[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

So uh. Let's just say I do regret not trying to extract some gold for peace.



Dreylin/OT4E were so desperate for peace that they signed it without looking. Alright then. Side note: REM is going to be pissed. I don't think he'll retaliate though. He's still in great shape.



No new units in this city. We do need to wait for Donovan to play, though. We did play after him last turn, not to mention playing before him would result in a 3-way split. Anyway, we should definitely go for this city this turn.

This game is definitely not boring.

[Mardoc]

If an infantry is at 16 strength it means that it's at ~80HP. That means that against another infantry it has worse odds than a cav at 15 strength (15.74% vs 21.79% without any bonus)

To get the infantry to 16 Str, I need two airships. If I have three units to your one, and equal or better tech, I'm going to win no matter what unit mix I use.

[Commodore]

Using cavalry as your yardstick might be a problem, because cavalry are amazing. I'd be more prone to look at them if you were pointing a finger of blame; pinch and/or charge cavs are an answer to a surprisingly large number of Industrial units.

[Sullla]

Excellent news. I couldn't be much happier with how that whole wartime sequence went down for us, once it became clear that Dreylin had Assembly Line / infantry in time to prevent us from achieving our larger goals. We captured two cities and razed another at fairly minimal losses. The only real setback was the sinking of our loaded galleon by that frigate. Dreylin is reigned back in from runaway status, and hopefully we signed peace in time to stop REM from taking over as the new runaway. Of course, both Dreylin and REM are now pretty unhappy with us, but hey, only one of us can win the game. As scooter said, this game remains incredibly entertaining.

Agreed that we'll look to set up an attack on Donovan's city now (making yet another enemy, heh) and also agreed that we need to play after him to preserve turn order. Scooter, with us about to get Railroad tech at the end of this turn, I'm happy to go back to doing the worker micro again. I'd like to see us get rails up in as efficient a manner as possible. I'll look in-game tomorrow and put up some suggested city builds and worker moves.

Regarding cavs: yeah, they are pretty awesome units. They crush their peers (riflemen) and do OK against infantry, although they need siege or air support. The main thing is the promotion factor: cavs can easily take Pinch with Barracks + Stables or Theocracy or Vassalage, while rifles need to hit three promotions to reach Formation, which is out of reach for anyone who lacks Aggressive trait. The higher base strength and Pinch promotion swings the cavs vs rifle matchup heavily in favor of cavs. On the other hand, promoted infantry can slaughter cavs easily (see the 95% odds that we were getting with C2 infantry against cavs) but infantry come a lot later on the tech tree, and are more expensive units to boot. Plus the 2-move factor of cavs is not to be understated. Here on this map, cavs are nerfed somewhat due to the wraparound oceans that let land units move rapidly from place to place, but Dreylin showed how a defensive first-response stack of cavs can still be very effective.

While I think our longtime regulars are well familiar with all of this, I figure we have enough new faces reading to lay out the "cavs are awesome" logic anyway.

[antisocialmunky]

Of course, both Dreylin and REM are now pretty unhappy with us, but hey, only one of us can win the game. As scooter said, this game remains incredibly entertaining.

Agreed that we'll look to set up an attack on Donovan's city now (making yet another enemy, heh) and also agreed that we need to play after him to preserve turn order.

Don't be silly - In a FFA there aren't any enemies, just friends you want dead.

Glad you are having as much fun playing this game as the rest of us are watching it. I wonder if the other players feel the same about these settings. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself but I wonder what an AI survivor with Industrial starts would look like. I'd atleast be faster to run

[Bobchillingworth]

They'd probably be pretty slow, I imagine the AI gets bogged down with building random city improvements while working cottages.

[Dp101]

Sorry to go semi-offtopic and continue the discussion about cavalry, but I'm confused as to why people are stating that with two promotions each a cavalry beats a rifle. I opened the worldbuilder to do a test and set up the ai with one rifle with combat 2 and gave myself a cavalry with c1/pinch. However, I only had 36.7% chance to actually win against the rifle (although I also had an additional 19% chance to withdraw), so I don't see why people think the cavalry is superior. According to the combat odds display the cavalry had a modified strength value of 16.5 and the rifle had a value of 16.8. Sure, with more promotions the higher base strength of the cavalry will boost it more than giving the infantry more combat promotions, but the issue then is that when you go up to 10xp and 3 promotions the infantry suddenly gets formation, which makes the odds even worse for the cavalry. The cavalry then has a 30.6% chance to retreat, with a 20.8% chance to withdraw, even worse for the cavalry. Am I still missing something here?

[Commodore]

Stables, and tactical flexibility.

[Zalson]

The rifle is likely to only have combat 1. The Cav is likely to be C1/pinch.

[Athmos]

As said, this third promotion is much easier to get on a cav than on a rifle, because of stables.

Great reporting as always, thank you guys ! Would you care to show us the power graphs from time to time, that we may follow the balance of power between Dreylin and REM ?

And when do you think you can settle the island city and the north one on the road to Dolphin to take full advantage of your victories ?