Krill Wrote:Current breakeven bpt is around 750bpt, but when OU finishes it should go up to over 850.
I kinda lied. Breakeven bpt is 1k bpt now, at about 45% slider.
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[Spoiler] Any volunteers for a human sacrifice? Brennus of the Aztecs, by Krill
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Krill Wrote: After thinking about it a bit, I decided to stick with the run to Communism, but I will trigger a GA on T227 (next turn). The reasoning being that I do not want to let Pingo get the Kremlin nor the Gspy, that SP is worth probably in excess of 200hpt at the cost of maybe 100gpt, and I want the full set of Security Bureaus, Intelligence Agencies and jails to steal teach and generally be a complete pain to other people. Necessary? Not if I were to go for the kill right now but I'm going to hedge right now, and it's another bonus from using so many workshops now, and I can finish the last city improvement after I swap everything over to cottages... Steel would be useful for drydocks to enable me to straight up win a naval war with anyone, as it makes it possible to get 3 promotion boats. OTOH< as I do not wish to use Vassalage, they are only allow me to not use Theocracy...and I kinda want to use Theo when I start to mass build units. Rifling is just the icing on the cake and enables Cav with MT, but by itself is useless to me, I can defend fine with muskets, rifles don't help me much more on defence. And on attack I do not want to use a huge stack one slow movers. Nationalism is less than a 2 turn tech already and will be taken whenever I need it, rather unimportant. Mill Trad is important to get early so I can get WP down whilst I have nothing useful to build in my HE city except 14XP knights. Mil Science opens up Commando, but as I do not need to promote any units until I attack, it is the last tech I need to get prior to launching an invasion and so goes last. Constitution allows Rep which I'll work just for hte extra 100 or so bpt it'll give me, and gives jails that I would also rather like, but again it can wait a bit. Democracy is the much nicer though, SoL gives up another 30 odd pop in the form of specialists, Emancipation for Towns 35 turns after converting the tile to a cottage, and Universal Suffrage for cheap cash rush provided I get Kremlin. And IA for more nice per turn EP. So with a GA, how many techs can I actually research? I think I can get Lib, SM, Communism, Nationalism and most of Constitution or Mil Trad or Rifling before I run out of gold, and that is being pessimistic.
Only one thing for it - wait for tanks.
And on the sixth day, god created Manchester.
[SIZE="1"]Played: PBEM13 (China), PBEM17 (India) Helping out: PBEM23 (Egypt) Dedlurked: PBEM15 (Ottomans) Globally lurking: more or less everything else[/SIZE]
I don't wish to wait for that long. I'm probably just going to invade someone with a 150-200 unit army of cav cannons and rifles, and navy of frigates, SoL and galleons, using SPI to swap between Rep/Bureau or Environmentalism/Caste/SP/Theo and US/NH/Caste/SP/Theo. As I am looking at my first GA in the game only now, and I already have my GP in place for my second GA, I'm working out how to get the GP out for my third GA, and they should be done in the next 20 turns. The rest is just chaining them in the most effective way possible to hide my tech path and army build up. The second GA would likely see me finish up Constitution, and Democracy, and most of Rifling the third GA see me complete the SoL and tech Steel and MS. All the while building cav and other junk.
Turn 226 - #1 GNP, Bitches!
Next turn, GA. FWIW, the reason I'm #1 in GNP now is that I have saved gold for the past dozen turns and built the infrastructure to support a good tech rate. The reason I got to build the infrastructure now is that I waged war earlier in the game, putting off tech for land, unlike, say, Pingo, who waged a major war in the knight era after building for a bit. Well, I say built for a bit, they fought a war with Commodore and I bullied them, but they did spend a long time just sitting there not doing much. OTOH, scooter focussed on teching early and built up a huge tech lead, and didn't wage a smart war, instead trying to take Brick out for some reason when they would have been better off trying to expand to the islands so they didn't have to contest them with anyone else and they would be more developed when players one the continents would start to tech well later on in the game. scooter then waged war on Nakor after finishing up Brick and right now is making 200gpt at 10% culture and 90% tax, which right now is pitiful but will improve over the next 20 turns. The point? The whole reason the RB mod slowed down the tech pace, nerfing cottages through the slavery nerf and moving production tile improvements into the early and mid game was to make warfare more viable early on. The aim was to make it possible to play the game in a way other than focussing on tech early on, not to make early wars the one right choice. I think that has been shown to work well here: we've had Commodore try early war, fail, and fall off. Nazul got a starting warrior kill and went well into the mid game, but have cottaged almost every single tile, and have paid the price by not being able to keep a standing army in place to defend themselves first from my HA hordes and then from scooters upgraded rifles. scooter teched great early on but made a mistake not expanding and wasting time on an intractable foe and has also paid the price with delayed expansion, losing out on the main island to me and having to wage a war with Nakor that shouldn't have been necessary, and Pingo have come back into the game strong after removing yuri (somehow) after a huge knight buildup and attacking on a foreign continent. I'll ignore Cyneheard, I never know what he does any more. I don't think I would be in this position if it weren't for scooter screwing up a few mid game decisions, staying in slavery for too long, the Brick war, not planting Haithabu to open up northern islands via cultural expansion. I definitely think I could have won this game if I had gotten the Vikings with this start - it's not like I had an easy first 125 turns to play out either.
And it looks like Pingo have turned their tech back on, finishing SM this turn. They have 1700 gold in the bank and do not have Lib, and show 1700 GNP. I'm still not worried, because if this is a race, next turn I will go past 3500 base bpt if I have to build research, and will finish SM in 2 turns with overflow then do Communism in 2.
Pingo don't even have the bpt to do Communism in 4 turns.
I'm not expecting to hold a tech lead, I will research techs first to get the first to boni like Gspy, and to get a head start on wonders (note I really, really want Pentagon, SoL and 3GD), the rest of the time I'm quite happy to use the improved known tech bonus to follow up behind the rest if they do tech trade. But the only two teams that will have a reasonable tech pace are scooter (currently at 200gpt at 10% culture slider) and Pingo (maybe 1kbpt at breakeven?)
There are lots of little minor things that I could have done better, worker management for one, and they always happen. But major mistakes are defined at least in part by how others take advantage of them, and most of the major decisions I've made have worked out much better than I expected.
The major decisions I've made have been:
I think the largest problem I had was that with the crappy land that I cold expand to, I really had to be aggressive to have a chance to do well in the game, and the run through Lit and Music has been the lynch pin in that strategy. This isn't to say other strategies wouldn't have worked, but I'm happy with how this game has progressed. |
