[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

Hmmm. The Great Scientist lightbulb would have been worth about 2000 beakers towards Physics tech. If it took Dreylin the last 25 turns or whatever to accumulate the other 1400 beakers, that's good news for us. On the other hand, their Power rating is pretty disgusting. The average non-Dreylin power rating is 634k... and their power is 1293k. Scary stuff. Our own buildup starting in about 5 turns can't get here soon enough.

I'm not too worried about pindicator's galleon, he's probably just ferrying units over to his island city. Shadowing the boat is never a bad call though.

I will touch up the micro plans sometime tomorrow night. Don't worry about whatever is happening with the workers at Induction Coil, ferrying them to Photography is a minor priority. We can 2-turn infantry for a while at Induction Coil once the coal plant finishes; I'm not too worried over her. I think pindicator has a much easier target in BGN if he wants to go after someone. Looking forward to getting graphs back on our opponents pretty soon, playing in the dark is not fun.

When I look at the map overview, I think we've done pretty darn well for ourselves in terms of the landgrab. We have our whole starting subcontinent, the whole northern island, half of the southern island, and most of the two isthmuses connecting to the north and south. I don't think we're all that far behind REM here, who has 15 or 16 cities (which we'll also have in a couple more turns). Dreylin's team is the one throwing everything off in the averages, since they effectively have twice everyone else's land. I mean, average non-Dreylin Food is 252 and they have 445 Food, average non-Dreylin Land is 138 tiles and they have 265 tiles. Thank goodness their teching has sucked this whole game - they are still 7000 beakers away from Assembly Line AND 6000 beakers away from Railroads!

I seriously think that if we can absorb most or all of Donovan's land we have a pretty good chance to win this thing. A very big "if", admittedly!

[Tohron]

Regarding 9 xp Infantry, have you thought about aiming them for City Garrision III? One infantry with C1 + CG3 could hold off 5-6 unpromoted cavs or about 4 cavs with C1 + Pinch in the tests I did, and would doubtless be even better against rifles. Seems like a few of them would be really nice for defending newly captured cities against counterattacks, or preventing boating-based city snipes in your own territory.

[Sullla]

Yep, that's yet another thing that we can do with highly promoted units. CG3 infantry with the defensive bonuses from culture and fortification (and hills?) are virtually unkillable by older units on the tech tree.

I checked after the turn roll this morning, and BGN's capital city is showing... nothing under production? I'm not sure if he genuinely finished a unit between turns, or if this is some kind of weird artifact of how the production tracking displays. Do you have any thoughts on this scooter? What Great Engineer plan do we want to move forward with now?

[scooter]

I checked after the turn roll this morning, and BGN's capital city is showing... nothing under production? I'm not sure if he genuinely finished a unit between turns, or if this is some kind of weird artifact of how the production tracking displays. Do you have any thoughts on this scooter? What Great Engineer plan do we want to move forward with now?

I'm assuming you didn't see any new buildings?

You got in before he could have theoretically gone in and changed builds to hide it or anything (I don't think he would do that regardless, and I'm not even sure that would work). So it seems to me that the simple answer is that he built something, and he isn't racing us to Pentagon. After all, he wouldn't have lumbermilled that forest if he was going to chop it. If we conclude that, we should go for the 1T later plan for the higher chance at an Engineer. I'm guessing he just completed a settler? It seems like it would have been a little tough to do so, but maybe he found a way. He is way behind in expansion, so the better choice for him would be to start cranking out settlers rather than messing around with a wonder that's more of a later-game luxury really and doesn't provide as much value to him as us.

So... I'm going to go ahead and conclude he isn't pursuing Pentagon. Is there any other angle here that you can think of where he's still racing us?

[Sullla]

Nope, no new buildings. I don't think there are any of them that cost over 189 production anyway. Your call of settler is almost certainly correct; 189 production last turn, then 145 more production this turn = 334 total. Settlers cost 332. And if BGN wanted the Pentagon, why build the grocer or lumbermill? Looks like he's not going for it.

So I think we're back to scooter's T315 original plan. I will put together the exact micro tonight. Let's cross our fingers for nothing crazy in the next few turns.

[Sullla]

OK, two interesting bits of news from today, aside from the BGN stuff I checked very early this morning:



Donovan has picked up Assembly Line tech. The good news is that this was an extremely expensive tech for him to research; I have him picking up Steel on Turn 292, and now Assembly Line on Turn 311, so just shy of 20 turns needed to get the tech. He will also need to build the factories and coal plants before he starts seeing the industrialization bonus (and Donovan has spent all of his former huge bankroll, now with just 9 gold in the bank).

The bad news is that this is going to make Donovan a lot harder to attack, if that still ends up remaining our plan going forward. We need more time before we're in a position to attack (we're only just finishing our factories/coal plants now) and he will have time to get some of his industrialization done, plus we'll definitely have to compete with infantry on defense. Depending on what happens with pindicator's research, he may end up being the better target to attack before all is said and done. Hard to say at this point.

We need to check the event logger to see if Donovan has any Great Engineers sitting around. I don't think so, but it wouldn't hurt to check.

The second issue relates to our Great Engineer project at Telegraph. I looked at the math here, and unfortunately not running that Engineer specialist last turn ends up causing some funny consequences. We have 17 food in the box, and we must run 8 specialists (5 Engineers + 3 Scientists) for the next three turns to generate a Great Person. We can't go 5+3, 5+3, 5+2 as scooter originally suggested, as that leaves us at 399/400 GPP. And unfortunately, the need to run that extra specialist is the difference between Telegraph remaining at size 13 with 1 food in the box versus starving. From what I can see, the city unavoidably starves. Whoops.

So here's my thinking: if the city is going to starve anyway, why not go for the faster Great Person date and push it out at eot 312? We are still configured for that setup, which lets us rush Pentagon Turn 313 and finish it Turn 314. The city is going to starve anyway. Now that two other teams have Assembly Line tech, I don't like letting the wonder sit there any longer than we have to. And the Great Engineer percentage difference is relatively minor in the two cases:

T313 Great Person odds: 80% Engineer, 20% Scientist
T314 Great Person oods: 87% Engineer, 13% Scientist

Don't get me wrong, I don't like increasing our risk factor either. But every turn of delay also increases our risk factor with two other teams potentially able to get a Great Engineer; Donovan or BGN could be popping one at any moment. We genuinely have no idea what their GPP counter looks like. I think the 7% greater odds of a Scientist are worth getting the wonder completed a turn faster.

If you see this post, let me know what you're thinking scooter. I've left the city micro for Telegraph/Cotton Gin unfinished in our micro plan for the moment, pending what we decide to do here.

[scooter]

Yeah, let's go with the faster plan. In addition to Donovan/BGN, it's also not lost on me that pindicator is sitting on two engineers, and we don't know what he's teching right now. I'm assuming RR for Mining Inc, but it sure would be a sad day if it turns out to be Assembly Line and he snipes it that way.

[Sullla]

OK, sounds good. Cross your fingers for an 80/20 dice roll in about 48 hours from now. I will update the sandbox accordingly.

One other issue for the turn scooter: we need to start moving 1 infantry and 1 rifle out of Radio towards Haber Process this turn. We'll need them to guard the northern isthmus city when it gets planted on Turn 313. Radio is building its own infantry replacement, and we'll pop out another infantry from Haber after the settler. (Island city gets the infantry in the capital; western isthmus city gets the infantry being finished in Telegraph plus the infantry in Pasteurization.)

[scooter]

Turn 311



lol.

We should get REM graphs end of turn and pindicator's within 2-3 turns.



Revolted to Pacifism, and the plan is a go.



This city in particular has boomed into a serious contributor in a short timespan, and there's more room for improvement. The hilly terrain means it won't quite be workshop-spam-heaven, but those grass mines will be pretty impressive in their own right once we build them and get railroads on them. Second chop is coming next turn on the plains tile.



I shuffled the Dynamite Rifle forward (after moving Infantry/Rifle pair into Dynamite) to get the first unit up there more quickly. We do still have the Rifle pair on the Galleon to the east, so the north isthmus city will be fairly easy to defend.


I took a few shots of pindicator's land to point out the alternate invasion possibility. Pindicator's appeal is his lagging behind in tech. I still prefer Donovan (the MFG graph up above is a nice reason why), but here's the other option:







Figured it was worth noting that we could potentially capture a handful of towns which would be nice I guess. Basically, his land near us is very empty behind the lightly defended front cities. Anyway, it's something to think about. I do think he's got a mini-stack of Cossacks somewhere that I missed, because we've definitely seen a Cossack or two in his front city on occasion. Somehow they disappeared, so I'm guessing they're playing zone defense somewhere, and the explorer simply missed them.



Broke 600hpt. That rival best GNP is exploding at an even more impressive rate. Assuming that's REM.



Trio of cities coming up as mentioned earlier. None of them will be super cities, but due to State Property, they'll all be contributors. Possibly more important is the easier access into western waters that we'll have from settling both isthmus cities.

[scooter]

One more thing - if we get a 20% scientist, here's a couple possibilities:

1) Hire a ton of specs (non-scientists) in Radio in addition to the 4 Engineers. With some food deficit, we can get a second great person fairly quickly. We could then launch a golden age to help spam units for an attack.

2) We detour for Physics, using the Scientist to speed it up. We'll want Physics anyway for Electricity down the line, and Airships would be a pretty nice boost for any invasion (both for the massive intel boost and the bombarding ability).

I think they're both pretty good options. I'd prefer Pentagon, but I could settle for either of those.