The Pen vs The Sword (Gandhi of NA)

[The Black Sword]

Thanks a lot for your help Gawdzak.

Ichabod; these things really suck, I don't mind when I make a mistake but when you spend a lot of time planning something only for the game to lie to you, it's demoralising.

Here's a picture of my pretty capital(4th in the world), now that I'm back in Bureau:


I've got to get on windmilling those hills now. Btw, I have a theory that Comm didn't give us riverside capitals so that Ottawa wouldn't have any competition.

I decided to research Chem -> Steel Power directly, then I'll backfill Astro and Rifling. It's a bit risky, particularly with dtay signing peace with OH, but I don't think I'll be attacked and you need to take risks sometimes. I don't really want to start building units for another 5t when I'm out of OR if I can help it.

It also looks like we have a good old fashioned Communism race going on. Come on Dtay!

Demos:

[The Black Sword]

Looks like I'm the first person who's going to commercialise their shrine:


Here's what I'm thinking of picking off Gavagai:


He's got a pretty advanced Cav and Rifle army(bigger than mine actually) to deal with William but he's behind on Naval techs and ports. So I think I could take and hold these with little cost. He had a much bigger garrison in Cerf until Will declared on him and he shuttled them home.

Tech:

I think I can grab both Astro and Rifling before I'm out of gold and I probably should do that to modernise my army a bit. Then it's probably on to factories.

Demos:


BGN is in a GA, OH's finished, 5t until my own. I have 75% of BGN's land and pop according to the victory screen. I'm switching to Pacifism next turn to get out a couple of GPs, will switch to building troops in that period to fix that soldier count a little. Dtay signing peace has me a bit worried but my sentries don't show any galleons massing.

I'm never sure what to report on at this stage of the game, happy to answer any questions.

[Ceiliazul]

Are you going all in on culture? How will you execute that plan with regard to tech and religions? Who will try to.stop you?

Have you read putboss 6? (Which had the most intense victory since pb1)

[The Black Sword]

Now that Wall Street is complete my 3 culture cities are going to focus pretty exclusively on the culture victory. I also have some minor religious spread activities going on. So I am pursuing it to the best of my ability, but I wouldn't call it an all-in yet. My current tech rate is higher than expected though, I really need to come up with a proper estimate of how long it would take to go through the entire tree.

I have 5 religions in my empire, so I'm hoping for all 5 Cathedrals in each city. Also hoping nobody else values the Eiffel Tower.

With regard to tech, I think I need Industrialism(Tanks, Battleships), Radio(Bombers,Subs) and Rocketry(Missiles), as I mentioned before. I'm not sure about Fission, Tac Nukes seem to be about as effective as their hammer value in Guided Missiles. ICBMs look like they might be better in terms of cost/effectiveness which seems a bit backward. I've done some sims with late game units and I think that's enough, I might go into that in more detail in another post. Anyway, after that I plan to stop teching, focus on military and culture. The order to get there is still unclear, but I'm thinking something like Factories -> Destroyers -> Bombers ->Tanks.

Who will try to stop me is a big question. I'm hoping it will just be Old Tourist and BGN. Theoretically, the others should let them, hope to incite a big war between us and have a shot of catching up. But the game doesn't always play out that way. I'm expecting at least Plako, GJ and Dtay of my neighbours to keep up in tech, if not in size, and it would make a pretty big difference if they decided to get involved. On the plus side, both OT and BGN are really far away, even transports only move 5 spaces per turn.

I've read PB6, but there really are massive differences between the two games. I've some experience from FFH28 of last stand defences myself too.

[The Black Sword]

Ok, throwing some wild beaker estimates around and assuming 24t of golden age, I reckon I can get access to the Industrialism/Radio/Rocketry triumvirate in about 40t.

There's then at least 250,000 beakers left in spaceship techs. Among those spaceship techs is access to Modern Armour, but any further end-game toys require more (>20k beaker) techs. Factor out a pretty generous pre-req bonus and you're looking at around 180,000 beakers to build a spaceship. What tech rate could be managed at that stage of the game? Looking back at past games of similar sizes, I can't really see anyone breaking 5k bpt with tech combined with full wealth building. Assuming one could hit an optimistic 6k bpt, that's still 30t of teching.(Additionally, I could make 3kbpt total output now, so that requires doubling that in 40t, which seems vaguely realistic). It then takes 10t for the spaceship to travel IIRC(would appreciate being corrected if I'm wrong there). And of course however long it takes to build the final part(s), which I'll just ignore since everything is already so vague. There is around 22,500h to be invested into the spaceship btw.

So, I'm looking at 40t to set up my culture cities and then 40t to take the victory home to beat a space race, which sounds pretty reasonable. Seems like culture requires less resources too, the problem being that my entire empire can't contribute them. What the rest of my empire will be doing is building military, which a potential space-racer has to match, further slowing him down.

Hence I feel a culture victory should be faster and easier than a space victory, and I have a very good setup for it. Despite the massive variance, those turn estimates should be pretty handy in deciding what to build in my cities.

[Ceiliazul]

It then takes 10t for the spaceship to travel IIRC(would appreciate being corrected if I'm wrong there).

You're not wrong, the devs are. The dumbest thing added in BTS, I suppose it hasnt been modded out simply because no one has actually needed to launch in a long time. Wonder if Krill/Seven would make that change on principle...

[Qgqqqqq]

It depends on how many pieces they build. Here's the link I found with a brief search.

[mackoti]

Ok, throwing some wild beaker estimates around and assuming 24t of golden age, I reckon I can get access to the Industrialism/Radio/Rocketry triumvirate in about 40t.

There's then at least 250,000 beakers left in spaceship techs. Among those spaceship techs is access to Modern Armour, but any further end-game toys require more (>20k beaker) techs. Factor out a pretty generous pre-req bonus and you're looking at around 180,000 beakers to build a spaceship. What tech rate could be managed at that stage of the game? Looking back at past games of similar sizes, I can't really see anyone breaking 5k bpt with tech combined with full wealth building. Assuming one could hit an optimistic 6k bpt, that's still 30t of teching.(Additionally, I could make 3kbpt total output now, so that requires doubling that in 40t, which seems vaguely realistic). It then takes 10t for the spaceship to travel IIRC(would appreciate being corrected if I'm wrong there). And of course however long it takes to build the final part(s), which I'll just ignore since everything is already so vague. There is around 22,500h to be invested into the spaceship btw.

So, I'm looking at 40t to set up my culture cities and then 40t to take the victory home to beat a space race, which sounds pretty reasonable. Seems like culture requires less resources too, the problem being that my entire empire can't contribute them. What the rest of my empire will be doing is building military, which a potential space-racer has to match, further slowing him down.

Hence I feel a culture victory should be faster and easier than a space victory, and I have a very good setup for it. Despite the massive variance, those turn estimates should be pretty handy in deciding what to build in my cities.

i was doing like 6,6 k on pitbos 13 but was a litle later and still had a Ga in sleeve so ther was more like 8k turn.But i think you done wrong the math with tech needed for spaceship that are more then 250k.

[The Black Sword]

i was doing like 6,6 k on pitbos 13 but was a litle later and still had a Ga in sleeve so ther was more like 8k turn.But i think you done wrong the math with tech needed for spaceship that are more then 250k.

Maybe you should have updated more. The last I could find from you was saying you made 4.5k around T240, which is roughly the time I'm talking about here. I take it 6.6k was near the end around T270?

I'll doublecheck the 250k figure but remember that assumes you've already got Flight/Radio/Industrialism/Rocketry/Combustion, everything behind that and that you go for no extraneous techs.

[The Black Sword]

Anyhow, I revolted to Pacifism and am pumping out 3 GPs for my golden age:







Tahn also has around a 40% Priest shot at the moment. The odds of rolling a pair of Priests are worryingly high. If either Tahn or Basilisk hit an Engi/Spy, then I'll figure out how to get a 5 person GA. If not, I'm not going to worry about it, I'll take 20k culture instead.

Pacifism actually saved around 20gpt over OR btw.