[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[TheHumanHydra]

THH - Is there anything that would help you get a better handle on how things are going at the moment? (I'm going to be asking a lot more advice with FT away)

Figured you might need me a little more while Fin's away. Um, as to what I'd need - I could really use a breakdown of what techs we're up and down compared to our neighbours - just the tech tree and the tech trades screen would be fine. Also the GNP graph and military advisor unless I've just overlooked them on the last couple pages. Now, as for micro advice - that's going to be very difficult seeing as I can't log in. I guess just remember that if you need micro advice post the relevant city screen and, if workers are relevant, a shot or description of their positions. I'll try and help you out as much as I can; is there a certain time of day I should try and be on gchat or checking the forums or anything else you need me to do?

(And Merry Christmas!)

[Old Harry]

Thanks THH, I don't think you need to worry about round-the-clock availability or the micro decisions - I'm more concerned that without Fintourist's gentle scolding I'll end up heading down some dumb tech routes or neglecting military defences or ignoring a dangerous neighbour. I'll try to post reports that give a firm idea of what the plan is for the next few turns, and you just need to point out where the plan won't work... But feel free to ask for any info - it'll all help to keep the path clear for us.

Our military - we also have 20 workers not shown. I think the first job is to get at least three bowmen into all our vulnerable coastal cities. Now that we have longbows and knights for defense these units aren't much help except as meat shields.


On techs our neighbours are the only ones with Paper so we can tell that:
- dtay (Alexander) is
Ahead: Paper, Education, Liberalism and Nationalism (not shown on the screenshot)
Behind: Feudalism, Calendar, HBR, Archery, IW, Machinery & Alphabet
(Interestingly Catapults and Chariots are his only real units, and there aren't many of those... If he wants to start using Nationalism I think he'd be drafting axes right now. So I'd guess Gunpowder will turn up for him soon.)
- Mack (Mehmet) is
Ahead: Music, Guilds, Banking, Paper
Behind: Monotheism, Calendar, Philosophy
(Which way do you think he's going? Please not Economics...)


Our other neighbours are harder to judge, so I haven't been bothering trying. Ichabod has something pretty strong to have rolled over slow. He isn't in bureau yet so I'd guess he used horse archers or catapults. Suttree has catapults and axes and spent a while getting to hereditary rule, so longbows might not be far off. TBSJ have Bureau and Serfdom, so Maces and Longbows are possible. This is where we are on tech - we have everything before here but Compass:


We lost graphs on Mack so the GNP isn't that helpful right now. We're comparable with plako and TBSJ and slightly below dtay but ahead of Ichabod.


(Merry Christmas!)

[Fintourist]

Hey!

Christmas has been busy and now it's only 6 hours and I'm off to Airport! Thus, I did not manage to do the comprehensive analysis about our and our opponents teching capabilities, but here are some fairly quick remarks and calculations..

Assuming:
- Our break-even rate in GA is ~430 raw beakers
- After GA our break-even rate is ~350 raw beakers and max rate is ~525 raw beakers
- Edu Bulb brings 1900 beakers
- We will birth Great Merchant eot 155 in Omdurman and run a trade mission in Stray Geese T157

Then we:
- Are finished with Banking & Paper eot153 (or very close)
- Finish Edu supported by a buld eot 156 or 157
- Finish Economics eot162

How our economy develops and if you run wealth/research in cities of course impacts everything. Anyways, if our GP plan goes as planned Economics eot 162 is very doable, 161 should be possible too, eot160 is probably pushing it unless our economy gets better than I quickly estimated.. Well, you should do the same analysis yourself and compare then the actual beakers to these/your forecast..

Anyways, it is equally interesting whether our opponents reach Economics before we day. In order to also reach Economics eot162 (and taking account the current cash reserves) mackoti would only need to average 400 beakers per turn during the next 15 turns meaning only ~330 raw beakers per turn.. Which is unfortunately easily doable..

It's clear that mack averages more than 330 raw beakers at break-even. Pretty surely way above 400. He made 500+ gpt during the GA, which of course is unsustainable. We get ~110 extra commerce from GA and if we adjust that to mack pop points he got roughy ~150 commerce extra from GA. Anyways, based on that info, gold reserve changes of next 2 turns (currently 774g) and GNP you can try to create an estimation if you have time.

... Remember also that mack has now quite a few EPs on us and will probably get a reseach visibility soon if he keeps spending on us (damn ORG courthouses). So my conclusion is that if mack is going for Economics we will lose it, probably only by 1-3 turns, but being ~3000 beakers and 770 gold behind is just a bit too much even with our GA, Edu bulb & trade mission. However, I think our play is strong enough that unless someone soon shows Paper we should comfortably beat anyone else (including dtay) to Economics.

So as a conclusion of conclusion: You need to decide whether you believe that mack is going for Economics or for something else.. And also whether that something else is not so deadly that we can afford to go for Economics ourselves.. Otherwise just spamming trade missions and taking a different tech path is probably better. Free Market is of course an awesome civic for us, worth around 70 commerce per turn I think, so losing the GM race would be only a medium catastrophe.. Personally I'm undecided.. I would love to win Economics merchant, but the more I look at that path the more it looks beaten.. M_h just gave mack a bit too much that we can't win this race if he is in it, but it also questionable whether one should abandon a plan in a 17-player game if you think you can beat 15 and lose only if one remaining opponent has the same plan.. So yeah, scratch your head well! If you want to keep playing solid, removing the economics merchant from the calculations is probably justified..

Final Words:

It has been great to work with you OH & THH and despite my enormous frustration caused by some of our opponents and map it has been a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to coming back in ~4 weeks and reading how you managed to grind a win out of this..

I hope you still have fun and have energy to keep playing focused and try to create chances for our mighty "The Lost Dynasty" civ..

[TheHumanHydra]

Have a good trip, Fintourist. We'll miss you.

[Old Harry]

Farewell Fintourist, it all goes to hell from here on

As an example of how it's going to hell I worked out a possible build-list for the next seven turns (assuming production rates don't change, which they will, so this is a very rough estimate).

- Agincourt is busy on GP duty so it'll just about finish a spy by t154
- BoP finishes Moai this turn, then a lighthouse t151, then produces a knight by t155
- Cannae is putting a few specialist turns in for the next golden age so it'll just about finish a Trireme by t155
- Dunkirk completes another sentry chariot this turn, then a spy and two knights by t155
- Endor will make one knight by t155
- France could produce two Triremes by t154
- Galipoli just continues on its market
- Hastings ditto for a forge
- Issy gets a Mace this turn then two knights by t155
- Jamestown gets a Mace this turn then five knights by t155
- Konig is busy with GPs
- LB just continues on its market
- Midway gets two more Triremes
- Nuremburg gets one mace
- Omdurman is busy with GPs
- Peterloo can whip a knight t155

TL/DR: we could add 2 spies, 12 Knights, 3 Maces and 5 Triremes by eot155. That would make our army:

4 Chariots (3 sentry, one medic 1)
12 Knights
4 Maces
6 Catapults
2 Longbows
23 Bowmen
18 Axes (1GG with morale promo available)
4 Spears

4 Galleys
6 Triremes

2 spies

I think we need the Triremes in case of Mack coming at Cannae or Omdurman by sea. The spies are to scout Suttree and Mack, since they won't let us do it the normal way...

The Knights can become our zone defense force or a surgical strike force if our spies spot a weakness in Suttree or Mackoti. Or they can be the base of a force of ~30 Knights that we whip out over the subsequent turns. But we need a guaranteed return from 30 Knights - if it doesn't get us enough land to compete with the big boys then they just make us fall behind when we could have been building banks. So right now I'm assuming we won't go full military, we'll just try to keep up on tech and hope something comes up.

I haven't put any longbows and catapults in the plan, but we could switch priorities and build a few less Knights if we think we're just going to sit tight.

Of course if dtay doesn't get gunpowder soon then going after him with a stack of 30 Knights would be fun...

[TheHumanHydra]

Perhaps we should think about how many units we need to hold against mack and how many we would need to defeat suttree (most militarily economical target?) and see if we can build enough to do both (ie. attack suttree safely). Alternatively, above you (I think it was you) posted that dtay's military is puny and obsolescent - if he doesn't start drafting soon enough, maybe he could be our economical target? Just thoughts ...

[Old Harry]

Turn 149

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.. Whu.. Oh, we're back. William offers gold for silk, so I re-offered cash for silk. I also offered plako, Dhalphir, Lewwyn, Retep and TBSJ our spare luxuries for 10gpt each. Our happy problem is that we have too much and we need to make it work for us

Next turn I'll close borders with plako just to see where lunch teleports to.


Nakor is no more. If you happen to read this Nakor all I can say is it might be best not to visit Finland in the near future (or Indonesia for the next month). I just can't believe that Lewwyn and Azza didn't get more cities out of the deal. I think this puts Pindicooter ahead of Mack once the cities come out of revolt and start contributing. Can he count on Commodore or Lewwyn to do something about them, or will Mack need to intervene?


Moai is complete, but we need the Lighthouse to work the GA coast effectively. This is horrifying. I've highlighted the trade route breakdown - we're getting at least 4 gpt routes in every city with a maximum of 7. I wondered if a harbour would be good, but I think that would just push BoP to 4.9 gpt and get no benefit at all. Free market on the other hand would get us 17 new trade routes for 68gpt.


Quantrill is settled costing 4gpt but gaining 8 beakers. We need to settle more cities people! Where can we do that?


TBSJ have knights now, so there will be no attacking them (us or dtay) for the foreseeable future. We'll need to keep an eye on their power graphs. BTW I double-moved dtay this turn, but I did wait 24 hours to play so I don't think I can be blamed...


We have Mackoti's graphs back, (100/65) and our golden age GNP of last turn gets nowhere near his, fortunately his GA is now over and we are 2nd on GNP after plako whose GA is due to end next turn.


Also Mack's power leveled off. He doesn't need to do any more warring for a while, so maybe a surprise is possible.


Demos

I ended turn. By the way - Suttree can attack again in two turns time, but our army is so much more mobile and advanced now that I'm not finding it particularly worrying at all. If he has 10 spears, 15 cats and 15 axes what would you want to see in our possible attack force?

[DMOC]

Just read through this thread, and it's great. I would definitely not like being in your position with two apparently strong civilizations to your north and south.

Say, all this talk about the new Realms Beyond mod features must make the game quite confusing (at least to me), but you seem to be handling it well.

[Old Harry]

Thanks DMOC we'll have to see about how long our neighbours remain strong.

I think that once you get your head around the slavery change the rest of the mod isn't too taxing, although SPI and AGG haven't been changed a whole lot, so maybe it's harder for the other players. I read Krill's PB8 PB5 thread all the way through and we ran a sandbox for the first 100 turns, so we probably caught any misunderstandings that way.

[Old Harry]

Random thought - who do you think would like a Mutual Defense Pact with us? And does that then prevent back-stabbing?