[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

i meannnnn i did that when we needed to get biology NOW..... and, um, i was kinda planning to do that this turn to shave the end off of steel research, which i feel that we really want to finish in 2t instead of 3t. but we need around 300 extra gold to pull that off so, yeah, i'll have to run wealth in cities that can 6 turn cavs if we want to make it happen. there are a few such cities whose current status is that they have a treb prebuild 1t from completion and don't want to start a cav instead of cranking more cannons, so i think that's an ok place for 2t of wealth, but those cities are not enough by themselves to get us over the line

yeah, my gut agrees with your gut. luckily it's only reeeeeally a live concern as of now at one former greenline city in the extreme south, which, um, already has 9 draft unhappy stacked up and so we probably have no choice but to let it grow a bit....



fortunately, i think this city has a compelling use case - many of our cities in the north are still sitting on at least one 2 gold trade route, since our size 14+ cities are aksum, takakeisho, wakamotoharu, and abi, which are all pretty northern. if we can power grow this city to 14 or even 18, we could turn their trade routes into something more closely resembling the pristine pair that this city is recieving

check out CMF posting in our lurker thread btw  somehow that makes me VERY nervous hahahaha

[ljubljana]

i thiiiink this is the new config for abi btw. that 6 is a lie, we are 4 points off from shaving off another turn so i'll work one more merchant for a minute to enable that. pretty nice having accidentally popped the WMH GP while abi has a nice full food box to burn through as long as we do NOT get a merchant from this one (which should be at most a 10% chance by the time we finish) we can then run through the last GP with 8 specialists for a 16 turn timing

although..... if it's an artist or scientist, as is pretty likely, we won't get to turn the rest of the food box into GPP as 8 would then be our ceiling for non-conflicting specialists and there is no way to raise that. so maybe this is better



but then our odds of popping a merchant go up to more like 1 in 7

anyways yeah this is why yall have been seeing a ridiculous "grocer" build here for the past many turns

[ljubljana]

thoughts?

normally i'd exit out of this so i don't hold up the turn by staying logged in forever, but..... i am heavily inclined to take it, and am worried they will change their mind or think better of it when we reoffer. or they could misinterpret us rejecting, then reoffering as indicating that we want a pact but want it kept secret from ginger until war breaks out! nothing could be further from the truth.... i don't think ginger should bother building up to attack us if we have a formal defpact, the only way their tank push works is if mjmd doesn't intervene with their own tanks. and meanwhile, i think the best outcome for india is that ginger invades zulu to slow us both down, and mjmd helps enough to keep us from dying, but NOT enough such that either us or ginger remain viable competition in a post-conflict world (and then mjmd conquers SD at the same time to seal the game). giving us a formal, public pact makes that much less likely i think, and makes our preferred outcome of mjmd and ginger teching up and then nuking each other much more likely. soooooo

The Big Question: is there some way that we can leverage this to delay railroad until after assembly line???

edit:

[ljubljana]

turn 150 overview

er, excuse me,,,, turn TWO50  the game's half over  and i'm sure we're favorites for that histograph win..... or would that be a histograph draw, under the no-score mod? 

anyways i've assiduously avoided big milestone updates but habits are made to be broken (says me of the three-hour civ turns....)

for fun you may wish to compare with our t243 update - anything look different?



you can see i've finally realized what i should have noticed 20 turns ago - railroads turn our northern border with ginger from "defensible" into an out-and-out disaster. kirishima, takayasu, and takanosho one city to the south are all 1-turnable from the fog by a tank stack after ginger declares war, from anywhere within 4 railed (or combat worker-railable!) tiles from the border. so i dropped every city in range on culture builds (kirishima will follow next turn post-forge), and had the cities that can swap the free mercs specialist over to an artist. luckily for us, mitakeumi's fourth-ring borders mean TWO of the critical tiles are in range (at takayasu and takanosho), so it seemed worth culture building here too even though we're delaying a precious, 1/3-finished levee to do so.... of course, if ginger notices they can just swap THEIR cities to culture builds to counteract that but a) hopefully they don't notice until we already have some amount of a lead and b) those notably are not tank builds, so if they do this they are still trading 1 for 1 in hammers with us which is not terrible

anyways, wakamotoharu, having finished its great prophet, is now belatedly growing onto the last moai tiles so i can draft off them  kirishima is small-on-purpose, first because WMH needed the corn and now i plan to keep it that way to minimize the damage we'll take from a ginger attack there. it and takayasu were doing their best ™ to get levees up (forge was a levee semi-prebuild, so we can work an engineer to get it done quicker) but if it appears next turn that there's any chance of flipping the tiles before war breaks out that will have to be backburnered  everyone else is spamming treb -> cannon save monster takakeisho, who would love to start ironworks after the levee completes but.... probably it has to just supply a few more cannon instead.

i'm also planning to start drafting a bit closer to "for real" this turn - you can see that hokutofuji is on a coast tile so it is a likely victim. keisho and WMH are exempt for now as we need them size 18 and 14, respectively, to give boosted trade routes to a large number of cities. the rest will get hit, but probably not for a few turns - better to draft from further away cities first so the troops can reach the front in time



the former border region with GT has seen the most ridiculous growth post-biology.... atamifuji and hoshoryu have become shockingly huge very quickly, and nearly all of the cities in former GT have become among our best producers. this border region, so hilly and miserable for so long, is now Unleashed, for whatever good it will do us, training cavs to fight off tanks  or um... building wealth, as tomokaze is doing with its 25 hpt (a few cities have to do this or our trebs will actually come out trebs next turn....)

lalibela, among our best hammer cities since size 2, is now out to 37 hpt and is about to get a coal mine. even myogiryu, former garbage filler that i almost didn't settle, is up to 27, almost in 4 turn cav range. gondar is our first city that has grown onto a specialist due to a combo of high food surplus and low tile count due to american cultural pressure, and my finger hovered over the draft button until i realized it is actually itself boosting trade routes in around 10 cities at size 14. so that merchant is producing some 14 effective commerce, and is worthwhile for now. abi is frantically starving down for our next golden age which SHOULD come in 19 turns if (we live that long and) do not roll the merchant chance

and aksum finished our first levee this turn and has ascended to godhood



yeah, maybe i over did it a bit.... we are now MORE than 1t-ing a rifle (or cav, if we wanted to go that route) and are going to just start building overflow from here until we hit the cap (is it 110 base hammers for a rifle, or 110 post-modifiers = 49 base hammers?). so the plan is to make commando-eligible rifles every turn until we would waste overflow, then dump a big chunk of it into a more expensive infra project like a library or market, which i do think are worth making here with the city up to 40 raw commerce unboosted. i was torn on whether to make the levee at all or not, until i realized this city could probably use such tricks to make a 1t university and bank, which we will need eventually if oxford and wall street are to be in our (distant) future



meisei and ichiyamamoto have also ascended from miserable filler status to demigodhood. ichiyamamoto in particular was garbage all game long - we founded it early just for the silver and it stagnated at under size 6 doing nothing for (literal) ages on end. but now with bio, everything has changed. kinbozan by contrast represents the fate of our desert core - it carried us in terms of commerce for so long (and it and tobizaru are still strong commerce cities) but will probably never surpass size 7 with me shaving a draftee off every 13 turns (that's how long it takes to get from 5->7). i may sacreligiously farm over its towns  since working 2 desert hill windmills instead (and building wealth) is actually better (and will be much better with a factory and environmentalism). similarly ichi is getting a silver-bladed windmill soon (and should have done so a while ago) since there is not enough food to work all the hills in this region even with one, so silver windmill + desert windmill gives more yields than a silver mine alone



here is takanosho of part 2 of the depressing border situation fame. i think this is the tile we're most likely to get back, though we are furthest behind right now in terms of percentages - it and mita are putting 72 culture/turn on it, and we have a ring bonus vs the offending (taj-building....) ginger city as well. and thank goodness, it would be a nightmare to have to stack obsolete garbage here as well as in kirishima/takayasu (which can at least help defend one another, in that one can help counterattack wounded units that tried to attack the other). daieisho, crappy for so long, is the miserable desert success story, with pretty much 2 worthwhile tiles and 35 hammers/turn. and tobizaru is sad and has been stuck on research duty over continuing its crawl towards a 6-hammer levee and borderline-relevance



ok, so this area has not really changed since t243.... it's provided a lot of draftees though! and is about to provide more, with hungary rush due to be drafted again this turn, CTR next turn (for now three rifles we've gotten out of this miserable culture war - that's even more than mjmd got for free by flipping it ). and even Ultimate Filler onosho is surprisingly close! these cities are all running artists, though i'm starting to question whether they will actually pay off before the game's end. probably merchants would have been better but i want that plains town!!! it is in range of three cities, getting ring bonuses from two of them, yet is still at only 40%! that indian city must have some crazy culture infrastructure.... anyways, if we do stick with the artists, these cities are likely to hit FOURTH-ring borders during our golden age or shortly thereafter, at which point we should finally see some real movement here.... until mjmd turns on the culture slider, that is



ura, once among our mightiest cities, is... still pretty mighty. i finally remembered that it's a border city and have stacked a (token) garrison here.... 5 desert tiles is a lot, but it's better than GGGA stacking, which is working some of the most miserable tiles i have ever contemplated (4 hammer desert copper mine, THREE hammer desert hill mine....) for lack of worker labor and with 9 draft unhappy faces on the books for 30 turns. so it goes.... despite it all the city is still strong at 22 hpt, though not on the level of its companion DotR, which is also working some pretty miserable tiles (desert silver mine....) but is 3t from a levee :O



magnus, as i think i mentioned in passing, is to my somewhat-surprise the best of our greenline acquisitions, and at 41 hammers per turn is our third-strongest producer. and work ethic is our dumbest, up FIVE sizes in seven turns (!!) and probably about to power-grow to 18 to boost some trade routes in the north. when food-optimized it has a cool +17 food surplus, seems legit. you can see from the pins that i'm even contemplating an ultra-late globe theater here! probably won't do it but while we do technically have enough cities to hit the "draft every city every 10 turns" dream of no-net-draft-unhappy, in practice we have enough food-capped undraftable plains hill windmill spots that i don't think we can actually get away with it. so it would be nice to get the load lightened somewhat (and unlike other cities with high food surplus, there is really nothing else viable we can do with bare plains to make it a worthwhile food sink)



we're finally working all of greenline's towns almost! well, we COULD be, but pillage farming is the only city in range of those two southernmost plains ones and i have it on food-neutrals instead. that city has a miserable slow-growth period ahead of it as we try to work up to getting all its levee tiles online (and taking the other towns back from ouch in so doing). but it is making 28 hpt so that's chill 

CSR as i mentioned is working 3 coast tiles for lack of space to add more draft unhappy.... but after seeing the gondar sitch (which, by boosting TRs at size 14, somewhat obviates the need for another size 14 city down here to do the same) i may draft it once more just the same. coast is coast (is draftable) after all. and VA i drafted last turn which is why it's sad and has an actual unworked plains mill. some of these border tiles are third-ring to the mjmd city and thus probably unrecoverable, but the town and the two improved plains hills are all at around 40% zulu, so i'll probably work artists until we have them back and then switch over to merchants. and idk if ouch will stay on that very suspect culture build.... but i'd like to invest 50 hammers to take it to third-ring borders for defensive purposes. if ginger invades here they will surely crack a border city and i do NOT want a location this central and strategically significant to suddenly relinquish all our tiles that we need to mount a recapture attempt (not to mention it would be 1-turnable by 2-movers if both the border cities fell )

OKAyyy my hand huts (and my back hurts, sitting upright without a chair to type this all out....) and there's still an actual turn to play? oh welllllll

see yall tomorrow for more contemplation of the imminence of our doom (but we got some nice screenshots out of semi-surviving this long, wouldn't you say)

[williams482]

Seems like the empire is chugging along pretty well. A late globe for nonstop drafting is certainly intriguing, and it looks like Work Ethic probably has the production to squeeze it out in a reasonableish time? Shame we can't do any whip overflow tricks at this stage in the game.

Do we not need the happiness from silver at this point? Or have we got multiple safe sources with no viable trade prospects?

[williams482]

Also, with Ginger outright MIA at this point, I'd be extremely surprised if a carefully executed tank timing attack (on us or mjmd) is on the horizon. How we should best respond to that is of course unclear.

[ljubljana]

Also, with Ginger outright MIA at this point, I'd be extremely surprised if a carefully executed tank timing attack (on us or mjmd) is on the horizon. How we should best respond to that is of course unclear.

hmm.... i do not know if i'd be that surprised. i don't think this tank push is really something requiring careful execution or planning - or, to the extent that it is, civac already supplied that by getting them to industrial in the fastest possible timeframe. at this point, all that any replacement would have to do is set every city on tank builds next turn, and with their 1500ish MFG they'll have 40 tanks in around 5 turns. and there you go - Tank Push. now the tactical execution would require some degree of finesse (and maybe we'll be lucky and squeeze cultural control of the disputed tiles out of their chaotic turnplayer situation) but i'm confident any replacement would be plenty capable of executing it competently. and really there isn't much you can do with 40 tanks that DOESN'T threaten the player with rifles, cavs, a handful of cannons, and not yet rails

re silver, we definitely need the happiness (most of our cities are only in the green thanks to hed rule and we may be dropping that for representation come GA time....), but due to our expansionist tendencies we actually have THREE sources (the other two at sites where we do have the food to eventually work them). admittedly i have been guilty of neglecting a careful search for trade opportunities for the surplus.... but tbh, at this point i think the only resource we don't have a native supply of is bananas (and now deer since we are bribing ginger with our only source in exchange for open borders). oh wait, and also whales, which nobody has hooked up all game so far as i can tell. but actually if we need to, we can get a source of whales pretty easily by building culture in pillage farming.... although idk if that's worth it when we're just a few techs shy of obsoleting them at combustion

sigh, sadly if ginger is AWOL for real the most likely outcome is that we never get to know and that t250 update is actually an end of game update, which is the real reason i bothered to write one up.... that would be a shame as i still think this game is competitive, but um, if one of the two empires between whom it is competitive doesn't have a turnplayer, what can you do. mjmd's far enough in front at this point (and, tbh, has a favorable enough diplo situation with ottomans unwilling to cow us or give us the kinds of diplo assurances i would need to think about switching sides) that my winprob estimates are something like 70% mjmd, 20% ginger, 10% us, but that is not a callable game under normal circumstances (....right?)

[ljubljana]

251



man's got some serious production to burn, it looks like.... or really is going to go for the late culture try. not sure that's correct when they're this close to a conventional wincon though - why let ginger become the only power with nukes by turning on the slider?

well, rough news on the cultural front:



a turn of 70 cultural production resulted in.... just 1% movement in the tile that exposes takanosho to 1t-ing. oops.... well, we did also get 1% in the takayasu tile and that one COULD flip in time since it's not at 54/45, so i guess i think culture builds here are still worth trying.... at mitakeumi at least. but maybe takanosho should just deal with it and make a cannon, idk. in 8 turns of this it will hit 60% defenses at least (and add another ring bonus towards controlling the tile) so that's not nothing but... unclear whether the not-nothing that it represents is still net worthwhile with war likely to come sooner than that

to be honest i'm a bit confused as to why we only saw 1% movement as the tile below takanosho's disputed plains moved by 2%, and it's out of range of mitakeumi and so recieved half as much culture last turn..... so maybe we will get a few 2% turns at the plains and have it back in more like 6-7 turns? though frankly i don't know if even that's better for us now than 2 extra cannons would be

well, as long as the ottoman player has tanks and rails and we lack anything that can defend against tanks, controlling these tiles will be of pretty paramount importance so we don't just get stabbed completely out of nowhere and lose 3 core cities. so maybe cultural builds until we control them would be correct even in peacetime, idk. i guess i'll try it for one more turn at least in the hopes of getting some more encouraging numbers in so doing... idk, lmk what you guys think



magnus topped out (more or less)



Significant Build #1 for this turn.... i fully promote him and show him off to the ottoman explorer, to illustrate that we do have SOME defensive scheme in mind should they choose to attack us lol



and Significant Build #2, hopefully the first of many rather than the first of one



yeah, feeling pretty confident about the mass-wealth build hypothesis.... even west point builder zephyrion hasn't produced a unit in 6 turns or so, which we know since civac hasn't been playing double-turns and therefore we have moved before them every round during that period (and scouted this city for any new units that might have emerged at turn roll)



EPs for our semi-regular checkup next turn



nowhere really made sense for drafting this turn, so i did some exceedingly painful ones.... atamifuji, hoshoryu, and tomokaze all got hit. those levees were due in 4.... now they aren't  but i think these cities are all less than 10t from working specialists, so probably the hammer conversion will end up ok, and they are very clear cases of "troops we send now will be lucky to arrive before the fight is over" so

our mfg was above 1000 for the first time all game at the start of this turn.... aaand now it isn't  but we have two mighty levees finishing next turn so we shall rebound



i didn't do this last turn to make sure we could squeeze one more draftee out, but we might need to allow CTR to take some 8% revolt chances again so we can stuff 8 more obsolete defenders in kirishima and takayasu.... as far as i can tell, the best chance we're going to get to hold those cities involves having physically more units in them than ginger has tanks, so they can't take them in one turn without exposing their tank stack to cannon-based counterattack. and anyways my sims show that a gifted city, which CTR still is, will never flip back to the gifter, so we SHOULD be talking about an 8% chance to lose 3 turns of production, not to lose the city completely (if my sims are wrong about that then thaaat's a big oops....). i will not do the same in hungary rush which WILL flip if it suffers one more indian revolt

and for that defensive scheme to have much hope of succeeding i think we need



railroad tech, and a good deal sooner than the 7-turn are-you-serious ETA we get at breakeven. mjmd is doing their best but the 2 workers they have allocated to the task are really not enough to reach the kirishima-takayasu-takanosho danger zone in time to threaten an attacking tank stack with cannon collateral.... so nauf and mjmd both get loan requests for all their treasury (mjmd's is 1200).... my expectations are not high here but if they DO both accept we should be able to shave maybe 3 turns off of that without taking major diversions from endless military production

speaking of rails



is this unit good against tanks? eg, is it better than a hand-produced CG3 tokurifle? it can take ambush which is something and takes it to 22.5 defensive strength in a city... while a CG3 rifle has 24.5.... and the rifle can actually, you know, ATTACK a tank

i guess one thing it can do is defend our coastline, if ginger starts making marines and shipping them over by transport. not sure how many it's worth making in anticipation of such a use case though

anyways, perhaps this is all overreacting but if it is, i think it's no big deal.... if for some reason ginger or the new ottoman player gives us reason to expect we are NOT about to be tank-pushed (and if someone new does take over i will immediately cow them just to check), we can just finally build long-delayed banks (we still have zero banks) after this round of cannons finishes. it's not like we really want to NOT have a nice cannon stack and rails in hand between now and AL for security purposes anyways, and while i would of course rather make factories before banks than vice versa, i suppose neither approach is terrible per se... rails would also be pretty essential for responding to an indian invasion of superdeath or cultural victory try, if THAT is how this game is going to conclude

[xist10]

MG are a very difficult unit to use correctly. I don't want to say much, but I would recommend to search MG / machine gun in greenlines PB72 story.
Anyway you don't want to built MG; because the promotions a MG can take are horrible.
The best MG are upgraded crossbows and/or grenadiers.

[williams482]

Yeah, unless you can upgrade CG units to machine guns then they just aren't very useful except for shutting down attacks by less advanced units. I.E, the inverse of your situation. They aren't even an effective marine counter; marines get +50% against them, which neatly counters the MG +50% vs gunpowder and leaves the 24:18 strength edge.