RBPB3 - Gandhi of the Egyptians

[T-hawk]

Do you need the catapult that badly this turn from Lancre to work all those terrible 2-hammer bare hills? Why not work food and then whip? The city has happy room.

[Krill]

Yeah, I'll be 1 unit down by the time Ottomans and India attack me, and as I'm looking at up to 50 units hiting me, I do need the numbers.

Next turn I get two mines on the plains hills that are currently being worked, and that will up the city to 50 hpt. I will start a WC/Pike/Pike cycle there once Engineering is in, so I'll be making 1 unit a turn from now until the area cools down, or I'm able to slow down the unit builds to grow etc.

Using a slave would mean not making a unit this turn, and carrying the overflow every subsequent turn, so I'd never catch up in the number of units.

Quick question: is the maximum overflow calculated before production modifiers are taken into account? e.g. if I build a WC, and put 70 adjusted hammers into it, is it then immediately truncated to 30 overflow hammers, then adjusted to 15 by the production modifier, or do I get the 20 hammers back and lose nothing?

[novice]

Thanks for the update. I must admit I've stopped paying close attention to the game, so your update frequency matches my reading frequency.

What are your intelligence sources for expecting an Indian-Ottoman attack? The power graph + realpolitik? And is paper around, or did you scout all that land yourself?

T-Hawk will answer your overflow question.

[Krill]

Indian-Ottoman attack, well, India have been increasing in power for no real reason. Only got 3 targets and I'm the one that would be "juiciest" to take over, and hte best for them personally. Ottomans I think would do it if they thought I left something open to attack, I don't consider them long term threat that would plan to go after me no matter what, they are in a 3v2 with HRE against Carthage and England, I figure they are more likely to play defence and try to tech it out (which would definitely be possible, 8v6 eventhough they got 4 relatively dead civs to our one in Egypt. That noob religion chaser is getting what he deserves now!)

I have heard "runours" from others that I am the target of an Indian attack, but nothing I can't see with my own eyes from the demographics. I was building up a defense prior to anythign reaching me, all it has done is confirmed that my preparations to knock out a fair chunk of pikes to supplement my WC force were not deluded paranoia.

Paper has not been sent around by everyone, I still have not requested it but then I'm lazy and don't need it. I think others in PAT and CUDDLE have started to receive it though.

And on the updates...now there is something to post about I'll probably post a bit more...sorry for the lull, but I'm not doing a demo on how WCs slaughter warriors and axes, and how big a n00b I am for constantly slaving my capital for 2 pop for settlers (I have two on the move towards Ottomans and India).

[Krill]

Reckoning "worst" case scenario is that India hits me in the next 5 turns with about 30 HA. If they don't start to move now then I should have too many pikes to fight through.

[T-hawk]

Quick question: is the maximum overflow calculated before production modifiers are taken into account?

I think yes.

e.g. if I build a WC, and put 70 adjusted hammers into it, is it then immediately truncated to 30 overflow hammers, then adjusted to 15 by the production modifier, or do I get the 20 hammers back and lose nothing?

Yes, I think it truncates to 30, then adjusted to 15. If you build another unit next turn, the 15 will get the production modifier re-applied.

[Krill]

Cool, I did it the right way then. That is also one of hte reasons I won't be slaving me HE city unless I'm in dire need of a mace or knight.

Thanks for that T-hawk

[Krill]

For some reason I can write 1k emails about how to play the game, but I can barely string 12 words together about anything else...

This was what I sent to the others in PAT (ran it pasty Malifirst, think it was SP), suggesting we take MT from Lib.

For those of you that dislike translating into English ,I'm sorry for the length of this email...1200+ words was more than I expected to write, but I think it was necessary to explain why I think MT is our best bet right now.

This brings me on to a central theme of this email: What is it that we as a group want, and as individuals, how can we get what we each need from this group.

As a group, we need space to expand into. Some of us, England, Babylon and Myself, have plenty. Others in Carthage and Mali need to start looking at expanding via warfare sooner than that. maya has at least enough space to double in size. Babylon, Maya and myself have to deal with Byz though, and in fact I have 4 neighbours that I need to be prepared to fight off. So how do we reconcile that difference in needs?

First of all, what do we each have in common? We all need to continue to research, some of us to funding and others to do the teching. This isn't going to change even if we are in war, it might even be more important to tech to the next era of units (like we are discussing now). We need each of MT, Rifling and Steel, what we are discussing is the order in which to get them, so it is fair to say that we shouldn't decrease our tech rate until we have them all.

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I know alot of you won't understand the relevance, but this is exactly the mistake that Kaz made in the MTDG. They built a massive army of maces ,upgraded and slaved, threw away a tech lead,and when they lost the attack, they opened the game up to SANCTA. The lesson from that game is simple: do not throw away a tech lead for an attack that isn't needed. We can't use Nationhood until we have established each economy so that it doesn't rely on one Bureaucracy powered academy city. I am perhaps the only one that would benefit from Nationhood due to Spi.

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So, if we go for Rifling, and we cripple our collective tech, what do we get? We get a 110 hammer, 1 move unit that has 25% against mounted units that we can get for 1 pop, but it costs 3 unhapppiness, so really quite limited amounts of drafting are possible if we are going to grow our cities and work those cottages to keep on teching. So we'll have a choice between letting Cuddle catch up in tech, or not drafting lots of rifles, instead building them along with everything else.

However, the MT option gives us this: An early and quick Taj/MoM combo for Mali to go beat the crap out of Inca and still fund/research, and a 100 hammer fastmover that flanks cats, trebs and cannon. Maya and Babylon, you just got a unit that is equal to Byzs' UU. England and Carthage, you just got a unit that will let you have odds on any knight force, and let you expand into Ottomans, and into Frances' land without riskiness because one stack can defend either side of your empires.

Do we need Rifling asap? I don't think we do. I think we want it as fast as we can reasonably get it after MT though, because that brings up the holy mother of god best unit in this era: the Cav. 120 hammers. Nothing gets odds on it until rifles (which I've already demonstrated will cripple CUDDLES tech to draft), it flanks everything until Arty, and has a 60% withdraw chance with F2. This is the unit that we want to be fielding, this is the uni that lets us take what we want, forking CUDDLE cities on the attack and covering as much ground as possible in our over-expanded empires.

The third option is that we aim for a Libbed Steel, which is doable if Maya wanted to bulb Chem, but Cannons aren't that useful for this reason:

They cost 100 hammers,and collateral astack, but the invaders cats are still there. The defender needs both the cannon to cripple the stack, and the units to finishit off. And as cannons are one movers, you need multiple stacks all over the place, and that is not cheap. We are still going to be building the 90 hammer knights, but on top of that we need to build 100 hammer cannons. it is actually better that we get cannons than rifles if you just consider the units, but Rifling is better because of Cavs. Cannons do let us attack though, as CUDDLE can't flank them away, nor can they collateral your stack while cannons defend...welcome back to the SP way of waging warfare. Problem is that C2 knights techincally have odds to survive, and Cataphracts generally win against Cannons, so Cannons are only really useful for Mali and Carthage if they were to push asap, and the rest of us were to sit back.

That is whyI prefer that we go for MT now and then research straight to Rifling afterwards (even using what little we can save up each turn to push Mali that little bit closer to finishing RP).

Now, what are Cuddle doing? What are they researching? They are getting Theo from Portugal, but that will be finished in the next few turns, and leaves open one very scary possibility for their 3 researchers in HRE, Portugal and Ottomans.

HRE: Gunpowder
Portugal: Theo then Nationalism
Ottomans: Education (this fits with their GNP imo)

What is the purpose of this? It gives them drafted muskets, units cheap enough to overwhelm us in numbers if they want to stack attack, or units powerful enough to just leave in a city to clean up against knights after one of us invades. They cat the knight stack (plus the junk underneath it) and flank with their knights, clean up with Muskets and other cheap junk. Meanwhile they then tech MT and get cuirs so that they can flank away cannons if we invade with those (using F2 cuirs).

So here is the plan again, tweaked:

Maya: Drama then Nationalism, overflow gold to Carthage
Carthage: Save gold, then Lib, save overflow
Babylon: Education, then Banking, overflow gold to Carthage
Mali: Constant funder to Babylon,
England: constant funder to Maya
Egypt: Constant funder to Maya

Once Banking is in, change to this:

Maya: Nationalism then Gunpowder, overflow gold to Carthage
Carthage: Lib, as fast as possible (won't be 100%, but doesn't have to be, 700 beakers less than Nat and has to take 1 turn longer)
Babylon: Funder to Mali
Mali: PP
England: constant funder to Maya
Egypt: Constant funder to Maya


Krill

[Krill]

Ottomans got a GS. Now I feel vindicated, we'll almost certainly go for MT.

[Krill]

Something I've been doing for the pastfew days is bug India about that incoming HA stack.

Wonder if they decide to keep the threat hanging over me instead of walking into a slaughter? They'll be pissed when I settle those 2 cities next turn, and they'vehung backon the attack because of that reason.