[Spoilers] Dreylin's short visit to a late Era

[OT4E]

Indeed the shape of the coasts doesnt give us immediate answere about the kind of the map, but it seems that there are some islands and probably different seas.

About defogging I do not see big risk in that but I also do not feel that we lack this knowledge right now. Our first cities are planted and we are not going to plant more soon. Our explorers will reveal everything in time, so in general I'd say keep rifles in the cities. I also do not know exactly when can they become unhappy, with US we dont have extra happiness, and the goal for the turns 6-20 is to grow cities to thw maximum size as quick as possible.

[OT4E]

Have you tried to play it over in sandbox? I do not insist but I worry that I can forget to post some important details. Feel free to request more information if something is not clear.

I also dont like that my appearance has almost killed the discussion. Ok, we have agreed on the basic concepts but there are many things more to think about. In my tests I left 3 forests in the cap for the Oxford, but it seems that it is not big deal to build it later if we do not base our strategy on Oxford rush. So it can be wise to spend those forests on the settler while we are on the bureaucracy (in my estimation we will have to go into the nationhood).

Interesting thing is what to do after Kremlin. My understanding is that we must focus on city-spamming. Our UB gives us extra food, so it can be read as if we get 3 food from city circle while others have just 2 and we will have great boost for slavery which is better with low city size and high city number. Biology seems to be good as the next goal. We build mainly farms and closer to biology we replace most of them with workshops leaving just 1-2 per city or 2-3 shared between cities.

The problem with all this is that our science will almost stop when we switch to state property and start complectating our army with units. Here in my understanding we must take Oxford plan outside of the pocket. I see our economic concentrated in the cap, we save money in the nationhood but spend them on the bureucracy. May be it is reasonable to start growing GS for academy after we get our first GS for Scientific Method out. It wont be ready before we get Kremlin but the significant part of it will be produced.

One more idea we must consider is Globe Theatre. 1 free rifleman per turn is awesome and if we get about ~10 cities we can draft them at maximum rate without growing unhappiness.

And some thoughts about long term goals, there are 3 main direction for development:
1) Railroad -> Combustion. It gives great logistics and naval domination if there is land oil on the map, though mapmakers do not often put land oil. Anyway railroads and machine guns give you some opportunities. Machine guns are immune to collatherial though they fall pretty easy against cavalry, Railroads help you collect gather army in one place quick.

2) Physics -> Artillery. Physics lies on the path for Fussion if there is no land oil and it gives you airships to control the land. Artillery is great unit, under normal circumstances you simply cant attack nation with knowledge of artillery.

3) Assembly lines. The main advantage it opens is in factories. The bonus from Kremlin multiplies with those bonuses and transforms into something horrifying. They'd better not let us live till that. While infantries are easily dealt with cavalries and cannons, and they make nationhood less attractive.

[Dreylin]

Hey, sorry I haven't been a bit more communicative; haven't has as much time as I expected recently and would probably be completely winging this (badly) if you hadn't offered to help out. I still haven't managed to look at the run through the sandbox, but might have a chance soon. Will think more on your future plans / suggestions and comment more tomorrow.

Meanwhile....


t254 -

So here is some news from the SE:


SE of the Pig, those look like Gaspar/Noble's Dutch borders to my eyes. So shall we meet them or retreat and continue scouting the land between us? I'd lean towards the latter.

Bananas in the North:


And here's the overview:


I do have a question from the micro plan regarding Worker 2, highlighted. Here's what the micro says:

T5: worker 1 chops gems, 2 worker finishes iron, worker 2 starts roading hill, I put wealth in city#2 to save overflow for missionary, care about merchant which is set automatically, city#3 starts theatre

I assume that this is the one which starts roading the connection, but the Worker on the Iron won't finish ... and as I'm writing this I realise that the new Worker from Llamas is the one which moves to finish the Iron.

Worker 5 moves to Pigs & starts Pasture?

Both cities #2 & 3 store overflow on Wealth now to hedge for Religion?

[OT4E]

I think there can be some mess between turns when I was describing them. Iron is completed when we start building wealth. Worker on the hill start roading after chops. Worker above pigs starts roading to city#3 (NW). So it looks like they both start roading on the turn before we get religion and finish roading on the turn we get religion.

Pasture we start later, the worker chopped from the cap does.

I think there is no point in hiding, lets make contact.

[Elum]

I would avoid contact for now, though I would count starting next to Darius of the Dutch as a win, we don't want their settling priorities to be better informed with regards to our contested land

With regards to post Kremlin strat, I can see drafts and whips carrying a swift expansion nicely, keeping pop and worker turn requirements low, while focusing on building a capital to move to and setting up any choice workshop cities. What do people think of the current cap? Is it worth moving? Biology farms would be great but I wonder how much of a farmers gambit that is. Combustion line seems fun to me, it also seems to be strong against a physics -> artillery push against us. Railroads suit a wide empire.

[OT4E]

What do people think of the current cap? Is it worth moving?

I am fine with it. It has 2 base commerce resource which not only provide us burst of commerce early game, but for a while we wont have time to grow our cottages to comparable size to beat it, so I cant see how can the new cap site look like and how can it be better.

Yes there is a place for just 7-8 cottages, which is not much but I'd refrain from seeking 20 land tiles spot or for better number of food just because it takes too much to ovecome gold and gems.

I would avoid contact for now, though I would count starting next to Darius of the Dutch as a win, we don't want their settling priorities to be better informed with regards to our contested land

It is just a matter of few turns, we have nowhere to hide. Within the first few turns you can reveal city locations which can help a lot in the future.

[Dreylin]

I would avoid contact for now, though I would count starting next to Darius of the Dutch as a win, we don't want their settling priorities to be better informed with regards to our contested land

It is just a matter of few turns, we have nowhere to hide. Within the first few turns you can reveal city locations which can help a lot in the future.

I think I'd go somewhere in between; I don't think we should be seeking to meet them this early, but I don't think we should be afraid to do so. My concern is that the Explorer has effectively beelined in this direction, so if we meet them straight away they know we are pretty close to each other - and in which direction we have come from. I'd suggest we turn the Explorer south and see whether we can skirt past their West to defog the area SE of the Fish. We may not be able to avoid meeting them, but a couple of extra turns before making contact will obscure our relative positions.

Agree that they are not a bad neighbour to have, until they start launching East Indiamen into the waters offshore our capital - at that point we either need airship early warning or better naval tech. We probably need to prioritise settling that island as soon as it doesn't interfere with the Kremlin push.

I also don't see a compelling reason to plan to move the capital; would it make sense to plan for SP Watermills (I think we can get 4) rather than full Cottages? With Electricity they're >1/2 Town, with no growth curve and supply the added food for whip/drafting. We can put Farms on the Watermill spots for now and grow Cottages on the others, then switch when we get SP (& Elec?)

Since we're a chunk of the way there anyway, Physics seems a decent next target - maybe with a GS partial bulb - and then use that GS to bulb into Biology?

Oh, and the Communism Spy becomes the 1-person Golden Age?

[Elum]

Grabbing the Physics GS would be great denial, I guess we will find out if it's feasible after the great people start popping in other civs. Phi/Spi is feeling like a great choice right about now. I looked into how the Kremlin works after it was mentioned here, I didn't know it improves base hammers from whipping. In the sandbox it seemed that whips were giving 37 hammers, is that correct? If so, with the Kremlin that is 55 hammers per pop, or 68 with a forge. You weren't joking OT4E

[OT4E]

37 hammers with forge and just 30 base hammers (exactly as normal) therefore we get 56 hammers per whipped pop after Kremlin. If we manage to get factories and power we will be getting 90 hammers from each whip, but we must be ready to use it earlier. Not everyone will be happy for us to have such bonus and grow, but we will have everything in our hands.

Grabbing GS from Physics is great, but I am not sure how we can afford it. Though may be if we extend Castles+Pacifism, but this is possible only with optimistical environment. We will see, I'll make some more tests by the end of the week.

[Dreylin]

t255 -

Short report since it's v late here; we can discuss more tomorrow. Same 3 pics:







Micro for next turn is: Mine Gems, 2x finish Roads, 2x chop Forest into appropriate city, 2x road Iron(?).

Goats builds Workboat next, or another Worker?
Whichever of Chickens or Llamas gets the religion builds 2 Missionaries; Chickens builds Theatre if not, what about Llamas' next build?