[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

oversight - sorry about that, i'll fix it this round

[TheArchduke]

Trying to play. If not feel free to until wednesday.

[TheArchduke]

Still that damn mod, will solve that tomorrow, please do turn at earliest convenience until I say you otherwise.

[ljubljana]

no time for a full report right now (or to update the spreadsheet - need to make a dr's appt) but big news today: your warrior reveals a tile on the island off your north coast and we get the foreign trade inspiration. that means FT will come in super fast, BEFORE the second city settler pops, and we can start boats immediately on turn 19! i highly recommend that one or both of us swap to sailing immediately to do so - japan in particular could easily end up with CS conquests as early as turn 30 now!

we also do NOT get era score from this, itself interesting bc Woden turned up w four additional ES this turn. i think that means they discovered this same continent from the other side, unless there's something about team games that i'm missing here? if so, that's great news too, woden/banzai are by far the least immediately threatening possible neighbor

note to self: use appeal lens in the west to help w barb camp scouting...

[ljubljana]

williams: looks like, from what i can tell, rankings data is available only on a team by team basis, not on a per-civ basis. is that consistent w your understanding, or am i looking in the wrong place?

meanwhile

Turn 3 - Japan



The 2f/2h/1c coffee tile is the one that triggered the Foreign Trade inspiration....and it is also in the second ring of the Portuguese plains hill plant! Definitely seeing a significant argument for this site as the 2nd city now, I think that coffee tile is probably stronger than bananas for our purposes. The exposed trade routes from that city are definitely a concern, though...

No obvious second city site for Japan though. 4SW of the capital will work well down the line, but it's a poor second city for lack of fresh water. Big decision for my warrior next turn, who could continue W or start going NW. The latter probably reveals more camp-eligible tiles faster, but runs the risk of missing the camp if it is 3W of the warrior's current position... And the former may uncover another continent for a possible ES boost, if we assume both players on our team have a continent in easy range of the start (note the edge of an island peeking out of the fog 3SW of my warrior)

With Foreign Trade now accelerated into the same timeframe as the settler pop, I am seriously considering a switch to Sailing in the next few turns, and then trying to make up for the slower holy site at the capital by building a very fast HS at a captured city-state. But maybe I will talk myself out of that when the time comes. It has a 13t research time, so I'll need to commit around turn 6. TAD, you may want to seriously consider doing the same, a city-state capture in the early turn 30s will help your growth curve a ton while making the security situation much safer. Plus, the sooner we get boat packs out, the more likely it is that we can snipe city-states ourselves that should go to the other players :D

[williams482]

williams: looks like, from what i can tell, rankings data is available only on a team by team basis, not on a per-civ basis. is that consistent w your understanding, or am i looking in the wrong place?

Huh, I did not realize that was how it worked but I guess it makes sense. That does make it trickier to get anything useful from that information, but probably still worth gathering. I'll rework the spreadsheet tomorrow.

The lack of freshwater sites for Japan is definitely troubling. I think it's more important to cover as much territory as possible than to get eyes on every possible barb camp location, so the warrior should probably go northwest.

Are you aiming to get boats out before the settler finishes?

[ljubljana]

Not before the settler, I don't think - it's theoretically possible with the fast FT but seems like too much of a slowdown on total growth curve? I'm thinking immediately after the settler makes sense, though - I can at least 4-turn boats w this capital and could have a pair (enough to kill a CS as Japan!) out by t27. FT is still going to be a 7-turn research w a monument and the boost anyways, so I think t19 is more or less exactly when it will come in and we can start boats (t10 monument = t12 CoL in my experience). On the one hand, that still feels slow to me.......but on the other, I guess it's more or less literally as fast as possible from this start, so maybe I should chill

Eh, well, at least we can see where the freshwater sites must be - I'm sure the north and NW contain at least one great second city site. I think I may be swayed to SW-NW for the warrior next turn, though, by the prospect of picking up 4 ES from a new continent. If the map is roughly symmetric, I expect the offshore island 3SW of the warrior to be as likely to be a new continent as the one NE of TAD's warrior, which WAS one. Only one opponent got 4 ES last turn, so if we weren't first to TAD's continent, we SHOULD be first to mine. That is, unless in a team game the 4 ES from being first to a continent doesn't apply for some reason, and Woden's ES this turn came from somewhere else? Would love to hear your insights on that point

lol, in the last game i finished my first bireme on turn FORTY-ONE, as phoenicia!! that there were any CS at all left to eat is honestly a minor miracle......good thing Norway was on my team in that game......

[ljubljana]

evidently my gorgeous blue Japan is actually their SECOND alternate color scheme and the least common primary color for them, requiring BOTH portugal in the game to take their white default and indonesia to take their dark red first alt. guess there are some advantages to being last in turn order after all <3

[TheArchduke]

Switch to sailing, it makes more sense with FT boosted and monument first.

[ljubljana]

Yeah, I think that's probably right unless we find the astro boost very soon as well. Delaying boats by 4t for a holy site in the capital is one thing, but if the choice is between starting boats right away on t19 or waiting for sailing research to come in on like t30, I think boats first probably makes more sense. I'll have to make up for the great prophet points somehow, but there are multiple ways to do that (worst-case i can delay boats 4+5 and the third city settler for a ~t40 cap shrine) and if i do kill an early city-state i will want a holy site first there anyways.

Should we switch Portugal to sailing too? Or do you think it only makes sense for Japan? Leaning towards both rn but i can definitely be convinced.