Dtay's Little Red Book

[dtay]

One additional note about, spurred by the civics thoughts above. Presume the 3 GP Golden age is my last, I need to be in endgame civics at the end of it. Options are

Column 1: Rep or US
-Strongly leaning towards US, in fact certainly so unless I land Statue of Liberty. All those hammers are great, and given current tech positions I am in pole position to get to communism, and therefore the Kremlin, for cheap rush buying. SoL would throw this into question, since that's a lot of free beakers/gold from the free specialists. Hammers v Commerce question basically.

Column 2: Nationhood or Bureaucracy
-I actually think Nationhood is the winner here, not even for drafting, but just because it is a "No Cost" civic. As my empire grows the percentage of my commerce/production from the capital declines, and civics costs grow larger, making Nationhood actually near Bureaucracy's economic equal. And then drafting infantry is an efficient lategame military production strategy, especially since i'll have lots of excess food (I already am running random specialists in core cities just for lack of tiles, would love to put a gun in their hands...).

Right now Bureaucracy is better, and we'll reevaluate post-Oxford (I could do the math now but haven't), but I think later Nationhood will win.

Vassalage is a possible 3rd option, but I expect I'd prefer Theocracy to it to get to the 5xp hurdle.

Column 3: Emancipation or Caste System
I expect I want to keep caste unless someone forces me into Emancipation, which I doubt will happen.

Column 4: Free Market or State Property
If I'm doing the math right, State Property is certainly better, just a question of getting to it. I'll redo the math once I choose my next tech path choice though.

Column 5: Free Religion or Theocracy
I'll have too many military units for Pacificism and OR is less important once infra is up (and is expensive). FR will almost certainly win out unless I end up in a fight to the death with someone late game (as in, we are both fighting for our lives, not just them).

So getting communism and then democracy woudl enable the final set, and isn't that far off. And conveniently comes with part of the golden age necessary.

[Commodore]

Love this kind of post. No love for Environmentalism if you snag the SoL?

But if it's not PS/Vassalage/Slavery/FS/Theocracy you're doing it wrong!

[dtay]

Love this kind of post. No love for Environmentalism if you snag the SoL?

But if it's not PS/Vassalage/Slavery/FS/Theocracy you're doing it wrong!

I'd have to check the math but I'm pretty sure the +1g per specialist totals up to barely more, or even less, than civic cost savings. And I don't have very many farms/pastures (compare PB13 where honestly I think I should have gone environmentalism econ wise, I had so many random plains farms).

Basically the fact that nationhood is only slightly worse economically than the actual econ options makes the small sacrifice for the ability to draft seem very worth it.

[dtay]

Shrine Shrine happy shrine



Power



Pind passes Krovice in power is notable here. More notable: He's at war with Cyneheard. That is... tempting. I feel like this is the Whosit Krovice decision all over again, I would love to land the knockout blow on krovice but other people keep making it tempting to attack them and Krovice last time at least made it rather prohibitive.

Thinking about timing, it costs 110 gp to upgrade knight->cav. Let's say I want 20 upgrades, that's 2 turns of gold after rifling, looks like 6 turns, going sub-100% on the final turn, to Rifling, so 8 turns. I can ship the troops from Pind -> Krovice in 2-3 turns front to front, Krovice -> Pind takes longer. All things considered, let's say war in 9 turns so t168. I can almost assuredly shave a turn or two off of that if I pick the target sooner, but I think that's the backend of what we're looking at.

I should check Pind's civics, if he's not in slavery that's also a point in favor of attacking him, he wont have a mechanism to convert pop to <pain-in-the-ass>-ness.

I'll continue watching techs and power charts anyway.

Demos, still in pole position



My land area is only 4th though. So approximating land = capacity (not entirely true given quality variation, shrine, and coast usage), I'm not in a long term winning position. Need moar landdddd.

[dtay]

Sooo, Krovice is growing paranoid (also golden age)



None of this was visible last turn, in view

1) Catapult stack
2) Great Artist
3) Sentry Chariot where it stops attacks from the fog

Last one is just be careful, but the first two have to be deliberate. This is def attempted deterrence of war.

This is all pushing towards Pind, Krovice is def not getting caught off guard

Pind-wise, confirmed he is not in slavery. Another push towards Pind



Power - Pind is higher, push towards Krovice



Demos

[Ceiliazul]

[dtay]

I feel like my internal desire to play civ is never in synch with turn rolls. The past few weeks turns were rolling faster than I wanted to play them (showed up in PB22 more than here), and now the last week I want to play more civ turns than games I'm in... life is so difficult

[dtay]

Random but nice:



Demos - someone passes me on MFG, I suspect Krovice in the golden age given I had a sizable lead last turn



Rifling in 3 turns, but I'll let up and get it in 4 so I have gold left over for upgrades, then attack on the 5th turn.

Oh target you ask? 80% Pindicator. I can still reverse course and switch to Krovice if I act next turn since the water is less of a bottleneck to attack him (perhaps delaying my attack to the 6th turn from now but that's no big deal), but launching an all out attack on Krovice that Krovice sees coming while they are in a golden age feels... unwise.

Pind on the other hand is off warring... somewhere I can't see against cyneheard. And is not in a golden age. And is not in nationhood or slavery, nor can he switch immediately.

My remaining concern is an opportunistic Krovice attack. Only one of my cities is attackable from the fog, so that one needs a standing garrison.

Besides that, there are 4 main vectors into my territory for Krovice (into Whositland, into CHland, the coastline in the East, and between the lakes). These can be covered in pairs by catapult stacks, so I need two of those left behind, and then enough hitters to mop up.

Still working out the details, but I'll leave I think one of my rapid-response knight stacks behind where it can get to any front in 2 turns, and then more localized Oromo/Rifle groups. That leave me about ~30 2-movers (knights/cuirs/cavs) and the local forces in the colonies for the initial attack on Pind.

That is all confusing without pictures, I'll get some later this turn or maybe next turn.

[Gazglum]

Hey DTay, just came back after a long absence and read your thread from start to end. You're playing a great game! Are you happy with how thigns have turned out up till now, or are you kicking yourself for any missed opportunities earlier on?

[dtay]

Hey DTay, just came back after a long absence and read your thread from start to end. You're playing a great game! Are you happy with how thigns have turned out up till now, or are you kicking yourself for any missed opportunities earlier on?

Hmm, it's a tricky question. I don't think I missed anything huge and obvious, and all things considered my position is pretty good with a large beaker lead and top power. I'm skeptical whether I can win from here though, b/c I'm caught between a rock and a hard place with regards to land area and neighbors. I only have the 4th largest land area, but my neighbors are set up such that conquest without leaving myself vulnerable is very difficult. I rather wish I was in nationhood right now for the draft, just because I need the garrison troops. I might actually blow the 3 person golden age a lot sooner than I thought I would just a week or so ago with a GP from Tarkir (National Epic almost completed) to get into Nationhood, and then try to create a 4person golden age (hopefully with the great spy from Communism to help) for the end game civic switch.

I wonder if I would have been better off calling Krovice on their settling super early with Horse Archers or something. Their existence is a giant pain, and that might have been the early (high variance) shot at clearing them out. I'll have to check after the game if they were as vulnerable as I thought at the time.

I'm not quite sure if that's a missed opp, b/c it still contains large risk and I'm not sure it would have worked, but it might have been a risk worth taking given where I find myself now, not really able to imagine exactly how I could take over my continent without getting in a giant death trap and leaving myself open to a Finharry naval attack.