Freeciv LongTurn (LT57 report)

[HansLemurson]

How does population growth work in Freeciv? I get the impression it's always 20 food, in contrast to civ4 where it costs 20+2*size.

Smaller cities user weirder numbers.

1. 12 Food
   
2. 14 Food
   
3. 16 Food
   
4. 20 Food
   
5. 24 Food
   
6. 28 Food
   
7. 34 Food
   
8. 40 Food
   

But then it's 40 Food for all cities Size 8 and above. 
Granaries of course cut this in half, so the relevant quantity is 20 Food. 
Because excess food doesn't overflow, you try to get cities to have surpluses of +20, +10, or +7 if your food resources are limited. 
The sooner you get population, the better.

Now just a reminder: what you are seeing is the LongTurn ruleset, which is not a standard ruleset for Freeciv.  It is heavily modded with many experimental features and attempts at optimizing for (relatively) fast fun multiplayer games.

[HansLemurson]

Turn 68
Top 5 Cities:

VG Still keeping pace.

Demographics

#1 in Econ is now the Aleuts, who just entered Democracy.


Science

I'm planning on going for Democracy too.  It's going to have much lower corruption than republic, making it easier to celebrate my cities.
Also, importantly, I'll be able to pay for unit upkeep with Gold, which is a global resource, so I don't have to worry so much about where units are stationed.
My cities will also be completely immune to Incitement.  Because of this basically everybody is going for Democracy.
I'm planning on adding just enough bulbs so that I'll be able to research it when the price goes down.
I'm going to go into Anarchy next turn, and then depend on the Bulb income from the Great Library and Observatory in Vectron's Glory to carry me across the finish line.
I plan to change to Democracy on Turn 71.

Hardened Target

Last turn, Goslar was at 3 population and was expensive to buy.
Now it has 7 population and is EXTREMELY expensive!
For that price, I could practically buy an army to conquer the city.
Ste clearly shipped in a bunch of Migrants this turn to boost the city's population.  Higher population = higher price.
Price is also affected by the total amount of production in the city invested in buildings and units, so large garrisons make prices higher.
But the biggest effect is of course the courthouse giving 4x cost.  If that were gone, I could have afforded to incite even this city.


Intel

Couldn't do the fancy End-of-Turn intel reports like last time.
And like I said, EVERYBODY is going for Democracy.  Once Ste gets it, my chances for ever inciting him vanish.


Diplo Fight!!!

I decided to try to spend my surplus of diplomats in a war of attrition.
When you attempt a mission on a city, if there is an enemy diplomat in the city, you have to "battle" it in a single round of combat.  50% chance to win.
I chose the "Sabotage" mission, because I want the courthouse of the city gone if possible.  But also because unlike Incitement, it doesn't cost gold, so I could actually do it.
I was just doing it to trigger a diplomat fight.

When a Diplomat wins a fight, it gets promoted.  I won, and now I have a veteran Diplomat (The game says it has a rank of "Secretary").


Winning Streak

5 Sabotage attempts result in 5 battles and 4 victories.  This is...ridiculously good luck.

It also shows that Ste is no fool, and had filled Goslar with many defending Diplomats to prevent this sort of thing.  But he didn't count on my having hot dice!


Final Result

I won one more battle, and then a Sabotage mission actually went through (but failed).
I paused to consult with Cgalik on how to proceed:  The 5 veteran diplomats still had MP left and so could still perform a Sabotage mission (and with better success chance!) but the odds of hitting the courthouse on any attempt were fairly low.
Buildings would be targeted randomly, and even if/when the courthouse fell, it would still only be a chance of incitement.
We decided that the main goal of "Fight enemy diplomats" had been achieved, and with amazingly good luck.
Bargen is in no danger now of being Incited before I get Democracy, and having 1 city on an island is much more valuable than gambling on 2 cities when you might not even have the resources to defend against counterattacks.
If the incite happened, then I'd still have to eliminate the last footholds on Osilia before I could be truly safe, and until then my armies would be split.

In any case, I decided to "Declare Victory" and go home.  Inflicting 5:2 losses on your enemy is a win in any book.

Boat Rescue

One of the diplomats was low on MP, and so had to take a boat home.  Thanks Cgalik!  (he said he is "returning the favor" from earlier)


Homeland

Haven't spent any gold yet here, but I want banks in my biggest cities so that their luxury output can be further multiplied (to say nothing for their gold).  If I'm going to celebrate effectively in the future, I'll need as many Luxury bonuses as possible.  Vectron's Glory has enough production to build a Bank on its own.
Wismer is slowly recovering from its plague, and will likely build its sewer system without outside help.
Kiel is sadly just going to have to wait.  I hate to give up population growth, I really do, but my Gold has so many strategic burdens on it right now.
I want to keep a large reserve to serve as a threat to the enemy.  "Who knows what I could do with it???"
Also, I won't have any gold income during Anarchy, so a reserve will be important.

I bought some of the more pressing projects, and then called it a day.

[HansLemurson]

Turn 69: Revolution
Top 5 Cities:

In second place now through the power of sheer tenacity.  
I wonder how dense or loose Kevin packed his cities.  
The closer they are, the more total cities you have and the faster your initial growth, but your crowded cities will hit an early peak.
The further they are, the higher their maximum size, and the less defense units and buildings they require.

Demographics

Finally crossed the 300 mark in population.  I'm still a top-ranked nation, even if I'm no longer #1.


Science

I'm at 0% science funding now, and so will coast along to the finish on the base-level research funding.

Events

Upgrades, growth and research all continue.


Intel

Ste is stocking up on gold.  Wonder why he's not going for Democracy sooner?  Maybe he thinks he'll be able to coast to a finish too?
Chill has spent all his gold.


Price Check

City is a little larger now, but also a LOT pricier!!!
There are many factors that could go into this cost...extra happiness, more buildings, or maybe even a MASSIVE ARMY WAITING TO DESTROY ME.
I hope it's not the last one.  I don't like that option.

Revolution Time!

Thought I'd show off the menu for making a revolution.
You can also see that Bargen is size 8 too!
Unfortunately it lacks a temple, so the population is unhappy, and can't feed itself.  I think I grew it too soon...

Oh well, nothing a little Anarchy can't fix!

Republic soldiers can't be Bribed, but I'll lose this immunity under Anarchy.
I thus moved a Pikeman out of Bargen and onto the Iron Mountain to the left of Bargen.  Paired units can't be bribed.  I guess they're afraid the other guy will report them.

Revolution GO!!!

You know it's gonna be alright.


Homeland

Banks aren't going to do me much good right now, since I don't collect taxes in Anarchy.  
Fortunately, I don't pay any costs either!
Banks will however be helpful when I come out of Anarchy and am producing an ass-ton of gold.  I'm going to try to Celebrate, and Banks will be important in maintaining that, since they multiply Luxuries as well as Gold.

Kiel finally gets its Sewer System, but the rest of the cities will have to just coast along accumulating production.  I'll buy their stuff soon, don't worry.

[HansLemurson]

The game ended today with a resignation from our team. We could have kept fighting for a while, and we were able to give the impression to our opponents that things were far more even than they were, but we could see the writing on the wall, and were getting burned out on the massive logistics anyways. So we decided to bring it to a clean end on Turn 100.

Sorry for my absence, those of you who were eagerly awaiting updates!
I got pretty tired this last month, and had to drop "write up report each turn" from my schedule. I kept taking meticulous screenshots though, so I may be able to compile an action report of the last 31 turns of the game.

The thread is now open-reading to all members of the opposing team.

[civac2]

Your reporting schedule was a bit insane. There is a bit of air between insane schedule and nothing at all though.

It did seem like you were losing in your last reports. I wondered if you had lost motivation because of that or if there was something up.

[HansLemurson]

Your reporting schedule was a bit insane. There is a bit of air between insane schedule and nothing at all though.

It did seem like you were losing in your last reports. I wondered if you had lost motivation because of that or if there was something up.

It was, yeah.  I thought I could keep it up until suddenly I couldn't.  
I thought about doing weekly reports, but even then I wasn't feeling it.  I knew I should write up something, but then one week became 2, and so on...

The phrase "If I'd had more time, I'd have written a shorter letter." is relevant to my reporting style.

There was just so much happening each day I had a hard time categorizing and summarizing it, so I just dumped all my thoughts onto the page, and left it for the reader to deal with.

...
Now, where I left off, it certainly did seem like we were losing, but what I didn't show is that we were actually able to launch some counter-invasions(T83) and I actually retook my island (T85) and my team-mates captured another Island-and-a-half from Ste's Czech Empire (T86). So the pendulum swung back.

This week though they launched an invasion that almost totally overran Scotland (T92), whose defenses were mostly obsolete units awaiting enough gold for upgrades. We decided to gather up one final invasion of our own, and invaded India (T99), doing comparable damage to India as they had done to Scotland. That was however our last hurrah. I was tired, Louis94 was tired, and we knew that Ste was massing an army we had no hope of countering once it entered the field.

[ste]

That was a great read! They, of course, write about me every day but this felt exceptionally good.

Imagine being a spy at the height of the Cold War. Second-guessing every move of your mortal enemies for quarter of a century (or year). Saved your nation from a grand industrial espionage here and nuclear strike there. The action has been over for a while and you're getting bit bored mowing your lawn (still in disguise) but then memoirs of your greatest adversary come out. Yeah, that good. Thanks, Hans!

So, how about a bit of POV from the other side - for good Karma?

Let's start with my original city plan:



Super fun starting location. Four reachable islands around. Unlike Kevin, our captain, I'll see some early action - he is a jealous of my babies. It's good land too - no tundra or desert - but as well only three trade-rich specials. I quickly stress to my teammates that I'm uniquely positioned to suck in economy in this game - before the Demographics competition starts.

Next the captain tears my plan to pieces:



Good points. In later game, you want to be growing your capital every turn with +20 food for as long as you can. Those mountains are not great for that.

So, I worked with his suggestions to reach this:



One more city (12 total), better early growth but more risk with the cap being coastal. So, I name it Brno - to utterly confuse our simple minded enemies. FTW!

(...let me know if I should continue...)

[cgalik]

@ste, Please do continue and repay @HansLemurson's excellent documentation!

[civac2]

I'm curious as well.

[ste]

So we got city spots - time to pick a government. There is a choice early on between Despotism and Tribal. Tribal has bit less production waste (but less gold production) and nearly all our team went for it.

In hindsight, I think it wasn't an important choice. What I really like about this LTT (Long Turn Traditional) ruleset is that it really tries hard to give multiple good choices and avoid a single golden path.

Our teams took very different paths with early governments and wonders, yet I feel that nobody was pulling away primarily because of those choices. To newer players I'd definitely recommend taking Monarchy as second government instead of Republic - it encourages you to keep defenders in cities and when played well, republicans don't pull away from you in research too much.

When new-ish players choose Republic you get this:


Empty YKnot's city size 4 on an island right next to my homeland? Xmas time!

The attack was just too easy as YKnot didn't connect in time to buy units. I tried to bribe Konik Kerne but it wasn't to be. I was feeling confident about taking Bronn next turn.



And if I played better, that could have very well happened. Can you see the big blunder?

Yeah, I didn't block the sea entrance to Bronn. Hans got in with his boat (which I didn't track), but next turn, when my catapult failed, I was uncharacteristically wise enough to give up on the attack. I did at least stuff up the withdrawal and lost a good stack.

So yeah, a siege. I went into knight production. YKnot got wiser and built walls in his other close cities. I checked Bronn but it was quite strong:



That's 7 good defenders in a walled city. I need 2 knight per defender at least, then some for the weaker units - I didn't have enough. So, I went for operation Lure Them Out - and (as you know) it worked. Best victory of the game for me... it all went mostly downhill from here.