[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

More excellent reporting as always, scooter. My thoughts on the issues you raised:

* I think the ideal time to throw a two-person Golden Age is whenever we can get the Great People together. The problem is that we're not very close at all to having them on hand. Radio will produce a Great Person eventually, but no other city has much of anything in the way of GPP saved up, and we've burned through enough Great People now that they're getting to be quite expensive. Unfortunately I don't see any easy way to produce another Golden Age. I'll have to think about this further.

* On number of cities: I agree that we're making real progress. Right now we really only have about 14-15 cities fully online and contributing. Everything after Photography on the city list is still in the buildup phase. But we're getting there and slowly getting stronger as the newer cities get their factories done. We also have the three captured cities coming out of resistance. (Of course, REM is also getting cities out of resistance and only getting that much stronger. Civ can be such an uphill battle sometimes.)

We definitely want the other city on the southern island, otherwise we wouldn't have placed Barbed Wire where we did. I also think that the corn location is worth building, where we can easily grow it to about size 8 and then work the corn, two grassland workshops, a couple of water tiles, and a pair of specialists. It will also give us another canal city in a useful location. That's worth founding even with the expensive settlers here in Industrial era.

The inland location, however, is not worth founding in my opinion, or at least not right now. There's no food to be had, and since it's not on the coast, we won't get useful trade routes. The three tiles we would work are the center tile (2 food) grassland watermill (3 food), grassland hill horses (1 food), and a plains hill mine (0 food) - exactly food neutral, which is nice. We would get 2 + 2 + 4 + 5 = 13 production/turn, multiplied to 17/turn with forge and State Property. Is that worthwhile? Eh, probably if we stretch out the time frame long enough, but I think we have more important stuff to build right now. Maybe if we get enough production down the road to churn out a settler more cheaply.

I'll look and see where we can squeeze out a settler for the corn location. Pasteurization might be the best spot, as it doesn't have anything too compelling to build after the current university is done.

* Speaking of universities, we're on pace to have the six we need for Oxford finished soon. We have universities finishing in Radio, Spinning Jenny, Pasteurization, Battery, and Contact Process. The capital will be able to 1-turn its own university after finishing the current settler, and then its on to Oxford after that. With stone, it should be relatively cheap.

* I also had another thought about the other national wonders on our radar screen. West Point is slated for Haber Process, and I think that's the proper location. We're about to finish connecting stone next turn, and as soon as Haber is done 1-turning its library/observatory/university, it will knock out West Point in 2-3 turns. We had previously suggested building Iron Works in West Point as well, but now I'm starting to think that it's better placed elsewhere. The problem is that building Iron Works in Haber Process ends up giving us more production that we really need for units. Once the railroads are done, Haber will have about 62 base production/turn, which equals out to 130 production/turn after multipliers. That's enough to 1-turn almost every unit in the game; even tanks only cost 140 production. With overflow, we should be able to 1-turn every unit we want in Haber. And in a true Final War scenario, we'll be in Police State civic anyway, which adds another +25% modifier onto that (taking Haber to 145 production/turn). Adding Iron Works on top of that is just overkill. We get the scenario we had earlier when building up to fight Dreylin: hitting the overflow cap and most of the production getting wasted. There's also anti-synergy between West Point and Iron Works in the sense that the turns spent building the Iron Works are turns where we could have been building units instead. Haber should do nothing but churn out high XP units endlessly from now until the end of time. Pausing to build a wonder which will only result in excessive overflow production is a bit of a waste.

Instead, I'm going to suggest that we put Iron Works in the capital instead. Steam Engine is no slouch on production either; I think it gets slightly over 55 base production after we finish the railroads, and that's close to 120 production/turn after multipliers. If we go this route, we're essentially deciding to stick with Bureaucracy as much as possible going forward, so that we can stack up the +50% bonus to production and commerce. It makes sense to do so since Steam Engine has higher commerce than just about any other city, and we can boost that further with Bureaucracy and Oxford University. Don't forget either that we have more watermills at the capital than at any other city in our territory, where we'll get the Electricity bonus in a little bit. With Bureaucracy and Iron Works, the capital can reach about 200 production/turn - which we can then funnel into Build Wealth to cover half the budget of our entire empire. This way, we're getting the full benefit of Iron Works instead of losing some of it to excessive unit overflow. And if we need to build a key lategame wonder, we've got a really strong city to do it in, plus we won't have to decide whether to produce West Point super-units or build the wonder. We can do both at once!

Thoughts on this? I was planning on having the capital finish its settler, then go university -> Oxford -> Iron Works. That will probably take about 10 turns in all, but our economy will be in grand shape after that, leaving most of our cities free to churn out units or further Build Research as desired.

* About the war between Dreylin and REM: I think that at least one of the two sides thinks they can make more progress or they would have signed peace already. I would sleep better at night if those two stacks north and east of Zipper would smack into each other and suffer lots of losses... Well, let's see what Dreylin does this turn. He's about to merge his stacks together, and he'll be able to rebase airships into our territory starting this turn. I think there's a good chance we'll still see a fight for Silkmoths. (By the way, better for us if REM holds the city, albeit severely weakened. Dreylin has too much culture in this region.)

* For all the fact that we're still stuck in permanent third place on the Demos screen, things are looking up in some areas. We are only 22 tiles off the Land lead, and less than 100 Food away from the leader there. These numbers really are looking better. We just need to solve the GNP issue (which is currently ongoing and looking up) and then we'll be right there. Have faith, readers! We are not the favorites but we're not that far off either.

If we can somehow smack pindicator with tanks and destroyers and add some of that land to our territory...

[Sullla]

Just by way of comparison, here's where we were on Turn 320:



And here's where we are right now, 8 turns later:



We might not be in first place yet, but this is MUCH better than where we were when Dreylin was about to run away with the game.

[rho21]

Thoughts on this? I was planning on having the capital finish its settler, then go university -> Oxford -> Iron Works.

What about Iron Works -> university -> Oxford instead (or university -> Iron Works -> Oxford, for that matter)? Presumably that trades extra speed completing the lot for less research on the way, but how much research does it cost?

[Sullla]

It's a timing thing, rho21. Oxford is a lot cheaper than Iron Works to build; it's 320 production + doubled with stone against 560 production not doubled at all. In the case of our capital, Steam Engine can build Oxford in 2 turns while it will take 4 turns to build Iron Works. I would rather get the science bonus in play first, since Iron Works won't really do anything unless we're building Wealth in the capital. In a perfect world we would sim it out but I don't think we have the time.

Two small things from the end of this turn:



Dreylin used an airship to bombard our privateer. It had to be him, I logged in after he played to see if there had been any movement in the Dreylin/REM war front (there wasn't). I have no idea if this is intended to send some kind of diplomatic message or if Dreylin simply did so as a lark. Do you get Great General points for using air strikes (?)



I also changed our Scientist specialist in Haber Process to one of the infamous Spy specialists. It's a matter of numbers here; we have no science multipliers currently while we have +100% bonus to espionage points. The Scientist is worth 6 beakers (with Representation) while the Spy is worth 4 beakers and 8 EP. Given that we need thousands of beakers for each tech while everyone's total EP can be measured by dozens and scores, this seems like a no-brainer swap to me.

On Espionage: if you want the detailed explanation of how it works, Mardoc and I wrote the definitive guide back during the Intersite Demogame. There are no active spy missions for this game, so the key information is in the passive benefits and chance for a spy to get caught. The single most important stat is "total EP ever spent against anyone", which is why it doesn't really matter where you spend your EP, just that you generate them. REM is leading by a wide margin in this category, although we're starting to catch up. As far as spies getting caught in enemy territory, the major modifiers are your total EP ever against their total EP ever, Open Borders versus Closed Borders, and whether the spy moved on the previous turn versus standing still. I could try to calculate the exact percentages, but the long story short is that we can probably spy on Dreylin without much chance of getting caught, while REM would have decent odds to catch our spy.

It might be worthwhile to have one spy sit without moving in a Dreylin city and a REM city. We'd be able to see inside their city screen and therefore check out what slider percentages they're running along with what tech they're researching. Food for thought, although getting the spy caught would suck.

[Sullla]

Very early thoughts on Turn 329 after the turn rolled:

* BGN revolted into wartime civics at the end of last turn: Police State, Vassalage, Theocracy. He may be gearing up to attack someone, or he may simply be wanting to protect himself against the giant Dreylin/REM armies floating around. If BGN would attack someone, it would almost certainly be pindicator, and we'll want to be ready to take advantage of such an opportunity. Still a ways off obviously.

* REM looks to have moved some of his units back away from Silkmoths. No idea where they are going. Perhaps he fears an attack by BGN (?)

* We are just barely short of getting visibility on REM's bar graphs. We will get them next turn for sure. After we do get them, we should be able to allocate enough EPs to get BGN's bar graphs and start picking up research visibility on all non-REM entities.

* Speaking of visibility:



Barbed Wire may be worth founding just for the visibility alone. We can see into Ducks and Geese now via expanded borders. And Dreylin has a settler down there as well; they are probably less than pleased about our city. We'll need to chop that forest ASAP, both for the production bonus in the city and to deny attackers defensive cover.

* I turned on science, Combustion listed ERA is 4 turns. I think we can get that down to 3 turns pretty easily by building some Research as appropriate. Every turn sees us finishing more and more crucial infrastructure, as well as making more progress on our rail network. Our 100% science rate has gone from about 500 beakers just a few turns ago to the 675 beakers/turn you see now. Oxford in the capital will be worth close to 100 beakers/turn all on its own. We're getting close to the point where we can run 100% science permanently while making 700/800/900 beakers/turn.

* I've spent a little time glancing around the map at what's located inside other cities. Dreylin has Oxford in his capital (cheap Philosophical universities), REM doesn't have Oxford. Neither one seems to have Iron Works completed, nor do I see West Point anywhere although I might have missed it. Donovan has Iron Works built in his one remaining city, and he's probably 1-turning infantry in there endlessly.

REM has a lot of windmills; most of the hills in his core have windmills and not mines. I honestly don't know if that's better or worse than the mining + railroads that we did. That does explain why he went for Electricity early on though, as he's benefiting from both the watermill and windmill aspect of the tech. It's not exactly a good sign that REM is still ahead of us in production by such a good amount (roughly 1300 to 1000) with windmills to our mines. Oh well.

I'll be out for the rest of the day but will look again at this tomorrow.

[antisocialmunky]

Well Barbed Wire is also close to his oil so it'll be easier to snipe the water source (land source isn't that far away either right?)

[scooter]

Well Barbed Wire is also close to his oil so it'll be easier to snipe the water source (land source isn't that far away either right?)

Oh! This reminds me of something we really need to talk about. A lurker (Commodore?) pointed this potential issue out to me in chat a couple weeks back. I meant to bring it up in here, but I completely forgot about it.

An issue that came up in PB18 was that turn splits for modern era war got to be pretty unfair. Whoever went 2nd was free to run fighter missions knocking out the opponents oil, which left the player in the first half of the split helpless to build new oil units. We never discussed this in the setup for the game, but it seems obvious in retrospect that it wouldn't be very fair.

My thought is to suggest publicly that all players agree to not air-strike strategic resources and that'll be that. It won't dissuade players from building planes since they're obviously still very useful as combat units, but it will dissuade players from doing silly things just to get the second half of the turn. Anyway, I would be in favor of this rule addendum. If Dreylin and REM both approve of it, we could simply go with that. (I expect those further behind to definitely have no problem with it.) Sullla - any thoughts on this?

[scooter]

The inland location, however, is not worth founding in my opinion, or at least not right now. There's no food to be had, and since it's not on the coast, we won't get useful trade routes. The three tiles we would work are the center tile (2 food) grassland watermill (3 food), grassland hill horses (1 food), and a plains hill mine (0 food) - exactly food neutral, which is nice. We would get 2 + 2 + 4 + 5 = 13 production/turn, multiplied to 17/turn with forge and State Property. Is that worthwhile? Eh, probably if we stretch out the time frame long enough, but I think we have more important stuff to build right now. Maybe if we get enough production down the road to churn out a settler more cheaply.

The biggest weakness of that inland spot is probably the fact that it's inland which greatly limits its trade route potential. I would be okay with the slow hammer payback if not for that. So yeah, no need to bother with that just yet.

* I also had another thought about the other national wonders on our radar screen. West Point is slated for Haber Process, and I think that's the proper location. We're about to finish connecting stone next turn, and as soon as Haber is done 1-turning its library/observatory/university, it will knock out West Point in 2-3 turns. We had previously suggested building Iron Works in West Point as well, but now I'm starting to think that it's better placed elsewhere. The problem is that building Iron Works in Haber Process ends up giving us more production that we really need for units. Once the railroads are done, Haber will have about 62 base production/turn, which equals out to 130 production/turn after multipliers. That's enough to 1-turn almost every unit in the game; even tanks only cost 140 production. With overflow, we should be able to 1-turn every unit we want in Haber. And in a true Final War scenario, we'll be in Police State civic anyway, which adds another +25% modifier onto that (taking Haber to 145 production/turn). Adding Iron Works on top of that is just overkill. We get the scenario we had earlier when building up to fight Dreylin: hitting the overflow cap and most of the production getting wasted. There's also anti-synergy between West Point and Iron Works in the sense that the turns spent building the Iron Works are turns where we could have been building units instead. Haber should do nothing but churn out high XP units endlessly from now until the end of time. Pausing to build a wonder which will only result in excessive overflow production is a bit of a waste.

Instead, I'm going to suggest that we put Iron Works in the capital instead. Steam Engine is no slouch on production either; I think it gets slightly over 55 base production after we finish the railroads, and that's close to 120 production/turn after multipliers. If we go this route, we're essentially deciding to stick with Bureaucracy as much as possible going forward, so that we can stack up the +50% bonus to production and commerce. It makes sense to do so since Steam Engine has higher commerce than just about any other city, and we can boost that further with Bureaucracy and Oxford University. Don't forget either that we have more watermills at the capital than at any other city in our territory, where we'll get the Electricity bonus in a little bit. With Bureaucracy and Iron Works, the capital can reach about 200 production/turn - which we can then funnel into Build Wealth to cover half the budget of our entire empire. This way, we're getting the full benefit of Iron Works instead of losing some of it to excessive unit overflow. And if we need to build a key lategame wonder, we've got a really strong city to do it in, plus we won't have to decide whether to produce West Point super-units or build the wonder. We can do both at once!

Totally agreed with all of this. That definitely seems like the way to go. Further down the road we could stick Red Cross in Haber Process. I'm envisioning a late-game final war where that city can very nearly 1-turn Commando Medic1 Mechs (which of course come with free March). That could be a little unfair . Even prior to that, free Medic1 on a lot of units could be very helpful.

As for ability to build a key wonder with the capital - how do we feel about Cristo Redentor? I've literally never built the thing before, but if it works the way I think it works (we would be able to change civics every single turn), that sounds pretty great. It's also something that REM is almost certainly targeting, and denying that would be amazing. We get a bonus on it for being Spiritual, so it would be easy to build very quickly provided REM didn't get to the tech far before us. Thoughts here?


Been a busy weekend for me, but I'll play the turn sometime later tonight. Whether the report comes tonight or tomorrow morning depends on when I get to the turn.

[Fluffball]

There are several pages of debate in the lurker thread on what to do with airstrikes. I agree with you scooter and hopefully you voicing that makes everything nice and simple. Brick should make an announcement shortly I guess once he decides on a rule.

[antisocialmunky]

Totally agreed with all of this. That definitely seems like the way to go. Further down the road we could stick Red Cross in Haber Process. I'm envisioning a late-game final war where that city can very nearly 1-turn Commando Medic1 Mechs (which of course come with free March). That could be a little unfair . Even prior to that, free Medic1 on a lot of units could be very helpful.

That's one way to implement universal healthcare.