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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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[PB22 Spoiler] Joey and Borsche puke on the funny pages
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I think the CR would be better off giving you one less turn of anarchy : 1->0 2->1 3->2 and so on. So it's not too OP.
Do you really have the production to have the parts done in 40t ? They're all pretty expensive and you complained about your lack of good production cities earlier.
May 14th, 2015, 05:16
(This post was last modified: May 14th, 2015, 05:18 by GermanJoey.)
Oh yeah, that should be no problem. I might be the best set up of everybody to actually build the damn thing. I don't have very many *good* production cities, but I have a shitload of mediocre ones. Stuff like the casings and the thrusters will thus be a piece of cake, I don't even need to plan those, just queue those up in whatever generic 25-30 base hammer city I have available and forget about 'em. The cockpit is also easy. That leaves the docking bay, which is big, but not as big as the engine, and can start being built 5-6 turns before the engine can. So, that needs a decent city to build it but shouldn't be a problem either. The engine is a biggest bottleneck, and I'll have to build up a big ass overflow chain in Maracana to deal with that. 1600 raw hammers for that sucker, with no Aluminum multiplier. Next is the stasis chamber, which is decently big and comes at the second to last tech, and so I'll have to chain overflow at Zen Pencils or GoatKCD for that one. Finally, you've got the life support, which is small but comes with the last tech. Maracana should be done with the engine by that point and can slam it down in a single turn!
Of course, this is all assuming that we're still embroiled in a space race by that point, and not creating a nuclear armageddon... 
Hey y'all, Have a shitload of words about the space race.
So, I mentioned that I was going to post civfanatics about the space race, asking if anyone could link me to any reports from a top HoF SP game. They came through for me (thread here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=547540, and if anyone is interested I can link some of the particular games I mention in that thread.), but unfortunately I wasn't able to find much I could use. Reading through the turn logs for some of those weird games was still pretty useful though, because it got me thinking about why it wasn't useful. The few game reports that did exist mainly focused on the early game, on the best pace to conquer AIs, etc, and then on the mid-late game, regarding the logistics of spamming trillions of corp executives. Very little on the actual endgame, with the implication that it didn't matter much at that point. The HoF games were pretty weird. Many of the top-scoring games even went so far as to cash-rush the entire spaceship in one turn. So, that's useless here, no corps and it's not worth it to swap into US. I did find a few less-warped games, and from that I gathered that the obvious stuff is best. Beeline SC, which I was already inclined towards, then Fusion for the engines, then get Ecology for the life support last. That's about how I remember it going. The Space Elevator sucks, as everyone knows - unnecessary tech for the spaceship, and +50% production doesn't mean much if you're already getting +150% to +250% from other stuff. Where satellites/composites was in the order varied a lot in these games, which I think meant that it didn't matter much. Well, at least I know now that I'm not overlooking anything. (I think)Next, some thoughts on specific players. Gawdzak Gawdzak's strength right now is that he's ahead, very simple. He's been ahead in tech all game thanks to his isolated position... I can't even remember a time where he wasn't ahead of everyone since we made contact 200 turns ago. I guess dtay was sorta on par around the age of rifling, but I don't think he ever got ahead. Gawdzak's also about par with me for the strongest military, and has the least vulnerable geographic position the map on top of that. He doesn't really need much more unless he wants to go on the offense, which he shouldn't want because, hey, he's ahead, so he'll be the one on the defense. (I think this was the motivation of his short, recent invasion of dtay, by the way, to add extra of crumple-zone to his eastern flank to preemptively discourage a potential wrap-around dogpile). However, I think Gawdzak's struggled some with scaling problems and his output may be on the decline, relative to ours. Let me explain. When I was a teen, I was a tall, lean guy with an infamously huge appetite. Whole pizzas, dozen donuts, whatever, I could put it away. I especially loved donuts, which was great because some buddies of mine worked part-time at a polish bakery. They'd get in to work really early in the morning, fry up the donuts, and then head to school, and they'd often bring us the ugly ones that deformed in the fryer, mmmm. Well, every year, pre-mardi gras, this bakery would hold a "Pazcki Ball" (pronounced Poon-chki) where they'd unveil that year's first batch of pazcki's, which are these jelly donutish things that you eat just before lent. And they'd make a real big deal about their pazckis; people would come to the ball dressed in suits and tuxes, they'd get a live polka band to play, a real fancy affair. And the highlight of the evening was always the pazcki eating contest. So, my pals invite me to go one year, and they make a real big deal about me to the owner. Like, you gotta put Joey in the eating contest, he's got the craziest appetite I've ever seen, yadda yadda, and so Mr. K is like, ok lets do it. So there I am, up on stage, with these 4 other huge guys and a plate of big pazcki's in front of me, freshly fried and powered and stuffed with jellied apricots and plums. The bell rings, and, oh man, they're so good. So good! The dough is incredibly rich and flavorful, completely unlike a donut - it would be as if to compare an artisan baguette to wonderbread, to compare their texture. I just keep punding bite after bite after bite, as fast as I can, so good, eventually cramming a whole goddamn pazcki in my mouth and then starting on another without thinking. Except, I can't chew as fast as I'm biting! Shit! But I can't stop eating, if I stop eating I'm gonna lose the battle. Eventually my mouth get so full that I can't even swallow, and I start to choke a little bit. And then I look up, and there's like 500 old people in their sunday finest staring up at me, my mouth bulging like alvin the fucking chipmunk. It took me so long to swallow that first pazcki that by the time the winner finished his six, I had only gone through 3.  Truly one of the greatest embarassments of my life...So, in the analogy, Gawdzak is me. Make sense? Yes? So, Gawdzak appears to have very high city specialization, which is a nicer way of saying that many of cities are pitiful. For example, his Ironworks is freaking size 10, which is just incredibly sad. These cities have grown onto workshops and that is it; these cities have either built military or wealth for most of the game, allowing a very high average slider, considering Org civic cost reduction, Org Courthouses, and Ikhanda. Thus, he focused infrastructure entirely on science multipliers, in his few good cities, ignoring markets/grocers/banks perhaps entirely. Everything else has just been as much wealth builds as he could possibly manage. That's worked very well for him most of the game and is the main reason he's got the tech lead he has now.  However, the situation is changing, and Gawdzak's lack of chewing will be coming back to bite him. First, military costs are spiraling far beyond what you'd ordinarily consider. Gawdzak and I are both in Vassalage and have similar soldier counts, so let's compare. My expenses are something like 1800gpt in total at the moment , with 1.7x inflation. Thus, base expenses are about 1900/1.7 = 1058. Civic costs are about 420 base, cities about 300, soldiers about 330 together. Don't remember exactly off the top of my head, but it's about that. So, 330gpt * 1.7 = 561 gpt, what does that mean to me and what does that mean to Gawdzak? To understand, first, let's roll back the clock. ~75 turns ago, my cities expenses were relatively higher and soldiers were relatively lower, but still pretty high overall. For Gawdzak, his soldier costs were almost zero and his cities about that too, and civic costs ofc half because he's Org. Back then, my expenses were probably on the order of 3x to 4x of his, and my gold multipliers cheap, and thus I built tons of them everywhere to "take advantage" of my low slider % instead of courthouses and such. Furthermore, when coal plants started rocking my health, I built even more grocers, which means even more gold multiplierage just collaterally. So, my total net modified commerce (beakers produced + gold produced - expenses - gold consumed) can absorb high military expenses pretty well, as all my gold multipliers are stronger as the slider is lower, and thus I don't have to lower it as much. However, Gawdzak doesn't have that going for him. If he lowers his slider, his net modified commerce falls hard. Further, I'd be surprised if Gawd's expenses were more than 30% lower than mine now. (1375ish compared to my 1800). Soldiers cost the same no matter what traits you have, and, while he may be Org, a size-1 iceball working a railroaded ice mine still takes 12 turns to build a Courthouse, 24 for CH+IK. So his city costs will be relatively far higher compared to how they were before, at least for awhile yet. Furthermore, the steady creep of inflation weakens wealth builds ability to maintain a high slider over time. (that is to say, a city with X production working wealth allows the slider to be Y% higher with Inflation = 1. If Inflation now equals 1.5, the slider can now only be increased by Y%/1.5). Thus, his slider will lower and his total net output will decline faster (its slope will be higher) than mine as our expenses continue to increase. Gavagai Gavagai is at the other extreme. (I sorta think of my empire as the "average" of the two other Gs, where I have the island characteristics of Gawdzak but the tallness of Gavagai's). Gavagai has very thorough infrastucture overall and nice tall cities, a powerful ironworks (pictured below), a strong national park (the only one in the world, and the only possible one too, built in that long-ignored jungle between HAK and Adrien. Getting this up early was a smart play, IMHO!) and a legendary shrine. That he still probably has the highest total output of any civ and over 20% more land than any other civ *AFTER* losing a dozen of his best cities, including the size-23 Terra, the #1 city in the world for hundreds of turns, just goes to show how far ahead he was before. As always, the biggest thing that he has going for him is that he has Actual Land, while Gawdzak and I pretty much live in water world. Gavagai replanted a few of his old cities, so still has a bit of growth potential to look forward to too.  On the other side, Gavagai's empire has a few peculiarities to it. First of all, he's running Enviro+Rep with heavy bio farm spam (and presumably heavy specialist useage, surprising for a Fin civ) and thus has very many big cities. I think that explains his need for Broadway - he's gotta happy capped everywhere, health-capped too. I mean, just speculating here, if I've been health capped and I'm exp, with my intrinsic +2 health plus cheap aqueducts, harbors, and grocers, and his cities are as big as mine, he's gotta be puking all over the damn place, even if he's got 3GD power instead of 2 extra from a coal plant. (just like my damn cat last night, who helpfully jumped onto the couch last night as he started to gag and then puked *into* a gap in the cushions, thank you buddy  ) Combine that with his lack of Fascism, for Police State (which he can't get, if he relies so much on specialists) and Mount Rushmore, and his empire is very vulnerable to war, more so than I had even thought before.The other weird thing about Gavagai is that he's running shitloads of wealth builds and running a very high break-even slider. I almost never see him gaining gpt in the resources screen. Now, Gawdzak and I are doing that too, and yet I mention it as peculiar to Gavagai. Well, that's because Gavagai has stock exchanges *everywhere*, built during his long MoM GAs back when he didn't have AL. His gold saving rate is higher than mine right now, IIRC about 3300gpt, including however many wealth builds that is. (mine is close though, and I'll be running more wealth soon, once my supermarkets finish (edit: with about half of my supermarkets done, I'm now running at 3600gpt gold-saving; should hit about 4000 I think; Gawdzak is only 2500gpt!) So, I'd really expect his overall gold multiplier to be better than his overal science multiplier, especially since his Oxford and what must have been many of his universities, got razed in the war. Thus, he should be building research and running a lower slider for higher total output. But, he's not - why? A mistake, or a temporary thing? I suspect that he is racing Gawdzak for The Internet, as he got Computers just a turn after him. Gavagai's Ironworks is waaaaay better than Gawdzak's and so shouldn't have any trouble beating him to the wonder. Will Gavagai change his policy as time goes on? We will find out, but if he doesn't I wonder if he can keep up with me. Me Strengths: #1. Maracana. #2. Maracana, #3, I think my infrastructure in general is far superior to Gawdzak's and better than Gavagai's. (although much more comparable there). On the other hand, I'm much less brittle in war compared to Gavagai, as I am unaffected by war weariness and the vast majority of my trade routes are internal. My cities are big and getting bigger, and I have been, in the last dozen turns, expanding my already-large collection of libraries, markets, grocers, custom houses, banks, supermarkets, observatories, and even a few extra universities. Almost all of my cities now have a factory + coal plant, which took forever in some cities. Had I ran wealth in some of these places instead, I'd be further along the tech tree, but I calculated that the game will run long enough that all of these builds will pay off before the end. All those gold-multipliers also let me absorb increased military maintenance costs much easier. (currently running close to 450gpt in total for the two military expenses after inflation, despite being in Vassalage) On top of all that, I have the biggest military and the biggest peak military production capability (Gav's MFG is higher but is not in Police State). #4, My production is fairly evenly spread out over my empire. Interestingly, this has been a huge problem for me all game but now works to my advantage. Other than Maracana and Ma3, I have no important production zones that focus on key infrastructure. Weaknesses: I have three main weaknesses right now. First of all, Maracana, my most critically important city, is 3 tiles from Gavagai's border. That didn't stop being a thing. Second of all, my border situation is the most complex and thus I have to maintain the biggest standing army, and that's slowing me down a bit. I'm not only the "pickle in the middle" between Gawdzak and Gavagai, but also need to keep a big western fleet/army to pin down Portugal. Gavagai has, irritatingly, been building his own mini-navy over there too, up to about 20 ships now, and over time this buildup will more and more put me off balance. My third big problem is that I'm about a tech-and-a-half to two-techs behind in the space race. I think that once my supermarkets and labs finish, I'll have by far the best break-even research capability, but for now I am indeed behind and have ground to catch up on. Gav and Gawdzak both have Plastics and Computers, and Gawdzak also has Rocketry already finished. (I wasn't able to quite fully finish it, btw, without removing some critical builds, so I just let it take two turns ). However, neither of these guys has Refrigeration, which, while not a required space-race tech (its an optional prereq to SC), they'd have to be completely stupid to skip. (edit: Gawdzak is now teching Refrige this turn, T268) If they do skip it, and on top of that continue to keep the troop faucet squeezed completely off, then we won't have a space race, I'll just eventually wipe one of their stacks while the other one sits by helpless. I really doubt that would happen, though.So, as to the second weakness, I am not actually as behind as it appears. There's also KTB chicken to consider. Gawdzak, currently in the lead, will eventually start researching every tech up to almost completion and then researching something else in order to deny KTB to me/gav. Gavagai will eventually start doing the same thing when he sees me start saving gold while building labs. However... how long can they really do this? They also have each other to think about. My peak BPT is greater and thus I can save gold for longer. Remember, I only need to be at/ahead of parity when the last tech is completed! As to the first weakness, let us discuss that in terms of the last player(s): Plako (and dtay and 2metra) First of all, 2metra is going to die. He's got to, I think. I can't allow him to remain a monkey on my back forever, and my best chance to hit him is about now, while Gav's military is weak compared to mine. With him dead, I can just keep a single, insanely large Sirian fleet anchored right in the middle of these two guys and that'll be that. A big question for me is *how* I should kill him - do I take everything he has, to weaken dtay relative to plako, or do I let dtay take as much as he can, in order to strength him relative to plako. dtay would want the latter, of course, although I don't really care too much about what he wants. Sorry dtay, nothing personal, we've been on opposite sides of the world and have at best a business relationship in this game, and right now you're too weak to really do business with. Thus, the "how" of attacking 2metra is actually all about plako. Now, what do I want to do about plako? First, some thoughts on him. He's going to be pretty strong going forward, with a big modern army and a city count comparable to gav. (although not as well developed). However, he's been relying on EE to keep tech parity, and as soon as Gawdzak and Gavagai figure out they can just declare war on him and kill his transports, then I don't think he can keep up in tech anymore. I guess right now that they're more concerned about losing routes than they are about him catching back up and competing for space, a bit of a prisoner's dilemma for those two. However, he's still got his slow cultural victory going for him. What will the timing of this be? I honestly have no idea. He's not set up trait-wise, like TBS in PB18, to spam out Great Artists, although he could try to use his EE to try for an espionage-assisted victory using one of dtay's cities. That's probably not a known technique around here, but since plako was admin of the demogame for awhile, he probably read about it some on CFC's board. And, hell, he's plako, so he probably knew about it before any of those guys anyways. So, maybe he wouldn't need so many artists nor so many cathedrals. At any rate, plako isn't my problem, he is Gavagai and Gawdzak's. Gavagai directly borders him and Gawdzak is just a short hop away by sea, whereas I'd have to sail through hostile territory dozens of tiles to even make it to his border in either direction. So, if plako starts generating heaps of artists and turning on his slider with a projected date before a spaceship launch, it is up to those two to deal with it. In the case that plako's timing will be before any of our ships, then I do need Gav and Gawdzak to succeed in taking him down and thus want to keep plako as weak as I can, which means a stronger dtay. In the case that his CV will be slower, however, I want plako as strong as possible so that Gavagai and Gawdzak need to strengthen their military near their borders, slowing them down - which means that I need a weak dtay. Right now I have the feeling that plako won't be faster than our timing, but I have yet to calculate an estimate for this. I need to figure this out very quickly, as I want to invade 2metra in just a few turns! Any questions? And did anyone actually read all of that?
Bonus shot: sneaky, sneaky Gavagai. Too bad for him, I have dozens of fighters scanning all over the goddamn place specifically just for this sort of thing. Hmmm, I wonder how I should respond...
Have about half a dozen drill privateers around? That's the stuff right there.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out. (May 15th, 2015, 05:19)Miguelito Wrote: Read it all and enjoyed every line (well not sure i really got the donut analogy. Plus I live two hours from Poland, now I'm angry annoyed i never even heard of that pazcki things) They're a mardi gras thing; IIRC, the idea is to use up all the lard and sugar in the house, as they were forbidden during Lent. The analogy is just me being silly. Basically, Gawdzak made some tradeoffs during this game: he built wealth and did not grow on to coast. Markets/libraries/grocers/etc in crappy coastal cities have a very long ROI, and coast takes forever to grow onto and also has a long ROI. This meant that his cities were productive sooner, and he turned this into a tech lead - just as I got to an early lead in my pazcki battle. However, this game has gone on long enough (and will continue for awhile yet) such that these long ROIs have been met, just as the guys who actually chewed their food quickly passed me by while I was choking on fried sugar dough.
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