Gaspar, Lewwyn, et al go full Sartre

[Gaspar]

I'll try and get a real report in tomorrow, I didn't sleep well last night and I'm beat right now. Clearly I need to lose my Permanent Golden Age status since the new GA hasn't been much of a boon for my reporting.

Take a look at this shot from the front. The units there are facing north - is there any explanation here other than a misclick? I'd ask for a reload for that shit, those units are just XP fodder outside of a city. They definitely didn't come from the north nor did they kill anything.

[Gaspar]

So I know I've been pretty quiet, mostly because I've been annoyed with the game - as Noble said to me in chat, our empire is pretty great, it just so happens that there's another guy whose empire is a lot greater. I do think if the game were called and Mongolia removed from the game but the rest of us kept playing, we'd win the game of the remaining players. But sadly, I don't have an assassinate Joao hack, so the world we inhabit is less fun.

The big news of the turn is us redeclaring on Oxy. We're mainly after setting a slightly nicer future border with TBS as well as sniping his island. There's nothing happening in the south, but this is where our action is:




The units on mouseover are our stack E-SE of Chaz Bono. We're going to raze that city next turn and replant 1N next turn as well. Outside of D'Andre, which has a Chariot in it, there's a Maceman and 3 Knights. That would seem woefully insufficient but that Chariot is the sum total of units he has on that island, which I have christened Sheepland II: Arctic Boogaloo. Also, Xenu - WTF? Why are we the only ones who got completely uninhabitable islands? This city here has 3 food sources! That's insane!

For those of you rubbernecking and dedlurking, here's what the rest of Oxy's empire looks like right now. He's got maybe 7-8t left I'd gander, but that might be too kind. Just takes a while to wade through all that culture. I don't suspect we'll be attacking in the south, even though he's relocated troops out of Gurton this turn finally. Knowing Oxy, I'm expecting them back in Gurton next turn anyway.




Here's what's gone on in the world since I last reported:




Our empire deserves at least one pass-through during this Golden Age. So I'm going to do a handful of cities every turn until I get through all of it.




Valhalla, the capital, is doing capital things, still producing most of our science though the swap to representation next turn will reduce the bureau dependence slightly. Rep will be worth over 150 beakers with Mercantilism and then all the extra specs were running to generate GPs during the GA. That mish is for the new city.




Second city Eden, still powering through GPs.




Cockaigne, now with 100% more Heroic Epic. It can do a Knight a turn in perpetuity, at least until we have something better to have it do. We're working on converting farms to workshops and mines to windmills, as one is wont to do once you have the full roided up workshops. Well, minus State Property of course.




Atlantis is working on a GP of its own. We won't cash in most of these points until after GA. Basically we should get one more before the GA is up and the generate 1 more for the 3-man shortly after the GA. The hope is that in the theoretical world where the game lasted long enough, we could cash out enough of these dudes for a 4-man GA during the 3-man GA. Which would be pretty, pretty cool with an empire this large. It matters naught, of course, but that was the plan.




El Dorado has been a decent utility city - it generated the settler that will found River Styx near former Chaz next turn and has otherwise produced a lot of military. There's some worker pruning going on here too - we just finished that crappy desert incense plantation this turn (we have an awesome plains one at Asgard.)




Ys, site of a future NobleShrine® is another utility city that's done mishes and settlers and such but mostly just builds military not as fast as we would like but still pretty decently for the "clam city" that served as our slightly too slow gateway to the west.




Shangri-La, planted for gems is just about what it is now. Which is to say a middling commerce city that produces units too slowly to fortify borders. I think in a lot of ways, this city is the archive of our failure, such as it is. If it were the uber Moai, planted near the current Kobol, instead and we teched Currency before Iron Working, we'd probably be in better shape. We wouldn't be winning, since the majority of reasons the leader is winning were completely out of our control, but that's the biggest misstep that we could control.

More next turn...

[Gaspar]

So in the interest of putting some mildly interesting content in the thread, with Constitution coming in @EOT, we have some decisions to make re: tech path. Basically, the "stretch" goal is Assembly Line - Factories are teh sex, even more so when you're Organized. Additionally, Infantry are great and Pentagon is a wonder we'd love to build. So the techs we need:

Paper
Printing Press
Replaceable Parts
Steam Power
Education
Economics
Corporation
Assembly Line

Nearby, there are two other techs which will highly increase our survivability:

Steel
Rifling

The original plan, as much as there was one, was to tech Paper, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts during the remainder of the GA, grab Rifling, and then continue on towards Assembly Line, probably doing the Education/Econ/Corp run before Steam Power because we'll get some discounts by not being first to the stuff and given that Xenu gave us SIGNIFICANTLY LESS RIVERS THAN EVERYONE ELSE (seriously, take a look at that shot of cities above - the first 6 cities after the capital have a total of two riverside tiles) means that Levees aren't all that sexy. Most likely we'd do something like fire the next Golden Age somewhere shortly after grabbing Rifling and then start powering through the expensive techs en route to AL during that third GA. In a perfect world, we get enough GPs for the 4th GA during that and maybe we fire it shortly after to help finish off building projects like the rest of the Factories and Coal Plants, in addition to, after finally teching Steel, an Ironworks build in Tartarus.

The appeal of teching the Paper > PP > RP run is twofold. One, we'll get some discounts on all of that and significant discounts on the first two, particularly if we can manage to tech them before Oxy is eliminated (dtay's stubborn survival isn't good for tech discounts.) Two, Printing Press provides a good 30-40 commerce per turn out of thin air and Replaceable Parts is a must with the Windmills we're building everywhere which are going to suck once we're out of GA. So basically taking that path gives the best economic boost en route to the keystone tech.

However... if you look at the shot of Maya in the picture above, we're going to be sharing a second border with Mongolia in ~8t. Right now, there's no possible way to get the volume of defense on that flank that we have on the eastern border. However, we do have something like 8 catapults over there. If we upgraded those 8 catapults to cannon, well, at a bare minimum, TBS moving his huge 1-mover stack on us would be suicide. I'm not positive it would be enough to also handle the mounted divisions but it certainly increases our odds. The downside here, beyond teching Steel which is of dubious economic value (Ironworks payback horizon with only Iron pretty much sucks and it is hella expensive - 700h) is that upgrading 8 catapult to cannon would cost 1400g, which amounts to quite a few turns of research. So realistically, if we were to follow this path we'd basically have to tech to Steel over the next 4t, building some Wealth and then either save gold for upgrades while still building quite a bit of Wealth or, assuming we get a Great Merchant as one of our next 2 GPs, run a very fast trade mission to a border city to pay for the deficit. Cannon cost 100h and move too slowly to be able to be deployed in numbers on the western front that quickly after teching Steel.

So the question ultimately boils down to this: How likely do we think it is that TBS just continues marching eastward (for him) after eliminating Oxyphenbutazone? If we think he's like to pause and consolidate before considering his next military action, then the value to the economy of going the Paper > PP > RP > Rifling path is definitely superior. This is my current inclination, simply because I'm tired of playing in terror of the Mongolian menace - it just isn't fun to play all your turns worried you're going to get overrun. He's currently teching Democracy, obviously for a SoL build which will be absolutely amazing for him, which doesn't suggest he's in "End the game now" mode. However, if he is intending to attack us and we have the chance to force him to go in a different direction and don't take the opportunity to do so, well, that's the sort of thing they write more eloquently on tombstones. I've never been eliminated in a BTS game and I'd rather not have the experience.

What sayeth the peanut gallery? Which path would you suggest we take? Is there an obvious alternative I'm missing?

[Ichabod]

Factories are also needed to get fast ideologies, so I agree with your plan.

And here's another nice thought exercise: which is worst? Playing all your turns worried you're going to get overrun or playing all your turns getting overrun?

[Gaspar]

And here's another nice thought exercise: which is worst? Playing all your turns worried you're going to get overrun or playing all your turns getting overrun?

NobleHelium: what do you think of ichabod's question
Gaspar: thats an interesting question by ichabod
i mean
generically speaking
ive only been overrun once
and that was in ffh7
and that was fucking miserable
partly because it was kyan's civ
i dont dislike tbs anywhere near how much i used to dislike kyan
NobleHelium: lol
Gaspar: i guess thats the thing
the real question
is whether its better to play in fear of getting overrun and have it never happen
vs not playing in fear of it and having it happen
NobleHelium: well i definitely don't want to be overrun, that's for sure
Gaspar: because obviously the best case scenario is not playing fear of it and not having it happen
NobleHelium: but i also don't want to dump 1k+ on cannon upgrades unless we're actually under attack :-P
Gaspar: and the second best is playing in fear of it and then him trying and stopping it
so really the question to answer
is how likely is he to attack
i think the answer to that question is
if we look really weak
he'll attack
otherwise he'll consolidate first
NobleHelium: ok
well
we'll have like 20 knights in river styx
with a handful of jans
Gaspar: well the knights and jans need cats to look scary
NobleHelium: let me draw scary faces on them then
oh
i misread what you said
lol
NobleHelium: ok so should we set every new build to cats then
send the hogsmeade cats north
or what?
Gaspar: i mean i don't know
i'm spitballing here
NobleHelium: we have two cats
Gaspar: i guess i think
NobleHelium: from purg
that we'll move up
Gaspar: if we have a half-dozen cats
+ lots of knights/jans
thats probably enough to make him want to bring overwhelming force
i mean if he rolls up 20 rifles
i'd think 20knights + a few jans
can kill that after catting
NobleHelium: i am not so sure about that
i think you might need like 10 cats at least
Gaspar: fair
so i guess the real options here
NobleHelium: i mean the thing is
i guess 20 cavs is the same as 20 rifles
probably a little weaker
so either way he'd have to attack with both cavs and rifles
Gaspar: yes, but you don't necessarily get a chance to cat the cavs
whereas as you definitely get a chance to cat the rifles
NobleHelium: well if we don't get a chance to cat the cavs that means that city can't be defended
Gaspar: well of course
NobleHelium: and we actually will get a chance to cat the cavs
because once we get a border pop in styx he can't attack it without being exposed for a turn
Gaspar: yeah i guess i forgot we'll be able to pop borders basically immediately
NobleHelium: you could log in and move the hogsmeade cats north to middlemarch
still our half of the turn right now
Gaspar: well lets not forget
NobleHelium: yes we're currently showing them to oxy
Gaspar: we're going to border him at hogsmeade soon as well
NobleHelium:are we assuming
that there is zero chance
that tbs will dow us before oxy is dead
or at least low enough not to worry about
Gaspar: zero chance provided we're not stupid and leave him exposed troops, yes
the only way he attacks before oxy dies is if we have like 15 knights sitting out in the open field
which we won't let happen
anyway
i suppose the question here
is what we value more
commerce or production
if we value commerce more, we throw anything that can get units to the border on producing them as fast as possible
if we value production more, we keep doing what we're doing and tech steel and upgrade cats
because the thing is
i think the question isn't simply whether or not tbs can take city x
its whether the proposition is worth it
and given he's already in a clear winning position
NobleHelium: Okay I agree with that
Gaspar: i can't see why he'd run 20 units
into a big stack of cats
when he can just wait, consolidate
and conceivably come back with overwhelming force later
NobleHelium: Well we're basically producing units everywhere now
Gaspar: yeah
i guess i think
sufficient cats
in border cities
is enough of a short-term deterrent
the real downside to this plan
is we're building more cats
which while they don't truly obsolete
certainly aren't a great use of hammers when we're one tech away from something a whole lot better
NobleHelium: well anyway
we'll probably have
a few exposed knights
from killing chaz's units
but not more than that

What does that all mean? I don't know, really. It means we have to make a bunch of bets here. Of course the safest path is both - we tech Steel next AND we pump a bunch of catapults to cover the western border, then slowly replace the siege on both borders with cannon, using the eventually replaced catapults in an assault somewhere or as a backup plan. The problem is, part of why TBS is so far ahead is we've had to play scared for the last 60t. At some point, it just isn't fun to always take the safest route. We've proven time and again to be a pain in the ass to attack so any value there is from having that reputation is probably minimal. So its really a matter of what is fun here. And what is fun here is doing the absolute minimum required to deter TBS from attacking while doing everything we can to improve our civ.

Does that mean we don't tech Steel/do the upgrades? No. What it means is this isn't an easy decision.

[Krill]

You might think it was Kyan's game, but it was my strategy in FFHVII. Which probably makes it worse, right?

[Gaspar]

You might think it was Kyan's game, but it was my strategy in FFHVII. Which probably makes it worse, right?

Kyan's game, your strategy... well it was DaveV doing the actual roflstomping and I get on with him just fine.

Of all the things to take away from that, though...

[Krill]

FWIW, thinking about that game, I think it's worse to be planning to overrun everyone, rather than trying to defend. Those turns are a bitch to play properly, easily take 6 hours to play each one.

[Ichabod]

You know you failed as a troll when people have a meaningful discussion based on what you wanted to be a trollish question...

Perhaps I should have add a Kappa in the end...

[NobleHelium]

Anything can be a meaningful discussion when I'm involved.