[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

Yes, in this mod circumnavigation requires Optics, gives a +50% trade modifier instead of +1 to movement, and can be achieved by everyone instead of just the first to reach it. Accordingly it’s more valuable for Protective civilizations such as ourselves, and less valuable for non-Protective civs. Protective civs might prioritize it, but for others it’s a free bonus for doing a thing you want to do anyway (exploring the map & making contacts), so everyone gets it eventually if they can.

[scooter]

I tend to not report as much on the weekend, so my pictures are a bit limited, but there was something noteworthy that happened yesterday.





I was expecting the OB cancel, but I didn't necessarily anticipate the luxury cancel. I probably should have. Needless to say, this was incredibly annoying as it was 2T prior to Fur hook and ~4T before some Calendar luxuries come online. I was already eating a couple turns of unhappiness in anticipation of Furs hook and Market whips, but this compounded things in an ugly way.





Pale suddenly had 3 angry citizens. I finished Moai and started a Market. Next turn I'll simply whip the angry citizens away into the Market. The Market and Furs hooking will increase my happy cap by 3 instantly, and I can then regrow the city on a Cothon build, retaking the Cows.





Unta was massively messed with as well. However, I got the Market to a nice clean 3 pop breakpoint at max overflow, so I went ahead and did it as it would overflow into Marble-enhanced MoM. I can also retake the Corns and quickly regrow pop. The Library is also sitting at full overflow, so I have that option as well. In addition there's the 4 mines and 2 available forests. It still won't exactly be a fast build, but given nobody else has Marble and Bing skipped it, it's likely to be the fastest. In which case it's probably worth saving the forests for lumbermills still, but we'll see about that.





I was trying to figure out what the diplo state is after SD did that, and I saw this very weird trade. Why on earth is the weakest economy in the game gifting 4gpt to the tech leader??? WTF? Anyway, this leads me to some diplo noodling. I'm moderately annoyed at SD, but I get the thought process. However, we have no reason to be enemies here, so I'm wondering how to salvage this. I didn't respond to his gpt demands for a few reasons. One, his valuation was insane, so there was nothing I could say back that wouldn't be insulting. Two, I frankly do not trust him to not cancel OB anyway after gifting gpt, so it would need to be explicitly paired with the OB offer. But again, the map says we should be friends here, so I want to try to figure that out.


I tried a different tack with him, offering him my spare Gold for OB. I'm not sure if it's beneficial to him or not given that he lacks large cities and is Chm, but I wanted to signal willingness to deal. I'm also considering offering him some sort of deal that suggests eventual 2v1 on Yuris. The way I look at it is that's an avenue where we would both benefit, but he would surely benefit more, which would give him strong incentive to actually work with me. I'm not quite sure how to frame this. Maybe just a war in 30T indicator or something just to pick a distant turn number? What I want to communicate to him is that if he cooperates with me and doesn't go super realpolitik that I would help him with Yuris who could be a serious problem for him.


I also offered my spare Gold for Cairo's sole Incense. Obviously he rejected it and he requested my Gold back as a gift, but I was trying to signal that if he can hook another one, we have a deal. I'm not quite sure if his gift request was an acknowledgment of that or not. In any case, OB is not worth a ton for me right now given that I do have Cairo's routes still, but that may change in a few turns as another round of Cothons complete.





City is set to slowly grind out a Monument for like 10T, and then I'll have Pale supply it a WB. So this city is just a Marble factory for a good long time. I liked the Otataral/Marble parallels here.


I'll get some empire shots in the next turn or two, but broadly Calendar coming online is going to open up a bunch of things. Nap is Plantationing the Dye right now, while Banana Island is suddenly extremely viable to settle. In addition, East Island is probably about ready for its third city as the cities in the area get their core buildings online, so I'll probably have Black Coral handle that soon as it now has Lighthouse + 2 Fish online. I paused expansion to do this wave of Cothons and the odd Library/Market, but it may be time to do more settling soon. My happy issues are about to massively improve which is badly needed relief.

[Zed-F]

Superdeath is (unsurprisingly) super-transactional in these dealings. Fortunately our Market whips seem like a good solution in the short term. But are you sure SD is paying Bing? To me it looks like the trade screen is saying SD is being paid by Bing to slow us down, which makes a little more sense. I still think this is SD's idea though, to try to wring some benefit for himself out of wanting to cancel OBs with us. I guess he doesn't feel like he needs the Gold just now. Maybe he will change his mind later, but SD always seems to me to be 'but what have you done for me *lately*?' about his relations with other empires. Not very good from a trustworthiness or a long term relationship point of view, but if all he's looking for is incremental gains, it appears he can get some.

I'm fine with continuing to poke SD periodically to see what kind of trades we can still reasonably make. Eventually his circumstances will change or he will think enough time has gone by that the winds can shift. Overall, the diplo situation seems potentially a bit volatile right now. We know Bing is most likely an enemy. Yuris could be a rival, but maybe not if he doesn't have ambitions in our direction; Cairo or SD might make a better target for him. SD could be a friend, but only in the most at-arms-length fashion. Cairo is a friend for the moment, but it's not clear how long that will last; if another player decided to try to take a piece out of him, we might get involved one way or another. Nobody has much in the way of power with which to punish anyone for not aligning with their interests right now, but we're getting into the Medieval era soon enough and that could change.

I'm not sure what Bing's deal is in all of this, though. He seems happy to pay SD to slow us down, which makes it clear he views us as an enemy (as well he probably should.) Several of his other moves haven't been what we'd have expected. He started his first GA recently, but what's he doing with it? It seems too early (and too lacking MoM) to be a play for Astronomy already, even if he does chain into a second GA. What else makes sense? Normally getting a tech lead means wanting to gobble up a neighbor, though I don't think that would work well on this map at this stage of the game against a prepared opponent. But he's also not building power quickly either, at least not yet. It's unclear to me what Bing's intentions actually are, so to me that suggests we should keep our guard up.

Hopefully we can follow Bing (and, to an extent, Yuris) to some of the techs we'd like to get in the short term anyway. I do like the idea of continuing to settle more cities, but we have a lot of needs along our border as well -- culture to stave off Bing, Barracks, defenders both on sea and on land. But I suppose a couple of our core cities like Li Heng are nearly done our immediate infrastructure push and will be in position to support further expansion fairly soon.

[Tarkeel]

I was expecting the OB cancel, but I didn't necessarily anticipate the luxury cancel. I probably should have. Needless to say, this was incredibly annoying as it was 2T prior to Fur hook and ~4T before some Calendar luxuries come online. I was already eating a couple turns of unhappiness in anticipation of Furs hook and Market whips, but this compounded things in an ugly way.

Yeah, that one was to be expected, for several reasons really. Superdeath probably has you begged as the game leader, and now wants lopsided trades. It could also just be that he complete misjudges the value of the deals as well.

I was trying to figure out what the diplo state is after SD did that, and I saw this very weird trade. Why on earth is the weakest economy in the game gifting 4gpt to the tech leader??? WTF?

I'm hoping this is just rent on a very small loan, or it could be some form of extortion or paying half the value of OB? Still weird, but it's Bing paying SD as Zed says.

[scooter]

SD counter-offered. Still nowhere near worth it as his routes would have been worth < 7c this past turn, though that is about to change. However, my WB was trapped by Yuris culture, so I decided to offer OB to him. His scout is trapped on my island, so maybe it's worthwhile to him. In addition, it would give me a chance to scout his nearest cities to us and see. Also might open the door to reversing things and being friendly with him - offering him a safe border if he wants to mess with SD. I dunno, just keeping options open.





I may be able to complete N-S wrap after all, as I'm very close. More importantly, seeing signs of some hand-crafted pole land what with the ice oasis tiles and what looks like an iceplains fog bleedthrough on the east island.





Metal Casting next for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that everyone else has it, so I'm getting a hefty discount. Also, I really don't want to be the only player without Triremes. Our economy has jump-started in the last half-dozen turns. My break-even tech rate was below 50bpt after the last wave of cities, and I was losing a fair amount of money at 20% tech. Since then, Cothons, trade routes, Markets, and Libraries have shot our break-even rate closer to 90bpt. So things are moving in the right direction.





Now that Calendar is in, it's really time to claim this island. I'm hoping the Axe dissuades Cairo from trying. I highlighted two options here. Yellow is quite exposed and a bit uncomfortable, but that second ring Fish is incredibly tempting. Gray is the safer spot - on a hill and further back. It also will start a little faster as Yellow won't have much of anything until the Jungle is chopped. I do have Workers in the area that can ferry over as they're hooking Spice currently, but still. Any thoughts on this? I am going to try to scout Cairo's border here since he signed OB and moved a WB in to scout me. My inclination is to go Yellow, but I could definitely be talked into the safer option.


Another quiet advantage of Yellow is it makes me feel better about giving a Clam to Red as Aren could keep the Crabs permanently.





In international news, Yuris shrined Buddhism. Looking forward to all my cities turning Buddhist rather than the home-grown religion.





Our 16 cities. I expect us to settle 4-5 more pre-Astro, so we're nearing the end of this phase.

[Zed-F]

With the addition of fish that we can get and otherwise seems orphaned, I think I vote Yellow West as well. We can chop jungle outside our territory so it makes sense to me to pre-chop the jungle on bananas and found our city at the island's tip. Getting mountain vision would be nice too; maybe we can beat Cairo's city to it.

Yellow East might be jealous of its colour being stolen, though. It's probably faster to get going than CrabIron would be, with several forests available to chop in the area, even though it doesn't claim new food and slows down Ubaryd's development accordingly. Assuming that's the plan, do we expect to be able to get a Library and Lighthouse built in Ubaryd before the rice gets handed off? Things are progressing nicely on our northeast border, but there's still so much to do.

It's really a shame that our home-grown religion has so doggedly refused to spread naturally, and we haven't found opportunity to get into OR. I guess Yuris must have bit the bullet and built a monastery or two. I imagine we will probably get into OR whenever we have a GA, but we will be well on our way to Astro by then and I'm not sure how much time we'll really have to spread it. Maybe after Astro we wind up letting Buddhism spread, build Shwedagon Paya, and adopt Free Religion (probably not).

It's curious to me that Yuris and maybe Bing can get up to the polar ice lands without Astro, but we need Astro to get there. That doesn't quite seem right. Maybe when Skullcup or CrabIron expand borders we'd find a way through to them.

[Tarkeel]

I like yellow over grey, mainly for the advanced vision, but that fish is also very nice. In the event of a war with Cairo, it's either a crumple-zone or staging area IMHO.

[scooter]

Yesterday I offered Yuris OB. He re-offered them.





I am now at route capacity again without paying SD 14gpt. Instead I'm boosting the commerce of his top geographic competitor. Don't try to extort me. Anyway, this had a very nice impact on finances.





This was with science turned off, though most other players were saving $$ too. GNP shoots up to 270 at 100%. I'm back to avoiding binary science in order to slightly mask my possible output - I teched at 30% slider this turn and will likely finish MC next turn around 70-80%. Everyone except SD was saving gold this turn. I generate 106gpt at 0%, while Yuris is 57gpt, Cairo is 51gpt, and Bing is 56gpt. Of course it's possible someone else is also > 0% science, but it seems unlikely as those numbers sound about right to me. There wasn't a lot of interesting domestic happenings this turn, and I finally got Yuris' graphs this turn, so let's do a look at all our graphs.





Food is very consistent. I have a near constant 20-30F lead while the other 4 are all pretty equal. My happy constraints have had weird effects here. It's prevented me from ballooning cities vertically, but it's resulted in me doing more commerce-related infra whipping. My economic situation has massively improved over the last 15 turns or so as a result of all this.





Two things really stick out here. First, you can see Bing's Golden Age of course. However the more noteworthy thing is the production from Yuris. I strongly suspect he's gone heavily into lumbermills having gotten Metal Casting very early. In addition, his super cheap Forges are also probably factoring in quite a bit here. Honestly I think he's in a really strong position given he's also shrined. I would peg him as second place right now. I hope to get similarly positive responses from him. If I don't, I may have to reconsider in 10T time whether I want to keep letting him have trade routes with me.


Given that SD was negotiating so harshly and Yuris signed OB, I sent him a fish-for-fish as a soft entry. He's going to want to use Samurai soon. He probably does not want to come after me given my population and PRO, but he'll want a safe border to go elsewhere. I probably get a little less out of that, but it may free me to do some northern Border Adjustments if necessary. Though it may not be necessary, hard to say yet.






The Bing GA is more noticeable here. You can also see the one turn I turned on the jets with tech to complete Compass a few turns back.





Nothing particularly interesting here except for Cairo running even lighter on military than the rest of us. If Yuris and/or SD do look his way, we may be able to get WhaleIsland after all. Just play the long game there. (Half-serious)


In general, I think this graph is largely a consequence of everyone having more cities to settle still. I am the city leader by a fair margin, and I still have 4-5 more spots earmarked. I don't exactly think I claimed WAY more than what is "mine" here, so I suspect everyone else has at least 5-6 more to settle. So there's very little incentive towards conflict right now for anyone. Even Yuris is still a few expensive techs away from Samurai.

[scooter]

Also my bad on making that dot Yellow as well. I don't know how I did that. But I agree that's the spot to settle. Workers complete the Spice next turn, and then I'm going to ferry over 1-2 in advance to chop Banana Jungle which should be just enough time to pickup the settler.

[Zed-F]

Good to see our economy improving and doing so faster than our rivals, generally. We still have a total researched beaker deficit to Bing but if we are catching up it should be manageable. I guess it gives us a bit more flexibility as regards our next tech after MC. I still don’t see advantage to getting Monotheism while we are still building MoM, so the safest choice is probably still Machinery to improve lumber mills & unlock crossbows. However, since we have marble now, it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to investigate the Aesthetics line, if we think we want to take the time to build a second wonder.

Once we do get Machinery, is it more important to go toward Optics or Construction-Engineering first? The former buffs our domestic routes, insuring us against the need to open borders, gives us Caravels for defense & to scout Astro lands, and is less expensive overall, but might not be hugely profitable if we already have a lot of open borders except insofar as it prepares the way for Astronomy. The latter allows us to build castles to get more routes, but is a bigger upfront investment in beakers and hammers. I have up to this point been assuming we want Optics first, but that’s predicated in part on the idea we don’t really want to depend on open borders; if we plan to have them anyway, that may alter the calculus.

Of course we will also need to come up with a GA & Astro bulb plan, which might factor into the above. I don’t think we’re quite at the point of nailing this down, though if we do go with Aesthetics we might aim for the Music artist to launch a GA. I’m not sure where we prioritize this relative to Optics and Engineering, though. And of course after MoM completes we have to decide when to get Monotheism + Monarchy relative to any potential upcoming GA.