[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

unfortunately now that we know about the extra CS, it looks like this map is nightmarishly good for a longship-spam plan. if thrawn plays it like i would, they are roughly 5 turns away from having SIX cities, before turn 50! maybe they will take the time to do double-settler in the first two cities, maybe not (i probably would but i'm a builder...) but after that they will have either six or EIGHT cities spamming longships before the classical era. i am really really scared the other teams are going to check out and concede once they figure that out, as there is zero chance whoever is targeted can fight off the swarm on their own, probably us included...

it really says something that we're sitting here debating if we have time for ONE round of settlers before desperately trying to catch up to them. if anyone thinks i am losing us the game by daring to expand in the t50s, please speak up and i can try to shove some boats into these build orders before the greedy settlers.... though really i'm not sure too sure how i would even do that....

[ljubljana]

ok, with this as the setup, here is the basic gameplan i think i would follow as thrawn: spam longships from the start, which they have done, and kill the first two city-states with the first 6 longships, as they also apprear to have done. then, i would send 6-8 ships to go kill the other two CS, while with shipbuilding in hand (which they are <5t from i imagine), i would fan out my next 6 ships in different directions to find a target and disrupt any CS attacks in progress that i might stumble upon, meanwhile pausing ship spam for the only two econ builds i will make all game, two settlers in the first two cities. then, the swarm - with 8 cities they will make roughly 3 ships/turn, and can make 30 more in the 10t between t50 and t60 and throw them ALL at the strongest-looking opponent, who will probably just die without much available counterplay. OR, don't even bother picking ONE target - send 13 ships each at ALL the enemy teams and crush all the opposing navies before they can coordinate. once all three opponents, or even 2/3 opponents, are huddled up inside their cities with no CS and no prospect of ever getting another boat out, it'll be time to concede, and that will probably happen before t80 with thrawn closing in on 100 boats...

if this is their plan, i'm guessing we do want the three settlers now to give us 10 cities by t50 ourselves and at least a prayer of competing with thrawn's numbers (and then to switch pretty much every city onto boats pretty much forever, with me letting monumentality take the wheel and TAD possibly chilling on 5 cities for a loooong time). but....if this is their plan, there is also a good chance the game is already not winnable. if we look too spiky, they can just throw 20 longships each at the other two teams, which they can probably do by around t70, and i'm not sure what we can really do to stop them...

[ljubljana]

portugal's "open borders with all city-states" ability is about to REALLY come in clutch here...

oh and helmsman might be back on the menu

[williams482]

I think you're on the right track with cramming in those settlers now while it's probably safe-ish. We need those cities to be building ships themselves if we want a chance of keeping up with the Norwegian navy in the intermediate to long term, and we have to at least pretend there will be a long term. Japan + Crusade + #2 in dom ranking is a pretty spiky combo for right now, although the flip side of that is we should consider investing in an early missionary for TAD's cities to get Crusade in play usefully.

The lack of a policy swap off the shared boost is a known bug; Sullla ran into it in PBEM7. What's happening is that the game passes the boost from Japan to Portugal on Japan's turn, so by the time Portugal's turn rolls around again the civic technically completed the turn before (and thus the policy swap has already expired without Portugal ever having the chance to take advantage). This is obviously stupid, but at least it's anticipatable, and Japan won't need to worry about it thanks to turn order.

[williams482]

But yeah, outside of bare minimum expansion stuff (including the absolute minimum era score targets for a GA -> DA), the play is galley, galley, galley, galley, and on until Norway isn't an imminent danger to eat everyone. I really don't want to see another PBEM19, especially if this really is the last time Realms Beyond plays this stupid game.

[ljubljana]

yeah, i've definitely been doing some thinking about the missionary. it has a huge opportunity cost in the short-term, as it is worth about the same as literally a full settler in monumentality. but, you know, dying under a hail of longships would also be a pretty huge cost

i don't wanna see another PBEM19 either >:| although i am not at all convinced this will actually be the last PBEM maybe the last for thrawn, but there's no way TAD and CMF will really be able to stay away.

in that vein i am starting to get seriously worried about era score. these extra CS really are a mixed blessing - of course they are awesome for us as the one team bar Norway that is in position to capitalize, but they also mean we are only going to have about 10 turns to scout for contacts if we want to rush them as quickly as possible (and surely there's no universe in which that's not the right play, right?) i also did the math on my holy site in the third city and it's uncomfortably tight - it looks like i'll found t52 which is EXACTLY fast enough to make it at 6hpt, but it's close enough that amenities could mess it up. and then i have 7 more guaranteed ES from poliphil and the camp. but that leaves me 4 points short which requires at least 2 contacts or i miss Monumentality and TAD is in even worse shape with no religion in the bank and no district score incoming...

[williams482]

The new city will be unhappy on it's first turn, no avoiding that. Some margin is absolutely needed to cover for that.

TAD isn't getting a GA. I don't think we should even try to push for that, and the benefits of actually landing one are extremely marginal at best. The classical era is usually pretty short, and with relatively few trade districts likely to go down in that period, what is even the point? A dark age is probably also out, but if we get unlucky on contacts maybe Portugal could reach the end of the era without getting three more points?

Is it viable for us to trade the early GP for a "splendid" campus in the capital? Ancestral Hall isn't as critical for us as it normally would be because all of our expansion projects to go through monumentality. Victor isn't quite as urgent because we will be getting promotions from these city state captures, and it shouldn't take too long to hit pop 7 and crank out the district+building after (although having already committed to an early Victor makes that delay more painful).

[ljubljana]

oh, do new cities always take the amenities hit before old ones do? we will have 4 amenities from the gems by that point, but Teru + Asa + new city will demand 5 in total... unfortunately the "best" solution if so is probably a builder in the capital after the settler for chop + mine + cotton plantation but eeeeeew

hmmmm, i think a dark age for TAD is probably mutually exclusive with a GA for Japan since both depend on how many contacts we get. and worse, TAD would have to delay oligarchy to get a DA in any case. i think that's almost impossible, so we may as well try for the GA just to get 10% off on cartography, if nothing else... and TAD will probably get 2 harbors down at least unless the situation with norway is REALLY critical....which it probably will be

can we do a +3 campus at the capital? huh, i mean, i...i guess in theory we could, i didn't think of that! the thing that may not be possible is doing both that AND the +3 holy site in the new city, which requires the GP to hit +3 according to the current pinmap. but let me try moving stuff around and see if there isn't SOME solution that makes it work...

[williams482]

The new city will be unhappy on the first turn because (if memory serves) the game is too stupid to reassign amenities to the new city until the turn after it is founded. Where/how it allocates amenities after that point is unknowable and appears to have a significant random element, like the tilepicker. If it is possible to get every city to neutral or better though, that is what we'll get.

My thinking on a Portuguese dark age is that although we can't guarantee both civs get the ideal classical age bonus, it may be possible to ensure that one of them does. If striking out on contacts means Portugal can play around with Twilight Valor, and landing foreign contacts clinches Monumentality for Japan, then in either case we have something to fall back on.

[ljubljana]

yeah, i think that makes sense and would be nice re GA/DA. delaying PP for TAD would be a significant setback, but i think we're on track to get it JUST in time for the age transition anyways so it might only mean a few turns of delay. that said it's a few turns of delay on oligarchy, and also everything AFTER PP, which is scary, esp if TAD takes victor too :/