RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[regoarrarr]

Sullla (or anyone else who can answer):

I understand the concept of hammer overflow well enough (and I've learned quite a bit more reading this thread), but I don't quite get this: do you mean that if you had been building a cheaper unit, it would have provided more hammer overflow? Or is there some other micromanaging technique I'm missing?

You can only overflow the number of shields of the unit that you are producing. So because archers cost 25 hammers, if you overflow more than that (through extra whipping / chopping whatever), anything more than 25 hammers is converted to gold (not sure of the conversion rate). Had they been building say an axe, they could have overflowed 35 hammers into the next unit.

[Krill]

The amount of overflow is limited to the cost of the item just built; you can never overflow more hammers than the item cost.

So if you built a warrior, you could only overflow 15 hammers, and archer, 25 hammers. The Pyramids you could overflow 500 hammers off, if you wanted.

In 3.19 the overflow rate is 1 gold per base hammer put into it, up to the cost of the item, anything after that is lost.

So if you put 80 hammers into a warrior, you'd complete the warrior in 1 turn, overflow 15 hammers, get 15 gold, and lose everything else (a further 50 hammers).

[sunrise089]

@Gettyburg - I'm surprised that you'd say "need more units NOW" and not work the grass hills immediately.

@Fredricksburg - both spears (in this case) and archers work by having a low base strength but a lot of % bonuses, so I don't think the 30% difference that walls add will be as useful as another unit (also, what is the city culture at? although I suppose you can't do much to crash it to 40% defense in a few turns). I don't have a precise rule but I tend to value walls over another unit on defense only once you already have maybe 5-6 units, so I would wait and build them only if a big stack comes.

Oh, and good luck. I look forward to the show.

Needing production and working mines? That's crazy talk! (Speaker knows what I mean).

[Ruff_Hi]

@Mr. Svinlesha - my understanding is that your overflow is limited to the number of hammers required to build the thing that you just completed. The excess gets turn to gold. Note that v3.19 patch broke this a little trying to nerf the gold overflow. Sometimes you don't get any gold.

So ... my take on Sullla's comment was that if they had built something more hammer expensive (a Library for 60 hammers), they would have got the full value of the overflow, not the amount limited by the archer.

Edit: beaten to the punch. Good to know about the overflow conversion rate. I'm currently playing a game where I am running into that all the time.

[Speaker]

Needing production and working mines? That's crazy talk! (Speaker knows what I mean).

Sullla and I have been fighting over this a bit.

[novice]

I decided to go another tile northwest, onto that hill where we'd have clear visibility on the whole area:

That must have been pretty bone-chilling when Chamberlain moved onto that hill... May he rest in peace.

[Sullla]

Not bone-chilling, more like an "Aha! Got You!" moment. We were assuming all along that there was a good chance for athlete to jump into this fight with his chummy RBPB3 friend Jowy. The important thing is knowing what you face; if you know that, the odds of winning go up significantly.

Of course, knowing what you face does nothing if you're just screwed. And we may indeed be in that position! I had to time to run the Power graph numbers this morning, and, well, we have an uphill battle ahead of us:



These tallies should be highly accurate thanks to our newfound intelligence:

Jowy
2 scouts
2 warriors
4 archers
3 chariots
1 spear
10 phalanxes
(Expect 8 phalanxes, 3 chariots, and the spear to attack.)

athlete + kalin
5 warriors
1 archer
3 chariots
6 horse archers
(Expect 4 horse archers + 2 chariots to be the attackers; these guys have to have left at least a couple of units behind for defense.)

Dantski
5 warriors
3 skirmishers
2 chariots
3 spears
6 axemen
(Expect a mixed stack of something like 4 axes, 2 spears, 2 chariots, and 2 skirmishers to come after us.)

There are just *SO* many units ranged against us now; this 3 vs 1 thing really sucks. If you couldn't guess that already. Jowy and Dantski have been loading up on axes like crazy over the past ten turns. I actually think we have a good chance to stop even the combined Jowy + athlete assault, but if Dantski brings his axes in from the other side too... man, it's going to be awful difficult.

Our best hope is that all of these opponents screw up the timing and/or pick the wrong places to attack. I'm still not even sure if we want them to combine their stacks of not; hitting us in one spot would create a monster stack, yes, but it might also make it easier to defend. If they split up piecemeal, that would stretch our defenses... at the same time though, we might have an easier time taking down a series of small stacks.

At this point, all we can do is watch and react. Thank god for that athlete NAP lasting until Turn 100! Another three turns will get us those horse archers, and that might save our collective behinds. Wish us luck, one way or another this is going to be memorable!

[Sullla]

So as you probably know, the war has started already:



Jowy declared war this turn, and one of his axes killed Chamberlain. Let us take a moment to pause and remember Joshua Chamberlain, our starting warrior. He was the greatest hero of all, and his sacrifice will not be in vain! You will have your vengeance, noble soul!

Jowy didn't even have the courtesy to send us an email, yeesh. Not too classy! If I didn't check these boards and CivStats frequently, we could have been screwed over.

So let's see, where's he gonna attack:



Everything moved into Thebes. That would seem to make Chancellorsville the likely attack target, right? Alternately, I guess it could be a long trek to Fredericksburg... We can reinforce HR or Chancellorsville equally, so let's concentrate our defenses in that area.

Speaker, is there any way you can get to a computer before tonight to look at this? I'd like to wait and hear back from you before doing anything. Alternately, I can log in and do the moves you prefer myself, if you're trapped at work.

Now, there was some discussion over the turn split rules. I've been deliberately running down the clock and leaving all of our worker micro until the end of the turn for the past three turns, so that we could claim the second half of the turn timer. I did that again this turn:



Some of the workers have been moved, but these guys are still free to move, as is that spear in Antietam. Because we are going to use the remaining time on this turn to react to Jowy, that means that he *HAS* to take the first half of the timer split, or else it would be a double-move. I'd actually like to wait for Dantski to play before doing anything, to be honest, because there's a decent chance he attacks this turn as well!

Why do we want the second half of the timer split? The rules as written enormously favor the second half, because you cannot whip once you "end turn" under the current rules. That screws over the first half teams pretty badly! It goes like this: run down the timer until there's one minute left, declare war and move in your attackers. Now the other guy has been forced onto the first half of the timer, and he whips defenders, but they don't complete until next turn, and by then it's too late because the attacker has already captured the city!

Jowy tried to cheese us by doing this, but we deliberately left some of our units unmoved to prevent it - no dice! He shouldn't get the benefit of the doubt anyway because he's being kind of a douche for attacking us.

So for the moment, I'm not doing anything until Speaker has a chance to respond. I am sending this off to athlete though:

Dear Rebel Alliance,

Remember that we have a NAP that lasts through Turn 100. You guys can't attack us until the start of Turn 101! Just because Jowy got anxious and jumped the gun doesn't mean you can break our prior agreements.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

The big question now is, what's Dantski going to do? Who knows!

[Speaker]

Sullla, I'll get home in an hour or two and take a look. I need to work tonight, so I'm going to go home for a bit before I come back.

[Sullla]

Great! I'll be on chat whenever you make it home.