(December 6th, 2013, 02:55)NobleHelium Wrote: Remember carracks do not get booted from borders on war declaration. Huge backstab units. Keep two defenders in every city.
I'm sure they remembered that, Noble. . (I jest. You guys definitely got the best of me in the last go round!)
Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon
(December 6th, 2013, 02:17)antisocialmunky Wrote: Its hard to tell Comm's and YM's power apart.
Comm's power seems quite low for Comm.
Yeah Commodore has been full on ignoring military. Fantastic news for us. He clearly has the pop to turn it into something in a pinch, but I honestly think he might be content to leave us alone. Again, I think it's another case of real-life war weariness here hah.
Anyway, the general great news right now is Nakor I don't think he is all that close to Feudalism. But the longer we wait, the more we tempt things. Also, basically ALL of his cities of consequence are on flatland which is just fantastic news for us. I'm looking at his border city close to Orioles right now. On one hand it has 4 units in it (more than any of our cities ), but it's 2 archers, a spear, and an axe behind 20% borders on flatland, and the spear is not promoted. Knights will run through that stuff. Obviously he'll see our power building and probably react a bit, but still. Note to self: start watching for bridges over his rivers to see if he gets Construction.
Maybe Nakor will have all his power sitting on a boat stack ready to get sunk.
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(December 6th, 2013, 12:02)antisocialmunky Wrote: Well I didn't expect it to be lower than Nakor.
Maybe Nakor will have all his power sitting on a boat stack ready to get sunk.
Nakor kind of responded to our earlier attempt at aggression the way pindicator predicted - by overbuilding units that were going to obsolete before the next conflict and slow down his teching. But yeah, Commodore's is definitely especially low - keep in mind too his population is quite good so that inflates his power honestly. But then, his only neighbor is us - and we've been trying to broadcast a lack of interest in conflict - so he has much fewer military threats than basically everyone else in the world.
Upgrading Costs are going to be steep, so after the GA ends we'll have a better idea of how many turns it will cost to upgrade those HAs into knights. (We also have a chariot that can be upgraded.) The formula is the following, right?
Code:
Gold Cost = 25 + Hammer Difference x 3
Horse Archers are 50h apiece and Knights are 90h. Translation: 145g apiece for every HA upgrade, and if we want to upgrade the chariot it will be extra 205g.
We currently have 4 Horse Archers with 2 more completing before Guilds comes in. To upgrade all of those into knights will cost 870g. Adding the chariot brings the total cost to 1075g. I'm guessing that will take us about 4 turns to raise money for the HA and a fifth turn to include the chariot. We'll need that much time anyway to produce more units, so upgrading won't delay the attack, it will just delay our research ability.
How many knights can we produce manually in those 8 turns (3 for GA and 5 for raising money)? I'll need to look at cities individually and figure that out. I would guess that we can build about this many though:
Trailblazers - 2 knights (after 2 zerkers)
Red Wings - 1 knight (maybe 2 if we chop our last 2 forests into it)
Bills - 1 knight
Orioles - 2 knights
So we should easily have a dozen knights and 6 zerkers off the lines within 8 turns. Add a couple turns to move them in position, and we can probably attack in 10 turns with 14 or 15 knights and 6 or 7 zerkers by boat. Very rough estimates, though. I'll have to sit down city-by-city and figure logistics to really get a firm number. But with an initial attack force that small I think we should continue to produce units even after the war starts. Knights have a long shelf life, and zerkers will too, thanks to their amphibious promo.
And some Commodore-Potentially-Stabbing-Us thoughts.
I want to have Boilermakers pump units for a while. Triremes and Longbows should both be very doable in the short term. Wolverines is also a city that can do some military once we get some mines and farms down, but it has to get up to speed first. Once Boilermakers hits its happy cap we can move the Fish over to Wolverines and help that city to grow for a while. Actually, it's almost at it's happy cap now so maybe we can swap that tile right away. Boilermakers is too far away to contribute units to the war, so it should focus on defending the islands.
My biggest concern is still a lack of workers. If I have to identify a city to turn into a worker pump, I think I would be looking at Valiants for the islands or Bills/Timbers for the mainland. But we need like 50% more workers than we currently have. Maybe even double. Hopefully we can get some from Nakor.
Yes I actually did this. I went in order of their position on the in-game scoreboard.
Dtay - Northern Illinois. Sure they're undefeated and seemingly demolishing everyone they play, but have they actually beaten anyone significant? Not really. So are they for real? I have no idea.
Mackoti - Alabama. Because it's going to take a miracle on par with a 109 yard field goal return for a TD as time expires to beat him.
Scooter/Pindicator - Georgia. Always a good team, always marked down as a tough matchup by everyone on their schedule, and nobody would be shocked if they won something big, but wow do they have random patches of either horrid luck or bizarre blunders at the worst possible moments.
Plako - LSU. Usually not particularly exciting to watch (lurk), but always very good and capable of beating anyone. Together with Alabama (mackoti), they're probably the most consistent team of the last decade.
Fintourist/Old Harry - Auburn. The average fan didn't have high expectations for them, but the more knowledgeable fans recognized their very good new coach (their strong performances in lesser known PBEMs) as an indicator for a good showing, and somehow they've outperformed even the overly optimistic predictions. Auburn miraculously beat Alabama, and now all of PB13 is left hoping that FinHarry can do the same to their geographic neighbor mackoti.
Commodore - Ohio State. Pure evil. I might be biased on a number of levels.
Ichabod - Baylor. Highly entertaining when they're on TV (or when he's reporting). Also pretty dang good, but not quite good enough to win it all. Also, seriously, nobody hates Baylor/Ichabod, because they are just so much fun.
Lewwyn - Oregon. Okay I was hiiiighly attempted to say Arkansas (Razorbacks = pigs = bacon lololol), but I think this works better. Lewwyn played a flashy opening - like everything Oregon does. He started faster than anyone, but as the game's gone on he's fizzled a tad.
The Black Sword - USC. Rough start, but a coaching change (Black Sword taking over for Jowy) seems to have made a positive difference. Not nearly enough to win anything big, but enough to be pretty impressive.
Azza - Oregon State. I never know if Azza is any good or not, because he seems simultaneously quite good and quite not depending on the opponent. All that matters is he sometimes tends to play bitter rival Lewwyn (Oregon) a whole lot tighter than would reasonably be expected.
WilliamLP - Duke. They're good! At another sport. He has LP in his name! Not that LP, though. Unexpectedly the best team in a terrible division in a soft conference, while WilliamLP has come out the best team in the most war-torn section of the least competitive continent.
Nakor - Nebraska. Nebraska consistently goes 9-4 with a reasonably good team/gameplay and then gets crushed by a better team in a bowl game (or mid-game war).
Dhalphir - Florida. Previous coach (Urban Meyer/Serdoa) was a big name that's had a good bit of success, but the current new coach hasn't gotten nearly to those heights yet. Overall though, still a little too early to say conclusively whether Dhalphir will work out or not.
Bacchus/Suttree/Slowcheetah/Retep - Rutgers, Connecticut, Memphis, Temple. 4 mediocre teams that have vaguely recognizable names (but aren't particularly big ones) that are all virtually irrelevant this year. Lumping them together may be a cop-out, but you try saying something interesting about any of their civs or any of those 4 football teams.
Two comments:
1) These are jokes. Please don't take them seriously and get offended just because most of them might suck. Especially the Commodore thing, that was very clearly a joke I would hope you would recognize.
2) Thanks to Brick for some input on a few of these
(December 6th, 2013, 14:54)pindicator Wrote: And some Commodore-Potentially-Stabbing-Us thoughts.
I want to have Boilermakers pump units for a while. Triremes and Longbows should both be very doable in the short term. Wolverines is also a city that can do some military once we get some mines and farms down, but it has to get up to speed first. Once Boilermakers hits its happy cap we can move the Fish over to Wolverines and help that city to grow for a while. Actually, it's almost at it's happy cap now so maybe we can swap that tile right away. Boilermakers is too far away to contribute units to the war, so it should focus on defending the islands.
I'm definitely good with our suggestion on Boilermakers, but I'm not super concerned about Commodore doing anything crazy. Part of that is his power, part of that is just how things will be set. First, if he makes a conscious decision to screw with us (which he clearly hasn't done yet with his lack of military), it won't be until after we actually declare on Nakor, because he'll see our graphs and us sitting on a growing force. Even once we actually move in on Nakor, we'll still be building more units, so I think we'll be pretty covered. The nearest island could theoretically be a tad vulnerable, but I really don't think he'll risk getting into island hopping against 4 move galleys + Zerks. This is literally the worst time possible for him to get in a war with us, so I really honestly believe he'll leave us be.
(December 6th, 2013, 14:54)pindicator Wrote: My biggest concern is still a lack of workers. If I have to identify a city to turn into a worker pump, I think I would be looking at Valiants for the islands or Bills/Timbers for the mainland. But we need like 50% more workers than we currently have. Maybe even double. Hopefully we can get some from Nakor.
We got a few from Nakor last time I believe, right? But yeah. I pretty much agree with all this, and I don't see any other obvious choices besides the cities you cited, none of which are really great for workers anyway. However, I really don't think things are quite that dire, really. During our Golden Age of course we really need to work land tiles, but once it's over... We're still in Rep + Caste, so I think we can easily compensate for land being a tad under-improved by just hiring a couple Rep-enhanced specialists. That's better than many of the tiles we'd be improving anyway in a non-GA context.
Thanks for your teams/player analysis. That was pretty funny.
I also like that you guys think you are UGA. Snakebitten is my word for this year's team. Let's hope that neither of you tear an ACL celebrating in the end zone. That really happened to our #1 receiver on the first possession in the first game of the year.
. (I jest. You guys definitely got the best of me in the last go round!)
), but it's 2 archers, a spear, and an axe behind 20% borders on flatland, and the spear is not promoted. Knights will run through that stuff. Obviously he'll see our power building and probably react a bit, but still. Note to self: start watching for bridges over his rivers to see if he gets Construction.
