[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[GermanJoey]

Do we know who got the circumnavigation bonus ?

BGN, IIRC.

[Athmos]

Do we know who got the circumnavigation bonus ?

BGN, IIRC.

Thanks, I forgot and couldn't find it again in the thread.

[scooter]

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.

Yeah I keep coming back to the thought, but I always come away underwhelmed with the idea and/or afraid of getting trade routes trashed. I really don't know if it's worthwhile or not, so I keep defaulting to status quo.

Do we know who got the circumnavigation bonus ?

BGN, IIRC.

Yeah, I vaguely remember an explorer of ours seeing a BGN boat with an extra movement. Just glad it wasn't Dreylin.

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?

So, so few . We've built 0 gold multiplier buildings, so we just have the "free" markets in each city. We've built 1 Observatory (Steam Engine) and maybe a half-dozen libraries? If that. 0 Universities unless I'm forgetting one. The thing is that most of our beakers researched in this game have come from either bulbs or build research, so we haven't lost that many beakers from missing science multiplier buildings.

We definitely still want libraries at bare minimum everywhere, though, because trade route income alone makes it worthwhile in every coastal city. But we've prioritized Factories. Our non-hammer infrastructure is super lacking, but it's the price we've paid to try our best to keep pace with REM in expansion. I think it was the right choice.

We do at least have Barracks everywhere. What else do you need?

[Dp101]

Are there any plans to draft infantry as a method of getting an attack force, or is the hammer/pop ratio not good enough due to the 2pop cost?

[Sullla]

Oh thank goodness:



Next stop, Pentagon.

News for the turn is that pindicator has discovered Railroad tech. Let's see if he founds Mining Inc the way that scooter predicted. We also seem to have traded maps with Donovan:



His cities are more or less where we expected. We also now have visibility on a lot more of the Dreylin cities in ex-Gaspar territory.



Demos with our team building Research in most cities. Next stop Fascism tech and (hopefully) the free Great General.

EDIT: REM also picked up Assembly Line tech. Well, the production lead was nice while it lasted.

[scooter]

Awesome news. Even if we weren't in a race, I think landing Pentagon this way was much better than slow-building it.

The GG should be ours, but technically REM could tie and coin-flip us. There's no way Donovan or BGN could 2T the tech, but I have to assume it's possible for REM. I'd be completely stunned if REM had a way to 1T it (theoretically possible if he overflowed a ton of beakers), but there's a small chance he'll race us for it. I don't think he will, though. I think the GG has a great-than-normal value for us because we're aggressive and we can hit those 2nd/3rd level promos way easier, so I doubt he'll sell out for it like we're going to. It would also require him delaying his cheap factories, which I don't think he wants to do. So I like our odds.

I think we want to keep pushing down the Railroad-Combustion line next as previously planned, but I suppose there is a small argument to be made for Physics. I'm not going to make it . I'm not nearly convinced it's worth delaying Combustion, but if someone else wants to make the case, now is the time.

[shallow_thought]

With SPI, you might actually get some use out of police state - REM can only use it in GA/final war. Does that mean he 's more likely than you/BGN to skip Facism altogether, or at least plan to come back later for the various war weariness reductions when he needs them?

[Sullla]

I think that our current plan is to swap into Police State / Vassalage / Theocracy when our next civics swap opens up (on Turn 316) and spend five turns pumping military. Then we can see where we stand and re-evaluate from there. We have a couple of unique circumstances going in our favor: first team to fully industrialize with factories/coal plants, Aggressive trait buffing our Gunpowder units, Pentagon (presumably) finishing next turn, and Spiritual trait for access to Police State and XP-boosting civics on demand. This might be our best opportunity to leverage those advantages and turn it into territorial gains. Even if we would decide to back off and go back to teching, I would feel a lot safer with more military on hand. We have a huge shared border with Dreylin and his gigantic army; continuing to sit around with half his power rating is playing with fire for no reason.

Scooter, I'm hoping to do a detailed planning look at our individual cities over the weekend and figure out which ones should be building what units. We can optimize things here by having only certain cities build drydocks/stables and so on. I also want to stress another point: when we're not building research or tying up our best cities on settlers, we can crank out a *LOT* of military units in a hurry. That goes even more so when we're in Police State civic for the +25% bonus (which does not require a religious spread like Organized Religion, it applies to all cities.) Naval units are even sillier, getting another +50% bonus from our cheap Aggressive drydocks. The total naval bonus is 185%, which means a little city with 25 base production (essentially 4-5 workshops) can get 71 production/turn and crank out 1-turn frigates and galleons. Mid-tier cities like Battery and Dynamite will likely turn into naval bases for this reason, although some of them still need to finish their factories first. We will also need to work around Civ4's limitation of only 1 thing buildable per city per turn. I expect that our best cities will probably crank out infantry for this reason (most expensive current unit at 112 production), as they'll otherwise get capped on overflow and start wasting production.

In Police State civic, Steam Power and Haber Process and Spinning Jenny can all do 1-turn infantry builds. Pasteurization is pretty close, at something like 4 infantry every 5 turns. Radio and Telegraph (once it finishes growing back) aren't far behind. We can very easily set up a situation where we're building 5 infantry and 2-3 frigates/galleons on every turn, all of them starting with 7-10 XP each. Like I said, let's try that for five turns and then see where we stand and what our options are.

Finally, to answer the question from this morning, drafting infantry is usually a poor option outside of an emergency situation. Increasing the cost from 1 pop to 2 pop makes the hit a lot worse, and the opening up of factories/coal plants at Assembly Line tech also provides the production to build infantry much faster via natural production. Assembly Line factories + State Property workshops is the breaking point at which normal production outweighs slaving/drafting.

[scooter]

Yep, we're on the same page here. Although I had forgotten how easily we would hit the wasted hammers threshold when building navy, so Radio and Pasteurization are not the right options there at all.

Practically speaking, cities furthest away from any coast are ideal for Stables. Telegraph comes to mind as a city where a Stable might make sense since we'll definitely want a few Cavs. Coastal cities can reinforce more quickly with boat chaining (pre-rails).

And yes - Police State is going to pretty much be a Spiritual exclusive. Yet another reason REM has less interest in Fascism than us.

[scooter]

FWIW... Here's the power situation:

Dreylin: 1,480k
Us: 706k

Not very close! But let's say over the upcoming 5-6 turn window we build 25 Infantry, 6 Galleons, and 6 Frigates. Let's say we also add 3 Drydocks, 2 Stables, and 2 Barracks in a couple cities that need them. I'm ignoring Cannons, Cavs, SOTL, and Privateers for simplicity's sake even though we'll probably swap in a few of them in place of other units. I'll also ignore population/tech because life is too short. But I think that this type of volume is roughly doable. That breaks down to:

Infantry: 20k * 25 == 500k
Frigate: 8k * 6 == 48k
Galleon: 4k * 6 == 24k
Drydocks: 2k * 3 == 6k
Barracks: 3k * 2 == 6k
Stables: 2k * 2 == 4k

Total Built: 588k
Current + Total Built: 1294k

So in 5-6 turns of military builds, we can essentially draw even with Dreylin in military power. Obviously he'll likely continue adding units, so it's not quite that simple, but he's been whipping/drafting to get to a military that size for far, far longer than 5-6 turns.