(December 8th, 2021, 00:50)Ginger() Wrote: Hell yeah, one population cities with 16 food and top power
All you need is some soylent green and it'll be the perfect horror of humanity.
Thinking long term though, aside from the joys of conquering the backward continents, how do you manage to defeat both Picc and Mig? I imagine your research has not improved at the Kremlin's loving hands, so what do you need to have happen to make your victory possible? Is Domination possible in your mind? If not, how will you get the space ship?
Conquests with Mills-boosted integration, how far will that carry you? Sorry if this is raining on your glorious parade (it is glorious)
That's a really interesting and important question actually, I appreciate it. I think there are probably three ways to play this out, and I should actually commit to one in the next few turns. Killing Superdeath happens no matter what, but afterwards I would play very differently depending on the goal.
1) Spaceship Victory
You are correct that the Kremlin has not helped research (well, it is more complicated since it let me whip those Observatories/Unis, but recently it has hurt obviously). Unit costs are tough; Breakeven was 70% pre-GA, 75% post-GA, and is only slightly above 60% currently - a huge drop. Also, we are just whipping a lot of population into units that could be coast tiles or scientists.
Despite all that, I seem to have the 3rd best economy in the game, and the Shrine won't exactly hurt either. So what I'm about to say might sound silly: I actually think a spaceship victory is nearly impossible for me, and has been for a very long time. Let me explain. Maybe other players have commented on the strength of my economy in the last 50 turns - its surprised me, so I'm sure its surprised them. Background context is pretty important here: I failed to build nearly any cottages this game. Instead, my economy has been built upon (obsolete) wonders, high numbers of buildings, and most importantly trade route modifiers. Here is the GNP graph from the last 100 turns:
You can see where my economy rebounded after I whipped everything to the ground against Pindicator. But that was a combination of regrowing cities above Size 6 (crazy, I know) and a strong focus on Harbours and Custom Houses to pair with GLH. This worked amazingly in the short term, but was never going to in the long-term. Kremlin was an efficient bandaid because it let me whip banks and universities, but even that is just a bandaid.
Yes, my trade income is great, and that was enough to carry me from T150-200. But for 50 cities the tile income is laughable, and it is catching up with me. The truth is that no amount of whips and trade route modifiers can compete against the 2/1/9 cottages that Piccadilly has, or Miguelito's Mining Inc. Regardless of my heavy whipping here, my economy would be getting outdated - I am the sick man of PB59.
What's interesting though is this: if my economy had no chance of keeping up with Mig and Piccadilly, then attacking Superdeath for the Shrine is the correct play even going for a spaceship. So I still am somewhat on a reasonable path to attempting this. For that though, the correct play would have been beelining Kremlin even earlier, and taking the Shrine with rifles -I'd have needed the extra gold and land much earlier, I think. The other big thing I'd have needed to do differently would be staying in Representation; the only economy I could try to make would be using Cereal Mills to hire Hordes of scientists in every city for 6 beakers each. I'm skeptical that even that would work out, but it would have been much better than Police State. Overall, having done neither of those two things, I'd call a spaceship win from here implausible, bordering on impossible. Lesson learned: build cottages next time.
2) Domination Victory
So the other victory I was thinking about was domination. I mean, I have a lot of units being pumped out, right? Here are the victory conditions:
51% is the hard part. I would have to conquer two and a half continents (and keep them for long enough that borders cover them fully). In my case, that would mean...
Fully conquering Island 2 (Mr. Cairo):
Fully conquering Island 1 (Superdeath; Tarkeel; Donovan Zoi):
Partially conquering Island 5 (Lazteuq; Charriu):
If I had infinite time, I might actually be able to pull that off. Maybe - it would rely on my civ4 warfare ability... Anyway, that's irrelevant, as I have maybe 40 turns? 45? That might even be optimistic. I doubt even TBS or Mackoti could pull that off. So a domination victory probably isn't happening either.
3) Playing for Fun
So if I don't think a spaceship or domination victory is possible, that begs the question: what exactly am I doing here? I feel like I want to achieve something memorable with what's left of the game, and if that can't be actual victory, I might as well set myself a personal equivalent. A fun starting point could be conquering Island 1 (Superdeath/Tarkeel/DZ) completely. Maybe even that's ambitious, but the goal has to be hard, right? And if I'm underestimating myself, it still leaves room to layer future goals (maybe conquering Cairo next, for example). So I think that's my personal goal, for now.
Regardless, I always finish killing Superdeath and I probably attack Donovan Zoi always too. That land is able to become productive quickly thanks to Cereal Mills, like Grillo mentioned. If I choose to go for a spaceship, I whip a university and a laboratory everywhere ASAP and sit around doing nothing until I inevitably lose. Boring. If I choose to go for domination, I follow that personal goal and start with Island 1. I think I know which victory condition I'm pursuing.
T219
Superdeath seems to agree that he can't retake NoHandlebars. For starters, he offered peace.
But more importantly...
I'm pretty sure Tarkeel's entire stack from yesterday's screenshot was wiped out. I was pretty grim about Actual Victory Prospects yesterday, but if there's a chance, it starts with that.
But to be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this. I suppose the question is whether this means we can advance further... Superdeath also moved the rifles out of Seether, towards 30s2Mars. Here's what's left:
Honestly, I wonder about the mental direction of Superdeath right now - his attack on Tarkeel seemed very effective, but what was the motivation? He's moved all of his rifles to the north, which is curious. It's not like the Miskatonic border city is well defended:
Part of the problem is Superdeath's temperamentality - it looks like he wants to fight Tarkeel, but this could be a trap for me, or I could make a move that turns him around (not taking peace, for example ). Or I suppose he could have just wanted to fight a winning battle, without long-term implications (though the rifles leaving Seether are pretty weird imo). So to hedge my bets, I kept the main stack in NoHandlebars for another turn. Worst case, I figure a turn (of waiting for tanks) won't slow things down much anyway. Next turn we can make a better decision depending on what SD does - if only he wasn't so impossible to predict!
The one exception to my 'stay put' decision this turn was advancing with two cavalry and four infantry on Senses Fail. I realised SD didn't whip this (in a picture from last turn, it's Size 3), and I mostly just got excited by everything.
In theory, the cavalry will capture the city and the infantry will use the roads to garrison it. If it doesn't look like that will work out, I'll put the cavalry under the infantry next turn, or run away back to NoHandlebars. In retrospect, this was way too greedy, and I should have just waited. Oops.
The other reason I moved in there was that Tarkeel landed 4 Cavalry and 2 Riflemen in NoHandlebars, with which I worried he might try to take Senses Fail himself. Paranoid as befitting a cruel dictator, I suppose.
Donovan is gathering a stack on Champ island.
He might be able to do some real damage with this, if Tarkeel's coast is undefended.
On the home front, the second wave starts getting mercilessly whipped out.
Is arming our slaves with tanks a good idea? Apparently!
As far as eeking out the impossible victory, another thing worth considering is whether I could somehow trick Miguelito and Piccadilly into slowing each other down. It's a shame they're so far away from one another (side note: I dislike this map shape. It strongly discourages interaction with most other players, which is explicitly the point of a big game. Not a huge deal, but a shame). Maybe if they nuke each other? That's surely dreaming, though.
I also had an idea this turn. I think I'll take a zoomed-out picture of Island 1 every turn, and make some sort of timelapse of the conquest. Should only take a minute per turn, so not a huge time commitment. They would like like this:
T220
I'm still confused about what Superdeath is doing. He continues moving troops northwards.
He completely abandoned Senses Fail, so at least I wasn't punished there.
That whole area is a complete clusterfuck, by the way.
Why does Superdeath's city only have a crossbow? Why did Tarkeel abandon those two cities? Why didn't Superdeath make any moves to reclaim them?What the fuck is going on here???
Donovan is moving troops towards StoneCity in the west, which is a bit suspicious (that city needs to be renamed ASAP). He and Tarkeel are also skirmishing with boats in the middle-sea. Tarkeel had a crack at Snallygaster, which is surrounded by Miskatonic culture.
Tarkeel this game is a really good display of why I don't like Serfdom on food-high maps like this. His tech is decent, sure, but his production is just tiny - he can't advance in land-wars that are literally infantry vs. longbows. Props to him for trying it out, I just don't think this was the map for it. Tarkeel also tried to sell me rice for 10gpt this turn, which is much too steep. I'm thinking about cancelling some grain deals actually, because at a certain point the excess food is worthless, and we're probably there.
Piccadilly started a Golden Age last turn, and their GNP is pretty scary:
You can also see my crashed economy. I'm trying to decide between aiming for Modern Armor, or just saying 'screw it' and whipping tanks until my people riot. Or maybe mobile artillery are the go here? I've barely even played singleplayer at this point of the tech tree, and I have literally no idea what I'm doing.
Cairo also went into a Golden Age and swapped out of Slavery. Still in Nationhood though, so invading isn't really anymore viable, I think. He might catch up with me in tech here, since I'm slowing down and he's speeding up (rapidly, too). I wonder if I missed a chance to invade him 10 turns ago, or if I made the right decision.
(December 9th, 2021, 22:34)Ginger() Wrote: For the captured shrine's name, may I recommend, War, What is it Good For? and Sweet Dreams are Made of This
Appreciate the suggestion! I ran out of Bjork songs that I actually know a long time ago, I've been using a wikipedia list. This naming theme scores a 10/10 for Aesthetics, but a 3/10 for personal interest. I like the second one, think I'll use that.
Finally, I definitely have the chance to take Seether this turn too. If it was a normal war against a normal defender I'd do it in a heartbeat, but Superdeath is playing some crazy mindgames here. Defending by not defending is impressive. The odds weren't great with the infantry... So did I go for it?
I... haven't decided yet. I had to cut my turn short because I ran out of time. I'll think about it overnight and finish the turn tomorrow. Cliffhanger ending!
T220 Part Two
I decided to move the NoHandlebars stack forward a turn earlier than planned. In the worst case that Superdeath turns around, so can they.
I initially thought I was going to attack Seether this morning, to the extent that I bombarded it before I changed my mind. I decided to wait 1 more turn, because I'll have tanks set up then. If he turns around, we can use the tanks in the attack/defense against his stack, and if he doesn't we can unload them and advance just as quickly anyway. No sense taking the risk.
It is possible that I've wasted two turns here, which would suck. But it's also possible that I would have spectacularly bungled the invasion by going in last turn. I guess I'll never know. (Similar to the attack on Nauf after Pindicator died, actually. I'm still not sure if I made the right call there).
I've also started shipping out chain gangs.
Their first priority will be getting a railroad infrastructure set up. After that, probably making a whole load of watermills and workshops.
(December 10th, 2021, 02:54)Hitru Wrote: About tech/units for late game war. I just want to say one word to you. Just one word: nukes
( also great to slow down tech/building capacity of others)
It's an interesting idea. Nukes are allowed in this game, but they're heavily nerfed in CtH at triple cost (e.g. 1500 hammers for an ICBM, instead of 500). This specifically nerfs Kremlin builds, annoyingly, because 1500 is so difficult to whip even with my modifiers. But it is an interesting idea. I would have to be very careful with timing, since Miguelito can probably build them much faster than me after my initial round of whips. So I'd probably want to build Manhattan Project, whip a nuke everywhere, use them within 2-4 turns, and then win.
This (and a few other posts/chats) have gotten me thinking more seriously about a domination win. I still think it's obscenely unlikely (<5%, maybe <1% chance), but it might just be possible, and I'm thinking more seriously about trying for it. I'll write up a post in the next week or so about it, because there are a lot of big decisions. Going away for the weekend, which will be good time to think, if not write. I believe the big challenge will be speed, so I'll need to start taking a lot more risks than I have been with the SD war.
its called psychological warfare.
If you can't beat them by force, drive them crazy until they run around like chicken, losing their minds, shooting themselves, building sand castles at the beach, singing naked in the rain...
its called psychological warfare.
If you can't beat them by force, drive them crazy until they run around like chicken, losing their minds, shooting themselves, building sand castles at the beach, singing naked in the rain...
It's working.
(T220 pt.2 above Klops' post. We somehow managed to post in the same minute).
(it is glorious)
Anyway, that's irrelevant, as I have maybe 40 turns? 45? That might even be optimistic. I doubt even TBS or Mackoti could pull that off. So a domination victory probably isn't happening either. 
If I choose to go for domination, I follow that personal goal and start with Island 1. I think I know which victory condition I'm pursuing. 
). Or I suppose he could have just wanted to fight a winning battle, without long-term implications (though the rifles leaving Seether are pretty weird imo). So to hedge my bets, I kept the main stack in NoHandlebars for another turn. Worst case, I figure a turn (of waiting for tanks) won't slow things down much anyway. Next turn we can make a better decision depending on what SD does - if only he wasn't so impossible to predict! 
I like the second one, think I'll use that. 
The odds weren't great with the infantry... So did I go for it? 
