I think the University of Sankore is still up for grabs, though I haven`t checked closely. Spending one of our Engineers on that wonder sounds good to me. UoS is a pretty strong wonder. We desperately need more beakers to stay competitive against the other much-bigger Empires, so let`s give it a try. Dtay has had Paper for a long time, so he`s surely building it soon. It would be hilarious if we could steal it away from him. We`re 1 turning Paper so we can try for it if it`s still available on t180.
Yes, Dark Savant is certainly going to reinforce Mist. He`s probably whipped out a defender this turn and could ferry over more troops. Let`s see. He`s got to do it on t179, before our Frigates block off the city completely. If we`re up against about 5 units we should break through pretty easily (but with significant losses). We could consider landing a few units next to Mist next turn already, a couple of Pinch Knights should do well against his Oromos. Also, it`s very risky of him to weaken his best defenders in Mist as we might want to go for a full amphibious attack instead. I think we can have 18 units in range of the city next turn (6 loaded Galleons worth of units). Perhaps a few more if we land units on Mist`s doorstep next turn and the Galleons return. We have a Galley with a couple of units right next to Kokejin and a few stray units in our island cities.
Dak Savant and Gavagai signed peace. That`s bad news for us, but we`re blockading Mist completely so hopefully we`ll be able to break through. I think Gavagai is worried about an attack by dtay, as all those Knights in Space Rock mysteriously disappeared this turn! I think we`ll get a lot of action in the coming turns.
In the second screenshot our attacking forces are visible. There is another loaded Galleon in Radanshiri. No forces made landfall on Mist island yet. Tularean Forest kept a garrison of 6 units (2 Muskets, 3 Knights and a Keshik). Dark Savant has a single Galleon in range of it.
We`re actually 1 turning Paper even at 0% science! We`re researching at full speed and will get a lot of overflow. Oh, and UoS has not been built according to F9 so let`s try for that!
Graphs and demos: Our neighbors are building units like crazy, should we be worried? Joey swapped to Theocracy so I`m pretty certain he`s going to war..
A couple of random notes: Dtay had 3 Workers in a semi-threatening position NW of Chubei but he`d have to attack into fully fortified units plus 100% defenses, over a river so I`m not really concerned. (I guess he could hide a million Knights on ships).
Also, the cultural situation near Tularean Forest resolved itself this turn. Carthage did, as expected, steal our forest coast and Deer and DS did for some reason keep control of the tile 3NW of Fountain Head. I can`t see any reason for that. Just like that Great Hidden Wall, those bugs seem to work against us for some reason..
EDIT: Also, looking at the screenshots, Fountain Head has Cartahagian culture in it. Did Rtr change how the culture works?
Another thing to consider is where to build the UoS. How do you feel about rushing it in Oghul Qaimish? Other candidates are Borte, for a little bit more security, or maybe Toregene. (Both Engineers are currently in Borte).
(October 30th, 2017, 14:10)JR4 Wrote: Did Rtr change how the culture works?
I don't know for sure that culture mechanics weren't changed - but I would be shocked if they were. If Krill was going to fundamentally rewrite code at that level, I'm sure he would have started with other systems such as espionage - I haven't seen any complaints from him on culture mechanics.
For the vast majority of everything, RtR only changes things that were exposed in the XML. I don't know of any fundamental mechanics that were altered, just prices, tech prereqs, tech costs, unit strengths and promotions - that sort of thing.
Same general reasoning as why RtR doesn't change any graphics. Anything that could be done with an easy change was preferred to anything that would take lots of modding effort or expertise - plus anything that's easy to explain in a changelog is preferred. General goal was to be a minimalist balance mod with a handful of bug fixes. The ability to unpause with an active diplo offer in pitboss was one of the big changes.
Thanks for the clarification! I`ve read about that annoying pause bug, haven`t encountered any problems of that kind in game. Rtr is obviously much better suited for MP gaming than base Bts, basically keeping the things that work and replacing the things that don`t work. I`m a bit skeptical to just how strong the Workshop economy is in Rtr (Workshops are simply overpowered compared to Cottages), but it doesn`t take much away from the game experience imo. The Workshops are there for everyone to build.
The culture on tile near Tulearean Forest that is still under Ethiopian control has to be a bug, I mean, look at how far it is from Fountain Head. At least the forest coast stops him from having vision on the Deer tile currently under Carthagian control. That`s still something.
What's our next research target? When I said earlier that Paper (if we get Sankore) might not even delay us to Steel, my point was that if we're able to land UoS, we could tech Paper regardless of our tech path; though Steel was a great tech for dtay to lib, I'm not sure it's a good choice for us to pursue by slow-research right away. Drydocks don't help until you build them (and unlike dtay, we lack the Agg discount) and start producing ships afterward, and we already have a lot of hammers tied up in current-generation ships already, so drydocks would be minimally helpful until we can tech to (Ironclads or) oil-based ships. Cannons are great, but they don't work against an alpha strike from fast-movers or amphibious attacks (not until after the city is lost at least) and in most other cases, on defense, it's just as good to build a bunch of Cats. Some alternatives to consider:
- Alphabet -> Printing Press : How many villages and towns do we have in our empire? I feel like it's less than 20. Building research is also slightly better for us than building wealth, but we can't afford to do too much of either. So I don't think this tech path would pay back the research investment until/unless we need to continue up to Rep Parts and Rifling and/or Steam Power.
- Education: I would definitely suggest this if we were expecting to be left in peace for the next 35+ turns. Universities in our seven best cities and Oxford in Borte would be excellent long-term investments, and at least they woudln't help anyone who conquered them from us. The only problem would be if we found ourselves wishing that instead of all that infrastructure, we'd built a dozen more Knights, half a dozen more cats, and a musket or three.
- Drama -> Philosophy -> Nationalism: (Drama can be skipped, but it's dirt cheap considering all the "or" prereq bonus beakers to and from it, and enables Theaters and the Globe - the latter to be hopefully built with whip overflow in a high-food island city so we can whip and/or draft it indefinitely.) This is an interesting tech path in that it doesn't enable anything terribly exciting intrinsically, but it gives us the option to go into Pacifism to push out GP when we expect to be left in peace - and swap into Nationhood for drafting in an emergency. It also gives us the option to go Music -> Miltrad next for Ger-powered Curies (and potentially West Point if we get a GG between now and then and use it to make a super-medic or to boost a small stack of units that includes a veteran Knight it can push up to 17xp) or to Constitution for Representation. The whole path to Miltrad is also less expensive than the path to Rifling, even figuring in the extra beakers from Printing Press (and hammers from Rep Parts).
- Drama -> Music: This would just be a slightly different path toward MT that only makes sense if Sistine hasn't fallen and we're serious enough about culture to consider (maybe slow-building Sankore in Borte instead and) Engineering the Chapel and getting some Stupas (and eventually other cathedral-analogues) into place pretty early.
- Military Science: If we need better units Right Now, this is the fastest way to get them, with Grennies, Police State (if we can spare the happy in our biggest cities to leave HR) and eventually (once we have Miltrad as well) the ability to build Blitz Curies/Cavs in our West Point city (and get a couple of Commandos out of one GG). The problems with this tech of course are that it's a complete dead end, it provides no economic benefit, and if we tech it now, I'm not sure we'll even get any KTB.
- Divine Right: Okay, at this point we'd just be trolling everybody. The Spiral Minaret would be nice to have though, and would repay our (smaller) investment a bit sooner than Universities + Oxford, so if we're expecting some peaceful turns to come, completing the Monk Economy triad isn't completely insane.
Gav signing peace with Dark Savant is bad for us, but in some ways it's even worse for Gav. Of course it wasn't a mistake in itself - he obviously felt he wasn't going to break through the defenses he was facing, and he might be on the verge of facing war with dtay - but the fact that Dark Savant was able to take back those two key cities suggests that Gavagai may have overestimated his chances in the war. He still has a couple advantages though: In the cities Dark Savant recaptured, any cultural buildings apart from Wonders are gone, plus barracks, walls, castles, stables, and likely other infrastructure, apart from all the whipping Dark Savant had to do and the population lost to capture and recapture. That's a lot to rebuild, especially in the border cities, and Gav had the stronger empire to begin with. He can still come back later with e.g. Cavs against Not Rifles or just with Overwhelming Force. Just the same, I don't think Gavagai can win this game at this point unless GermanJoey and dtay both blunder very badly in such a way (or at such a time) that Krill can't capitalize on their mistakes. Just four turns ago, I rated him third, remembering how dtay had suffered set-backs going after Russia but ultimately just steamrolled. Unlike dtay though, Gav didn't bring enough force to hold or take back his new territory. He might still be in third place, but it's a very distant third if so, and depends entirely on where dtay sends his new drydock-powered navy and cannon-laden army.
Can you tell (thanks to our sentry in his territory) what kinds of units GJ has been building?
Culture bug and related stuff:
There were quite a lot of deep changes in RtR's code beyond the XML actually, beginning with the nerf to slavery, and notably including Agg maintenance reduction and a number of deep bug fixes. But Mardoc is right that the culture rules weren't changed at any point. I even tried a test game to confirm, and the rules are the same as in base BtS ... and yet ... the tile SE of Tularean Forest is 3 tiles from any continent where Dark Savant has a city in every direction. The tile 2S of Vulcania is 4 tiles from Mist's continent, 3rd ring from the nearest mainland tile, and 6th ring for either of Dark Savant's two closest mainland cities. Yet both of these two tiles are under Dark Savant's cultural control. (Fountainhead having Most Serene culture actually is fine; they're both on the mainland, even though there's lots of water in between, and culture doesn't care about the path to the city that generated it - only the path to that city's continent.) I have no idea what is causing this - particularly the tile 2S of Vulcania, which we controlled two turns ago but appears to have flipped when Mist (I believe) popped 4th ring borders last turn.
Where to build Sankore is an interesting question. Oghul Qaimish probably wants the culture more than any other city, and (like Nambui) if we ever lose it, we're probably on our way to a hasty exit anyway. I was going to raise a counter-argument, but thinking about it more ... I think I agree that our best bet is to build it there. I'm honestly not sure that Borte is much more secure than Oghul Qaimish at this point anyway.
Meanwhile, now that we have Literature, where do we plan to put the Epics? Bulugan for the HE? Nambui for the NE? National Epic can probably wait, and the Heroic Epic could stand to be started with a bunch of whip overflow if available, but the HE starts to come out ahead (even without OR) by the time its city builds its fourth Knight afterward. So, if we don't use the whip at all and give it all the good hammer tiles, I think that's 10 turns after we start the build. (Sooner with whips, depending on when and how many.)
About culture, is that at a city which was before on DS pozition? If so when he got his 4th pop he got back all the culture he invested till then in that tile.So to take back that tile you need to beat that amount of culture.
(October 30th, 2017, 16:06)JR4 Wrote: I`m a bit skeptical ... in Rtr
I don't think you'll find any of the RtR changes with unanimous agreement. On balance, people agree that it's more balanced for MP play but everyone disagrees with one or more of Krill's changes. Plus there's a fairly large minority that prefers the 2.7.0.4 edition to both the base game and the later versions of RtR.
I don't think the mod would have happened if it were designed by committee, though.
As Tuesdays are pretty busy for me, I think I`ll have to delay answering some of the questions asked before t180. Now to the turn itself. Playing these war turns are very fun indeed (at least when all goes well for us)! Our combined forces made landfall on the Rice on Mist island. No more defenders were added this turn so that`s a lucky break! We`re encountering 5 units at most when we attack next turn. Another Galleon loaded with units is right behind, just to be on the safe side. Dark Savant swapped to Chemistry this turn so he`s getting Frigates in about 4 turns. I hope he`ll accept peace after we take Mist, but there is no guarantee now that Gavagai decided to withdraw from the war. DS has a Galleon in Lakeside (it killed our Caravel a couple of turns ago, forgot to mention it) and another one in Fountain Head.
Okay, University of Sankore still hasn`t been built so our Engineer moved down to Oghul Qaimish and rushed it there. We have a coin flip now at worst! Also, we built a new city, Oghul Khoimish (yes, it`s a very similar name to our border city).
Tech was set to.. Education. Let`s just take a gamble in order to stay relevant for a long time. I suspect that Joey has had it for a while and has built Universities everywhere. If we`re coming under attack, we`ll reconsider of course.
A Missionary successfully spread Buddhism to Vulcania. Our island cities have 5-6 defenders each so we`re still looking good unless an overwhelming force of Knights (or better mounted units) overrun us. Note that dtay finally is building a border city NE of Chubei, but not in a very threatening position.
I don't think you'll find any of the RtR changes with unanimous agreement. On balance, people agree that it's more balanced for MP play but everyone disagrees with one or more of Krill's changes. Plus there's a fairly large minority that prefers the 2.7.0.4 edition to both the base game and the later versions of RtR.