Ok, so. Some explanation as to why I'm flipping out. (on this game, in particular, I mean )
The long story short is that we just lost the University of Sankore by 1T, and I'm afraid it might have been one of the biggest deals among what turned out to be the 4 big prizes of this Medieval-Ren period.
The long story long is that...
...I've been deathly afraid that Haram officially begun blossoming into a runaway civ, and it seems my fears were right. The first part of this goes back to his scoring the MoM, and of course comes back to following up with the Taj. (sidenote: regarding the Taj, TBS did indeed land a GS recently, and I'm totally certain he could have beaten Haram if ONLY HE HAD LET ME MAKE HIM A LOAN OFFER ARRGhHhh). However, this wasn't outside the realm of what we could handle, as our extremely developed Fin economy was still probably superior to his GA-economy. Like maybe his civ is still overall stronger, but not insurmountable, and not something we have to base our whole game on playing around.
Anyways, I figured that preventing Haram from grabbing all 4 prizes and turning into a runaway was more important than figuring out who to conquer next. Without TBS, there was nothing I could do about the Taj, but whatever. So, I focused on Lib, Sankore, and Economics instead. The plan there was to research up to Education + 1T to lib, and essentially guard it long enough to pop Economics. Haram surprised me by racing me to it via an extraordinary amount of wealth builds. I am pretty sure he was building something close to an average of ~150gpt in wealth to be able to research like he did, and even then could only compete in the race by skipping many essential classical-era techs, or what I woulda thought as essential for him. For example, he doesn't even have Aesthetics, much less gotten his NE starte, to start pumping GPP for his MoM GAs. I was so sure he would ignore Education for a long while as he backfilled that I actually saved gold on Paper for like 4 turns (saving gold to loan to TBS :P) What a mistake that turned out to be!
So why is Sankore such a big deal? Most games, nobody even bothers to build this thing, right, so why would this be the make-or-break of Haram turning into a runaway? It all harkens back to Haram finishing the AP near the end of our last GA. The AP was a brilliant play, I feel, that broke the game open for Haram, or at least, perhaps, my not reading that he would build it before it happened was a mistake that broke the game open for him. Had we been in Mono by the end of our first GA, I think many of our problems don't exist. Anyways, the AP buildings turn out to be a really big deal on this map because it is fairly hammer-poor. It's not just about rate-of-return with an early AP, although the RoR isn't too shabby when forges are already up. Whipping is fine in this era, but won't be as competitive later, when builds are more expensive and we have to deal with War Weariness unhappy on top of the stockpiled whip unhappy. So, we want to whip in these AP buildings now, when we don't have much other good stuff to build, so that we have more hammers to play with later, when we do. And of course, if we have all these buildings built anyways, why not get 4bpt to 5bpt per city for free? Currently, we have 26 AP buildings, many in cities with libraries, making Sankore worth 60bpt. Haram's got at least like, I dunno, 35 AP buildings? maybe more? Meaning its worth something like 80bpt for him. By the end of the next few turns, we'll have about that many too... so, +80bpt for him compared to +80bpt for him is a 160bpt swing, on the scale of approximately 1/4 of our current break-even research rate. Remember when I said that I thought that our saving grace vs eternal-MoM-GA was our superior economy? Well, say goodbye to that!
On top of the base beakers, it turns out that this bpt swing will also put him over the edge compared to us on winning the race for the Economics merchant too. That's just how it works out. I had a GM sitting in fennbandit's city of, uh, god I don't even remember the name. Anyways, it's size 12 and far enough away for a mission be worth 1700 gold, which is enough for6 full turns of 100% research with minimal wealth builds. At that point, with Sankore installed, we could add in some research builds on top to hulk up to 1100 beakers per turn - just enough to finish Optics, Lib, Monarchy, Fedualism, Guilds, and Economics within 6 turns, knocking down 1 tech a turn, believe it or not. The new free GM from Econ would then replace the old one, just in time to fire our second GA from our newly completed National Epic:
And then we'd be in a just swell position. Alas...
As it stands, as we can't discount a 36 turn GA as a temporary thing, Haram will have a superior overall economy, straight-up double hammers per turn (and we're the nominal #2), and almost equal CY. All this before his Pro trait stuff comes online. He's like... 5 or 6 turns from Guilds? Then another dozen from Chemistry maybe? At that point, he's gonna start looking like I was in PB26. And then where does he go from there? If I were in his shoes, what I would do is rush Oxford in his max-size cottage spammed capital ASAP, then using wealth builds to run at 100% science for the duration of his GA. He might even be able to maintain 100% outside of his GA... he's also got that awesome shrine, which I admit I've been helping, and I'm sure we'll see a grocer and bank show up there soon. Spiral Minaret would be a priority too. After that, I'd head straight for Astro and Chemistry, then Rifling, and then just fucking wreck one of my neighbors.
Haram's currently rocking 1150 GNP on Machinery, which, assuming that he's break-even at 100% science, is worth a little over, like, 820bpt = Six turns to the economics merchant, not including this one. Without Sankore, as of T132, we'd need also need 6, assuming significant wealth/research builds and also assuming we'd cashed in the merchant. IMHO, this is not worth the risk, because if we miss our GA is delayed a loooooong time. We've also got to consider that we had been taking a crazy risk even chasing lib so hard to begin with. We've been building an insane amount of wealth/research per turn over the last half dozen turns... if you inclide the capital's Sankore build as failgold, its something like 175hpt worth of wealth/research. Per turn. Cripes The side effect of this is that not only did our big infrafrastructure push stall out near the end:
(almost 600 hammers short, although I did add some stuff I guess)
but we've also barely built any military units over the last 7-8 turns. All the cities that would have been doing that have been building wealth. We've thus fallen from a clear second-place power now down to 5th place, which is not good. Dreylin is gearing up to invade Tsargon very soon, perhaps even before Knights, Borsche has Berserkers and compass, meaning he's 1 GG away from 4-mover galleys (6-mover Galleons), and, of course, Haram could switch over all his production to military, and possibly even start drafting muskets. Terrifying. He's even gotten so bold as to try and do this:
He's got a fucking warrior looking directly at 5 full galleys, while his coast is empty, and yet still thinks that I couldn't possibly protest this ridiculous plant. (directly on the rice is the only possible tile to plant on). Ugh. This plant would eventually push my borders back, allowing him to hit with 2movers from the fog. Unacceptable.
At any rate, I think dealing with Haram has to be our #1 priority, rather than thinking about where/how to expand. I have a few ideas on this, but its really... man, I dunno. Gonna be tough.
Counts and Demos:
Demos:
Post-whip demos this time, after whipping off 9 pop this turn. The close-to-our CY is TBS, by the way, not Haram. We've still got about 40-50 food on Haram, I think. For whatever that's worth. Gonna have to lay off a bit, grow pre-GA.
City counts:
20: Us (T129)
19: TBS (T121), Haram (T126)
18: Fennbandit (T122)
16: Borsche (T118), Dreylin (T127)
14: Jowy (T125)
12: Tsargon (T128)
3: Scipio (T96)
Ooh la la, Seven posting in TBS's thread, maybe he's up to something spicy...
I had made some preparations to raze Haram's Colossus-Moai-Sankore-HagiaSophia Size 15 super city, but I think I am going to be too slow with it. Just haven't had the necessary time to think about this game that far in advance, and the time I did have was needed to make sure I actually got the damn boat tech to begin with. Of course, Haram, The-Million-Hammer-Man, 1-turned a bunch of boats as soon as he saw Astro, and he's surely seen my naval preparations this turn. Ack. Just didn't have time to plan for better... you see, my wife's grandmother is here to visit the baby, and good god has this woman gotten ridiculous in the past few years. She has not only become semi-senile, with a very soft emphasis on the semi, but her hearing has also almost completely gone as well and she hates to use her hearing aid. So, you kind of have to shout directly in her face when she wants to talk to you (which is nonstop and always, good god does this woman have energy), but the time she finally figures out what you're saying, she's often already forgotten the context of what you're talking about it and gets mad at you for not keeping with her. I swear to god, my life the last couple of months is like out of a goddamn sitcom. And tonight she wanted to "teach" us to play Bridge... we both already know how to play and yet we managed to get through 3 games in 2 hours.
I actually find her hilarious, if exhausting, but my wife is not a patient one, let me tell you...
At any rate, even if Haram's got his garrisons built up properly, I will still be able to do some considerable damage with blockades. He just switched into caste+pacifism too... I wonder if he tries to pop out a scientist from his Moai to speed up his Astro timing? Hmmm...
(January 18th, 2016, 05:25)GermanJoey Wrote: And tonight she wanted to "teach" us to play Bridge... we both already know how to play and yet we managed to get through 3 games in 2 hours.
Haram just jumped ahead of me in the turn order, God Dammit
edit: this happens just about every single time I want to declare war in an RB pitboss. I remember Gavagai drove me fucking crazy with this shit in PB22.
(January 18th, 2016, 15:33)GermanJoey Wrote: Haram just jumped ahead of me in the turn order, God Dammit
edit: this happens just about every single time I want to declare war in an RB pitboss. I remember Gavagai drove me fucking crazy with this shit in PB22.
2nd half is preferable for the duration of the war, its true, but Haram jumping means he got to spend about 400 gold in upgrades before i could play. One of those for sure was a mace in the Moai city; 2xbows, a mace, and a chariot could probably take on 2 vultures and a catapult, but not a mace, a vulture, and a catapult.
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One of those for sure was a mace in the Moai city; 2xbows, a mace, and a chariot could probably take on 2 vultures and a catapult, but not a mace, a vulture, and a catapult.
