[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

[Bigger]

not sure engineering is worth the detour.. but anyway shouldnt we wait for azza to finish it to get the known tech bonus? we can keep on max tax until he finished, that might shave a turn off of it?

Would it shave a turn? isn't the known tech bonus nerfed in this game.

not for this early in the game.. its still 25%?? anyway its at least on par w/ vanilla.

rbmod is supposed to have a really high known-tech for late medieval and industrial techs (pretty much liberalism/gunpowder on) and that got nerfed in non-tech trading games by mistake.

at least thats how I interpreted the tech thread

[Lewwyn]

I just wanted to go back and talk about something you've said he

I just want to point out that for every 10 turns we don't fight, we can produce 8 maces out of maths, 5 maces out of gilgamesh, 2 (or better, 3-4 cats) out of king arthur.. and thats just in the immidate area. more out of the odyssey & aeneid, a few from iliad and el cid, - and in the east mahabrata and roland will be able to pump out military as well.

Now this is very true. We could get a huge army in 10 turns. But, that means 10 turns of growing unit costs. 10 turns of Azza building military too. And while we might out build him, currently he is lacking in cats. If we give him 10 turns he might be able to build enough cats to make attacking him much less feasible or cost effective. If we go in now, he'll have to focus on building maces, we can kill the cats he does have and then use our cats to much greater effect. Also I would not be suggesting this if I didn't know we would have a ton of units being produced behind our army.

Do I know if we'd have better odds in 10 turns? No. But I also know we could have worse odds.

[Bigger]

ok, ok, you've convinced me .

[Ceiliazul]

Yaaaay... Bloooood!

[Bigger]

Yaaaay... Bloooood!

ok, so I just played 170, which will be the last turn of peace. I expect more thread views and lurker input now that we've ended our detente.

so Lewwyn won out. I was about 50/50 anyway tbh, and as we planned I realized we can apply a lot more force to Iron Maiden than I realized.

The downside of attacking now is the secondary fronts will be weaker. 1) the ships out of el cid will have only 1 galley, with a mace and spear instead of 2 maces, and be 1 turn behind. 2) only one ship leaving the odyssey to the presets, with a mace and a spear, and it will be 2 turns behind. 3) only one mace from the east, and it will be one turn behind.

but we will keep pumping out units the whole war and I'll still be able to do some creative things.

btw, this made me very happy:

bad timing for azza. that academy won't help him much at all - if he had saved it, he could have gone into a golden age during the war, which would have beefed up his production, and switched to slavery near the end w/o anarchy. yay for dodging that bullet.

As for the main front:
Next turn, we will move to the horse tile 11 maces, 10 cats, 2 axes, 2 spears, and a horse archer. the maces and cats are all unpromoted, so they will absorb his cat barrage and promote to heal. (well I'll promote one mace to C2 going in I think).
turn 102, we bombard away all 40/50 of his defenses and move 4 more maces in, giving us 15.
turn 103 we attack with all 10 cats, then all 15 maces, then whichever left over units have a chance of winning. we plan on just killing enough units to take the city the following turn or as reinforcements come in (we can have 1 more mace come in at least this turn, maybe 2) - but I think there is a decent chance we can take it in one shot, we'll see.

this is what we're up against:

there is another cat in presets that can make it to the front in time to be relevant, unfortunately. since azza will play first, i'm hoping he detours it to A7x or keeps it in presets for zone control.
there's also a mace coming up from Tenacious D that will not make it in time!

here's what I did to prepare (besides moving all units into position in king arthur):

had to work every hammer here to 1 turn this mace.

4 whips!
1:

chop coming in next turn will 1 turn (with 37 overflow) the 2nd mace as well

2:

maximum overflow here will allow another 1 pop whip in 2 turns, and then a 2 pop whip 2 turns after that.
3:

mace here was 2 turns from completion. would have liked to wait a turn to whip, but had to go now since we're DOW next turn
4:

thanks to the barb city giving me trouble around rama's journey, only this mace will be ready to invade living end
ok, don't expect him to take it - but only has an archer defending, so he'll have to divert an army from somewhere or let me run around pillaging things (like the gold mine).

[Bigger]

Lewwyn: the more I think about it the more I think you're right, we'll need Engineering. Not for the initial push into Iron Maiden so much, but if we're ever going to make progress we'll need help getting our troops to the front. (and besides that pikes will be very useful in mahabrata to make me less paranoid about serdoa's knights).

So azza should have one turn to go when I play this evening. im thinking I'll turn on research now and finish drama (I've got like 55% researched) so I can overflow into engineering next turn after azza has finished it. that should cut it down to 3 turns and even a little overflow too.

btw, I made a mistake in that account - the mace from Tenacious D should hit Iron maiden in time - I forgot to calculate the increased movement from engineering :/.

I probably will only move the maces and cats in turn 1... then I'll empty out the king arthur garrison on the bombard turn. it will save supply costs.

[Lewwyn]

Lewwyn: the more I think about it the more I think you're right, we'll need Engineering.

Mnhmmmm...

[novice]

About the known tech bonus. If it's 25%, that means that one player out of 11 gaining the tech only increases your research bonus with 25%/11 = 2.27%. In a 4 or 5 player PBEM it might be worthwhile to plan your research around the known tech bonus - in an 11 player game, not so much. (Unless the bonus is a lot higher, like it is in the tech trading version of the mod.)

[Bigger]

About the known tech bonus. If it's 25%, that means that one player out of 11 gaining the tech only increases your research bonus with 25%/11 = 2.27%. In a 4 or 5 player PBEM it might be worthwhile to plan your research around the known tech bonus - in an 11 player game, not so much. (Unless the bonus is a lot higher, like it is in the tech trading version of the mod.)

ok, thats about what I figured. I don't know who else has engineering, I wouldnt be surprised if commodore and plako have it, maybe serdoa too. waiting on azza, even if its less than 3%, didn't really hurt us as we didn't need it for the first battle and saving up cash will just help us plow through philo faster (also cuz we don't really need philosophy except as a prerequisite to nationalism).

Lewwyn, I just had a thought. all our cats came from gilgamesh or maths, so at least 4 have 2 promos. what do you think about promoting a couple of them to the +bombard promotion so we can actually reduce his defenses to 0% (or at least 2%) instead of 10%? I would promote them next turn right before we bombard, of course. the downside is thats 2 less cats that I can promote to barrage or city raider, but it seems worth it.

[Bigger]

well, we're at war .


ill post a detailed turn report in 5-6 hours, have some errands to do.