Third time's the charm - Mardoc plays the Pirates [SPOILER]

[spellman]

Or, um, a bug. Maniac's already proved those exist .

Hm, to the Civilopedia when I get home!

[Mardoc]

Hm, to the Civilopedia when I get home!

Oh, I've looked. There's a reference to "Invisible by Subs in Trenches" in the Deep Pressure Hull ability (and not on the sub entry), a distinct promotion, Stealth, which grants "Invisible by Submerged". Deep Radar is listed as seeing "submerged". I'm not sure anything but code diving or in-game testing would answer precisely what those mean, though.

[Mardoc]

HK, Bigger, any chance one of you can fill in for me from the 23rd through the 27th? I'll be on vacation then. If not, no worries, I can just ask for a pause. Our 2/day rate seems to be pretty well gone, anyway, I guess people's empires are getting too complicated to run in a lunch break.

[HidingKneel]

Sure, I can sub (at least, I can play a turn a day, in my west coast timeslot). Not sure I really know what I'm doing, though, so if you want to leae it with me, you should probably give some pretty specific instructions.

Question: what's the immediate draw of doctrine:initiative? Mining platforms?

For new bases: I'd say the spot marked C3 and the island site look good for settling next. Not sure about the third sea colony pod.

Civic-wise, I think knowledge looks more appealing than power. It seems like special abilities in Planetfall can be very strong, but promotions that you buy with xp are much less so. Plus, every base getting a free specialist makes +1 science per specialist quite nice.

Poking around the save, you seem to be running quite a farmer's gambit. Aren't your sea bases at risk from native life? And what about Sian's sub... can that conquer sea bases? A 5-move, 4-strength unit seems like it could do a lot of damage.

[Mardoc]

Sure, I can sub (at least, I can play a turn a day, in my west coast timeslot). Not sure I really know what I'm doing, though, so if you want to leae it with me, you should probably give some pretty specific instructions.

Alright, I'll see if I can come up with those. Or maybe just ask for a pause, depending on how complicated things are in a week.

Question: what's the immediate draw of doctrine:initiative? Mining platforms?

Primarily, yes. Looking at the demos, we've been consistently top 1 or 2 in GNP, and up there pretty well in food, but horribly behind in manufacturing. Mining Platforms ought to let us fix that. Well - at least get us in to the middle of the pack.

For new bases: I'd say the spot marked C3 and the island site look good for settling next. Not sure about the third sea colony pod.

That's about what I was thinking, yes. I think the third one needs to be the Fungal Gin/Algae/Thorium site. That'll be our 7th base, so settling for resources rather than raw yield makes sense. Especially health and Planet resources - we've got the Artifact and Silver to boost happiness.

Civic-wise, I think knowledge looks more appealing than power. It seems like special abilities in Planetfall can be very strong, but promotions that you buy with xp are much less so. Plus, every base getting a free specialist makes +1 science per specialist quite nice.

That makes sense. It's hard to break the FFH habits, but you're probably right on this.

Poking around the save, you seem to be running quite a farmer's gambit. Aren't your sea bases at risk from native life? And what about Sian's sub... can that conquer sea bases? A 5-move, 4-strength unit seems like it could do a lot of damage.

Yes, it's pretty horrible at the moment. And I think subs can conquer, yes - although not while we're currently in (I think) unbreakable peace. At least I checked, and can't find any way to declare on Sian, which I presume goes both ways.

Up until now, I thought we had a monopoly on the sea so I wasn't worried. And then we were just so close to our pods. But yes, we'll need to take a significant break after the current wave of pods, and build military most or all places. Conveniently, assuming we grab the c3, island, and Thorium sites, we'll be able to grow all the bases at least two sizes and stay within caps, which will be a good time for hammer builds like military, anyway.

[Mardoc]

T75 - not much. All the colony pods will come to fruition at the end of next turn, but this turn was mostly just pressing enter.

With, of course, the exception of the mess in the public diplo thread - coincidentally, pretty well timed for the expiration of a mutual defense league in 15 turns.

Which raises the question, of course, of how we should respond to this:

@ Mardoc, please don't try to play the "Let's you and him fight" game. It's not very conducive to peaceful resolution. Though if you get superconductors I will happily sign OB since Maniac doesn't have enough bases to fill my TR slots.

My first reaction was to be honest, and say I don't care what he does so long as he stays a landlubber. But...maybe he's looking for a casus belli? And/or a smokescreen?

Perhaps I should say something more hostile, to try to give Sareln cover. Cause honestly siege tanks *don't* scare me, not without an associated navy - but I'd be very happy if Sareln keeps building them. Sure, it means we can't as easily land and burn his ports to the ground, but if he's building only siege tanks, he can't war with us.

[Xenoborg]

Oh, I've looked. There's a reference to "Invisible by Subs in Trenches" in the Deep Pressure Hull ability (and not on the sub entry), a distinct promotion, Stealth, which grants "Invisible by Submerged". Deep Radar is listed as seeing "submerged". I'm not sure anything but code diving or in-game testing would answer precisely what those mean, though.

You got a free bunker in your capital didn't you? I think it might have a promotion to see submerged. Not sure if it can see 4 tiles away though.

[Bigger]

If this were Civ4 I would gladly sub for you, I certainly have the time. But given my knowledge of Planetfall, you're much better of with HK doing it.

[Mardoc]

You got a free bunker in your capital didn't you? I think it might have a promotion to see submerged. Not sure if it can see 4 tiles away though.

Yes, have a free bunker. It's got the Barrage I, Medic I, and Naval Fortress abilities - which means it can hit 4 tiles away, but doesn't include anything about seeing submerged. At least not in the tooltips. I think the relevant ability would be the Deep Radar promo, which we do need to make sure to get on a variety of garrison units, but don't currently have in the area.

If this were Civ4 I would gladly sub for you, I certainly have the time. But given my knowledge of Planetfall, you're much better of with HK doing it.

And HK isn't too confident, either. Ah, well, I'll see if I can read the tea leaves well enough to make a plan worth following, at least for a couple turns.

[Mardoc]

T75 - hit enter, and had an interesting diplomatic proposal:


Unfortunately for Maniac, I can't really see what's in that for us. He ought to be able to hold Sareln off if he spends to build an army. I don't really want to build an army just yet, a navy and some police to keep the citizens happy is sufficient for me. So I turned him down.