[LURKERS] Setting Up Tents for a Ren Faire

[Mardoc]

So...is Sullla saying that drafted rifles are bad?

No? Or at least I can't find a recent post of his that says anything like that.

[Zalson]

So...is Sullla saying that drafted rifles are bad?

No? Or at least I can't find a recent post of his that says anything like that.

Yeah, I think the context was that Spiritual is doing better than Imperialistic -- and Spiritual hasn't even been able to draft rifles yet.

[Krill]

Meh IMP may get forced to stick in Nationhood which limits the advantage of an OU bureau capital. The advantage for Aztecs is the EP bonus. The downside is SPI can force a minor economic advantage?

I'm waiting to see how people cobble together a per turn research base. Bulbs are only going to drastically alter turns specific techs get researched but reaching the next military techs requires that research base. And then building them? Nat is cheap, and gives a cheap way to make rifles and Grens/Cannon will fall to a Cuir beeline.

Cuirs off boats aren't scary and need gunpowder. Im trying to see where IMP has a decisive window for military action and struggling...

[Krill]

Meh IMP may get forced to stick in Nationhood which limits the advantage of an OU bureau capital. The advantage for Aztecs is the EP bonus. The downside is SPI can force a minor economic advantage?

I'm waiting to see how people cobble together a per turn research base. Bulbs are only going to drastically alter turns specific techs get researched but reaching the next military techs requires that research base. And then building them? Nat is cheap, and gives a cheap way to make rifles and Grens/Cannon will fall to a Cuir beeline.

Cuirs off boats aren't scary and need gunpowder. Im trying to see where IMP has a decisive window for military action and struggling...

[GermanJoey]

Meh IMP may get forced to stick in Nationhood which limits the advantage of an OU bureau capital. The advantage for Aztecs is the EP bonus. The downside is SPI can force a minor economic advantage?

I'm waiting to see how people cobble together a per turn research base. Bulbs are only going to drastically alter turns specific techs get researched but reaching the next military techs requires that research base. And then building them? Nat is cheap, and gives a cheap way to make rifles and Grens/Cannon will fall to a Cuir beeline.

Cuirs off boats aren't scary and need gunpowder. Im trying to see where IMP has a decisive window for military action and struggling...

IMHO Imp isn't gonna have a natural. specific strategic advantage in that way, like Spi would in its ability to rely on Nationhood without giving up Bureaucracy. Imp's bonus to settlers implies that they should always have a head up on city-count, which sometimes of course is truly what you want, but that obscures's what Imp's advantage really is. Rather, what Imp has is flexibility in deciding what it's strategic advantage is. Here, because of the chokepoints between areas, Imp isn't likely to settle much more land in the expansion phase than anyone else, so they need to transmute their settler advantage somehow.

Like, take TBS's Academy sim - he wouldn't be ahead in city count at that T218 if that sim was the real game, but he'd have that very solid per-turn research base you were talking about. Essentially, he transmuted REX potential into something else.  Or think about REM in PB33 - he was among the leaders in city count early in that game, but not outstandingly so, and was overshadowed by Dreylin/OT4E for much of the first 50 turns. However, he built up an outstanding research base, with lots of courthouses (and I agree that the EP advantage of getting these things early is tremendous, much more so then people realize because your total accumulated EP lowers requirements for passives for yourself and raises them against yourself for others), libraries, universities, Oxford, and even the SoL. He could do all this because his cities got planted much earlier and thus started their growth curves earlier too. Eventually, this research and infrastructure dominance accumulated enough to open up a half-era tech lead and a sizeable production lead early into the modern era against which his opponents could not fight against effectively. In this game, a solid game plan for an Imp civ might perhaps be to take such a lead around the start of the Industrial era.

Or take a theoretical Suleiman of Byzantium (which is what Mack what to pick), who could crush someone like Alhazard around this stage of the game without ever really falling behind in core development compared to a baseline civ - his military would essentially come from hammers saved on settlers transmuted into Cataphracts. He wouldn't even need to actually attack, as the mere threat of it (shown in his spiking power, compared to everyone else that has only garrisons of longbows and warriors) would send his opponents into a panic and force them to waste considerable resources planning a defense. Or think about how Imp civs in ancient-era start games are the main contenders (along with Ind ofc) for the early wonders like SH, Oracle, GLH, etc, because they're the ones that don't need to funnel chops into REXing. Or how, e.g. Viccy can spam and work cottages without falling behind on growth, etc.

In every case, Imp wins by proactively choosing how they will win and then doing it without needing to passively react to others because they never have to say "oh shit, I'm falling behind!" Of course, this all theoretical... the only one of the three Imps that seems to have a plan along these lines is scooter, who wants to just get as many cities as fast as he can while moving through Nat/Const/Demo, and then score the SoL. So, that's early industrial by itself, so the window of opportunity he'd be trying to open would have to be later... late Industrial at the earliest? Seems late...

[greenline]

Well, if you're going to attack someone with Rifles, you choose someone who doesn't have them. And if they don't have rifles they're a long way from cavs.

I have to wonder if anyone is going to end up so behind that they'll have a period of vulnerability where they don't have cuirs or rifles in this game. Everyone starts only two or three techs away from Rifling or MilTrad after all.

[OT4E]

Well, if you're going to attack someone with Rifles, you choose someone who doesn't have them. And if they don't have rifles they're a long way from cavs.

I have to wonder if anyone is going to end up so behind that they'll have a period of vulnerability where they don't have cuirs or rifles in this game. Everyone starts only two or three techs away from Rifling or MilTrad after all.

Rifling requires 4 techs: Gunpowder, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts and Rifling. Plus you want to have Nationalism to use them effectively. It is thousands of beakers and teams are only making 100-150 by now. Aligning 2-3 GPs into techs can bring you much closer to Rifling than those who doesnt spend GP in this direction. And after all people choose Construction, Educstion and Astronomy instead. So my conclusion is that half of the teams are vulnerable to straight Rifling war-path without any extra-ordinary micro required.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, with 4 neighbours you'll almost certainly find one good target who went for economic techs.

[The Black Sword]

Btw, here's a question none of the players seems to have asked explicitly yet, how many cities do you need before the SoL is worth it?

[pindicator]

I don't have any idea how to quantify it, but my gut says you'd want around 15+ cities in the same continent. And the ability to run either Rep or Pacifism