Gaspar and NobleHelium - More Arguments About Buildings & Food.

[NobleHelium]

Interesting tidbit as we likely go another day without a turn - our Galley can't upgrade to Transport at its current location because Caldeum can't build them. You don't see that very often.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 160 last night.

No movement from Commodore's Destroyers or Transports. He's still saving gold on Astronomy. With the additional Airships in Caldeum I figured out a configuration of recon missions that lets us defog every single land tile in Commodore's empire. He built a new Destroyer in the far western city of Schlock.

Anyway, Industrialism was showing at 5t at 80% which was what we had enough cash for, but then I was thinking maybe I should run the slider higher since we may scrounge up enough beakers to improve the time and it would be silly to be unable to burn enough gold to finish it earlier. I did some calculations and there didn't seem to be a way to drop it to 3t (100% was showing 4t), but then I noticed that if we built Wealth in BK we would be able to have enough cash for 4t at 90%. BK is busy building Broadway of course, so then I put NT on Wealth as a test and it's definitely enough gold. We can put BK back on Wealth for a turn after Broadway finishes, the last turn of tech. Then we can put NT on a Public Transportation that turn to overflow into the Industrial Park, following that up with an Aqueduct and then lots of Tanks. (We want to build the PT first because we would lose hammers to overflow with the Aqueduct.)

There was also an interesting micro situation at Caldeum.




So let's see what I'm doing here. For one thing, I'm not building a unit. The problem here is that when we research Industrialism, our Ivory for Spices trade with davy will be cancelled and I'm not sure if we'll be able to get it back. We could offer him Musicals + Sheep for it which is a slight improvement over Spices for him, but he may very well reject that since it favors us on the face of it (we don't actually get any value out of the happiness from Spices right now, so it's actually the same). With R&R we could offer Musicals + Singles, but that's a while away.

In any case, previously I was planning to just farm the remaining plains tile and ignore the 1 unhealth, but with the Spices going away at least temporarily I decided it was a good idea to do the Harbor now. So we did the Harbor last turn, and then we do an Infantry next turn which puts us at the overflow cap. We dump that into Versailles on t162, then finish it on t163. On t164 we've finished Industrialism and can start building Tanks. I think we'll get about 20h overflow out of Versailles (less if we swap out of OR), and the city produces 117h adjusted while building Tanks. So we'd lose 1h overflow per turn, allowing us to build 1t Tanks until the end of the game most likely. Anyway, the whole point of this was so that we could give the Sugar to Silver Spire for 4t and then for 1t every 3 after that. SS can use it to grow to size 3-4 where it will be stuck until we take out Kusari. I ran an Artist instead of the third Engineer this turn so as to not bump into the overflow cap next turn building the Infantry.

Also, I was re-thinking our Airports-everywhere strategy and I don't think that's going to be efficient. The additional unhealth may cause us to have to build another health building in some cities, and that's not worth it if we don't need the air unit capacity. Those cities can just do land units instead. So we'll build Airports in all cities that may need the capacity, and maybe a few others where the unhealth is not a problem. Oh and Tanks will be expensive enough for BK to build.

[NobleHelium]

Gaspar: I found commodores destroyers
me: he moved them?
Gaspar: not sure
but they seemed hidden to me
me: well are they 9w2n of HC
Gaspar: yeah he moved them
me: well where are they now
Gaspar: 12W5N of HC
was thinking
we should keep a few ships on the east coast
and maybe detail a transport full of marines and see if we can take out his undefended cities there, once we have the option
me: you mean going around?
Gaspar: yes
me: yeah
well let's see
12w5n
from 9w2n
so he moved them 3nw?
weird
Gaspar: yeah
it is weird
the funny thing is
still in range of our destroyers
me: lol
Gaspar: so if he was trying to avoid that
mathfail

ORLY?



(The Destroyers are facing southeast by the way.)

[Gaspar]

A natural, for the turn we finish Broadway. (I know they kinda suck, but they are from my hometown.) B-flo represent!

So anyway, yeah. Turns still incredibly mundane. The main feature of this turn was a lengthy discussion between Nofun and I on the best way to crack Commodore. We basically decided we're going to need Air Collateral regardless to make it less bloody. In that case, Sirian style much faster than land based stuff and requires less planes. So to that end we queud up our first few transports and will probably do Marines first when Industrialism finishes. In lieu of anything terrible exciting, let me post a few screens.

Here's the current state of the Chinese navy:



And here's current state of the Holy Roman navy (save the possible ship far off at sea, we have full visibility on his territory and points reasonably near our ports, however) :



So yeah, reasonably secure at sea. The only issue is that the majority of our ship-producers are on the Eastern Coast in former Turkey, which takes 5-6t to get around the Commodorean theatre. Still, as long as he's not really building ships, we're okay.

Here's an overview shot of former Yurilands, which are sickeningly productive now, with workshops everywhere. Bastion's Keep, Rakkis Crossing and Stonefort in particular are really excellent cities.



We recently finished Wall Street in our Shrined city. It makes a decent bit of gold even on 20% tax.



Just south of Cathedral is Halls of Agony the city that we planted north of the Ruins of Kiki. Its nothing special, but check out that CPT for a size 6 city planted like 15t ago.



Sistine. Anyway, here's the demos. I have no idea if there's anything else that anyone would find interesting or even if anyone is still lurking this at this point. But here they are, if there's anything anyone wants to know, just ask:

[BRickAstley]

You're still #2 in one category. Unacceptable.

[Gaspar]

You're still #2 in one category. Unacceptable.

I'm actually pretty convinced we have the highest Life Expectancy of any of the teams.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I'm actually pretty convinced we have the highest Life Expectancy of any of the teams.

How long do you spend on the turns at this point? Separately, how long do you and Noble spend arguing about food and buildings (etc) at this point? What do you do to amuse yourself when you are so far ahead?

[Mardoc]

Now that you've got eyes on the whole map - how do you like Novice's tool? Better than a random map? Good enough that future mapmakers may not be necessary?

I mean, obviously it's not as good as a fully handcrafted map where every tile is carefully selected, but those are in limited supply.

[Gaspar]

How long do you spend on the turns at this point? Separately, how long do you and Noble spend arguing about food and buildings (etc) at this point? What do you do to amuse yourself when you are so far ahead?

A lot less time than we used to but that's partly because I've been semi-out-of-commission and Noble's had the reins a lot more than say, before the last 20t. But even still, there's less to discuss because the cities are mature and there are a finite number of things we have a reasonable reason to be interested in building. As such, the turns are pretty dull.

Now that you've got eyes on the whole map - how do you like Novice's tool? Better than a random map? Good enough that future mapmakers may not be necessary?

I mean, obviously it's not as good as a fully handcrafted map where every tile is carefully selected, but those are in limited supply.

I don't love it, truth be told. I don't know what the logic that supports it is since that's over my head but I don't think it can replace a human. The things in this game that I think weren't properly valued:

• Yuri's start was terrible - its short a food resource and he basically started in the jungle. That's fine in a truly random map but less so in one that is in theory balanced. His land is great late game, but not nearly so hot in the start.
  
• Mistabod's start position in my mind was pretty clearly better than the others.
  
• The size of our secure backline was really strong.
  

That said, in search of a more "random" map it was certainly better than what the generic script spits out. I like Seven's mirrorland script but there's some value in variety, particularly in what it adds to scouting and the like. So I guess mostly I'd grade novice's tool as a work-in-progress.

[CFCJesterFool]

Did you ever consider Infantry+Arty? You are waiting for bombers I suppose (airships don't do enough damage)? Marines for coastal cities + tanks for inland targets (both w/ bomber support) is probably a very quick victory over Commodore.