[SPOILERS] naufragar and Rusten get nickel-and-dimed

[Rusten]

You know about the "trick" to maximizing the amount of watermills, yes? The order in which you make them matters a lot. You need to force them on the right side of the river.

The newest version of the RtR mod has some spicy updates for cottages, but for this game it's workshops all the way. Both in terms of improvement yields and how long the game will last. When in doubt --> workshop. Workshop everything except watermills and the farms required to grow (but windmills first). You shouldn't be worried about production with caste system. In the renaissance caste is *the* production civic. With all the modifiers unlocked the workshops outperform regular mines and whipping once we've grown back our cities to double digits is very ineffective.

But for now make farms, watermills and windmills first as we'll need to reach high pop counts before switching to the workshops. 
Rule of thumb is as many farms as you have worker turns available. With infinite worker turns it's generally more efficient to farm first and then workshop over the farm when you've reached your target pop*. We'll lack worker turns, but it might help your decision making. Grassland farms are very good.

5 workers. I guess that's all we need given the whipping, but we'll need almost 2 per city later if we are to keep up with growth. Serfdom will lower the requirement a bit.

*Always true for cottages. Can't speak in absolutes for workshops as I've not done the math.

[naufragar]

Thanks for all this. I don't know the watermill trick, but I'll look it up.

5 workers. I guess that's all we need given the whipping, but we'll need almost 2 per city later if we are to keep up with growth. Serfdom will lower the requirement a bit.

Yeah... We should have more workers, but when we were supposed to be building workers and settlers, we were building axes to fight Superdeath and then immediately transitioned to samurai. Believe me, I don't think 5 workers for 7 cities is the right number.

[Rusten]

I don't know the watermill trick, but I'll look it up.

You can't have 2 watermills next to each other. Quick explanation (black is river, X is where the worker makes the improvement).




Blue before red before orange before pink before green.
The problem is that if you start with pink for instance, then it could end up at the orange location, which means orange is forced on red and red is forced on blue, but blue has nowhere to go, so you're down 1 watermill.

If that's too broad of an explanation I'm sure you can find it better explained someplace else.

[naufragar]

And you all said I was crazy.


Crazy like a fox.

I made a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake this turn, and it destroyed all enjoyment I might have gotten from what followed. We captured Draft Dodgers and killed 3 of the 4 horse archers. I have illustrated my mistake.


I killed our Great General. I lost vision of the enemy galley when I moved the marine samurai in and I, like an infant, have trouble with object permanence. Only after I moved the scout did I go back to check my screenshots. Even then, I shouldn't have moved the scout to the coast. He was just as safe one tile to the east. I'm sorry; this turn deserves a better report than this, but I'm trying to keep this thread family friendly and I'm blindingly angry at myself. I hate unforced errors. 27xp until our next Great General. The shark fins on the power graph won't show up until next turn or the turn after, but Superdeath has closed the gap a bit.

Maybe I'll come back to this when I've cooled down. (But I have to take a mandatory information security thingie today, and those always put me in a fine mood.   )

Edit: Oh, I forgot. Here's the full combat log from his attack through our counterattack.

[Rusten]

The horse archers are gone!

You just won the war! Now's the time to celebrate, not fret over mistakes. The galley is more likely to be empty and the scout may be fine. Grieve him and get annoyed if he's not there tomorrow, but not until then.
Can't imagine Superdeath has much left in the tank after that. The fact that he got a GG and immediately attached it to a horse archer he left to die furthers this feeling. Although it's possible he attached it in the capital and we'll face a bunch of 5xp archers.

edit: You can skip the safety spears now. No deep horse archer drive will be made. Samurai and trebs all the way.
Can you confirm that this was SD's only visible source of horses?

[naufragar]

I have cooled off significantly. I have also learned to never open strange .exe attachments from unknown senders.

Can't imagine Superdeath has much left in the tank after that. The fact that he got a GG and immediately attached it to a horse archer he left to die furthers this feeling. Although it's possible he attached it in the capital and we'll face a bunch of 5xp archers.

I agree with this, even if I can't be as sanguine about the war overall. He killed our trebs, which slows us down a ton. Pajarocu whips one next turn and then that treb takes ~3 turns to get to the front. Last turn, after I logged off, I logged back on in a panic and put Gaon on a treb just in case we lost ours. Tht one is still a ways out, and Pajarocu might be able to get two trebs down to the front by itself before Gaon gets one. Pajarocu is a work horse.

But I totally agree that there's no way Superdeath can shrug off the loss of 10 horse archers and a city. I think you can see in the screenshot that we have three more samurai already on the way down. Really, it's just a treb we're missing.

I don't remember seeing any other horse in Superdeath's lands, but I'll double check. He does own tiles in the fog, so still no guarantees, but I'm allowing myself to be hopefully about this.

I said in the report that Superdeath is closing the power gap. This was nonsense. Rival top power hadn't gone down, because SD is no longer rival top power, not because he wasn't effected by the loss of ten units.

I had said before the last turn that Superdeath could turn on autopromote but that I was "imagining worst cases." I wasn't; I was imagining my opponents making the correct moves, which I should always do! He did turn on autopromote, so the archers had a bit more health. It's also why some of the horse archers, including the survivor, had Combat 2 instead of Shock.

Finally, the captured city of Draft Dodger still has its granary. In three turns, we can turn it against the enemy. That's nice.

[naufragar]

Superdeath still has fight in him.


Attacked our stack on the mine with 3 horse archers, 1 chariot, and an archer. He killed two samurai and a spear, while only losing a horse archer and the archer. He won that round. He didn't kill our Great Medic. I'm assuming his galley is unloaded. I'm assuming he's trying to hunt ours and attack at 33% odds. He's been doing this, swinging like a berserker at low odds and hoping he lucks out. I've talked about this attitude before. Example from this turn: the very last combat he initiated was an archer against an axe at 15% odds. Why? Presumably because if he wins, it's a great coup, and if he loses, well YOLO. I'll whip a trireme next turn. No point in letting him get lucky on a 1 in 3. We need that galley, especially because....



See Rusten, we have so many workers that we can use them as scouts.   Nice to find a fish. I've moved my planned city down a tile.

I promised you sharkfins, so here ya go:


This doesn't take into account our most recent defeats. We've got a touch of war weariness cropping up too. We're only 6k about rival top power. Magic Science has left a scout parked on a hill over looking Scylla's. I say parked, but he keeps moving it a tile west to get more vision of our lands. Dear future opponents, I hate this and I will kill your scout the moment it's convenient. The lesson I learned from Superdeath is not to let these needlessly antagonistic insults slide but rather be prepared to escalate. The moment I feel I have some breathing room in this war, that scout is dead.

Maybe even before I have some breathing room, because breathing room might not come for a while. Superdeath has some pop to whip.


He has three cities in the fog we don't see. I assume one is by his copper. Buckle up for the long haul.

[naufragar]

Since we kept the city, we need to think about how many units to leave in Draft Dodger before moving on. Our stack has shrunk considerably and will shrink more from the garrison. We don't know what the south looks like or if SD can hit the city from the fog with two movers on his rounds. If we lose this city, we lose our road network and our progress. It would be an unmitigated disaster.

I forgot to mention that I'm teching Masonry and we've got roughly a 45% chance at landing an Engineer. Boak/GKC just swapped to Organized Religion in their golden age, so I'd bet they're going after 'Mids. If we land the Scientist, we bulb Alpha, right?

[Rusten]

Bulbing alphabet seems extremely weak. If we want trade routes we can ask MS. I logged in earlier and it looks like he has a fair share of island cities so I'd go ahead and send him open borders. Boak/GKC is becoming more dangerous and it might be best to buddy up with MS for now.
Saving the GS for either a golden age, philosophy (nationalism --> draft) or astronomy must be better.

edit: If MS has a surplus luxury you could push your luck and ask for it with the open borders, but I'm fine with a 1:1 trade too.
edit 2: I also saw a big open spot between us, SD and MS. IIRC it had sugar/banana or something of the sort and lots of grassland. We need to claim it sooner rather than later -- can't wait for SD to die as MS will surely settle it.

[naufragar]

edit 2: I also saw a big open spot between us, SD and MS. IIRC it had sugar/banana or something of the sort and lots of grassland. We need to claim it sooner rather than later -- can't wait for SD to die as MS will surely settle it.

I can't remember the spot you're talking about but the capital can get onto settler duty now that it's done with its great person.

I don't have my screenshots to check, but I think that Superdeath actually deleted the horse archers (and axe) that killed our samurai...? Read into that what you will.

I'll offer MS open borders next time I'm in game.