[Spoiler] PB42: Rusten and mackoti play Krill playing Bismarck of Portugal

[Krill]

T137, GA T2




ITM to wealth, some specialists get swapped around, demos change slightly. I expect to have around 8 courthhouses completed or a few turns from completion at the end of the GA.





Note that OH is completing Compass this turn.

[Krill]

Update tomorrow morning, but I think I might be able to squeeze Machinery in before Monarchy. I'll know for sure on T140.

Also, I got graphs on superjm. He has less power than I do. The game is changing...

[Krill]

Turn 138, GA T3

So we got graphs on superjm this turn. I have not seen them since T120, so even though we lost them around T128 we had no screenshots to compare them to.




I am not concerned by OH's power because I can see everything be sent to his south western area, to invade DZ or superdeath (superdeath has to be to the south or south west of DZ, only unexplored area of the map), and DZ will be finished off by Lewwyn soon, so OH is going to force his share of the spoils. OTOH,superjm has to be worried about OT4E because OT4E is only balanced out in power by Gav: the moment Gav declares war on someone, or makes a move, OT4E can just rush north and start taking everything.

OT4E has MoM, and must be preparing to rush to knights with his first GA. I don't know if he is already getting there, but I have one warrior in his front city already, once scout probing around, and I am running a further scout down to get better coverage (and to hedge I am setting a sentry network up on the islands in the ring of fire in case anyone tries anything funny on my southern seaboard). The clock is ticking on superjm getting crushed from the south, and I need to make the decision to either join in, or to support him. At the same time, I may have an opportunity to join in on a war against Lewwyn by OH (but that is really risky, because it has the opportunity for OH to then swap sides in a 2V1, so I really don't want that in the near future, and the pay off is likely islands only).

What this means is after courthouses, straight military. Construction to Engineering, Feudalism to Guilds, Optics through to Paper (and Privateers), Construction are the core aims in some order, backed up with a Theocracy push and this will have to marry up to the great people plan: The second GA is going to be based around building up the army and revolting into Merc (and likely either Printing Press, Gunpowder or Nationalism, as Education for Universities and double OU doesn't fit this empire or available construction, I would need to use the GA itself to build the universities). The reality is that the second GA could come before I finished up on the Medieval era techs. And I need a navy, Portugal's time to shine.





I've gone and worked out the tile improvements for WB, BCR and by elimination, Kalamazoo. I'd appreciate it if someone would double check this, but it is not essential (I know that the eastern farm and eastern plains workshop need to be swapped).

Assuming Caste, Guilds and that once into Merc we run engineers in all cities, I think WB gets to 34 with caste, 38 with caste and Guilds, and then 40 base hpt at size 15, so it's basically churning out one turn knights.

Because it needs to grow, I'm focusing on getting it as large as possible prior to Optics because it needs to hit 27 base hpt to one turn Carracks, which is size 13 at 3fpt ie continued growth. I focused on one turning Carracks here because I the only other port city that has any production is Sing Sing Sing: every other city sucks, so I believe WB will be on Carracks for a good 30 turns, just churning them out. It'll need a market next, and it finishes the HE next turn as well as grows to size 9. At that point it will require 86 food to reach size 13, and then a further 49 food to reach size 15. At some point I need to get another source of happiness for size 15 (and then more for redundancy). Looking at size 13 by around T153? There are 4 workers around here already, should be enough to get WB tooled up in time.





Ultimately, BCR can grow to something like size 18, but it only needs size 14 to one turn knights. I know one of the none riverside workshops can be riverside, and BCR will use all of the sheep, corn and deer to feed the unit factory.

Again, Caste/Guilds/Merc hammer output is 36/40/42, which means that after Caste can change some tiles and start to grow it slowly up to the later game sizes needed for Rifles and Cuirs. Need a market for further happy as stated 2 turns ago, but here I think we have to farm some of the flatland tiles to reach size 14 and then swap everything over to workshops. I'm torn between just forcing units out of here straight away and growing it, but because we still need to get Machinery, Construction etc, this is the best time to grow. After HE is finished (pushed because I wasn't sure if superjm was going to invade, otherwise I would have built it slower) I think it takes around 100 food to reach size 14. Given the amount of tile improvements needed, including the farm>workshops clocking in at around 80 total worker turns, I need to bring another 4 up to support the single worker already here.

I was thinking I needed military out ASAP even for defensive units, but I reckon that need has never really existed except in my paranoia. And given I need Carracks to be able to do anything over in superjms land in response to OT4E, there is a window where building units just increases costs and stockpiles them for later waves: so long as BCR is building a unit per turn shortly before WB is churning out one turn Carracks, other cities will fill up the spare transport capacity and there is minimal need for stockpiling the rather naff units I can build now or in the next 5 turns.





Kalamazoo just takes whatever is left. Both cottages are given over to LBJ and ITM, which leaves 4 plains windmills, one grass windmill, copper mine and two grass workshops.

Caste/Guilds/Merc gives 25/27/29 base hpt at size 11, which needs 58 food for 2 pop growths. Just farming the spare grassland tile and windmilling the hills means growth will be good enough IMO. 2 cats/HA/LB every 3 turns is sound, and more than I expected TBH. The rounding isn't ideal but then it's not solveable until BCR gets to a much large size or Biology.





Overview of the northern industrial area.





Industrious started to turn on once we got forges down: In two turns it will have two copies of a single National Wonder down, but we will not be using it for a few turns. So by the end of the GA I would say it is fair to describe IND as providing a new advantage, and time to see if it is broken. Given the pain I've had from playing with a single trait and a baseline civ so far, I'm not seeing where I can get a payoff that is at the ZOMFG broken level.





What turn did Elkad die? T77-ish. So it's taken 61 turns to go from down a civ conquest, 84 v 69 food to up 337 v 320 and higher in population and land area. Whilst also hitting the boundaries of both horizontal and vertical growth in that time. I wasn't sure we'd reach this point and still have a decent tech position.





Top GNP is OH, but as he just finished a courthouse, I am now 1EP below the level of tech visibility, so I've gone and adjusted Ep spending again.

[Krill]

Techwise, I'm saving gold T138 and T139 as expected, but I think on T140 if I run 100% and can still have enough gold to run 60% on T141, then I can Monarchy on T142. I think. The beakers from the few scientists and artists I'm running gives a none negligible amount of beakers that should drop Monarchy to a 40% tech on T142, which is essentially breakeven.

Anyone have any questions?

[Krill]

For completeness sake, I've been considering alternative options for tech path during the GA.

Given that I have a sort of functional GP plan for if I revolted into Slavery, it is fair to say that this plan also works for a revolt into Serfdom. It is possible to get Feudalism (as Monarchy>Feud) and revolt into HR/Vassalage/Serfdom on the last turn of hte GA.

It's not the worst idea in the world: I'm going to be building units in WB, Kalamazoo and BCR, even if I'm not building a unit per turn from either HE city, Vassalage saves gold and is much cheaper than Bureaucracy, it's really not that much of a hit. Serfdom essentially takes the 21 work turns per turn I have up to about 33 (rounding), which if we went into a second golden age on, say, T160, would be the equivalent of 220 extra worker turns, or putting a windmill on every hill AND getting half of the 25 watermills down. Or it would be, if I had Machinery to build them. Because we don't have Machinery, Serfdom actually comes too soon and we lose a good chunk of that effectiveness. And Bureaucracy is worth around 30gpt and 20bpt, (considering wealth) but costs roughly 15gpt to maintain: Even Vassalage might save me 30-35gpt, but the units I'm building after the markets are likely to be back ups so aren't that necessary.

Also, I'd be stuck building HA and longbows, with no ability to build siege units: Machinery will open up maces, xbows and trebs, which are IMO better to "trickle" out (even whilst growing I should be averaging a unit per turn). The final problem being, I would be further away from Carracks, so even if I did get the economy built up a bit faster, and I did get to the point of building land units, I'd have no boats to move them anywhere. So Feudalism doesn't fit into what I need right now.

Construction has a similar problem: I don't need total cat production. Engineering is only really useful in getting units to embarkation points, so that can wait. Guilds? I do need that and I want Banking for Merc for the next GA, built I will want Maces to crack cities from boats as well so I can build them first whilst waiting for Guilds. No, the right path is Machinery because it gives everything I need and is the prerequiriste for every future tech>(Monarchy)>Compass>Optics and then push through to Guilds.

[Krill]

Looking at religion, I think I can plump for Confucianism now. I have Buddhism in WB only, so I can't get that spread. Hinduism is in a billion cities already and shrined, and I don't want to prop up OH, or give him the opportunity to cripple my tenuous happiness with a war dec if we are the same religion. Judiasm I could run with, and I could spread it from 3S which is a good production city already. But Confucianism is already spread in Kalamazoo and MtK so it's in an even better position to be spread from two decent cities and I probably have to plan to take over superjm anyway; at the very least the are up to Mids (not that OT4E would ever let me keep those cities, because they have the shrine and Mids, so I need to prepare for two wars, one after the other, and let OT4E make the first move).

And if worst comes to worst, I just raze the shrine, but there are some awesome tactical options that involve an Inchon/Inchoff style attack with an artist bomb at Ravenna if OT4E was really fast on reaching superjms core where I could trap his army. I'll look at grabbing Meditation for monasteries (but this does make the HBR grab look a bit stupid, but that's the effect of losing graphs).

[Krill]

And having now said that, I completely forgot I would probably end up declaring on the person that I shared state religion with and would shatter my own happiness in a completely ironic manner.

Turn report to come later. Lots more unreadable screenshots with tile improvements littering the landscape.

[Krill]

Turn 139, GA T4

Got tech visibility on OH back, ye finishes Optics this turn as expected. The age of Sail is beginning! Now let us all watch Donovan get his few unruly triremes get wasted by 3 move caravels and the power of CKN and swords!

In other words, clock is ticking. Even though Lewwyn signed peace, all that does it strengthen the wall OH has to bulldoze through if he wants to take over that an entire subcontinent, nothing is stopping OH from cutting Lewwyn in half with his circumnavigation empowered caravels and just chomping up everything, least of all pressure from me keeping him honest.





Perfect for OH, watching two food resources softening each other up right as he reaches CKN. Not that DZ has ever been given much of a chance by anyone in this game.

Onwards with more introverted things.





AoM uses all the tiles it can reach, and will still build Moai at some point. I count 3 forests to chop (Lighthouse and a workboat). 28hpt without water tiles at size 9, but the reality is it just has to grow and it will not take part in anything except self improvement. 46 or so worker turns needed here.





MW needs to reach size 15, and works all its unique tiles, plus what it has in this screenshot. Reaches 32 base hpt at size 15. Given teh lack of food though, I'm going to have to just farm everything to get it to size and then swap over. That would mean I need a further 56 worker turns just for the farms, on top of the 92 worker turns needed for the actual tile improves to work at size 15. There are only 3 remaining forests to chop as well, and these will basically be used to complete the market and forge (for happiness needed due to growth). Looks like the courthouse was a bad idea (but reality is I'm still going to need it at some point, but should have put these hammers into a forge). Conclusion is that I need more workers.





NW is actually at size already, but it can grow to size 14 on coast (I will build a feitoria). OTOH, I just need to swap the tile improvements over to get it to 22 base hpt (24 with merc, but because of the size discrepancy I'm going to have to swap tiles between MW and NW anyway so it may as well grow). Due to thatit's not that useful to think of this picture as anything except an end point. There is a good chance it grows to size 12 or so "Just because". I count 40 worker turns needed here.





Left over tiles given to AM mean size 12 and 28 base hpt is final position. I'm going to have to swap the corn over to TX to get that to size 12 at some point, but also need to farm a bunch of tiles to get it size 12 before swapping tiles back. Again, that's a further 20 worker turns above and beyond the 36 it already needs.





Overview. Those worker turn totals btw? I need 215 for the final improvements, and another 75 for initial farms. I have 21 workers for the whole empire. This is why Serfdom will always have a place...I need 7-8 workers to get this done and I have 4: with Serfdom I would only need about 5. Given I also need a further 2-3 workers for JJ and BCR area, that's a deficit of 6 workers between "Need for current pace" and what I have.

More to come later, but I need to get off the PC now.

[Krill]

Top score

   

[pindicator]

Time to pack it up, everything's already been accomplished