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

[HidingKneel]

I just don't think Locusts are a priority for us right now, they're a much more offensively oriented unit than a defensive one, and as long as we stay off the continents Isles are a better deal anyway. And honestly, 88 tiles boosted is probably a better profit than a bulb anyway, even ignoring the value of having that extra commerce/hammers go where *we* want it instead of half a tech we won't use for a while.

Of course, golden age now means it's harder to fire a golden age later, so you're giving up more than just the value of the bulb.
That said, I'm in favor of the golden age. It synergizes well with your focus on horizontal expansion. Time to cash in!

[Mardoc]

Of course, golden age now means it's harder to fire a golden age later, so you're giving up more than just the value of the bulb.
That said, I'm in favor of the golden age. It synergizes well with your focus on horizontal expansion. Time to cash in!

True. I just don't think there's long enough remaining in this game for too many GA's - at least not before it's essentially decided. Someone, almost certainly Iskender, has passed us in hammer production, and that'll just get worse as Morganic cities come out of revolt. We need a boost stat .

More if/where we decide it's worth building some Sea Boreholes.

So, I've continued to think about this. My original plan was to build maybe 1-2 Boreholes per city, just enough to keep us on the good side with Planet. But...maybe this is the right time to declare war on it, instead? It'll take a long while for our planet rating to actually fall, and in the meantime the extra hammers and commerce would be very useful.

Sea Boreholes can only be built on Trench, and only after Nanotubes. Assuming coastal Trench, it's currently a 0/2/0 tile, generally improved by a Mining Platform to make a 0/4/0. Nanotubes will increase that to 0/6/3. Replacing our Mining Platforms with Boreholes would turn those tiles into 0/8/9, at the cost of changing each tile from -0.5 Planet happy to -2. Are 2 hpt and 6 energy/turn worth a -1.5 Planet rating? Particularly at a time when we've got to build a military anyway to stand off the Spartans, and there are enough turns invested in the game that it'll take a long time for our Planet Rating to fall? I think so!

It does mean that we'll be giving up on the possibility of winning by Transcendence. I think the game will be decided long before that anyway,though - particularly with Iskender in charge of such a large fraction of the world's surface.

Edit: wait a second, we can have our cake and eat it too! We're currently at something like +60 shrimps/turn. If we upgraded each of our worked Trench tiles instantly, that's only -24. We'd gain a whole lot of production and energy, and still be net positive on Planet Rating. Maybe a couple cities would start to be at risk for Blooms, but we could still train Isles to deal with those. And we could train them a heck of a lot easier if we had lots of extra hammers .

Edit2: We're gonna need a lot more Aquaformers....

[Mardoc]

Demos before Golden Age:

Demos after:


Atmospherics is in, and we've our first Drop Trooper already. I'd forgotten that stuff in queue is auto-upgraded; if I remembered I'd have built more Marines and less subs this turn.

I'll use next turn at 100% gold to buy upgrades for most of our Marines, then it'll be straight on to Nanotubes. We can't quite arrive there before the end of the GA - it's showing as a 7-turn tech, which probably means 8, and we've only 5 more turns of GA.

After that, we'll backtrack to fill in some of the cheaper techs, as well as going on to pick up a Plane tech.

[HidingKneel]

[quote='Mardoc' pid='311921' dateline='1353510162']
Demos before Golden Age, Demos after:
[/img]

Wow.. I hadn't realized how far ahead you are in GNP. It's a shame Sian folded so fast, but you look to be in great shape nonetheless. What does the tech path look like after Nanotubes? Is the plan to sit tight, play defense, and leverage the economy to a win condition? Or to take the offensive? Do you think nanotubes are going to give you an economy that can compete with all the bases that Iskender keeps adding, or do you expect to fall further behind in production when the golden age ends?

[Mardoc]

Wow.. I hadn't realized how far ahead you are in GNP. It's a shame Sian folded so fast, but you look to be in great shape nonetheless. What does the tech path look like after Nanotubes? Is the plan to sit tight, play defense, and leverage the economy to a win condition? Or to take the offensive? Do you think nanotubes are going to give you an economy that can compete with all the bases that Iskender keeps adding, or do you expect to fall further behind in production when the golden age ends?

Well - yes, we're ahead in GNP. That would matter more in a game where we weren't playing against the Data Angels and the Consciousness, but it should still help.

Currently planning to go back after Nanotubes for Magnetic Propulsion, Fusion Reactors, and Cryogenics. That path makes all our Boats Stealth, allows the building of destroyers, reactors (courthouse equiv, also gives health), and ultimately unlocks the Thunderbolt, the jack of all trades plane. I think there were some other benefits, too. Would like to slip in Mass Drivers (to turn boats into aircraft carriers) and perhaps Fluid Dynamics (Interceptors) if we can, but both should probably wait til after Cryogenics. There may be some other techs worth grabbing here and there, but I can figure those out later.



Played the turn in the airport Sunday. Don't remember exactly everything, but a few bits:

Iskender's in a golden age too now . That puts his hammer production ahead of ours again, although I still have high hopes for the effectiveness of Nanotubes to fix that.

We did start Nanotube research. It was temporarily a 6-turn tech, but by the time I finished shuffling tiles around it had fallen to 7. That might mean we can manage it in 7 anyway, though, even after the GA ends. Current plan is Nanotubes, then over to military techs.

We've settled two new cities since I last showed pictures, and we have some colony pods in the water or in queues to grab more. I'll try to show them next time the turn comes around. But in brief, we're settling in Iskender's direction at the moment - the two sites to the east of our home island, plus the one negotiated spot to the south. Next couple will go west or south - west is better for empire shape and is more likely contested territory, while south there are the 2nd Crystals!

I spotted a Sarelnish cargo foil near a nice spot in the southwest, I suspect he'll beat us to the ocean directly south of his territory. I'm starting to entertain the idea of invading him, Str 6 Drop Troopers could handle his Genite/Siege Tank stack pretty well. But it's probably not yet worth it, let's wait for planes (~20 turns out, I think). Especially if Maniac chooses to join in...and double especially if Iskender scents weakness. Sareln's probably only worth attacking if we can set it up as a 2-turn war (turn 1, drop troopers next to all cities and bombs, turn 2 conquer). Or in the future when we have gotten ourselves up to #1 military.

We've also upgraded many Marines. Didn't have enough cash to get them all upgraded to Drop Troopers, but all the ones on Iskender's borders are upgraded, anyway. Considered delaying Nanotubes, but I really think that'll be the tech that breaks us out of 'in contention' and puts us firmly in the lead.

And I'm not quite sure why, but we have the Voice of Planet holy city now...in a city all of 2-3 turns old . It previously belonged to Sian, and that city was conquered by Iskender. There must be something about not getting to keep it if you're not the religion, or if you're negative Planet modifier. At some point, we'll want to spare a Transcend to rebuild the Concordat, but I'm glad we used the one we had on a GA. We might even want a 2nd GA before building the Concordat, even if it would all by itself pay our Borehole Planet deficit . I think it gave us a free spread this way, though, and an earlier border pop, so it's profit even if we invest nothing more.

Back to your question:

In general, I expect to keep up with Iskender in hammers if he has no more easy conquests. I don't have any feel at all how easily AIs will fold - they seem to be keeping more troops on hand than Sian, but presumably they'll also use them stupidly. On the other hand, his logistics must be getting annoying. I know we won't fold easily, and I suspect Maniac won't. Not sure about Sareln - he pretty much stopped building military when he signed the truce with Maniac, and his troops are looking pretty obsolete now. But in general - we were pulling ahead, and now he's got the new territory and buildings and pre-grown, pre-improved cities, but we'll pull ahead again if he doesn't repeat. Of course, he's now got a border with Lal...

This is a frustrating balance. The best time to hit Iskender is clearly when he's overextended in the middle of a conquest. We could have really hurt him a couple times in the Sianish war if we had the right troops in place at the right time. What we really need to do is keep building military to give us options, and keep our eyes open for opportunity.

I expect to keep ahead of Iskender in GNP regardless. He's presumably got a bunch of conquest cash, but he's also got the same # of cities as us but a lot more spread out. His tech path has been fundamentally military, which will prevent him getting the most out of his land. His GP tech strategy has to be showing diminishing returns by now. I really think the next 10-15 turns (and the past 20) is the danger zone with respect to Iskender, our fundamentally stronger econ should be outweighing his bag of tricks. He could potentially turn that hammer lead into cash and research, but it's not enough to overcome our current income (after all we're also turning hammers into cash).

But Nanotubes will be huge - once we properly Borehole all 16 of our currently worked Trenches, that's a net +64 hpt/+144 energy/turn. And I expect the 'currently worked' number to keep increasing as we grow up all our cities. I think we currently have 1 city out of all ours that's at its happiness cap - and we've still room for fairly cheap bumps in the cap by building our Holographic theaters, empath guilds, and of course cities on resources.

Fortunately, we're well ahead of Maniac and Sareln and I expect that to continue true, short of us being dogpiled. They might be able to neglect GNP and keep up in tech, but they certainly won't keep up in hammers. And a silver lining of getting AI's killed is that both of their methods get harder.

Mid term, I intend to continue at peace with the world and keep spamming out more bases. We've got so many resources and other per-city benefits that it still seems the best return on investment. Eventually we'll run out of room. We're already blocked from expanding east and north (after the current handful of cities); all that's left to claim is the antarctic sea and the western basin. Not sure if that'll happen before or after our tech gets to a winning position. Also not sure just how much of that territory Maniac, Sareln, and the AI's can claim. If we can straight up build the gate and win, we'll do that. Otherwise, that'll be our cue to go a-viking.

Long term, I'm debating between a knock-down drag out conquest war, and winning via dimensional gate. Of course that may not be entirely our choice, if Iskender attempts a conquest win himself.

Pictures to come, um, soon. Cold Days was released today, and I suspect it'll be a higher priority for me than RB for a while.

[Mardoc]

Played the turn last night, didn't have time to report. Next turn, surely. Definitely.

Some highlights (and lowlights)

• Iskender's demos look much better than they did, especially GNP. He's basically tied us now. Not sure what to attribute that to, I'm guessing it's Sian cities coming out of revolt, unfortunately .
  
• We've got another new city, temporarily depressing our demos. I'm halfway tempted to slow down the city founding rate, but really the demos today don't matter nearly as much as the demos in 10 turns. We'll have to pay for the new cities at some point, better to get that out of the way and the cities growing.
  
• We should get graphs on Iskender next turn or the turn after, depending on how much he's spending on EP on us.
  
• I've got four aquaformers in queue; we're fine on them at the moment, but in 4-5 turns when we get Nanotubes, we'll want lots. Plus - well, we're keeping up with our cities, but we don't really have excess improved tiles, not in any substantial quantity. And I keep adding new cities and growing the old ones, so our demand for improved tiles keeps going up.
  
• All cities currently have room in their happiness caps. I think the next couple cities will go west therefore, crystal happiness isn't all that urgent. Plus our other southern city planted for land resources is still only partially improved. I readjusted the dotmap in the south, though, and we can get crystals with our next southern city if we want.
  
• One more turn closer to Nanotubes. Which will be absolutely lovely.
  We may want to sign open borders with Iskender after all - he's got a spawning spot inside his territory that's blocking some of our nice tiles from being worked.
  

Starting to think about really putting Biodomed to use - its main effect, after all, is that food riots can't happen. We can't really take advantage of it now, while we're still growing up our cities and have no really awesome non-food tiles. But in 10-20 turns...we'll have a couple cities with a choice between working the 2/0/3 Kelped coast or the 0/8/9 boreholed trenches. Even after spending the 2 energy/food to feed the Trench workers, it seems fairly obvious to me that we should work the trench. And that, in turn, will make nuclear reactors really pay off for those cities. Only handicap is that once we go that route, the city in question will never grow again. I suspect...hmm, I think we'll probably have to consider this on a city by city basis. Yet another thing for the 'to-do' list - analyze the likely candidates for good stopping points.

[Mardoc]

So, we finally had another turn! And it was a fairly boring one, of simply building and growing and researching toward Nanotubes.

But! It came in on a Sunday afternoon. Which means I have the time and computer for posting pictures

So, what haven't you seen...new cities? New cities!

Three of these since the last time I posted pictures. You can see they're pretty much all settled for food resources, so they should grow up much faster than our filler cities earlier. Battlecruiser is currently gimped by the Isle blockade and by the slow rate of getting aquaformers in place. As soon as we get those fixed - 2 Nutrient resources, an energy, and four trenches will add up to an awesome city eventually.

Meanwhile, Radar and Semaphore are more or less fillers as well, and tripwires for Iskender. Not that they'll be bad - and Jungle DNA is good too...but there's not awesomeness here. They're simply in a good place for the shape of our empire, have a bunch of good tiles and some food to get them launched.



Next turn, I plan to settle two more, here and here:




Again, neither is super awesome, but both will be pretty good. And these two, in particular, also have the virtue of rounding our our empire some more.

In the south, I've figured out a better place for the crystal city. Rather than trying to get every single resource on the island, we'll just get a few, and console ourselves with the Algae and mineral spot.



Sareln grabbed a site in the south, which isn't quite as horrible for us as I previously thought, but it's probably defining our border in the southwest. If you guys have time, I'd appreciate your input on how best to fit in a couple cities here, and whether we should go directly for establishing a border, or settle the crystals first?

First thought is 3W of Port, and 4 S of that spot for a pair of border cities.


Finally, we've gotten graphs on Iskender. And demos look better this turn. Here's what they look like:

Any questions, or requests for additional pictures?

[HidingKneel]

Oy... sounds like nanotubes isn't all that it was supposed to be . (Well, boreholes still look great after a suitable investment of former-turns).

I had another look at the save. As for the SW border with Sareln... I like the tile 3W, 2S of Port (or possibly 3W, 3S, depending on how long it takes you to get access to the second ring). But this seems lower priority than expanding into the NW. That looks like the last big chunk of sea that you'll be able to grab peacefully.

[Mardoc]

Oy... sounds like nanotubes isn't all that it was supposed to be . (Well, boreholes still look great after a suitable investment of former-turns).

Yeah. It'll be good, but not the game breaker I was expecting.

We had 15 aquaformers. I put 8 more in queue . 17 turns/borehole is gonna need a heck of a lot more formers. Pretty much took every Stockpile Energy city and shifted it to a former - I think that'll pay back faster. Breakeven is 40%, btw, without buying our research with hammers.

I had another look at the save. As for the SW border with Sareln... I like the tile 3W, 2S of Port (or possibly 3W, 3S, depending on how long it takes you to get access to the second ring). But this seems lower priority than expanding into the NW. That looks like the last big chunk of sea that you'll be able to grab peacefully.

Both are moderately high priorities, yes. Not certain which will be grabbed first if we neglect it. Gonna try to get both areas, of course .

[Mardoc]

Well, we're up to 22 Aquaformers. Haven't yet decided where we should stop, but we're clearly not close to that point yet. Most of the existing ones are now parked on a trench, with or without help, drilling away. I think a decent place to stop will be about enough Aquaformers to make 2-3 boreholes a turn, plus keep up with Kelp and Mining Platforms on non-Trench tiles for all our expansion - maybe 50 Aquaformers will be enough for that.

Our first borehole is due in 4 more turns - I was able to get three aquaformers to the same tile without wasting worker turns. Much as I want to get boreholes producing ASAP, I also don't want to sacrifice worker efficiency given our unexpected backlog of tasks. Most of the '16 turn remaining' tiles will get help from the in-queue Aquaformers to speed them up, anyway.

When we finish boreholing all our worked trenches, we'll have excess formers; I'm thinking it makes sense to have then start clearing out fungus at that point. Boreholes and unrestrained population growth are likely to take us out of Planet's favor, so we'll need to limit what it can do to us. If Iskender hasn't cleaned out the spawning spot blockading Battlecruiser by then, we'll offer to clear fungus by his border in exchange for him clearing the spawning spot .

2 more Sea Colony pods completing EOT - I think one will go to create a border with Sareln in the south by Port, and one will go in the northwest sea.

Finally, something I should have expected, but didn't - the 2nd Crystals came within our borders at EOT due to Battlecruiser's 3rd ring border pop. I'll be sending a Former that way immediately, to hook them up for happiness.