[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

Definitely some trade-offs have had to be made, overall I think we’ve made good choices within those constraints but they have been felt. That said, with CRE instead of PRO our tech rate would be considerably worse than it is, and we’d have considerably worse long term potential, so it’s hard to say picking CRE would have been worth the cost. CRE instead of EXP would have saved similar hammers up to this point but would be behind on hammers going forward, and probably isn’t markedly better either.

[scooter]

Man, I always undervalue Creative for archi maps, your dots show the pain.

Tarkeel did warn me about this. I heeded it some, but even so I still underestimated the impact. I really ought to play a game with CRE at some point, it's been ages.

[Tarkeel]

Been a bit busy lately myself

Observations:
1. Good to get that Hindu spread, it does reduce the attractiveness of fish+reach. If we did really want hill defense we could settle on the forest, but that's effectively a cost of 60h since it removes the forest and mandates a monument to get the fish in culture. We lose the ability to put a fishing village 3N1E of Capustan, but now the only way to get the northern fish is to put a city 3N1E of Y'Ghatan, and there would be less overlap with yellow. Or else we give up the northern fish to Bing if they settle nearby.

I actually like settling on the foresthill, even if it will hurt. This city is likely to be the border fortress in the region, and having that extra hill defense will be very handy. Although wil the plan to immediately work improved fish, I guess the snowball is more important.

Man, I always undervalue Creative for archi maps, your dots show the pain.

Tarkeel did warn me about this. I heeded it some, but even so I still underestimated the impact. I really ought to play a game with CRE at some point, it's been ages.

I'm not going to say told-you-so, as Mao of Carthage is probably worth the pain. It is a reason to get into OrgRel to have missionaries in new cities though.

[Zed-F]

OrgRel + Monarchy after Compass might be a decent ordering, but I hesitate a bit to look past Compass as things could change between now and then. There’s also lots of other things we’ll want ‘soonish’ after Compass like Calendar, Metal Casting, Optics…

[scooter]

Honestly, I haven't thought too hard about the player distribution.

Been a bit busy lately myself

Observations:
1. Good to get that Hindu spread, it does reduce the attractiveness of fish+reach. If we did really want hill defense we could settle on the forest, but that's effectively a cost of 60h since it removes the forest and mandates a monument to get the fish in culture. We lose the ability to put a fishing village 3N1E of Capustan, but now the only way to get the northern fish is to put a city 3N1E of Y'Ghatan, and there would be less overlap with yellow. Or else we give up the northern fish to Bing if they settle nearby.

I actually like settling on the foresthill, even if it will hurt. This city is likely to be the border fortress in the region, and having that extra hill defense will be very handy. Although wil the plan to immediately work improved fish, I guess the snowball is more important.

I realized I probably need to actually think a lot more about the player distribution. I've "felt" like we're looking at a W rather than M at times, but I hadn't actually done the legwork. So here's a couple details. First off, this map script and size is 64 tiles wide, or at least that's what I get when I try to replicate the settings Commodore mentioned early on. It also just sounds right from what I can see. So I guess the question is how close am I to Superdeath, the only other southern hemisphere player I've found. That proves to be harder than average to figure out given that I do not know where his capital is. I don't even know if it's on the west or east side of his empire. However, when I count tiles from the east edge of my empire to the east edge of his, I get 27 tiles, which is awfully close to half. That suggests we're the only two southern hemisphere players. See this picture.






This looks incredibly unlikely to have another whole empire between us. However, there's an even simpler way to "confirm." The spacing between our borders as of my most updated maps is currently 16 tiles, and I can see it's at most 10 for Bing and Cairo. So I think that confirms there are no other players between myself and Superdeath, which leaves Yuris east of Bing and west of Cairo.





This is a long-winded way of saying I think we can realistically claim the island to the east here. It will hurt on distance maintenance, but all the other reachable islands we see are jungled, and this is not. So I'm not so sure that FishyClammyStone is actually an "eastern edge" for us - I bet we could get to this next island too, particularly with our fairly large foodhammer edge (we've got a 20FH lead over rival best right now).

[Zed-F]

Yeah I kinda suspected that might be the situation but it’s good to build the case and have more than just suspicions to go on. I don’t think it really changes our plans so much as confirms them; we were already planning to expand our northern border if possible, and we were already talking about prioritizing commerce techs to pay for that expansion. Maybe we need to think about Code of Laws, but it’s considerably harder to build a lot of courthouses in far-flung cities than a lot of our cost-reduced UB in core cities.

[scooter]

Interesting offer from Superdeath. Initially I thought this was some sort of fish-for-fish request, so I sent back a clams-clams offer. However, I now think he found a second Gems. He said, foreshadowing.





This is interesting. I did specifically check SD's resources last turn. This turn he settled a city AND connected Stone. Assuming his Stone is roughly as far away as ours, this makes it moderately likely he settled ON Stone. Of course, if his Stone is much closer then maybe he simply hooked it at the same time, but it's noteworthy. Makes me wonder if he's going to make a run at Mids/HG or something.





This was why I wondered about his Gold/Gems deal. This is a killer site without knowing anything else about it. I tend to agree with Zed-F's idea of having this WB keep heading east while having one of the Galleys transfer the Scout over to this island.





Some minor logistical things here. Settlers load up next turn and start moving, while Aren just finished a Galley. Two Archers will complete right on time to load up on the trailing Galley as it sails past. Meanwhile one WB is already on the way to FishyStone, and a second out of Y'Ghatan is ticketed for the Tundra Fish. Y'Ghatan is well-equipped for WB duty as it's a low food high hammers city that doesn't want to be whipped a lot. It'll likely build 1-2 more and supply the islands with WBs in general, though I'm considering a settler out of there.





Goal is to keep pushing the lead here. I don't see any need to slow down expansion even though the next few cities will sting a little on tech. Just need to push through and trust the trade routes to save us later. Considering a couple Libraries in core cities as there isn't a ton that needs building right now. Makes some sense to squeak a couple in while saving money on 0% tech. Of course, all the more reason to get into OR ASAP, but I'm not so sure it's worth the delay to Currency.

[Zed-F]

So... is the second gold site strong enough (and profitable enough) that we should consider picking up the scout with the *first* galley after dropping a settler for stone, then dropping the scout and the second settler on the next island east, settling FishyGold, and trading that second gold for gems, rather than settling TundraFood now? Normally being that aggressive with a settler would be risky but without barbs, and without evidence of Bing being here yet, and with our W theory and no contact yet to the east, it should likely be at least safe for long enough for galley2 to arrive in the area with an archer. We have several turns in which we could re-jig plans before boats arrive in the area if this makes sense. If this is a worthwhile proposition, should we consider trading for gems immediately with a plan to hook the second gold (i.e. to lock in the trade before someone else takes it, at the cost of giving SD a second lux for a number of turns before we get our second online) or should we wait until we have a second gold? I guess we could diplo him to suggest we would be willing to trade gold for gems in X turns.

It would be an odd coincidence that SD should settle city 7 and hook stone on the same turn if he didn't settle on stone. It probably means he did prioritize Masonry earlier. Why settle on the stone if you're not worried about a wonder race? I suppose our stone is on flat desert and if the surrounding tiles had been different we might have chosen to settle on it, since a 3-hammer improved tile isn't exactly an awesome yield. If he is going for HG, he's got a head start compared to us. He does have a more expensive aqueduct to build than we would, and will probably have a city or two less by the time it's built, but sometime after T80 is probably a semi-reasonable time for it to fall. Do we want to race for it? Fail gold on a stone-boosted wonder wouldn't be terrible if it helps us get to Currency & Compass, and of course we'd be happy to win such a race too. But whether it's worth building even a discounted aqueduct to get in the race is a good question; it's possible sinking hammers into a couple Libraries is better long-term than trying for HG, though I'd prefer to see some analysis to back that up. Of course SD could be going for Pyramids instead.

I still have my doubts on getting to OR/Monarchy before Compass, let alone Currency. If we did research OR and waited on Monarchy, would we even want to revolt just for that, then revolt again later for Monarchy? We don't really have that many buildings that are super attractive to build, other than the ones we already get access to on the Compass beeline and that are already discounted by Expansive. The weakest leg of our economy is commerce, and OR doesn't help us so much with that in the short term; rather, techs for OR/Monarchy are more readily affordable after Currency + Compass. I could perhaps be convinced otherwise but I would want to see a convincing plan to minimize revolts (potentially involving a GA if it makes sense.)

[scooter]

So... is the second gold site strong enough (and profitable enough) that we should consider picking up the scout with the *first* galley after dropping a settler for stone, then dropping the scout and the second settler on the next island east, settling FishyGold, and trading that second gold for gems, rather than settling TundraFood now? Normally being that aggressive with a settler would be risky but without barbs, and without evidence of Bing being here yet, and with our W theory and no contact yet to the east, it should likely be at least safe for long enough for galley2 to arrive in the area with an archer. We have several turns in which we could re-jig plans before boats arrive in the area if this makes sense. If this is a worthwhile proposition, should we consider trading for gems immediately with a plan to hook the second gold (i.e. to lock in the trade before someone else takes it, at the cost of giving SD a second lux for a number of turns before we get our second online) or should we wait until we have a second gold? I guess we could diplo him to suggest we would be willing to trade gold for gems in X turns.

Yeah I'm really starting to think about doing exactly this.





SE of the Gold looks like a very strong site. I can improve the first Fish close to immediately, and the Gold tile would pay for the maintenance increase. Strongly tempted to send the second settler this way and backfill the Tundra location. I have 2 more turns to decide technically as my Galley moves the same path either way. I've scouted like 25% of this island and it's already better than the rest I've seen.

It would be an odd coincidence that SD should settle city 7 and hook stone on the same turn if he didn't settle on stone. It probably means he did prioritize Masonry earlier. Why settle on the stone if you're not worried about a wonder race? I suppose our stone is on flat desert and if the surrounding tiles had been different we might have chosen to settle on it, since a 3-hammer improved tile isn't exactly an awesome yield. If he is going for HG, he's got a head start compared to us. He does have a more expensive aqueduct to build than we would, and will probably have a city or two less by the time it's built, but sometime after T80 is probably a semi-reasonable time for it to fall. Do we want to race for it? Fail gold on a stone-boosted wonder wouldn't be terrible if it helps us get to Currency & Compass, and of course we'd be happy to win such a race too. But whether it's worth building even a discounted aqueduct to get in the race is a good question; it's possible sinking hammers into a couple Libraries is better long-term than trying for HG, though I'd prefer to see some analysis to back that up. Of course SD could be going for Pyramids instead.

Yeah I'm not really dying to race for HG if that is actually his target. However, it should be noted that we are Expansive which gets the Aqueduct bonus in CtH. So I am sort of tempted to go ahead and queue up the Aqueduct and configure it for a max-OF whip once Stone is hooked. Like you said, Stone-powered failgold would be good for us right now, and of course the wonder itself is pretty good too. We're hitting the point where it's nearly profitable on a per-city basis, but also the Engineer GPP can be valuable.


I sort of suspect he's going for Pyramids though. He might have noticed what I did which is that it may slip through the cracks and decided to go for it. He only just got to 7 cities, so if he's angling for HG soon it won't be with an enormous number of cities. So my hunch here is this is a Pyramids play from him. Maybe he's got a heavy forest city.

[Zed-F]

Yeah that second gold site looks pretty great to prioritize. We definitely want to start claiming that island ASAP before Bing decides it might be good to explore in our direction.

It'll be a while before we have stone hooked (since we don't yet have Masonry and it's not clear to me whether we get it before or after Currency -- right now we don't intend to build walls anywhere in the short term and the improved tile isn't a great yield for the city) so the only reason to hurry hooking it is if we want to prioritize HG. Hopefully SD is going for 'Mids and we have some time.

Since we can't start the Aqueduct either without Masonry, I'm curious what our plans for builds look like. We should be done those archers and about done a WB at Pale; an update on what we're focusing on production-wise in the near future would be nice. I'm guessing workers/settlers/archers/workboats in some combination, but you also mentioned some libraries might be forthcoming (maybe after settler whips so we can regrow on them?)

Also curious if we are stuck on SD's eastern border with our western WB and will need to open borders to get through -- the minimap seems to suggest this might be an issue?