... not to mention it's just bad etiquette, ofc)

[ljubljana]

254

open the turn to get



7 cannons, a cav, a 20 xp rifle, and........



ohhh FUCK yeah!!! i didn't dare even to affirmatively hope for this, but great engineer is the best outcome - it's not a merchant so we can work the full 8 specialists for the next GP, it's not an artist so we don't have to worry about doubled-up artists ruining our golden age, AND it even gives us the inside track to found creative constructions.... although i am inclined to think that crecon is not worth delaying our golden age for a fourth great person, i could be convinced. we have 5 copper, 1 iron, 2 marble, and 1 stone hooked up, and i see roughly another 10 of these of various stripes that could in theory be connected.... so 15 * 0.37 = 5.5 hammers/city roughly, and we are zulu so we will pay very little maintenance from the corp..... is that worth doing? the opportunity cost is that our civics situation is exceedingly dire right now, we should have swapped to environmentalism + representation ages and ages ago and the longer we delay, the further behind in tech we will fall (of course)

this is the part where i guilty confess that i have actually never once played around with a corp even in SP and have basically no idea how they function or what yields they need to produce to be considered worthwhile 

levees:



this one's still the tiiiiniest bit underwhelming as the city still needs to grow onto the last two riverside towns, but



THIS one has me absolutely beaming with pride at how far we have come at what was such a terrible city for so, so long



aksum thinking about spending some of this accumulated overflow on a library, since we are presumably going to turn on research next turn. depends on if i see any tanks in gingerland though of course



finally realized i'm being silly here (and at ouch) and it is probably economically optimal to power these two cities to size 18 for 4-gold TRs (and grant them draft immunity in the meantime)



mjmd turns up with industrialism three turns after ginger

well, here's one:



i did my best to defog as many ottoman city centers as possible this turn though, and i only saw 2 tanks, in stonefish and lungfish..... they have now hit enter three times since discovering industrial and definitely have loads of cities making over 60 hpt, so if they were really coming for us full-force i'd expect significantly more by this point. even heroic epic + west point zephyrion hasn't made one, at least not that i could find... tbh it's not realistic to expect them to wealth-build to industrial and then make ZERO tanks - the two options were likely "make a few tanks to modernize their 2-mover stack" and "fully commit to an all-out tank push". what i've seen so far suggests the former, which makes me feel comfortable doing some veeeeery carefully-chosen things of this nature



harbor?? apparently this is worth 4 GPT on its own merits, a better ROI than a market, and adds 3 health to fix the looming unhealthiness problem here..... i mean, i'm pretty surprised but if you say so  actually all the harbors on the south coast purportedly add 4 gold, i guess because the base yield from a size 18 city TR is 1.9.....



how's our bigass pile of obsolete garbage looking? (kirishima, of course, contains its own almost-identical pile)

ended up just sending mjmd a silk / deer offer straight-up, sorry if i appear passive-aggressive in so doing lol

[ljubljana]

btw guess what is still unclaimed and would be worth a cool 270 BPT for us in representation....

eyeing a swap to bureaucracy during the GA, then try for it in the capital after ironworks while sandbagging research overflow to do a 1t democracy? that would be the safe plan that doesn't commit many resources. there are also UNsafe plans..... that involve teching democracy instead of railroad with our current gold stockpile, then trying to rush it with the great engineer  in a size 20 city that would knock out 900 of the 1500 hammers we need, yes? so assuming we can assemble a small overflow chain first, we could drop in maybe 150 base hammers on the first turn and then need 250 more for roughly a 6-turn build....

of course that almost completely kills this third golden age for factories that we're supposed to be going for, so maybe it's too ambitious. on the other hand the statue is worth about as much as swapping to representation in the GA would be (not as much as rep + enviro though i think), and of the two obviously the wonder is more time-sensitive..... there is really no plausible candidate for a fourth great person site right now though sadly, atamifuji is the only city with significant banked GPP and those are heavily prophet-tainted, so we may end up just waiting another 18 horrible turns for abi if we burn the GE here