[spoilers] - pindicator is excited for the next Realms Beyond league mechanics

[pindicator]

Turn 188, Part 1 - The end of the war

Two cities left and both went almost according to plan:

We started at Sakusa where the two frigates from the south bombarded defenses to 8%, then I sent in both CR2 catapults against his 3 musketmen. Happily the last catapult withdrew and both catapults got in several good hits against their defenders




The maces went in first, both with odds around 70%. They both died.

But everything was just weak at this point and my musket was able to win his coin-flip-ish battle. The crossbow in my stack and 1 of the muskets from the boats were able to mop up with fights in the 98+% range, and the city fell:




Just Tendou remained, and it was stocked with 3 muskets, 2 longbows, 1 pike, and 1 knight. Mouse had also left his entire navy inside the city so I was very happy to never have to engage his units; if he had moved them to block my frigates then I might have had to sacrifice some privateers to get through.

Again, I used the frigates to bombard, and I had an accuracy promoted catapult in the stack which also bombarded to get the city defenses to 8%. Then I sent in 3 CR2 catapults and they also had good success damaging multiple units.




Like at Sakusa the last catapult even retreated for me.

Here I kept track of the final battles a bit more as I was waiting for more high-odds rolls to go against me. Luckily none of them did!

C2 camel archer v CG2 musket (63hp), 70.0% - WIN
Guerilla xbow v CG1 longbow (73hp), 17.1% - LOSS, 2 units damaged
C1 camel archer v C1 pike (71hp), 69.2% - WIN
C2 camel archer v CG2 musket (54hp), 87.8% - WIN
C1 camel archer v C1 knight (79hp), 84.8% - WIN
C1 camel archer v longbow (71hp), 88.4% - WIN
C1 camel archer v CG1 longbow (58hp), 95.3% - WIN
musketman v CG2 musketman (25hp), 98.8% - WIN

I probably didn't need to sacrifice another crossbow there, but I was hoping to bump up my odds for that next battle a little more. It did: the fight against the pike went from 67% to 69%. But the dice rolls all went in my favor and with that the war which I started 38 turns ago finally has ended:




First off, a big kudos to Mouseferatu on how stubbornly he defended. He made some mistakes along the way - just like I made mistakes - but on the whole he was tenacious and did a great job executing a stubborn defense. I think the only thing I would point out for future games is to watch out for amphibious captures of cities combined with boats going into the city and units then being able to attack inland on the same turn. I was able to destroy that initial catapult stack on the second or third turn of the war and that really set him back for mustering his defenses. But really a solid job of making me burn a second golden age to get into Nationalism and use drafting as a giant anvil of production; not what I wanted to do at the time but I had to in order to not lose everything right away!

Now that the war is over I'm hoping to reassess things globally and think about larger strategy again. With Gavagai and OH on my borders both showing superior units (Gav has his German grenadier UU and OH has cannons and cuirassiers) I need to get my defenses in order quick. The war has taken a toll on my power levels and I might be a tempting target for either neighbor if I don't turn things around shortly.

I'll finish up later tonight. It will be nice to play these turns outside of a turn timer again!

[BaII]

First off, a big kudos to Mouseferatu on how stubbornly he defended.  He made some mistakes along the way - just like I made mistakes - but on the whole he was tenacious and did a great job executing a stubborn defense.  I think the only thing I would point out for future games is to watch out for amphibious captures of cities combined with boats going into the city and units then being able to attack inland on the same turn.  I was able to destroy that initial catapult stack on the second or third turn of the war and that really set him back for mustering his defenses.  But really a solid job of making me burn a second golden age to get into Nationalism and use drafting as a giant anvil of production; not what I wanted to do at the time but I had to in order to not lose everything right away!

Thank you! Yeah that killing of my cats that early in the war made it really difficult. It's hard to play out wars vs Humans instead of AI and it's much easier to be punished for making those kinds of mistakes. Oh well time to read about your side of the war

Also I ended up not using my navy for anything much after I saw the Frigates since I assumed if I were to ever hold a choke they would be free exp for your frigates but considering your need for speed here yeah I can see why you still didn't want to engage in them.

[pindicator]

So I guess I forgot to do part 2. I was going to recap tech situation, get into global politics, etc.

Turns out that would have all been for naught because I open up turn 189 and find this:




I help him take down Rusten and he helps me with the rest of the world. No rest for the wicked in this game.

More accurately: I help him take out Rusten, he helps me take out one or two neighbors, and then he wins by culture or space or stabs me in the back. But this is pretty much a play for 2nd place. There's no guarantee it will work: Rusten is doing fantastic since his conquests wrapped up and he may be able to out-tech us both.

It's also incredibly boring: either it succeeds and we take out Rusten and then #1 and #2 in the game are in an alliance - yawn; or it fails and Rusten runs away with the game - yawn.

I think my reasonable avenues for expansion are either through OH or Gavagai.

I think my odds of winning this game are 1% at this point: it only happens if Rusten and OH bog each other down and I'm also able to either surpass them with tech or backstab the winner at the opportune moment. I'd put Rusten at 65%, OH at 33%, and the rest of the field combined is the other 1%. So it makes sense to take this on, right? It keeps my 1% alive.

There's also a little bit of an anarchist in me that wants to hit Offer Trade. If I understand things right, that would make OH and I declare on the world right now. That would probably hurt me more than him, however.

I think I'm going to go for this. I'll decline this trade and send him a Fish for Fish to signal my agreement. Not sure how we proceed from here, but I don't see how this worsens my chances. And if successful it means I get #2 instead of #3 ... or eaten.

Except if he wants me to declare on Rusten now then we may have some issues...

[Miguelito]

Congratulations on the won war!
Once the new cities come out of revolt, it'd be very nice to have some shots of the various regions of the empire.

On helping OH take out Rusten, how does that work? On the minimap you look pretty remote from each other. Would you actually ship troops through OH to hit him?

Now for some game-related content, here's the rest of my Metamorph report:
When I last wrote, I had a Frost Blades Raider around late yellow maps who wouldn't find good claws and was starting to stall out, and had just found a six-link Quill Rain from a Metamorph. In the end I decided to amass orbs of regret (delving was very helpful there), and with about 70 of those transitioned into Explosive Arrow (no totems)*. EA gave you 3% more ignite damage per arrow shot at the enemy, and with the new Barrage support and GMP these can be a lot, while Quill Rain is just perfect for the purpose. Fully charged, I was easily shooting 50 arrows per second. The skill was also nicely combined with the inc skill duration nodes around the scion, malevolence, and temporal chains, to give it >3 seconds to amass fuses, which would then all explode and cause one massive ignite. That way the skill was incredibly good as a boss killer; T16 Metamorphs would melt to death often after the first salvo. During mapping otoh it's pretty weird, because you shoot, then have to dodge bullets until some 3 seconds later the explosion hits. Expecially in Delve that's something special. But after a while this became quite fun and was something different from the usual direct confrontations.
I had a blast, chaining T16 maps, killing Sirius, Shaper and Red Elder. Most powerful character I've had, and that in SSF. The one massive drawback was the performance, which for me has gotten increasingly awful since Legion. Even like that, the char was powerful enough to just shoot away during a lag spike like when a Metamorph spawned, and get the job done (she would just also die often)**.
I was looking very much forward to keep playing in standard, and even tidied up my stash, but of ocurse it got nerfed. They introduced a cap of 20 on the number of arrows for the 3% more ignite damage per arrow, at which point it now triggers the explosion. Apparently, people managed to get up to 800 arrows into bosses and caused the damage per second numbers to overflow. With some adjustments I could still play well on T16 maps, but had to actually pay attention while bossing, and couldn't do shaper even with 6 portals. Now that's of course still very strong, but it just feels bad to play a lesser version of what was before.
I think the nerf was justifiable, because a bow that you can find in the first zone maybe shouldn't give as much power, but the way it was done robbed the skill of its identity imo. Now the best way to do damage is just to go for the explosion hits and trigger those often, so pretty much like any other projectile hit skill (I stood with ignite because I didn't want to spend the time to completely rebuild).
I think you enjoy very much trying lots of different builds, right? On my part most times I've played just one char per league, to see how far it could go (repetitions of the same build when hardcore, Blight was an exception there). Now, having conquered almost everything the game has to offer (exception is Uber Elder, which I think I could have stood a chance pre-nerf and with the improved performance from sound effects off), going back feels a little stale for now. I nthe end I actually uninstalled. I'll follow the news on updates, but I think I'll come back to it when 4.0 hits, hopefully with a better machine.

But I'm happy to hear you're enjoying yourself, and yeah, that jewel you found sounded insane when it was announced, nice to hear it plays out that way in practice as well! How far did you push it?

* and found Touch of Anguish (the Frost Blades claw) in the first Delve I did after that
** I have recently learned that a lot of the CPU performance weirdly actually goes into sound effects, as the game apparently doesn't cap their number, and so they all have to be computed - particularly nice when you shoot 50 arrows per second into large packs. You can turn sound effects off in the ini file, and this has made my game fluent again (and tripled the framerate in hideout, not kidding), though the atmosphere becomes a little strange. At least you can finally appreciate the music.

[pindicator]

192

Can someone tell me what this means?




I'm guessing someone feels stuck between a rock and dye-ing to knights?


As war weariness has fallen off and I've been able to get a round of infrastructure and growth in my cities, then the GNP is really starting to climb




Most all the Rennaissance techs are 1-2 turns; and the Industrial era techs are 3-6.  Maybe that's a cause of just how stupidly large this map is that we've got multiple players with 40+ cities out there.  But maybe there still needs to be a little bit of tweak to the formula because it feels like things are coming in a little too quick.

I finished Steel at the end of last turn and started or queued a bunch of drydocks.  With steel I'll get some cannons going which should be enough to defend any attack.  Then the drydocks will help churn out 3 and 4 promotion frigates.  From there I think the next big goal has to be oil and modern naval units.  But I really wanted to get Corporation first, so we're swinging by Economics (1 turn) and then Corporations (2 turns) for the free trade routes as well as for building Wall Street on my shrine city.

Speaking of tech, I think I've analyzed the F4 screen correctly, and come up with these beaker totals:

pindicator	AT	Old Harry + Hitru	GeneralKilCavalry	Dark Savant	Commodore	Rusten	Krill (now TBW)	Gavagai
60,547	57,659	95,475	40,560	23,944	55,674	90,459	65,661	44,414

I'll also have to get a screenshot of the GNP screen because I think I'm catching OH - obviously I am still in a big hole beaker-wise, but I could conceivably catch him before this is all done.

We still have a lot of the later cities from the conquering that are still in revolt, but I've gone and renamed them all.  We're pretty much through all the expansions and the unique maps.  I guess next up is the regular maps.

So before we get into the new lands, I figured we'd take a look at Gemling Island because the south hasn't gotten much attention when all the action has been west and north.





There are still 2 filler spots to put in, but both those sites would pretty much be just for the beakers and be stuck on building wealth.  Cortex I put in sooner because it can also work a mined gems, and makes pretty good commerce with just that and building wealth.  I crammed in a city of The Awakening southeast of Delve and that is just a fishing village - I'm waiting for its lighthouse to finish and then it gives its fish back to Delve and has to be content with just growing on coast for the rest of the game.

In general, I want to put Forbidden Palace either down here or up north at Mouseferatu's old capital.  Probably goes down here but I'm not sure on that until all those cities come out of revolt and I can see what the costs are.  In addition, I still need a few more courthouses I believe.

I don't plan on using this as a staging point for going further south.  GKC would be an easier target for conquest but he also would leave me with such a stretch on supply going north to south pole-to-pole.  Perhaps I need to do it anyway, just because he is that easiest route of conquest.  But I need to watch out for TBW - he's got Redcoats and Cavalry and my land forces are a little behind technologically.  Which is another reason why I may just sit back and build up infrastructure and navy instead.

I still need to find homes for a number of national wonders.  The biggest ones right now are finding homes for Ironworks, National Epic, and Oxford.  Oxford probably has to go in my capital because no other city really comes close to its beaker output.  Ironworks likely goes in one of the high-production cities I conquered off of Mouseferatu.  National Epic is rough - I have no plan right now for a 3rd golden but I think I should get one.  Although my next great person is like 30 turns out, so maybe it's better to just ignore and no count on a third GA.

[pindicator]

Detail I left out of tech thread: I had been drinking, and I probably won't play until I get sober

Anyway, Gav attacked and I feel like I didn't see it all because I only saw a boat stack that I think I can take on. Anyway, I'm just thinking I must have missed the galleons because ... you know, drinking

[darrelljs]

Detail I left out of tech thread: I had been drinking, and I probably won't play until I get sober

Anyway, Gav attacked and I feel like I didn't see it all because I only saw a boat stack that I think I can take on. Anyway, I'm just thinking I must have missed the galleons because ... you know, drinking

.

Darrell

[pindicator]

197

We couldn't even get 10 turns of peace, could we?  

What I had been doing was trying to get some production infrastructure in place and then I was going to just crank out ironclads.  If Gav had given me 5 more turns then he wouldn't have had a chance.  As it is, he's caught me at a vulnerable moment.  My capital and my Heroic Epic city can 1-turn frigates all day, but the rest of the empire is a little lacking still.  And on top of that we have a numbers deficit to make up.

What advantage we have is space, which we can kind of trade for time - at least, we could if Krill didn't buff naval movement to all holy hell in this mod.  We still can do that a little bit.

Also, this woke me up a little bit.  I've been playing the last 10 turns in a bit of a lethargy.  I'm sure the lack of reporting told you all that though.

We also are pretty sure what Gavagai's plan was, and thankfully I did get to spot his forces so I know what I'm generally up against.  Not that this is entirely helpful because - again - we're outnumbered here.

By the way, this is one reason you didn't see me hitting Old Harry.  Because I've got this stupid attack dog named Gavagai on my border and he's predictable as all hell.  I just let myself get greedy with infrastructure; I should have been rotating frigates and drydocks in half of my empire instead of trying to get it all out of the way at once.

On to the show:




In addition to the stack there are another 4 privateers south of Reon and a frigate inside the city, for a total of 1 SotL, 4 frigates, and 15 privateers.

Here is the stack that I finally noticed halfway through my turn.  It's also why I quit:  because when I didn't see the galleons I thought I really must have been missing the obvious.  I had been watching that stack for a while, so I knew they were in the area, but I didn't really consider them a threat.  First, because there were never any masses of galleons seen.  Second, because I didn't think Gav would actually pull the trigger against me with Commodore on his other side.  Well, Commodore decided to run off and join the crusades and I guess that was all the green light Gavagai needed.

There are no galleons here because this is a feint.

I know this is a feint because I found his galleons the turn before he declared.  From t196:




We have here 2 Frigates, 23 Privateers, and 12 galleons in the main stack plus what looks like another 2 frigates outside the city.  Or are those galleons?  I have a hard time between those ship models.  I can assume there's still the 3 privateers near my border to the west of Perandus, so in total there's something like 60 boats in the water for Gavagai, although split up into 2 groups.

This is his main attack force and what I expect to come east and hit Perandus.  Unfortunately it looks like everything is promoted to Nav-2, which puts Perandus only 2 turns away from where I spotted them.  That means Perandus falls on Gav's half of t198.

My navy is really outmatched after spotting that group.  I have in the area 30 boats:  12 frigates, 8 privateers, and 10 galleons.

This is not looking good, to be honest.

[pindicator]

198

Gavagai is really putting on a show up north:




I wonder what he does when he realizes I'm not coming. If that galley is going to bring in units to mop up Cair Bladd then so be it. If he decides to divert his main armada north then that buys me more time to get my navy together.

Reasons for optimism this turn: we have Steam Power and coal.




And coal means ironclads. I was worried I'd have to wait another turn to hook things up first. I actually didn't start too many ironclads, and only did in northern cities. All the southern cities that are making boats are making frigates because of the movement difference.

Indeed, there are reasons for optimism. I've massed together all my northern boats. The southern boats are heading north but will be 3-4 turns out.




I have 9 frigates, 11 privateers, and 9 more galleons in that stack. The galleons are all fully loaded in case he does take Perandus this next turn. Then we have 30 more units on the mainland in cavalry and siege.

In addition, I went through every city and microed for production. The results:




The longer I can drag out Gavagai's attack, the stronger I get. And my tech is far superior to his:




Rifling next, not so much for riflemen, but to upgrade my camel archers to March Cavalry.

[pindicator]

199 - Preturn

Well I called where he was going.




So likely he plans to hit Torment next and then combine his fleets. Unfortunately I don't seem to have enough to hit any one of his fleets yet.

See, this is where Krill really fucked up navy in this game. On land invasions move 1 to 3 tiles per turn. In BtS you'd have to worry about navy stacks moving 4 tiles per turn at this point. But here in RtR land we have every boat with Nav-2 so it's 6 tiles. If I just sat back he could theoretically hit my capital in 2 turns. That's just stupid for an empire this size.

But I don't think he'll go for that straight line because he doesn't have intel on where my boats are. He will send his troops to hit Torment and combine his fleets there. In return, I think I need to stuff Torment to the gills with troops and then try to buy a few more turns for the Ironclads to come online. I think that could work - if he loses time going after Torment and then has to sail all the way around - or better if he then decides to try and pick off the easier cities to the north.

Then when I have naval superiority I push him back slowly.

Yeah, that's the plan I have to go with.


To be completely honest, a part of me - the part of me that was checked out after the war with Mouseferatu was done - just wants to walk away from this game. Not because it's not possible to beat Gavagai back, but because I just don't want to put in the mental energy to do so day after day. That's probably the same part that I let convince me to just build infrastructure and not care what my neighbors were doing. After 200 turns, it just gets exhausting.