RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Shouldn't those numbers show up in the F9 statistics screen?

[Lord Parkin]

Thanks for the updates! We want empire shots too.

Okay, sure.

Shouldn't those numbers show up in the F9 statistics screen?

You're right! That's cool, I had assumed that it only counted units you directly engaged in battle with.

Here are the total numbers of dead units from the F9 screen then:

Cho-Ko-Nu (33)
Galleon (22)
Frigate (16)
Rifleman (10)
Cavalry (10)
Redcoat (5)
Beserker (3)
Axeman (3)
Scout (2)
Catapult (1)
Knight (1)
Musketman (1)
TOTAL: 107

There are also 6 Galleons and 18 unknown units which are unaccounted for in the F9 screen because Nakor disbanded them himself. However, from chat with him I believe they may have been mostly Redcoats. In any event, that brings the total to 131:0.

I also realised that I forgot to account in my previous tally for the 1 Axe that I killed at the first city I captured, and 1 Catapult randomly in the open that I killed. So the numbers match up; it's 131:0. And that means that we can deduce that there were no units on board those two Galleons I killed this turn. Still, Nakor could have saved the Galleons if he hadn't left them inside a weakly defended city, so that was a mistake.

[Lord Parkin]

I may be declaring war on Locke next turn, so I've left this turn unended so I can be sure the next turn rolls at a time when I can actually play. This is because I have to play first next turn if I am to declare on Locke within the rules, so if the turn randomly ends early during the night then that potentially screws everything up. As always, all my moves have already been made and I won't be taking any more actions this turn.

[bato]

We also want screenshots and information from the time before the war and how you prepared for it.

[Lord Parkin]

We also want screenshots and information from the time before the war and how you prepared for it.

Right, will also try to put together a somewhat coherent and chronological account of the preparations then. Already have the screenshots, just need to find the relevant ones and add the text explanations.

[Gazzahk]

Thanks again - I am certain it will be both interesting and instructive.

[Lord Parkin]

I recall someone (was it DMOC?) asked a while back for the full record of techs researched during our Golden Age once it was over. Well, here it is.

T163 - Printing Press (3, started pre-GA)
T164 - Music (1)
T165 - Feudalism (1)
T166 - Guilds (1)
T167 - Banking (1)
T168 - Economics (1)
T169 - Compass (1)
T170 - Optics (1)
T171 - Horseback Riding (1)
T172 - Astronomy (1)
T173 - Construction (1)
T174 - Constitution (1)
T175 - Corporation (1)
T177 - Democracy (2)
T178 - Gunpowder (1)
T179 - Replaceable Parts (1)
T181 - Rifling (2)
T182 - Military Tradition (1)
T183 - Engineering (1)
T185 - Chemistry (2)
T187 - Steel (2)
T189 - Steam Power (2)
T192 - Railroad (3)
T195 - Combustion (3)
T196 - Scientific Method (1)

As you can see, our 1-turn streak ended up lasting for 12 techs in the end. Not too bad. We could have kept it going longer if we'd kept researching cheap techs before expensive ones, but I wanted to just get Democracy ASAP at that point to start on the Statue Of Liberty.

[Lord Parkin]

At the start of this turn, we got the option to put up an AP vote to stop all the wars we were in. It would be no fun if that succeeded though, so I just opted to instead try to flip Luddite's stolen city of Maccardle over to us again. He'll probably defy once again, but oh well. We'll have it captured before the vote comes up again on T212 anyway, regardless of anything else. No way he can defend a city that we can move units right into with rails from our own territory.

There were several battles we were involved in this turn, from which we earned our second Great General. We lost slightly more units than I was anticipating (7 Rifles as compared to an estimated ~5-6), but that was no big deal. Barely a turn's worth of drafting to replace them. Plus with Assembly Line, Infantry, and a 2+ Great General Heroic Epic city all coming online next turn, Rifles are really chump change for us at this point.

Here's a quick screenie from early last turn just to prove we were prepared for the Locke invasion well in advance:



First off, we had the Battle of Crossing. We bombarded the city defences to 0% with two Cannons, then the fighting began. The summary is as follows: Cannon vs Musket (x2) won 93.4%, won 98.5%; Rifle vs Musket (x3) won 84.5%, won 89.4%, won >99.9%; Rifle vs Axe won 99.8%; Rifle vs Longbow won 99.6%.



Crossing was captured along with 136 gold. We also captured a Worker, which Nakor must have forgotten to delete. Neat.

I was considering razing the city due to its poor placement (rendering a Fish resource useless). Eventually I decided to keep it because it was more convenient than the alternative of building 2 new Settlers - especially considering it came with several buildings and 4 pop. So Crossing was renamed to Colocolo and became a part of our empire.



Next we had the Battle of Paradise. I was debating whether to wait a turn and unload some Cannons to reduce our losses here, but eventually decided getting access to Khazak THIS turn through the canal was more important than losing a few excess Rifles. So we bombarded the city defences to 24% with a Destroyer, then the battle went as follows: Rifleman vs Musket (x3) lost 26.4%, lost 27.7%, lost 29.0%, won 97.1%, won >99.9%, won >99.9%; Rifleman vs Axe (x2) lost 79.7%, won 79.7%, won 97.0%.



We captured Paradise and earned 138 gold. Keeping this city was a no-brainer due to the canal and the obvious difficulty that anyone would have retaking it for a very long time. Keeping to our feline naming theme, the city was renamed to Pajeros.



The final battle this turn was the Battle of Khazak. Our Transports travelled through the canal at our newly captured city of Pajeros, to find the city defended by one Redcoat and one Archer. By my calculations, depending on how much damage we did per battle, we'd lose 2-4 Rifles fighting that Redcoat out of the boat. Given our massive excess of them, I decided to go ahead and attack - especially since waiting a turn would only let Locke draft/whip 2 more Redcoats and maybe upgrade that Archer to a Redcoat too.

The battle went as follows: Rifleman vs Redcoat lost 0.5% (no damage - gah), lost 0.5%, lost 2.2%, won 8.0% (6 XP - yay); Rifleman vs Archer won 93.0%.



So Khazak fell and we received 165 gold. We renamed the city to Canadensis, and that was that.



The goal for the next turn or two over here is to finish capturing all the "island" territory near us, as due to our naval superiority these island spots should be unchallenged for a considerable time to come. And hey, an extra half dozen cities adding to our production and research base can't hurt.



In other news, we successfully snuck 4 Transports and a Destroyer into Plako's heartland through Rego's city of Winton this turn. All going well 2 more will follow next turn. Essentially this will force Plako to either park his army at home to defend the 6-7 cities we'll soon be able to fork simultaneously, or else lose many or all of those cities.



For those keeping track of the gold, we earned 439 gold through 3 city captures this turn, funding yet another turn of 100% research.

And for those monitoring the kill:loss ratio, this turn we killed 14 units and lost 7. So in total for the whole war we're now at 145:7.

[Lord Parkin]

Summary of the Parkinstani Preparations for War

Our preparations for war actually began prior to T180, although at the time we weren't fully aware of what form that war would take. Originally the plan was to attack Luddite with Mackoti, rushing him with our shiny new Cavalry and Rifles before he had them (or the draft), and taking as many cities as possible before he could fight back. Of course, a few turns down the line it became very apparent that we wouldn't be able to attack Luddite without at least Nakor and Plako getting involved, so the plan had to change. But that was the original idea that began the preparations.

On T181 we had just researched Rifling, switched to Nationalism and drafted our first 5 Rifles, and were about to 1-turn Military Tradition. As you can see, a large number of our cities had been prebuilding Knights precisely for this moment. Many had them 1 turn from completion and ready to switch into Cavalry on T182 - and most of them already had Stables. We were also building Galleons in our western cities for a coastal attack which never happened. (These Galleons actually ended up being upgraded to Transports and helping to defeat the Plako-Nakor fleet later on.)

Also note that I was even going as far as to build Culture in a border city with Luddite to ensure a critical tile wouldn't flip and give him advance visibility on our fleet. I really was committed to working with Mackoti at this time.





Here's how our capital was looking on T182. Essentially the aim was to rush for and complete the Statue of Liberty before anyone else got Democracy. I was aware that Moogle had a Great Engineer which could potentially have been traded to anyone (in fact still could, as far as I know)... so I was expecting that as soon as anyone else got Democracy the wonder would be out of reach. Hence the focus on getting it ASAP.



On T183, we completed Wall Street in Evermore. This was a critical investment for us at a critical time, and is the main reason why Corporation was worth it for us despite everyone closing borders (as I anticipated might happen before it did). Wall Street yielded us ~1000 free gold by T200, and is continuing to pay dividends into the present.



You can see that by T183 we were pretty much building Cavalry all around.





On T184, we extended our Golden Age for another 12 turns. Normally I'd prefer to avoid using Golden Ages up relatively early in the game (the ideal time for them is usually just before or during the space race), but I was fairly sure at this point that I'd have to fight on multiple fronts by T200, so it was pretty much a case of "use it or lose it".



We'd been focussing our espionage mainly on Luddite for some time, and by T190 we had visibility inside several of his cities. This was only made possible by the fact that we'd whipped out a whole bunch of Jails pre-T180.

I should probably make a special emphasis on this here, because I believe that Jails are actually an underutilized building by most players. The huge espionage benefit they give at a critical point in the game cannot be underestimated, especially if you can manage to get to Constitution a little before everyone else. Being able to see into your opponents' cities - and more importantly, having them unable to see inside your cities - is a vital part of military success. If anyone had been able to see into Pardus or Leo, for instance, they would have seen my large naval stack in advance. I would have relocated it before that happened of course, but it at least would forced me to a less convenient location. Information - or rather, information denial - is power.



Here's what the capital was looking like on T191.



By T192, with the exception of a few cities building Frigates, the empire had pretty much totally been converted over to a massive Cannon pump. Cannons are obviously a huge step up from Catapults and Trebuchets, and you can never have too many of them when you're expecting a big dogpile.





In the last few turns before the war, micromanagement was getting incredibly intense. My entire empire was littered with signs reminding me exactly when to draft, whip and adjust cities, as well as where to rail - all to ensure I'd have the absolute maximum number of units possible in place to strike on T200. You can see some of the sign clutter in the image below from T196. Imagine this but over the whole empire.



Four turns before the war, we were still pumping out Cannons. But we were also churning out Transports and Destroyers from all our (11) cities with Drydocks - which we'd built in advance during the early 190's.

Note that I was also building Culture in Silvestris at this point, to ensure that I'd capture a key border tile down south from Plako by T200. Losing production for a couple of units in that city while building Culture instead would be more than made up for if I could capture that tile, as it would delay any advance from Plako by a turn. So essentially I was trading off ~2 units at the southern front when the war began in return for gaining an extra turn's striking advantage. Not to mention the added security of making it impossible for Plako's mounted units to walk into Silvestris in 1 turn. Well worth it, IMHO.





And that about brings us up to date. Hope that was useful to some of you... or at least not too boring.

One final thought: Nakor/Gaspar really lost out by not researching Steel much earlier (in fact they still don't have it). If they were really set on being the boat-builder for the alliance against us - which it seems was the case, given that no-one else has Astronomy even now - then they should have gone for Steel immediately after Chemistry, instead of the complete waste of time on Constitution/Democracy.

Steel not only would have given them access to Cannons in their inland cities, but more importantly the Drydocks would have allowed them to produce a greater - or at least similar - number of ships by T200. Ship whips going up in value from 37.5 hammers to 52.5 hammers per pop is rather significant, after all. Plus of course, there's the all-important extra promotion they could have got for their ships from Drydocks. That promotion could have given access to Sentry - which might have given them an early sneak peek at my fleet, or at least would have forced me to shift my ships back to keep out of sight. It also would have given access to Navigation II, which is useful for obvious reasons.

Perhaps it wouldn't have made much difference in the end, but it still might have helped - especially if I hadn't got to Combustion in time. Maybe getting to Rifling and drafting more units would have helped more than going for Steel, it would have depended on a few factors. Either way though, IMHO ignoring both Steel and Rifling while shooting for Constitution and Democracy was definitely a big mistake.

[Gazzahk]

Thanks for all that information, not at all boring.