[SPOILER] Darius of Ottomans - Vets - Krill

[Krill]

Will do in next18 hours...

[Ruff_Hi]

As PBEM2 is basically over bar the killing

what do you mean by this? If I remember correctly, our unit score is 1-0 to me. Oh - can I have my samurai back please?

[Krill]

Eventually. Which city would you like me to land him in?

What I mean, Ruff, is that you SL and Dreylin can't hurt me. I just have way too many productive cities, boats, units for you guys to overcome, unless you can get Darrell to turn on me. Which he won't. And before you get your hopes up, no I'm not going bankrupt.

[Krill]

Overview screenshots:

City Screens:

F2/5:

[Rodge]

Engineering: Only want for faster road movement and Castles. Castles would basically make my defence impregnable IMO. Needed to get to Steel to counter others Castles.

In other PBEM games, I haven't seen many people building castles. I know they provide a very nice defensive bonus, but they do have a large hammer cost and I seem to think most people stick with just walls in cities. Do you think the hammer investment will be worth it and how many cities would you see building them? (ie, one or both fronts)

[Krill]

Castles only cost 67 base hammers. I have stone and OR, so that only cost 2 pop to slave. They then up the cultural defence to 100% (so an unpromoted Janissary on a hill defends at 22.5 against a mounted unit that doesn't have Pinch). But that isn't the main reason. The main reason is that it makes it impossible to walk up a stack of siege and then bombard down the defences (giving you enough time to get some fast movers to flank the siege before they can collateral you).

Sometimes all you need is the threat of a castle to stop an attack. So, slavery, 1 turns worth of production into the castle, and minimum of 4 pop in a city, and the invader has to resort to slamming a stack of fast movers into the city. That is very smaller cost for a huge gain.

Castles and Flanking, two awful additions to the military aspect of CIV.

[Krill]

Teched Guilds in 1, can tech banking in 1 generating a little extra overflow, and can get GP in 1 anyway with Cyneheard researching GP on his turn and a planned revolt to Merc/NH in two turns anyway. So I should be completely safe with the numbers, now just to see if an attack happens.

[Krill]

Banking in, GP still researchable in 1 turn without the revolt to Merc, so no worries there. 521 bpt at end of turn after slaving away about 15 pop for the remaining three universities. OU due in no more than 9 turns. Research was 529 bpt at the start of the turn, for comparison purposes. Taj due eot t125, just played t111. Sunrise is teching Gunpowder, due in 2 turns, and Cyneheard ust researched it himself. Everyone has Engineering, except Whosit who is researching it, due in 3. Everyone is down Banking, Lib and Nationalism, I'm down GP, Engineering, Lit, Music and Theo on the rest of hte field combined.

So I currently have the tech, land, and population leads. Ho Hum.

[Krill]

Revolted to Merc and NH, beakers rose about 20 (well, once I've reassigned the specs), costs rose, well, you can see for yourselves, Before then After:

Sunrise due GP this turn, so I'll get a nice 1.54 multiplier on GP for some yummy overflow. Kylearan is due Banking, Whosit Engineering, and Darrell Guilds, everyone finishing a tech this turn except myself and Cyneheard. And I hid my tech behind Lit (so no one could see me finishing GP in 1 turn). In fact, I can finish GP in one while still saving gold,which I'll probably do to make limited overflow into PP, then save gold for a couple of turns, most likely only one which should give me enough gold to bang out PP then reconsider. And Taj is down to 13 turns. Hmm. I think I'm going to have to stop running binary to get PP one turn sooner. Max overflow this turn knocks out about 40%, then I can get PP in 2 turns while saving a bit of pocket money. Then back to proper Binary teching, because getting PP one turn earlier is probably worth it, might only be 40-50 adjusted beakers, but when you have drafted Jans, not like you need the money for upgrading HA...

[Krill]

Hmmm, it appears that I teched Literature in 1 turn during the revolt because of the amount of overflow beakers I had. Didn't know about that, and luckily I managed to research GP in 1 turn because I'm now up to 577 bpt at -108 gpt (max science). OU due in 7, PP in 3, Taj in 12. I have Libs in every city or are being built, after that Banks in every city in preparation for US cash rush, and then it's time to spend money like it's 2008.