Speaker's super top secret thread for the purposes of world domination; Neener Neener

[Sullla]

Alright, lots of stuff continuing to take place on each turn here. First, some actual news from sunrise's civ:



Getting the Great Engineer from Speaker's capital was a huge break for our team. With the Great Scientist from Physics and that Engineer, we only need one more Great Person to kick off a final Golden Age for my civ. And, conveniently enough, we're in prime position to do so in this city. We slowed Insta-Lock's Great Person production to make sure that Speaker's capital went first. Now we have combined 81% odds to land something that is not a Scientist or Engineer. (Since there were only 4 Merchant slots, and we just needed non-Scientist/Engineer points, there was some slight usage of Priest specialists here. Heh.)

As long as the odds hold true, we'll have a Merchant here next turn, then it will take a turn to move over to my territory, and then the Golden Age will be off. I could probably do close to 2000 base beakers/turn in a Golden Age, especially after swapping to Free Speech on the first turn of the GA. The effective research rate with 1.2x multiplier would be a little short of 3000 beakers/turn for our whole team. That would be more than enough to grab Communism and Democracy techs during the six turns, and revolt on the final turn of the GA into my desired civics combo. Again, let's hope that the odds hold true.

Now, as for dealing with Thoth:



He left one rifle on the hill, and moved up the rest to this forested hill. I'll be honest: I have no idea what Thoth is doing here. He has to realize that he's not going to take a city with rifles and cavs invading an empire of machine guns and infantry. The only thing that I can imagine is that he is looking at my cities (with espionage city visibility, since we've never been able to invest any EP with their team) and thinking that these cities are vulnerable. Yeah, sure, there's only one archer in there, but this isn't PB7 with the bullshit double moves enabled. I get to take my turn before those units can move again, and naturally there will be more defenders moving along the rail network to wherever they're needed. Thoth should know better.

Now sadly, I shifted some infantry over to the northwest last turn because I thought there was more of a credible threat up there. I didn't expect Thoth to actually move forward a second time, after the bloody nose he got last time. Oh well. In any case, I threw a cannon at his stack, and then sent in the infantry. One lost at 75% odds. All of the rest won, and gave me a present in the meantime:



Overall, 1 infantry and 1 cannon lost in exchange for 2 rifles and 2 cavs and a Great General. I'll happily take that one. With my factories/plants/health stuff finally done, my cities are outputting significant military now for the first time all game. Even with the lost infantry this turn, I went from 3 infantry to 6 infantry upon ending turn, and another 3 finish next turn. My capital is getting over 100 production/turn (although I will need to replace a mine or two with windmills until we get more health techs, heh). All I need now is Uni Suffrage civic to explode even further ahead in production. My civ is outputting a LOT of production. A lot.

The Great General is going to merge into my Heroic Epic city, where it will enable double-promotion ships. With Pentagon (3t) and Theocracy civics, that will get naval units to 10XP. Triple promotions from the start! Well, I have some fun plans for that down the road. Let's just say that Dave probably won't be expecting that combination...

There's really not much going on in the western ocean this turn. I combined my destroyers into one stack on the same tile as last turn. There's six of them hanging out together now, with a seventh very close by, and the eighth just built in Crescendo at end of turn. Dave is building his own destroyers to counter, and looks like he doesn't feel confident about attacking to try and break the blockade. This current standoff is perfectly fine with me; every turn we get a little closer to Industrialism/battleships. And my own non-Heroic Epic coastal cities are now done with their factories/plants and starting 3t destroyers. We are probably roughly even in shipbuilding capacity, since Dave's northern cities aren't in a position where I can blockade them. But, again, stalemate in the sea fine with me right now.

Team 3 will likely get another tech this turn. I'm really wondering what they've chosen to pursue... If I had to guess, I would say Biology, as it's a logical tech to chase and it would work well with their State Property workshop economy. That would be a very fine choice for them, and it wouldn't be that scary for us. At some point they are going to go for factories.... right? Drafting rifles is only going to work for so long. They will fare poorly against our double and triple promoted tanks.

Team 3 also captured and razed a city from Team 2 last turn. It doesn't look like Team 2 is going to achieve their Culture victory, unless they have a crapton of Great Artists hidden somewhere. The race to carve up their territory seems to be on in earnest. I'll split off the battle between Speaker and Lewwyn/India in the next post.

[Sullla]

OK, here's what things looked like after Speaker moved:



Most of Speaker's army is sitting next to LOLOLOLOL, and there's a smaller stack down to the south. That stack only existed because of the cultural borders bug; when we razed Lewwyn's border city, the culture in that area disappeared for two turns, and Speaker had to leave some units behind to guard his city. Otherwise Thoth could have attacked it through the disappearing borders, and yes, this is a really silly bug that's always been present in Civ4. In any case, that stack had 3 rifles and 5 cavs in it, along with Speaker's Medic III Great General cavalry. Lewwyn's various outdated units were split between a force inside his city, and a group on the hill behind it. All extremely outdated stuff (muskets, maces, pikes, etc.) along with 17 catapults. Their team actually had no knights because they never researched Feudalism. Heh.

We weren't quite sure what Lewwyn would do, but true to his nature, he attacked the smaller stack:



A whole bunch of catapults died, and then a bunch of outdated stuff died, and then the outdated stuff eventually started winning. In the end, we traded roughly along these lines:

We Lost
2 rifles
5 cavs (1 Great General)
1 knight
1 curiassier

They Lost
7 catapults
2 janissaries
1 musket
1 pike
2 random other units that were renamed

That's a good trade for Lewwyn, and making the best of a frankly horrible situation. However, my moving out of his city, those units are all going to die next turn, as they are sitting wounded on flat ground with no place to run:

The stack indicated on the left is what's inside the city; the smaller, injured stack indicated on the right is what's on the flatland tile southwest of the city center. If you add the 3 muskets, 3 maces, 2 crossbows, 3 pikes, and 1 catapult to the list of exchanges above, then we don't come off looking nearly as bad. We'll kill off a huge amount of Lewwyn's outdated stuff in exchange for 8 units.

The one mistake was losing the Medic III unit. Speaker unfortunately made a micro mistake there; it had 3 movement and could have joined the main stack this turn, but it was grouped with the smaller stack, moved onto a hill tile, and then only had 1 movement point left. That was a bit sloppy, and it cost us our healer for this invasion. No question, it's a setback. We have a normal Medic I healer, but that's definitely not the same. Ah well, just have to get another Great General then. I think there's another one due relatively soon from Speaker's Imperialistic civ.

We can't kill Leeroy Jenkins next turn, but we can take down the defenses and clean up that flatground stack. It's just a matter of time wading through the old units, which can't be replaced easily. Kudos to Lewwyn for a nice move, but that city should still fall soon.

EDIT: I'm going to be traveling for the next four days, so probably little in the way of updates. Sorry! Also, check out the ancient-era naval blockade up in the north. Triremes from Thoth blockading Lewwyn. High comedy!

[Commodore]

Interesting to see the Chm/Imp play out for GG production. So one little mini-game that's always interested me is the use of Great Generals, particularly at this stage of the game. How do you decide which of attaching/settling/Military Academy you do in this game?

[Speaker]

I'm pretty annoyed with myself for losing that medic. I've had the thing sitting around for so long that I forgot that it even had a third move, and didn't realize it until I moved my trailing stack, and saw that it still had a movement point left, but at that point, it was too late. I honestly didn't think Lewwyn would attack like that. I was expecting him to more or less let me take the city, and then try to counter attack it, using his 19 catapults to soften it up. So with that in mind, I have several machine guns ready to move in via railroad, once the city is captured. Give me the here.

Interesting to see the Chm/Imp play out for GG production. So one little mini-game that's always interested me is the use of Great Generals, particularly at this stage of the game. How do you decide which of attaching/settling/Military Academy you do in this game?

There's really no need for a military academy at this point in the game. I already have 100% hammer multipliers in every city, and 200% in my capital and heroic epic city. Settling makes sense early game, to get double promotion units before you have access to Theocracy, or later, if you can get enough experience to get triple promo units (I have one general settled in my capital, for just this reason). As is, I will get triple promo units from all my cities once the Pentagon finishes in a couple turns, so I will be attaching all my generals from here on out. Medic III is probably the most valuable thing right now. Other situational uses do exist, mostly involving XP "Sprinkle" to get a stack of units an extra promo. I have attached a general to a stack of 20 7/8 charismatic mounted units before, getting each of them 1 XP, for their 3rd promo, as well as a stack of 10 8/10 XP units for the same idea.

Charismatic+Imperialistic+Pentagon should give our military a huge edge over the last bit of this game. Having a full complement of triple promoted units is going to be pretty ridiculous, starting in another couple turns.

[Speaker]

Paging Dr. T-Hawk for a bit of micro discussion.

I want to build a barracks (33 hammers) and grocer (100 hammers). If I build the grocer first, it will take 3 turns, 2 for the grocer, 1 for the barracks, with a *lot* of overflow. If I build the barracks first, will it take 2 turns? I'm not sure I 100% understand how overflow works, but I'm thinking that I will have the max 33 overflow, which will add to my base production of 24, and then multiply by 2, giving me 114 hammers next turn, allowing for a 1-turn grocer? Is this correct?

[Speaker]

Here is a tactical map of the battle area, following this turn's fighting. I have killed all 12 of Lewwyn's exposed units without taking any losses. I attacked with two cannons at ~75% odds, and then every fight after that was >99%, so I really didn't even sustain much damage. Unfortunately, it looks like Antisocialmonkey has sent up a stack of 8 Janissaries, so I don't think I physically have enough units to capture the city. I am building a new stack, and next turn, I will decide if I want to pull back, attack with what I've got, or just sit there. My city raider III cannons have 95% odds right now.

[SevenSpirits]

Paging Dr. T-Hawk for a bit of micro discussion.

I want to build a barracks (33 hammers) and grocer (100 hammers). If I build the grocer first, it will take 3 turns, 2 for the grocer, 1 for the barracks, with a *lot* of overflow. If I build the barracks first, will it take 2 turns? I'm not sure I 100% understand how overflow works, but I'm thinking that I will have the max 33 overflow, which will add to my base production of 24, and then multiply by 2, giving me 114 hammers next turn, allowing for a 1-turn grocer? Is this correct?

I'm not T-Hawk and I'm not sure, but I think you can only get 16 overflow from the barracks. (I think it's capped before dividing out the multipliers.)

[pindicator]

Actually, I'm pretty certain what will happen is that you'll out in 84/33 into the barracks. The 51 then gets divided by your multiplier of 100%, so half that and round down to 25. That's your overflow.

The following turn you'll get (25 + 24) x 2 hammers into your grocer, or 98h. Just shy of 2 turns.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, what pindicator said.

[Speaker]

Actually, I'm pretty certain what will happen is that you'll out in 84/33 into the barracks. The 51 then gets divided by your multiplier of 100%, so half that and round down to 25. That's your overflow.

The following turn you'll get (25 + 24) x 2 hammers into your grocer, or 98h. Just shy of 2 turns.

If that's the case, I can micro it from there. I'm going to try and see what happens.

EDIT- OK, yeah, it gave me 24 hammers overflow + 24 base = 96 total. I swapped a farm to a mine, for 104 and a 1-turn grocer (next turn), at the cost of a couple food. That was a fun little exercise.