Gillette Turn Discussion

[Old Harry]

Turn 187

A bit more info exchanged with M3, I gifted the scientist without taking a picture.


They should gift us the prophet next turn, at which point we could start the golden age straight away and switch to SP when we have it. However I think it's a better idea to revolt the first turn of the GA so that we get maximum turns of whatever we want to run. Speaking of which - what do we want to run? HR/Bureau/Caste/SP/Pacifism for the Great people? then switch to HR/Nationhood/Slavery/SP/Theocracy at the end - allowing us to control the pop of SFL by slaving out frigates?


The Troll settler has disappeared on his galleon again, not sure where to... The visible galleon is a different one, possibly a decoy. They are heading to Mil Tradition for cavalry but that means we can ease back on the research builds for physics - I'll go back to building regular units and infrastructure and we'll complete physics next turn, overflowing a lot of beakers into communism


On our Troll border by running artists we can pop our cultural defenses to 60% by t197. Is it worth then building walls and castles? Not for the extra defense (the walls don't do anything against rifles and cavalry) but to make bombarding the 60% down much slower. I don't know the exact numbers, but if they only have cats I think it'll reduce bombard damage by half or three quarters. It only costs 75 hammers for both thanks to stone.




I still think we'll lose Jemmy first turn of the war


At Arqubus we just want it to grow so I think the forge might be a waste of time - we won't whip or build much here for the rest of the game, just run specialists - so I've set it to a trading post, which we can 2-pop whip next turn.


Here are our builds - the ones off the bottom are three granaries a forge and a trading post.


Power - it looks like Trolls whipped a lot this turn, they aren't in Nationalism, presumably they will have a bunch of rifles completing next turn...

[YossarianLives]

HR/Bureau/Caste/SP/Pacifism for the Great people? then switch to HR/Nationhood/Slavery/SP/Theocracy at the end

This sounds like a good plan to me, if we can afford to wait on building units until the end of the GA.

I have no idea of the walls / castles would be worth it. I guess if it costs us any units, it might be better to have those, but if it's cheap enough that it won't make a difference to our ultimate army count, then go for it

[Cheater Hater]

Civics seem fine to me--I wouldn't bother with Walls/Castles, since I assume Trolls will get Cannons sometime in the war--I think those hammers would be better used on more bodies for Trolls to get through.

When are we going to get Theocracy? Are we going to get though Steel, Military Science, and Nationalism by the end of the Golden Age as is?

As far as cities go, I think we'll be fine as long as we don't lose anything on SFL or any of our core--sorry eastern cities

[Commodore]

Could we some high-water mark empire-wide shots?

[Old Harry]

Turn 188

Here is the great prophet that M3 swapped for our great scientist.


So some overviews of our magnificent civilization (high water mark? Oh ye of little faith!) - first up the border with Trolls (we're facing west here) - you can see that Jemmy, Epee and Katana can be hit by 2-movers on the first turn of a war. I think we need to give Jemmy up and stuff all our defence into the other two. We'll know how many Cavalry Trolls are attacking with thanks to our airships, so we can carefully calibrate what needs to be done. I hope that we can use our cannons to hit their stack of cavalry and prevent them making any further in-roads past these border cities...


This is our core.


And this is the whole of the mainland (see how much we've been squeezed!) Sorry about all the signs - I need them to track what is going on!


The north of SFL.


The south of SFL.


The whole of SFL.


Target #1 - Tequilla Slammer (the 0 means its empty)


Target #2 - Tequilla Sunrise


Target #3 - Teqila Sour and the south of the Troll core - from the staging point our 6-move galleons can hit Tequila Sour, Cuba Libre, On the Rocks, Gin Tonic or White Russian.


Target #4 - The east of the Troll lands - from the stage? marker we can hit Single Malt, Panama and Cape Cod, then from Single Malt we can hit Weissbier (MOM city), Salty Dog, Elephant Beer.


So what did I miss? I was planning to try and spread buddhism to the Troll cities without a religion to get espionage visibility, but if we have airships this may not be so useful, so I might use the missionaries in our cities instead for OR and Theocracy bonus. Any thoughts?

Power - presumably Trolls will start whipping Cavalry next turn.


Demos

[Cheater Hater]

Yeah, Jemmy is definitely worth giving up--I guess that's what happens when you mainly have farms and workshops
(as a flashback, which city were we going to lose during the first Trolls war right before peace, Jemmy or Katana?)

I'm shocked at how small our mainland is, even smaller than M3--I guess it's just that it's bigger than most empires I'm used to managing (which doesn't bode well for a Huge map like PB13, but that's off topic )

How much attacking do you think we can realistically do? I'm assuming the first couple turns are going to be purely defensive, even on SFL (since presumably Trolls will have Chemistry and Frigates by T200--can Caravels upgrade into Frigates? I don't believe Galleons can--can you still build Triremes and upgrade those after getting Astronomy?). Then again, if Trolls have been emptying their SFL-bordering cities (ETA on getting unit counts in the other cities?) we won't have as much to worry about on that front possibly.

What's the most hammer-efficient way to defend against Cavs, assuming we can't get Rifles? Pikes, Longbows, Muskets, Grenadiers, or something else?

Airship question--we can build them in SFL then rebase them to the mainland right away, right? That would be one way to use the production from our developed SFL cities along with naval units (all the cities need are Granaries and Forges before they can start pushing units, right?)

More paranoia:
* Did Trolls' settler ever pop up?
* We did get the Physics scientist, right? Are we triggering the golden age this turn or after we get Communism?
* So the research plan is Communism->Chemistry->Steel->Nationalism->Military Science, correct? Are we going towards Rifling afterwards or saving for upgrades? How far can we get through Military Science before the end of the Golden Age?

[Old Harry]

Turn 189

We're not going to be able to finish Communism this turn. I've been through every city in the empire to see how much effect launching the golden age would make if we ran research everywhere. I think we end up about 50 beakers short . I wish I'd stuck with some research builds last turn. The maths (using the filledness of the research bar) is:


448 pixels = 4004 beakers
155 px overflow = 1285 beakers
399-155 px research = 244 px = 2180 beakers
4004-1285-2180 = 438 beakers left to get

The commerce a golden age would bring in is 282, the hammers (research build) are 104 for a total of 386 - about 50 short

So I'll restore all the normal builds and we might start the golden age next turn, but more likely the turn after.

Our research path is (the times are very much estimates until we start the golden age):
Communism eot 190
Gunpowder eot 191 (start GA)
Chemistry eot 193
Steel eot 196
Theo eot 197
Nationali eot 199
Mil Sci eot 201

We could skip Nationalism, save up money, upgrade a handful of our zerks on t200 and hit coastal cities t201. I think we can use four galleons to hit with 13 (possibly upgraded) zerks. It depends very much how Trolls set up their defences what we do. I think we're going to be whipping out frigates from SFL at the end of the golden age to dominate the ocean, Trolls have very little coastal production, so I think we'll rule the waves, especially with a few drydocks...

Its also tempting to slot in banking after Chemistry to build banks in Occam, Dirk and BOG, but that's long term thinking when we might need to stick to the short term. I guess we can decide when we get to it.

To answer your other questions:
It was Katana that they threatened last time.
The best defence against cav is rifles - I'll try and buy some from M3 in return for airships and cannons, but we won't get many. I'd guess pikes are our next best option followed by drafted muskets, but if you have any thoughts let me know.
Airships can be rebased like that, yes.
Dunno where the Troll settler went. I'm checking carefully each turn to make sure he isn't sitting under one of ours.
I don't think we want Rifling, we can buy a few for stack defence from M3.

These are our builds, we'll have one Airship next turn that I want to use to get visibility on the Troll heartlands. All the trebuchets will queue-upgrade to cannons for the eastern front, all the triremes will queue-upgrade to Frigates (I hope) and I'm building a handful of pikes and longbows to get fortified in the eastern front cities ASAP.


This looks like it's the sum total of M3's fighting units. How do balista elephants do against cavalry?


And yep, there we go. Perhaps grenadiers aren't going to be much help...

[Cheater Hater]

One of the demo screens was supposed to be the power chart I assume?

That's too bad about Communism--then again, we aren't getting it that much faster, and maybe the full turn of hammers (+ whatever was needed last turn) is more than the (timeshifted) Golden Age hammers, and we need all the hammers we can get right now.

I think we should be able research Banking post-Military Science, but after that we can turn off research--do we want Military Tradition for Curaissers?

More miscellaneous stuff:
* Have you been checking the espionage screen recently? We can check the Sabotage Hammers option of Trolls' cities to see if Trolls are building anything big (most notably, the Kremlin--I doubt we have time to build it even if Trolls don't appear to be, but it's still good to know if, say, we pop a low-odds engineer during the Golden Age)
* If Trolls don't declare on T201, do we declare? I certainly don't think so (I'd rather wait until M3 joins T211), but I want to know your opinion

[Old Harry]

One of the demo screens was supposed to be the power chart I assume?

Fixed! Although you may wish it wasn't

I think we should be able research Banking post-Military Science, but after that we can turn off research--do we want Military Tradition for Curaissers?

Although we might want to be upgrading zerks and cats at that point.

More miscellaneous stuff:
* Have you been checking the espionage screen recently? We can check the Sabotage Hammers option of Trolls' cities to see if Trolls are building anything big (most notably, the Kremlin--I doubt we have time to build it even if Trolls don't appear to be, but it's still good to know if, say, we pop a low-odds engineer during the Golden Age)

Nice idea - I'll look next turn.

* If Trolls don't declare on T201, do we declare? I certainly don't think so (I'd rather wait until M3 joins T211), but I want to know your opinion

I agree, the longer we can wait the more cannons and muskets we'll have to use.

[Old Harry]

Turn 190

Next turn our airship will give us visibility on the Troll core. I think that merchant is a Troll too. Their civics are currently Police State/Nationalism/Slavery/State Property/Theocracy. That's pretty aggressive...


I should have taken a pic before moving this caravel away, but there is a rifle and galleon in Red Bull, which I think will make its way to an island, meaning we probably do need to get Mil Sci (I was thinking that if they just build cavalry we could skip it.)


I remembered to get this one... They're going for a cavalry/rifle mix.


Sabotage prod for Trolls:
Cap 0
Bloody Mary 2873
bitter 0
Horses Neck 905
WIFOM 412
On the rocks
Ramune 433
Weissbier 619
...
Red Bull 1413
...

I'd guess Kremlin is getting built in BM, although I don't know how far through they've got. It's probably not worth our while trying to build it...

So next turn we'll start a golden age, perform some whips, then revolt to HR/Bureau/Caste/SP/Pacifism. The question is - how many pop do we want to whip right before a golden age?

Urumi - still 3-pop next turn (this is the only unimproved tile we're working in the whole empire) - worth a whip?


Voulge - 1-pop, I say yes.


Woldo - still 3-pop, probably a no?


Zatoici - will be 2-pop, probably a no...


And the scary stuff.