[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Old Harry]

How about staying at war, blockading and pillaging Ichabod for about five more turns then getting a peace treaty out of sync with Mackoti? Do we earn money from blockading? I'm sure I have in SP...

Civics - I'd stick with OR for another turn at least, definitely until we've got enforced peace with Mack (I can live without the stress too) and possibly then until Wall St is done. We don't have any pressing military plans right now and I don't see any of our neighbours charging into us straight away (although we need to keep a close eye on dtay), so why not pre-build all the units we can, then build wealth and get some techs that allow them to queue-upgrade? We'll probably complete the units before decay kicks in, and the only thing I think we lack right now is Cannons. (Bear in mind though that if two units queue-upgrade to the same thing we'll lose the hammers from one of them.)

[Fintourist]

How about staying at war, blockading and pillaging Ichabod for about five more turns then getting a peace treaty out of sync with Mackoti? Do we earn money from blockading? I'm sure I have in SP...

That plan works for me. Re blockading: Dunno, we did not get any cash this turn though.. Maybe it works like fortify bonus or healing and it only happens when units don't move (which wasn't the case last turn)

Civics - I'd stick with OR for another turn at least, definitely until we've got enforced peace with Mack (I can live without the stress too) and possibly then until Wall St is done.

Sounds like a plan. Btw, OR does not impact our Wall Street ETA, I have microed it so that it will finish at exact hammers even if we switch into Theocracy next turn.

We don't have any pressing military plans right now and I don't see any of our neighbours charging into us straight away (although we need to keep a close eye on dtay), so why not pre-build all the units we can, then build wealth and get some techs that allow them to queue-upgrade? We'll probably complete the units before decay kicks in, and the only thing I think we lack right now is Cannons. (Bear in mind though that if two units queue-upgrade to the same thing we'll lose the hammers from one of them.)

Sure, although I probably finish Cavs ans Cannons soonish, because Cavs won't upgrade into anything and Artillery is still far away in the future. With rifles I'll be more patient. You don't believe me saying this, but at this point the unit cost difference between keeping the units in queue and on field is pretty minor..


Aaaanyways, I moved our ships, kept blockading, advanced our ships towards Ichabod's untouched harbors and ended turn.




Thanks to 5 opponents knowing the Steam Power our GNP is reasonable, but still far far away from rival best. If we had double the amount of cities I'm sure we would be competitive!




I like seeing that drop in Ichabod's power while ours remains the same. That probably makes me a bad person..




Not worried about Mack's power, but this. Some day that MFG will be turned into units and then we bite the dust. Or if Mack can keep up techwise with other competitors (his GNP graph is not equally impressive) he should be very fast to produce spaceship parts. This MFG makes me think that we would be better off attacking immediately, but attacking a neighbor with similar power, small/medium tech advantage (infantries) and with no other wars ongoing does not feel too appealing (and we just accepted a 30-turn NAP kind of thing).

[Molach]

A bit belatedly, but we should add this to PB 18 awards:

The Fintourist award: For the most surprising & crippling naval/amphibious attack in the game.

I thought more about 1807 than 1941 when I read the planning and execution of this attack - perhaps due to frigates getting whacked rather than battleships, and no planes involved.

Well done anyway.

[Old Harry]

Ha! Totally!

While we're in OR should we build the forbidden palace somewhere and a drydock in jamestown?

[Fintourist]

Turn 222

We have Coal, but in very weak locations:




These 2 are our only sources. The are annoyingly both at the dtay border and tile yield wise useless. Eastern coal is just outside Jamestown's BFC and LB's coal is simply a weaker tile than merchant while building wealth.

But this was interesting:




William has a real army it seems. When counting 1 one cav inside Manon there are 40 cavs and 14 cuirs in this picture. He must have been upgrading quite a bit, because he does not have Rifling that long. So yeah, he probably would survive a while if attacked although I believe that plako is just happy to consolidate his gains for now. WilliamLP's future does not seem too promising though, because he is quite a bit behind in tech and probably has spend quite a few turns of research into army. For example he lacks chemisty IIRC. So yes, his WilliamLP's economy is not terrible, ours is maybe just 20 % better, but he simply has not accumulated enough beakers so I would imagine that he will not really have anything to say when the era of tanks comes. Not that we have much either I guess :P

Btw tanks, I checked civilopedia and they did not seem to have Barrage promotion available there. I'm sure I have used that in Single Player back in the days so maybe I just missed it? EDIT: Nevermind, quick googling shows that it was removed in later patches, makes sense.

As discussed, we don't feel too threatened, but playing turns will be much more relaxing if we have new set of enforced peace locking our huge border with mack:

A bit belatedly, but we should add this to PB 18 awards:

The Fintourist award: For the most surprising & crippling naval/amphibious attack in the game.

Thanks! My PBEM45 attack on Sareln and these 2 declarations against Ichabod have been maybe the most exciting turns I've played although they haven't contained too much of real fighting. Preparing something like that is quite fun as well. It's surely clear, but I have to mention that OH deserves equal amount of credit/blame when it comes to our crazy attempts during this game.

While we're in OR should we build the forbidden palace somewhere and a drydock in jamestown?

Yeah! We are actually finishing our 7th Courthouse in 3 turns.. AGG has really made us to skip those, which also means that our EP generation sucks and we lost Ichabod's and dtay's graphs this turn. Let's run 10 % EP slider in couple of turns and get them back?

Jamestown started a Levee, maybe drydock after that!

Domestic head-scratching:

I'm having a hard time trying to decide whether we should switch back to Theocracy. It would feel wasteful to produce a bunch of 4 XP Frigates, but strictly economically OR is a better deal (not really a game-changer or anything). Maybe 5 turns in Theocracy starting next turn and then back to OR?

And yeah, do you have preferences where we put our overflow when we finish Sci Meth and start saving gold?

Assembly Line?
Railroad?
Physics?
Biology?
Lib-Communism?

I don't think we have had so many interesting tech options for quite a long time.

Will we go for naval power aka Railroad+Physics+Artillery+Combustion in some order for destroyers?
Or improve our land units by taking Assembly Line for draftable rifles and maybe head then towards Industrialism?
Or think that we can get away with something Economical such as Biology

Btw, RBMod tech costs make this era pretty interesting despite huge land disparity. We are actually not that many techs behind leaders, but still when we look at accumulated beakers the difference is quite significant. That means that turn-wise we are again enough behind so that we need to fight with a clear tech disadvantage if scooter or mack (or Commodore?) beeline strong military techs and utilize them immediately.

[Old Harry]

I logged in to try to answer those questions and got this from Commodore. Those two are the closest cities he has to dtay, but I'm going to guess that this is a warning that dtay's going to attack us in 25 turns? Or is it saying that he'll attack dtay in 25 turns ? Should we offer a defensive pact? He also offered a map trade that I accepted but I didn't reply to him otherwise.

We have Coal, but in very weak locations:

Hmmm, wonder how long dtay has known where that coal is? He's got two of his own though so that wouldn't be why he's pressing on our borders.

we lost Ichabod's and dtay's graphs this turn. Let's run 10 % EP slider in couple of turns and get them back?

Lets ignore Ichabod now - we can see everything we need to in his coastal cities with caravels and privateers, I think dumping all our EPs on dtay should let us catch him up without running the slider.

Domestic head-scratching:

I'm having a hard time trying to decide whether we should switch back to Theocracy. It would feel wasteful to produce a bunch of 4 XP Frigates, but strictly economically OR is a better deal (not really a game-changer or anything). Maybe 5 turns in Theocracy starting next turn and then back to OR?

I think this depends on what our next tech is. See below...

And yeah, do you have preferences where we put our overflow when we finish Sci Meth and start saving gold?

Assembly Line?
Railroad?
Physics?
Biology?
Lib-Communism?

I don't think we have had so many interesting tech options for quite a long time.

Will we go for naval power aka Railroad+Physics+Artillery+Combustion in some order for destroyers?
Or improve our land units by taking Assembly Line for draftable rifles and maybe head then towards Industrialism?
Or think that we can get away with something Economical such as Biology

Benefit of Biology:
17 food on the mainland, 18 on the island. It will make Om produce GPs more effectively and improve our Rep-spec-tech rate a little.

Benefit of Physics:
Airships for reconnaissance, reveal Uranium (which we can't use for ages anyway), gets us close to Artillery.

Benefit of Assembly Line:
Draftable Infantry, start building factories and coal power stations (OR will be useful here).

Benefit of Railroad:
Internal Comms, build Machine Guns, gets us close to Combustion.

Benefit of Liberalism:
Running Free Religion when teching pays off within about fifteen turns of teching right now. Supposing we don't want to be running something else at the time...

Mack just got Railroad, so is only Combustion, Electricity and Industrialism short of Tanks and Battleships. Our shortest path to Anti-Tank and Destroyers is Physics->Artillery->Railroad->Combustion (always supposing that we have oil somewhere). We could move Railroad earlier to get our internal comms set up quicker or leave it like this to start producing Anti-Tanks and Artillery sooner.

If we don't think Mack can get those three techs (47 000 beakers) quicker than our four (51 000 beakers) we could slot in Assembly Line to increase our building efficiency and draft Infantry, but I don't think it works that well for us. Did you conclude that factories were worth it FT? How many hammers do they take to pay off? What about in a beaker-constrained situation like this?

I think that Mack is keen on easy conquests, so when he sees we can build Anti-Tanks and Artillery that may be enough to make him look elsewhere. Upping our production with factories may actually make more of a difference in a hot war, but does it have the same psychological effect? I could go for either route, but I lean towards Physics right now.

[Fintourist]

Hmmm.. Interesting stuff.

I don't think Commodore is warning us, because I don't know how he would have gotten the info that dtay is attacking us in 25 turns. Dtay would not have asked him to do it, because we don't share border with Commodore. So yeah, I interpret it as an attack plan, but who knows how serious that is.

How about we offer next turn same cities, 24 gold and iron-for-iron and indicate that we have understood are potentially on board? Dtay is now vulnerable and mack is not yet so threatening (I see he accepted peace) so 25 turns is too far for my taste so we could suggest 20 turns, but maybe Commodore is not ready yet. Well, anyways, this might not lead into anything good, but a conflict between Commodore and dtay would be great for us (and also great for scooter, which hopefully makes mack+plako realize that they need to do something about it) and I think we should do whatever possible to increase its possibility.

Re tech path: Happy to put the overflow into Physics, we still have several turns time to think about where we really commit our beakers.

[Fintourist]

If we don't think Mack can get those three techs (47 000 beakers) quicker than our four (51 000 beakers) we could slot in Assembly Line to increase our building efficiency and draft Infantry, but I don't think it works that well for us. Did you conclude that factories were worth it FT? How many hammers do they take to pay off? What about in a beaker-constrained situation like this?

I think that Mack is keen on easy conquests, so when he sees we can build Anti-Tanks and Artillery that may be enough to make him look elsewhere. Upping our production with factories may actually make more of a difference in a hot war, but does it have the same psychological effect? I could go for either route, but I lean towards Physics right now.

Many thanks again for your tech thoughts, this is really complex Factories are decent builds if we believe that we are still alive in ~30 turns after we get Assembly Line. Cities that build Factory+Coal Plant need to get together ~420 base hammers and then factory+CP is paid back. I would imagine building them in several cities, but they are not that good that they make us want Assembly Line next in any case. In our HE city, Jamestown, the opportunity costs is that big that I for example doubt whether we want to build those. In Königgratz we most definitely build them.

[Fintourist]

Turn 223

Mack accepted peace, finished Pentagon and, declare-peaced scooter. We are blockading Ichabod, no blockade gold though, (but maybe we could demand something for peace in couple of turns?):




Domestically there isn't much happening, diplo is a different thing. We once again would like to have OBs, if we don't, in 10 turns we will be alarmed..




As speculated, let's see what comes out of this attack-dtay thing.. If Commodore would come in with force and we have enforced peace with mack during the most crucial turns, this might be an opening for climbing one position in the scoreboard. 24/25 turns is a bit too long time though and many things can go wrong here.




I haven't ended turn, because I can't make up my mind about OR vs Theocracy:

OR brings us ~60 hammers per turn, but costs us around 25 gold per turn. Theocracy would mean ~10 extra promos during the next 5 turns and of course a bunch of units will be born closer to next level (7 XP cavalries being the most typical example). Of those 10 units that reach a promo about half are ships, some 4/6 XP frigates and one caravel (which could be an useful sentry caravel if mack does not open borders) and few 3/5 XP rifles.

I dunno, those hammers are not achieving anything too dramatical, they speed up Ironworks by a turn, which is something and those promos are nice, but not really game-breaking either :P With enforced peace with mack there is no reason to be too worried about losing the ability to switch civics for 5 turns so that's not a big factor here.

[Old Harry]

Pacifism?