[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

Hmmm. I'd really like to get a city of some kind in the southeast to form a border with pindicator from that second settler out of the capital. I don't think planting on the iron is too bad as a worst-case scenario. I'm also hesitant to try claiming one of the other spots on the map because our workers are not set up for those areas, and any cities we plant will be slow to start without proper worker labor for support.

If we're truly concerned about pindicator, there's always a possibility of sending the FIRST settler out of the capital to the southeast region. It's inefficient on both sides (worker on the island wasting time, road not ready in the southeast so settler wastes turns moving) but it is a possibility. We could always wait to see what pindicator does this turn and next turn before deciding where that first settler out of the capital goes. If we see a triple whip this turn or next turn, maybe we shift our plans. I agree that it's worth thinking about.

[Brian Shanahan]

From the sounds of recent discussions and game developments, I'd be thinking gunning for the Pentagon and a commando factory may be the strongest single option. Commando infantry and later mechs look to be the strongest way to reel in a leading Dreylin.

[scooter]

Yeah, I definitely don't want to delay that island spot I don't think. Let's just continue on our path and see if a triple-whip comes or not. I don't think the worker situation is quite that bad (for example, the two southeast workers could simply load up on the Galleon with the settler if we planted up on the island), but you're definitely right that it's still inefficient. I'll give it some more thought, but for right now Plan A is still a go.


Pentagon is crazy expensive, but yeah I'm still thinking along the same lines. A capital with Bureau, forge, factories, power, and maybe even a brief spell of Organized Religion could crank it out pretty quickly. Getting a mixed shot at an Engineer is also a possibility. Anyway, it's definitely something to consider. I'm also looking forward to Panzers. Have we ever seen one built in a MP game at RB?

[Sullla]

I logged into the game to take a look around for the current turn. There's good news and bad news to report. The good news is that scooter's metagaming instincts were correct: we are not the target of Dreylin/OT4E's aggression:



The bad news is that Donovan appears to be really, really screwed. He's now going to be in a two front war and I don't think he has much of a chance. The timing of the war declarations is interesting, with Donovan actually starting the conflict himself, and then BGN piling on afterwards on his turn. (Note: there is a very small chance that BGN/Dreylin signed a Defensive Pact and the war declaration happened automatically. I do not think this was the case.) I need to log into the game again later and check Donovan's civics, but I don't believe he's in Nationhood civic. I'm pretty sure that he's running Slavery civic though, and he does have a lot of large cities, so here's hoping he's willing to burn population for units in a big way.

The bigger question for our team: when do we pile into the war ourselves? We aren't in a great position to go on the offensive at the moment, since we're shuffling units around and leaving cities unguarded to push out settlers. However, that will change relatively soon: we'll finish Communism research on Turn 290, and we can revolt that same turn into Nationhood/Theocracy civics. That's only 6 turns from now; hopefully Donovan can hold out for at least that long. I think we can get six units via drafting (1 each from Telegraph/Haber, 2 each from Cotton Gin/Radio) and add in a grenadier or two via natural builds. The tile north of the horses will flip to our cultural control in the next half dozen turns, and then we can move right next to Sector 19 along a road network. I figure we can have an attack ready in about 8-9 turns from right now, something like 5 rifles and 3 grenadiers should be enough to capture an exposed city from a gassed/dying civ.

I just hope that that's not too slow! We're going to have to hope that Donovan can slow down his attackers long enough for us to build up a military force ourselves and claim at least a few of the spoils. I don't really see how we can shift gears in the next half dozen turns - we need to finish these settlers, and we need to finish our Communism research ASAP. I do think it will take some time to wade through Donovan's territory, given his culture and the fact that Dreylin is likely attacking with rifles/grenadiers. (Although he could have a swarm of cavalry too, which would be a lot more dangerous...)

Scooter, your thoughts on this? Maybe we'll get really lucky and Dreylin/OT4E will completely bungle their attack, throwing them back down into the middle of the pack. Hey, we can dream, right?

[scooter]

Well, I'm not sure yet that we totally know what's going on. It looks like Donovan declared the moment the peace treaty expired. I assume he decided to declare and immediately offer peace to lock himself into 10 more turns of peace. He sees like the rest of us that Dreylin is going to kill somebody, so he's trying to get assurances it won't be him. He's basically trying to force Dreylin into ruling him out as the target. There's no other reason for Donovan to declare himself unless he saw a pre-emptive strike possibility.

I did notice that OT4E spent like an hour in-game afterwards, did not end turn, and apparently did not accept peace (assuming it was offered), and their thread had a flurry of activity while he was logged in. I'm not certain if they're debating how to react to a pre-emptive strike, or if they're debating whether to re-offer peace. But I don't think this sequence of events confirms at all (yet) that Donovan is the target.

Another thing to keep in mind: Dreylin has no reason to accept peace yet. If he's targeting Donovan, of course he won't accept. But if he's targeting BGN or Gaspar, he'd be wise to stay at phony war for a couple more turns to mask his true intentions.

As for what the BGN declaration means... no idea. Could be a defensive pact (I haven't noticed any active DPs though), but it could also be him trying to signal to Dreylin that he's willing to help pile on if Donovan is the target. The latter would be my wildly unsupported guess. He was in-game after Donovan, so it's very possible he did the wardec himself.

How about we offer a map swap with BGN? It might help us understand why he declared on Donovan maybe? Plus he may have pindicator's maps by now which would be a nice bonus.

[Sullla]

Hmmm, those are some good points. I saw the war declarations and I assumed that Dreylin was about to start the fighting, but you bring up an excellent point. Donovan might be trying to get 10 more turns of enforced peace, at least until BGN declared war as well and complicated matters. I don't know what Dreylin's going to do here; I also don't see a compelling reason for them to take peace. I suppose we'll have to wait and see what develops over the next few turns.

I'll suggest re-offering the same deal that BGN offered us a few turns ago: mutual Open Borders and a mutual map trade. That would allow us to get our explorer out of the limbo where he's currently located, and it would set up a trading partner for us when we leave Mercantilism civic in a half dozen turns. I'm not too concerned about giving BGN 5 turns of one-sided trade routes, especially when he already has a trade connection to Dreylin. We have little reason for conflict with BGN right now, and he could make a good ally to cultivate in the future.

Here's a logistics point for the next few turns:



We're going to load up the galleon next turn with a settler, worker, and rifle, then move the ship up next to the ice tile. On the following turn (T286), we unload the rifle and the settler onto the "1" tile, and the worker onto the tile northeast of the crabs. Then our ship heads west to pick up two more workers on Turn 287, which we'll unload onto the sheep tile on Turn 288. This may have been clear from the micro plan, I figured it couldn't hurt to draw it out on the map to avoid confusion.



Then for fun, a few words about Civ4's in-game scoring. Here's a quick refresher course if you haven't worked with this in the past. Civ4's score is based on four components: population, land, technology, and wonders. While it's not perfect, Civ4's in-game score is a pretty good proxy for overall empire strength. Each of these metrics is calculated in a slightly different way:

* Population counts total pop points, not the geometric numbers on the Demographics screen. Population is worth different amounts of points depending on the map, with the formula being 5000 divided by (max pop score). On this map, it's 5000 / 1217 = 4.11 points per pop.

* Land works the same general way as population, with points awarded for each tile of land that your empire controls. The formula is 2000 divided by (max land score). For this map, it's 2000 / 1132 = 1.77 points per tile. However, unlike population, there is a delay of 20 turns before land in your cultural borders counts for score purposes. This was done for Multiplayer purposes, to avoid teams detonating Great Artist culture bombs on the final turn of the game and racking up huge score points (oh yes, we abused this in pre-release testing!)

* Technology is worth 6 points per tech per era. Here in the Industrial era, techs are worth 30 points each.

* Wonders are worth 16 points apiece, and they all count the same - there's no era adjustment. Note that national wonders also count for score points the same as world wonders; everyone gets 16 points for having the Palace, for example.

You can see our score on the left hand side of that screenshot. We currently have 40 total pop, we had 37 tiles within our borders on Turn 264 (I checked via old screenshot), we've discovered one Industrial era tech, and we have one wonder (the Palace). Our score looks pretty impressive right now, in part because we had the fewest tiles within our borders in the early game and therefore the fewest Land points. However, in the next 6 turns, we will discover two techs, plant three new cities, and grow about seven population; that should be worth about 100 score points, and I expect we'll be in second or third place on the scoreboard afterwards.

I thought I'd compare this to the other teams, as best I can figure out their scores from working backwards with the information we have right now.

Dreylin/OT4E
Score: 1191
Population: 160 (true pop = 39)
Land: 79
Techs: 60
Wonders: 32

Dreyin's score is heavily inflated by techs and wonders. As I said before, that definitely does matter - they do get to keep the Kremlin! - but it can skew things a bit. Even though they have 8 cities to our 5 cities, their team has about the same amount of population as we do. The scary thing about this team is their gigantic military more so than their score lead, which is somewhat illusory.

BGN
Score: 1154
Population: 152 (true pop = 37)
Land: 82
Techs: 60
Wonders: 0

BGN is listed in second place on the scoreboard largely due to having two techs discovered. This is a case where early game score can be deceiving; I don't think anyone would rank his situation ahead of REM's. He has less population than us and fewer cities (only four of them). I'm curious about where this war with Donovan is heading.

REM
Score: 1141
Population: 177 (true pop = 43)
Land: 74
Techs: 30
Wonders: 0

REM has the most population in the game, not surprising for someone with 9 cities. They're generally pretty small cities, with his average city only about size 4.8, but he does have a lot of them. I think his GNP has to be cratering pretty hard as well, given that REM has all those cities but no Communism (yet) to control the maintenance costs. I would still argue that REM is in second place right now behind Dreylin/OT4E.

Donovan
Score: 1119
Population: 147 (true pop = 36)
Land: 82
Techs: 30
Wonders: 0

Donovan is not in a very good position right now, despite racing out to an early lead in score. He has five cities, two of which are brand new and the other three which are all quite large (average size = 7.2). He's a very long way away from Communism tech, and the vultures are circling on his borders. I don't think going for the early Academy/library/university/observatory combo in the capital has worked very well.

Gaspar/Noble
Score: 1097
Population: 135 (true pop = 33)
Land: 72
Techs: 30
Wonders: 0

Gaspar/Noble have a lot of cities as well; I think they planted their seventh city after I took this screenshot on their turn. However, their cities are also very low in population (average under size 5) and they are also a very long way after from Communism tech. They'll have to rely on their Dikes and their Fin/Org combination to limp along to higher techs. Basically, this team has played the same style as REM, only they've done it with a non-Imperialistic leader. Even with their high city count, I think this team is in one of the weakest positions.

Pindicator
Score: 1081
Population: 147
Land: 74
Techs: 0
Wonders: 0

Pindicator is still the only team that hasn't discovered a technology yet. His position is probably a little better than his score indicates, although it's hard to say since we know less about pindicator than any other team. I think the Agg/Chr trait combination isn't doing pindicator any favors thus far. He's going to be seriously out-researched if he doesn't start picking up some techs soon.

Anyway, no real point to this exercise other than having some fun with the numbers. And if you managed to make it to the end of this post, we had a small bit of good news this turn: no whips from pindicator. That means we're one turn closer to picking up the city spot we want in the east.

[scooter]

Mid-turn sneak preview.



Oh so NOW they have Rifles.

[Sullla]

Ha! Brand new city too, with only 5% fortify bonus. Let's get a couple of grenadiers up there (one from the capital and one from Haber Process?) and go take it.

Also, I'm finding xenu's login name of Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson to be way funnier than it should be.

[scooter]

So let's talk about this barb city first. Turn is mostly played but not ended for obvious reasons. If we want to take this, we should start reacting now.



So here are our two Grens - as far away as possible! One in Cotton Gin, and the other completes in the capital EoT. If we do this, it requires emptying out two cities for a few turns - Cotton Gin and Haber Process.

Keep in mind that both of these cities are now draftable, so we can emergency revolt and draft at any moment. It would take something completely crazy to surprise either city.



If the rifle in Haber left now, it could arrive in Cotton Gin by turn 287. Cotton Gin would then sit empty for 3 turns (counting this one so more like 2.5). Thankfully we have an explorer on the south island, and I've been watching the coastline, and there's no Dreylin boats in sight. I think we're safe to take this risk. We have similar sights on the northern waters suggesting Haber is similarly safe. We could always add the island rifle to have a third attacking unit just in case since it's almost certainly safe too.

The short version is we can totally do this. It's not risk-free, but the risk is lower than "leave 2-3 border cities empty for 2-3 turns" sounds.



So now for the "should we" discussion. This land is 100% Gaspar's. Do we want to possibly piss him off a bit to capture this (very strong) city that'll be a thorn in his side? And do we want to stretch ourselves this much?



I think that yes we do. We've been waiting for something to break our way, and this might just be it. I think Gaspar is running a military as paper-thin as ours (we will know for sure next turn - we missed getting his graphs by just 1 EP), and he's not aggressive. We're already settling towards Gaspar, and there's a good reason - the other direction is Boudica and Dreylin's army of death. This is our best chance to catch a break and make up some ground, and I think we have to take the swing at it.

One final note: I see a lighthouse! So it looks like the cities DO come with buildings, and you just have to hope to keep some of them in the capture. Also we're on Prince, so we should win our first barbarian combat, so that's a nice bonus.

Thoughts? I won't complete the turn until we decide.

[scooter]

Side note: man I sure hope Dreylin is planning on attacking Gaspar and not Donovan/BGN. I'd put the odds around 30%, but still. It would make this thing a total slam dunk.