[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

I don't mean to stray things off too far, but I really don't think Cavs are that special here. I mean they're nice, but they're much more powerful on a land-dominated map. This is a water-dominated map, though, which means naval mobility is much more important. Cavs are nice, but if not for the Airships preventing our boats from advancing we would have slaughtered Dreylin's Cavs with Infantries off boats. We only were in reach of them 3 times, and we got 3 wins at 95% each. Cavs are awesome and still useful in this game, but they're nerfed a bit on maps with this much water.

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 ?

Sorry, the reason I haven't included this is because REM has denied us his graphs with EP spending again. We're spending exclusively on him, but he's got so much EP/turn that it doesn't matter. I think he's close to getting city visibility on us, which means we badly need to slip in an EP building or two. Pretty obnoxious.

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 ?

The settler takes 3T to build (started last turn, so 2T remaining). I think we can use our workers to road that hill tile so that it will take 1T to transport it to the island and we settle it the following turn. So... 3 turns from now? Dreylin's nearest Galleon is at least that far away, so unless he has a settler ready to go, we should be able to get it. Not a guarantee, but our chances are good.

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.

Sounds great. Donovan has played, so when I get home I'll take a look in-game. If Donovan has not reinforced S19 seriously (I don't see how he could), I'll go ahead and capture it.

Some things to consider:

* We should be careful about where we place rails with Commandos in mind. I don't think anyone will be mass-producing them anytime soon, but there are definitely GGs unaccounted for right now. Obviously we want them on hills for the production bonus, but we don't want to spam them too badly.

* We have a civic swap available next turn. I think we should get out of Theocracy for at least 5 turns. I thought about Pacifism and coming up with a plan to get us another golden age, but I'm not convinced that's the way to go just yet. Free Religion is the most obvious choice - the 10% science bonus will be pretty nice when we're building research everywhere and pulling down 1k beakers/turn. There's also an argument to be made for some Organized Religion so we can get in a round of Infrastructure (Libraries everywhere, Observatories in a couple cities where it's worth it, a couple EP buildings, West Point, Ironworks, Grocers in cities with health issues). I lean slightly towards 5T of Free Religion, but it's certainly up for debate.

* Speaking of West Point - we should make a super-unit somewhere with our GG so we can unlock it. I'm thinking we attach it to a Frigate so that we get a free Destroyer upgrade in a few turns?

[Sullla]

Some Turn 325 thoughts before scooter plays our turn:



REM took one more Dreylin city this turn, the island city that was mostly surrounded by REM's culture. That one was a sitting duck, pardon the pun. It's going to be a lot harder for REM to capture anything else from here on out, now that Dreylin's military has been freed up from defending against us. Here's what we can see in the north:



Dreylin emptied out the cities on our border and his units are marching east. There are a lot of cities in ex-Gaspar territory without expanded borders; it might be tricky for REM to defend them. Lots of units on both sides up there. We're hoping that these two continue to fight for as long as possible in a bloody stalemate. Being good players, that probably won't happen, but we can dream, can't we?

Current City Count
REM: 22
Dreylin: 18
Scooter: 18

REM is clearly the game leader now. He's claimed the lead in number of cities, he has the tech lead, and he's also tops in production. So was our war a mistake, simply exchanging a Dreylin runaway for a REM runaway? Possibly, but I think we still had to make a move. Sitting around on 16 cities doing nothing would only be a slower form of losing the game. We should almost certainly capture a city from Donovan this turn, and hopefully we'll be able to replace the razed city on the southern island to get to an even 20. Dreylin was unquestionably running away with the game 10 turns ago, and we had to deal with that first. Now we'll have to figure out something about REM, but that doesn't make the decision to deal with Dreylin earlier a mistake. Before it was like this:

1) Dreylin
2) REM
3) Scooter

Now the situation is more like this:

1) REM
2A) Dreylin
2B) Scooter

That's still a better place for us to be in my opinion.

(We may even think about making a move against pindicator at some point in the future; his power is vastly lower than ours, and we have some good avenues of attack against his territory. Food for thought in maybe 10 turns down the road, especially if REM/Dreylin remain at war. We need to consolidate and work on infrastructure for the moment.)



Here's the situation on the Donovan border. We have 9 infantry ready to attack against Donovan's 1 infantry, 1 cannon, and 1 grenadier. I think we got this one. I legitimately feel bad about attacking Donovan, who was a good neighbor throughout this game, but he's on the way out and we can make use of another quality city.

Scooter: remember to declare war before moving in our ships. I always type this out to remind myself when attacking someone who has shared Open Borders. I think the Whosit incident has scarred that into my brain for life.

Note that we can finish researching Railroad this turn by having all our cities build Research. That's an effective 1500 beakers this turn after applying the known civ and prerequisite bonuses, which shows how much science we can put out if we're willing to turn our production into GDP. Unfortunately, REM can do the same thing, only better since he has higher production and the Statue of Liberty. Anyway, we'll get the tech this turn and start laying down railroads. Agreed on not spamming them everywhere; we want them on hills for the production bonus and linking cities together for mobility.

I did write out suggested worker micro for the turn. It's in the usual spot in the shared Google Doc spreadsheet. I enjoy thinking about this and the game is still close enough that I think it's worth the effort. If you'd prefer to move the workers yourself, just let me know.



Here's the capital, as part of the discussion on civics. Unfortunately we're just short of enough production to finish the settler this turn. Here's where the decision comes in: if we plan on swapping into Bureaucracy next turn, we might as well build something else in the capital this turn, as we'll have enough production to finish the settler in 1t once we get the Bureaucracy bonus. I would suggest a jail (which we can do in 1t) or possibly getting started on a bank (2t) if we do plan on going to Bureaucracy next turn.

There's also a case to be made for swapping into Nationhood next turn though. Not to draft, but for the "No Upkeep" civic cost and to gain the 25% espionage point bonus. High Upkeep versus No Upkeep is worth about 30 gold/turn difference right now, which I would guess is roughly equal to the economic benefit we get from running Bureaucracy. If we want to go to Nationhood next turn, then we definitely continue building the settler in the capital this turn. I think I lean slightly toward going back to Bureaucracy, but it's close enough to be worth discussing.

In the religious category, I favor Free Religion over Organized Religion by a decent amount. The civic is a lot cheaper (Low Upkeep versus High Upkeep) and we really don't need to spread our religion. That just leaves the 25% building bonus, and honestly I think I'd prefer the 10% research bonus over that. I could be talked out of this too though, as we will be doing some infrastructure builds in the upcoming turns.

I queued up some buildings behind this turn's Build Research. I think we want a library almost everywhere, due to how cheap it is and the commerce coming in from trade routes. Our core cities should also all get the jail + intelligence agency combo, worth 24 EP/turn at a pretty cheap cost. REM has invested in espionage, which means we need to invest in it as well to counter him. Give me 5 turns to build, and I'll have our civ pumping out well over 100 EP/turn. I'm sick of not being able to see his bar graphs, and we can't allow him to get city visibility. Plus, having research visibility on Dreylin and REM would be nice. (REM's ability to snipe "first-to" benefits on the tech tree via seeing the research of the other teams has been a huge advantage for him.)

I don't have strong thoughts about what unit to attach our Great General to. My thought is a land unit for a Medic III unit, but that's only a thought. We must attach to a unit with at least 6 starting XP to reach 26 XP for level 6 (to unlock West Point). We also do need to use the promotions, but once we have a level 6 unit, fortunately it doesn't matter if it would die. The free Combat I from Aggressive trait does not factor into this, since it's "level 6 unit", not 6 promotions. I have two workers going to connect the stone resource so that we can get started on West Point.

Here's some overview screenshots:



World diplomacy. Poor Donovan is about to be at war with us too. Dreylin is not terribly popular with anyone, although that's largely his fault for declaring war on everyone else in typical OT4E fashion.



Current civics. The diversity of choices in this game has been so much fun to watch. Dreylin's been running the Slavery + Kremlin economy, REM and our team has been using the State Property + Caste System + factories/power plants setup, and pindicator is now trying out a non-State Property factory economy with Caste System + Mining Inc. Lots of cool stuff going on.

Also note the trade route income that we're getting from the other teams. Fortunately attacking Donovan won't hurt us here, as he doesn't have enough cities left to matter. I think that when we look back at this after the game is over, Dreylin's inability to get much in the way of trade route income is going to prove to be one of the biggest things that held him back. He only had REM as a serious trade partner for most of the game, due to fighting wars with Gaspar + Donovan + pindicator + our team. This is one of those things that's easy to overlook but has played a huge role in each nation's economy.



Current techs. Here's the status relative to our team.

Scooter: We have Steam Power, Assembly Line, Scientific Method, Communism, Fascism, Steel, and will finish Railroad at end of turn.

(Other teams top to bottom)
Pindicator: Has Railroad, Missing Fascism/Scientific Method/Communism
BGN: Nothing! Same techs as us.
Donovan: Missing Fascism/Scientific Method/Communism
Dreylin: Has Physics/Biology, Missing Fascism/Steel
REM: Has Physics

REM picked up Steel this turn, so he's up Physics on us, although we will clear Railroad at the end of this turn. I think Physics is our next tech, as no one else is about to get Combustion. I want those airships for vision! Probably Railroad -> Physics -> Combustion -> Electricity -> Industrialism. That's what we have left to reach panzers, which look like they'll be in play before this game ends.

Finally, we can rename Dolphins to Antiseptic, and we'll need a name for Hedgehogs. Feel free to make suggestions.

[Commodore]

How about the zipper?

[antisocialmunky]

Would you guys be willing to go to war with REM and try and get Pindicator to join in the not so distant future?

[Zed-F]

Since it's a war gain I would suggest a medical invention such as anaesthetic, vaccine (i.e. smallpox), stethoscope, aspirin, x-rays, or blood transfusion.

[rho21]

Barbed Wire is quite a good one here too. Especially as you're enclosing animals.

[antisocialmunky]

Since we are talking about names, I think you should name the cities from the war after war related innovations. Proximity Fuse for that city that borders both REM and Drey (Hedgehogs I think) might be a good one since it seems like it will get blown up first in a war declaration.

Others include:
Breech Loader
Revolver
Submarine
Ironclad
Torpedo
Belt Armor
Dynamite

[scooter]

Turn 325



I logged into the game, and while the gamestate was downloading, I tabbed away. Tabbing back, this is what I saw. I think the game zoomed way in while I was trying to scroll in my web browser. For some reason this was really funny to me. It sure looks like these two idiots started the fire and got caught in the act.


Let's start with the fun stuff.



19.8h pinch amphib infantry vs cg2 infantry: 51.5% lose

After that it got easier.

amphib infantry vs cg2 grenadier: 89% WIN
amphib infantry vs wounded cg2 infantry: 93% WIN



amphib infantry vs cannon: 99%



Jackpot! That's a fantastic infrastructure haul. This is going to be a really nice city for us.



Guessing Dreylin was dug in a bit here to hold off REM? We're going to need to get some culture into this city pretty quickly.



Sullla - I took a couple cities like this one (Contact Process and maybe one other city?) and stagnated them. I'm ok with working coast when we're trying to grow, but when we've exhausted all land tiles for a given city, I don't see any real value in working coast. It's just so much weaker than a rep specialist. While building research an Engineer results in more beakers than a scientist in almost every city, so engineer it is. So that's my rationale on a few of these cities if you see intentional stagnation. A couple cities like Dynamite have a 1F surplus (with no land tiles remaining) so they'll have to toggle between a 1F surplus on coast and a 1F loss on a specialist.




REM is now the guy we're chasing. I have some thoughts on how to handle that, but I'll have to save that for tomorrow. The good news is that it feels less bleak to me. I think our chances of winning have gone up from about 5% 10T ago to around 10-15% now. Still pretty bad! But I can at least see a hypothetical path to victory even if it'll be very difficult. It'll require some luck too.



It's getting harder to fit it all in. Good problems! I did shuffle some builds around too since fresh tile improvements made a difference in a couple cities.

Sullla - I'm thinking about replacing the Dreylin city right on the spot he had it, but I think you were considering a different spot when we chatted. Any strong feelings on that? My thought is that planting on the hill will greatly help in defending the spot if Dreylin gets tempted to come back at it for revenge.

[scooter]

Would you guys be willing to go to war with REM and try and get Pindicator to join in the not so distant future?

I'll try to talk strategy tomorrow, but as far as I'm concerned, all options are on the table. There are three ways to haul in a leader.

1) Try to dogpile him if you're very confident that someone else will join.
2) Try to take him on directly in a short period where you're unusually strong (Examples: UU, golden age, critical wonder, while his army is elsewhere, etc.)
3) Grow quicker by hitting softer targets before he's able to do the same.

#1 is what we did with Dreylin obviously. I think that was the right choice. This scenario is not quite the same as the Dreylin scenario, though, so the question is which route is best for us this time. I'll take a stab at that tomorrow.

[rho21]

A few thoughts:

Have you offered peace to Donovan?

Is it worth queuing up another settler on the offchance that some cities get burnt in the REM-Dreylin war? Or would that be too antagonistic or unlikely?

Why Physics before Combustion? Airships would be lovely, sure, but I don't think you're expecting to start (or suffer) a war in the next, what, 7 turns it will take you to have both techs, so the information isn't critical. I think you'll still be researching Combustion almost entirely at 1st even going via Physics, and you might get an extra discount on Physics (from BGN) if you wait. Earlier oil would be a minor production boost (though I guess it comes with health problems too). I guess what swings it to Physics is that opponents will get a larger discount on Combustion than they might have if you go there first.