[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[shallow_thought]

I was thinking you'd want coal straight away for Assembly Plant builds - forgetting that those hammers are needed as beakers for a while yet.

[Sullla]

The workers will connect coal on the exact turn that we discover Assembly Line. Not a coincidence.

[scooter]

Here's a thought while we wait for the reload business to sort out. What do we think about defensive pacts now? I didn't think much of them earlier, but now I'm wondering if it might be a semi-effective way to contain Dreylin. I think it seems pretty likely that he may try to pick on someone else. I don't expect people to very seriously "honor" a defensive pact, but it could still be a minor hindrance to Dreylin and at least force him to consider his defenses a lot more if he does invade someone. Positives/negatives:

+ could make us a less appealing target because of the headache of trying to get out of the other war(s) if we are attacked
+ if someone else is targeted, may force Dreylin to hold back slightly until he's secured our front, causing an invasion to be less effective

- the potential to trash trade routes. Granted, we don't have any routes with Dreylin, but he's not the only person capable of declaring war on someone.


I'm just thinking the calculus has maybe shifted a little bit on DPs. I still don't think they're super meaningful, but if they have any potential to hinder Dreylin, they could potentially be useful. Any thoughts? And if we did consider the possibility, there's also the "who" question.

[Sullla]

Let me do some bigger picture thoughts while we're waiting here on the reload. (Pindicator went ahead and played his turn since I guess he's not following the conversation in the tech thread, but we're going to have to reload eventually since BGN declared war on everyone. We can't simply play on; it would cost our team a lot of trade route income.) Here are some thoughts about our competition.

Dreylin/OT4E
Cities: 16
Resources: 37 connected
Food: #1
Production: #5
GNP: #5 or #6
Power: #1 (by a lot)
Techs Discovered: 2 (Scientific Method and Communism)

So we know the general deal with these guys. They have the most cities, the most land, and the largest army (albeit a lot of it unpromoted and full of units that will soon be outdated). They have all of their starting little subcontinent, plus all of Gaspar/Noble's land. They also have the Kremlin and have been relying on whipping heavily to this point in the game, although their core has been growing in the last dozen or so turns and has a lot of large cities now. Our one saving grace is that Dreylin/OT4E have done a very poor job at research; their GNP has been terrible ever since their early game Golden Age. Their army costs have to have been killing them. I also suspect their territory is somewhat underdeveloped, as they've never been in Steam Power or run much Serfdom civic. I mean, we have 20 workers and way less territory, plus we've been in Serfdom/Steam Power the whole game, and we're still working more unimproved tiles than I'd like! Really tough to avoid that.

Dreylin/OT4E are one of the two favorites to win the game. We border them both in the north and in the south across bodies of water. They've already declared war on us once to raze a border city that we captured from the barbarians. The odds of working together with them seems slim. Dreylin's team occupies large parts of the map where we'll be looking to expand militarily. We will likely either succeed in taking some of their land or get beaten back and lose the game. A defensive pact is not going to happen here.

REM
Cities: 13
Resources: 25 connected
Food: #2
Production: #1
GNP: #1
Power: #2
Techs Discovered: 3 (Scientific Method, Communism, Steam Power)

REM has wound up in a position somewhat similar to ours, despite getting there in a completely different fashion. He used Imperialistic trait to race out to a huge lead in city count, and has remained in a top position ever since. We have actually almost caught up in cities, as we plant city #12 this turn, but REM's cities were founded a lot earlier, and he doesn't have a bunch of brand new size 3 cities like we do. We also have not managed to catch REM in Production, although it's reasonably close there. We have cheap German factories incoming followed by power plants... except that REM has even cheaper Organized factories coming down the pipeline too. Crap.

I'd feel a lot better here if REM hadn't been able to land Statue of Liberty during his last Golden Age. That's such a powerful wonder that it makes me think if we should have made a play for it. REM can work a free Representation Scientist in every city, and that's worth 13 * 6 beakers = 78 beakers/turn, completely for free. I think we'd be ahead of him in science if it weren't for that wonder. Unfortunately, we couldn't make a run at the wonder since we needed our large cities building settlers to avoid falling even further behind in expansion. We probably would have done better to mix in Slavery civic more often, triple whipping some settlers here and there while building up the capital for normal production. Lesson learned for the next Industrial start game.

We do not border REM, and I don't see what point a defensive alliance would serve with him. Our best hope is that he decides to go after Dreylin for some reason... although I can't see why he would do that. We also have the advantage of much better traits than REM as the game continues onward, with Imperialistic not doing much of anything from here on out. And REM genuinely seems to be running out of land, plus he packed his cities really closely together, which might limit them from capping out at big sizes. I dunno, I'm kind of groping at straws here. REM has played a very strong game, and there's not a lot we can do to interact with him at the moment.

Scooter/Sullla
Cities: 12 (including this turn)
Resources: 23 connected
Food: #3
Production: #2
GNP: #2
Power: #4
Techs Discovered: 3 (Steam Power, Scientific Method, Communism, 95% of Assembly Line)

Our numbers for comparison. You guys know enough about our team by now.

Pindicator
Cities: 11
Resources: 24 connected
Food: #4
Production: #4
GNP: #3 or #4
Power: #5
Techs Discovered: 2 (Steam Power, Steel)

Pindicator's numbers come from before his Golden Age started, since it's hard to know where his true values are now. I'll make this a quick summary: pindicator has essentially no chance to win the game, but he's but himself in a position where it will be difficult to take over his land. His Aggressive/Charismatic traits make him an unappealing target. Again, they don't really help him win, but they don't make him a good opponent either. His Cossack unique unit's time has essentially come and gone without having any impact. Pindicator has taken a weird tech path, not heading for Communism/State Property but not heading straight for Assembly Line either. Trade routes provide no value with pindicator since he's not likely to leave Mercantilism any time soon.

I think pindicator has played the strangest game so far. I can only conclude that he's mostly checked out and playing with half a mind right now. I'm content to keep a peaceful border with an equitable split of land and concentrate on other targets. Perhaps that changes down the road if we would pull further ahead, but I'm too afraid of aggression from Dreylin to get pulled into conflict with pindicator any time soon. I greatly doubt that pindicator would sign a defensive pact, or that he would see any value in it.

BGN
Cities: 8
Resources: ??? (I could not check in game since we are "at war")
Food: #5 or #6
Production: #5 or #6
GNP: #5 or #6
Power: #5 or #6
Techs Discovered: 3 (Scientific Method, Communism, Steam Power)

We do not have BGN's bar graphs so I'm not exactly sure where he stands in the rankings. Near the bottom though. BGN's game was wagered on being the first to Communism, a race which he lost to Dreylin and from which he's never recovered. It's pretty amazing that he hasn't been attacked by anyone up to this point. BGN has been drafting recently, which may indicate that Dreylin or REM or pindicator are licking their chops and ready to carve him up. That would be bad for us, but what can we do about it? He's also on the other side of the world. Honestly we'd probably be getting ready for an invasion ourselves if we were closer.

Right now, I think we thank our lucky starts for every turn that BGN is still breathing and giving us those sweet trade routes to his civ. If he can hold on for a little longer, we can get factories/coal plants/infantry up and running, and then be prepared to counter-invade Dreylin or pindicator if they start picking on BGN. That's still very much in the future, however. We could offer a defensive pact, but it would be purely symbolic since we couldn't do anything to help BGN at present, and if it killed our trade routes with someone like REM, it could be highly unprofitable. I would not offer an alliance with this game's dead man walking.

Donovan Zoi
Cities: 8
Resources: 22 connected
Food: #5 or #6
Production: #3 or #4
GNP: #3 or #4
Power: #3
Techs Discovered: 2 (Steam Power, Steel)

Then there's Donovan, who has also played a very odd game. He just didn't expand for a long period on end in the early game, and then when he did finally start to expand, he was slapped down by the Dreylin hammer. To Donovan's credit, he lost a barb city but managed to whip/draft enough units to force a peace treaty. If Gaspar/Noble had been willing to do the same, Dreylin would still be slogging through their cities, and REM would likely be winning the game, with us running close behind in second. Donovan has quietly been doing a nice job of recovering since then, and although he's lower in score than BGN, his strategic position is quite a bit better. Donovan has cannons available, and he's sitting on a lot of gold for a potential mass catapult -> cannon upgrade. (I can't think of what else he's doing with 1200 gold in the bank; surely his costs can't be THAT high when he actually starts researching?) Donovan also has zero chance to win the game, but he's been a great neighbor and his Free Market trade routes have been mutually beneficial to both our teams. Donovan is also prickly enough that invading him would be quite costly. His next tech will be either Railroad or Assembly Line, either of which will give him very nice defensive units (machine guns or infantry).

Since Donovan is also our neighbor, the situation is a lot different with him as compared to BGN. We share a mutual defensive concern over Dreylin's empire, which borders both of our teams across a wide stretch of the map. I don't see any reason why we would want to fight Donovan, given that it would only give us an additional front to defend and create an enemy out of the team that's been our best friend thus far. If we just want to hit a non-Dreylin target, I think we'd have better odds trying to snipe pindicator's border cities. At the very least it wouldn't cost us trade route income.

*****

Anyway, the conclusion to all this is that I think Donovan is the natural choice for a defensive pact. We have very good reasons to work together (peaceful border, trade routes, mutual fear of Dreylin) and not much reason to go to war. If we want to offer one, we should offer it to him, and presumably before our magical peace shield with Dreylin wears off on Turn 306. It's worth discussing at the very least. What do you think?

[scooter]

Sullla - any thoughts about swapping into Theocracy right now for 5T since we have a few infantry coming out now? Only downside is that would mean we won't be able to swap again until T309, a few turns after our peace with Dreylin expires.

[scooter]

Turn 304

Assembly Line incoming! Another city plant first.



One thing to remember with name suggestions - we are limited to 15 chars. That unfortunately eliminates about a third of the suggestions I've seen pop up in this thread . Anyway, this particular suggestion seemed nicely in line with the theme of Textile Island, so here we are. Both forests are being chopped, and borders pop EoT so the work boat that's been hanging in the ocean for a couple decades can finally get to work.



This was a great turn for the happy cap. Silk + dyes being hooked this turn boosted us by 3, and that combined with draft unhappy starting to wear off in various places was a big boost. We'll cancel the Dreylin happy-happy deal as soon as it's possible.



I think this is where our island explorer should hang for awhile. This will let us keep an eye out for anything funny from Dreylin.



The other explorer I'm sending towards Pindicator. I'm not afraid of him closing borders on us since we aren't exactly getting routes from him, and he watched us for awhile earlier. Would be nice to get visibility on some of his cities.



Several Rifles are getting bumped up to Infantry.



Ok, let's talk about units. I brought our northern Galleon down a little to pick up the settler, and then immediately realized that's not ideal. No problem, it can return in time for the Dreylin peace to expire. I think we should deliver the settler to the silver tile this way.



Then the north... Let's talk some more about defense.

So Dreylin's boats look like they're leaving these waters, but I'm still pretty uncomfortable with this area. I think we need a few more units up here. Infantry may get great odds on Rifles, but Dreylin is still building military, so he's definitely going to try to win fast before tech matters. If I were him, I would strongly consider a swing at one of the only two people who could possibly challenge him, and that's us and REM. All he has to do is significantly damage both of us or mostly conquer one of us, and we'll start debating a concession. Even if he targets someone else, I think he definitely plan to keep on the gas pedal. Our infantry might get amazing odds on Rifles and all, but he does have a truckload of decently promoted Cavs. A few catapults to go with them would be plenty enough to overrun our little island up here as our current plan stands. I think we need to look a little more prickly. Here's what I'm thinking:

1) Haber Process builds an Infantry next before getting into Factory building. We add this to the Galleon with the Rifle pair.

2) Spinning Jenny builds two more infantry in addition to the one in progress now with two incoming chops (stealing one of Power Loom's chops). It shouldn't take too long.

3) A bunch of upgrades up here, or we at least we hang onto the cash necessary to make said upgrades in case it becomes necessary.

4) Slip in a pair of Catapults somewhere and stick them between the two cities.

That would get us up to 9 Infantry very quickly (if we upgraded all 5 of the non-Infantry units), and then a little later a pair of catapults to make attacking out of the city a breeze. That's more than we planned, but I'm now 90% convinced Dreylin has no intentions of peacefully consolidating. I honestly can't decide if that's the right decision or not, but when you've gotten yourself into such a strong position, you get to choose between multiple attractive options.

I don't think we make sense as targets for him for a myriad of reasons, so this is perhaps overly conservative, but he definitely does have the sheer quantity needed to make things uncomfortable in the short-term. The tea leaves are suggesting he intends to use that quantity on someone, and I'd rather it not be us.

[Sullla]

Quick thoughts before heading to work:

* Explorer position looks good on the southern island.

* Sending other explorer to pindicator seems wise.

* I was intending us to use the southern galleon to found the silver city all along. Not sure if I did a good job of conveying that.

* We should be able to build some more military to defend in the north. I can look into the exact micro stuff tonight. On civics, we want Organized Religion if possible for building factories, or Theocracy if we want to train more units. Unfortunately we can only have one or the other.

* Any thoughts on defensive pact offer to Donovan, given the summary I typed up yesterday?

[scooter]

* We should be able to build some more military to defend in the north. I can look into the exact micro stuff tonight. On civics, we want Organized Religion if possible for building factories, or Theocracy if we want to train more units. Unfortunately we can only have one or the other.

Theocracy was kind of a gut feel thing, but OR saves us enough hammers that it's probably still worth it. It's basically a trade-off between unit XP and unit quantity, and I think we still want the latter. So let's stick with Plan A (OR).

* Any thoughts on defensive pact offer to Donovan, given the summary I typed up yesterday?

I definitely do, but I didn't have the time to write it up last night. I'll write some thoughts pretty soon.

[AdrienIer]

Also, I've seen this glitch before... But for some reason it claims a 3F surplus right now. Adding a second scientist (dropping a coast) will display both a 1F surplus on the hammer box and a 1F loss on the foodbox. Why is this again? Anyway, that's why I didn't hire a second scientist.

I don't think anyone answered this from a few pages ago : the reason is that your hammer box doesn't count the food that your unhappy citizen eat, while your food box does. So if you're building a worker or settler while unhappy you're getting 2 free hammers per unhappy pop.

[scooter]

Anyway, the conclusion to all this is that I think Donovan is the natural choice for a defensive pact. We have very good reasons to work together (peaceful border, trade routes, mutual fear of Dreylin) and not much reason to go to war. If we want to offer one, we should offer it to him, and presumably before our magical peace shield with Dreylin wears off on Turn 306. It's worth discussing at the very least. What do you think?

I won't quote the whole thing, but I wanted to talk about this post. I think I see the world pretty differently than you. I think Donovan is a prime aggression target. In fact, I think he's the softest target in the game right now. We have three neighbors - Dreylin, pindicator, and Donovan. Addressing each of them:

Dreylin

In my view, attacking him is pure suicide anytime in the forseeable future. The reasons:

1) He's got the largest standing army by a large distance. When on defense, quantity can very, very easily beat quality.
2) He's Spiritual, so he can swap into unit rushing civics at a moment's notice.
3) He's invested very heavily in farms, and he has the most cities and pop in the game, so his unit rushing civics are going to be more effective than anyone else's.
4) It almost certainly would hand the game to REM unless we really were to get trounced.

I don't see a world where this makes sense. The only way I could see it is if Dreylin were to get into a conflict with REM for whatever reason and there was a chance for an opportunistic play. And even then, I think I'd rather just use the commotion to go kill someone else. But total conquest of him is just not possible anytime soon, so attacking him is betting on both success AND his willingness to take peace later. I think this is a total non-option.

So off the bat, I'm pretty convinced that we have to take on one of our peaceful neighbors. If you can spell out for me a Dreylin attack plan that is feasible, I'd be interested, but I just can't imagine a way we could make it work short of dropping everything and beelining Destroyers right now. Either that or we wait for him to invade someone else and try to devastate him from behind, but I'm not seeing a good way to do that. And it doesn't necessarily help our position relative to REM.

Pindicator

The downside is obvious - Boudica is tough sledding for anyone. He may be playing slightly checked-out, but I wouldn't expect that to continue if he was invaded. He's got nearly as many cities/pop as us, so mass whipping would be really easy for him. He's also got Cannon access. On the upside, he's not Spiritual, so he does have to pick and choose on his civics.

The problem here is that killing him would just take too long. With just 1-movers to wipe out a dozen-ish cities, that would take so long that he'd have plenty of time to whip himself silly, and it would take long enough that Dreylin/REM might consider interfering with us. Our boats can also only access 3-4 of his cities - the rest would take a slog across land where he'll have mass-whipped Cannons waiting for us.

Donovan

The downside is basically that we're getting trade routes from him and that he's got a decent standing army (still nowhere near Dreylin's) right now, and that's about it. That and he's seemingly on the path to Machine Guns, so there's a bit of a timer happening. On the flip side, he's very conquerable. No war traits or Spiritual, so we can expect mostly unpromoted units. Just 8 cities, and IIRC 3 of them are on islands which would be easy to cut off. We also have much easier ocean access to his core. We could easily set up a naval operation that would take out almost all of his core cities in about 2-3 turns, and the rest would be mop-up. He may have a larger standing army than pindicator, but what I'm more concerned about is who would have the bigger army 5 turns into the war? Maximum wartime production on defense is still all about whipping, and with Donovan we could neutralize that threat far easier while Pindicator would have ages to whip out loads of Cavs/Cannons. Losing his trade routes for a little bit would be a bummer, but I'd still rather have the cities.

Is there anyone in the game with less tools on hand to defend with? BGN is a similar size, but at least he's Spiritual and has Sacrificial Altars (and we can't reach him). Pindicator has the traits and the cities. Dreylin has everything. REM is way too far away. Donovan might have the toughest time defending of anyone left now that the Dutch are out.


-----

So that's my view of the world. In this scenario, a defensive pact with Pindicator would make a small degree of sense, although it wouldn't be a big deal since Dreylin doesn't affect him as much. The main thing is it may be a way of signaling peace to pindicator, which may give him peace of mind to go target BGN (beneficial to us because it keeps Dreylin/REM from taking him) while we target Donovan.

The other possibility is offering it to REM as a way of insurance to prevent Dreylin from crushing one of us soon and ending the game early. It would benefit both of us because the longer this game stretches out, the better both of our chances of victory rise.

Alright, there's all my thoughts. Would like to hear what you agree and disagree with.