It's Clobberin' Time! Raging Barbs Highlands Tokugawa on Monarch

[shallow_thought]

I did consider both MilTrad and Chemistry-Steel. In practice it didn't matter (much) for my turnset, but yes, this is a good time to have that discussion.

One thing to consider is that if we are going to build universities, earlier is better than later. It might be slow and ugly to kill Julius with rifles and trebs, but it can be done. Depends on whether we think we're shorter on production or commerce, and how much impact tech trading is going to have from now on, forcing us to run harder just to keep up.


In a "normal" game, MilTrad is great, and it could still be very useful here. Ignoring anything else, the ability of two-movers to get to the front quicker might help us kill Julius slightly faster. And why have we built all these stables if we're not going to grab it? The argument against is that it _can_ be skipped if we think we're going to push as far as infantry. 

Chem-Steel is nice, and we want cannon. Trebs are OK still against cities, but I'm not expecting a great survival rate. Cats are going to die in the field, suiciding if we're lucky, flanked if we're not. But that's a lot of beakers, and Uni's might actually start paying off in a similar timescales (maths needed).

Also, Oxford - we could well be in Bureaucracy longer than a "normal" game with this tech rate. Although we do now seem to have a clear GNP advantage.

[haphazard1]

I will have to look at the save to do some maths. But how many of our cities are generating enough beakers to make universities pay off in a reasonable time frame? Unis are expensive.

Cavalry or cannons would both be nice, but rifles and trebs should be plenty to wipe out the AIs especially with drafting in an empire as large as ours. Cranking out tons of units and just running over the enemy should be possible at this point, although it will be bloody.

If this game lasts long enough for infantry to be a factor, something (else!) will have gone spectacularly wrong.

[Zalson]

I will have to look at the save to do some maths. But how many of our cities are generating enough beakers to make universities pay off in a reasonable time frame? Unis are expensive.

Cavalry or cannons would both be nice, but rifles and trebs should be plenty to wipe out the AIs especially with drafting in an empire as large as ours. Cranking out tons of units and just running over the enemy should be possible at this point, although it will be bloody.

If this game lasts long enough for infantry to be a factor, something (else!) will have gone spectacularly wrong.

We should plan on getting infantry -- we're going for conquest! This game is going to keep going for quite some time; as such, all of our cities that produce a large amount of science should build universities.

We have a lot of conscript musketmen; have we considered using them absorb some of the low-odds battles?

Finally, we definitely want military tradition: if we can get west point in Cholo, we can have commando rifles and infantry very soon. But, I think, long-term, we want education first.

Also: we have like 80 units in Roman territory. I know his stack is big but ours is bigger. He can attack it and we'll shred it on the counterattack.

EDIT: that's a lot of spy specialists.

EDIT: wow we need more workers

[shallow_thought]

We have a lot of conscript musketmen; have we considered using them absorb some of the low-odds battles?

Also: we have like 80 units in Roman territory. I know his stack is big but ours is bigger. He can attack it and we'll shred it on the counterattack.

EDIT: that's a lot of spy specialists.

EDIT: wow we need more workers

Even our conscripts come with C1 and D1; they just (mostly) refused to die! But yes, plausibly could have saved a couple of cats and sacrified muskets instead.

I do think that it's efficient to catch his stack in a city and shred it with trebs, rather than letting those cuirs hit us on hills or in a city. But it does rely on him not killing all our trebs with flanking damage on flatland. We'll see.

I have no excuse for the spy specialists .

I did build a few workers; I certainly agree we need more. It's just we have so much to build - first wealth, then rifles, replacement siege, commerce buildings. Also, I'm not claiming the use of workers was especially efficient. Some of that was down to barbs and roaming Roman units.

[Zalson]

Well, that's good news! Good job getting rifles!

[Zalson]

Just finished playing through start 5; just won domination in the 1800s.

I founded 47 cities— we should probably try to fill all our available slots soon. Even the tundra iceballs were useful for holding back barbs and generating some cash. So we should found all those spots.

I also lost focus at the end; I probably could have one several turns earlier with better focus. Once we can get commando units, it’s all over. So we should try to get military science too. I had like 80 cav and they were too slow at the end

We are also going to need a ton more workers. Railroad and AirPower will also be useful. The ability to airlift to the front meant I could drop a machine gun into a newly captured city and let the commandos roll on.

I also had the monk trio in all its absurdity. Hope we can get that in this game.

[RFS-81]

Sorry, Frostpunk completely absorbed me yesterday, and I have to do non-gaming stuff today. I'll still look at the safe this evening to see if I have any questions, and probably start playing Monday.

[haphazard1]

I would certainly hope that this game never gets to air power, or even railroads. We have rifles and our enemies do not, so unit spam and conquest should be our primary focus. Founding more marginal cities in the tundra is not going to help us much; Roman cities will be much more useful and productive.

[shallow_thought]

I'm kind of hoping it does get to railroads, because it would make our eventual running over the AIs easier, and I'm lazy.

I do favour the idea that seizing other people's stuff is going to be more efficient than building our own going forward (I'm sure Mansa and Jules have lots of tasty wonders for us to exploit ). I'm just not sure quite how easy it's going to be, even with rifles. Airships are going to be annoying - and Julius will have them any time now.

Actually, mechanical question. Really basic one. How do walls / castles etc. actually work? How do they interact with the cultural defence value? And what happens now that we have gunpowder weapons, which (I believe) are supposed to "obsolete" them. I rarely build them myself, and usually just have enough siege to wear down AI defenses without worrying about where they came from.

[haphazard1]

Walls and castles provide a fixed defensive value (50% or 100%) that can replace the cultural defense value of the city -- you get whichever is greater. If the city owner also has Chichen Itza, add 25% on top of the higher defensive value. Walls and castles also reduce the effectiveness of pre-gunpowder siege units at reducing defenses, with each structure halving the effectiveness. (This effect stacks, so one quarter pre-gunpowder siege damage for castles.)

Once gunpowder units are in the field, they ignore the defensive bonus of walls/castles and only see the cultural defenses (plus Chichen Itza, if appropriate).

Example 1: A city with 40% culture defense (borders popped twice) has walls. A samurai attacking the city will see 50% defenses from the walls. A musket attacking the city will see 40% defenses from culture. Cats and trebs reducing defenses will be slowed by half.

Example 2: A city with 60% culture defense (borders popped three times) has walls. All units attacking the city will see 60% defenses. Cats and trebs reducing defenses will be slowed by half.

Things get a bit confusing if you have a mix of gunpowder and non-gunpowder units attacking a city with walls/castle where the defenses have been partially bombed down by siege; the percentages get a bit weird. But generally the fraction of the entire defense which has been reduced gets applied to both the cultural defense and the non-gunpowder defense (if it would be greater). You can switch between gunpowder and non-gunpowder units and see the city defense value change on the screen; also, you can always look at the detailed combat odds in the tooltip to see what is being applied.

As for air ships, they are annoying. But this is one area where great general super medic healers help a lot. Unless Julius has a lot of air ships, we should be able to heal any damage done in a turn or at most two. Usually you can do this while the siege units are working on defenses, so you only have one turn's worth of air ship damage before you actually attack the city. And if Julius wants to spend his hammers building air ships rather than cuirassiers or muskets, that is not entirely bad for us as it means less defenders in his cities. WIth a big attacking stack, he should not be able to damage enough units to really make much of a difference.

Air ships are more useful on the attack then on defense, as they can be used to damage the top defender. They are also very useful against ships, where stacks tend to be much smaller and damaging one or a few units can make a much bigger difference.