[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Kofiman]

Antibiotics are a bit too modern. But how about Germ Theory?

[Zed-F]

Pasteurization was founded based on that angle but there are a lot of topics that are related to germ theory (Sewer Systems, Antiseptics, etc.) that are worthy of a city name.

[shallow_thought]

Bessemer Process
Dynamite
Vulcanised Rubber/Vulcanisation
Electrolysis

All discoveries/techniques highly relevant to the mass production of weapons .

FWIW I don't think violence is your friend in the short term; as a (peaceful?) lurker I'd much rather see the "hammers are the new food" philosophy tested to destruction rather than an all-or-nothing stab.

OTOH I have never played MP Civ, and am currently, shall we say, working my way up the difficulty levels in SP, so if you feel the need to hit someone while you have infantry and they don't ...

More seriously, I'd love to have your analysis of what the key techs for military are in this industrial start, and when the windows might be for action, given that you don't seem to have any truly weak neighbours. The cav/cannon combo looks potentially painful in a land war even with infantry and railroads clearly help defenders while it seems that ironclads could seriously slow down galleons/frigates on this map. What edge would you need to start a full-on war?

[scooter]

Great suggestions all-around.

I made a little timeline of the settler things happening for reference.

301: pick up silk settler
303: drop off silk settler
303: settle clam/dye/oil
304: settle silk spot
305: Assembly Line (before turn)
305: pickup silver settler
306: Dreylin peace treaty expires
306: drop off silver settler
307: settle silver site

Some minor units comments.

1) The road-cutting Grenadier can cover the dye/clam/oil city to the west. Alternatively we could swap that with the Haber Rifle since Haber is overall less exposed.

2) I'm thinking one of the rifles in Spinning Jenny (and maybe one of the other units too) can shuffle west and cover the silk spot.

3) One of the rifles on board the Galleon currently can park on the silver spot.

4) That leaves one spare Rifle currently onboard the Galleon. We can leave it onboard as a mobile defender, or we can stick it in whichever city feels the most exposed. I don't have any strong feelings about that, which pushes me towards wanting to leave it onboard. Contact Process will want a unit eventually, but it can sit empty for a bit.



I didn't cover this in the report, but I stuck the Frigate here for this turn. I wanted Pindicator to see it and know we have one nearby, but I also didn't want to put it in a threatening-looking location. Past that, I think it should head north and be in the Dreylin area by the time the peace treaty expires. The second Frigate can get up there in that amount of time too based on the forest chop coming in.

The tricky thing: we have two ocean fronts with Dreylin, and our southern ocean front is arguably the more exposed. There's a good case to be made that one or both Frigates ought to head south instead. Any thoughts on this?

[Mardoc]

Ooh, silver site could be Photography, since that used silver.

[Sullla]

First of all, those are some great suggested names. We should be good for some time now. Thanks!

To address some of scooter's points, I think that the rifle currently in Haber Process should cover the oil/clams city when it gets founded. The grenadier coming down on the road can sit in Haber Process to keep it happy; we'll probably build an infantry for Haber soon enough to replace that. On Textile Island, my thinking was that the grenadier that we landed up there will guard the silks city along with one of the rifles in Spinning Jenny; we will then upgrade that grenadier (which is promoted to C2/Pinch) into an infantry once Assembly Line tech comes in. Spinning Jenny is also going to build an infantry on the same turn that we discover Assembly Line tech. We should end up with these totals if I have my math correct:

2 infantry (1 upgraded)
2 rifles
2 more rifles on the galleon

We can upgrade more units as appropriate, and I have more forest chops going into Spinning Jenny to clear out defensive cover for invaders, so we can get another infantry out if needed. I think we can muster enough forces to defend ourselves.

In related news, I do not think we should land a rifle at the silver spot. One infantry out of the capital should be enough for right now, and we can reinforce as soon as we get factories built. If the city would get burned, then oh well - losing a brand new size 3 city actually isn't that big of a loss now that we can pump out settlers quickly. Better to have that rifle up at Spinning Jenny, which we truly do need to defend.

At sea, I agree with the decision to let pindicator see the frigate down at Induction Coil. (He missed his turn by a full day, then played two turns back to back again. I think he's pretty checked out on this game, which might make him a good target to fight later.) I also agree that we want to send the frigate, and the second frigate coming out behind it, up north to the Spinning Jenny region. While I agree that we're going to want some ships in the southern ocean soon, that's something that can wait. There *MIGHT* be Dreylin ships down there. There are *DEFINITELY* Dreylin ships buzzing around to the north of Textile Island. I also have a Ship of the Line coming out of Haber Process on Turn 305; although it's slow moving at only 3 moves per turn, it can exert zone control in the narrows near our future silk city, able to kill any frigate or galleon that Dreylin tries to move through there. Two frigate and a ship of the line will give us some punch up there, if not a true fleet.

Other stuff upcoming in the micro plan:

* I have us squeezing another worker out of Radio on the one turn where it's unhappy. We get the "free" 2 food that way, and we can always use more workers.

* What do we want to build in Battery and Contact Process after that pop borders? I think Battery wants a barracks, as I expect we'll be building some military here. We also have a couple turns to kill before discovering Assembly Line anyway. Contact Process I'm less sure about; we might just want to sit it on Wealth or Research for a couple turns until T305.

* I have Radio, Spinning Jenny, Pasteurization, and Induction Coil also timing rifle builds to finish on Turn 305 and get auto-upgraded to infantry. Most of them will finish on T306, and then the cities can go straight onto factories from there. Just those four cities plus the infantry built in the capital will give us 5 infantry, and that's 100k worth of Soldier Count rating (20k each). Our Power rating is going to increase pretty fast.

* It's too late tonight for a longer philosophical discussion on the current state of the game, so I'll just leave this idea. We tend to focus on Food as the most important stat in normal games of Civ4, since normal gameplay leans so heavily on Slavery for whipping. Get a high food surplus, work cottages, and then whip for production. That's the basis for standard Civ4 gameplay at higher tiers of play. However, here in the Industrial Age, that's much less true than before. Food still matters, as Food is a proxy for Population, and more Population is always a good thing to have. But if you're not whipping frequently, Food is a lot less relevant. Our Food might be lower than Dreylin and REM, but if we have Production and research equivalent with REM and higher than Dreylin... well, does it really matter that much if our Food is lower? The whole point of Food is to turn it into Production and research, right? I think scooter is correct and our position is better than that -100 Food deficit would otherwise look.

That said, I'd still rather have 14 cities and 300 Food if we can manage that too.

[scooter]

Yeah, I agree with all your defensive suggestions. Makes sense all-around. Couple comments on your post:

* What do you think about slipping in a Barracks first at Induction Coil before beginning that Rifle? It's just 20h to us for an extra promo on that Infantry.

* I was thinking the same thing about pindicator. That's the second time in a week that he's forgotten to even play his turn, and he's playing very quickly. I think he's pretty checked-out. Worth noting though that checked-out pindicator can become 100% engaged very quickly when declared on, because that type of thing is very much up his alley. I've never seen him mail in a war turn, especially on defense. So I wouldn't mark him as an easy target necessarily. Just FWIW.

* I don't think a barracks in Contact would be a waste necessarily, even though like you I'm not as convinced that it's crucial. We do get them cheap after all. It'll be a little bit before it's big enough to get the good trade routes, which is when it would pull in enough commerce to make a library make a little more sense. Though with the incense, it may be worth it anyway.

I played, but I'll have to wait until tomorrow to post some screenshots. It wasn't a very eventful turn. We did blow past the 300h mark in production which is always fun. On the turn we signed peace with Dreylin (296) we were sitting on 219h/turn. 5 turns later we're at 311h/turn. For the curious:

296: 219
297: 248
298: 260
299: 279
300: 293
301: 311

Spamming State Property workshops is really fun.

[Epoxy]

What is your research plan after completing Assembly Line?

[Sullla]

Getting back to scooter's comments from yesterday:

* Yeah, we probably should build a barracks before the rifle/infantry in Induction Coil. It will delay the infantry finishing by 1 turns but that shouldn't be an issue; I don't think either of us expects pindicator to attack the city. And that extra promotion gets us Pinch on the infantry, which essentially makes it invulnerable against enemy rifles (if not cavs). Base strength 20 with +50% against Gunpowder against base strength 14? Yeah don't bother.

* You certainly know pindicator a lot better than I do, and that caution is well taken. I'll mention again that I do think the value of a safe / demilitarized border is extremely high in these kind of games. The fact that we don't have to stack a huge force on our border with Donovan and pindicator is helping us a lot right now. I think the ideal scenario for us would be Dreylin attacking one of his weaker neighbors, followed by us jumping into the war to attack Dreylin when his army is out of position... and then REM also jumping into the war, resulting in Dreylin getting carved up. That would set up a lategame 1 vs 1 between our team and REM, where we would lean on our much better Aggressive/Spiritual combo (Commando factory!) to come out on top. Obviously that's hopelessly speculative at this point.

* Agreed that Contact Process will likely want a barracks at some point, but probably not right away. I think I'll stick it on Wealth for the first couple turns in the micro plan until we can discover Assembly Line, rather than having a barracks sit at 8/40 production for long turns on end to no real point.

Here are a few pictures from the current turn while we're waiting on Donovan to play:



Battery's current garrison as it just starts out. There is a worker on the galleon that will unload next turn, and Pasteurization is going to build a rifle -> infantry auto-queue upgrade to also ferry over here. Hopefully we can stack 2 infantry + 1 machine gun here in the near future.

By the way, Dreylin should be able to see our borders just peaking out from under the fog. We can't count on remaining hidden here.



Settler about to hop on board this galleon, while our frigate steams north to the Haber/silk city conflict zone. There's one other item of note here: Dreylin has two privateers at the northeast corner of this screenshot (near the clock). I'd love to kill them if we could hit them with our two frigates, earning them both a promotion in the process. However, I doubt Dreylin will let them get close enough for us to attack them. It's also worth pointing out that privateers start with Sentry promotion, so we may want one or two ourselves to serve as eyes in the water down the road. We need some frigates for actual military units first though.



Demos for the current turn. Not much different from the last few turns, although scooter has pointed out how dramatically our Production continues to increase. Unfortunately REM is still higher than us in that category... and Food, and military, and probably research. Speaking of that, here are the current bar graphs:

[Sullla]

What is your research plan after completing Assembly Line?

That is an excellent question. I think there are a couple of good choices here:

1) Fascism (2059 beakers): This is an unorthodox pick but there's some real useful stuff here. First and foremost is the free Great General for being first to discover the tech. I think we're almost certain to land this if we pursue Fascism next as a tech, and that would leave us very close to our potential Commando factory if we land it. (We would potentially need to be in both of the XP civics, Vassalage and Theocracy, plus a barracks and West Point, plus two merged Great Generals.) So a free Great General would be quite nice for us.

There are other useful things at this tech too. It unlocks Police State civic, which we have a good chance of using at some point in this game, even if only in short 5 turns spurts. It also unlocks Mount Rushmore, which has a pretty noticeable effect on reducing war weariness (essentially a free Jail in every city). Finally, it also opens up Paratroopers (with Flight tech); the combination of Paratroopers + Commando would just be disgusting. Paradrop into enemy territory and then ride railroads up to 10 tiles in any direction? Pretty hard to defend against that.

Of course, the biggest argument in favor of Fascism next is that it's a very cheap tech at only 2050 beakers, and its value drops dramatically if we're not the first one to discover it. Either we go here next or not at all.

2) Steel (2402 beakers) en route to Railroad (3861 beakers): This is the conventional tech route, and one that we'll certainly be heading down soon. Steel has cannons, ironclads (incredibly slow but somewhat useful), drydocks, and the Iron Works. We'll be putting that last national wonder in Haber Process, along with West Point, which together will allow us to one-turn any unit in there. (A merged Great General from Fascism would be especially nice there; Barracks + West Point + Great General would be 9 XP, and Pentagon would get us to 11 XP for four starting promotions on Gunpowder units!) Railroad unlocks machine guns and railroads themselves, critical for unit movement and even more production with the railroad on mine bonus.

And the next tech beyond that is Combustion (3088 beakers), which opens up oil and modern naval units. We can't afford to be late to Combustion tech or we'll lose all control over the sea. I think we can afford to detour to Fascism first because we're sitting in a position of tech leadership, but I doubt we can dawdle after that. First to destroyers/transports will be a huge advantage.

3) Physics (3432 beakers): The other option would be to go for Physics tech and the free Great Scientist for being first to discover. That would make it vastly easier for us to land another Golden Age, as we would only need one more Great Person and Telegraph is actually sitting at 234/400 GPP right now with a 100% Great Engineer pool. Physics also does open up airships, which are very nice for the recon purposes. However, I feel like the other options are a lot stronger than this one, plus there's absolutely no guarantee we would be the first ones to the tech. If we don't land the Great Scientist, Physics would be a very poor choice indeed.

4) Biology (3088 beakers): I don't consider this a realistic option because we have zero non-resource farms in our territory. This map is quite fertile anyway, which rules out the need for farming to pick up food.

So I think my preference would be making a run at Fascism first, and then going down the Steel -> Railroad -> Combustion path after that. I could also be talked into that second tech line and simply ignore Fascism as well. The other paths all seem weaker to me.