[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Athmos]

I like this plan ! I was wishing from the start that we could make this sea Mare Nostrum one day !

[rho21]

Here's the real news for the turn: Dreylin has picked up Biology tech! Looks like their strategy is clear: whip for production using the Kremlin, and then run a whole lot of Representation specialists for commerce.

Presumably that gives a good estimate of their tech rate. How quickly can they reach Steel or Assembly Line? (i.e. How big is your window?)

The hardest thing is getting the ships into position, especially the ironclads which will only move at 2 spaces per turn before promotion.

I'd suggest giving the ironclads Navigation 1. To me, unpromoted ships have the potential to change, promoted ones look as though they are done, and it makes sense to give ironclads navigation even on defence as they are so incredibly slow. Oh, hang on, that doesn't work as the blue glow is visible, isn't it?

If things are going well and we want to get aggressive, we can always load up our infantry and move to the tile 5 north of Dynamite, where we can threaten four or five different Dreylin cities in one move.

The now spare infantry and fleet from the sea to the East, travelling through Penicillin, might be the easiest set to bring to bear, should you want to attack Dreylin's core. You might want the army to attack further into Gaspar land though.

In big picture terms, we'd like to fight for about 10 turns and secure enough land for 5-10 more cities, then go back into peaceful civics, tech up to Combustion/Industrialism, and prepare to hit someone again. I'm dubious that we can pull that off, but it would be ideal if it were somehow possible.

For Dreylin to accept peace, presumably you'll need to be looking like making further gains, have destroyed a significant part of Dreylin's army, or have REM joining in.

Worth inviting BGN into the war once it gets started?

Win or lose, this should be fun.

It already is, just talking about it.
Thanks for the detailed strategic analysis. You're absolutely right about the targets, I was too focused on your previous discussion of strikes at Donovan.

Best of luck for the war. Looking forward to seeing how different this game looks in 10 turns' time.

[Sullla]

Spies might make sense, but I don't think we have enough passive espionage to avoid them getting caught quickly. Maybe later? By the way, REM has a huge EP lead and can surely see our research, which is how he sniped Fascism from us.

We already have a new turn - real fast turnaround once pindicator could play. I plan to spend some more time poking arounder with this tonight.

[Sullla]

I have a logistics note before getting to the current turn. Scooter, I'm going to keep writing out the worker micro for each turn, but I don't think I'll continue writing out the city micro or updating the sandbox. It's simply getting to be too much work, and by now I think we've passed the point of diminishing returns. I will also be leaving at the end of June to go on vacation, and that would have been the end of the sandbox in any case. It has served its purpose at this point, and it was a lot of fun to do. Time to move on to bigger and better things though.



Another team went golden this turn, with Dreylin also popping a Golden Age to go along with REM's. As you might imagine, the Demographics are going to look pretty awful with both of the other game leaders being in Golden Ages while we aren't. GNP is particularly sad right now. Dreylin has chosen to swap into Nationhood, Caste System, and Free Religion, which perhaps suggests he's going to try and consolidate and tech for a bit after this successful war with Donovan. Obviously Dreylin being in a Golden Age isn't going to make our own attack any easier, but I'm not sure what else we can do. Hopefully we can hit him before he's able to consolidate his Donovan gains.

BGN is also piling on Donovan's dying body, which is good news if it denies a city or two to Dreylin. I don't expect this to have much of an effect.



Most of the rest of my commentary is on unit logistics in preparation for war. Scooter, I think that I have a starting date for our conflict: Turn 323, in six turns from now. I'd honestly like to start sooner, but it will take that long to get ships into position. Hopefully this will also give us a stronger starting punch. We might want to start a 5 turns countdown with REM next turn, which hopefully he'll understand when we offer 5 gold, then 4 gold, etc.

I think we should drop off the two rifles currently in that galleon southwest of Power Loom. We then want to fill them with infantry currently on Textile Island. We can actually move the galleon in such a way that it doesn't appear to have moved: SW, unload infantry on mainland, NE-NE, load infantry in Power Loom, SW again. The infantry in Spinning Jenny then move over to defend Power Loom. The logic is that we don't want Dreylin to see a huge concentration of infantry appear on Textile Island. So long as we have 3-4 infantry visible on the island, he hopefully won't suspect what we're planning on doing.

The city of Dolphins has also popped 40% culture borders, which is unfortunate for us. It's likely to steal the spices tile at Penicillin unless we run Artist specialists to counter. We might very well want to do that.



Here on the west coast, I think we should swap the grenadier in Dynamite with the two infantry in Haber Process. The latter city is pretty safe and it builds a new infantry every turn anyway. We need to build up our defenses along the west coast in preparation for war. Radio built an ironclad, and since it has enough production to 1-turn an infantry, we'll do that. I think we might swap frigate/infantry, frigate/infantry for the time being, since I believe we get enough production overflow to make that work.

We can also see at least some part of Dreylin's forces. He has 2 privateers and 3 galleons north of Sector 19. That city has already survived longer than I expected. Hopefully Donovan has several infantry in there, and it's taking Dreylin a while to crack them.



In the south, we will be unloading three workers in Kaplan Turbine this turn. We should probably unload the infantry on board one of those galleons as well, and then walk it over to Battery along the road completing this turn. The Hindu missionary in Telegraph is intended for Battery, which will produce a frigate this turn at 6 XP and keep 1-turning ships for the immediate future. I actually wanted an ironclad here, but we didn't have quite enough production and it's better to complete a unit every turn than get stuck with 90% production in the box.

I would move the Pasteurization infantry over to Hydraulic Ram, and keep doing that for the next few turns. Pasteurization is pretty safe and units in Hydraulic Ram both defend that city and can load into ships to go attack Sector 19 after it gets captured. The Steam Engine infantry I would start ferrying over to the island, again both to defend Battery/Kaplan Turbine and position for the possible attack on Dreylin's own island city.

Induction Coil's frigate that it built this turn, and the galleons to follow over the next two turns, are needed up in the north near Spinning Jenny. We have to set them in motion now so that they can reach the area by Turn 323.

Overall, I'm still not sure how this is going to play out. I'd like to hit Dreylin sooner, but I don't think that we can do so. It just takes time to build the ships and move them into position. If I had to guess, I think this all ends with us dealing a lot of damage to Dreylin, but not enough to boost us into a winning position, and REM being the biggest winner. Still, not doing anything about Dreylin is going to lose us the game for sure. He surrounds us on every side, and he's going to equal us in tech sooner rather than later if we wait to act. We have to try now while we have the edge and Dreylin is still a long way away from his own infantry. Worth a shot at least...

[Dp101]

Is this amount of coordination with countdown timers as gold really allowed within the rules? I thought AI diplo essentially meant no diplo?

[scooter]

FYI: played. Report will come tomorrow.

[GermanJoey]

Is this amount of coordination with countdown timers as gold really allowed within the rules? I thought AI diplo essentially meant no diplo?

From the tech thread, this is what AI-Diplo means:

Diplomacy: "Pitboss-AI-diplo"
You can make any offers for any item the trade window allows you to make, excepting cities.
Any trades offered to another player are treated as valid trade offers.
You my not communicate using: chat box in diplomacy window, unit names, city names, outside communication, in game chat, anything else in this vein.
You may not gift units to or trade cities with another player.

[scooter]

I have a logistics note before getting to the current turn. Scooter, I'm going to keep writing out the worker micro for each turn, but I don't think I'll continue writing out the city micro or updating the sandbox. It's simply getting to be too much work, and by now I think we've passed the point of diminishing returns. I will also be leaving at the end of June to go on vacation, and that would have been the end of the sandbox in any case. It has served its purpose at this point, and it was a lot of fun to do. Time to move on to bigger and better things though.

Honestly, I'm amazed you kept doing it for as long as you did. That was a crazy amount of work. It's been a big part of why we're nipping at REM's heels for second rather than fending off Pindicator for 3rd.

What do you think of a shared document where we can keep general notes for special cases/plans? It can be a little more informal where we can jot notes that can be removed once obsoleted like "micro Radio to grow EoT320" or "stage Galleon SW-SW of city" type things. Or keeping track of city names. That's the process I've tended to use for my own solo games, and it's easier to keep track of than digging through the thread to find the comment one of us made 5 days ago. As you'll see when I report the turn next, I missed a couple of your notes for this turn (mostly because of my own circumstances). Any feelings on that?


Oh no. Literally as I'm replying, I noticed this part:

Scooter, I'm going to keep writing out the worker micro for each turn, but I don't think I'll continue writing out the city micro or updating the sandbox.

So about this... I was very tired, and it was very late when I read this sentence last night. Still traveling and whatnot. I read this entire sentence as you abandoning the entire spreadsheet, not just the city micro. Glancing at the spreadsheet seeing what looked like a blank column for the turn seemingly confirmed this to me, so I neglected to scroll down. So next time you take a look in-game, it's probably going to look like I drunk-played this turn. I just tried to do vaguely sensible things with the workers, but it was so much later than I hoped by the time I got to the turn that it's almost certainly a big huge mess. What was that Adventure from way back where you had to take over for a horribly bankrupted AI? Or that PBEM where the players took over for AIs at 1AD. Well I promise it won't be that bad.

The good news is I get home tonight, and I'm not going to play this next turn until tomorrow. Schedule should finally return to normal over the weekend. Sincere apologies for the things you're about to see.

[scooter]

Turn 317

As I start to write this up, I notice REM just logged in and sniped a Donovan city. Something to watch. Donovan is going to be dead even sooner than expected.



Apparently we aren't going to be the recipients of the worker gift. Either that or this guy is marathon training.



So remember what I said about it being a rough turn? Yeah. By the time I got to the turn I missed a lot of stuff, and decided to send this missionary off to Spinning Jenny rather than Battery where it would make a little more sense. I think we were going to want to slip in another missionary or two anyway, so maybe we can do that this upcoming turn after 1T'ing an Infantry with overflow this turn.



BGN is trying to scavenge Donovan too. Donovan is now at war with half of the existing civs. He didn't actually capture anything, though.



Dreylin actually took a serious hit a couple turns ago, but Donovan took way more damage. I'm guessing the delay in finishing off Donovan has more to do with healing units than being unable to finish him off.



Another half-dozen infantry and change coming in.



T314 Power
Dreylin: 1,614k
Us: 761k

T317 Power
Dreylin: 1,591k
Us: 903k

I'm reasonably confident that we can pull off a bloody stalemate at worst. I'm not necessarily confident we can do more than that, but I don't really think we have a choice in trying. Gotta hope he gets piled on.



I went ahead and canceled our spice-incense trade with Dreylin. We have another source too, so even if we lose this one, we're still good. I left a sign there to track the cultural progress there so that we know if/when we need to run artists.



Unit shuffling did happen on the west coast to guard against a Dreylin opportunistic strike. I think we need to be hyper aware of that possibility. They've got airships everywhere, so I don't think we're going to really be able to surprise them at all. They may well see our attack coming very far in advance, in which case a pre-emptive strike would make a lot of sense for them. I think we're going to need even more infantry at Radio.

[Sullla]

Ouch. That is a harsh blow to what we're planning. We can work around that missionary but it's not going to be easy. I could have easily played the turn last night - if this situation comes up again, just let me know so there's no need to try playing while exhausted after midnight.