[SPOILERS] By the Rivers of Babylon, FIN has no effect (on krovice)

[Gawdzak]

Feel free to kill the lurker civ at anytime, it will save me the hassle to log in every turn.

Although I think I've stockpile a decent number of warriors by now...

[Krill]

novice, I'm going to get new glasses today, they managed to rush them through. Thanks for taking over at such short notice.

Rest of the report will wait until later this evening then. But I can keep on playing th turns unless you want them? I don't have any issues with you logging in, I just thought you were busy with life and didn't want ot pick up what is essentially a timesync right now.

[novice]

timesync

Another city name!

I appreciate you playing the turns, I'd rather not spend the time if I can opt not to.

[Krill]

You want to go and propose that as an Eggcorn on the database site?

No worries, I'm happy to keep on with the turns.

[Krill]

Next ten cities:




PE has a big issue: it can’t industrialize due to lack of health. Even after building an aqueduct and a garden, it’s going to grow to size 20 with Bio and would only have 3 surplus health. So unless we get Medicine (hospital), Refrigeration (supermarket), Ecology (recycling centre), or Combustion (publis transport) can’t get the factory unless sticking at size 19 and suck up the 2 lost food. Which is reasonable, if we get Plastics for the hydroplant.

Growing would give an effective increase when building units of 11 hpt. A factory would give an effective increase of 15hpt. Powerplant would give the increase of 30hpt. I suppose this is just a good reason to get Combustion.

The only other question with PE is whether to build West Point here. If we add the two GG to RC, then that city makes 11XP, but 16 with WP so another GG would allow 4 promotion units from RC, but putting WP into PE allows a second city to make 3 promotion units. So...two 3 promo units a turn or one 4 promo unit a turn.





MP will be giving up the watermill and workshop to PM, so could pick up the mine and then start growing again on coast I suppose, or steal the ice hill from the southern city (whatever it’s called). MP is going to be building boats for a while, but emergency inf drafts are good as well. Whatever works best with the new island cities i suppose, MP is just going to fit in around those needs.





CL has two options: once Bio lands, it can grow 6 pop sizes.to pick up 2 more hills (20hpt more into boats). Or it can just sit at size 13. Depends on what BGN does, building a grocer is never a concern for me at this stage of the game. CL also makes 38hpt, so potentially a viable place to industrialize but I kinda doubt it. After rails go down, I imagine that enough spare workers to windmill the hills may allow the growth option a bit more easily.

If it looks like BGN isn’t going to do anything, then there is a real chance that I just grow the city for score purposes so our position doesn’t look as bad.





Ah Plano...the city that most benefits from rails in the entire empire. Rails will give an additional 9 base hpt. The northern plains workshop will be lost to PE, but that just means that I can transfer a pop point to the coast and then workshop the farm south of the corn. Bio would give an additional 4 food, but I think that means both the forests have to be turned into workshops or the city will grow one poop size. Personally, I think laziness is going to win on that and it can grow with a grocer.

Oh, and Plano is the only city in the empire that can 2 turn DD, it can reach 50 base hpt, and with the health limit not to bad it will definitely be industrialized.





One of the troll cities that I got bored with as a mediocre produciton city. It is growing to size 16 at present but it may make more sense to give a few of those tiles to the site 2 city to use as a draft site. As with Marsh Pit, I think that I’ll work out the micro for FtM for the site 2 city later, but right now I’m favouring working max cottages, so cottage the tundra tile, cottage 3 farms, and move a pop from an overlapping farm to an unused cottage; new pop grow onto the other cottage. Give the iron to the new city.

After the university, it would only justify having hte market and grocer then back to cheap units like the airship. At a measly 14 base hpt it can build 5 turn airships or 2 artillery in 15 turns...maybe wealth, thinking about it. Although airships are just too important…





I’m not sure if BA is my favourite city, but it’s a damned good example of how FIN loves those out of the way fishing villages. The bank should be done just in time for turning off research. Growing that last pop point should not have an effect from unhealthiness as a harbour should complete shortly after growth. BA has such little production but solid commerce that it needs to get the commerce modifiers down first; the forge isn’t even worth it IMO. If we need hammers that much we just liquidate the pop into drafts. LIterally everything in this city can be turned into a draft, so by my count there are 5 infantry sitting here giving us beakers and gold every turn.





Mute Point now has a close neighbour over the waters. Commodore would come up with some poignant historical article explaining the growth of the city. My answer is simple: I’ve been too bored to work out anything special here so I’ve let it work coastal tiles and the iron and building beaker multipliers whilst researching.

Should really have built a bank rather than this library because the bank would be finished in time for turnign off tech but hte library will sit there ensuring no cultural revolts to the great lurker civ. I took the deer back after taking this screenshot, it’ll grow another pop point...but it will actually just go onto a draft cycle when AL comes in.

If/when we kill the lurkers, it can use the last two coastal tiles.

I htink that not working the iron comes out ahead with a draft cycle. Over 10 turns that’s 70 base hammers with rails, due to rounding without a forge it would give 80 hammers. Working the coast gives 30 commerce and 20 food; the commerce is worth 45 gold or beakers whichever whay you cut it as rounding is national. The extra food doubles the net fpt from 2 to 4 which means that drafting occurs at almost double the rate and pretty much every 11 turns compared to about 22 working hte iron. Which means that one additional inf appears out of thin air every 10 turns which is 140 hammers. So yeah, I think not working the iron is right.

Just sucks can’t give the iron to site 8 and also settle site 8 on hte oil...but as you can’t get trade routes through ice I suppose that means settling 1N is the right call if we do not believe that BGN is going to be cutting oil at the end of every turn.





Dominaria, the last hiding place of Cheater hater before he magically teleported to Greece.

If we give up the marble and fish to site 9, then it only needs to grow one more pop size to work all of the coastal tiles. Dominaria is a worse draft city than mute point; I believe that giving up the fish to site 9 is better to enable site 9 to draft as site 9 has a lower pop level, still it is likely to need to emergency draft if BGN comes through with a naval task force and makes it past Marsh Pit.





SS, moving into the era of 200 hammer boats, is going to have trouble keeping up the output. However, donating the grassland workshop to FR works because FR has a a forge so a better hammer modifier. SS can pick up an extra coastal tile, and irrigate the eastern plains workshop to hit +4hpt and an easy 10 turns draft cycle. And slowly build the DD that this ironclad is going to morph into at a crappy 12hpt adjusted.





Willow Lake is still the city with the most culture in the game, but not for long if TBS has his way. Once the granary is completed in the new site 1 cities, it can swap the sheep for that workshop and stagnate at size 18 with 42 base hpt. health can afford to industrialize, and it’s not a coastal city inasmuch that it is not capable of building boats so I see no reason not to build the factory. Joey has kindly started to railroad hills for us, which I think is payment in kind for keeping BGN away from HAK for him.

I think after this artillery, then it’s time to fit in the bank and grocer prior to switching off tech. then prep the aqueduct and garden to max overflow into a factory. The university probably needs building for cultural reasons though. Figure that stuff out later.

[Krill]

Final part of hte T222 turn report.




New junk city. Someone can go and argue over the lighthouse and granary stuff again. I don’t really care. Will get a granary next then sit on a draft cycle, giving the hill back to Marsh Pit. it’s a trade route city, nothing more.





You see that entry above? I’m too lazy to copy/paste it here and change the name to Cold Slaw.





How many ways are there to say trade route and draft city? I suppose this city needs a new name and it acts as a good forward base for airships. It’ll also be one of hte first cities to get a couple of inf because it’t a bitch to reinforce when this place turns into a warzone.





Site 1, renamed to Shoe In because it’s a shoe in for my greatest lapse of concentration. It builds a granary, then it steals the sheep, then it builds a lighthouse and hey presto it’s yet another draft city. I’m pretty sure that in this area there is going to spare food so some drafting in additional cities is probably going to occur on an irregular basis. And that basis is defined by the excess happyness in SI eating up the extra drafts. With a barracks, and not staying at size 8 ever, SI can suck up 4 extra drafts.

Question is how fast it can get up to speed. There is an argument that we should have revolted into US a few turns ago and used it to buy the basic infrastrucutre in the new junk cities. I don’t quite buy that due to the potential immediate need for boats and units to react to BGN getting to destroyers. I think that growing to size 2 now might make more sense, but I’m not interested in doing thet micro right now.





Anchors Away swapped over to the fish and gave the deer back last turn. Farm the tundra, windmill the hills, as I said previously, and draft. Lighthouse unneeded. Granary, barracks and wealth. That’s it.





Solidly fifth in stats from the GA, but more realistically 6th. The gifting of units has started to take a toll on the power graph, and we are just in a position where the only units we can build are artillery and DD, so don’t yet have a fully Industrial era army. Doesn’t matter, just keep on building what I can.GNP isn’t going anywhere. MFG is skewed because of the GA, and crop yield shows you just how limited the extent of the lands are.

And so ends the T222 turn report. All 6,300 words of it.

I wrote less for my dissertations. Fuck this.

[Krill]

The final final section that I wanted to write though, was about how to view the final race to the finish line. Most of this is not new in any way shape or form, but some of it is another explanation for why BGN is being punished for lack of focus.

I’ve started to visualise the race in terms of clocks, and each player has their own clock that is ticking down to 0 as each turn passes.

TBS has a clock that is linked to a culture victory. For the purposes of this metaphor, I’m going to assume that TBS is the player closest to victory. TBS doesn’t have to interact with anyonme else. He just needs to not lose three key cities. This culture clock needs to stopped from counting down by the players that still have clocks running in the race to win. That’s rarely going to be more than 2 other players regardless of hte number of players in the game.

In this instance, those players are Old Harry+Fintourist, players formerly known as OldTourist (OT), and BGN.

OT are running the second clock, using the space victory as their goal. If TBS is stopped from attaining cultural victory, then they supplant him as the players closest to winning as the space clock is the clock closest to zero. Now TBS can be stopped by anyone, but only those that have a vested interest instopping him have any reason to do so: those that aren’t going to win the game should invest resources elsewhere to basically do something else. Not relevant what, just do something else.

So OT have an interest in stopping TBS but also know that if they are successful, they need to defend themselves from the player running the final clock, the domination clock. Now BGN, having that final clock, could arguably have a vested reason to attack TBS and stop him, because the resource gained from stopping TBS should help in rolling over further civs to speed up the domination clock. OT may also find that by not attempting to stop the culture clock, they have additional resources to speed up the space clock, potentially surpassing the culture clock.

Right now I’m not 100% certain whom is closest to winning, but the obfuscation of this fact should help OT, because if they have confidence in winning ahead of culture, then their refusal to intervene with TBS may be enough to force BGN into action against two targets at once when those clocks near zero. It will definitely force him to act sooner than he would otherwise hope to do.

But anyway, to the slighlty newer stuff. That third clock, that domination clock, that one can’t be stopped, almost by definition. The player that chases domination has the resources to fight everyone at once, that’s the whole point of that victory. That’s a clock that isn’t sped up by tech per se, it approaches zero every time a player grows their empire.

So everytime a player has the opportunity to grow their empire, they should take it. The sooner it happens, the sooner the new cities can start regrowing and providing more troops that wind up the domination clock so it ticks that little bit quicker.

And BGN didn’t do that. He fucked about and choose to focus on fighting a stupid little side war for no reason after it become obvious that he couldn’t win it quickly. If he had focussed on taking over wetbandit and HAK, and at least splitting Ruff, then he could have jumped onto AT and CH before he died, then rolled Plako. The only point that would have forced him to interact with OT, is that if he had taken over Dreylin and Pindicator first, or defended those lands from OT aggression in the first place, then he could have stopped OT from decreasing the number of turns on their clock. We are about 30 turns on from the start of our war, those are 30 turns that BGN gifted to his opponents. That’s all him, although I’m going to take credit in taunting him into wasting more time.

And woo 7000 words.

[Krill]

Been thinking a bit more about how this game is going to end, and I think there is a scenario where it ends really quickly: If TBS loses a culture city and he has not created a back up city (he should have), then the game is a striaght race between BGN to Dom and OT to space. If BgN isn't going to fight OT because he's that insanely pissed off at us, then the game could realistically be called at that point IMO.

Question is if people realise it.

[Krill]

Finish Bio end of turn at 50%; set research to 100% to overflow out as much as possible, plus next turen is hte last turn of the GA. I think that Assembly Line will be a 3 turn tech given the overflow, I think there will just be enough gold left with a small amount of welath building. Then we can start doing a few drafts here and there and start sending units out to defend cities and airships around the map.

Also offered ceasefire to Ruff; if he accepts I think we can offer him OB? BGN is apporoaching the point where we needs to actually doing something rather than sit and home and fall behind in tech.

[Krill]

Now have a ceasefire with Ruff, I offered him OB with the prerequisite peace treaty this turn.

So it seems like I've found an instance where ceasefire is actually useful.