[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Turn 240

Yuri didn't take the cease fire offer. How many turns of waiting 36 hours to play do we have to put up with before a double move becomes permissible? Actually he's probably going for the "stop the war against me" AP resolution for the enforced peace...


Serpent Ford is his new culture target city, he's only got two religions and I can't see any missionaries being built. That means it'll only get +250%. And without many cottages the city is going to max out at 450 cpt.


Our previous estimate was eight Great Artists meaning he needs 18 000 culture in SF. Hornshark (the NE city) is starving to produce an artist this turn, presumably to try and pop another to get him nine GAs, meaning he needs 14 000 culture. That much culture will be about 31 turns (which is about when we're due to land our spaceship) but I wonder how quick the 4200 GPP great artist will come? I'm estimating he'll make 112 GPP next turn, so that'll take 38 turns...


An interim measure could be to concentrate our tile bombardment on Serpent Ford. I think we need a couple of turns to get all our boats and planes healed up before we do that. Grenoble, Orelans and Tours are all good places to station planes, although Yuris can have a lot of his own Fighters in the area too.


We think BGN must have over 30 commandos now (some of his Cossacks have got there too). Our second commando tank will roll out of Hazelnut eot, to add to the ~15 commando Cav we have...


BGN has an awful lot of intercept missions running against someone who doesn't seem to have any air units... One morale Knight could kill all of these units though Ruff - got any GGs due?


Demos and power

[Fintourist]

Serpent Ford is his new culture target city, he's only got two religions and I can't see any missionaries being built. That means it'll only get +250%. And without many cottages the city is going to max out at 450 cpt.

Hmm, I wonder if that's really the strongest candidate. The city only starts at 1000 culture, which is of course good for us. Although, I searched quickly and did not find an amazing alternative.

I assume you got to 450 cpt roughly like this:
(95 commerce + 17 other culture) * 3.5 + 58 hammers per turn converted to culture = 450

- If that would be a constant rate from now on TBS/Yuri would only need 28 turns from here to reach 14k culture in SF (eot268).
- However, some hammers need to be converted into academies and academies take still time to build. That pushes in my quick model the victory date back by 2 turns (eot270)
- However vol.2, 450 cpt also assumes that TBS/Yuri can maintain 100 % slider constantly, which on it's own isn't sustainable and they would need to go into heavy wealth-building mode.
- 90 % sustainable slider means that SF is ready eot272
- 80 % sustainable slider would mean eot275

Our current rough estimation for winning date is that we arrive at space eot273 so it's a close case (that 273 timing already isn't easy for us).

Btw, TBS's 2nd culture city Weldyn currently shows that it will be legendary eot274. The lower slider will impact the city as well, but Weldyn has some speeding up potential. E.g. TBS/Yuri isn't in bureaucracy at the moment.

Our previous estimate was eight Great Artists meaning he needs 18 000 culture in SF. Hornshark (the NE city) is starving to produce an artist this turn, presumably to try and pop another to get him nine GAs, meaning he needs 14 000 culture. That much culture will be about 31 turns (which is about when we're due to land our spaceship) but I wonder how quick the 4200 GPP great artist will come? I'm estimating he'll make 112 GPP next turn, so that'll take 38 turns...

I did some math here as well and your 112 GPP next turn is correct I think, but that comes with minor food surplus so the break-even GPP rate over time is higher. I did a small starvation model for the city and I think you can get 4200 GPP together in 31 turns (eot271). Are we sure that 4200 GPP is the limit that needs to be reached though? TBS is currently aiming at 2800 GPP and will produce 6 GPs before a possible new one, right (he has 2 GAs saved). I could not arrive at 4200 GPP with any calculation. Does someone now for certain how GPP limits will behave from here on? (If the limit is 4000 GPP, GA can be birthed eot269, if the limit is 4500, then it's eot273). TBS might be able to speed things up by one turn by allowing NE city to reach a lower limit while another city, which is behind in the turn order waits just below the limit and goes into full starvation mode when the NE city reaches the limit. Well that's what I would do :P

Of course the great artist also needs to travel to SF as well. Another basic question that OH surely knows; Does airlifting cost the movement points? If not TBS surely rush-buys an airport in NE city, otherwise there will be one turn needed for travelling before the culture bomb can take place.

I'm a bit hopeful that the NE city won't start a new Great Artist though. If it does Yuri definitely made a significant (not game-changing) micro mistake last turn: When you starve, starve properly, working random food resources instead of additional artists does not do you any good.


Well, as a conclusion of the above: I would not be too confident of our ability to win the game before eot273. It's turn 241 and that timing already assumes that we can get all the techs we need + build the ship in 23 turns. Of course the model I'm basing our own victory date isn't completely accurate and there are also external things affecting our timing. Thus, the new culture victory timing of TBS might be annoyingly competitive and I fear we might be forced to deal with him again, maybe not by razing a culture city, but bombarding tiles, forcing him to build units instead of wealth or something like that --> There is an annoying scenario where we need to spend time far away from our core and we leave us vulnerable to BGN when he realizes that he won't win the space race without hurting us.

Hmmm, I guess the next 1-3 turns will include healing our troops anyways so we can see a bit more about how the situation develops + hopefully test / get answer to the technical questions above.

Wall of text :P

[Old Harry]

Turn 241

Yuri kindly agreed to let us double move if we'll allow TBS the same courtesy when he gets back. This is the area in which we'll be trying to repay his kindness on turn 243-4.


This is a filler city I'm quite pleased with - it's making 14% of the EPs of the empire for just a 340 hammer outlay and now lets a production city use those hammer tiles instead.


Victory screen, demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 242 prologue

There was a price, but that seems reasonable. I vote BGN wins the PB18 award for most sporting player - would have been interesting to see if we could have won without Aluminium, but I'm not going to turn it down...


To try and find a cloud for this silver lining l I think this means he'll need to clatter his stack of commando Inf/Marines/Cossacks into our cities before the end of the game .

[Old Harry]

Turn 242

In world news: Ruff is no more and we're down to ten civs + the lurkers. Our war with TBS is the only one in the world now, so I don't see that number shrinking before the end of the game. dtay signed a defensive pact with BGN. Is it worth us asking a few people for a defensive pact or do we need to sign peace first? Also we caught one of BGNs spies on the northern continent.

Yuri started the 9th Great Artist in Hornshark - so he will only need 14000 natural culture in the city of his choice (unless we get the chance to burn an artist-producing city). We think he'll get this artist eot172/3. Serpent Ford built Research rather than the cathedral last turn, which makes me wonder if that's his target city at all...


Anyway I moved our fleet to start project: bombard SF towns. We have 6 Battleships and 40 Destroyers, Yuri has 34 Destroyers in range, so it'll be a little while before he can go toe-to-toe with us.


Then I thought we could kill a few of the Fighters Yuri has on intercept duty. It went ridiculously well...


Other than that we're pre-building workshops in our bigger cities to get spaceship parts built as our teching tails off. Fintourist - have you considered the negative effect that bulldozing towns in Watercress, Yam, Horseradish, Nectarine and Celery will have on our tech rate? We will want to wait until the last moment to do that, but there are still a couple of techs we'll need once we start building parts.

Demos and power.

[Qgqqqqq]

You need to sign peace first.

[Old Harry]

Turn 243

Ah, here's Yuri's real third culture city. Unfortunately it's well away from where we can do it any serious damage . With the Cathedral and a culture build I think it'll start making 450 CPT in eleven turns. That means he'll hit 14000 culture on t268, so the limiting factor for him is the ninth great artist.


He's got three on ice at the moment and has six cities working on Artists.
- Basilisk Caves 93% (3 turns)
- New Silverhead 94% (2 turns)
- Hornshark 100% (25 turns)
- Elensefar 78% (2 turns)
- Tomb of Kesorak 89% (2 turns)
- Alethkar 100% (3 turns)
So that's about a 40% chance that one of them isn't an Artist .


Then we continued our campaign - this Battleship was the first target, after three fighters soften it up:

- Green Destroyer vs 51HP Battleship 87%.. WIN (3 hits)

Then we try to kill a few more Fighters:
- Fighter battle 1: LOSS (injured defender to 50%)
- Fighter battle 2: LOSS (injured defender to 50%)
- Fighter battle 3: WIN (injured to 50%)
- Fighter battle 4: WIN (injured to 50%)
- Fighter battle 5: WIN
- Fighter battle 6: Destroyed farm
- Fighter battle 7: Failed to destroy mine
- Fighter battle 8: WIN
Now he's down to 8 Fighters , next we moved into Plako's land:

- Tank vs Cuir 99%... WIN (1 hit) up to 26XP!

And now we have 12 Bombers and 30 Fighters in range to hit next turn in plako's cities. Our commandos might even be able to stop New Silverhead before it can pop its artist.


In other news we started Apollo, the city can convert a few more farms to workshops if we want it quicker...


Victory, demos and power

[Old Harry]

Turn 244

Start with killing some more planes. Then some sky-pillaging.

Fighter 1: Shot down enemy, 50% damage
Fighter 2: Shot down enemy, 50% damage
Fighter 3: Shot down enemy, 50% damage
Fighter 4: Shot down, 50% damage to enemy
Fighter 5: Shot down enemy
Fighter 6: Shot down enemy


The nice thing about this is we don't suffer war weariness but we do gather XP. We trashed 26 improvements this turn . We may not be able to directly stop the culture cities, but we can at least wreck TBS/Yuri's economy enough to slow him down. He's got to run the slider this turn, so we'll see what that does for his eta.


BGN has some slightly threatening transports near our coast - particularly north of the north continent and to our west. Reconnaissance has given sight of most of his water and a lot of his land and he's got ten more carriers than us, ten more Battleships, 30 fewer Destroyers and 20 fewer Tanks. Note that his Fighters are all on carriers so we can't see them.


Demos and power

[Old Harry]

Couldn't resist one more look this turn. We're fairly sure we can't stop TBS's Great Artists being born, but we can try wreck his economy enough that he has to run the slider a lot lower than 100%. The red blobs are farms, mines and workshops we've bombed, the orange ones are towns than we've bombed down to be villages. Clicky-click to enlarge.


Cities with a lot of towns for us to hit are, in the east (where our fleet is heading):
- Wesmere
- Freelands
- Serpent Ford
And in the west:
- Kholinar
- Kharbranth
- Kasitor
Blue blobs on here are the remaining towns that should be in range of our fighters.

[Old Harry]

Turn 245

We have Superconductors, and it turns out you need Observatories to build Labs . In Yuri News he lost two bombers to our fighters this turn . Then we sky-pillaged another 30-ish improvements .


He's starting to hurt for health and we think his slider now breaks even at about 50%. Plako is giving him banana, so I sent him an offer of a variety of our spare stuff in the hope he cancels with Yuris. Probably a long shot...


Unfortunately that still doesn't slow his culture date enough, so we have a backup squadron of boats making its way north to mess with Basilisk Caves .


The shrine city now has its pigs back - the other tile is only 3% away. When we have that back then I think we have an opportunity to disperse our defence force more widely. We know BGN has >30 commando units, so we're keeping an eye out for his Transports. So far he hasn't done anything aggressive, but I think 15-20 units in each of our spaceship cities will be necessary once we're building.


Demos and power