I'm not saying that neighbors can't be friends, just that with a small tundra-filled starting land we were going to run out of space super fast. Our first thought was that we could get lucky, you'd settle the land to your east and we'd secure the chokepoint. That was the initial plan, settling MCG then the 3chorddorks tile, taking your copper away from you with a religion while you were settling east. Then we found out that you didn't have any land to your east. Going on peacefully would have benefitted you more than us. We had planned 2 cities between MCG and the chokepoint that were never settled because we'd have two cities to defend to your one (plus hill vs no hill). Therefore, as we had feared from the start, your controlling the passageway led to us having less continent land than you. Even as it was you managed to raze the fur city south of MCG because you could fork cities and force us to let you raze one of them.
Around t100 you had much better land than us ! To match you in power we had to destroy our economy in the long term. That was the last blow for us. We had decided to stay away from you and settle our western island plus the northern peninsula but that made it certain we couldn't win. We assumed you had a big stack in 3CD so couldn't take the risk of moving our units to the west. We had to assume at all times that you had a spy (through early alpha) in MCG and that you'd notice the disappearing stack. And when we did get our own spies it only confirmed what we already knew : we didn't have enough troops to control you in the east and mount a successful invasion of Dreylin in the west, even after reducing our empire to nothing to match your growing power.
I'll admit that we never founded the ice filler cities with fish deer and tundra. Big deal. Ghuzz was a barb city that spawned around the time we planned on settling it.
And now about the northern peninsula : did you notice that we lost Stade de France to barbs at some point ? That slowed our settlement by at least 20t, because right as we were retaking it you attacked us. Yeah there were 4 or 5 good cities up there, totally undefensible if Gavagai Dreylin or you attacked via sea (or we would have had to keep enormous garrisons there) as was proven by your swift conquest of it all. It was just a matter of choosing the moment that suited you best and it was yours. And notice how there is absolutely nothing north of the rice/copper row, except a good copper/rice/cow city way up there that we did control at some point. Also your land gave you 2c trade routes while the land across the channel was on our continent. The island to the west was as close to Dreylin as it was to us, we almost had it but couldn't maintain a big enough force to keep it due to all our troops being around MCG. We didn't have 2c TR until some people gave us OB (really late) while you had 2c very soon and 3c pretty soon thanks to the alpha beeline.
(October 17th, 2014, 13:18)GermanJoey Wrote: The Known Tech Bonus (KTB) is a really big deal in RtR mod once we get to the classical era, and an even bigger deal in the medieval era and beyond. I have our EPs split between mackoti and REMAI atm, since it seems REMAI is trying to get research visibility on us.
See that is something you haven't considered : we were totally isolated, and had only met you ! We also had less huts than you (maybe 3 total ?) and had to double back to scout our backlines so didn't meet Gavagai until super late. And what you took for a warrior rush was just our escort for our third city on the 3CD tile. I mean, do warrior rush ever work ? They're completely pointless.
The biggest thing to note about REMAI's land is that we still can't see any more of it than we could 40 turns ago:
What does this mean? It means these guys haven't traded their damn maps around at all! We've traded maps very recently with Gawdzak, Mackoti, HAK, AND Gavagai; if REMAI had traded maps at all with either of them (who might be their only contacts besides Dreylin, their western neighbor), then we'd be able to see more of their land. Great! The less friends they have, the better for us.
These guys are doing... OK. Their CY and city count is respectable, although it is actually only 10, not 11 as I mentioned in my last update. This had me stumped for a bit, as their score increased last turn, so I think what happened is that they lost a city to barbs 4-5 turns ago - they had a score decrease in the tracker right after turn rolled. Based on this, I estimate their total pop is only ~30ish, as 3 of their other plants (the 3 before this replanted one) were relatively recent.
They got a classical tech score increase last turn, but no bridges around their silver yet. Gotta keep a close eye on that. They've put over 250 EP on us over the course of the game (we're forced to keep 3 EP on them to prevent their getting city visibility, with the other 1 going towards Furungy in order to slow him down from the same), and their power has started to spike too.
What these guys need to do is a.) REX the hell out of their north and b.) somehow hold off the pair of predatory motherfuckers to their east without crashing their empire. Their situation is not great at the moment, but they have sooooooo much empty land left to expand to. I'd feel rather bullish about their next 50 turn prospects if I wasn't also planning to murder them in their crib, Muwahhaha...
Sorry for derailing your thread talking about our relationship this game, but I'm bored and I really find some gold in there. The end of this t100 thing is what I thought was your state of mind the entire game. And I was close enough. Also you mention earlier in your thread that you wanted to send us a resource trade, but you never did. I think even sending us a 1 for 1 trade (I mean a happy resource that you didn't have in duplicates for our silver) would have made me reconsider our relationship.
(March 19th, 2015, 14:09)AdrienIer Wrote: I'm not saying that neighbors can't be friends, just that with a small tundra-filled starting land we were going to run out of space super fast. Our first thought was that we could get lucky, you'd settle the land to your east and we'd secure the chokepoint. That was the initial plan, settling MCG then the 3chorddorks tile, taking your copper away from you with a religion while you were settling east. Then we found out that you didn't have any land to your east. Going on peacefully would have benefitted you more than us. We had planned 2 cities between MCG and the chokepoint that were never settled because we'd have two cities to defend to your one (plus hill vs no hill). Therefore, as we had feared from the start, your controlling the passageway led to us having less continent land than you. Even as it was you managed to raze the fur city south of MCG because you could fork cities and force us to let you raze one of them.
Wait, what? That plan is completely crazy... that was really what you were trying for? I mean, not to mention that it is super risky, relying on a religious pop like that so late into the game, you must have seen I had noone to my east around like T25 or T26 or so? I'm also like, way way closer to that spot than you were? If we had settled ajacent to the copper (which we seriously considered) instead of just in BFC, we would have had axemen by the time you arrived. Plus, I'm Agg, I could have just forced you back with spammed warriors and/or chariots. Both of our games would have been ruined for sure, but I would have taken that spot back, holy city, or not just from a sheer weight of hammers. Man, I don't know what else to say about that.
I really don't get what you wanted from that chokepoint considering that you would not have gained any further land past it unless I was dead, and I was like, not dead. Given MCG's current position, sure taking the chokepoint would have gotten you two extra cities to MCG's NE. However, like I mentioned, you could have gotten those extra cities anyways if MCG was just positioned slightly differently. I wouldn't really be able to fork them except with a pure 2-mover stack, but that would leave myself open to a counter-attack from a stack easily positioned between the two cities. So, all the chokepoint really gets you is the chokepoint city. However, the chokepoint city sucks too because its super far away from your core and would need constant hammers and gold poured into it in the form of units. If I ever got control of the tile 2NE of it, I could hit the city with 2 movers out of the fog, requiring you to keep a huge garrison there. If you instead settled 1SW of where 3CD was, well that city would be safe, sure, but doesn't have any food.
Speaking of the holy city, why did you never get a shrine there? Miss your dice froll for your first GA? I really thought you would get one early, putting Expansive's cheap markets and grocers to good use.
Quote:Around t100 you had much better land than us ! To match you in power we had to destroy our economy in the long term. That was the last blow for us. We had decided to stay away from you and settle our western island plus the northern peninsula but that made it certain we couldn't win. We assumed you had a big stack in 3CD so couldn't take the risk of moving our units to the west. We had to assume at all times that you had a spy (through early alpha) in MCG and that you'd notice the disappearing stack. And when we did get our own spies it only confirmed what we already knew : we didn't have enough troops to control you in the east and mount a successful invasion of Dreylin in the west, even after reducing our empire to nothing to match your growing power.
I had more land and more cities because my early cities focused on growth without needing much worker labor, via shared tiles, workboat food, etc. For example, compare the output of MCG to Zen Pencils. MCG has a tundra marble, a crab, a sugar, a plains incense, and a bare tundra deer. The three food resources are completely crap 4f tiles, the sugar and incense were not improve-able for a long time, the crab was junk, the deer w and the marble was not improve-able either. In contrast, Zen Pencils had a plains cow, a corn, a fish, and a copper, all 5-6 yield tiles. You had a similarly good spot available near what became Soccer City, it was just to your west, away from the chokepoint.
Early spies were not something I thought about, although maybe I shoulda tried squeezing one out at some point. I was actually really stressed out about falling behind the global growth trend after our start was slowed.
Quote:I'll admit that we never founded the ice filler cities with fish deer and tundra. Big deal. Ghuzz was a barb city that spawned around the time we planned on settling it.
And now about the northern peninsula : did you notice that we lost Stade de France to barbs at some point ? That slowed our settlement by at least 20t, because right as we were retaking it you attacked us. Yeah there were 4 or 5 good cities up there, totally undefensible if Gavagai Dreylin or you attacked via sea (or we would have had to keep enormous garrisons there) as was proven by your swift conquest of it all. It was just a matter of choosing the moment that suited you best and it was yours. And notice how there is absolutely nothing north of the rice/copper row, except a good copper/rice/cow city way up there that we did control at some point. Also your land gave you 2c trade routes while the land across the channel was on our continent. The island to the west was as close to Dreylin as it was to us, we almost had it but couldn't maintain a big enough force to keep it due to all our troops being around MCG. We didn't have 2c TR until some people gave us OB (really late) while you had 2c very soon and 3c pretty soon thanks to the alpha beeline.
I do remember you losing a city... I remember mentioning it somewhere after seeing it in the tracker but don't remember it being so early, maybe closer to T80-T90 or so? IIRC I attacked you around T62 since we made peace T65. I don't think that's my fault that you were unprepared for barbs... if you had settled for copper with city 2 or 3 instead of city 4 I think you'd have been fine there. As far as the northern penninsula being indefensible, that's also untrue, at least until T230 or so. Gavagai didn't have any presence at all there until after HAK died. Dreylin would not have been able to attack there until Carracks (and ironically didn't until the rest of the world had Frigates), and would have no reason to had you kept your western island. I did eventually conquer that area, and indeed swiftly, but I was actually unable to reach there at all until T182, once I had Galleons. Even then, only attacked because I knew I could cut off your reinforcements with a superior navy. You had, it sounds like, a hundred and twenty turns to build up defenses there! And as far as sitting all your forces near MCG instead of your other border... again, this is not my fault!!!
I think, in general, you are really underestimating how hard it is to get troops next to a city, intact and healthy, ready to attack with good odds, when said cities are so far away.
By the way, speaking of indefensible, if you still want to see Zulu of Carthage crash and burn then stay tuned to this game. My sprawling disaster of an empire will perhaps be the most vulnerable mess ever to confront the Sirian doctrine in the history of Civ4...
The biggest thing to note about REMAI's land is that we still can't see any more of it than we could 40 turns ago:
What does this mean? It means these guys haven't traded their damn maps around at all! We've traded maps very recently with Gawdzak, Mackoti, HAK, AND Gavagai; if REMAI had traded maps at all with either of them (who might be their only contacts besides Dreylin, their western neighbor), then we'd be able to see more of their land. Great! The less friends they have, the better for us.
These guys are doing... OK. Their CY and city count is respectable, although it is actually only 10, not 11 as I mentioned in my last update. This had me stumped for a bit, as their score increased last turn, so I think what happened is that they lost a city to barbs 4-5 turns ago - they had a score decrease in the tracker right after turn rolled. Based on this, I estimate their total pop is only ~30ish, as 3 of their other plants (the 3 before this replanted one) were relatively recent.
They got a classical tech score increase last turn, but no bridges around their silver yet. Gotta keep a close eye on that. They've put over 250 EP on us over the course of the game (we're forced to keep 3 EP on them to prevent their getting city visibility, with the other 1 going towards Furungy in order to slow him down from the same), and their power has started to spike too.
What these guys need to do is a.) REX the hell out of their north and b.) somehow hold off the pair of predatory motherfuckers to their east without crashing their empire. Their situation is not great at the moment, but they have sooooooo much empty land left to expand to. I'd feel rather bullish about their next 50 turn prospects if I wasn't also planning to murder them in their crib, Muwahhaha...
Sorry for derailing your thread talking about our relationship this game, but I'm bored and I really find some gold in there. The end of this t100 thing is what I thought was your state of mind the entire game. And I was close enough. Also you mention earlier in your thread that you wanted to send us a resource trade, but you never did. I think even sending us a 1 for 1 trade (I mean a happy resource that you didn't have in duplicates for our silver) would have made me reconsider our relationship.
No no, please by all means, post whatever you want, I like talking about this game! This isn't even a derail at all, I mean, this is my thread for PB22 and you're talking about my PB22 game.
I was feeling foolishly bullish at that point, unexpectedly climbing to world-tops in CY and production and I *also* underestimated just how hard it would be to attack you. I think, at that point, your power and production was super low, I had 5 XP Agg swords coming up and Numids following that. I totally I overestimated how far you were behind on tech (more like I was overestimating my own tech position) and production. Once I realized that a.) your power buildup was matching mine and that b.) you actually were able to get Hwatchas in time for my attack, I called it off. I really didn't think about the Hwatcha much at all until it was too late. Agg Swords in RtR are freaking amazing, as you are learning in PB23, but the Hwatcha stops them hard.
I probably should have sent you a trade offer at some point, at least after I decided not to invade. That was a big mistake on my part, I think. Very lazy thinking. My state of mind was like: I was still a bit bitter about that pig thing and very wary about the so-called warrior rush, plus all the EP you spent on me... I later got super mad at you guys, sometime after your second big invasion, and Dr. Ceilazul called me out on my failings on this side of things.
(March 19th, 2015, 16:30)GermanJoey Wrote: Wait, what? That plan is completely crazy... that was really what you were trying for? I mean, not to mention that it is super risky, relying on a religious pop like that so late into the game, you must have seen I had noone to my east around like T25 or T26 or so? I'm also like, way way closer to that spot than you were? If we had settled ajacent to the copper (which we seriously considered) instead of just in BFC, we would have had axemen by the time you arrived. Plus, I'm Agg, I could have just forced you back with spammed warriors and/or chariots. Both of our games would have been ruined for sure, but I would have taken that spot back, holy city, or not just from a sheer weight of hammers. Man, I don't know what else to say about that.
I really don't get what you wanted from that chokepoint considering that you would not have gained any further land past it unless I was dead, and I was like, not dead. Given MCG's current position, sure taking the chokepoint would have gotten you two extra cities to MCG's NE. However, like I mentioned, you could have gotten those extra cities anyways if MCG was just positioned slightly differently. I wouldn't really be able to fork them except with a pure 2-mover stack, but that would leave myself open to a counter-attack from a stack easily positioned between the two cities. So, all the chokepoint really gets you is the chokepoint city. However, the chokepoint city sucks too because its super far away from your core and would need constant hammers and gold poured into it in the form of units. If I ever got control of the tile 2NE of it, I could hit the city with 2 movers out of the fog, requiring you to keep a huge garrison there. If you instead settled 1SW of where 3CD was, well that city would be safe, sure, but doesn't have any food.
Speaking of the holy city, why did you never get a shrine there? Miss your dice froll for your first GA? I really thought you would get one early, putting Expansive's cheap markets and grocers to good use.
We even discussed settling 3CD before MCG but that was waaaaay too crazy. The plan was to take the copper from you, and make 3CD a thorn in your side, plus you wouldn't be able to expand properly. The city being on a hill, plus some cultural defense, meant that your agg promos were not very impressive. It was meant as a way to cripple you, take your land early-ish (with a HA rush) and then start the snowball with 2 civs worth of land. Kinda crazy but with the land we had I don't think we could have won by playing this normally.
The shrine would have needed priest specialist, and with you forcing us to build units all the time (well we were both forcing each other to build units to be honest) we never had time to build temples. If you were wondering why you didn't get a single temple out of our cities, now you know.
Quote:I had more land and more cities because my early cities focused on growth without needing much worker labor, via shared tiles, workboat food, etc. For example, compare the output of MCG to Zen Pencils. MCG has a tundra marble, a crab, a sugar, a plains incense, and a bare tundra deer. The three food resources are completely crap 4f tiles, the sugar and incense were not improve-able for a long time, the crab was junk, the deer w and the marble was not improve-able either. In contrast, Zen Pencils had a plains cow, a corn, a fish, and a copper, all 5-6 yield tiles. You had a similarly good spot available near what became Soccer City, it was just to your west, away from the chokepoint.
Early spies were not something I thought about, although maybe I shoulda tried squeezing one out at some point. I was actually really stressed out about falling behind the global growth trend after our start was slowed.
You got a great 2nd 3rd and 4th city that fit all the requirements : expanding into contested land (by which I mean in our direction, because you had no other land available), with copper and horse. We had our copper very far to the west, away from the contested land, and our horses north, again away from the contested land.
Quote:I do remember you losing a city... I remember mentioning it somewhere after seeing it in the tracker but don't remember it being so early, maybe closer to T80-T90 or so? IIRC I attacked you around T62 since we made peace T65. I don't think that's my fault that you were unprepared for barbs... if you had settled for copper with city 2 or 3 instead of city 4 I think you'd have been fine there. As far as the northern penninsula being indefensible, that's also untrue, at least until T230 or so. Gavagai didn't have any presence at all there until after HAK died. Dreylin would not have been able to attack there until Carracks (and ironically didn't until the rest of the world had Frigates), and would have no reason to had you kept your western island. I did eventually conquer that area, and indeed swiftly, but I was actually unable to reach there at all until T182, once I had Galleons. Even then, only attacked because I knew I could cut off your reinforcements with a superior navy. You had, it sounds like, a hundred and twenty turns to build up defenses there! And as far as sitting all your forces near MCG instead of your other border... again, this is not my fault!!!
I think, in general, you are really underestimating how hard it is to get troops next to a city, intact and healthy, ready to attack with good odds, when said cities are so far away.
By the way, speaking of indefensible, if you still want to see Zulu of Carthage crash and burn then stay tuned to this game. My sprawling disaster of an empire will perhaps be the most vulnerable mess ever to confront the Sirian doctrine in the history of Civ4...
Gavagai didn't attack... But that's what I know in hindsight. Same for Dreylin who could have beelined carracks. HAK could have decided to go south if he had expanded into the enormous backlines he had. Paranoid ? Maybe but I still don't like that northern peninsula.
Look at what you did with Furungy (only one guy contesting you the land) : when you attacked him there you had to keep a huge garrison over, and almost lost cities in your core because of that, because having your empire cut in half is terrible tactically. You can't move your troops around efficiently until galleons. Your flexibility is reduced and you have to maintain two armies instead of one. When Dtay got attacked he lost a city but soon he started winning the war (not a spoiler here, I'm not sure what's happening over there). That's because most of his empire is in one piece, so putting every city into the war effort he can pump a stack in a few turns. With an empire cut in half you can't do that so quickly, and in the few additional turns you take to get your stack on the front line you've lost 2 more cities.
About spread out empires... Aren't you contending with Gawdzak for the weirdest shaped empire in the game ?
(March 19th, 2015, 16:42)GermanJoey Wrote: No no, please by all means, post whatever you want, I like talking about this game! This isn't even a derail at all, I mean, this is my thread for PB22 and you're talking about my PB22 game.
I was feeling foolishly bullish at that point, unexpectedly climbing to world-tops in CY and production and I *also* underestimated just how hard it would be to attack you. I think, at that point, your power and production was super low, I had 5 XP Agg swords coming up and Numids following that. I totally I overestimated how far you were behind on tech (more like I was overestimating my own tech position) and production. Once I realized that a.) your power buildup was matching mine and that b.) you actually were able to get Hwatchas in time for my attack, I called it off. I really didn't think about the Hwatcha much at all until it was too late. Agg Swords in RtR are freaking amazing, as you are learning in PB23, but the Hwatcha stops them hard.
I probably should have sent you a trade offer at some point, at least after I decided not to invade. That was a big mistake on my part, I think. Very lazy thinking. My state of mind was like: I was still a bit bitter about that pig thing and very wary about the so-called warrior rush, plus all the EP you spent on me... I later got super mad at you guys, sometime after your second big invasion, and Dr. Ceilazul called me out on my failings on this side of things.
You'd have won the war of attrition though, if you had went on with your military buildup we'd have been forced to stop whipping. You can't whip a size 3 city every turn you see. Germany lost the battle of Britain in 1940 and you lost (as in, didn't win) our early conflicts for the same reason : you stopped fighting just as you were going to win.
I finished Assembly Line on T217! Big Golden Age update! 90% of screenshots are from T217, its just that turn rolled before I could finish writing this up.
Demos + Overview Screens:
pre-GA demos.
Immediate post-GA demos, without changing tiles.
I'm only gaining about +500bpt extra from the GA, so I'll only catch up about 4k beakers on Gawdzak from this, less than I'd hoped. I think my break-even income is higher than his though, so maybe I'll catch up more? +300 hammers per turn is pretty good though, especially since the Demos don't count hammers from OR. Gawdzak's MFG is still higher than mine though. ;[ CY is taking a small hit due to increased specialist assignment and more focus on maximizing my GA hammers.
Gavagai has about +25% more land than I do, and has finally exceded my citizen count. I'd been tops here for most of the game.
Tech screen. Gawdzak got Physics a few turns ago and is presumably working on either Artillery (most likely, since his gold savings has consistently stayed low. He'll want to deny me KTB on Railroad) or Railroad (to get Combustion faster). After he gets destroyers the next natural tech will be Industrialism for Tanks and Battleships. Since I want both Liberalism and MT, I'm guessing that he's still up maybe 15k beakers on me. Gavagai, on the other hand, finally just got Corporation. He'll want AL next... I'm guessing that's another 7-8 turns away for him. Plako just switched into State Property at the end of his GA, but dtay beat him to the Kremlin. 2metra is still dancing around Astro, I'm sure most of his income going towards upgrades...
Selected Cities
Claretin's GP will finally be born at the end of this GA!!! That'll be GP #3 for GA #4.
My NE is thus perfectly tuned... we should get our last GP 7-8 turns after this GA finishes. There's a 86%*8%=6.8*% chance we'll whiff and end up with a double merchant... cross your fingers! Still though, the ToA has generated a lot of Great People for me, I can't really complain about pool pollution when it was the only way I could get real GPP pooled at all.
If Greasy Grossman actually completes a Great Person I will laugh my fucking ass off. I certainly wasn't planning on it!! But! It could happen, with another GA coming soonish! Part merchant, part scientist, with a little bit of artist mixed in... that's our Greasy alright! I might even just settle him here, my little Siberia for academic rebels.
We got a cute lil event here in a filler I just planted on T216, very nice!
My future Ironworks is still growing for the most part. I've been trying to maximize food here as much as possible, but I really wanted this levee done ASAP because levee gives 2 hammers per tile in the GA. It was worth starving here it for a turn, IMHO - I'm trading 9 food for something like 60 hammers! T218, I set it back to full growth. I've been a bit neglectant of this site due to deciding only recently to put my IW here; I only have 2 workers here redoing its tiles because I had sent my extras back to the mainland to help jump-start my fillers. Unfortunately, I just do not have any other good production cities available; only my HE gets base 40hpt right now, and I want to put West Point there. Ironworks will have to be here.
My Moai is lookin beautiful as always. What a city!
My capital, enjoying its final days in Bureaucracy. After this GA I'll be in Vassalage + Free Religion instead of Bureau + Theocracy; I calculated that my income will improve enough to justify researching Liberalism.
Full city list. I'M BUILDING A FEW FACTORIES, YOU COULD SAY. For those interested in number crap, my current city count is 59, while Gavagai's is 57 and Gawdzak's is 52. I have 7 filler spots left to settle, 3 of which will be planted in the next couple turns while the rest will have to wait until after factories and coal plants are up.
Civic and Tech plans:
I've been mulling over what civics will be best for me. Basically, I have a few options:
Police State vs Rep - The extra production from PS is nice, but I decided to go with Rep here because I too much beakerage from cities that have become too big for their britches, working specialists where they can't work tiles. This is especially so for my fillers, which, like Greasy Grossman, work just 1-4 actual tiles.
Bureau/Theo vs Vasalage/Free Religion - I reckon FR is worth somewhere between 175 and 200 bpt in total right now, considering my slider is at 60% break-even outside of a golden age, while the civic costs (High+Med to Med+Low) and Vassalage units saves like 130gpt at the current rate of 45% inflation. Together, that's far, far better than what I get from Bureaucracy, and Vassalge gives +2 XP without needing Hinduism in the city. I also considered Enviromentalism, which I estimated to be a bit better than Vassalage money-wise but I'd rather not give up the extra promo.
Free Market vs State Property. Good lord did I spend a lot of time thinking about this option. My conclusion was that FM is better for now still, but I should reconsider for the next GA. Right now, my distance from palace costs are like 280gpt, times 45% inflation = 406gpt in total, yowza. In addition, I must have at least like 100 workshops and watermills, giving 100fpt. The +10% hammers is, perhaps, +70hpt total. Overall that is pretty awesome, even if a lot of that food would be going into cities that are already out of tiles to work and much of the hammers would be lost to rounding.
Comparing that to FM gave me trouble, because the FM route bonus turned out not to work like I thought it did. It took me awhile, playing around with some cities' incomes trying to get numbers to add up correctly, but I did figure it out. It turns out to work like this:
Code:
total route yield with free market = floor(1.25*(floor(RM1*RB1) + floor(RM2*RB2) + floor(RM3*RB3) + ...)
Where RM = all the Route Modifiers for a particular route (e.g. +25% for capital, +150% for peace, +100% for an international route = +275% => RM = 3.75)
and where RB = Route Base (1.7 for a size 17 city, for example)
Anyways, I had thought that FM gave an extra hidden RM of +0.25, but it turns out to just multiply all your damn route commerce together, making it even stronger than I had previously realized. A little iceball fishing village w/ cothon, for example, brings in 25cpt with FM, and only 15 without. That's an extra 10 commerce from nowhere! My capital gains +21 commerce with all of its nice modifiers, my Moai like +25cpt. I estimate that I'm bringing in +600 commerce per turn in total, close to 25% of my total economic output, just from this civic!
If I didn't need to research Communism I still might consider SP despite it being economically worse. The extra food and extra hammers is not easy to pass by. As it is, however, I can't justify a 10k beaker sideline to get a civic that I'm not fully convinced is better than what I currently have. I guess that means I should get a Forbidden Palace somewhere? I'm really not sure where though, my capital is ironically as close to the exact center of my empire as possible.
Anyways, what all this means is that my tech plans for the GA are something like this, very straightforward: RR -> Liberalism (for FR) -> MT (for WP) -> save gold for Combustion/Artillery. I'll begin teching RR T219, completing it in 3 turns; I'm not switching into V/FR until the last turn of my GA.
International Situaton:
The biggest news of the last few turns is that I've signed a defensive pact with Gavagai, which he offered IIRC T215. I had to think about it for a very long time, staring at that trade window. My thoughts are this. First of all, if any of the three of us (me/gawd/gav) get into a real 1v1 war, the third guy will win the game whether he joins in or not. No question about that. Thus, the pact doesn't mean much in the event of a war except to punish Gawdzak for instigating it, whichever the target. Gav and I have a lot better long-term prospects than Gawd does, but Gawd is currently the strongest and most advanced. So, if anyone were to *want* to pick a fight, it will be Gawdzak at the instant he has destroyers and transports... and I think he'll want to, be desperate to maybe. He will very shortly have a window where he is the uncontestable strongest civ in the game, with Artilleries, Infantry, Machine Guns, Destroyers, and Transports at his disposal, each unit being the stronger than anything anyone else can field. I can match Infantry with Infantry, but only *after* he'd land and even then need to retreat from the presense of Artillery. Gavagai won't even have Infantry yet!
Compounding matters is that the bulk of Gawd's fleet is currently chilling down near Nidaros, while he doesn't have pretty much anything near Gavagai. (I already have airships crawling all over the goddamn place, perhaps the one benefit of going for Physics before AL). Furthermore, I'm way, way, way more geographically vulnerable to Gawdzak than Gavagai is. He could potentially cut my core right in two. Gavagai isn't vulnerable like that because his core isn't as important to him due to essentially having two additional fully-developed, land-adjacent cores courtesy of HAK and Donovan's poor defensive skills. Meanwhile, my new land from Furungy and the REM/Adrien is slowly getting back up to speed, true, but it is still geographically, hmmm, how to describe, this, "way the fuck out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere," I think is the technical term. Eventually, if the situation does not change, I think I will surpass Gawdzak as strongest civ for a bit (only a bit, as Gavagai will likewise eventually surpass me), with Railroad uniting my cores and my higher land, bigger cities, and higher city count eventually giving me a manufacturing advantage. However, I need time to get my factories and coal plants in place... an attack now would be game-over for me.
Thus, I think that this pact will push Gawdzak away from attacking me, if he had any inclination, and towards attacking dtay (perhaps allowing Portugal to make inroads on dtay's other front) and let me build up enough internal momentum via Factories and RR to set affairs proactively rather than reactively.
A screenshot of my eastern defenses; my naval presence here is by this point far larger than Gawdzak's. He's got a slight edge on me on land though, but not enough to invade unless he mass-upgrades. I have a constant congo-line of rifles walking over from my central core - it's become so tedious moving them every fucking turn that I've begun actually breaking one of my cardinal civ rules, to never use a multi-turn move no matter what.
Next, the Portuguese situation. 2metra is still driving me nuts with his stupid Carracks, I don't understand why he keeps a.) building them at all, as the world enters the age of destroyers, and b.) posturing with them, trying to slip them in every nock and cranny with the hope that I won't notice one or something. Does he think I'm stupid? I dunno, lol, maybe he's right (lol!) because the worst part about it is that it's working, sort of... I've been so stressed and busy IRL that I've been playing a bit faster and sloppier and somehow let this Carrack sneak right up to my core without thinking about the fact that it could be carrying a paylod of rifles. If I hadn't finally noticed this turn, with just enough time to get some rifles down, 2metra would have his revenge.
He's also got some near his coast (and down around the ice, which I spotted with a Galleon) but I have far more troops on this front so it is not such a big of a deal. Portugal is the only front I don't have scouted by an airship but my Privateers have spotted his main Carrack stack, consisting of something like 24 Carracks and a few ironclads and galleys, on port by his mainland. I've got only 4 frigates, 5 galleons, and a privateer nearby, but I've got a pair of fast-moving ironclads and several frigates en-route to re-inforce. I've also got about 2 dozen rifes and a dozen cannons on garrison duty.
Overview shots
Most of my empire looks about the same as my last big overview update, with the occaisonal new filler around, but all of my war gains are now out of revolt. So, I'll give y'all a few more pictures.
a.) Gawdzak and Gavagai develop a bloodfeud, I stay out of it and win by concession (0% chance, neither of them are stupid)
b.) I launch a Spaceship on this side of impossible
Christ, I don't know. How DO I win this game? I'm reminded of Omar Little's immortal answer in his witness testimony on The Wire... "and How does one rob drug dealers for 10 years and live to tell about it?" "And how does one win a modern-era game where every single fucking one of your cities are boatable?"
A turn at a time, I suppose. *smirks*
Of course, the irony is that Omar eventually got shot in the back of the head out of the blue, by a little kid who just wanted to see what would happen.... 2metra, I'm lookin at you here.
The obstacles, you ask? All of them, all of the obstacles. Gavagai is way bigger (and has the MoM on top of that, that wonder really should obsolete at SM) and could eventually overpower me, Gawdzak is currently way more powerful and could soon dagger me, dtay is a huge threat to space despite his small size with SoL and Kremlin, 2metra could decide to make a suicidal last-stand invasion with like 50 carracks, and even faraway plako could potentially be a game-ending problem due to being one of the top military powers and owning the Sistine Chapel. Will he try for a Cultural Victory right in Commodore's face, or will Commodore just keep NAPing him forever? The only person in this game that is not a potential existential threat to me is, ironically enough, Commodore himself - and how many times has that ever been said at RB??!??
All of this is not to say that I don't also have a few things going for me... I've got a 4th GA lined up, my Exp health bonus is about to pay off big, my Agg Promo bonus still keeps my troops superior at parity tech, my Commando infantry pump soon to be online and I still own the circumnav bonus (9-move transports stuffed Commandos are a thing that could happen this game! now that's some FFH2 shit!), loads of infrastructure in big cities, and possibly the world's best tech rate. I'm just... so spread out, I don't know how I can build a spaceship yet keep up with military on three fronts unless I get some more land somewhere.
![[Image: Ew4GzJY.gif]](http://i.imgur.com/Ew4GzJY.gif)
Still though, the ToA has generated a lot of Great People for me, I can't really complain about pool pollution when it was the only way I could get real GPP pooled at all.
