[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[williams482]

Ooh, now that is an interesting pick!

Worth noting for Gaul that they get kinda sucky harbors because they can't build them adjacent to cities and it's not exactly easy to surround them with mines, but their bonus for adjacent military units is a fucking killer ability, ESPECIALLY if it includes embarked units (which I bet it does because this game is dumb). We totally should have considered them as an option, Gallic galley death balls are no joke if they get space to deploy.

I see little reason not to jump on Japan now though. Should we wait for TAD to give final approval?

[ljubljana]

yeah, I think we'd better wait for TAD (who is likely asleep as it is 1 AM Austria time).

woah woah woah does that ability apply to naval units too? i thought it was just land units, if it works on ships as well that's hideously powerful

i didn't consider Gaul because i just bought NFP two days ago and have barely had time to read over all the leader abilities.....

[ljubljana]

shit am i gonna have to learn how the district discount formula works?

gonna be holy sites bootstrapping into campi i bet so that's a big yup

and how does said formula reflect the "preserve"

and wtf is a "diplomatic quarter"

[williams482]

woah woah woah does that ability apply to naval units too? i thought it was just land units, if it works on ships as well that's hideously powerful

Oh, nope, you're right. Melee, ranged, and anti-cav only, according to the (oh so reliable   ) wiki. Thank goodness for that!

I'm a little surprised there wasn't more push to ban these guys in general on that ability alone, it's absurdly powerful in large ground engagements. I guess being limited in unit types goes a long ways.

[williams482]

shit am i gonna have to learn how the district discount formula works?

gonna be holy sites bootstrapping into campi i bet so that's a big yup

and how does said formula reflect the "preserve"

and wtf is a "diplomatic quarter"

I got a quasi-comprehensible spreadsheet for you if you want!

Preserves count as specialty districts like all the rest, because feature creep that fucks up existing mechanics is the best kind of feature creep. 

Diplomatic Quarter is some kind of one-per-civ specialty district (also mucks up the discount formula!) that gives you city state bonuses? I think it gives back the parts of the first envoy bonus that were taken away in this update. I have thus far refused to learn anything more about it because I don't own that expansion and I'm stubborn.

[ljubljana]

i think on a land map they would be well-deserving of such a ban. but here ships are all that really matters and while Gaul will be cranking out a lot of them, no Great Admirals, combat boni, or direct buffs to research rate seems spooky. idk, i still think it could be a really really strong pick (oppidia are almost Hansas and come online MUCH faster), they will just need to find a way to leverage that into enough science to keep up. i sure hope the restrictive Gallic district placement rules don't invalidate all their best reefside campus sites

[ljubljana]

I got a quasi-comprehensible spreadsheet for you if you want!

I WOULD LOVE THAT <3

[williams482]

Here you go, quickly copied over from PBEM20. The really useful bit is the "Calculator" tab, which has a bunch of nice goodies: just plug in the right numbers into the yellow cells and it runs numbers for you. 

I'd like to revamp the data collection section to be much more streamlined, as anything to make that less sucky is a good thing and all the real work past that point can be done under the hood. A combat calculator would also be a sensible addition, but I have a different file for that which is only mostly right, I still haven't figured out how to match it up to reality after you and Thrawn discovered the "rule of 12."

[ljubljana]

Do you think you can guess mine?

Hint: Chevalier was onto something

...is thrawn NOT playing norway? that would be some amount of a relief, surely there will be at least a small learning curve in terms of tactics for Krill and thrawn can't make all the moves for them...

anyways my first thought in that position would be to pick something to leverage pillage gold into a longer-term military advantage....right? dutch, korea, etc? but that's not weird enough.

oooooh ok it would be REALLY funny if thrawn's plan is to spam longships, pillage up to cartography, then mass-upgrade the (by then likely heavily-promoted) longships into caravels and keep it going!! so perhaps thrawn's pick is a civ with even more gold to throw around, like spain or mali?

either way clearly the key to keeping this game from spiraling out of control is to be as unpillageable as possible. only so much i can do about the traders, BUT at least as japan we are well-suited to a big inland district cluster. then we can park land units on what few gold-yielding coastal improvements we have in mainland japan. this game could even be the one use case for something like catapults which do full damage to ships and would get the +5 from Divine Wind. hmm hmmmmm

[williams482]

I'll just throw in that I don't think I could resist taking the Netherlands in Thrawn's position. Longships keep you safe early and pilfer all kinds of upgrade gold, then go do some real killin' once you turn that gold and science into superfrigates.

I doubt that's where his mind is at though, Chevalier being "on to something" almost certainly means something weirder than that.