[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

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?

I wouldn't necessarily call either one disastrous if we executed things quickly enough, but I'd also much, much rather he pursue Assembly Line than Machine Guns. MGs are a pain because you can't collateral them and they get a bonus against gunpowder units which means we'd be better off building Cavs. If he gets Assembly Line, I don't think that would change things a whole lot for us.

[scooter]

Turn 306



Dreylin did revolt into Nationhood, but he also did pull his boats out of this region. I think he's targeting somebody else - probably BGN. So I went ahead and revolted into Organized Religion. Other Dreylin notes:



Reasonable border city from him that doesn't cramp our dotmap much. There will be two tiles that we'll have to compete for second-ring, but that's not unexpected.



Later on I noticed that's where the Privateers went. We'll see if he turns around or not. I'm expecting them to head west.



One of our very few cities not building a Factory this turn (I'm going to keep calling them Factories because it's easier). Sullla - I wanted to point this out because it's much closer to completing the Infantry than your microplan thinks - guessing there was a typo in there. In any case, it'll complete next turn with a ton of overflow, and I think we can send that straight into its Factory.



Other than that - Factories everywhere! The cities that look like they'll take forever are mostly dumping in chops this turn FYI.



I noticed one interesting thing. We actually passed Donovan in power last turn, which means REM is actually 2nd in power and still ahead of us. I didn't realize how small the difference between us and Donovan actually was.



Sullla - what do you think about chopping this into Pentagon (and possibly the other forest SE-SE-S of Steam)? I figure it would be a very needed boost if we're in a race with BGN. Even third ring, it's worth a fair amount of hammers going through all those modifiers and would probably shave a turn off the completion date.



Not much else to note. Let's just not get attacked for another 5-6 turns please. Although I think we've got enough stuff and cash on hand that we could survive anything that wasn't totally all-in.

[scooter]

Two more things:

1) I tweaked EPs to put just 1 into Pindicator this turn. That'll get us to the magic 43 number (we're at 42/42 right now) which I'm guessing he's targeting as well. Rest into REM so we can start work on getting his graphs which may take a long time.

2) REM got a Merchant as you can see above. I scrolled through the log to see what else he's got, and I found that's his 3rd consecutive Merchant. I can't imagine he's running trade missions (difficult to safely pull off in this type of game), so either he's got a use for them that I don't see, or that was an accident.

[Sullla]

A couple interesting things from the start of Turn 307:



Pindicator's Golden Age ends, but not before he finishes another Great Engineer. At least we don't have a Great Artist culture bomb to worry about there... Pindicator is also spending espionage points on us beyond what's needed to get bar graphs, and so we've lost his Demographics again for the moment. I think that we solve this by building a jail/espionage agency combo in one or two of our cities after they finish their factories, which will produce 24 EP/turn when combined together. (If we went for the very expensive security bureau too, it would go up to 40 EP/turn.) Anyway, we can look into that down the road.

In this immediate area, I think we should ferry one of the Induction Coil rifles up to the silver city on the island, so we'll have infantry + rifle on defense there and infantry/rifle/grenadier at Induction Coil. We can also ferry the two workers at Induction Coil over to the island once they finish improving the last tile at Induction Coil, the grassland hill mine.

Elsewhere, BGN revolted into Bureaucracy and Organized Religion. It sure looks like he's going to make a play for the Pentagon in his capital... That city finished a factory between turns, which puts BGN one turn out in front of our capital's pace (since we needed to build the infantry defender for the silver city before we could start on our own factory). The sad truth is that I think he will win the race to the wonder if he wants it. We probably get slightly more production/turn since we have a levee and he doesn't, but BGN has the one turn lead, plus he has two forests within his capital's 21 tile radius that he can still chop, and that will beat any third-ring forests that we're looking at. Anyway, for now we build the factory/coal plant combo and we can decide what to do via production tracking in a few turns.

Note that REM also picked up a Great Scientist. If you're wonder how he managed that one turn after picking up a Great Merchant:



REM won the prize for first to Physics tech. Now this is good news in the sense that he just spent 3000 beakers not researching towards Assembly Line and REM's cheap Organized factories. However, it's very bad news in the sense that REM will probably trigger his second Golden Age with the Scientist + Merchant combo, and then reach Assembly Line in short order anyway. He has been playing a truly outstanding game here, and I'm really curious to see REM's spoiler thread when this is all done to see how he managed it.

No one else discovered any techs. Dreylin still hasn't discovered anything since Communism in the early stages of the game, and he was whipping/drafting up a storm again last turn. It seems to have worked thus far, and Dreylin has way more land than anyone else. I do wonder how effective it will be for much longer though, with infantry on the scene now and machine guns not far behind.



A refresher on everyone's civics. I think the choice on what civics to run helps make this Industrial game so much more interesting than your standard Ancient game. There's a lot of options here and no clear right choice in most categories. We've seen teams running almost everything at some point throughout the game. Note too that REM, pindicator, and Donovan are not Spiritual and will be stuck with these choices for some time barring Anarchy or another Golden Age.



Demographics are mostly the same, aside from our terrible GNP number when we're running 100% gold. Since we have zero cottages or windmills throughout our empire, the GNP figure looks awful any time we're not building Research. However, with factories we'll be able to add something like 400 beakers/turn to our research at any point in time by converting production into science. This is another really fun (and difficult to strategize) thing about this late era game, since it's so easy to convert production into research or wealth. How much production do we put into unit? How much into research/wealth builds? How much into infrastructure? These are really tough choices and fun to think about.

So leaving aside GNP, we continue to sit in third place in most everything. We have actually passed Donovan in Power rating as scooter said yesterday, so that means three other teams are ahead of us. Dreylin is one of them, and it could be REM or pindicator or even BGN for two of the other three. BGN has been drafting a lot of military recently, he might have passed us for all I know. I'll also point out that the average numbers are being throw pretty far off by outliers in each category:

Production: REM is #1, the non-REM average is 239
Food: Dreylin is #1, the non-Dreylin average is 224
Power: Dreylin is #1, the non-Dreylin average is 592
Land: Dreylin is #1, the non-Dreylin average is 130

So we really are well above the average in most categories, we're just well behind the runaway leader in each one. Same story as before, Dreylin is the Food/Land/Power guy and REM is the Production/GNP guy.

Let's hope for continued peace for 5 more turns, get our factories/coal plants done, and see what happens next.

[Sullla]

By the way... did you know that five turns from now, when our factories and coal plants are done, we'll be sitting at about 700 production/turn? And that if we set all of our top cities to Build Research, we can clear 1000 beakers/turn base?

(Yes, I've been playing around a bit in the sandbox. Fun times are ahead for our team.)

[Wyatan]

However, with factories we'll be able to add something like 400 beakers/turn to our research at any point in time by converting production into science. This is another really fun (and difficult to strategize) thing about this late era game, since it's so easy to convert production into research or wealth. How much production do we put into unit? How much into research/wealth builds? How much into infrastructure? These are really tough choices and fun to think about.

Well, come on, you know why you're having fun with that: it's MOO's economy!

Speaking of which... maybe you're actually having a tad too much fun with it... *ahem* Unfinished game... *ahem* Not even preserved as a highlight... *ahem*

[shallow_thought]

If BGN pushes Pentagon, does that open a chance for you to try for the Facism GG, if you still want to? I'm assuming that most of his beakers are coming from building research...

[scooter]

Turn 307



Dreylin now shares this island with us.



We settled an island spot of our own.



Sullla - we don't have control over grass forest to work it, so I tweaked the plan and went with this to pop it in 2 turns. I figure we want the culture in here anyway for vision over water, as well as getting some culture onto that grass forest tile.



Haber Process is getting pretty close to surpassing Steam Engine in base production. It'll 1-turn the Coal Plant next turn, and then we'll really be cooking.



Post-turn demos. World soldier count is rising everywhere. Donovan is actually now either last or next-to-last (him and Pindicator are likely below us). It looks to me like REM has kept producing units, and BGN added a bunch during his Nationhood stint.



Here's BGN's capital. It's true that he can probably get it before us regardless. I tend to think we should go for it anyway. Worst-case scenario, we'll get a truck load of failgold that we can put to good use. Best case we beat him. He does have his factory now, though.



I held off on loading the Rifle down by Induction because pindicator hadn't played this turn yet, so I didn't see any sense in loading yet. Next turn we can load up the Rifle and unload it in Photography on the same turn.

Factories completing the next few turns:

This turn (307): 2
T308: 3
T309: 1
T310: 2

Finally, here's the city count:

Dreylin: 19 (!!)
REM: 14
Us: 13
Pindicator: 11
Donovan: 9
BGN: 8

[Sullla]

Scooter, I logged in an made one change after you played the turn. I realized that our second galleon is going to get stuck in the eastern ocean for a little while after we finish mining over our fort, and we want to make sure we have at least one galleon in the southern ocean for transferring units. As a result, I swapped Cotton Gin from missionary over to galleon. I like Cotton Gin producing missionaries (that's why I made the suggestion in the micro plan) but I think we need a galleon in the southern ocean more.

After the round of factories/coal plants complete, I would like us to settle three more cities ASAP: the two isthmus locations north of Haber Process / west of Pasteurization, and some spot in the unclaimed land on the southern island. This looks like the best spot to balance safety and land down there:



So the obvious problem here is that this proposed city has no food bonuses. However, we can workshop the two riverside grassland tiles for +4 food, and that will be enough to grow this city at a semi-decent clip. (We could farm the grassland tiles and then workshop over them too.) This city only needs to reach size 8 anyway: two grassland watermills, two grassland workshops, two plains workshops, and two grassland hill mines. That's 32 production/turn with a levee, and 67 production/turn with the full factory/coal plant assortment. Nothing to sneeze at there. Plus this city is also highly defensive, five tiles away from Dreylin's city and located again on a hill for the defensive bonus. Seems like a good place to stake a claim.

I'm thinking of having Haber Process build the settler for the northern isthmus and Pasteurization build the settler for the western isthmus (both of them take 3 turns, since Pasteurization has some forest chops helping out). If we decide that we can't win the race to Pentagon, the capital could easily pop out a settler for this location.

Hopefully we can get all of these three spots, finish our factories/coal plants, and decide where we're going from there. I'm not exaggerating when I say that our entire empire's production base is going to double in the next five turns - we're going to have a lot of different options on where to go next.

[Sullla]

Turn 308 looks like a quiet turn, at least in the early going. There was nothing of interest in the event logger. We did have this offer from REM:



I canceled so that we could discuss, but we could re-offer if desired. We definitely do not need the happiness from those wines. However, we will be in a health crunch soon after we finish the coal plants, and we do get health from the wines if we build a grocer. Counter to that point, we currently have no grocers at all in our empires, and we probably have more useful stuff to build. So I have no strong feelings on this, and I'll leave the decision up to you.

Our southern border with Dreylin:



I really want that second city on the southern island, and another city on the isthmus by the deer. And then 2-3 infantry in each of them for safety.



Similarly, we want another city up here on the northern isthmus. I think west of the deer tile is my preferred spot, serving as a canal city, claiming the spices, and able to steal the bananas from Haber in a pinch if we want extra food. We are halfway through our factory push now, and I see founding these three cities as our next strategic goal.

So let's talk briefly about BGN and the Pentagon race. Here's his capital:



BGN also has a size 15 capital (Steam Power is size 14 growing to size 15 in two turns), he's also in State Property + Bureaucracy + Organized Religion, and he's a turn ahead of us in the build order, having finished the factory last turn and the coal plant this turn. We finished the factory last turn and will finish the coal plant this turn.

The true problem here is the forests, however. Forests are one thing that update on the map in real time; if they get chopped, even in the fog, they will update on your map. That means that BGN has two forests ready to chop in his 21 tile radius, which together is worth more than a turn's worth of production. (We are getting about 50 production/turn before modifiers and two forest chops are worth 60 production/turn before modifiers.) So BGN is a turn ahead of us to start, and those two forests will gain him another turn's lead on us. Chopping our third-ring forests is not going to make a difference. This is an insurmountable wonder lead if BGN wants the Pentagon, and I suspect that he does based on his swap into Organized Religion.



There's a closer look inside BGN's capital with all of the buildings identified. The buildings will also update in real time, so once you have vision on a city's center tile, you can always follow along and see what infrastructure is inside. We were able to see the factory complete last turn and the coal plant complete this turn.

We will be able to see how much production this city gets next turn via production tracking. Scooter, I don't agree that we should chase after the Pentagon if it's clear that BGN is going to beat us to the wonder. Our own capital produces well over 100 production/turn after modifiers, and there are so many things we can do with that better than spending 8 turns in futile pursuit of a wonder we aren't landing. If we conclude that BGN is going for the wonder, I'd like to use the capital to build a settler for the island and then a series of 1-turn infantry to back up our settlements on the island and elsewhere. That has a lot more value than a psuedo-Wealth build. (We've almost caught REM in cities and not coincidentally, we're also getting close to him in score! Gotta keep the expansion train rolling for the last few spots of open land.)

Finally, I don't think there's any need to keep stockpiling more gold now that we have 900 in the bank, so I turned on research for Steel tech. Five turns to research is pretty solid considering we're not doing any Research builds at the moment.