[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[spacetyrantxenu]

Herein will lie the misdeeds of Churchill of Portugal, as he attempts to erase the dubious record of the first Gallipoli Campaign.



We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!

[spacetyrantxenu]

current RB Mod release notes:

RB mod 2.0.2, for PB8

Change log:

Change log 2.0.2

Astronomy: requires Paper as a Mandatory Prerequisite.
Scouts: require no tech. Every player starts with a scout instead of a warrior.
The Draft: Rifles now cost 2 pop to draft. A city must now end a draft at size 6 instead of size 5 (So size 8 to draft a rifle, size 7 to draft a musket).
Nationalism and Education Tech costs corrected (2700 base beakers per tech)

Traits:

Financial: +1 commerce on all non-river tiles that have 2+ commerce. +100% production of banks. Remember: A Golden Age cannot trigger Financial's bonus yield (as in the base game).
Expansive: No longer gets double-speed granaries, but gets double-speed grocers. +35% Worker Production, +35% work boat production.
Creative: Loses cheap Libs, regains +2 culture per city, half price theatres, Colluseums.
Charismatic: +2 happiness, but no longer gets +1 happy from Monuments.
Protective: Plus double-speed granaries, but loses double speed castles and drill 1 on archery and gunpowder units.
Imperialistic: Double-speed Custom Houses (At least this gives Imp something on water maps. For flavor, Custom Houses are very mercantile, which is what 17th century Imperialism was). +60% Settler Production.
Organized: Gains double speed libraries.


Civs:

Rebalancing:
Inca: Terraces now give +1 culture, Quechua loses combat 1.
Byzantium: Cataphracts are 11 strength.
Khmer: Ballista Elephants are 8 str, +50% vs. Mounted units, +25% vs. Knights, and still target Mounteds outside of a city (this buff was to make them better than regular WE against their nemesis, Knights).
Sumeria: Vultures now get +30% vs. Melee.
India: The Fast Worker is now 2 moves, but starts with Mobility (-1 Terrain Movement Costs), and now starts with Mysticism/Wheel, instead of Mysticism/Mining (slower start).
Celts: Dun now gives G2, not G1.
Portugal: Feitoria now costs 120h, from 180h.
Rome: Preat S7. Forum increased to +35% GPP generation.
Persia: Immortal is now a S5 spear replacement.
Carthage: Cothon decreased to 80 hammers. Numidian cav increased to S6, C1, loses melee bonus and F1 (and innate retreat chance).
France: Salon +1 free spec, -1 artist.
Germany: UU is now the Kannon, a cannon but at 80% cost.
US: UU: Minuteman, Rifle replacement, starts with Guerilla 1, Woodsman 1. UB: Mall, Grocer replacement, +1 happy from deer, sugar, Hit (Musical, Movie, Single).
Japan: UB: Pagoda: Observatory replacement, +10% hammers.


Civics:

Police State: Now Medium Cost (down from High).
Vassalage now provides free support for military units as well (meaning Pacifism is cheaper), and is Medium Upkeep.
Slavery: 30h for the 1st pop, 20h for the 2nd pop and subsequent pops. So, 30/50/70/90. On Quick speed, that's 20/33/46/60.
Serfdom: +75% Worker Speed, +1h for Watermills and Windmills.
Free Market: No longer provides -25% Corporate Costs. Now provides +25% Trade Route Yield.
Environmentalism: No longer provides +25% Corporate Costs, or +2 commerce to windmills. Provides +1 gold per specialist, +1c to farms and pastures, +2c to forest preserves, and Low upkeep. Swapped with Free Speech. Now available at Liberalism.
Free Speech: Now High Upkeep, swapped with Environmentalism. Now available at Scientific Method.


Wonders:

Rushmore: Now -50% WW, (from -25%).
Red Cross: 200h.
West Point: 550h, +5XP. Now requires a lvl 5 unit (17XP/13XP for Charismatic).
Great Lighthouse: Now +1 trade route instead of +2 trade routes, enabled at Masonry, but needs lighthouse and Sailing (no functional change in the tech requirements but makes F6 look less cluttered).
SoZ: no WW effect. Now +3XP, 200 hammers, no building prerequisites.
Cristo: +200% SPI production, -50% Anarchy instead of -100%.
The Internet: now a wonder. 2k cost, +15% beakers in every city. No longer a project
SDI: No longer intercepts nukes (irrelevant as nukes no longer).


Base unit changes:

Scouts: require no tech. Every player starts with a scout instead of a warrior.
War Elephants: now 7 str, +50% vs. Mounted units, and +25% vs. Knights.
SAM Infantry: 75% interception chance (up form 40%)
Destroyer: now enabled at Artillery (not Combustion) (requires Oil OR Uranium)
Transport: now enabled at Artillery (not Combustion) (requires Oil OR Uranium)
Mobile Artillery: can now load guided Missiles and Tac Nukes (as Submarines and Missile Cruisers do). No longer require oil.
Gunships decreased to 3 moves.

ICBM: No longer unlimited range, but long enough so that they will out distance your army and navy easily, and they can be rebased. Loses the nuke tag. Does not need Manhattern project to be built.
iCost: 900h
iAirCombatLimit: 75
iAirCombat: 160
iCollateralDamageLimit: 75%
iCollateralDamageMaxUnits: 12
iAirRange: 36

Tactical Nukes: no longer nukes according to the code, now S80 1shot units that can bombard units, cause collateral damage to 5 units, cannot be intercepted. Cost 300 hammers. Loses the nuke tag. Does not need Manhattern project to be built. Full list of changes:

iCost: 300h
iAirCombatLimit: 75
iAirCombat: 80
iCollateralDamageLimit: 75%
iCollateralDamageMaxUnits: 5
iAirRange: 4

Guided Missiles: can bombard units, tiles and cultural defence, cause collateral damage to 2 units, cannot be intercepted. Cost 75 hammers. Full list of changes (underline means original stat, for comparison):

iCost: 75h
iBombRate: 16
iAirCombatLimit: 75
iAirCombat: 40
iCollateralDamage: 100
iCollateralDamageLimit: 50%
iCollateralDamageMaxUnits: 1
iAirRange: 4

Flanking:
Horse Archer (and replacements): do 50% flanking damage to Catapults and Trebuchet.
Knight (and replacements): do 50% flanking damage to Catapults and Trebuchet.
Cuirassier (and replacements): do 50% flanking damage to Catapults and Trebuchet and Cannon.
Cavalry (and replacements): do 50% flanking damage to Catapults and Trebuchet and Cannon.
Gunships: do 50% flanking damage to Cannon, Artillery and Trebuchet.

Buildings:

Jails: now -50% War Weariness.
Castles (and replacement UB): no longer decrease bombardment rate of catapults or trebuchets.

Technology:

Hunting: enables pastures, cost increased by 50% from 40 to 60. No longer enables camps.
Animal Husbandry: enables camps. No longer enables pastures.
Archery: base tech cost decreased by two thirds, from 60 to 40.
Astronomy: requires Paper as a Mandatory Prerequisite.


Espionage:

Switch Civic and Switch Religion now require Future Tech.
Spies now spawn with "Secretive", and cannot see tiles except the one they're standing on.
The No Espionage game option now works properly:

*GSpy points are converted into Great Merchant points.
*Espionage no longer gets converted into culture.
*Cultural expansion now happens at normal values.
*Spies cannot be built.
*Graphs are always visible on contact.


Tile Changes:

Watermills: +1 base hammers, no longer receives +1h at Rep Parts.
Workshops: +1 base hammers, no longer receives +1h at Chemistry.
Mines: +1h at Rep Parts.
Whaling Boats: Enabled at Sailing, not Optics. Otherwise unchanged.


Game Mechanics:

The Draft: Rifles now cost 2 pop to draft. A city must now end a draft at size 6 instead of size 5 (So size 8 to draft a rifle, size 7 to draft a musket).
Corporations: Completely removed from the game.
Culture Victory: 33K, 50K, 75K, 150K on Quick/Normal/Epic/Marathon.


Miscellaneous:

Coastal Blockade now has a range of 1 square around the blockader, instead of 3 squares
Barracks: increased cost to 60 hammers, +1 culture.
AP Resolutions: Declare War (on a non-member), Force Peace (between two members), and Assign City are no longer eligible resolution actions.
Fail-gold: You never get fail-gold if you also completed the wonder somewhere else (so no National Wonder fail-gold, or doubling up on a wonder to guarantee yourself a paycheck. The game still informs you that you received "0 gold" from your hammers).
Hut techs: Can only gain techs from the first two rows of the tech screen

Fishing, Sailing, Wheel, Pottery, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Hunting, Archery, Mysticism, Mining, Bronze Working.

Addendum: These changes are only present in the Tech Trading version of the mod.

Tech Trading:
Known Tech Bonus changed to 50 (up from 30), enabled by Tech Trading (so there is no Known Tech Bonus until you research Paper)
Alphabet no longer enables tech trading, allows Open Borders
Writing enables Map trading, no longer enables OB
Paper enables Tech trading, no longer enables Map Trading. Requires Metal Casting, Literature and Code of Laws as mandatory prerequisites.
Corporation enables Tech Trading
Scientific Method enables Tech Trading
Cost of Education, Gunpowder, Printing Press, Astronomy and Nationalism increased by 50%
Cost of all subsequent techs increased by 100%
Techs prior to Paper in the tech tree can no longer be traded:

The untradeable techs are as follows: Fishing, The Wheel, Agriculture, Hunting, Mysticism, Mining, Sailing, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Archery, Meditation, Polytheism, Masonry, Horseback Riding, Priesthood, Monotheism, Bronze Working, Writing, Metal Casting, Iron Working, Aesthetics, Mathematics, Alphabet, Monarchy, Compass, Literature, Calendar, Construction, Currency, Machinery, Drama, Engineering, Code of Laws, Feudalism, Optics, Music, Philosophy, Civil Service, Theology, Divine Right, Paper, Guilds, Banking

[spacetyrantxenu]

The players:

Commodore - Gilgamesh of the Khmer (CRE/PRO)
Azza - Napoleon of Rome (ORG/CHA)
Pindicooter - Huayna Capac of Zulu (IND/FIN)
Merohoc - Augustus of Arabia (IND/IMP)
Ichabod and the Brick - Genghis Khan of the Vikings (AGG/IMP)
Plako if RBmod - Louis XIV of the Aztec (IND/CRE)
Xenu - Churchill of Portugal (CHA/PRO)
Catcheetah - Suryavarman of France (EXP/CRE)
Lewger - Qin Shi Huang of the Netherlands (IND/PRO)
N-core - Mansa Musa of India (SPI/FIN)
Serdoa - De Gaulle of Maya (IND/CHA)

[spacetyrantxenu]

My first reaction to seeing Churchill was "FML, Protective again?!" But now that PRO is an economic trait (sort of) it isn't all bad. It sucks to lose the drill promotion on archery and gunpowder units because honestly what's the point of Churchill if not to see just how many promotions you can stack on a unit? Well, now the purpose is to take cheap granaries and the free CHA happiness and grow large cities as quickly as you can. I'll have to see what updates go into the mod revision but I assume generating base hammers will still be more important than in vanilla BTS, so more tiles in play sooner via larger cities means higher hammer output. So in that sense PRO/CHA isn't complete garbage like it is in vanilla but still, I'd like to play a game one day where I don't get PRO. At least I'm not playing Mao again.

What to expect in this game: I have no idea. I really should play a SP game using the RB Mod to see what it feels like. It's one thing to read the PB5 threads and another to play it myself, I'm sure.

Oh, I forgot half of my pairing, the civ: Portugal. Fishing / Mining gives me the fewest possible free beakers, same as anything else that is Fishing / non-Wheel/Ag/Hunting. I hope I have a coastal start and can take advantage of Fishing and later my UU, the Carrack. Whether having a glorified seagoing galley is any help to me remains to be seen. Maybe if I can get a leg up on exploration I can grab more overseas territory than other players pre-Astronomy, but that is entirely map dependent. If I start in the middle of a large continent I'll lose any benefits from the Portugal civ assignment so let's hope that doesn't happen.

That would include being unable to use my UB, the Feitoria. It isn't a great UB as it is, but at least it's less expensive than in vanilla BTS. At 180 hammers it was probably rarely worth building. Here at 120 hammers it's at least viable in some circumstances. I'd hesitate to make Colossus a priority but if I could pair it with Feitorias that would make for the basis of a nice water economy. Too bad that's a plan to make a living working some of the worst tiles in the game (coast). So that probably won't happen, I may not build very many of those. But at least I have cheap granaries!

What's up with the five IND players? I guess I'll be building the wonders of workers and settlers for a while, I don't expect to land many wonders against half the field unless stone or marble are just insanely close to my start.

Good luck to the other players in RL, death to all you infidels in this game!

[Qgqqqqq]

Go for Maoi/feitora/collosus/GA/lighthouseable lake for 3f/2h/5c tiles!
It is theoretically possible to never obsolete the colossus by avoiding scientific method, as Mackoti did in PBEM24.
That said, you probably won't get colossuss

[Krill]

Collosus obsoletes at Astronomy.

[Mardoc]

Things may change. Please inspect to ensure I met the requirements on food.

[spacetyrantxenu]

No need to analyze that screenshot as it is now obsolete, but it didn't factor into me caring whether or not we rolled a new map. For all I knew I was the guy with no room to expand so there was no point in playing out that map irrespective of whether the start visible from that screen shot was good, bad, or otherwise.

But after establishing there was no need to analyze it I'll at least speculate. There are two options, either this city site was human edited to add some of the food because it was a garbage start or the map script attempted to rebalance an awful start by adding more food. I think this was a result of the map script trying to improve the original start by just adding food. I have the required 3 hills in the BFC but the settler starts on one of them so I'm not sure that counts, maybe that kicked off the rebalancing attempt? Anyway, this city site screams Moai, not capital. Here Portugal isn't a bad civ, at least I have Fishing / Mining to at least be able to (soon) chop work boats for quick growth. But the lack of land tiles would suck overall with the slavery nerf. I'm not sorry to see this start go to waste. But even if I was sitting on two river corns and gold I wouldn't want to play a map that may have left me without much land to work with.

Anyway, glad we're moving on to a new map, but I wish we had avoided this whole thing by not rushing to get the game online. If this is going to run for six months or so before some likely concession we may as well take the time to set it up correctly.

[Krill]

[spacetyrantxenu]

That's a really nice start. This has SIP written all over it. This much food just screams whipping but I'll have to be careful with my play habits since whip efficiency is different in RB Mod. One benefit of CHA is that I can whip more heavily earlier on if I need to, due to the free happiness, so if I stack up a few more unhappies on one pop whips it isn't a big deal in the short term Ideally I'd like to use those improved corn tiles to push out several quick workers and settlers, then start growing my capital ASAP up to my CHA happy cap. Once I'm there working gems (!) and with a cottage on the dyes and anywhere else I can get one, I should have enough beakers coming in to get to Monarchy and HR so I can grow out my capital.

Plan subject to change on T1. Scouting moves: I think I'll move the scout 9 and then either 8 or 7, that should hopefully be enough movement to identify if I'm about to strand a sea food resource. Also, I think I see jungle 774 or the settler's tile, I hope I'm not right on the edge of a big swath of jungle. I don't want to go to IW very early here. But it makes me wonder, since the dyes are right next to where I started....Well if it is then workshops are very good in this mod so it isn't all bad, just tech up IW to cut out the jungle and then power through whichever techs are needed to make the workshops worth using.

I'll have more to say once the game is live, I'm sure, but there is not a lot else to do for now except nail down a naming scheme. I have an idea in mind but let's see how it goes when I reveal a few more map tiles...