[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Athmos]

In case you don't get an engineer, how long would it take to slow build the pentagon ? Would you still get a reasonable shot at it ?

[scooter]

Slow-building it would take around 8T or so. Whether or not we should at that point would be a different conversation. The chance of getting beaten to it would be much higher, and we have so many other things we want too.

[Athmos]

Yes of course, but I was curious to know, it also helps appreciate the advantage of the great engineer play.

[Sullla]

Quiet turn for us so far in this thread, in part because neither scooter nor I was able to log into the game before work this morning. That definitely won't be the case tomorrow - we have a little Great Person dice roll coming up at the end of this turn.



Tech news for the turn: BGN has picked up Steel tech. Too bad he didn't get that slightly sooner, as we'll only get the known civ beaker discount for this last turn of research. It's interesting how the smaller civs (Donovan, BGN) have been researching noticeably faster than the large civs (Dreylin, pindicator) thus far, probably because they were investing in research/wealth multiplier buildings instead of more settlers / units. That's not going to last much longer though, as the bigger = better rule of Civ4 takes over. REM has been leading in GNP for some time now, and I expect that trend to continue.

We picked up REM's bar graphs for the first time all game this turn. I'll let scooter post the graphs if he chooses; we will get pindicator's graphs back soon as well. (Pindicator spent a whole bunch of EP on us and jumped from 50 EP up to 100 EP in a quick burst. I think he ran 10% EP on the slider for a turn since I don't see any espionage buildings in his core cities.) Here's the quick summary: REM is ahead of us in Food and Power, but not by a lot in either case, and we've been closing the gap quickly, especially in Food. I think REM has 15 cities right now, and we're about to go up to 16 in the next three turns - we've caught the Imperialistic leader. REM is behind us in Production, but not by much, and he will pass us when he goes through his own Industrial revolution at Assembly Line. Finally and arguably most importantly, REM has been #1 in GNP for the last few turns, with him almost certainly running mass Research and Wealth builds in his cities. His whole empire is full of workshops like ours, and it would explain why he hasn't been expanding much or building units of late. He's still ahead of us, not least because of his Statue of Liberty build, but we're not that far behind.



Here's a troubling sign: Dreylin is showing two Ships of the Line up to our north. They are in a position where they can move to Power Loom and bombard it on a single turn; galleons in the invisible Dreylin city (NW of the whales) can also move into position to attack Power Loom in one turn. Fortunately, when we found our isthmus city next turn, it will be able to see into that city after popping borders. Needless to say, we will need to garrison that isthmus city heavily with infantry.

Now Dreylin knows we can see that tile, so he is almost certainly showing those units as a deterrent to us, in the same way that we showed him our Ship of the Line earlier. (Post-Steel tech, we should probably build a single ironclad for this region and show it to him for the same reason.) Here's the scary thing: Dreylin picked up Physics tech last turn. He then whipped 11 pop last turn, all separate 1 pop whips, in what I can only assume was for a fleet of airships. Those airships will now be granting vision all across the map into enemy territory. We have borders with Dreylin all over the map, and if he can scout out our defenses everywhere with airships, it's not going to be too tough to find holes. It's not possible to defend heavily everywhere on this map, and that's a scary thought against someone who has a truckload of rifles and cavs. I don't think that we're that likely to be attacked, since Dreylin can take on Donovan or BGN much more easily than us; we have the ability to train the strongest unit currently available in the game (infantry), and we have the game's highest manufacturing base, and we are #3 in Power close behind REM, and we have Aggressive trait for free promotions to boot. But unlikely to be attacked is not zero chance to be attacked, and so we'll be sweating the next few turns. (It's enough for me to suggest an infantry in Spinning Jenny this turn over my preferred intelligence agency build. More espionage is nice, but not losing these cities is nicer.)

By the way... yes, we're well aware that dealing with Dreylin's army is a Tragedy of the Commons problem. Every other team in the game has a common incentive to want to deal with Dreylin, but none of us wants to confront their team head-on. That may very well let Dreylin pick apart the map one team at a time. I'm sure at least one person has posted something to this effect in the lurker thread. But hey, it's a no-diplo game, what are you gonna do? Besides, I think we're be able to match Dreylin's military pretty soon. We just need a few more turns to finish our factories/coal plants, and then time to train units. If we pop into Police State civic in a few turns, we can definitely build 4-5 infantry per turn, and those units coming out with tons of experience. Give us 10 more turns of peace and we'll be almost impregnable. Again, I'm sweating the details until then.



Scooter, I think we should move the western isthmus city north onto the incense tile. We lose a jungle tile and plains tile that we'll never get control of in Dreylin's borders, and we pick up a grassland forest tile in the north plus a significantly less aggressive / easier to defend location. Plus we also don't have to waste a tile on a silly fort for canal purposes. Would there be any reason not to do this?

I also think we may want to offer a map trade to Donovan sometime soon. If he accepts, we'd get vision on where all his cities are located, and that would be nice if we decide to attack later. He's not likely to accept later if we're in Police State / Vassalage / Theocracy and our power is spiking on the graphs.

I'll be tinkering around in the micro plan and sandbox. Let's hope for no foreign attacks and a kind Great Person dice roll.

[scooter]

Tech news for the turn: BGN has picked up Steel tech. Too bad he didn't get that slightly sooner, as we'll only get the known civ beaker discount for this last turn of research.

So he didn't go for Fascism. Guess we could have gotten it after all. I think we should be able to get it now, though.

Here's a troubling sign: Dreylin is showing two Ships of the Line up to our north. They are in a position where they can move to Power Loom and bombard it on a single turn;

Minor note: this actually isn't true. They're 3 tiles away from the bombard tile, and they have only 3 movement. So they would have to move one turn and bombard the following turn. With that in mind, it looks like a defensive statement (as you went on to say). He likely saw our boats in the area with his Airship, and he stuck those units there to cut off our boats easiest attack avenue. Could be wrong, but I sure hope I'm right.

Scooter, I think we should move the western isthmus city north onto the incense tile. We lose a jungle tile and plains tile that we'll never get control of in Dreylin's borders, and we pick up a grassland forest tile in the north plus a significantly less aggressive / easier to defend location. Plus we also don't have to waste a tile on a silly fort for canal purposes. Would there be any reason not to do this?

Good call on this. That's definitely the better way to go.

[Sullla]

Oh right, ships need at least 1 movement point remaining to bombard. Good point. That does indeed look like a defensive placement to stop our own invasion of Dreylin's border city. Well said.

Regarding Fascism tech... I've written out the turn micro through T314 in our sandbox. We should be able to research the tech in two turns following the completion of Steel research, and that's at modest deficit rate (60% science) burning through the remaining gold we have in the bank. As it turns out, we can raise a lot of beakers when we Build Research in every city:



A *LOT* of beakers. This is in the sandbox where the trade route values are lower than they are in-game too, so if we can do it in the sandbox, we can certainly do it in the actual game. Our competition for first to Fascism tech is also largely out of the picture: BGN just finished Steel (with no gold in the bank), and Donovan just finished Assembly Line last turn, also with no gold in the bank. So let's flip the switch and crank out Fascism in 2 turns, then we can revolt into Police State on Turn 316 and really get the military engine pumping.

Our GNP goes over 1100 when we build Research in every city, FYI. We can do the same thing as REM too!

[Tohron]

Still thinking about a Defensive Pact with REM? Seems it would be the best way to avert a "Tragedy of the Commons" scenario with Dreylin, by having his two biggest rivals signal a willingness to cooperate.

[scooter]

Turn 312

I went ahead took a full set of graphs screenshots because the REM comparisons are interesting. Normally I'd spoiler the graphs, but I do have lots of comments about REM. So let's do this.



REM has been steadily ahead of us, but the margin has been about the same for a long time. So it's nice to know he didn't snowball way past us - we've pretty much kept even pace with him for a long time now. We haven't been able to tell what his food total is because of Dreylin. Dreylin is obviously in a league of his own, but he's also relying on his food for whippping, plus he has more population to support with that food.




This is fun and all, but I'm expecting REM to land Assembly Line any turn now, and it won't take too long for him to catch us. Hopefully by the time he does, we're conquering new cities to stay ahead of him.



I guess I'm glad to see we're roughly in the same league here.



So I think a lot of the difference between us and REM here is:

1) the SoL specialists

2) he's built more science multiplying buildings with the hammers saved from cheap settlers

3) that little bit of extra food we saw up above (since all of his cities settled a little ahead of us). That likely is allowing him to run a few more specialists than us. We're just hitting the cusp where we're hiring them more often in our cities, and I think that's where his GNP explosion has come from. Rep scientists are pretty great once you've filled out your land tiles.

He also seemingly settled his cities a tiny bit more tightly than we did, which means they run out of land tiles more quickly, contributing further to the extra specialists. If you can afford the settlers (he can), why not. Our cities are mostly more spread out.




So if we can afford to have a couple cities not building Research (and still 2T Fascism), I'd suggest we 1T a Drydocks in Radio next turn, and then possibly get ourselves a ship or two. We've got none on these waters, and Dreylin is going to see pretty soon with Airships that our whole west side is fairly lightly defended. Something like a Privateer + Frigate combo would be nice - Privateer could scout, Frigate could cover it. We'll want those ships on this water anyway if we do invade Donovan, so it's not wasted.



Pasteurization is another nice possibility for a quick Drydocks. It's obviously on shared water with Dreylin, but the canal city allows it to also be on shared water with Donovan. Battery also wants a Drydocks, but we do have to finish that Coal Plant first.

Obviously we want Drydocks in a lot of cities because we get them cheaply on a water-centric map. But if some sort of Donovan attack is still in the cards in the near-ish future, getting some boats out of these two cities will be crucial. If we end up attacking pindicator instead, we've already got a few boats over there that'll make the need for boats less dire.

Finishing Fascism in 2T is still the top priorityy, but if we have any wiggle room, I think this is where I would spend it. Thoughts?



The MFG march continues despite Telegraph working 0 tiles. REM breaks the 1k mark in GNP.



I moved the Telegraph Infantry towards Pasteurization. We'll want that and the other Infantry in Pasteurization to go defend the canal spot (leaving 1 rifle in Pasteur, which may not even be necessary really).

In Cotton Gin is the Infantry that Steam recently completed + the Galleon. Those will load up with the Steam settler to nab the spot on the south island. Cotton Gin also has a Rifle in it. It may be worthwhile to leave it empty and use the Rifle to beef up the south island defenses.

Random thought that just came to mind - how about we build a Catapult in Spinning Jenny instead? It'll convert to a Cannon end-of-turn. It'll make landing that island far less attractive. We still do have that Rifle pair on the Galleon, so we have plenty of defensive units up there.

Big huge dice roll coming up. Kinda hoping Donovan plays earlier tonight so that we don't have to wait until morning to find out.

[Athmos]

Do we know who got the circumnavigation bonus ?

[GermanJoey]

2) he's built more science multiplying buildings with the hammers saved from cheap settlers

Thanks for the great updates, guys. A question about this, since you mentioned your multipliers a day or two ago too - how many do you have right now?