That's great news! I believe that even pulls Nambui out of unhealthiness (in addition to the extra happiness) which is kind of nice too.
Quote:Nambui has a grand total of seven unhappy faces from War Weariness right now..
Okay, that's good to know. Note that if we adopted Police State, that number would be reduced even without getting peace, though not by nearly enough to keep Nambui happy right now.
Quote:Also, this is certainly the last turn of the Carthagian Empire. GG, Couerva and chumchu!
Definitely! (Though they might survive a bit longer if dtay doesn't have a slow-mover stack with cannons next to the city; I'm assuming he does, and that Carthago therefore really est delenda by EoT.) As I mentioned in my fake interviews above, they played a much better game than their seventh-place finish suggests, and kept up the turn pace as well as nearly anyone in the game. I hope they had a lot of fun with this one while it lasted!
Quote:DS making a monster 18 unit Grenadier stack in Lakeside would be problematic for us. At least Radnashiri has 12 defenders now. Breaking them down won`t be cheap.
They're Aggressive Grens too, and of course he can start Ships of the Line now too. We'll probably be able to tell how seriously he's taking this war (and/or how threatened he feels by Gav/dtay) by the number of times he whips next turn....
Quote:We`ve got an absolutely ridiculous amount of gold.
Yup! If dtay comes after us right after Carthage, we'll be able to upgrade a lot of junk into Grenadiers - and if not, we'll be able to keep the research slider at 100% for quite some time!
Quote:Do we want to swap into Theocracy right away on t197? I`m thinking about keeping Org Religion for another turn.
I think that depends on how threatened we feel and (therefore) how much infrastructure we'll still be building, and how many units will complete at EoT. In particular:
- Bulugan will finish a Gren, but that doesn't matter if it has a settled GG: It'll have two promos anyway, and the extra two xp won't make much difference.
- Chubei will finish one too, but we could swap off of it to start something else and swap back to finish it whenever we're in Theo again unless we think it's urgent to finish it ASAP.
- I ... think that's it? I think Budashri just finished an LB (probably/hopefully the last one we'll ever build) but even if it's still just short of completion, we could swap off of it as at Chubei or even just finish it anyway; I doubt if one promo on a str-6 unit is going to make a difference at this point.
So, yeah, probably might as well stay in OR for now while units get closer to completion and infra gets built. (Unless there's an emergency forcing us to whip a bunch of units and start new ones everywhere else...)
(November 21st, 2017, 12:21)JR4 Wrote: Graphs and demos: Gavagai is making units in his Golden Age. His stack didn`t move last turn. 8 Galleons and a Galley are still in range of one of Dark Savant`s cities.
The Galleons are still on that tile N-N-NW of Izmir? Interesting, but I wouldn't count on getting help (from him or dtay) - especially if Dark Savant starts spamming Grens.
Quote:Our demos look pretty good in a Golden Age but I must say that the top mfg is scary.
That's GJ, of course. In fact ... they're all GJ, I think, and not even in a GA. Also, looking at the minimap, I might be underestimating how much land he has even from islands alone. As Gav demonstrated, those aren't easy cities to hold, and towns or no towns, dtay is going to be a monster (well, but a bigger monster than he is already) when his Carthaginian holdings come out of resistance, especially if he's able to follow up by running over Dark Savant with help from Gav, taking our shrine, or both ... but GJ has a city of his own on the Carthaginian mainland now, and by the time his peace with dtay ends, it'll no doubt be crammed with Protective Rifles, and Cannons of his own to lead off a counter-attack. It's a pretty thrilling game even though most of the players have no chance to win. (Including us of course; I would love to cram five Cathedral-analogs into each of three Future Legendaries, with Spiral Minaret to pay for the investment in Divine Right for our fifth religion, but trying to pursue culture and defend against GJ and dtay simultaneously is a new definition of a long-shot strategy....)
The big news of the turn (in addition to Carthage dying) is that Dark Savant started another Golden Age. That`s his third GA. He`ll probably be able to almost match our gnp and mfg for the next turns. If not someone decides to attack him. Gavagai`s stack increased to 25 units. His Galleons (8) are still positioned in that corner 2N-NW of his border city with DS.
As always the tactical situation on the eastern border is complex. One Ethiopian Galleon moved to Vertigo, so there`s only 5 left in Lakeside. Lakeside still has 18 units. Vertigo has 3 Oromos and a Longbow iirc. It`s vulnerable to a surprise attack. Maybe we should attempt a raze?
The National Epic finished in Nambui. The city now produces 75 GPP in the Golden Age. Bayan Khutugh will beat Nambui, as it`s a GP awaiting in just 4 more turns. Borte is finishing the Oxford University. We`re keeping Organized Religion for at least another turn, but DS going into Theocracy might force our hand here..
Oghul Qaimish is building.. a Caravel. DS has sunk two of our Caravels earlier in the war so more eyes on the others is useful. One reason why having a couple of expendable scouts is valuable can be seen in the last screenshot. Yup, that`s a lot of Ottoman boats stationed there.
Graphs and demos: Everyone are building units. Krill`s power is rising quickly. Does he have any hope of getting back into contention? He`d need more land for sure.
If Dark Savant stays alive for another 50 turns we might get into massive problems with War Weariness. I`m glad we built the Notre Dame now! Police State could be an option soon if we can fix our happiness problems.
The mini map is indeed a pretty scary sight at this stage of the game. The big Empires have so much more land than we do. We`ll just have to do our best to keep them at bay.
(November 22nd, 2017, 12:20)JR4 Wrote: The big news of the turn (in addition to Carthage dying)
This kind of line reminds me of (the original) Master of Orion.
GNN Newsdroid Wrote:The Silicoid empire now spans 12 star systems, outstripping all other races.
Also in the news...
The Psilon empire has been completely destroyed by the Bulrathi.
Or words to that effect.
Quote:Dark Savant started another Golden Age. That`s his third GA. He`ll probably be able to almost match our gnp and mfg for the next turns.
I think we're doing better than that. Barring losses for either of us (which remain constantly and eminently possible) or major changes in tile configurations, our mfgs will be similar only after our golden age ends, and then only until his ends too ~7 turns later. As for gnp, we're about to turn on research with Oxford University in our Bureaucratic capital, and barring unit upgrade emergencies, we won't have to save gold again for a while - certainly not during Dark Savant's Golden Age.
Speaking of which, what's our next tech target? Our options as I understand them are:
-Steel: We've already started it, and it's probably our shortest route to another military tech at this point. Cannons are pretty great, although losing the ability to build cheap catapults will be unfortunate. If we have time (and health) to build drydocks in key cities, that could help with our sea game too!
- Alphabet: Okay, so it turns out there's a quicker military tech than Steel after all, and it comes with an economic bonus too! Spies can't perorm any actual missions in this mod, and they can't see any tiles where they aren't actually standing, and (as GJ discovered with us once this game) they can still get "caught," but if there are land tiles we can't see where we're worried someone might be staging an attack, or if we want to look for targets of opportunity e.g. for a Morale/Commando strike such as I mentioned up-thread, getting a spy or two into enemy territory can be a big help. Building Research, meanwhile, might be more attractive than building Wealth (at least in the short term) since we have so much gold banked already. Finally, Alpha is en route to Printing Press for a completely passive economic boost (all the better since Borte has Oxford now as well as the majority of our towns) and Rep Parts for a bunch of extra hammers, and although Rifling is probably a trap for us (at least until we get Military Tradition) Rep Parts also leads to the military techs we want the most, if we can get them: Steam Power (which also unlocks levees) + Steel (as mentioned above) gives us Ironclads if we want them, and opens the way to Railroads for maneuverability and Machine Guns.
- Music: If we anticipate having time to build infrastructure, getting Stupas into cities like Nambui would help with happiness, and of course it's on the way to Military Tradition. Also, if we're entertaining any notion of a cultural victory, we need to start building this type of infrastructure yesterday. (I don't think we're entertaining any notion of any kind of victory really, but y'know....)
- Divine Right: We're playing Isabella here! How can we not found our fifth religion of the game? Seriously though, Spiral Minaret will be really good for us, assuming we live long enough to ever run out of gold again. Definitely another long-term play, but definitely worth it if we live to see the long term.
- Philosophy: I don't see us running Pacifism any time soon, but I guess you never know! The main point here is that it's en route to Nationalism, which is en route to MT, but I'd go for Music and maybe even Divine Right first if I were taking this route, I think.
Quote:As always the tactical situation on the eastern border is complex. One Ethiopian Galleon moved to Vertigo, so there`s only 5 left in Lakeside. Lakeside still has 18 units. Vertigo has 3 Oromos and a Longbow iirc. It`s vulnerable to a surprise attack. Maybe we should attempt a raze?
You mean from the sea? Dunno; I'm not very familiar with Vertigo's situation. If the city is on a hill and the units are all fully fortified and promoted to G2, for instance, even if we've bombed the defenses down to 0, it might take four Galleons full of Amphibious Knights to take the city, expecting to lose about 4-8 (not simmed at all; I'm just guessing). If it's on flatland, and the Oromos are promoted D4 and not fortified at all, Amphi Knights would get odds (with the defenses at 0) right out of the gate, and we'd probably only lose 1-3 (meaning we'd still want three loaded Galleons to be sure of burning the city). I don't know how many Amphi-capable Knights we even have in the theater though. Another attack like that would certainly increase our War Weariness too, and I don't see Dark Savant giving us peace after we raze another city, unless we're obviously threatening to raze or capture even more.
One thing I've been thinking about along those lines: If we can get a good enough view of the Fountain Head area to know (if) it would be safe, a big stack on the plains hill NE of the city (enough Cats + Knights to take the city, plus ideally some G2 Grens or at least Muskets for stack defense) might convince him to take peace. We'd have to be awfully sure he couldn't hit that stack with cats before we tried it though.... (And we'd need the transports and the units themselves....)
(November 22nd, 2017, 12:35)JR4 Wrote: Krill`s power is rising quickly. Does he have any hope of getting back into contention? He`d need more land for sure.
If that's the case, where is he going to get the land he needs? His "real" neighbors are GJ and Gav. Apart from them, he mostly neighbors dtay by sea. I guess he could try to take a bite out of Dark Savant on their tiny mutual border and show us how it's done? Or he could try to out-tech Gav and hit him later with a full-era tech lead. I dunno. He might just be telling GJ, "Don't tread on me."
Could we get another look at the F4 tech screen, by the way? Among other things, I'm curious about what GermanJoey's been researching since Rifling....
What's the payback time on Divine Right / Spiral Minaret given your current empire? I can't believe it's actually worth the opportunity cost (keeping not too far behind in military tech is just too important) but it's a fun thing to consider in the ideal world where GJ and Dtay just keep glowering at each other and leave you alone.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Our tech path going forward is very important. I still like going for Steel next, as we haven`t researched a military tech for like an eternity (nor any other tech for that matter). It`s a bit sad to lose the option of building cheap Cats but I still feel like our big cities can contribute enough hammers to make up for that. EDIT: Heh, I`ve been pretty obsessed with researching Steel for a while now.
Hmm, Divine Right is also perhaps an option. Let`s see if Islam is still not founded when we get close to the end of our GA. Spiral Minaret is a very good wonder for us. It`s going to pay for itself quickly but we need to be sure that we`re not falling too far behind the others. I kind of like the idea of heading for Steam Power in order to be less vulnerable when the others get closer to Combustion and Assembly Line. We really can`t defend against units enabled by those techs at a big tech disadvantage.
So, right now a possible tech path could be:
Steel - Alphabet - (Music?) - Printing Press - Replaceable Parts - Steam Power
or
Steel - Divine Right - Music ----- Steam Power.
or
Steel - Philosophy - Nationalism - Mil Tradition ---- Rifling
The question is: Can we get away with ignoring Rifling for a while? Joey and dtay are probably drafting Rifles every turn. It`s a dangerous game to play. In SP Rifling has very often been a key tech target for me. It should certainly be an option later on, having the opportunity to research it quickly would be valuable in desperate times.
@Ref_Steel: I don`t know anything about Master of Orion. Does it have any resemblance to civilization?
(November 23rd, 2017, 08:14)JR4 Wrote: @Ref_Steel: I don`t know anything about Master of Orion. Does it have any resemblance to civilization?
Well, for starters, MoO is turn-based 4X strategy. Planets take the place of cities, and the totality of planets is the map. You can travel from anywhere to anywhere directly, but are limited by your engines' maximum range as well as speed per turn. Planets take various grades of hospitality, from earthlike to irradiated, that dictate their maximal population (but that value can be "terraformed" as research proceeds); the analogy would be food resources and jungled terrain in Civ. Some planets carry innate modifiers for production/research (for the former, these can be harmful).
Planetary management is more abstracted -- a planet produces "industrial capacity" based on its current population and innate modifiers. IC is universal currency; it converts into everything else, the best analogy being food in Civ4. You can allocate IC spending per planet using sliders; e.g. the Research slider converts IC into tech points, the Production slider converts IC into spaceship production (including colony ships, i.e. settlers), you can build factories which increase IC for a delayed profit etc. -- Population can be relocated from planet to planet, which resembles tile micro (or more on the ball, since it consumes travel time, worker food cost) in Civ4.
Unlike Civ4, you can efficiently deter the computer from settling critical sites in the early game as it will retreat unguarded colony ships from even the most feeble of armed ships. (It will come back with some guns, though.) Scouting remains important.
The tech tree is unique in that it varies from game to game, and within a game, from nation to nation -- some technologies are randomly deleted from it at game start. They are, however, divided into vertical "tiers" along with the horizontal categories/fields (weapons, shields, ecology, computers...), and you're guaranteed to draw from a specific tier. You can put research into multiple fields, using sliders again; there's a cost reduction for continuous investment into a field iirc. While you can trade for tech with the computer-controlled nations, you won't base your research path on that; any deals you strike will be tremendously uneven -- but there's fringe cases to consider, and it's a diplomatic tool.
You design your own units, which means spaceships; what more could you want. The most applicable Civ4 analogy is the promotion system. In MoO, you pick one of four hull sizes, from where base health and production cost increase along with the hull's capacity to install additional systems (weapons, shields, engine, targetting computer...). As with Civ, designs will grow obsolete, and "upgrading" is costly (you actually just get some IC back when you scrap a design, and all units are lost). There's only room for six designs at a time; when to design new ships at all is, in itself, a strategic consideration.
Fleets are huge, but abstracted into stacks. Combat switches to a tactical screen (think Heroes of Might and Magic, or perhaps the Total War games, although it remains turn-based -- so I guess, think chess with movement rules and relative strength of units against each other based on your ship designs). Land combat is automatic and success mostly based on shields/weapons tech, and of course, advantage in numbers; what's interesting is that your soldiers are drawn directly from your population, not from IC -- in fact, it's just the relocation of citizens to a planet someone else owns. (If I remember right, that's the one thing IC doesn't convert into -- it can even convert back into pop via slider, although that's usually not what you want.) Transports will be shot down by enemy fleets with impunity, but unlike orbital bombardment, capturing a planet by invasion leaves its facilities intact.
There are neither unique units nor unique buildings as such, but every nation has its own innate advantages, some of which are better than others -- just as in Civ5/6. I have to mention to RefSteel that Psilons absolutely doesn't fit us (although I guess they can draw Erratic iirc).
The main victory condition is Diplomatic, but the diplomatic system is well-designed.
There's also an "Orion" in this game, which is a black hole that consumes one of your scout ships, and perhaps more than that if you reload the game and forget which planet it was. It has other effects, but none of them matter because you've won the game once you can accomplish them.
Last note: should you get the space crystal event and we think anything alike, I should inform you that the damn crystal can actually be engaged in combat if you put a fleet at its anticipated target. I got it in my first game and had assumed that it was a global Armageddon clock. "Seek Additional Challenges", check.
I haven't played the game much (four or five campaigns), and never so much as started a game on Impossible yet, but it's a great one, and it seems I'll have substantially more free time now for some reason. Actually, that's wrong, as I haven't done much with Carthage since my tremendously stupid and symptomatic flip-out (thanks for being sympathetic), and I've been somewhat pressed for time. I think I might be up to play it in December/January, though, so see you there, perhaps.
Thanks for the introduction to Master of Orion, Couerva! Maybe I`ll give it a try some day. FWIW, I`ll probably not join the new PB starting in the New Year but will probably be a global lurker. Yes, the turns take a lot of time and effort to play. I know what you mean.
In game-related news, I`ve already mentioned that several Greek Galleons are positioned threateningly. Also, Joey had an Ironclad there. Okay, if he`s attacking now we`re in trouble. Maybe we should have turned on tech a number of turns ago. I guess we`ll find out soon! The big Empires surely have a huge tech advantage on us.
We made a civic swap to Theocracy this turn. Having a few extra XP on our units is helping a bit. Nambui got its Military Academy after the screenshots were taken. It should build a lot of units for us in the coming turns. It will have 12 units before Joey`s turn is up. The other GG is in Borte. Eot we`re finishing 3 Knights, a Catapult and 4 Grenadiers, nicely adding to our power.
Graphs and demos: Joey is building units like crazy. At least we`re getting a lot of production in this GA, to try to keep up with that power, at least to some extent.
The most applicable Civ4 analogy is the promotion system. In MoO, you pick one of four hull sizes, from where base health and production cost increase along with the hull's capacity to install additional systems (weapons, shields, engine, targetting computer...). As with Civ, designs will grow obsolete, and "upgrading" is costly (you actually just get some IC back when you scrap a design, and all units are lost). There's only room for six designs at a time; when to design new ships at all is, in itself, a strategic consideration.
with movement rules and relative strength of units against each other based on your ship designs). Land combat is automatic and success mostly based on shields/weapons tech, and of course, advantage in numbers; what's interesting is that your soldiers are drawn directly from your population, not from IC -- in fact, it's just the relocation of citizens to a planet someone else owns. (If I remember right, that's the one thing IC doesn't convert into -- it can even convert back into pop via slider, although that's usually not what you want.) Transports will be shot down by enemy fleets with impunity, but unlike orbital bombardment, capturing a planet by invasion leaves its facilities intact.
Actually, that's wrong, as I haven't done much with Carthage since my tremendously stupid and symptomatic flip-out (thanks for being sympathetic), and I've been somewhat pressed for time. I think I might be up to play it in December/January, though, so see you there, perhaps.