[SPOILERS] Kaiser and Adrienier are leading Japan to a good bowl of Ramen

[AdrienIer]

What do you think in regard to the scouting direction?

Warrior goes east, scout N or NW.
I'm leaving for my exams and won't be back home until saturday night, so I don't think I'll post any more before then.

[Kaiser]

Thanks for your feedback and bonne chance avec tes examen

[Kaiser]

As posted in the organization thread, I clicked a couple minutes ago on the Lurker thread and read a half sentence before realizing I was in the wrong thread.

I was reading a post where there was something written like this:

"Do you realize that all [scouted?] West besides England"

I am not sure about the verb, as I was mostly skimming over it, but I believe it could have been a post about the scouting directions of the players.
Please advise how to proceed, as I am know spoiled with that information.

[Kaiser]

Turn 15



Starts with us finishing the research for Pottery, which we need to harvest the Pwheat



We are currently leading the science score based on more researched technologies, this means that Bacchus and Ichabod either research a technology this turn or are researching more expensive technologies for the moment. A rush for BW or for Writing is realistic, especially as they both might have a higher science rate than me. If they finish techs this turn, then they have the same rate as we have until now and we will be in the lead next turn.



Suboptimal built his Scout or another unit finally and took back the lead for the domination category. Maybe he had a damaged unit that regenerated to full health last turn.



Rowain follows up with his first civic and pushes us to third position for the moment. However we finished Pottery this turn and thus will get back into the lead next turn if Ichabod and him do not finish civics or technologies this turn. On top of that we will be size 3 at the end of the turn and have nearly finished our second civic before Suboptimal and Bacchus finish their first.
I am not sure how Suboptimal managed not to have finished a civic yet, as he was clearly getting at least 4.8 culture a couple turns ago. It is curious for me that he stopped getting that culture. I am expecting the first civic from both of them very soon.



Let us have a look at our growth plan. Our assumption of 29 +food for our city was apparently correct.



Welcome at size 3 on turn 15. Sadly my calculations were slightly off, because I forgot to deduct the loss of the amenity multiplicator of 5% for yields and 10% for +food. So currently we are only getting 1 +food and 9 cogs out of our capital. However we can still stick to the short term plan as we should manage chop the Slinger on turn 21 into a Settler the following turn.

We will regrow to 3 on turn 23 and I do not believe we should delay the settler on turn to hide it. Besides a potential, but in my opinion unlikely, neighbor in the East, there should be no threat to our settler. However we are gambling a bit for a good city location at C2? as the Slinger will not have a lot of time to Scout for the Slinger and I am more or less set on settling there by now.


C2? is already quite decent for settling judging from what we see right now with its hills to the SE, the farmable area to the W including the FP and the district area to the SW. Let us just hope that there is more than a plain desert to the NE of that location, so we have some worthwile tiles there as well and we have a strong city location. I favor this position as it is a fast 2nd city and we are likely able to put it down 4 to 5 turns before the others will have their 2nd city out.



Our scouting gives us some more information about crater lake and Jerusalem. We definetively need to explore the area between Kikyo and Jerusalem to get a better understanding for C3? spot and potential city locations there. I fear that Jerusalem blocks many potential locations with its position.
At crater lake there seems to be a nice settling spot directly W of it, offering decent access to hills to the W and SW while providing farmable lands to the SE. We expect the player over there to be either W or N so we continue in a NW direction.

[Kaiser]

Turn 16 - a small step for our Scout, a huge step for Japan




I normally start my turns with analyizing the international situation. As you can see on the score overview, our score was updated to 14 bringing us clearly in the lead.

Furthermore Suboptimal finished CoL last round, now only Bacchus is lagging behind on it probably because he has no culture source at all. But even then he should have landed CoL on turn 15 with his base culture of 1.4 at 1 pop. He already has his 2nd pop since turn 8. There is something curious going on which I cannot explain for the moment.

I went on to analyze some more in detail before moving our units but decided to redo my analyis later on, please see below why.



Meeting Englands Scout in a difficult situation gives us the Eureka for writing which gives us an Envoy with La Venta in turn (look at the small checked bubble in the lower right). Now we gain +2 faith per turn and will have our pantheon on turn 28 latest.

The fact that the Scout is NW of Genova (which Ichabod met first, I confirmed that but took no screenshot) and directly next to a barb camp will give some hints to mull about.Being next to the barb camp on a hill probably means that he was not aware of the barb camp before climbing that hill, this in turn means that he came from a similar direction than me or alternatively a SW direction to be stuck at that position.


Typically Ichabod would like to avoid passing through charted territories, so, assuming the scout made contact with Genova on turn 11 (when Ichabod rose to first at Science Victory), he had 4 rounds of movement since then. As there are some hills W of Genova, I am inclined to believe that his Scout turned NW after finding Genova and it took him some time to get here.

This in turns means he came either from a westward direction, but on a very southern route, or from the North. However if he came from the North, he would have either passed the barb camp, as it is near a coast tile (look at the cliffs on the DH E of the barb camp) or he would have very likely found Stockholm a couple turns before me.

As a conclusion I believe he came from the W and I will send my Scout in that direction to figure out where exactly he is located. Due to the likely southern route of the Scout I assume that Ichabods capital might be slightly to the South as well.

4 turns ago, my Scout was still at Kumasi, so it is likely that Ichabod's capital is at a similar distance from Genova than my capital is from Kumasi. This would mean it is about 5-6 tiles W of Genova, we should be able to check that spot in 2 turns from now. Afterwards the Scout will check this area shortly before pathing N to see how the coast looks like over there.

Depending on Ichabods distance to Crater Lake, it might well become disputed area and we might consider sending our first settler in this direction between Genova and Kumasi to be able to settle Crater Lake 3rd. However we currently greatly lack scouting information from the E and C2? is likely strategically important as I expect Suboptimal to be close by to the NE and a potential contender for the lands close to our capital.
He met at least one of his religious city states, which I firmly believe were met by him now that I can see Ichabod's faith gains, on turn 5, so his Warrior was maximum 11 tiles from his capital away at that point in time, more likely less due to the landscape.



Ichabeth is apparently sceptical about our meeting.

Ichbod has spent 60 gold somewhere, likely buying a 2nd ring tile at this capital.

He has hooked up Silk, which means he has reserached Irrigation, which in turn is impossible at the moment as he has only researched on tech and Irrigation needs pottery as a prerequisite. On top of that, he should be gaining +1 gold for a plantation, which is not showing in his currently availble G/t and I will discard the possibility of him having built something which costs 1 G/t at this point in the game as I do not even have an idea what he could have build.
So I assume he has settled on the Silk resource, gaining the +1 culture and apparently gaining Silk as a resource as well, although this should only take place when he will research Irrigation. Is this a bug or a feature I was not aware of?




We could consider sending a delegation bringing 25 gold to Ichabod, we can see at the bottom left which information we would get for the moment and which we would get after sending the delegation. For the moment the only important information we could gain are religions founded, cities founded and government changes. All of which we are already informed of or can deduce by D&C, thus we will not send a delegation for the moment.
In the next 50 turns we want to know about declarations of war and denounciations as well. But we can have a trade route by then instead to gain that level of information if we deem it necessary. This would also give us important information about his trade deals then, which might give us a clue about the political situation.







Here are some screenshots showing Ichabod's science, cultural and faith rates. This confirms many things I was assuming before, especially that Suboptimal likely found both religious city states if it was one player, as Ichabod has only 2.1 faith. He likely has found a religious city state or is working a natural wonder for +2 faith.



By seeing his domination score, I realized that score is apparently the 3rd differntiator for the domination victory, as we both posses the
- same amount of original capitals
- same amount of military strength
- I have a higher score

This in turn means, that the others all have a higher military strenght than me and thus have build at least a Slinger instead of the Scout or even a 2nd unit by now. Maybe they have bad luck with incoming barbarians?


Sadly I did not take an overview shot of the current state, the warrior went further NE and is next to a river he will cross next round to continue E.

I have made some plans in my spreadsheet until turn 50 and it looks good to land Political Philosphy around that time if we get the Inspirations we need, which actually is only foreign trade which is not in our hand for the moment. I will give a detailed overview on turn 20.

[Kaiser]

Turn 17 - Moar



We start the turn with finishing Craftsmanship and bad news in terms of a barb Scout to the SWSW of our capital. I fear that he will mess with our Builder plans.



Internationally Bacchus caught up with CoL and now all players have researched their first civic. Ichabod landed a tech last turn as well, which could be Irrigation but I still believe that it is a bug. Again I will have to delay the remaining reporting for later due to moar international events.



Moving my Scout W reveals Yerevan and Englands borders to the SW. Yerevan actually has a very manageable quest, so we will land that one at some point as well.



Moving further to the SW gives us little more information about England's capital





Our Warrior however crosses the river and meets Rowain's Warrior heading in a SE direction. This could mean that he was coming from the NW and thus Rowain will be likely in that direction. After confirming shortly the influencing CIVs in La Venta and Jerusalem, it gets clear that it is not Rowain having met them first.

Here is a current overview of currently available and deduced/expected information (in red)


As you can see, Rowain is exceeding the expect gold amount by 48, meaning he either is working a gold tile, he has met a commercial city state 12 turns or less ago or a combination of the two. His G/t is at 10 indicating, that it is likely a combination of the two and thus he probably met a commercial city state around turn 12.

His military power shows that he forewent (is that correct?) a Scout in favour of a Slinger.
His Science per turn indicates that he is working a +1 science tile.
His Culture is confirming that Bacchus is really low on culture input as we deduced from his long time in achieving the first civic.




We switch Discipline for Agoge to get the multiplier for our Slinger production and continue woith our plan.



However, in our capital, we change the build order slightly to react on the barb Scout, due to starting the Slinger earlier, we can chop it earlier and use it to defend against the Scout if it will come closer. I moved the Builder on the Pwheat, which probably was a mistake as he would have been better positioned in the capital to react better to the Scouts movement. Next turn we will gain the 2nd Pwheat tile with our capital.

[Kaiser]

Turn 18 - even moar



Sadly the barbarian Scout decided to interfere with our planning and I had to withdrew the Builder into the city. If he stays around, we hopefully can still move onto the forest for the chop next round instead as long when he is not threatening that position.
However this means we will stay an additional round on 2 pop in comparison to our previous plan. Consecutively this will delay the Warrior and the Builder afterwards by one round each and thus also delay the time until we will be able to hook up the Silver at C2? for getting the amenity bonus in both cities.

The barb Scouts movements will be quite important for our next turns decision and if stays around it will threaten our development quite heavily, let us hope he runs away, even if it means he will bring some friends in a couple rounds.



Internationally Suboptimal caught up by finishing another tech, Ichabod is the only one still at 2 pop as all others caught up to me last round population wise.



Rowain has finshed a Warrior last round now having a respectable force of 2 Warriors and 1 Slinger. This turn we also had even moar international events ...



We not only gained the foreign trade inspiration but also found Suboptimals capital, located 12 tiles NE away from ours (might be 13 I needed to guess calc the fogged tiles) just on the border of another continent. Apparently Suboptimal of Arabia resides in Tomatin and has some nice 3 food tiles in his 2nd ring.



He is either the better poker player or is way more relaxed than Ichabeth was judging from this screen. Interestingly he has a quite odd current gold value, this coule either come because he did not gain his gold for this round or because he bought something and has some yet unknown gold income. which we cannot see anymore as he earns 5 G/t for the moment.

Here is a current overview of known and deduced (in red) income:






Ichabod's capital is currently empty and, as predicted, has been settled on silk explaining his higher culture rate as well as why he can trade silk already.
He has a pasture SW of our Scouts current position and we can consider pillaging it next turn. This would be a highly opportunistic move, gaining 25 gold and depriving Ichabod of 1 production until he is able to repair it, however we this will force us to declare war. There is the potential that he already used alle his Builder charges and thus we could theoretically plunder 2 other tiles, heavily delaying him, however it is more likely that his Builder is still around for the moment and he might keep it to fastly repair any damage done.

From his domination rating, we know that he had a Scout and a Warrior last round. The Scout is to the E and at least 2 rounds of traveling away, his Warrior's location is currently still unknown. Likely he is Scouting the W or N with him at the moment. Besides the chance of him finishing a unit next round or the round after, we should be able to get away with it unharmed and might even prompt him to call his Scout back hindering his exploration substantially.

We want to race Ichabod for the C4? spot as it is one of the few promising spots for us to settle so far, so delaying him is of a high priority, however I am not sure if that is the right call from a meta perspective, as it currently looks like we are wedged in between Ichabod and Suboptimal and thus should try to secure a flank with good relations.
I just hope that Adrienier finished and passed his exams already as I really would like to get some feedback on this topic. In any case, bonne chance Adrienier!



From a continental perspective I have good news, Englands capital is on the same continent than ours and our so far located city spots, meaning that his Red Coats won't get +10 strength when fighting a war on our turf. Suboptimals capital is on Kazhakhstania I would rate it 50/50 that Rowains capital is either on Kazhakhstania as well or on our continent. The best case would be if Rowain would be on a different continent than us, as he will only be able to exploit his bonus for defensive purposes then.
Bacchus is the only player so far which has not found anyone else yet. The fact that we alreay have met 3 opponents leads me to worry about us being in a more central position than I would like. I really need to check what is E of our Captial and I just hope it is not Bacchus lurking there.

[AdrienIer]

I'm back now. I think the simplest way for me to give more detailed opinions is if I have access to the save. Right now I don't even know where the city site you call C4? is.

[RefSteel]

His military power shows that he forewent (is that correct?) a Scout in favour of a Slinger.

Yep; according to my Dictionary That's Older Than I Am[tm], both "forewent" and "forwent" are acceptable spellings (of the past tense of the word meaning "to abstain or refrain from; do without; give up, renounce, or resign.")*

Wheat, on the other hand, is spelled without a "p" (unless there's a joke or foreign language term in there that I'm missing....)

*- I asssume you weren't asking whether you were right about what the player in question did though; on that subject, I obviously couldn't tell you if I knew - but also, as it happens, I have no idea.

[Kaiser]

Thanks fo your feedback RefSteel, that was exactly my question.

I abbreviate the tiles I use, so far I talked about the following

Pwheat - Plains Wheat
PF - Plains Forest
PFH - Plains Forest Hill
Silk - Silk (actually it is a GFSilk, Grassland Forest Silk)
FP - Floodplains
DHSilver - Desert Hill Silver (that is at C2? I will talk about it soon as it is the first amenity I want to mine)

I will make sure to update the ingame markers for you Adrienier