[2021] The Sugar Shutdown.

In a previous game Bente and Willie stopped progressing their islands at Artisan. As soon as made some New World islands with sugar fertility available, they both rushed them and their progression resumed.

In my current game I am playing with much more challenging settings and harder AI (Beryl and Hunt) so as an experiment, I decided to test the sugar theory. I rushed Artisan, got to the New World first and immediately claimed every island with sugar fertility.

Now at 11 hours, I am approaching investor and both are still on artisan. Look.

Beryl

Lady Hunt

Both have built rum distilleries but have nothing to put in them.

Normally Hunt and Beryl would be well into engineers by now, mb even investor, but both are stuck. Both want me to sell them sugar in the New World. I suspect that them moment they have even one sugar that this barrier will be lifted. I suspect that sugar is some hard coded progression requirement for the AI. I will test this later in the game when my little merchant empire has evolved past the brink of financial disaster and report, whether selling them one sugar is enough to get them moving again or if they require an island with sugar.

In the meantime, this is 2 games now where sugar has been a thing blocking AI progression. Something for you strategists and exploiters to consider.

Edit: Lady Hunt has been selling Rum in the NW now for about 4 hours, buying the sugar from Isabel presumably, (the only other person with sugar in game is me and I ain't sellin') and still no progress on her OW home island. So she has had access to everything required to progress to engineer, if she was a player, for over 10 hours. More than enough time for her to reach investor under normal circumstances. So I am convinced now. It isn't the rum. It isn't access to sugar. It is an island with sugar fertility.

(BlueByte, go away. Stop reading my posts and stealth nerfing stuff. I saw what you did to the sell price of Polyglot Scholar Rahim. I was relying on that in my current game. I managed, regardless, but - just ... idk.)

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