Strategic directions - long-term planning

[Speaker]

I'm not arguing in favor of either tech path, but can we please stop saying that Steel/Chemistry is a replacement for rifling/military tradition? Cavalry, Rifles, and Catapults are far superior to Muskets, Grenadiers ,and Cannons. The decision to research Communism before Rifling/Mil Trad would be purely economic. It would set us back militarily. Let's not kid ourselves there. Grenadiers are basically never built in MP. Cavalry are probably the best unit in the game, especially considering we would not need to adopt Theocracy to get two promotions on them.

[sooooo]

We don't have to decide anything until we get gunpowder. I think out techs after that will depend on the diplomatic situation. I hope that we will be able to feel secure enough to continue with economic techs, but we'll see. Once we have gunpowder and the german war is (hopefully) over, we'll be able to get a more accurate estimated date to techs like rifling and communism and compare them.

[Zargon]

Right, I did forget about the Kremlin. Whether it swings the balance is unknown to me. It still feels like banking is better than 10% of chemistry + scientific method + communism, which would suggest doing banking first even if we decide to beeline communism instead of rifling. I greatly fear civic revolts, so in my opinion it's a lot better than 10%, since even with Kremlin, well over half of the power of chemistry + sci meth + communism is wrapped up in state property, but that's a hard-to-judge risk.

If we get revolted out of state property, I think we're unlikely to eat an anarchy turn to get back. The cost is just so ridiculously high, and we would simply be inviting them to do it again.

I agree that we could easily do gunpowder next, and only then decide on communism vs banking then communism vs rifling, and that would be fine. This was prompted, though, by musing that we might be able to do slightly better with banking before gunpowder if CFC takes our NAP, so if that goes through, we might have a decision on our hands as soon as turn 160 (well, we could save gold for a few turns while we decide). I do think that gunpowder next is pretty obvious if CFC doesn't take our NAP or doesn't get back to us, so I suppose it's not all that critical.

[kjn]

I'd say Gunpowder next regardless. It's very cheap (due to double discounts), and I'd like to get musketmen ASAP to counter Apolyton's janissaries - I wouldn't be surprised if they picked up Gunpowder this very turn using overflow buildup. We can get a University in Mansa's Muse while we wait for Banking, and have plenty of other infrastructure to build anyway.

@Speaker: yeah, no question that Riflemen and Cavalry are powerful units. However, if we need to defend, then muskets and cannons should serve us well and also be a powerful deterrent.

@Zargon: lets cross that bridge when we get there. Communism also has the first-to bonus of the GSpy (half of a Golden Age), and we can't play a game solely based on what other teams might do.

[SevenSpirits]

Communism is really strong if we can get there first. SP is amazing of course, but also free spy is probably the best first-to-reach bonus of any tech, Kremlin is incredibly powerful, and intelligence agencies will be very good too.

Civic switching is a problem and maybe we should spend some time figuring our how expensive it would be right now for someone to revolt us, and keep track of that number going forward. Long term the only real solution is to build Cristo Redentor, which I really hope we can aim for (and btw, it combos incredibly well with the Kremlin). We will also need to run some espionage economy, and Communism/Constitution are the two key techs for that along with nationalism which we have already.

I am against going for banking before communism unless we strongly believe it won't affect our chances of getting GSpy and Kremlin.

Edit: I guess now is also a good time to calculate how much various corps would benefit us and other teams.

[T-hawk]

I realized I don't know that much about revolting out of civics, so how is the late game going to look for us? One turn of anarchy every 5 turns with little that we can do about it? Does anybody have any insight into this.

A spy revolution doesn't inflict any anarchy. Anarchy only occurs if/when you change back.

The spyer can only change your civic or religion to one that they use themselves. So someone using the same civic or religion can't change yours.

The spyer can run a civic/religion change mission anytime - it's not restricted by the victim's wait counter. It does reset the victim's wait counter to the full 5 turns. So it's possible to lock the victim out of changing back for many turns with repeated missions on different civics every 4 turns before the counter hits zero.

The revolution costs 650 EP base, which isn't a trivial sum, although a civilization that builds jails everywhere can produce that every few turns.

Running a counterespionage mission doubles the cost, although that requires an investment in our own spies and EP. And counterespionage can't be refreshed while still in progress, so there's a timing crack every 10 turns when it expires.

Going for a corporation route has similar risks as State Property. An inconvenient bonk out of Free Market would cost tens of gold per turn.

Do we have any interest in shifting to espionage economy for ourselves? The math works out wonderfully: the EP cost is usually below a tech's beaker face value with maximized stationary spy discount; Jails are the best economic multiplier per hammer by a significant margin; except for Nationalism civic's free +25% that we've already got.

[sunrise089]

@kjn - I agree that we may not have to make this decision for a while, but while cannons+musket defenders are better than cats+maces, they're by no means invincible versus enemy cavalry stacks. Sure muskets can kill cavs after max collateral, but that assumes a lot of cannons (at a non-trivial hammer cost) to overcome the huge base strength difference, plus giving us only a minor mobility advantage in our borders (and having basically no ability to put those hammers into offensive action). Speaker's alternative is obviously better offensively, has more mobility, and with minimal collateral gets us in favorable odds with pinch cavalry versus any enemy units.

I'd need to run the numbers (Speaker: perhaps in a basement!) but even with grenadiers it seems cheaper to get enemy rifles damaged to strength 13 (where pinch cavs should have odds) than to get enemy cavs below strength 10 versus the grenadiers, even before factoring in two promos being easier to arrange on 2-movers.

[antisocialmunky]

I want to power econ before until our naps run out so I think the commie banking beeline is best. We don't want to try and do everything and lose another wonder do we?

[pindicator]

I want to power econ before until our naps run out so I think the commie banking beeline is best. We don't want to try and do everything and lose another wonder do we?

This.
Apolyton is already ahead of us in the tech game. Let's cash in some og our tough guy rep and tech econ

[kalin]

Can we get to communism first if Poly is also going there?

Thanks for the explanation T-Hawk.

Kalin