[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

Diametrically opposite conclusions, ha! I'll type something more substantial tonight, but for now:

1) If we attack Donovan, what stops Dreylin from attacking us mid-war?

2) Do we have any teams we can trust to maintain a demilitarized border if we attack Donovan?

3) How do we plan on dealing with machine guns, which Donovan will surely have soon?

[scooter]

Good questions!

1) If we attack Donovan, what stops Dreylin from attacking us mid-war?

Not a whole lot if he's at peace. If he's attacking someone else, that's our free ticket. This is why I've put an emphasis on a quick war - the fear of Dreylin coming at us while our army is elsewhere. It's either that or take Dreylin on directly, which I think only works if we have help. It's a nasty catch-22, and somewhere we're going to have to do something risky and hope it pays off. Our best hope is that they would be afraid of cornering us into whipping/drafting ourselves into the ground and throwing ourselves into them kamikaze-style in response to an attack by them. We didn't do that last time because winning was still possible with what they left us, so that trumped revenge. If they were to come for Textile Island or something bigger, I'm not so sure we'd still care about winning so much as making him hurt. They have to know that's a possibility. Whether or not that would dissuade them... no idea.

One thing - if we carried out a naval assault on Donovan, those are the same waters bordering Dreylin's core (IIRC). So in that sense, he tries anything funny, and we just load up and drop it all in his core and raze some cities. Our best bet is the chance that we're both holding guns to each others heads simultaneously in that sense.

2) Do we have any teams we can trust to maintain a demilitarized border if we attack Donovan?

I think pindicator would leave us alone if we attacked Donovan, and Donovan would do the same if we went elsewhere. I don't think it really makes sense for either of them to attack Montezuma of Factory-and-Infantry-possessing Germany.

3) How do we plan on dealing with machine guns, which Donovan will surely have soon?

This is a good question, but are we certain he's researching Railroad? He's got to be teching either Assembly Line or Railroad, but his massive bank account is a little confusing to me. This is the biggest uncertainty to me - I have no clue whatsoever what he's planning on tech-wise.

[Dp101]

I mean, both Assembly Line and Railroad are equally disastrous from a perspective of trying to get a quick war, right? Why does it matter which one stops your advance?

[Sullla]

Here's an idea that I had this afternoon. Before doing a detailed micro version of this plan, what do you think of this general idea scooter:

* On the current turn that just rolled (T305), we have the cities on non-military or non-essential stuff use Build Wealth for one turn. This lets us carry over forest chops and production overflow to the next turn, and along with running 0% science, gets us something like +250 gold this turn, which we will then have available for upgrades.

* For the following turn, we wait and see what Dreylin decides to do. If he plays and doesn't attack us, then we revolt into Organized Religion and start building factories, while holding onto most of that gold in case we need to turn grenadier/rifles into infantry. If Dreylin declares war, then it's all hands on deck mode and we ignore factories to start cranking out and upgrading infantry. We would then revolt into Theocracy for triple promoted infantry (allowing for the awesome C2/Formation combo that decimates cavalry).

I see this as keeping our options open for the upcoming important turns. How does that sound for a general course of action?

[scooter]

Phone post. Yeah, I like that plan. Let's do it. Seems like the ideal solution for flexibility.

[Tohron]

If you're in a position to get 10 xp units (whether via West Point + civics, Pentagon + civics, or whatever), getting some City Garrision III infantry seems like a good idea for fending off a Dreylin attack. It takes about 4 cavs with combat I + pinch, or 5-6 unpromoted cavs to overwhelm just one combat I + city garrison III infantry, even without cultural defenses (some retreat, others die).

[Sullla]

OK, micro stuff is up for the current turn and the next turn. I'm assuming for the moment that Dreylin will not declare war on us when the peace treaty wears out next turn; we'll have to rewrite some of the micro stuff if he does attack. Organized Religion helps out noticeably with getting the factories build; most of our core cities only take 2-3 turns, and the power plant will likely be 3 more turns after that. Less time than that in our true powerhouses of Steam Engine and Haber Process. Let's hope we get those half dozen turns to build up in peace.

Some other interesting things from the start of the turn roll:



Those trade routes are pretty nice, heh? Dreylin's many wars have hurt him a lot more than he probably expected by denying him all these trade routes. (REM is making a mint, as he has routes with everyone here plus Dreylin too!) Pindicator is the only one in Mercantilism, and therefore he's not getting any routes with anyone. I'm guessing he doesn't realize how much that's hurting him. No wonder his economy has been so subpar.



Here's the biggest news of the turn: BGN has picked up Assembly Line tech. Amusingly, he picked this up on exactly the same turn that we did. Some kind of coincidence there, heh. This does change some things, however:

* Do we still want to make a run at Fascism? If we don't get there first, it's probably not worth the beakers. This may have tipped me back over into the "just go for Steel/Railroads/Combustion" line of thinking.

* Here's hoping we don't have competition for the Pentagon! I will start tracking builds in BGN's core cities and see if he's building it anywhere. I think we still want to go factory/power plant in our capital before trying for the wonder. Unfortunately BGN is Organized, which means that he can build factories faster than we can. Or do you want to skip the factory/coal plant and just try straight for the Pentagon itself? It would take 10 turns with Organized Religion, 12 turns without OR.

* Donovan is also burning through his money right now researching... something. Dreylin has also increased his GNP in the last two turns, which means we will likely see them (finally) discover a tech soon, most likely Steam Power.



According to the Demographics, we are the 3rd place team. Pretty accurate I'd say. There is one really noteworthy thing here, however: we jumped into 3rd place in military power. We can see the bar graphs of Dreylin (#1) and Donovan (#2) who are both ahead of us, and Donovan not by much anymore. This means that REM has lower power than we do! At the very least, he doesn't have some monster army out there. My guess is that he's been doing a lot of Wealth/Research builds like we have. I don't see how his GNP could be so high otherwise.



Going back to our discussion from today, if I wanted to attack Donovan, here's how I would do it. Donovan does not have vision inside the city of Radio, so we could station soldiers there and simply walk across the border next to Sector 19. However, I think a better move would be to forego the land attack and use galleons instead. If we build a city at the red dot (which we should do in the next 10 turns), we fort the incense tile and move right up next to the city. Frigate drop the cultural defenses and the units attack right off the boats, never coming off them. No warning, no time to get additional defenders. Then the ships sail on through the captured city next to the capital, and can either unload or attack right off the ships again on the next turn (yellow arrow). A secondary attack lands next to the invisible Donovan city on the northern island and captures it on the second turn of the war.

If we could take those three cities on the first two turns of the war, Donovan would be finished and it would all be mop-up duty from there. Easier said than done, naturally, but speed plays a huge factor. Donovan isn't even Spiritual, so no whipping or drafting until he goes through a turn of Anarchy. Attacking over land is just silly on this map. We're not in a position to try this, but who knows a dozen turns from now? We can build a lot of units really fast once the factories are done.



In the shorter span, I think we'll want to push out some quasi-aggressive settlements to keep the expansion train rolling. We have the backfill spot south of our capital (yellow dot), the isthmus city over by the deer (blue dot here) and its twin north of Haber Process, and then this red dot city on the southern island. I'd love to claim that spot and back up our plant with 3 infantry, daring Dreylin to come attack us. It would be another Spinning Jenny location, and another very strong city. We need 5-6 turns to crank factories, and then it's time to build settlers and claim however many of these spots are still left.

Busy turn. As a final note, I'll mention that the Hindu missionary that we just built should probably go over to Pasteurization. And if Dreylin declares war and immediately offers a 10 turn treaty for the guaranteed peace, I would definitely take it. Let me know if you have other thoughts on any of this stuff, scooter.

[scooter]

Eventful indeed. Pictures of a few things in the next turn coming up shortly, but a few comments.

* The Fascism thing is really tough. We can get it in 5 turns with wealth building and no upgrading, but more realistically it's 6 turns. BGN has researched the same exact number of techs in the same exact number of turns as us. I'd be tempted to just let him have it. Losing the bonus doesn't sting as much knowing it goes to a non-contender. I'm also more and more drawn to just getting Combustion ASAP and trying to swing the game on that. If we can get that a dozen turns before Dreylin (and he hasn't, you know, somehow wrecked us by then), we can really do some damage. Plus it wouldn't hurt to get Ironworks + our cheap Drydocks up and running that much sooner. So I'm very slightly leaning towards just heading down the Combustion line. I went ahead and set tech to Steel (we overflowed a handful of beakers and they had to go somewhere), but we have 24 hours or so to swap back to Fascism with no harm done.

* As for Pentagon, I'm thinking let's bet on our capital city being able to produce more hammers and get the Factory + Plant first. I know our capital is a better hammer producer than his, and I think he'll go for the Factory first too. I like our chances here better than Fascism. Absolute worst case scenario we get an absolute truckload of failgold at a rididculous conversion rate, and we use it to fuel an even faster military phase.

* That screenshot of a possible Donovan invasion is 1,000 words on why I favor the idea. Just look how ridiculously quick and easy that would be if we had the units. This is why Destroyers/Transports >>>> all.

* That Red Spinning Jenny has been my pipe dream location, but defending it seems daunting. I'll think about it a little more.

[scooter]

Turn 305



Now I have a Ship of the Line. Ho-ho-ho.



Sullla - minor note here - these workers were unable to go SE and immediately begin a workshop due to the shrubbery situation. So I adjusted course slightly and put 3T into a workshop on that plains tile instead.



Infantry cost exactly 112h on Industrial. EFFICIENCY.



So here's to my comment about keeping Dreylin off our backs in a theoretical Donovan war. Let's say we invade Donovan, and Dreylin responds by harassing Textile Island. In that case, there'd be nothing stopping us from loading everything up and sailing northeast to Dreylin's core. Honestly if Combustion comes in around that same time, we may want to do that anyway after a hypothetical Donovan conquest. But that's getting way too far ahead of ourselves. In any case - this is the best insurance plan I can think of. It's hardly foolproof, but it is something.



Here's our next settler. Just occurred to me - should we login and swap Induction Coil over to a work boat? Would sure be nice to have those clams hooked up immediately at Photography, and that Infantry in Induction Coil isn't really urgent.



Wealth everywhere.

[Sullla]

My pre-6am thoughts:

* There's a sandbox error near Dynamite. I'll fix and adjust accordingly.

* I'm totally fine with Steel next, grabbing Iron Works, and pushing for the likely most important tech on this map: Combustion.

* Logged into the game and swapped Induction Coil to work boat. I actually wrote that into the micro plan late last night as an edit, probably after you played the turn. The old saying about great minds and all that.