[SPOILERS] dtay's thread awaits a title

[dtay]

Ugh, war called off. Plako signed peace and commodore started moving south. Looking at it, my cavs could raze 1, at BEST 2 cities before I stalled, and certainly couldn't hold anything. By the time my seige and infantry got to marching in commodore land his own stacks will be down south.

I'm going to finish industrializing and see if I can hit in the next NAP break window, but this is a major setback. I'm willing to be reckless but given I see where all commodore's troops are I know exactly how little a war right now would accomplish for me.

[Ceiliazul]

Boo! False advertising!!

But good on you not giving up... of course this probably means Plako makes more gains in the long run, but whatchagonnado.

[dtay]

War, take 2.

Declared on commodore, I don't think he'll be able to survive this. he has no current (unbreakable) peace treaty with plako, most of his miltiary is in the north, and he'll have a ton lof trouble fighting mixed infantry/machine-gun/(cannon/artillery) stacks. he just got steel, but doesn't have a ton of extant cannons yet.

Economically, inspired by Plako's theft of assembly line from me, I did the math, and god the espionage economy is great. As long as I'm not the tech leader (which I'm not), it is super super efficient to just get tons of spy points and steal techs from other people.

1) I can easily get +100% espionage in every major commerce city with jails/intelligence agencies, using US to rush them in low production places.
2) My massive espionage lead over everyone but plako means i get about a 50% reduction just from built up points.
3) +25% espionage from nationhood
4) the sit still for 5 turns 50% reduction from spies

So even with the increased cost of RBmod, I still manage to steal artillery and physics for example at about 8k espionage points a pop. Which is less than the beaker cost. AND that's not even taking into account I produce espionage way better than beakers anyway, since standard beaker multiplier is like 25-50, versus 125 espionage.

And finally, my slider-at-zero espionage output is over 500. Insane. Jail+Intelligence Agency is 24 base, some cities have security burs and courthouses for some more, and then the Statue of Liberty is letting me run a spy specialist in every mainland city (except for a few which run engineers).

None of this makes me competitive with the top 3, but it's def making the economy hum along much better while I rush buy.

[dtay]

It must have been insane in base BTS with the religion reductions and no cost doubling...

[Krill]

And people bitch about the KTB.

[dtay]

KTB (and associated imo tech costs modifications) one of the best rbmod changes. That and the trait rebalances. Admittedly the ktb was probably too large in the pb13 iteration, but I've found pb18/pb22 to be pretty much in the sweet spot.

[The Black Sword]

How much was the beaker cost of Arty and Physics?

I don't really know how I feel about the KTBs, the mod doesn't really need another force pushing toward hammer econ over commerce econ. I guess in smaller games it doesn't end up too bad. Increased tech costs are certainly good though.

Most importantly; war pictures would be good.

[Khan]

And people bitch about the KTB.

KTB?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

And people bitch about the KTB.

KTB?

Known tech bonus.

[dtay]

The pure espionage cost is about equivelent to the tech cost once about 3-4 civs know a tech (around 8k for physics/artillery, each of which is base 12.5k beakers). So you're looking slightly better at times before the multiplier difference comes in if you're getting a tech only known by 1-2 other people, but not huge. the real benefit is that I can easily with 2 buildings get espionage multiplier to x2.25 (jail, IA, nationhood) while it takes 3 buildings to get beakers to x1.85 (library, university, observatory, FR). So less hammers (though not by a lot if you assume I already built out libraries) for a much better multiplier. AND the ancillary benefits of jail and IA (war weariness and +12 raw espionage points, +27 modified) are way better than uni/library/obs (uhh, nothing besides culture which is mostly irrelevant at this stage).

Now, there are limits to this. You need targets who aren't themselves building out tons of espionage stuff. You can't be the tech leader. You need the communism tech which isn't an auto-get. And jail/IA are unlocked later so you can't start espionage as soon and might have "wasted" hammers on observatories and universities (I hadn't really, not a ton of either). But in the situations where it works, espionage is def better.


Wartime screens:

Here's the front. Commodore has over 40 cavalry guarding Summer Knight (because my stack contains like 37 cavs and that's all he could get in range). I imagine he retreats them next turn and waits to join up with the 10 cannons and ~40 cats hiding under those rifles to the NE. I should be fine with stack on stack warfare cause of my cannons and machine guns, but it will be a bit tricky guarding hte cities while still advancing until I manage to clear out more culture.

I think the play is not to actually bother making any given city literally able to beat his entire stack, but guard the cities well enough to force him to essentially blow the wad if he wants ot get a city back. Then retake and advance with more security. And if he doesn't try to retake, well, keep on marching.



The naval blockade. I razed one city over here, besides that just pinning



Razed a random city pretty far up north over here with a deep-cover galleons/frigate pair I sent off way at the beginning of the 2metra war to try to snipe one of 2metra's backlines.