[SPOILERS] Four Score & Seven Dynasties Ago: Pindicator plays Lincoln of China

[pindicator]

Turn 159



I have never been so happy to get a low odds Artist
This opens up tons of possibilites on how to crack Moogle. My one concern... is 4000 culture enough to give my army access to Bunker Rush? If I double move him I know it is.

[pindicator]

The current war front:



Four Gate's borders popped last turn, which combined with the low odds GA made ma abort an attack on it. I had my army along with a pair of workers staged on the horse tile, ready to road on the diagonal to move beside the city. I was hoping Moogle would rush his HAs into the city so I could then take them out with the CKN collateral. But the borders popped and that plan is not aborted.

But now I have a Great Artist bomb to use.

Right now I think I will bomb Swooper (formerly Void Rays). 4000 culture will hopefully push up to the gates of Bunker Rush, but I need to find the equations for how culture actually gets dumped into those tiles (IIRC it's not the full 4000 if you aren't expanded to that ring of culture already). The army will move into Moogle's territory the turn before this bomb takes place - close enough for the HAs to hit but not close enough for the catapults to get to me. The idea is to give him a reason to move his troops out of Bunker Rush where he thinks they are safe -- ideally 2 tiles away from my stack. Then we bomb Swooper, gain control of the tiles, and take out his stack with my collateral.

There's another idea: to build a city south of Moogle's capital and to bomb that. But I don't think I'd get access to his capital, and I think taking out his army is the real prize here.

When I do this is dependent on the research tab above. Drama is now my tech target because Music's Great Artist still has not been claimed. If nobody else has gotten Music by the time I finish Drama (a possibility since everybody is caught up in the Taj / Lib race) then I'll bulb Music as a "free" tech and get another Great Artist. Drama also unlocks my UB, which will help in getting good culture in border cities. I'm less excited about the Globe; I don't have a good spot for it yet.

That leaves a few options for the GS.
* Continue to sit on him and wait for an Education bulb.
* Bulb Philosophy now
* Academy
* Golden Age

I went with the Academy. It will take another 10+ turns to research Paper after Drama, and bulbing Philosophy seems a waste since there is nothing in that tech I want, plus I'll have 2 pre-reqs on it giving me a 1.4x bonus to my beakers there. In the end, the academy in my capital added on another 25bpt at 100% science. My break-even rate is only 30% so I added about 7bpt overall. Modest gains.

[spacemanmf]

I did a load of GA bomb testing in PBEM13, as part of the attack on Pegasus.

[pindicator]

Thanks! I'll check out your thread and try to glean how it will affect the battlefield

[pindicator]

I can see how this reminds you of that game: China and great artist bombs

Any hint as to where in the thread it is?
I've been skimming but havent had luck

[novice]

I can see how this reminds you of that game: China and great artist bombs

Any hint as to where in the thread it is?
I've been skimming but havent had luck

The fun starts here:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...post174046

The culture bomb research should be shortly prior to this. EDIT: Here: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...post169721

[AutomatedTeller]

nevermind

[pindicator]

Found it!

If I read this right then with a brand new city, it looks like I'll get 18 * [city cpt] dumped into the 4th ring. If the city's culture was over 1000 then I could hope to reach the 5000 culture needed to dump into the 5th ring and have a stronger culture dump into the 4th ring, but that isn't practical on such a new city. As such, I probably won't get influence on the tiles around Bunker Rush -- the city has been at 3rd ring for as long as I've seen it (10 turns) which means that the inner most ring has at the very minimum 400 of Moogle's culture dumped into it. More likely we're looking at something double that value.

I can exploit the way the game works to run max culture at the time of the bomb. Should I grab Music then i'll definitely be able to pull this off by building culture at the time of the great artist bomb. That means rather than getting 18 * 1cpt for having the religion bonus, I could run Culture at size 2 and get 18 * 9 or 162 dumped into that 4th ring. It still wouldn't be enough to get access to the ring around Bunker, though. Let's say I could get up to 20cpt; I'd still be unable to gain the tiles 1st ring to Bunker Rush.

Now I wish I had razed Void Rays; replanting just 1 tile E would definitely have gotten me enough culture to grab his city. But I was worried about getting a religion more at the time.

It will take too long to get to 1000 culture, so I don't think that is beneficial. I will have to try to lure his army out, perhaps towards Four Gate, or double move him and collateral the army while it's inside Bunker Rush.

Thanks for the mechanics help!

[spacemanmf]

I can exploit the way the game works to run max culture at the time of the bomb.

Don't think this works in post-patch BTS.

[pindicator]

Yeah, I was remembering the exploit off of rb29d that I was a part of long ago, but it looks like that was played on Vanilla.

By the way, I hate it when i forget to end turn. Busy weekend and I raced through my turn on Sunday. I'm just going to shut up in the tech thread about delays and clock manipulation and all that and try to just keep the banter fun. Too much stress in there already, and as just happened with me, anybody can have a slip, even LP I'm sure.

Anyway, this was turn 160. We finished Notre Dame (yay!), and at end of turn we will finish Moai down in Cheep-Cheep (yay!) as well as Drama (yay!) and be out of money (boo!). I'm building Courthouses everywhere I can, trying to scrounge up long-term savings, but actually more for the EP points since spies are a part of this game.

Thinking the future attack through... Next turn I will likely get drama and be able to bulb Music for the Great Artist. He'll be born in the capital which means he wont' be in a position to bomb Swooper until turn 163. Hense my attack needs to come on turns 163 & 164. I'll still try to lure Moogle's army out, because it'll be easier to kill the HA and catapults if I can do it outside of the city. So on turn 162 I will move my troops out, preferably after Moogle moves but it isn't necessary. Hopefully Moogle moves out, I can then artist bomb and have access to take his army out. If not, then we double move him on turns 163 & 164: bomb and move adjacent to Bunker Rush on 163, then attack with everything on 164. He has about 30 units in Bunker Rush but most are Horse Archers and catapults, so cultural defenses will not be much of a help to him. But I probably won't be able to kill everything off in 1 round