[PB69] Naufragar turns over a new leaf. Randomly.

[naufragar]

Played the turn in a manic mood for reasons you'll see soon. In the meantime, have one of the most manic songs I know. Not exactly a sea shanty, but Newfy enough, perhaps?




Well, damn. Magic knows how to use a Golden Age. And remember, these give the same bump power bump as normal muskets but they're really Tokugawa's First-Striking, Ass-Kicking super muskets. Trying to fight Magic when he's at his peak tech era and the world leader in manufacturing even before his golden age would be...quixotic.



(This is very funny. Please laugh.)

Well, I don't deviate from plans, no matter how circumstances change. It's called dedication. (Have I mentioned my bovine psychology, before?  )


So, I moved to attack Ban, and holy smokes, look how light its garrison is. Now, there could be, easily, 20+ knights waiting to reinforce, or the city near Pind could have enough units to make this impossible (which is why all Pind had to do was making a couple damn galleys  ) but hey, until Magic proves he can defend it... manic energy. 

[naufragar]

No time for a good report, but here's the highlight.



Magic evacuated everybody but 1 longbow (the other pip is Commodore's spectator). I used my artillery to reduce the defenses (and ran into the ugly truth about bombardment that Charriu has explained here). I sacrificed one City Raider 3 Trebuchet (yeah, building 10xp siege from Spain's citadels feels great) and then the conquistador conquista'd.



Here's the force disposition. Like an idiot, I forgot to take a pic of what's in Magic's stack on the eastern fort. It's like 6 muskets & 8 catapults? And, again like an idiot, I group moved all my guerilla musketeers back into my territory when I thought I just had a treb selected. Horrific misclick.    Oh well.

Magic still has a higher army power, but my Conquistadors and guerilla muskets have excellent potential to be incredibly annoying. We'll see if we can prise out any more damaging opportunities. If you compare the screenshots above, you can see the city capture and a couple of tile pillages got us some 200 gold, roughly 5 turns of full research, which is to say Chemistry. Feels great.

[Cornflakes]

(This is very funny. Please laugh.)

   

[RefSteel]

Trying to fight Magic when he's at his peak tech era and the world leader in manufacturing even before his golden age would be...quixotic.

Ha - beautiful!

(Beautiful.)

[naufragar]

Thanks, Ref and Scooter. I'm just a sucker for validation.

I was traveling, so played the past couple turns in a holding pattern. Magic has cleaned up most of our guerillas, but that's ok. We're trading roughly evenly while also getting tiny amounts of pillage gold:


This is the scary area. Two movers (which is to say Knights and Guerilla 2 muskets and crossbows) can attack Cathy Ames from Joker without warning. Right now I think it's impossible for Magic to take the city, but I have to check every turn that he hasn't prepared an alpha strike. It would be very expensive, but that doesn't matter. Freeing Joker from the cultural pressure and uniting the Magic and Gingerian areas would be worth any sacrifice.

The converse is true for me. I need Joker to die so I can isolate Gingeria and take it for myself. To that end, I'm building Culture in a golden age.  The goal is to get 4th ring borders and take over Joker's first ring. Then we move our artillery, which at that point hopefully consists of a strong Cannon division, and either Magic retreats or we wipe the city off the map.

Magic gets Chemistry in 3 turns but has saved up way, way more gold that he needs for 3 turns of research. By my estimate, he's saved up 9 turns of research. That would put him on Steel in 9 turns, but that sounds crazy. Or, it sounds really, really bad for me, so I refuse to believe it.

Here's the land I want:


With Magic removed from this area, I could capture or plant some 8 additional cities, and the land form is so defensible for me once I lock up the south of our continent. And I need to hurry. Bing is collapsing fast under the weight of another Commodore-designed dog pile. Pind doesn't have Rifles yet, but he can (and probably is) researching it now. The future of the game is murky. Pind and Commodore probably eat Bing easily. Pind probably gets the majority of the spoils.

I may or may not be able to eat enough of Magic to grow to keep up with the Bing-eaters. If I don't, nothing else matters for my game. Pind is just too big. But if I can, then this game still has 3 relevant military powers (me, Pind, and Comm, assuming I defeat Magic. Again, nothing else matters if I can't). And then it all comes down to diplomacy. I don't think I'm terrible at that sort of thing, but Pind and Comm are aces. All this is in the far future. Have to get a seat at the table by taking half the empire of the guy with the top power in the world. Well, if it were easy, it wouldn't be fun.

[naufragar]

Every once in a while, someone on here will say something crazy like "Organized is the best economic trait. It's overpowered." This is of course nonsense. Puny, pallid Organized pales in comparison to puissant, punchy Aggressive:


It's so fun to be Agg in this game.

We planted a city today. It's in the north, and my picture is bad because I've got a worker blocking the name. Oh well:


(Cadia, and yes, I'm double dipping. I already used a wretched hive from this universe.  ) Our expenses went up by 10 and our income went up by 4. Once we get a temple and monastery (~10 turns), this will break even at size 1. Spiral Minaret+Shrine is nuts, I am suddenly realizing. As with the entire campaign, the point of this is just to slowly ratchet up the pressure on Magic, both materially and psychologically. If I can hold this and turn a profit, great, but he can Knight this from the fog essentially at will. Not a concern. This was a spur of the moment plan hatched last turn (hence why my missionary is lagging behind).

Meanwhile, we keep on keeping on. Tense game.

[Tarkeel]

The monk economy is strong, but there's also a non-trivial cost in spreading and buildings. The transition to an oil-based navy is also extremely hard.

[naufragar]

The transition to an oil-based navy is also extremely hard.

Oh man, I hadn't thought about that. I've never played an MP game that went that late, but this one bears all the hallmarks.

It is time for t200. Big city overview to come later. In the meantime, here's what's currently going on with me and Magic:


I'd been building culture and expected to gain control of some of Joker's first ring. This didn't happen, which meant I moved my artillery up for almost nothing. Now Magic gets a good count of what I've got.  On the other hand, I get to see a little of what he's got (17 Toku muskets are going to take some getting through) and I believe he also promoted everything. This is great because it greatly reduces the amount of units that could become Guerillas and attack Cathy Ames.

My Steel ETA is 2 turns away and I'm going to be producing a handful of cannons that turn and the next. Then I ruin my tech lead by cash upgrading as many trebs/cats as I can stomach. Then we see what damage we can do. And frankly, the sooner the better. Pind and Comm are shredding through Bing and I'm very soon to be left completely behind.

Speaking of which,


Demos show a pretty clear 3rd place. I'm building wealth to finish Steel in time, so I'm behind somebody, either Pind or Magic. I could tell if Pind hadn't resumed EP spending on me and hid his graphs.  Very suspicious.

I wish I knew more of what Magic is doing. I've successfully prevented him from building banks (and when he was in a golden age, at that) so his empire is still horrifically expensive. He's researched Drama, likely to push back Cathy Ames' culture. If he commits to building culture, he can win the borders, but it's probably too expensive in the long run. That's my prognosis for Magic's game, generally. He can crank out muskets that I can't get through reasonably efficiently. He can keep his cultural borders and prevent first strikes. But it's all very expensive, and I think I'm getting to important stuff, like Steel, first and can turn this into a winning advantage. Things are on a knife's edge, though. Case in point, he still has top global power and 50% more build queues.

I don't feel terrible about my position, though. Pind still bears watching, but in the short term, I think I can grind Magic down. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Tarkeel]

The transition to an oil-based navy is also extremely hard.

Oh man, I hadn't thought about that. I've never played an MP game that went that late, but this one bears all the hallmarks.

If I'm allowed some self-promotion, you should read both of my PB58 and PB66 games.

[naufragar]

If I'm allowed some self-promotion, you should read both of my PB58 and PB66 games.

Will do! I read PB58 as it was ongoing. I admit I have fallen off '66.

It is time for t200. Big city overview to come later.

Eh... I'm feeling lazy, so have a t201 overview.


Look at all that brown. Look at that appalling lack of rivers. Oh well.

The treb builds coinciding with Steel finishing look better than they are. In many places I'll need another turn to actually finish the cannon. I've got tech vision on Magic and he's got Steel in 4 turns. This is upsetting. He's got ~500 gold in the banks. His burn rate is ~230gpt per turn, but if he builds wealth in every city, I think he can actually turn a profit. I don't know for sure but I suspect he's building wealth everywhere, will complete Steel in 4 turns, and then be able to upgrade ~5 cannons. If he's serious, he can keep upgrading with wealth builds faster than I can reinforce from my cities. He's playing well. I know I've got a tech lead, but again, he has top power, top mfg, Agg/Pro, so he's a real tough nut. (The sad reality is that I should've skipped conquistadors to go for cannons. I knew this, but I wanted to play with the shiny toys. )

So the question is, do I stay in Serfdom to slowly roll out cannons or do I swap to Slavery for a couple extra? My first thought is that Slavery is terrible for my empire. Look above for how little food I have, and how many farms (35) and windmills (20) I have. Leaving Serfdom guts me. Letting Magic outscale me is no better, of course.

Here's an example city:


Tortuga with Serfdom is a solid contributor to the war effort. If I swap to Slavery to 2-whip a cannon (let's not bother thinking about trip whips), it takes like 12 turns to grow back to size 9. We'd whip off the windmill and horse for a loss of (7*1.25)=8 hammers per turn. So we're down roughly 96 hammers for the 75 hammer (60*1.25) burst from slavery. Tortuga doesn't even have the worst food surplus of our empire. I've got multiple cities with literally nothing better than coastal tiles. On the other hand, Tortuga loses out little from windmills losing their extra hammer.

So let's look at a city with a higher food surplus:


Naturally, cities with bigger food resources I've grown bigger. 2-whipping a cannon and regrowing takes ~11 turns. Assuming we whip off two windmills and lose the hammer on a third, we're again down 8 hammers per turn for an 88 hammer loss for the 75 hammer burst. So Cathy Ames' higher food surplus makes this a bit better than whipping at Tortuga. Let's say, speaking very roughly, that if I were to 2-whip a cannon everywhere, then over a ten turn window I'd lose roughly 15 to 20 hammers per city. So over 10 turns, I'd be down about 170 hammers, counting my 10 cities than are big enough to whip. I guess a way to look at it is 10 cannons now* (*for some bizarre abstract definition of "now") in exchange for 12 cannons ten turns from now* (*see above).

But then we get into the weird edge cases, literally, of Dunwall, Oar, Necromunda, and Meereen, the cities at the southwestern edge of my empire. They have too few hammers to ever produce a cannon in a reasonable timeframe without slavery (they're finishing trebs with long setup time). So Slavery enables cannon from otherwise cannon-incapable cities. But these 4 are also so far from the front that I doubt they'll ever be able to reinforce the front in time to matter.

And all this says nothing about the massive income loss from farms going back to 0 commerce tiles and the higher maintenance cost of the Slavery civic.

But Magic will soon have cannons of his own, higher mfg, and the defender's positioning advantage. So is going for the slow burn of Serfdom the winning play? (Is there a winning play?)

Fun decisions. But I don't think I swap to Slavery.