[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

I'm honestly amazed that you were able to get everything to match perfectly in the sandbox. Mine was really out of whack, and this is why I usually give up on simming too early.

Looks like I miscounted where we were when I said I didn't think we'd get Steam Power in time. Sorry for the false alarm! We'll get it easily.

One last thought before going to bed: are we concerned at all about Dreylin/OT4E loading up some units on ships and trying to boat one of our southern cities? I noticed that they drafted two more times this turn, which seems like more military than they would need. We do know that their team has a galleon, in a different body of water true, but it could be canaled up to us. If it were just Dreylin, this wouldn't be a fear of mine. However, OT4E has shown from past games that he's willing to pick wars with multiple opponents at once, even at times when it doesn't make a lot of sense strategically.

Do you think there's any merit to this fear scooter? I'm just wondering why they would feel the need to draft even more units after signing peace with Donovan and already being the #1 team in power rating. (We're still in second, fortunately.) Of course, Dreylin/OT4E also border BGN and Gaspar/Noble too, and they both should have a lot less power than us...

Well, I've got good news. I logged in, and Dreylin did a quadruple-swap (Suffrage, Slavery, State Property, Organized Religion). He's still in Nationhood, but I checked the demos, and rival best power dipped (as I would expect from whips) rather than rising which I'd expect from drafts. So they didn't draft. That doesn't mean they didn't whip units, but they at least didn't draft any. Let's keep an eye on global power I guess? I'll send our Galleon south so that it can head into the south waters as soon as the fort is completed.

I don't think we've got anything to fear, but let's keep an eye on their power. Seems to me that if they aren't going to kill Donovan, they'd be wise to go into Kremlin-rushing settlers like crazy. So that's my best guess, but who even knows with OT4E.

[scooter]

Quick follow-up thought so that I don't forget it tomorrow - perhaps the Machine Gun ought to be headed to Cotton Gin instead of Haber Process until we can get eyes on the south water. That's the only place OT4E could harass us out of the fog.

[Sullla]

Ah, that's reassuring that they swapped out of the wartime civics. I didn't think that they could swap for a few more turns; must be due to the last swap taking place at the tail end of their Golden Age. Their team being in the triple rush civics of UniSuff/Slavery/Nationhood, with the Kremlin, is an area of concern though...

I don't think we want the machine gun in Cotton Gin. An attack is unlikely to come from Dreylin, and we can better use our best defensive unit in the Donovan border city, I think. What we really want is an explorer to sit on the southern island and give us vision of anything incoming. Maybe we can find a place to slip that in somewhere. Anyway, we have a new turn so we can discuss further tonight.

[scooter]

Turn 276

Quiet turn. Let's start with the foreign news.



Engineer over in Donovan's land. No idea what he plans to do with that.



Pindicator has a Rifle in a spot that could easily pick me off, so I moved NW. From there I'll go S-SW onto gems and hope he decides not to kill it. If the explorer lives, I think we should load this onto the Galleon and park it on the south island to watch for Dreylin/OT4E. I've got the Galleon headed that way now, and the fort is complete next turn.



Dreylin's got at least 12 workers! Seems a tad bit like overkill, but that may be the Serfdom talking.



Speaking of civics, I did the revolt after moving workers. Goodbye Serfdom, hello Caste. For now it's worth 4hpt, and that'll grow pretty rapidly over time.



Did the lightbulb, so Steam Power will complete at EoT, which will basically offset the loss of Serfdom.



Our next great person arrives in 2 turns, although it'll sit on ice for a few turns before popping a golden age.



We worked a barracks for 1T in Haber Process, and that'll swap to a levee next turn. We should probably speed that up with a couple chops. Steam Engine will also begin a Levee next turn at size 11. I've got this nagging feeling that we maybe ought to get the next settler out at sz11 first so that we can keep up our settling momentum. Any feelings on this? I'd default to sticking with the levee, but I wanted to at least throw the possiblity out there.

I also retreated the Machine Gun back to Telegraph so that we can send it out west.



We are the averagest civ ever. Also, I'd really like to know who that is running around with 0 military units built. Probably BGN?

[Sullla]

Hey, "average" civ is a lot better than where we were a few turns ago. I'll take it for the moment. Especially with Steam Power finishing at the end of this turn.

Regarding the major discussion point for the turn: I think that we definitely want to stay on the levee in Steam Power. Even after the Bureaucracy and forge multipliers to production, I think we're only getting about 46 foodhammers right now in the capital. That was our logic to going Steam Power first and pushing for levees, since it takes forever to build those settlers naturally at the start of the game. The levee is enormous not only because it adds 8 base production to the capital (which becomes 14 production after multipliers), but because it also adds production to riverside tiles that don't currently have any shields. That allows tiles like the pigs and the floodplains to get the Golden Age production benefit, and lets us do this:



That's getting to be my favorite picture. Anyway, so I don't think it makes a lot of sense to invest all this research into an early Steam Power if we don't plan to build the levee right away in our capital. We can do the levee in 4t followed by the settler (in Golden Age) in 4t more... which is about how long a settler would take in non-Golden Age mode anyway. The workers are also set up under the assumption that we'll be going levee first in the capital too. Anyway, I think this is a situation where we do better by sticking with our current setup, much as accelerating the settler in Telegraph helped us earlier.

And don't forget, the plan is to use the Golden Age to pop out 3 settlers if all goes well, taking us to 8 cities by Turn 290. We might fall slightly short of that, but we should be able to get close to it. I think that will leave us among the non-REM leaders, and with cities not whipped into the ground to boot.



I did make one unit movement. We needed to move this rifle forward this turn (the guy on the city ruins), so that he can move onto the forested hill tile next turn and cover the two workers who will also be moving onto that tile. This is all needed to found the city over here on Turn 278 instead of delaying another turn. While Donovan doesn't seem like the most warlike fellow, I also don't think moving two unguarded workers onto his border would be the wisest plan.

Other random turn thoughts:

* I wonder if Donovan is researching Steam Power himself? He'll finish the tech the same turn as us if he's been doing that and burns his Great Engineer for a lightbulb. He's the other Philosophical leader in this game, so I wonder what his Great Person strategy will be. (He used the first Great Scientist for a very early Academy in the capital. No techs discovered so far, however.)

* 12 workers for Dreylin feels about right to me. We have 9 at the moment and we've been hitting Serfdom civic pretty hard, while they've spent a lot of time in Caste System. I think our land is pretty well developed compared to some of the other teams; I wonder how the non-Spiritual teams are managing without access to Serfdom.

* Agree that getting the pindicator explorer down to south island would be useful for sentry purposes. We'd also love to have eyes on the isthmus between us and pindicator as well; maybe we can keep the galleon posted to that region if it's not doing anything, just to watch if anything is incoming.

* I did not have time today to sim and sandbox further into the future, so that will be next on the docket for tomorrow in the evening. Thanks again for more awesome reporting.

[scooter]

Yeah I agree on sticking to the plan, just thought I'd toss the idea out there. But I think our plan is fine here.

Good call on the rifle by the way. I missed that.

Finally, I'll be home very late tonight, so there's plenty of time before I'll be playing this current turn. I'll definitely get to it before the timer expires, though. How good the next turn report will be will probably depend very heavily on whether or not the Red Wings win tonight.

[Sullla]

Unfortunately it wasn't a great night for Detroit hockey. We'll see when and if scooter is in condition to play the turn tonight. In the meantime, I went ahead and updated the micro plan up through Turn 281, the start of our Golden Age. Here's a few quick observations from our sandbox:

* I think we'll be able to research Scientific Method and Communism roughly around the end of our Golden Age. The limiting factor is less commercial power and more getting the Great People out in timely fashion. We actually have to be careful not to research Scientific Method too fast, or else we won't get full value from our Great Scientist lightbulb (roughly 1600 beakers). I have Cotton Gin running 6 Scientist specialists in the Golden Age for some fun GPP generation; it takes 4 turns with some starvation deficit to get the Great Scientist out.

* Haber Process develops insanely fast. That city is ridiculous; I thought it would take multiple forest chops to get the levee completed, and instead a single forest chop should have it done by the fourth turn of the Golden Age. It will be able to produce defenders for our settlers (with barracks done too!) before the Golden Age is completed, while also growing like a weed onto extremely fertile terrain. That's our future Iron Works city, methinks.

* The upcoming city #5 has an almost ludicrous amount of food. The fish alone is worth 7 food; add in the corn and the other lake tiles, and we can hit +12 food/turn, or more likely +11 food/turn with the copper. Add in a few workshops for production or just go specialist crazy with Caste System from there. It's a really fun city to manage, and getting a Great Artist for a Communism partial lightbulb shouldn't be a challenge at all.

* Building 3 settlers during the Golden Age shouldn't be a problem. Finding defenders for our city plants will be the tougher task. I think that Haber Process will help a lot here, and Telegraph can probably contribute as well once it does its settler.

We need two major things to take place over the next dozen turns:

1) No one tries to attack us while we're in builder mode.
2) We're able to settle our two remaining key border cities (on the island and over by pindicator).

Those are big "If"s. However, if our luck continues to hold and we can pull those things off, I think we'll be in position to challenge Dreylin and REM for high tier status in this game. Of course, if we would get attacked or see some of our key locations get settled away from us, we'll remain in the middle of the pack.

Do the people lurking or reading the game have any questions for us?

[Tyrmith]

Going for longer term questions I guess:

How long do you think till you have panzers rolling around - do you think it's something you think you'll need to rush to considering how squished everyone will be shortly-ish? Do you think the game will be a race to the modern age, or will people get bogged down in the fighting?

[picklepikkl]

Less a question about this game and more a question about your game approach: as I am someone currently struggling with figuring out sandboxing/simming for the first time, I've been wondering how you do it. Do you play runs through to a particular goal on instinct and then look for ways to tighten up? Do you experiment with radically different lines of play, or do you start with a pretty firm sense of what you're doing? How do you judge what a "good" benchmark to be hitting is? (Notably, this is not a question of strategy -- how do you pick your goals? -- but of operations -- how do you figure out how to execute on your goals?)

This may be way too large a question for this particular thread or moment in time, but you did ask if we were wondering anything, it's been on my mind, and I'd like to eat your heart and gain your power learn from you.

[Dp101]

Do you think economies like this one are possible to transition into from a cottage economy later on in a standard ancient era start? Do you view the production economy as the endstate for a specialist economy that reaches the endgame?