[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

We're not at war, Yuris. Really! We've been friendly all game, haven't we? But it *would* be a shame if something were to happen to your navy, wouldn't it? :evil grin:

Yeah, when you're the clear game leader and there's no chance of a dog-pile, sometimes being a bit of a bully is all it takes. Really, suppose he gets Privateers and Muskets. How on earth is he going to be able to compete with our massive head start on fleet building of superior ships and massive advantage of number of ports? Not to mention upcoming plans for Kremlin. Or if war does get declared... that just makes it easy for us to finally get around to building Heroic Epic, doesn't it?

Though really, if we are going to declare war, we might want to give a thought to taking or razing his shrine city. That would probably end the game fairly quickly. If we put together a fleet 6-8 frigates over there and a couple handfuls of Grens and Muskets, I don't see what he can do to defend the city.

State Property might help us get more cities up to sizes where bigger boosts to trade income are a thing; I know there's a couple workshops around Pale/Unta for instance, and our ice island would just explode in food. Of course, Ice Island has a long way to go to catch up to really big sizes, so it probably wouldn't really happen before the end of the game. Maybe somewhere else is better positioned to make for another big city away from our western core. Black Coral, perhaps?

[Zed-F]

Double turn might actually happen! Will wonders never cease!

[scooter]

Yeah, looks like the double turn was real. Also.

Though really, if we are going to declare war, we might want to give a thought to taking or razing his shrine city. That would probably end the game fairly quickly. If we put together a fleet 6-8 frigates over there and a couple handfuls of Grens and Muskets, I don't see what he can do to defend the city.

He has stocked up the city pretty big and is watching me with Caravels, so it's pretty hard to surprise him now. But yeah, I'll reconsider trying again if things get hot. I am just hesitant to open up a window for SD to make a play on S Island. That part of the world he has a lot more units and now has a good amount of Galleons. I have enough in the area to defend, but not so much attack and defend at once. Bluffing at the city might be worthwhile though.



Here's some graphs from last night's turn as I took the full set.





This was the most striking one to me. You can see very clearly where I started capturing/razing stuff while expanding/growing my own cities. For a very long time my food lead hovered around 30-40F, and now it's around 200F. You can also see that everyone ran out of expansion options, and cities began hitting their natural ceilings. Superdeath in particular had to whip himself hard to make up for his lack of military.





A lot of it was other players whipping out armies. Thanks to MoM-enhanced production, I've been able to do buildups without whipping nearly as much.





It's also striking to compare my previous GA production to the current one. I think the mega-aggressive post-Astro settlements where I went all-in on squeezing out cities, worker, and work boats as fast as logistically possible is paying off now. Those cities are all useful mid-size cities now.






You can see the long stretch where I was frequently running my slider around break-even starting around 900AD in an effort to mask my true tech rate. I've stopped doing that. Yuris's non-GA spike is so large that combined with his flattening power, I suspect he's running Wealth builds.





The 0 Imports/Exports is satisfying. Also, Superdeath continues to subsidize the world's tech rate.

[scooter]

I started the turn with a tough decision. Bizen was not empty or near-empty as hoped. However, there was still an oppportunity here. There are no cultural borders, the Longbow is not promoted, and it has only 10% fortify bonus. (Yes, this means the Longbow was very recently not here). However, if I were to give my Musket C1 and Cover, my odds of killing the Longbow would be around 60%. The Archer would be cleanup for the second Musket. Those are pretty good, but not amazing odds. It would be nice to get some raze gold and kill a minor city. The city has a Granary, Lighthouse, and Harbor, so there's some value to be had in killing it.


In addition, we are just 4xp away from a GG, and Yuris has 3 killable Caravels in various places. All of that said, there are some downsides.


* 40% chance of turning a cold war hot for little benefit

* If Yuris doesn't take peace, maybe others join in?

* Pale goes unhappy due to losing Yuris' Silk

* We have been friends all game, maybe I shouldn't fire the first shot even if I am actively polishing my guns!


I didn't take the shot.





He covered the other two spots with plenty of units. This is the other thing is he does have more units in thet area than I do. I decided to back off. However, I did have to do something with that Galleon, as it will be visible as a result of all of this and in range of Yuris' Galleons. As a result, I combined most of my boats in the area onto the tile 1SE of where it was. This still represents a tri-fork of Seville, Bizen, and the previously unthreatened Hakodate. So maybe I'll force a couple more whips.





I wonder if Yuris took a shot at this city down here and just missed. I don't know what else this could be. Cairo can easily kill this Galleon with his units in the area, and he already has a scouting Caravel, so it's not like he lacks for vision.





Man, my revolt odds here have been annoying. So far this city 1) went into a revolt on the first possible turn after it came out of capture revolt, then 2) had just two turns of normal functioning during which I popped borders with Caste/Merc, then 3) went back into revolt on the second possible turn. Come on. I ferried in another Musket and a missionary, the latter to improve the culture situation further. A pair of Grens are also on their way from the core - TBD on whether they go here or towards the Yuris/Cairo front. I sent SD a fish-for-fish, and I intend to try to warpeace him when the treaty expires in a couple turns. He's shown no interest in doing much but pressing enter, FWIW, so I think he'll accept.





Landed the Artist. This means I can tech Communism, pop a 3-man, and go from there. I went ahead and turned tech back on this turn prior to the dice roll because I decided I'm going to want Liberalism anyway for Free Religion, so no harm regardless. I think I simply head straight to Communism now. Still open to Physics first, but Communism seems correct.





Yuris finished Gunpowder, so I do have to watch out for Privateers now. But he's still 2 techs from Frigates.

[Zed-F]

Great to see the Artist pop. I suppose if we really want a merchant for Sid’s we can theoretically get one more GP during our next GA… especially in the unlikely circumstance where Taj is still available. But we do want to get Kremlin built in good time, so I tend to agree that saving our current merchant for Sid’s is probably not the right call, unless we see a need to whip out a round or two of airships / Grens / Frigates / SotLs before launching GA3. Doesn’t seem too likely, unless Yuris decides to turn things hot more quickly than we expect.

I do agree that waiting for him to fire the first shot feels right when we have more borders to cover with higher quality troops, and less ability to concentrate forces in any one place. Just posturing and asking tough questions has been good enough so far and might continue to be.

Man, it’s a good thing we don’t really need Bawating for anything, though! I wonder if Hovenweep shouldn’t just steal its food for the rest of the GA as punishment. Maybe the rest of the game!

[scooter]

Superdeath played a 2 minute turn yesterday, so he's checked out.

Worth noting that while he played a 3 minute turn today just now after me, he just whipped away 22 population and did not echo my fish-for-fish.

[Zed-F]

I guess that *could* make us more likely to need to whip out a round of military while we research Physics before launching GA3… have to see what our rivals decide to do.

[scooter]

Yuris and Cairo peaced out. Superdeath also landed an Engineer. That might help him get to Chemistry much more quickly.





Yuris covered all his bases and did some whipping. So I politely backed off. Technically I could have taken a shot at Toyama here, but the odds of success would have been much lower than they were for Bizen. In general I've forced Yuris to tie up a bunch of defenders in the region spread thin across 5-6 cities, so that's a net positive for me I think. I retreated back to Barcelona.





One very funny side effect of the Yuris/Cairo peace. I'm sure this is not what Yuris wanted to see!





Fallen Embers came out of revolt at end of turn. Sadly there's no way to avoid staravation next turn, so I'll pop borders and squeeze out a few beakers. I'm not quite sure which specialist gets unassigned at starvation time, so I have one more artist than necessary slated to be worked.





I've quietly worked very hard to stock these front cities in advance of my SD peace expiration. The Grens/Muskets in Hovenweep moved 9 tiles this turn to get into it, and Bawaiting is well-stocked. Ugarat being a bit thin for this one turn is the one issue, so I sought to block one possible path with Frigates. I probably should have placed them on different tiles, but in general if he wants to try boating this city next turn, he's welcome to try. I don't think he will, but we'll see I guess. Attempting it would surely do him more harm than good given my counter options.





Cairo picked up Gunpowder rather than Nationalism, so maybe Taj will be open after all. Hard to say - we'll see in a half dozen turns where everyone's at.





Chemistry timers.


Superdeath: Needs Gunpowder + Chemistry
Yuris: Needs Engineering + Chemistry
Cairo: Needs Engineering + Chemistry
Bing: Needs Astronomy + Civil Service *or* Theology + Paper + Guilds + Gunpowder + Chemistry


Pretty soon we'll start seeing players putting beakers into Chemistry. I queued a couple SotL just to make sure I have a couple on each front well in advance. At current rates of tech I would expect that to take at least 10T or more, but with two Engineers out there, I think Gunpowder for SD and Engineering for Cairo would both be bulbable. I could be wrong on that, but it seems right to me. Can double check later.





Set tech to 80% just for this screenshot to illustrate my approximate timers. I won't quite finish Communism by end of this GA, but I'll come within 1-2T max of doing so. I could finish it with wealth/research builds of course, but I see no need to rush. A turn or two to whip some things would be nice before going back to Caste GA.


Speaking of GA, I do need to do some checking on the Mercantilism vs State Property tradeoff. Will look into that and just verify my belief that SP is worth it.

[Zed-F]

Agreed that we want to double check to confirm State Property is where we want to end up, rather than Mercantilism or Free Market.

How long do we need to be in Slavery for? Does leaving a GA and entering a new one reset the revolt timer, or do we need to change our civics and swap into Slavery before the end of this GA if we don’t want to have to wait the full 5 turns before starting our 3rd one & revolting again?

Taj would be nice to build but I tend to doubt we get a chance; it might appeal to Cairo to rush that rather than bulbing Chemistry. I guess we’ll see.

It seems like once we have Kremlin + State Property/Slavery (potentially after our GAs) and are building our military again, Bing might be the next target since he’s still so far from anything with which to defend against Grens, whereas others should have at least muskets. Or maybe we’ll see an opportunity to snipe some more territory for cheap before then. I get the sense from his score that his economy is improving and he might get to the Renaissance eventually.

[scooter]

Agreed that we want to double check to confirm State Property is where we want to end up, rather than Mercantilism or Free Market.

I checked on all civic decisions. The TL;DR is I think our preference during GA turns will be roughly: HR-Vassalage-Caste-StateProp-FreeReligion. These numbers are based on our current Golden Age (relevant for SP 10% hammers), but seeing as we'll be in a GA for the vast majority of the next 25T, it's relevant.


I checked on Vassalage vs Free Speech, but we have just 4 towns, and will have at most 7 in the next 10T, so Vassalage really is a no-brainer. It loses on gold by ~10gpt, which is a small price to pay for second promotions.


Economic civic is the most interesting. Free Market is just straight-up better than Mercantilism now that we aren't trying to generate multiple Great People. The +1 trade route everywhere is worth approximately 145 commerce/turn right now, whereas the maximum Merc could be worth - scientist in cities with a Library - is ~127bpt. However, something like 40% of our cities have neither a Library nor Market, so it's markedly less than that. If we ever do detour for Representation maybe the conversation changes again, but for now not so much.


State Property saves roughly 150gpt in distance maintenance right now, and that will increase a bit as our newer cities grow, and saves another 13gpt off low civic upkeep. On pure cash this edges out Free Market. Add on 17fpt and ~31hpt based on going city-by-city, and it comes out ahead. I know the hammer calculations are fuzzy due to some loss on overflow, but I think this is about right. This is also before I potentially add a few more workshops. So unless I'm missing something, State Property clearly wins out here.


As for religious civics, Pacifism is not worthwhile for anything other than a GP burst. Maybe we'll need that for 5T at some point, but otherwise we're done with it. Free Religion vs Theology is approximately 12gpt and 81bpt vs 2xp. Given that additional 2xp doesn't get us any promos currently, Free Religion definitely seems better. OR is an additional 13gpt and generally unlikely to be worth it anymore, though maybe there will be a 5T edge case somewhere.

How long do we need to be in Slavery for? Does leaving a GA and entering a new one reset the revolt timer, or do we need to change our civics and swap into Slavery before the end of this GA if we don’t want to have to wait the full 5 turns before starting our 3rd one & revolting again?

<snip>

It seems like once we have Kremlin + State Property/Slavery (potentially after our GAs) and are building our military again, Bing might be the next target since he’s still so far from anything with which to defend against Grens, whereas others should have at least muskets. Or maybe we’ll see an opportunity to snipe some more territory for cheap before then. I get the sense from his score that his economy is improving and he might get to the Renaissance eventually.

Worth lumping these two things together. Yes, we'd have a 5T minimum regardless. Honestly this to me is mainly about doing a some essential whips in our younger cities that need a few more buildings, and maybe a few unit whips in cities that don't really have any production or ceiling and are just working more coast.


But generally, the way I see the rest of the game is like this.


* Get as many Golden Age turns as possible (either 12 more with 3-man or 20 more if Taj sticks around) and be primarily in Caste for this. Consolidate and defend and lean on enormous commerce edge. Combustion is not really that far out anymore.


* Decent chance Yuris and/or others send a last ditch attack my way during this time. If it fails, concession is likely. It's possible it could happen anyway when they realize I'm going to continue my GAs for awhile still.


* Build Kremlin as the insurance plan. Once the various Golden Ages are over, if the game is still running, go back to slavery and lean on the pop edge to either make my cities individually much more profitable (mid-to-late game infra) to cruise to space, or whip out an obscene army and start murdering.


The whip and murder thing I could do right now I suppose, but I just don't really see the case for it anymore. Right now the pressure is squarely on Yuris to come at me and do it with help. I'd rather force him to try to execute perfectly AND get help on his own. Plus if I can avoid playing long meticulous naval invasion turns, I'd like to do that. Turns are still taking ~30 mins on average which is plenty acceptable, but that would easily double if I try a proper invasion. I just don't want to bother with all of that unless forced.