[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

[WilliamLP]

what actually happened with that stack from boldy (?) that moved north though our lands?

He turned back midway through... My guess is that he was going to reinforce some of his land cities on the connection between us and Kuro (and couldn't do it by boat) but turned back when he saw that he couldn't get there in time.

[WilliamLP]

The game is back up after frankly a needed, though unintentional break.




I'm going to settle here next turn, to try and at least get a stake in this large island. I think Retep must have cities on the other side of it. 1W of that site might be slightly better but I think I'd rather settle this site a turn earlier.

There's no excuse for why I haven't uncovered that fog with a caravel or galley. Also workers are lagging way behind the settlement because I fail at planning. I think to be better at this game I should try something like a big macro-spreadsheet, with what I'm going to need roughly where (settlers, boats, workers, work boats, military, missionaries) and how I'm going to allocate production and transportation to make that happen. Currently my play-flow is just to go through unit by unit every turn, which is scaling poorly at this stage of the game.

Ah yes I have such great things planned for future pitboss games. I think as I get more experience my inner micro nerd could be as obsessive and capable as all but the most extreme cases on this site... Hi NobleHelium.




I'm kind of surprised neither Bandit or Retep are on this island yet, unless there is a city in a fog of war. If they're just going to let me sail over and take it I wouldn't mind having the fish/rice site at all. Again, I'm not sure how much these island settlements matter, but this game is also going on far longer than I ever suspected it would.

The tech plan is to get to Communism just in time for the free civic switch to the broken State Property. And it should help a lot, particularly removing distance maintenance.




We're slightly behind Retep in the key metrics as he's also in a golden age. Communism may level it out quite a bit.




Can you spot where I switched to Nationalism?




We're now pretty clearly the number one military power again. This raises the question of what to do with it.

As much as trying to finish Kuro has been a comedy of errors, I don't think he has much for a sizable cannon and rifle stack.

But what about the even bigger picture? Should we just keep up in defense, while trying to optimize the whole empire as a research and spaceship production machine? Is Oxy a potential target eventually? Certainly with infantry and tanks it seems very possible. Again, does the land gained actually pay for the effort in the timeline of this game? I have no idea.

[NobleHelium]

Set specific micro targets, such as settling a city at a certain location. Then look at what other pieces need to be in place to support that target, like workers, work boats and transportation. Then work backwards from the target and see which units need to be deployed to achieve that target. If those units don't exist, then build them. Divide your empire into pieces along these lines, but the pieces are ever-changing and must be quickly malleable for maximum efficiency.

[WilliamLP]

There's not too much interesting to report. The end of the long Golden Age is near.




Between Retep and I it's just a passive aggressive land grab right now. I don't think he has much of anything guarding his island cities. I don't know if I want to try and snipe any though because I don't know if war is worth it and also PB13 Spoiler:

cross-game PB shield effect!!

Also I know the lurkers want me to give peace a chance for once.




Communism is in next turn. At the moment I need to decide on the big civic switch, in particular whether to go Free Speech or stay with Nationalism. I've exhausted happiness quite a bit now, drafting the maximum four rifles per turn for a while.

After that I need a tech direction, and about this part of the game I know jack squat. Steam Power -> Rails -> Combustion is important for the seas and for railroads and levees. Assembly Line is crucial and we get cheap factories as ORG. Biology is fantastic. Physics -> Electricity -> Radio is if I want to try and race Wetbandit to Cristo. To the left I'm missing DR, Democracy, and Military Tradition. This is turning out to be not really the kind of game for Cavalry.

[Commodore]

Generally, and not speaking about specifics, you listed the important lines in about the right order.

[WilliamLP]

The big golden age is coming to an end. We switched civics:




I'm going for Free Speech over Nat. Happiness for drafts is getting tapped out right now. Especially since declaring on Kuro would create an instant 4-5 unhappiness again. We have enough rifles to defend threats out there for quite a time. I think we can survive without emergency military production for a while.

So it looks like we're kind of resigned to the tech race. The three-way balance of power is precarious, too. Retep will have Infantry and Machine Guns very soon and what I know about Industrial warfare and beyond (e.g. from lurking PB9 a bit) is that basically it's a quagmire and the winner is the person not doing it.

Demos before switching:




Demos after.




So this is quite a significant boost. And my city tiles are certainly not optimized for SP: the best tiles are now clearly caste workshops and towns, much better than farms.

Retep has lost the GLH bonus with Corporation. (Finally.) He has more food and pop with less land so he must be working a lot of coast tiles.

We're hitting the awkward point in the game where my workers have mostly been shipped off, but we suddenly need a lot of worker labour again for reconfiguring workshops and building railroads.

I get more amusement than I should from the animated boats gently rocking as they sail through the plains.

[Commodore]

We're hitting the awkward point in the game where my workers have mostly been shipped off, but we suddenly need a lot of worker labour again for reconfiguring workshops and building railroads.

I get more amusement than I should from the animated boats gently rocking as they sail through the plains.

Great post; would read again.

No love for watermills?

[Qgqqqqq]

Why Hereditary Rule?

[WilliamLP]

Are watermills good before electricity? I guess they're +1/+2/= which is clearly better than pre-bio farms (other than irrigation spread). Workshops are =/+4/= with caste which feels like it's usually better, but it's something that needs to be considered city-by-city I guess.

Also, I know +6 or so food is a decent rule of thumb for growing cities, but once they run out of tiles to work without slavery I think I can afford to reduce food output for quite a few cities.

Back of the envelope for growing onto specialists:

A size 15 city needs 50 food to grow, 25 with a granary. Growing onto a specialist reduces food by 2. The tradeoff between food and hammers seems close to 1:2 at this point in the game, going by bio farms vs watermills vs workshops, so the food loss is worth minus 4 hammers per turn and hence at least 5 gold per turn with a forge and a wealth build. A scientist is worth 3 science per turn, 6 with representation. Plus the GPP if the game goes long enough for the city to produce a GP. (A big "if".)

So even ignoring the food cost of the growth, it seems to be a bad idea to run cities (that won't produce great people) at equilibrium higher than their tile cap, without Rep. With Rep, it might not be very good either, since factories will soon make wealth builds from 4 hammers (approximate opportunity cost of 2 food) worth more than 6 gold per turn.

Why Hereditary Rule?

I've done a lot of drafting, and some cities still need the happiness, beyond what Rep would provide. Also I'm probably going to make another run at Kuro soon and need the buffer. Also I'm not running that many great people other than in the NE city.

Edit: Also if a Monarchy is good enough for real Canada, it ought to be fine for fictitious Arabia.

[WilliamLP]

Very hypothetical: I wonder if there would be any effective way to suggest and execute a 2v1 scenario in an AI diplo game. Mind you, I'm enjoying the laid back nature of this game right now so I probably wouldn't want to be part of one anyway. But if Wetbandit, Retep and I were all rational actors, I wonder if it wouldn't be both to Bandit and my advantage to gang up on Retep and try to sink his navy and split up his island holdings. (At least... until one of us is the clear leader and it becomes rational for the other two to re-align and gang up... and so on?)