[SPOILERS] dtay's thread awaits a title

[von Adlercreutz]

Now that you already have F1 for a lot of mounted units, how often do you plan to use F2? Or other unusual promotions like mobility? Obviousy F1 is useful for getting sentry units more easily.

[dtay]

RE: F1/F2 - the sentry use will certainly come into play. The nice thing about the f1 is that it enables a ton of future flexibility. A bunch of knights/cuirs/cavs suddenly could promote to mobility to go through a hill. Or to f2 (even the 3xp ones withotu stables) to hit a ton of collateral. Or just do the standard combat line with an extra 10% withdraw. It's not gamebreaking, but very nice to have in the backpocket.

I like that commodore is now at war with HAK, doing something besides attacking me



Gonna have to get chemistry before the demo beeline, I can't afford to have GJ and Gawdak wielding frigates over me



There's a possibility I totally mix up my plans and go straight at physics or communism. I'm going to rethink after chemistry. I have a ton of gold in the bank and grabbing one of those first to bonuses might be worth it. It delays the large production bonus from US and also the shift into better civcs, err, dangit, now I'm gonna have to rethink through all of this.

Current plan would get democracy in about 10 turns. Probably going after communism or physics would delay that for another 10 turns. So call it roughly 400 hammers (I think i'll have around 40 towns in 10 turns). That's the major near term civic gain unless I want to draft a lot in the near future.

I'll also have to watch gawdzak. I want communism more than physics, but gawdzak is up lib and chem on me so could more easily contest communism. Hmm.

Uhh, I guess this is something? Not even in a city radius lol. In fact, I believe a city would need to be razed in order to get that in a city's radius

[dtay]

Got good infra






We'll see how long this continues, if I go onward or settle for the 3 disconnected cities.

Lots of war. I will note that commodore's tech thread comment is actually a spoiler for me, I haven't met the opponent(s) of 2DreyO and GJ. I seriously doubt it's mack/don, so that means REM et al



Decided not to say anything publicly since that would just make it worse, but bleh

You may have caught that this means I met gavagai this turn. he has a modern navy but is behind on land military tech



Building a frigate down here to see if there's a path through the oceanic ice

[dtay]

A note on broader strategy:

I'll be watching the commodore/plako war with care. with about 3t notice I can upgrade all my knights to cavs and charge on in (I'm actively keeping the ability to make knights until I actually need the cavs so I can get the free flanking boni).


A note on spoilers: I haven't actually done my civstats check for this turn, so maybe I would have known about the two mystery wars anyway once I do. Quite possibly commodore checked to make sure it was publicly knowable before saying something (this just occurred to me while doing this post).

[dtay]

Thinking about valuing US and the constantly Gold-MFG calcs I'll be doing

If going full production - 1st order US makes my grassland towns essentially 2-3 tiles if I always spend for hammers (2-1-6 base, then convert 6 gold to 2 hammers). there's an additional bonus however since the hammers can be freely moved around to build units/buildings where they are needed most.

If I get kremlin, this becomes 2-4 tiles, essentially state property/caste workshops + flexibility of moving hammers around + flexibility of uhh, sometimes I want to tech.1

However, 2nd order it's actually more complicated, since we have to account for gold multipliers. It turns out my empire produces gold from commerce at a very good ratio, because I have tons of cheap financial banks everywhere (and quite a few markets in the larger cities). Assuming a bank in every major commerce city (and enough markets/grocers to cancel out the commerce that isn't going through a bank), then now towns are 2-4 tiles without kremlin, 2-5.5 with kremlin. That's pretty sweet.

Conclusion - I want the kremlin. Conveniently, US makes creating a massive overflow chain super easy, so even if I lose the race to communism I do not inevitably lose the race to the Kremlin.

Question, do the US hammers get multiplied through forges the same as slavery hammers (and normal hammers)? I assumed yes in the above, otherwise I have to subtract out forge multipliers. Also, if so, that makes rushing things in a Bur capital amusingly cheap.

[Krill]

The hammers from the towns (+1 hammer from US) is affected by hammer multipliers.

The rushbuy gold>hammer conversion is not affected by hammer multipliers.

[dtay]

Trying to think through the cost benefit analysis of emancipation v caste, are there any good past examples of someone running emancipation while in contention? Commodore in PB13 is the closest that comes to mind.

My initial thoughts are that it's mainly useful for getting the village->town stage to speed up, and the specialist flex of caste + hammer bonus to workshops outweighs getting the +1c, +1h from towns a bit faster. And how many more cottages am I really going to lay down at this stage?

That would make endgame civics US/Nationhood/Caste/SP/(FR or Theo)

It feels weird since I'm kind of optimizing for both cottage econ and workshop econ, except I need communism for kremlin/hopefully Great Spy anyway, and at that point pretty sure state property beats out FM. Bit worse GNP wise, but so much better for production.

Should actually do math of SP v FM though, the banks I have everywhere are certainly better with FM.

[Zed-F]

Any news? How are things going in Inca-land?

[dtay]

Note: some of these screenshots are a turn or 2 old

Thing's are doing, i'd say ok. On a broad level, GJ and Gawdzak have both meaningfully improved their position, while Plako has declined relatively. My main problem is I've hit a wall in expansion, I lacked an easy land neighbor so I launched a naval invasion against Furungy, successfully taking his 4 island cities. I then had everything blockaded and was pinning stuff across his empire, awaiting the ability to land enough rifles in 1 city to withstand a knight counterattack.

However, Gawdzak in a rather brilliant play came in with a fleet and took the furthest island city from me. The existance of that fleet also made continuing the naval war against Furungy unprofitable, I don't think I could manage it with that sword hanging over my head, either threatening to hit my actual offensive forces or to end around back to my islands.





So I gave Furungy peace and asked for peace from Gawdzak, not seeing a good way forward against both of them. Furungy took it (giving me 600 gold as well), gawdzak refused. I thought he might be refusing only because he wanted to continue to interfere with my expansion, but no, still refused. But also hasn't launched another attack and a fairly sizable fleet is still in that former furungy city.



My fleet is now headed north to a defensive posture that will also let me probe Gawdzak's core. If I raze a city or 2 maybe he'll give peace? They were unguarded 3 turns ago but he probably drafted stuff in them since.

Island geography



The problem with these fights is I'm keeping about 80% of my military constantly on watch on the 2metra border. 2metra has rocketed eocnomically, rivaling the leaders in GNP/MFG and has top tier mil tech (rifles and now cannons!)



I grabbed military tradition when I saw 2metra getting steel so I can flank them away if he invades, which meant I wasn't going to be able to get to Communism by the end of this golden age. Given that, decided to grab corporation for the trade routes and the tech towards infantry.

Tech wise I'm then going at Communism for the Kremlin, then I have a decision point. I won't win with current land area, I'm actually 5th in land now. But expanding is difficult. Splitting commodore with Plako is probably the easiest, but Commodore has a very good military. I think the way to go might be declare war on commodore and throw my navy at him. Hopefully that gets Plako involved, then move the land army in.

Problem is I need the navy to guard againsy Gawdzak, and the land army to guard against 2metra. Gawdzak could plausibly leave me alone, I seriously, SERIOUSLY doubt 2metra would. North Korea...

Also, US golden age is pretty



Other interesting result of my tech plans is since I'm getting 2 quasi-optional techs (demo, communism) that have espionage buildings I'm probably going to start killing people in EP. Nice sidebenefit

[dtay]

Well 2metra declared war and put a big honking stack down by my middle city.



I almost certainly can't hold the first city, but the tight spacing and 60% culture borders means this won't speed up the path into my territory. And I can respond given 1 turn leeway, so he won't be making further progress.

I think my goal is to let the city die, but make sure that stack doesn't escape and kill it.

Also going around the other end to annoy him with frigates.

The actual damage to my empire won't be huge, but the opportunty cost will. I'm losing 1 city worth of infrastructure, but more importantly I bet my costs are going to hit about 4000 gold for upgrades and rushes. And I probably cna't attack furungy. So this is very damaging to my chances to win this.

You can see 2metra spent a ton of gold on upgrades last turn



Thinking about whether this makes sense for 2metra to do, I'm unsure. 2metra can't win so isn't worried about that, but not really sure what they gain by razing 1 city. Unless they expect to be able to do more? I'll have to think on it.

Legit question, a ton depends on this, so the city behind Orion has 60% borders popped, so the hill tile the stack is standing on SHOULD stay within my control even when the city falls. but I am terrified on some culture bug that takes away the borders for 1 turn. I want to put a stack on the tile behind Orion so even if 2metra flees I can collateral and kill him, but if the borders do their dissapearing trick he could hit me with cannons first and I probably lose the stack.

So does anyone know when/why/where culture border bugs happen?