[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Athmos]

Hi ! Just a lurker here (unspoiled), I have nowhere near the experience of anyone here (and in particular, never played multi), I'm really just an enthusiastic RB reports reader.
I needed to say I find this particular game very interesting and your detailed report and deep analysis (and their adjustments as the game plays out) are really great reading and quite insightful. Thank you guys !

Also, it's a bit hard to see as it is quite zoomed out, but from the first screenshot from Post #214 I don't think Tartar, the barbarian city Donovan captured, had any buildings before capture.

For what it's worth, I also fear that other teams are settling faster than originally predicted, and a plan to pick up the pace sounds, well sound :-)

Keep it up !

[scooter]

Turn played, but pictures will have to wait until later tonight. Short version: ReallyEvilMuffin is really going to make some neighbors unhappy I think.

[scooter]

Turn 270



Engineer falls for Dreylin. Since he seems to be racing for Communism, I'm going to go ahead and guess that Engineer is going to be set aside for Kremlin unless he plans to extend his Taj golden age. I also agree with Sullla that the BGN Merchant looks like a low-odds misfire to me. It doesn't seem to line up with his other choices so far.

ReallyEvilMuffin is doing some interesting stuff... Let's take a look.



So I confirmed his city here, and it turns out Gaspar settled this way too. Early tensions! I'm happy to see that. I wouldn't be surprised if that spot Gaspar went with was not what he was aiming for.



However, it looks like 1 side was just not enough for him. He triple-whipped Edward this turn, and it looks like he intends to snag this hill too. Can't say that I blame him - if he's going to make this work he definitely has to get more land than everyone else. IMP won't do much for him after T300-ish, so he kinda needs to be the leader at that point.



Not a whole lot going on domestically. A chop is going into Steam Engine next to get the settler out sooner as planned. Telegraph stored a second chop this turn and will store a third after that, and when we're ready we'll dump it all into a settler and finish it there.

I also loaded up the Gren/Rifle pair into the Galleon, and I'm going to take a quick peek to the southeast.

Sullla - any thoughts about delaying Steam Power slightly by getting this settler out of Telegraph sooner? I'm kinda wondering if it might just be worth it.



Guess we're the only ones to truly go all-in on hammers early! Also, how in the world does somebody have only 20f? Unless that's REM whipping everything down. Definitely some funky things going on here.

[scooter]

I checked real quick to see what it looks like:



By my count the settler would complete EoT276 if we started it right now (including the chop 2w of capital). That would cost us 7 turns of build research at 25bpt. 175b is about 1.5 turns of our science right now, so we're talking about 1-2 turn delay of Steam Power in exchange for a much quicker second settler.

Any thoughts?

[Sullla]

Hmmmm. That's a really good question scooter. The current plan has that settler in Telegraph finishing at eot 281, so it would speed it up by about 5 turns. I think that losing that Build Research in Telegraph would slow down our Steam Power research by 2 turns, since I'm thinking that we could do a little Build Wealth in the capital to keep us at 100% science after the settler finishes. Is it worth getting a settler out 5 turns sooner to delay Steam Power by 2 turns? My gut feeling says yes to that, especially given how powerful the land is on this map.

Now here's the only downside: the whole micro plan has been optimized around our current assumptions, and I spent a couple hours tonight tweaking it based on what we were planning on doing. If we want to make this swap - and I think it's worth doing! - it's going to need a serious rewrite. I can work on that tomorrow in the evening, and reconfigure our setup based around the assumption of faster early settler (for the western hill spot by Donovan, right?) and a slightly slower Steam Power. Maybe we could actually wait to end turn tomorrow for a change, to make sure that I have some time to do some sandboxing.

Unfortunately Donovan is the only one left to play, so I'm going to concur with you right now and log into the game to make that swap to settler in Telegraph. If you disagree, well, we're not losing much because we can always shift back to Build Research next turn. But it sounded like you approved of this swap to an earlier settler, and I'm on board too. Changing the micro around afterwards is very much part of the fun.

[scooter]

Phone post. Go for it. I will definitely wait on the turn tomorrow. I think it's well worth it.

And yeah I think I still want to go for the Donovan hill with that Telegraph settler too.

[Sullla]

Pics or it didn't happen:



Telegraph switched to settler, due at eot 276 (with forest chop). We will almost certainly send this to the western border with Donovan. Scooter, one other thing I forgot to mention: we need those units on the galleon back home to guard workers that will be roading towards our future city site. I would bring at least the rifle back home and probably both units to be safe, then we can do the unit shuffle along the arrows to shuffle defenders around and get units up to the northern border in time to cover the workers. We'll also likely want the machine gun + a rifle to defend our Donovan border city when it gets planted in ~8 turns or so.



And this is the overview shot of what we hope will be our Mare Nostrum some day. REM and Gaspar/Noble being right on top of one another is a huge break of fortune for us. Gaspar's cities are small, and I doubt he'll want to pick any trouble with us while REM is sitting right there with a city 3 tiles away. Thank you very much for that city placement, REM!

Rough timetable for us (subject to more serious planning tomorrow):

City #4: Turn 275 (definitive)
Steam Power research finished: Turn 278
City #5: Turn 279
Golden Age started: Turn 281
Settler for city #6 finished: Turn 285
Settler for city #7 finished: Turn 287
Settler for city #8 finished: Turn 289
Communism research finished: Turn 290

[Sullla]

We have a new turn for this morning. Scooter, feel free to play the current turn (T271) as I don't think we'll be doing anything different on this turn as a result of the settler swap. I can already see in my head where workers are going to be shifted around; I was going to send 5 of them up to the northern city to supercharge its development, but instead I'll send 3 of them and use the other 2 for roading towards the western spot.



Another quick discussion point. Donovan's border city is the Jewish Holy City, and it will expand borders shortly to the 100 culture level if it hasn't already. I've drawn in those border in this screenshot. I don't think that's going to change our settling plans, but if it would cause us to alter the plan, now's the time to discuss it before we get further along. Thoughts?

[scooter]

Turn 271

Note: This turn is not completed. I've done most things, but some workers are unmoved just in case. I'll make note of that further down.



Dreylin's golden age ended, and in his last turn of the golden age he swapped into Caste/Nationhood/Representation. He used that one turn of 300% GPP (Phi/GA/Pac) to churn out a quick scientist. Definitely looks like he's racing to Communism and Kremlin. That's probably the smart way to go - it's what I would have done with Gandhi because SPI/PHI is the fastest way to get to both first. His gameplan has been gradually making more sense to me, even if there have been a few strange things.

The swap to Nationhood I'm assuming is for the same reason as we did - to get some cheap defenses for future settlers. It's still worth keeping an eye on.



Do we have anything better to do for this Explorer than camping here? I think I'm fine with leaving him here to be honest. I only ask because the Galleon will be sailing by soon, so if we're dying to load him up, it owuld be a good time.



So here's what I did. The Galleon didn't have enough movement points to actually make it into the city. That means that any unit directly unloading into the capital cannot get to the incense any quicker by land than by sea. So I dropped the Rifle in Steam Engine and moved the other Rifle forward. That gets a worker protection up there in the quickest way as it frees up the Machine Gun to move immediately. I haven't actually moved the Machine Gun yet, as it depends on our worker movements. This is exactly what you were suggesting I assume, but I did keep the Grendadier on board.



And this is the reason why. The Grenadier can get up there by sea just as quickly, so there's no real downside in keeping him on the boat. And if we end up deciding we don't need need him, that's fine too. So next turn the Galleon will continue north in case we need the additional support.



Since we don't have much else for this Explorer to do, I'm thinking about just hovering him around Donovan a bit and getting a better look at what he's up to. Open to other suggestions of course.



I don't think Gaspar is capturing that city from REM anytime soon.



Dreylin's mass scientists in Goats is really skewing the demographics this turn since he's yet to login and adjust things. The main surprise (and this was true last turn apparently) is that somebody's actually passed us in soldier count. I'm not quite sure who it was actually.



Finally, a quick overview shot. I went ahead and did the chops and move onto desert hill for the fort, but the other workers (a,b,d,f,g) are unmoved. I'm pretty certain we don't want to do anything differently than planned, but I figured if anything would change, it would be these workers.


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Finally, yeah I'm fine with the holy city borders from Donovan. It doesn't really interfere with us too much, and we've got plenty of ways to pump culture of our own if absolutely necessary. So I'm still on board with aiming for that city with the Telegraph settler.

[Sullla]

OK, sounds good. My guess on the high power is pindicator, due to his traits and the lack of settlers we've seen from him. That production has to be going somewhere. More thoughts later tonight.