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

[Old Harry]

[Dhalphir]

Does the dtay/commodore defensive pact impact anything you plan?>

[Fintourist]

Turns 214-215

Does the dtay/commodore defensive pact impact anything you plan?>

Yep, it does. Our enforced peace with dtay runs out this turn and we need to decide whether we declare him again. That defensive pact gives us an incentive not to do it, because our trade routes to Commodore are worth some money. That is of course a minor issue when compared to our safety, but currently dtay is not really a militaristic power so we do no feel too threatened, but there is value in keeping our enforced peace deals with mack and dtay apart from each other.

It seems dtay does not want to get declared, because he offered us marble-to-silk and cows-to-cows deals this turn. Hmmm.. Maybe we don't declare yet and react when mack's power graph moves up again.. What do you OH think?

Here are the events of last 2 turns:




Poked Bear captured one of his cities back this turn. I sent "Lunch" back to Ichabod territory, it's keeping an eye on Ichabod's main stack (2E of capital), which currently has ~40 knights. Btw, those 2 cities are guarded by a single ancient unit so if we ever wage a land war here there might be opportunities for commando/GG operations.

Domestically we are finishing Steel this turn and we will be producing our first 2 cannons (assuming auto-upgrade works). I'm also arranging units so that we are slightly more tuned towards dtay attack than mack attack (just in case).




Next turn we can start producing drydocks, which reminds me that I need to do an Ichabod update:

Us vs. Ichabod naval situation update: (only counting our ships that already are nearby)
Frigates: 15 vs 13
Privateers: 2 vs 1
Caravels: 2 vs 3
Galleons: 5 vs 4 (we both have 1 of these Galleons in the west away from main front)
Galleys: 0 vs 2

This situation might get worse now, if we switch to drydocks and don't whip anything we won't be adding any frigates here for several turns, while Ichabod keeps pumping them at constant pace..

Demos & Power:

If mack does not increase his military production we might actually be temporirarily no.2 in soldier points.

Does anyone have city visibility formula available? I really need to check it. I think I want to put some of our commerce into EPs when things get tense and also make sure that Ichabod does not have our city visibility. I think he does not, but I'm not 100 % sure...

PS. Dtay has a worker named greed on our border.. Is that an invitation?

PPS. I looked around mack's civ. I also want GA/Biology/SP/Caste-tiles..

[Dhalphir]

I haven't read dtay's thread yet, but given that defensive pacts aren't really worth much in terms of real deterrent, maybe it really is just to make people think twice about attacking him since so many people have peaceful trade with Commodore. It'd be a smart play if true, it means that people who want to attack him better make sure they have other traderoutes somewhere, since this map is so strong on trade.

[Old Harry]

Yeah, that's a really smart move by dtay.

We complete Steel this turn, which leaves us with some interesting tech choices:
1. Steam Power - Assembly Line (25 000 beakers ~ 15 turns) gets us coal, draftable Infantry, Factories and Power Plants
2. Steam Power - Railroad (23 500 beakers ~ 14 turns) gets us railways and Machine Guns
3. Sci Meth - Physics - Artillery (33 500 beakers ~ 20 turns) gets us Airships, Artillery and Anti-tank. (Transports and Destroyers are only available with Steam Power - Railroad - Combustion)
4. Military Science (5 600 beakers ~4 turns) lets us build Ships of the Line and make units into commandos (although we'd need another Great General - are we close?)
5. Liberalism (3 300 beakers ~3 turns) lets us run Free Religion while we're teching, giving (on average) 130 beakers per turn
6. Democracy (7 889 beakers ~5 turns) Universal Suffrage isn't much cop if we're trying to catch up on tech, Emancipation could give our cottages a quick boost, but doesn't do all that much.

4-6 don't seem too useful (Liberalism is nice and cheap but I think the pay-off is 25 turns even if we do religiously use Free Religion) so I guess it's a choice of the first three and depends what we think will happen in fifteen turns.

a. Mack gets to industrialism and starts pumping out Tanks and Battleships
b. Mack gets to Artillery and starts pumping out Artillery and Destroyers
c. Mack remains peaceful, realising we're too spiky to eat and concentrating on Scooter or Plako
d. Mack scoots along to Radio and Flight and we hear the drone of Bombers

In all these situations I think option three suits us best -
a: Anti-tank are good against armour
b: Artillery work against Artillery (ie damage a stack enough that they can be hit)
c: Sci Meth/Physics is the gateway to further economic techs
d: We hope to get to Rocketry and draftable SAM Infantry in time

What situations did I forget? Of course to have some hope at sea we'd need Combustion or Electricity & Fission, by which time Mack probably finishes the tech tree.

However I don't see any of this lot helping us roll over Ichabod, so perhaps we just pause, save cash to upgrade Cannons and Cavs and slog through him the slow way, hoping William will pile on and Mackoti and dtay will leave us alone?

[TheHumanHydra]

If Mack can be at tanks in 20-35 turns, I vote on 3. If not, 1.

[Fintourist]

Turn 216

Great post Harry, I changed tech now to Sci Meth, there will only be ~250 beakers going into it this turn anyways. Next turn we save money as well. I really need to think about this stuff. I had thought that 30k beakers to Artillery is too much, but I agree that's a very relevant option.

I'm heading to theater now (and we discussed with OH the most important stuff via chat) so this turn report will only be one screenie...




If you notice something terrible there should be still some hours to change it before the turn rolls, but I'm not sure if I'll be back in time so maybe YH or THH can do it.. :P

Edit: So little pop.. I drafted 4 rifles this turn..

[Old Harry]

Thinking about it more Railroad - Combustion enables a lot more options than Assembly line, but I'm still not sure what's our best plan.

Had a look in game, saw a few little things:

France isn't going to build many boats - it just doesn't have enough hammers - unless we whip them. I'd suggest an Observatory would be better than the Drydock, but I'm not 100% sure so didn't change it.

At Light Brigade I switched three hammer tiles to be merchants for a benefit of 15 beakers and 3 gold per turn.

At Omdurman I switched us back to max specialists (merchants and a priest) and we'll have our next great person in 18 turns. It means the Market will take ages to finish, but I don't think it gets a huge amount of benefit anyway.

At that point Scooter ended turn so sorry if that screws anything up! Following the turn roll I put Tet on a Barracks and Jamestown on a Cannon.

Finally it looks like there are six amphibious Knights and one Cuir near WS which could upgrade to Cavalry without losing too many XP at a cost of 720 gold. Then there are plenty of other amphibious Cuirs that can take the remaining places on our boats...

[Fintourist]

Turn 217

Ichabod produced a privateer and killed our heroic "Galleon 1". That's not very nice Ichabod, what have we ever done to you!




Ichabod's navy is starting to become threatening.. He has 15 Frigates already and there are 6 Galleons (+ there is potential to upgrade caravels and galleys). We have also 15 Frigates of which ~10 are/can be C1. This means that if he moves his stack towards us we won't have enough stuff to kill his ships because of coastal defense bonus (we can try our luck in 50/50-fights though).

Consequently, I'm really hoping that our crazy attack succeeds. Odds are definitely against us though, because it is pretty




I upgraded 4 knights and 1 cuir to cavalries this turn. Next turn will be the staging turn and I will upgrade 2 more (move into VV --> upgrade --> load) if it looks like that the attack is still possible. There will be 7 amphi cavs, 3 amphi cuirs, 4 rifles and 1 amphi musket attacking..

Aanyways, if Ichabod notices and protects his city properly we might need to accept that we will lose the control of the seas at least until our drydocks start pumping ships, (+ we get steam power for ironclads or sci meth + combustion for destroyers...) If it looks like Ichabod is invading we can have 20+ cavs and 10+ cannons welcoming along with 1-movers so we aren't quite defendless. This is of course especially bad scenario, because mack and dtay might get ideas.. Well, Ichabod's 40 knight stack is still hanging around near his capital.

Speaking of mack, he finished Assembly Line and first Infantries enter this party:




Aaaanyways, I haven't ended turn because we can now change civics again (I drafted 3 times this turn):




Switch back to Bureaucracy, but stay in caste? We don't really want to draft for a while and we might just get away without Slavery for a while longer.

We are namely 2nd in power now...




Btw, if we turn research on we are 2nd in GNP as well. Crazy stuff.

And power graph shows that plako has suffered huge losses when conquering Bacchus... Well, I guess there is not much that Bacchus could do.




Btw, thanks for checking around our cities. Good comments/changes! I left France to AGG Drydock for a while. It still has an unused workshop tile so it just might be an useful addition. Well, probably not.. Especially Omdu was a good change, I had planned to do the same after growing the city, but I forgot it last turn.

[Old Harry]

Caste/bureau sounds good to me, what about OR instead of theocracy? How much infra do we build over the next five turns?

Is ichabod's navy still in the city? No change to the garrison?