RBP6 Lurker Thread

[Lord Parkin]

I thought of Star Wars immediately too. It surprises me that so many wouldn't get the reference in what surely has to be a fairly nerdy group.

[T-hawk]

Now that's a great post. Any discussion in the game thread is nice, but I vastly prefer posts like the one treskies added

Of course Sullla will like a post that's that brownnosey and suck-up.

(Somebody remind me to delete this when the game ends before Sullla reads it)

[Krill]

Of course Sullla will like a post that's that brownnosey and suck-up.

(Somebody remind me to delete this when the game ends before Sullla reads it)

No chance.

Admittedly with your mod powers this isn't much of a threat, is it.

[treskies]

Of course Sullla will like a post that's that brownnosey and suck-up.

(Somebody remind me to delete this when the game ends before Sullla reads it)

Just being honest is all... his posts/writeups have gotten me back into Civ, so I'm thankful for them. And after reading through the lurker thread, I have to say they are a lot more edifying than most of what gets posted here. Weren't you guys saying that it was a shame more of the players didn't post regularly, and that interest in this game was too low? Well, their team's got me interested in it. I think endless complaints about player's behavior outside of the game is a great way to make people uninterested in it. Just my two cents though.

Like I said though, new to RB. Don't know much about any drama, and care less about it.

[Krill]

edifying

[darrelljs]

I vastly prefer posts like the one treskies added to some of the spam that's been appearing.

Since when did humor become spam, anyway?

Darrell

[Krill]

Now that's a great post. Any discussion in the game thread is nice, but I vastly prefer posts like the one treskies added to some of the spam that's been appearing. Let me try to address this one.

Refer to T-hawk...

The Industrial era represents a huge shift in Civ4's gameplay. The combination of factories, power plants, and railroads skyrocket production in cities across your territory. For most of the game, the food supply greatly outstrips production. This is why we produce so many things through whipping, because the conversion rate of food into production via whipping (with granary in place) tends to be superior to building things yourself.

This isn't the entire truth, we whip because it allows us to work cottages so gives us beakers and gold which early on we need to fund expansion and tech. Specialists are not viable in the early game, workshops aren't available and you can't farm every tile. Cottages are used because it's them or mines, and mines don't give you beakers or gold until you research Alphabet or Currency. By the Industrial era, you have access to Freee Speech, and Universal Suffrage civics which make towns awesome tiles, more productive than anything else, so they are not replaced with other tile improvements like SP/Caste workshops because the Towns are more flexible and only slightly worse than hammer tiles once all of the city improvement modifiers are in place. Towns are actually the best tile in the game at everything prior to Assembly Line because you have access to +100% gold modifier, but only +25% production modifier.

But when the Industrial era hits, that dynamic changes. Let's do an example. An average city of size 12-15 will likely be sitting around roughly 15 base production. That's one or two food resources, a number of cottages, and a couple of mines. With a forge, that city can probably produce around 20 shields/turn. Now look at how things change in the Industrial era. We can build railroads (and a levee if it's on a river) to increase the base tile production, let's say up to 20 base. Then we add in factory and power plant: doubles actual production up to 40/turn. Suddenly whipping population for 30 production per pop point doesn't look so appealing any more. Even an average city can usually hit 50 production/turn with factories and power plants, which allows for 2-3t builds of contemporary military units. Think of how long it takes to build units during most of the game. We whip and draft because it takes too long. Not the case after the industrial revolution.

Not really, for a start we rely on the whip and draft earlier on because that allows us to keep population working productive tiles (ie growing cottages) instead of getting liquefied and turned into military units. Once there is a tech lead sufficient to build an army that will definitely take out a good chunk of land (normally defined as a player...) then the pop gets turned into military.

Also, the 30 hammers are adjusted by production modifiers, so you actually get 60 hammers per whip. And all of the improvements are actually quite expensive: a factory and power plant costs 400 hammers, or 320 base hammers if you have a forge. The other side of this is that hammer modifiers don't affect rush buy, so building factories and power plants everywhere is counter productive, you can actually look at them as a method to keep on teching, as you don't need to turn gold into hammers...except that you will. The reason being, other players that utilise workshops instead of cottages will normally be pushing past base 50 hpt, and they don't need to invest in beaker or gold multipliers. With a factory and power plant, the workshop cities will make an easy 100 hpt: the cottage player is being outproduced 2:1 but has the ability to keep on teching.

So the Industrial era shifts the focus of the game from one based around whipping/drafting (production through Food) to one based around actual building (production through... Production!) This de-emphasizes Food and emphasizes the Production stat instead. That's a major plus for our team in this game, as Team 3 has been riding their Food advantage all throughout the game thus far. Their military is almost wholly comprised of draft unit spam, which won't be very practical in the post-Assembly Line world. Drafted rifles are the best use of population in the game: 1 pop for 110 shield unit. Drafted infantry are a very poor tradeoff, as they cost 2 pop and can usually be built in 2-3t with factories/power plants. Advancing to this next tech should allow our "Tall" team strategy to counter the "Wide" team strategy of Team 3 better.

Cannons uber alles. And cav, but as T2 need the game to carry on for another 24 turns, I don't really see why this is so great. T1 need to hit T2 right now, factories and power plants will not pay off in time unless they can get T2 under control. Also, why is drafting inf a poor trade off? No comment on the happy cost of drafting, in an era where cities are normally limited by health (as T-hawk posted, Factories and Power plant cost up to 7 unhealthiness) so turning a bit of excess pop unto military units is not necessarily a bad thing. Inf themselves are not great units, being slow and expensive, and still die to mass collateral. Yes they beat rifles, but you don't use rifles for stack killing, you use cav for that, and pinch cav can beat the crap out of inf.

In terms of attack plan, we are going to defend against Team 3 and devote the rest of our resources to crushing one of the weak teams, likely Team 2 (which is nowhere close to rifles). We'll need to keep a decent amount of units along our shared border, but once we have railroads it will be very, very easy to defend. It will also be extremely difficult for Team 3's army (which will be comprised entirely of rifles and cannons) to do much against us once we have infantry (Assembly Line) and machine guns (Railroads). We slam 5-10 machine guns into any threatened city using our rail network. How do they break that? Uh... they don't? You kind of need air power or tanks to break through machine guns, and those are even further down the tree. Meanwhile, we should be fighting with infantry, cannons, and cavs against muskets and maces. LOL?

That's edifying? Sulla forgot that T2 still have cannons...and inf defend against cannons, not their own cannons. This means that T1 will actually be taking collateral whilst if they were attacking with just cannons and cuirs they wouldn't even take that.

That said, using Machine guns offensively (which he didn't comment on) alleviates this concern.

Again, the biggest issue would be Team 2 completely collapsing in the next 10 turns before we can get our factories, power plants, and railroads in place. We can't see what's going on over there, so we have to play things by ear. If it looks like Lewwyn and company are about to die, we can speed up our own movement and push the offensive. If not, it's better to avoid applying any pressure to allow them to hold out longer. Team 3 did not capture a city or discover a tech on this latest turn, which is great news for us. 4t to Assembly Line and counting.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Since when did humor become spam, anyway?

You forgot Sullla doesn't have a sense of humour.

[mackoti]

I am agree with Krill, but i think you forgot about kremlin , which gaves beter production using whip then factories, and needs to buil just by one of the players from a team.What i want to say you dont even need to rushbuy, just slaving its so pwerfull and you can keep your money for research.

[T-hawk]

Treskies, of course you're welcome around here. And Sullla is right, your post did lead to positive and useful commentary. I didn't mean to demean you at all, apologies if you took it that way. Thanks for joining!

[Krill]

I am agree with Krill, but i think you forgot about kremlin , which gaves beter production using whip then factories, and needs to buil just by one of the players from a team.What i want to say you dont even need to rushbuy, just slaving its so pwerfull and you can keep your money for research.

Yup, I agree 100%, I'm just lazy and couldn't be bothered to write about it Kremlin can just be absurd it used right, which is again something Sullla hasn't considered for T3 whom he has specifically indicated have high crop yields.