[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[aetryn]

Yeah, I'm not going to bother with HG with neither stone or industrious. The only midgame wonder I'm seriously taking a look at is MoM I think.... we'd probably settle a filler city just SW of the capital and aim to just straight-up chop 10 forests into it

but.... while i understand that it is pretty much considered one of the power wonders even after the CtH nerf, i'm not sure i fully understand why? we probably can only boost 2 golden ages with it, so in 8 extra GA turns we'd have to make up 300 hammers (marble) for it to pay for itself, so working an average of 300/8 = 33 tiles with at least one hammer - it could happen, but not by the time we hit calendar i don't think, and i'd guess the hammer investment doesn't pay off in most cases until somewhere in the second boosted GA. and then 8 extra turns of GA commerce is significant obviously but in SP it never seems to amount to more than like one tech tops (although the logic could be different in MP when most of everyone's income is going to city maintenance so a fixed percentage increase of raw commerce represents a larger percentage beaker increase?). it seems like it will clearly be a net positive over its lifespan, but waiting for 2 GAs might represent, like, a 50-turn payoff horizon... is that really likely to be better than the opportunity cost?

i shouldn't say this out loud but i have a horrible fear that gingac is about to found a religion in that border city and culture-crush us. if that happens with us having committed to peace for the time being i might cry. or i might uncommit to peace lol. it would certainly piss me off enough that i imagine it's considered an Aggressive Foreign Policy Move to do that kind of thing, hopefully of the sort they would want to avoid so as to not further antagonize us lol

Unless Ginger only has one non-capital city, there's no guarantee it will go here (and in fact will tend to go to the largest non-capital city, so probably his other city if he has one). Given that he can't control it, and that Ginger's combo has no happiness troubles, researching a tech he doesn't need on the slim chance of messing with us culturally seems like a very low percentage play, and I wouldn't expect him to do it, at least not for that reason.

The idea with MoM is you try to get 3 GAs out of it. Between the barrenness of this map and the amount of forests we've already chopped, that's unlikely for us in that timeframe (you probably need a few wonders to generate some extra GPP for you to get to 3 GAs before Nationalism). Bing managed it easily enough in PB72 but then he built half the wonders available, including terrible ones.  Without a lot of spare food running specialists is going to be ultra painful on this map.

[ljubljana]

he does have another city - everyone we have met is on 3 cities right now (except us i guess)

i see. so if we have no realistic prospect of getting 3 GAs is MoM considered not worth it? i agree that there's pretty much no way that's going to happen here lol

given that nobody has founded a religion yet i wonder if we shouldn't just be trying to oracle monarchy (and flip to hed rule with anarchy).... seems ridiculous with sumeria around but apparently they are not really pushing for priesthood with any alacrity, and it's not like we won't have the forests right

[aetryn]

he does have another city - everyone we have met is on 3 cities right now (except us i guess)

i see. so if we have no realistic prospect of getting 3 GAs is MoM considered not worth it? i agree that there's pretty much no way that's going to happen here lol

given that nobody has founded a religion yet i wonder if we shouldn't just be trying to oracle monarchy (and flip to hed rule with anarchy).... seems ridiculous with sumeria around but apparently they are not really pushing for priesthood with any alacrity, and it's not like we won't have the forests right

I mean, there's denial value also, but in a 10 player game when we've pushed other things? I wouldn't rule it out, but it doesn't look super promising for us at the moment. We can reassess when we see if we're first to Calendar and have any realistic shot of getting it.

[ljubljana]

with more optimization i'm fairly sure we can complete it literally on the turn hoshoryu expands borders..... that seems kinda plausible right? how late does this thing usually fall? and ofc it is a gd beautiful place to get 8 culture per turn

and if we fail, failgold will carry us to monarchy most likely

[ljubljana]

well



hed rule helps, but only really at the first 4 cities for food supply reasons, and it requires us to grow onto plains riverside cottages. idk how to assess the value of that tile - it seems reasonably strong economically in the long-term but it totally murders our food supply and stops us from whipping.... well, basically at all D: i guess we need, like, one or two more happy than we have right now very badly to get the popcaps to like, 7. but maybe if our four strong cities end up working, like, 3 res, 3 grass cottages, and growing onto and whipping off some marginal plains farms, we'll be in a better long-term position by virtue of actually expanding more lol

[ljubljana]

compare following a normal tech path:



fine ok i will do pottery -> currency i am bummed but convinced lol

other important learning from this sim is that speed to founding at the gold (NOT necessarily roading to it) and getting a monument in there is the key to fiscal solvency... but it's not like we can do that without roading down to defend it...? ew. that and i'm seriously starting to feel this early academy idea, most of these cities are just ROUGH from a commerce standpoint lol

[ljubljana]

still no monument, yes? then i will let kirishima's complete

[ljubljana]

Turn 52 - Zululand

west:



i am choosing to chop SW forest first as it's the most exposed and could in theory deny GT cover when moving in to attack. unsure if i will send the chariot forward to scout/terrify GT or keep it back as a sentinel for the workers. it would be very fun to annoy GT but it would also cost us money and worsen relations w a neighbor i GUESS

after chop, worker will make our first cottage (!!!) on grass SE of hoshoryu. 5t buddhism shot was tempting...... ohhhh boy was it tempting. but i am DISCIPLINED in this game dang it (i mean, not really but maybe for this turn). pottery in 3 when we're back to 100% science which is just in time

east:



kirishima nervously finishes the monument, current plan is to overflow into the ikhanda. hopefully building something here that is NOT military will give ginger at least someee pause about going into buildup mode. although we will have to see what's in that city..... if they try to undergarrison it with, like, just one axe or something i reserve the right to still attempt an eating

not sure if i should give them another 10t of peace after this one wears off or not. on the one hand it will reduce tensions and hopefully convey a lack of urgency about building up. on the other hand....it will reduce tensions and make them waste less time on military builds :D they do have a few warriors poking around which could be reeeeally annoying to our chopping workers so i MIGHT exercise forbearance for that reason (ugh i guessss)

kirishima would really like to whip the granary at size 4 obviously. but it depends on the ginger sitch - if we need more units then we need more units (and we will get more units)

center:



after i put a safety turn into the chariot, we are JUST, to the penny, still ok to get this worker in takakeisho in 2t. absolutely just lucked out there, no skill involved. after that, well..... i am tempted by another worker to chop and then help road to our copper site, then the settler. kirishima will whip the chariot as soon as it hits size 3 i think, and overflow into worker, ginger permitting. we need to figure out which of these cities is going to squeeze out the SECOND settler for the gold spot. it is very urgent but also very inconvenient for everyone who might be a possible answer lol

[ljubljana]

we gotta figure out precisely what turn ginger's city is growing to size 2 so theoretically if we attack it will not autoraze. but i have a dog on me so i cant do it rigjht now :shrug:

[aetryn]

No need to do anything aggressive with your military. They'll see it in power rating. Better if they can't guess exactly what you have by showing them specific units, or where it might be located. In particular, chariots aren't good on defense so we'd probably prefer our opponents to read it as possibly Impi instead (though they may well know we don't have copper yet - about that, how close are we to copper?) Remember what Sun Tzu says about remaining formless to our enemies?

And let's not needlessly annoy other players. Don't do a small harm. Appear innocuous and friendly until we're ready to go for the kill. Bullying sounds appealing but you never know when it will push the opponent past the point of rational decision-making and they tank their game and ours. I'd recommend just staying at peace (not war/peacing) with Ginger when the peace runs out. When we have a chance, we or they can signal peaceful intentions and by leaving the peace intact we let our trade bonus build up, for when that matters (if nothing else, it means Ginger will value OB with us more than if we continually blow it up by war declarations, which might make him more prone to keep OB with us by attacking the other direction).  But if you decide you absolutely want to kill Ginger early, go all in and do it, no half measures. I'd still probably recommend waiting for a later, more decisive tech period when our economy can actually handle bringing their cities on board without crashing. Ideally that'd give us some time to make some diplomatic overtures and possibly set up a 2 on 1, which is usually a more productive way to kill someone as long as you get a decent split.

Happiness-wise, it seems like we need to try to reach for the gold, and was there a silver in range? If we can get gold and silver, suddenly forges look real good at Metal Casting. We can also consider taking a run at the Monotheism religion (I'm assuming Polytheism and Meditation will fall very soon), but we should really stay focused on Currency as much as we can, since it unlocks a free 2 commerce per city, and also lets us start building markets (+1 happy, +25% gold when saving).