[SPOILERS] Panzersmackdown with Justinian (Mack/Seven)

[Shoot the Moon]

Anything happening?

[SevenSpirits]

Here is your update.

Things are moving along. Playing without slavery and with most spare food supporting specialists feels strange. Builds take forever. It's for a good cause though. Banking is due in about 15 turns and it will be worth ~80bpt, probably the most valuable prize available given we're too far behind to get first-to-x stuff like religions and strong wonders. Let me bring you up to date.

After Code of Laws came in and we switched to caste system on IIRC t113, it has been 30t. We kept thinking we'd do a stint in slavery to whip a round of courthouses but this never happened. Caste was just too important.

We researched Sailing, Math, Construction, Alphabet, Currency, Metal Casting, and Monarchy.

Sailing let us build some lighthouses (best one being the clam city one) and a pair of galleys, one to defend against plako and another to settle an island city far in the northwest. 15 turns after construction, the settling galley reached the island, having picked up a settler a few turns earlier. This city came right after currency and gave the same boost - +1c in all cities. Also in the settling party was a workboat to immediately hook clams so it was really a fantastic addition to our empire.

Math of course allowed better chops and we've kept chopping our numerous forests. Only a few are saved for National Epic in the clam city and for after Bureau is in by Mind's Desire. Construction made defending a lot easier as we have some annoying rivers traversing the main area X-Com were constantly invading, and let us start on some catapults. With a settled GG in Black Lotus, it's been making catapults while Fastbond (with a stables) has continued to produce horse archers.

After that we wanted Currency and Alphabet, and it turned out that with our tech speed going Alphabet first would save more beakers than getting Currency later would produce, so that's how it went. Alphabet is important to build some spies as well as open up a few bulbs. But the reason we wanted it was for spies.

At this point we felt secure and also had the low fruit of Currency in the bag, so next up we looked at our cities and saw we could get guilds in a reasonable timeframe and also have a merchant to bulb banking. Sounds great! So every tech since then has been towards this goal. We got Metal Casting first to build a couple forges and a trireme, and Monarchy second to hook our wines (timed with growth of a few cities). Currently we are working on Feudalism, it will finish next turn and we can adopt Vassalage which should be worth at least $1-2/turn plus the experience. Machinery has almost no benefit so it comes after, and then it's on to Guilds, and then 1t to finish Banking after the bulb.

With Banking in hand we will revolt to Mercantilism and I hope we can pick up all of the following in the next 5 turns (although it might take a bit longer): Iron Working, Polytheism, Aesthetics, Literature (for the Epics), Civil Service (which will be mostly bulbed as we are getting two great merchants - one for banking and one for this). Then we'll swap into Bureaucracy, fire tons of specialists, and grow for a bit since our tech needs will have been satisfied for the time being. Around this time we will finish the long-standing construction of our Palace in Mind's Desire, we will use the hammer boost to construct at least a bank and hopefully some market/grocer and then give it custody of its cottages.


Our cities:

Going to stay at size 10 since it will get +1happy from the forge but lose one soon from the palace move.

Still in max beaker mode.


Still a piece of crap. But it will get a bit better with irrigation from CS.


Future National Epic city (see the 3 forests) but first it will produce our second great merchant.


Producing our first merchant.


Hey look, that city has a library! Let's starve it by running scientists!


Working cottages for MD and hoping to get a magical christianity spread.


Will build Moai after we retake our stone city.


Future home of Heroic Epic.


Wow look at that, it's growing.


We will resume growing this as soon as we can get an archer into Gush, which is the poor city that will lose Rep happy when this city reaches size 7.


The lovely island city that let us get double benefit out of all our old trade routes. As soon as the borders pop we are a) hooking that lovely fish labeled "yesss" and b) chopping a granary. Then we'll grow and soon after will chop out most of a lighthouse, coinciding with the remainder of the required hammers being reached naturally. (One of the forests is outside of the BFC as well as not in culture, so there is a deficit to be made up by the city center tile.)


Newest city which had 4 forests. As soon as the borders popped we chopped out a lighthouse and a granary on subsequent turns.

Demos. We are very middle of the pack. Our actual net food per turn is like 7 btw - we are running a lot of rep specialists to accelerate guilds/banking. But as you can see our approval rate is second to last (and that's after hooking wines just a couple turns ago) so we haven't exactly been forgoing much growth where it's possible.


Interactions with the outside world:

A couple turns ago, X-Com tried to convoy an archer and spearman out of the stone city to the northwest. We killed with with a couple catapults, horsearchers, axe and spear. Most of X-Com's units are archers so we're not in much danger right now and can afford moves like this.


This is where, also a couple turns ago, we killed a spear with a W2 axe and stole a worker. Looks like X-Com want to settle another city here; that would be a bit annoying but on the other hand it's kind of a free city for us later, I'd hope. In any case, free worker, sweet.


One of our spies died a terrible and unexpected death just two turns into enemy culture. Grrr. But the second one is still alive and exploring.


Finally, it appears the lands in the fog to our south are connected to to us at least by coast, through the area where plako started. We see some Plako and Nakor settlements here:

[Krill]

What are your thoughts on playing without slavery? I've done it once before, without using it at all in an MP game, but I'd appreciate another view on things.

[SevenSpirits]

Well this isn't how you should be doing things normally, that's for sure. We have some crappy land though (like 15 river tiles total, 3 of which are cottageable grassland, and not a whole lot of food) and we were set back really hard at the beginning so we're pretty much ignoring infrastructure to try to scramble back into things, so we an hopefully conquer some better land.

What becomes very apparent is how much your hammers sit around doing nothing if you're building things at like 2hpt for real (as opposed to 2hpt with slavery doing most of the work). Having a half-done courthouse that won't finish for another 30 turns - that's 60h that are just sitting there useless, with more being added every turn. It would be so much more efficient to grow to work more tiles and then whip the courthouse say 30 turns later. Problem is we don't have the food or happiness to do so. That and most of our economic output is specialist commerce, and the fact that we are getting 1-4hpt in every city is just an unavoidable side effect. But anyway, building stuff over long periods of time is inefficient and should be avoided if possible. And it's something you don't encounter in a game with slavery so you don't usually have to worry about it.

Sol Ring (city #3) is the clearest example of this. Much earlier (actually back when we had slavery but really didn't want to slave it since it has such low food) we half-built a worker, a spear, and maybe something else that I forget now, that have since decayed completely because after a dozen turns it turned out we didn't need those things anymore. And right now there's a library partly built there that we may never finish.

It becomes imperative to settle near forests or at least a good hammer tile for the granary, otherwise you forfeit huge amounts of potential food.

Obviously you really want lots of grassland hills around to provide your production. We have had to use plains hills a few times and it feels unclean.

It becomes particularly important to have a couple high-hammer cities that can produce new units with relative speed. Under normal circumstances I'd also say it's important to be able to do periods of high production everywhere, either by switching to lots of hammer tiles or swapping into slavery for a while, in order to build a round of whatever item you just unlocked. However that's a luxury we can't afford right now.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm speechless.

[novice]

At the capital placement? Or just the "leastest with the mostest" achievement?

Btw why not build wealth instead of infra that never finishes?

[SevenSpirits]

At the capital placement? Or just the "leastest with the mostest" achievement?

That begins to touch on it, yes. Also that plains hill just grabbed first prize for best city spot we have seen on this map so far. Plus there's apparently more food in the fog or it wouldn't be size 9.

Mostly though it's just: they had THAT, and decided that the best way forward was to go all in with an attack on one of the highest power civs in the game, in the classical era, with ancient age units, through a narrow mountain pass?

Btw why not build wealth instead of infra that never finishes?

Well we only learned how to build wealth about 10 turns ago. And we are going to finish the courthouses I swear, they will be important in the long run.

Right now we are 11 turns from Guilds needing an average of 220b/t. We should be able to reach this target using just specialists (which are more efficient than wealth building, and readily available with caste), but only barely. So basically we'd have to build 200+h worth of wealth for it to make a difference in Mercantilism timing. I just did this analysis in the last few turns. If things looked different we'd be switching to some wealth builds now, but as it is, we'll only do so if our estimates turn out to be off, or something unexpected crops up. (It's possible we will have to build a tiny amount of wealth to compensate for e.g. increased unit costs.)

[spacemanmf]

I guess if there is food north of that city then that might have made it a gamble to settle on the plains hill if it meant losing the food.

[SevenSpirits]

t149:


t150:


I ran a sim of this battle before we decided to go ahead with it. It turned out to be very straightforward - it was just always best to bombard with 2 cats, attack with the other 2, then attack the spear with a shock horse archer at just over 50% odds, then attack at great odds with C2 horse archers until everything dies, cleaning up with chariots and the 2-move spear as needed. Expected losses were 1.27 catapults and 0.95 horse archers, in exchange for killing 5 CG2 D1 archers, a dog (unpromoted) and a spear (unpromoted), plus of course capturing a city. Instead we lost 2 horse archers, which, while almost identical in hammers lost to the expected result, is a bit above average and also saves more catapults instead of horse archers, which is great because we will have guilds soon but still have to use catapults for siege.

The city came with a granary and earned us 107g, so that's good too. And now we can begin construction of Moai. Excellent. At least we are in control of our own cities now.

[mackoti]

Like a reference ,Xcom stealed from us MC using 496 points.