[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[scooter]

I did back off the Bing check. Two more small things from the turn.





Second revolt of the GA. This combined with the Wines currently being hooked will more or less end the happy issues for the forseeable future which is great. Time for a quick missionary burst.





Some truly ugly micro in order to maximize the number of missionaries possible during this window. For example, Li Heng is working a bare grass hill and the not-yet-improved Wines because it allows the missionary to be out in 2T (0h to spare), which means the missionary can spread to Unta/Pale in time for that city to also produce a missionary before the OR stint is over. I don't think I should remain in OR when the GA is over because it's expensive and most of my core infra is up.


Actually, now that I type this out... I bet it's worth it to stay in OR anyway given how many more cities I now expect to have coming? I could easily pump missionaries along with all of these cities, removing the need for a Monument and saving 25% hammers on the all-important Granary-Cothon-Lighthouse trio. That probably is worth it, actually. 30 of the 40h required for a missionary is wiped out by the Monument alone, and then the other building savings are far more than 10h. Maybe I should stick in OR until the second GA at which point I go Theocracy? This would reduce my urgency now a bit.


Anyway, I'm also prebuilding some Galleons and actually building some settlers. Will also need to build some WBs. Next thing to think about is going to be settling priority order. I want this to be a real burst of cities before everyone else fully internalizes what I'm doing.

[scooter]

Actually, now that I type this out... I bet it's worth it to stay in OR anyway given how many more cities I now expect to have coming? I could easily pump missionaries along with all of these cities, removing the need for a Monument and saving 25% hammers on the all-important Granary-Cothon-Lighthouse trio. That probably is worth it, actually. 30 of the 40h required for a missionary is wiped out by the Monument alone, and then the other building savings are far more than 10h.

FWIW, the actual gold cost of OR is 12gpt right now, relative to simply getting out of it. That is quite a lot. However, that might be a worthwhile cost to pay if it, say, gets Cothons and Markets online faster, which it absolutely would because I can use developed cities to build the missionaries, effectively offloading the hammer cost from the new cities onto old cities. I think I've convinced myself it's worth sticking in OR.

[Zed-F]

Your other plan had been to go with Monastery in a couple key cities, but that does seem less flexible than staying in OR until GA #2. We are longer on commerce than hammers at the moment, so maybe the OR cost is worth the flexibility of being able to build missionary in more cities, without necessarily needing to build monasteries, and with the 25% building speed bonus in new cities. We aren’t going to want to remain in slavery when we get to GA #2, so it does seem topical to get those basic buildings out as quickly as possible.

Hopefully we’ll still be fine on the maintenance front. I suppose OR will also help us build courthouses and castles as necessary after this GA ends, providing we’re also able to spread to more mature cities that benefit from those buildings.

[scooter]

I can't say I expected to find this one already settled. I find myself moderately annoyed that a few players can access this stuff by Galley. However, I do wonder if it was intended to be compensation for the fact that the northern hemisphere has 3 players and the southern has 2? If so, I get that. It just feels like I expanded way harder/faster than everyone and yet did not end up with more land than anyone. I still am not #1 in land area. I think I got fairly hosed on land in this game - also noteworthy how much greener everyone else's land is - and traits + outplaying have offset this.





And now I'm a little bit worried the same thing will happen here via this 1 tile island. I will check it out after defogging this island. If it is Galley-accessible, it's possible I'll have to prioritize this island first to fend this off. I think it's imperative I claim as much as possible in my window here.





Well, at the very least I forced Bing to defend himself and spend hammers on purely defensive units, and even expend population on it via whip.





Starting this turn with Feudalism we are completing 5 techs in 4 turns as spelled out by the signs here. Actually, we are surely completing 6 techs in 5 turns, as I believe after Astro/Paper is Construction-Engineering, and Construction will also be a 1T tech I'm pretty sure. Anyway, I will revolt into Vassalage at the end of the Golden Age. It has essentially 0 cost to me as the civic cost is completely offset by the free units, and I have enough units to take advantage of that. This will allow me to build CG3 Longbows/Crossbows which will keep me safe for a good while.





Not too much to add. Black Coral's Scientist is actually in 2T, not 3T, as I'll burst it next turn. I'm bringing Galleys home/south as I'll probably upgrade 1-2 of them on the east front in order to settle S Island, while I build new Galleons on the west front to settle those islands. I'm also going to bring a couple workers west as I'm going to need a lot more worker labor on the west islands, while my eastern cities don't have a lot left to do.





Big international news turn. The other Golden Ages have ended, and Cairo was the first player to tech Civil Service and revolted into Bureau. (Although this is only technically true as I teched almost all of CS awhile ago.) Yuris built Great Library which wasn't a big surprise after he got Aesthetics.





Quick refresher on this screen as Yuris has collected a few wonders now. This is probably the least wonder-happy game I've played in a long time, but we banned the good ones, so I guess it's not super surprising. That and hammers are so scarce. However, the reason I point this out is to note one thing related to this screen.






Not for now. And not for anytime soon. But just something to be reminded of to file away for the future.

[Zed-F]

Yeah I agree we probably need to prioritize the SW corner over West Island to make sure we don't allow others galley access, and backfill West island(s) after. On the SW island, we might want to consider settling the 1-tile island first to block off Cairo/Bing, especially if we're only settling 3 cities on the SW island due to wanting to settle on the two coppers on the west coast. But we probably need to finish scouting that island for seafood first before we lock in on that. If we’re fast and lucky there could be another spot SE of the 1-tile island that also could act as a choke point.

I’m not clear if we can finagle anything in the SE or if we should be ceding that to Bing / SD / Yuris for now… it’s hard to get a clear picture of what we could possibly claim over there without being super contentious. It looks to me like SD has galley access to the 2-tile deer island and everything east of there. Yuris might as well.

EDIT: does it make sense to hire artists for a couple turns in Cawn and Darujbistan to pop borders so we don’t need monuments / religion there?

[scooter]

In nearly 100 turns, Unta never got a spread of Hinduism from the holy city that was 4 tiles away and trade connected the entire time. Feels bad! Corrected that wrong this turn.





Quick 1T missionary to spread to Pale as well.





Cairo is backfilling his islands. I'm jealous his Marble city looks like this and mine is an ugly mess that still doesn't have a Cothon/Lighthouse after all these turns.





Most important, the second Great Scientist completes with like 1F to spare. Little bit tight! The upside of all this is Black Coral got to let its whip anger run down during this exercise.





Bing has Longbows now, and in fact is now the #1 military. Fortunately it's all defense.





Looks like this city and the one across the water are very recently settled.





More importantly, Astro next turn! I think I'm going to comfortably overshoot my 1T Paper goal by quite a lot, but I'm not going to take any chances that I come up short, so I'm dumping the remainder of my treasury into Civil Service next turn. I overflowed a ton already, so there's plenty.





Here's an initial pass at dotmapping this region. I'm going to move the Caravel NW next turn just to defog a tiny bit more, then I'll circle down and see if that 1 tile island is ocean-gated or not. That will likely drive a lot of our decisions down here.


In general though, I think I like settling on the Copper hills? Most of the Fish are second ring anyway, so border pops are just going to be a reality here. In general though, this region is pretty far-ish from my core, so having the cities be on hills may be really beneficial. Open to other configurations as this one is just tricky overall.

[scooter]

EDIT: does it make sense to hire artists for a couple turns in Cawn and Darujbistan to pop borders so we don’t need monuments / religion there?

Yeah I'm definitely considering this. I did do this in another city to pop borders more quickly. I did want to complete the buildings there, and worker labor was tied up elsewhere, but yes it's really time to do this. At the very least, unlocking that second floodplains will be really helpful.

[Zed-F]

I think you wanted to keep a modicum of gold back for some instant Galleon upgrades, yes? Or are you instead planning to rebuild treasury for that during the next couple turns of Civil Service - Paper?

Should our SE caravel explore west from her along Bing’s northern regions to see where any Astro barriers might begin, or do we leave that solely up to our SW caravel and instead look around more in the area it’s at now? I’m still not sure that there are any claims we could make in the SE, at least without being backed by threat of force.

[scooter]

I think you wanted to keep a modicum of gold back for some instant Galleon upgrades, yes? Or are you instead planning to rebuild treasury for that during the next couple turns of Civil Service - Paper?

I have some control over this during the next couple turns. I'll probably expend most of it next turn on Civil Service, but there's a real chance I end up 1T'ing Paper at 0% science, which would be enough for an upgrade or two. In other words, I'll try to be efficient, but I'd rather overshoot beakers than undershoot. And I really did not feeling like doing the math to figure out exactly how many I'm generating each turn.

Should our SE caravel explore west from her along Bing’s northern regions to see where any Astro barriers might begin, or do we leave that solely up to our SW caravel and instead look around more in the area it’s at now? I’m still not sure that there are any claims we could make in the SE, at least without being backed by threat of force.

Yeah I have no strong feelings about the area around Bing's Ice Islands, other than I want to know what they entail. I am generally assuming I cannot settle anything south of S Island.

[Zed-F]

If we aren’t settling anything in the SE then I think I like the idea of that caravel heading S through the channel then W to help explore northern islands that might be Astro locked (or lockable) in Bing’s far north and NW, at least up to the point where we find there’s nothing but ice. Our SW caravel has a lot of stuff to check out still, e.g. find out if there is another Astro island W of West Island, and could probably use some help. After that our SE caravel could explore Bing’s current N coast and then keep heading east.

I guess it could check out the N coast of that marble island on the way. Yuris did go for Aesthetics and this seems like it could have been where their borders came into conflict.