Dtay's Little Red Book

[Commodore]

Never been impressed with drafting...but muskets are good. And collateral-immune muskets are terrifying.

[Commodore]

Also, helping the thread spam...what are your thoughts on each of your nearby neighbors?

[dtay]

Never been impressed with drafting...but muskets are good. And collateral-immune muskets are terrifying.

I feel like it really depends on the constraints you have. If you are happy constrained or close to it, drafting is pretty painful and hard to do in large quantities. But the food -> hammer conversion is just so good, you don't have to actually have that much food in your empire to do it effectively (obviously more food is better, just saying I think the food constraint is much lighter than the happy constraint).

The other issue I see is the mp effectiveness of the units you can draft is unideal since they aren't two movers. I think the war against TBS I had in PB13 is actually a good example of this (the spoilers can't possibly matter now), I didn't really make strong headway until I had at least medium number of cuirs to overpower knights and reinforce quickly.

And also I needed a blunder from TBS, he guarded Jetboy with the precisely same number of defenders as I had units that could kill, when he easily could have had 1 (or 10) more defenders there. That let me take Jetboy when he wasn't expecting it by sacrificing an excessive number of cats (I had too many cats compared to hitters in retrospect), and then use former TBS roads to to get something like 10 more muskets into the fray than otherwise would have possible. Without that critical turning point the lack of mobility of the muskets really would have been my downfall, and the war probably would have turned into a quagmire. But then without the early draft I wouldn't have been able to do anything at all in the first place, I just don't see how I could have built enough military to keep up with empire-wide defensive slaving.

I do anticipate Oromos being sweet though, they're one of the few cases I see the drill line as being worthwhile, since you can actually get to Drill IV and the net... -60% collateral damage you have by then? And 4-7 first strikes (including the natural Oromo one)?

what are your thoughts on each of your nearby neighbors?

Whosit: Doing what I think is best in his situation, realizing he is critically behind on expansion and deciding to convert what he has now into military in hopes of taking someone else's stuff. I think it was his only real card left to play. The hole he dug himself into initially indicates his early starting micro is probably pretty subpar (his land seems decent enough), but he did have a rough geopolitical starting position as the only player to neighbor everyone else on the continent.

I don't really think his war will really work though, i would bet CH, given the larger initial empire (and now I believe same-size empire) should be able to use the whip to avoid an empire collapse. That means CH/Whosit should hopefully get dragged down together, to ultimately probably die to more advanced troops wielded by Krovice or I. This paragraph is all with many grains of salt though, since I can't see the tactical situation at all, just the level of resources each SHOULD be able to put into the conflict.

CH:
Kind of covered above. No real strong opinion on his opening before this war, didn't seem to be lagging too much, didn't seem to at the very top. Don't know if he did something to provoke Whosit, if he did that was stupid, since I think it should be obvious someone in Whosit's position is going to end up feeling like hes caught in a corner and need to burst out SOMEWHERE. My scout saw some unit dancing back when it passed by that area, and the geography seemed ripe for settling conflict, so I'd bet that that is what started this.

It's a tough balance though, since he obviously shouldn't just concede a ton of stuff to Whosit just to appease him. The ideal settling is something that is as aggressive as possible while still leaving either Krovice or me as the best target (or most enraged-against-target) for Whosit. Anyway, this is going down a rabbit hole since I don't really know how the war started at all. Not surprised it happened though.

Krovice:
Obviously these are both top tier players. They pulled off a ballsy land grab that is going to serve them well in the long term. They managed their border with me very well during it, the creative buffer + settling extra tiles back on hills made any attempt to call them really expensive-seeming for me, which paid off for them. They've made a demo recovery over the last 10 turns and are now breathing down my neck.

I don;t think I'm a target for them right now given my empire's large pop and production and larger standing army. Their settling patterns corroborate this. I think our first real conflict is going to come around the time of knights, when either I want to attack them (I'll probably get there first b/c of the oracle head start) or one of us wants to eat Whosit and the other doesn't want to let it happen.

Plako:
Doing well from what I can tell on the scoreboard, city count, and wonder-falls. I don't have any insight into his empire's internal affairs. Obviously also a top tier player, these are some scary neighbors. I have open borders with him right now, IC trade routes are nice.

Hashoosh/replacement-i-forget-the-name-of
No real comments. I have the option to "liberate" Browner on the diplo screen, so I imagine that island is pretty close to his capital. Doing ok demo wise, no real comments besides that.

Pindicator:
Very good player. Seems to be murdering Barry, so he'll have a lot of land. I'm going to try to swipe some of the eastern coast of his continent off of him, but defending it is going to be tricky in the long run.

Ruff:
I got nothing. He got to an island I was hoping to settle, but he might have started a lot closer.

MYKI:
Very little to say. Had a unit running around the Pind/Barry continent, despite some culture in the NW of my vision indicating he's from a 3rd continent or the Pind/Barry continent is weirdly shaped.

Barry:
Dying.

[dtay]

Looking at this situation in particular I think the draft won't be that great. I'm not food constrained at all, but correspondingly even though I have tons of happy resources I will be happy constrained, since the super high food amounts will let nearly every city get to the cap. That means drafts are REALLY going to be coming at the cost of 3 pop, not 1.

How to account for the Nationhood Barracks happy in this is an interesting question. It's two happy I woudn't have under another civic, so "reduces" the happy cost of the first draft in each city, but I also theoretically could just have nationhood and run two more citizens in each city. Anyway, at best this only makes the first draft efficient, double drafting would be painful.

The excess food also means I can double and triple whip more than I could in PB13, which fills a similar role to drafting but costs a ton less happy.

So, quickly-thought-out net conclusion: The large amounts of food I have in this empire make the draft comparatively less attractive, since I'll be up against the happy cap in more cities, slavery is more usable, and the efficiency of the drafts food->hammer conversion is less important to me.

[dtay]

Colonization progresses.



Pind is running around with Chariots, but I think the worst moment of vulnerability is over. I've delayed a granary in favor of more military, it'll slow down Moss's growth but I think making sure I get a solid 4-5 cities on the continent is worth it, so military it is.

Whosit has peace with CH, here's his power right now:



Increasing military production in response, but I still think I'm an unlikely target. Krovice has less power and a more contentious border, and now there's an angry CH on the other border. And to some degree I just have to play a bit risky to stay on a knife's edge development curve.

Getting ready to put down Plantations once calendar comes in (should be in 3-4 turns)



Going to make a run at MoM using these forests




Empire overview:



Demos, at breakeven GNP is 3rd

[Ceiliazul]

What does your dotmap look like in former barryland?

[dtay]

Was going in to answer your question with some new pics, but... I think it's pretty irrelevant now:




Pind is angryyyyy.

I think he has (at least) 1 chariot following behind as well, since there was a chariot down here that disappeared into the fog last turn

There's also this chariot up north, which I'll kill with that spear coming out of Moss next turn



So Boyce is basically a lost cause. Unfortunately that Galley is carrying a worker/settler, not the best for the current circumstances. I'll let both off just to sit for a bit then turn around and grab military.

Unfortunately Mayo is set on a market right now, almost had it on an archer earlier ugh. So if I whip it'll be expensive.



I think I can hold Moss though. I'll have without any additional whips or chops 1 archer, 2 spears, 1 ax, and 3 chariots. I'll probably want to add archers/axes given his attack-force make up. The real problem is I want to kill the army so I can claim land with settlers, not just hole up in cities. I'll be back with more detailed plans next turn, hopefully.

[dtay]

Thinking through this, I'm willing to expend relatively significant resources to hold Moss, mostly because it will have (in 3 turns) 2 unique luxuries in its BFC. That pretty important empire wide, a far larger impact than it can create with it's own output.

So leaving Boyce as dead for now, I can chop out 1 unit in Moss, and whip at least 1 unit out of Amendola and Mayo. Despite that pretty sweet sword, 1 archer, 2 spears, 1 ax, 3 chariots, and 3 variable units should be able to hold. And that's without finetuning, I can certainly get up to 4-5 variable units.

I think the way to go here is figure out what the maximum limitation on units I can transport over is (galley capacity basically), and then make a judgement of how much of that capacity is worth actually building/whipping out.

EDIT: It's actually probably worth making the chop go into some nice PRO-cheap walls. +50% (+30% net) goes pretty far, should make up for some pretty substantial promo-disparity.

[dtay]

Flawless victory, promo earned



This may perpetuate a rather unearned and against-instincts reputation for early game opportunism... I ended up being the declaring party in the TBS conflict in PB13 (ok I was actually aggressive there), and then also technically declared war first in both this conflict and when slowcheetah took West City from me in PB13, but was really defending in both. Yet both those clarifications are still spoilered

I sometimes wonder where I fall on the early-aggression scale. I certainly observe myself doing risky city plants AFTER the snowball starts to roll, so failure won't cost me much. But I only have 1 real instance of actual aggressive early war, though that is 1/4... hmm.

(irrelevant/dated PB13 spoilers)
Amusing aside: West City changed hands a comically large number of times in that game, Me (founder) -> SlowC -> Ichabod -> Finharry -> Me -> Finharry.

Pind isn't guarding the holy city well, not that I can take advantage of it, which is why hes doing it obviously



Military pumps



Can't possibly see Moss falling. I believe (from memory) I'm going to have 3 archers, 3 axes, 2 spears, and 3 chariots all behind walls. The goal being to get odds on attacking out and actually killing Pind's army.



9 turns to shrine (travel time)

[Ceiliazul]

How much is the shrine worth right now?

Also, !