[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

Turn 196 Cleanup

So I spent literally all day agonizing over civics and tech path. The more I thought about it, the more I really don't want to concede Physics to mackoti just yet. The thing is I need Physics anyway. If he gets Airships and I ignore Physics, you can bet he'll do all he can to pressure me that way again. If I maintain tech parity military-wise, he may just leave me alone.

I thought long and hard about UniSuffrage. I only have 30 towns so that's just 30h, but they're generally in commerce cities that could use the extra hammers. In the end, though, I figured it's inferior to Police State because I'll remain building military so frequently that the 25% hammer boost to that is still superior to the 30h (admittedly pre-modifiers) I'd get from towns. In the end, though, Representation is the only way I'm going to be able to race Mackoti to Physics, so I decided to jump back into that.

The other thing I agonized over was Theocracy vs Organized Religion. I don't think I need to spell out the differences between them for you - I think anyone can see why both would benefit me. In the end I went with OR.



The Police State + Theo combination were pretty powerful for keeping me safe, so I may still live to regret this choice. The reality is my infrastructure still sucks. I have built 1 Observatory. I'm FIN and I still only have like 7 banks. Granted, they're in the cities that could most use them, but there's quite a few more that would significantly gain from having them. I have 2 Grocers and like 4 Markets. Of course most cities don't need them, but many would benefit from them. A ton of my coastal cities would enormously benefit from Harbors and/or that other building that boosts trade routes whose name escapes me right now. Etc etc. My goal is to try to leverage my tile yield advantage into a win, and that can't happen if my infrastructure continues to suck. Of course I'll still be building a lot of military, but there needs to be a balance, and my power has basically caught up to mackoti at this point. If I lose via military, you can possibly blame it on this decision. We'll see.

So, Physics race it is. If I don't win it, that significantly delays a golden age and therefore some key civic revolts coming down the line (hence my question about Anarchy since in some cases it may be worth it). I can live with not winning it, but it's a major prize. I went all in:



(look at all those great people points!)

In every city I was toggling between scientists, workshops, etc - to figure out which way comes out ahead. In some ciites it really was better to remain on a workshop because the city had a forge but no library, but that was an uncommon case. I even founded a new (garbage) city to extract more beakers:



I was already going to settle this most likely because of the whole pure profit thing, but still. Demos after I did all this nonsense:



Food/MFG is significantly dropped due to the specialist whoring. Nearly cracked 4K, that would have been fun. Anyway, that brought me over 3.5k beakers on the turn:



So, can Mack beat me? The only concern is he did have a scientist not THAT long ago. I kinda suspect he may have already bulbed with it to get to this point, but I'm not 100% sure. If he still has it, I guess there's a chance he completes it this upcoming turn, in which case I has a sad. I wanted this tech anyway so that part isn't a huge deal, but still. I ended turn, and I discovered why Mackoti suddenly changed plans on Physics:



Commodore beat him to Communism. That's pretty fantastic news for me . Anything to deny it to him. Minorly good news:



So yes, Mack is running heavy, heavy wealth to subsidize his teching, but he lost 166 gold last turn. That means he may have to dial down to 90%. I doubt that makes a difference here, but still.

So right now I'm hoping on a coin flip for the scientist. Although I think there's probably a 30% chance he bulbs it this turn and beats me in which case I'll be sad, so my chances of landing it are realistically below 50%. Anyway, the explanation here was long-winded, but that's what's going on in Vikingland.

[scooter]

Yep, Mackoti bulbed or something and will finish Physics this turn. I'll probably just do Biology now instead and then finish Physics once the known tech bonus kicks in.

[pindicator]

Yep, Mackoti bulbed or something and will finish Physics this turn. I'll probably just do Biology now instead and then finish Physics once the known tech bonus kicks in.

What changed your mind about airships?

[scooter]

Yep, Mackoti bulbed or something and will finish Physics this turn. I'll probably just do Biology now instead and then finish Physics once the known tech bonus kicks in.

What changed your mind about airships?

Oh I didn't change my mind about them. I'm just saying if he's about to finish Physics this turn, I may spend 1T teching something else (Biology or Replaceable Parts most likely, I'll elaborate shortly), then finish Physics in the following 2T. The bonus I get from drafting in Mackoti's tech slipstream isn't necessarily massive, but it's enough to be notable when we're talking several thousand beakers/turn.

[scooter]

So I'm trying to decide on what's next. So on one hand, I could just hang tight and wait for my National Epic city to generate 2 more great people. Upon crunching the numbers, that's going to take 27 turns. The question is if that's worth the wait. First, do I want to go 27T in these civics when stuff like State Property and Nationalism could be available? Second, is it even economically worth it to wait that long?

Because the alternative is just to use these guys to bulb right away when they come in.



1860b is not very impressive - akin to 1 turn of break-even science for me in non golden age mode (if that). However, it's a tech I'm going to want anyway since it's on the Steam Power -> Assembly Line path, not to mention it's an instant +1h to all my mines. I guess now is a nice time to look at all my near-term tech options. Beaker costs in parenthesis, and they are actual in-game costs, not raw costs. Techs after a colon are techs I still need to grab to unlock that particular tech.

* Communism (9016): Philo (1288) + Liberalism (3381) - This path looked a lot more interesting a few turns ago when I thought I was within a dozen turns of a golden age, since this unlocks State Property and Environmentalism. These don't really give me anything else valuable, so I'll probably ignore these even longer.

* Military Tradition (4830): Philo (1288) + Liberalism (3381) - Meh. Cuirs are a big upgrade over Knights, especially with the thread of Bigger/Lewwyn seeking revenge down the line, but is it really worth diverting for these now when I can easily grab Rifles and/or even divert for something like Machine Guns pretty quickly.

* Biology (11592): Obscenely expensive, but I can start it right now if I want. I have roughly 92 farms, so this is an instant empire-wide +92F. Given that I committed myself to Representation, that extra pop turning into specialists would be pretty nice. It also has the weird effect of letting you bulldoze a few farms in farm-heavy cities because the farms you already have are extra-productive.

* Steam Power (9016): Replaceable Parts (4347) - RP is a tech I want sooner rather than later anyway for that instant hammer boost. Steam Power unlocks Levees and lets me target Railroad if I want for Machine Guns and the actual Railroads. It would also unlock the ORG uber-tech Assembly Line, but I need to push that down onto a different section lest I ramble too much here. Levees are great, but here's what would benefit from Levees:

Trailblazers:11hpt
tigers: 13hpt
pirates: 14hpt
bulldogs: 7hpt
orioles: 4-5hpt
49ers: 7-9hpt
Grizzlies: 9hpt

So... around 55 hammers, and that's after investing significant hammers just to build the levees. Now granted, this is mostly in cities that are super-cities so could get them quickly AND benefit more than normal from them, but still. I'm not super sure that rushing to Steam Power so I can invest in buildings that will eventually generate 55hpt when I can tech Biology right now and instantly get over 90fpt. Tech it, sure, but I tend to think Biology may be a little more pressing.

* Assembly Line (16100bpt): Tons of Techs. Not only do I need that Steam Power line, I also need Corporation. Corp is a good tech for me, but it requires several techs I don't have yet (Philo -> Nationalism -> Constitution) that are all (in the near-term) worthless for me for any reason other than grabbing Corp.


So obviously I really want Assembly Line, but man is it ever far away. And that alone makes me think it's probably worth waiting 27 turns for my 3-man golden age (quick Biology may let me shave a couple turns off that FWIW). The problem is I become more and more vulnerable the more tightly I try to get to Assembly Line. Can I really go that long without diverting for Rifles or Machine Guns or the ability to draft or even the ability to use State Property? That's questionable.

Anyway, there's a layout of all the decisions I'm working through at the moment. My extreme lack of experience (let alone RB Mod experience) on this phase of the game may start to show a bit if I'm not super careful. For the curious, here are a couple tile improvement counts of various tiles that could get boosted by certain techs/civics:

Towns: 30 (UniSuff +1H)
Farms: 92 (Biology +1f, Environ +1C )
Workshops + Watermills: 70 (Communism -> revolt +1F)
Pastures: 16 (Environ +1C)

Unfortunately mines are not included, I thought I counted those, but somehow they didn't make it into my notes when I did these counts yesterday.

[NobleHelium]

Pretty sure a trade mission would be more beakers equivalently.

[scooter]

Pretty sure a trade mission would be more beakers equivalently.

Almost for sure, yeah. I'm gonna need to do some fiddling around to try to remember the combination of keys and sorcery required to check a foreign city on how much a trade mission would net you. That may very well be worth setting aside thoughts of a golden age 27T from now.

[Ceiliazul]

i was facing a similar decision in my last SP game. 1000ad scenario (bts) playing as aztecs, i got the econ merchant, but then my NE city spawned a low odds merchant destroying my GA-to-Communism plan... i thought seriously about burning them on RepParts.

I won't tell you what i ended up doing.

I feel your pain tho.

[scooter]

What in the world. Can anyone tell me what just happened? This screenshot was taken less than a minute before turn roll (I was in when Ichabod finished and rolled the turn):



I clearly have enough beakers for Replaceable Parts to finish in 1T. However, he presses enter, I do not get the tech. This doesn't make any sense to me. I am 100% certain I did not click something within a city to mess it up. Any guesses? I have just 1 guess.



This city lost a couple tiles at turn roll. Is this processed before beakers are processed? That wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Not too thrilled over losing around 40-50 hammers this turn because of this (not to mention the charades I went through to even get it micro'd like this), but what can I do.

[Krill]

I think culture is processed before beakers, so...yeah, that would do it.