[Spoilers PB27] REM tries to get a handle on this mod

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Finally finished the turn. They are getting long.

DZ is trying to hold the gains here which is nice. Small amounts of redcoats that are costly to kill with knights. I'm running around here pillaging with my chariot, but that doesn't really affect taotao too much in serfdom.

I gifted him a lot of resources so I hope he guesses that these guys are meant to help him against taotao. I think he will need it.

He has a lot of cats in that city. Rather than use them for collateral their best use would be to diffuse collateral coming from the cannon IMO. Stopping his redcoats getting damaged before they need to be top defenders should be his priority. I would love to be able to save this city for him. As discussed previously it seems like it would be frowned upon to use the return to England option.

Demos

Taotao threw himself into rep with consitution so I am finally not first in GNP. I am unsure, but I believe I would be still however if he weren't teching music with a couple KTB and 2xprerestquites. It's hard to judge. Definitely would still be ahead out of GA. MFG is harder to judge. With all his new dikes I think I will need to get some of my own levees up first. Also GAvagi in GA has overtaken me on that front too. That does not concern me too much, it is dtay I need to watch out for who is now ahead in CY too, and with Ichabod land probably will be for the forseeable future.

Noticed a couple of bugs too with tech costs. Physics costs the same as ecology and robotics? Checked base game and robotics is usually twice the cost of physics. Either Krill raised the cost of physics a lot re the GP or more likely forgot to increase ecology and robotics. They are all 12500 beakers currently.

[GermanJoey]

I think that second to last picture is a duplicate?

I have no idea what happened to the tech costs... I remember ecology and robotics being vastly more expensive than Physics in PB22...

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I think that second to last picture is a duplicate?

I have no idea what happened to the tech costs... I remember ecology and robotics being vastly more expensive than Physics in PB22...

Fixed. DZ only had a few redcoats and mostly ancient stuff in the city, but a lot of it.

It was only those 2 that struck me as being way off. But advanced flight was only like 500 beakers more than physics too. I will look into it more next turn as it could make a different tech route much more productive.

Forgot to add as no one is going towards democracy I'll get sci meth first (it only obsoletes one monastery in my capital) as the resource pops of oil and aluminium will be quite productive and can spare the time pre getting the levee and ironworks built.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Lots to talk about with no time to do a full report. However I really dislike this AI diplo. We need a few more options. DZ wanted a strange loan where I gave 800 gold and he gave 15 back plus 60gpt. I wanted to see what was going on and counter this, but of course because he is on full tech I cannot ask for gpt. This is definitely an annoying oversight that I don't feel was intended by this method... Bah. For the record DZ, I was gonna check all in game and offer for a standard rate back with no interest. I do apologise.

Other thing to quickly mention is tech path has gone out of the window. With the strong possiblility of war on the horizon I have gone straight for assembly line after steam power. I have enough gold to do it at full tech for 3 turns which will give me infantry before most of the opposition have rifles! I really should do more to convert this tech lead to more land though. It is annoying that taotao has had such a spike in MFG, which is really making me wary of a war. I have a plan for a few first turn razes of some key cities and poorly defended ones should this need to happen, but I still hope that this can be avoided. I can instigate most of this in 2 turns, and all of it in 3. Depends what happens to DZ, but I would say it is about 50% whether he holds his Mogor city, which he should have made a few more drill 2 and 3 redcoats in for the collateral reduction! I think there are too many cannon to make a difference.

In fact just thinking about it it might be an idea just to let taotao see a cossack stack in DZ land. This might make him back off and offer peace despite loosing cities? Of course if he does continue the war I could loose the initiative... Difficult to know what to do.

[GermanJoey]

I looked into the tech cost issue, and it looks like Robotics in particular has a bug in its tech cost implementation or something. The same problem (that it has the same cheap cost as Ecology) is in ToW 1.3/1.4. The rest of the tech scalings, like Physics being relatively more expensive, are due to RtR base tech cost adjustments, which were present at least as far back as 2.0.6.4 (PB18) combined with tech cost scaling.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I looked into the tech cost issue, and it looks like Robotics in particular has a bug in its tech cost implementation or something. The same problem (that it has the same cheap cost as Ecology) is in ToW 1.3/1.4. The rest of the tech scalings, like Physics being relatively more expensive, are due to RtR base tech cost adjustments, which were present at least as far back as 2.0.6.4 (PB18) combined with tech cost scaling.

Well cheap ecology isn't bad - no one ever gets it early anyway. Maybe it is just robotics then!

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I looked some more - surely advanced flight should be more expensive than flight?

Short update here - war plans off. Taotao and Donovan had signed peace when I entered. He has seemingly spent a lot of money upgrading his knights to Calvary too. So I will pull back and settle down.

Back to the tech I spent a long time looking at all the techs needed for space left and I *think* I'll finish the tree in about 60ish turns without any major upsets... With this in mind I probably don't need to take too many risks with the late game playing, and just continue a solid play and not offer openings.

IMO it is now down to 3 of us. Myself, dtay and taotao. Gavagi has too few cities, is taking too long to convert HAK and is quite far behind.

It can be viewed as the tech/GNP empire (me) the hammer empire (taotao) and the sheer size empire (dtay).

Dtay currently has about 10-12 more cities than me and probably has more room to plant with inhabit out of the way. His low GNP confuses me, he is around a third of me, even though he is now in FS with the +3 to towns! Maybe he wants the rush buying... Or maybe org is unbelievably crucial after all. I think if this was going slower he would have a better chance, but the tech rate is just so rapid I cannot see him getting back into it in time without seeing a major jump in that GNP. His tech is... Patchy. He is slightly behind gavagi, just got chemistry which will probably help him a lot. But EoT I will be up AL, SP, steel, rifling, edu, lib, MT, economics, Corp... The list goes on. Almost a full era. He needs to do something rapidly or the gap will be too great. It is about 60k now, and there are limited empires on par with us to use for KTBs

Taotao I had almost written off but now I'm not sure. I need to wait for his GA to wear off before I can fully assess. But those dikes... He is converting even ocean tiles with a dike/lighthouse/quay combo into 2/2/3 tiles. This could really be a bane. However like I said earlier in the thread this will hinder him in a SR in a level playing field, and space needs lots of prod in a few cities not spread around, so loosing the river bonus will hurt there. He will need to bring that extra prod into wealth builds or units to pressurise me. I am still teching faster despite the GA but he is now making 50% more hammers than me... EoT I am up AL, SP (23k beakers for those alone) economics, half of corp plus a few old religious techs, and still teching faster.

All 3 of us are roughly even on troop numbers too. And now the big surprise move - I signed a Defensive Pact with DZ. Was this good or bad? I don't know. Hopefully I got brownie points for making moves to support him in his surprise war. He thought about it and reoffered. Who does it benefit more? It offers him protection when his enforced peace runs out in 10t, and he doesn't have routes to loose. I get some protection now from the upgraded units. Sure, either of us COULD sign peace the next turn, but it does signal something.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I have infantry! Well, 3 infantry GG which had free upgrades to be precise, and the ability to build more. Need to play carefully here. I had hoped to hold and get factories online fast with the org bonus but it appears that taotao is posturing... Lots of gpt seemingly going into upgrades. We shall see what happens exactly here. I should have tested the DP before I signed, but I am about 90% sure it will overwrite an enforced peace treaty. Major blunder on my part if it won't! Awkward thing to test though really. But what is done is done. He has 6t left of his boosted GA also, I would like to see where he takes it.

Factories in most hammer heavy cities will build in 3ish turns. In the soon to be IW city I am now making 64 hammers per turn pre modifiers I believe with the levee, and it will have a factory in 2 turns. Then, combined with the IW which is half build, and will be done about 4t after the factory it will be making around 200 hpt with the 150% bonus! That'll build the SoL in roughly 5-6t.

Will get Sci method next turn, hopefully some nice placement of aluminium/oil for my hammer cities - it is a much bigger deal than usual here. For example, in 33 (not spoilerish) where I am running caste/SP a workshopped flatland resource will make as much as a mined AND railroaded resource. However in this mod with the bonus hammers to mines and the bonus commerce any flatland deposits are a huge bonus. Not forgetting they also add a fair few hammers and commerce to mature cottages. Not running the caste/SP duo making wells on flatland is much more attractive too than the disadvantage that it usually is.

Also my being in environmentalism will pay off even more than it currently is with the gold per specialist and commerce per farm/pasture - I will pretty much be able to industrialise with the +1 unhealth per factory and +2 for coal and factory without loosing any health. This is very good. I would imagine taotao who would be about 10-12t away from assembly line if he goes straight for it would have some health issues.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

ARGH STUPID AUTOPROMOTE!

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So the reload prevented any issues. I am very thankful for this.

Taotao has turned back on research, so I think I have deterred any violence from him for the foreseeable future. This I will use to industrialise with cheap factories in all my main cities, before a round of infantry to keep the solider count up.

I've currently actually got more settlers than even marginal places left to settle. Gavagi taking some of the island above plako has thrown me a little. Nothing else too obvious currently, but there is a lot of black further NE of that island so I'm sailing there for the lols and possibly cities.

On that island I will finally have more than 1 worker (embarrassing) next turn. 3 more next turn 3 more the turn after. It could do with some improvements.

Mainland is just being fine tuned now re mine/windmill mix and farm/workshop mix. Also with sci method this turn lots of juicy aluminium and oil to play with a big plus is aluminium in novogorod for an extra 0/3/1 on one mine for added lovliness for the IW. But overall about 15ish oils/aluminiums. 2 oils settled on so should always have a supply thankfully. No towns on either source though.

Taotao is teching sci method, not quite sure where he is going from it. Does he want to run a SP/caste economy? Or SP with vassalage? It is more productive, but he is already behind in tech needing to devote a good 10-12 turns to get infantry like me. I can't see a play for that being strong... He needs to reach the rifles before pumping out ++ military, being hemmed in by me to the north and redcoats to the east. He is IMO a bit stuck and should be using wealth builds in the dike cities to really push forwards here.

Where do I go? I don't even have a factory until EoT in novo, so I am 4-5 turns from wanting to start the SoL. Probably I will save gold on democracy and see where taotao goes after he 1ts sci method this turn. I feel the GG from fascism will be good here with my (5th!) GG I am only 8xp odd from naturally. I have got a couple of pirates to try and gain these last XPs. The mil academy has had a nice boost in this mod giving 1 XPs and drill to units from the city. A couple of those in the HE city or that and an instructor in the HE city will give me a strong unit output - 13xp Cossacks or 10 xp drill free infantry. A few drill 4 infantry and a couple of machine guns start to make a stack very resistant to collaterals...

But I digress, I need to not loose either the free GS or GG (especially the GS as taotao birthed a Gspy this turn, so could have an easy 3 person GA) and not loose the SoL either, whilst actually best for me would be getting biology/railroad for the increased tile values...

I suppose taotao has limited push to go Steam power with dikes coming earlier, so he might just hold on military tech if he doesn't expect an attack from me perhaps? Lots to think about.