[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Ceiliazul]

Oh, sure, Conditions May Vary, Not Valid in All States, and etc. But I'd have stopped at maybe three Great People, and never a bulb. Which is pretty clearly wrong, even if sometimes you should stop at the 1100 level.

Recommended reading: pbem23 novice/seven. They destroyed the field with specials, lots of bulbs and an early astronomy.

[Old Harry]

And this is without any GPP boosts, right? And with Fin for the coasts? No National Epic, no Phi, no Representation or Parthenon?

FIN coast, Rep scientists and there was 8 turns worth of Golden Age in the model (our 2-man GA) that starts soon. (no Pacifism though)

I don't have the model in front of me anymore, but if you want I can run the analysis with different variables or send it to you tomorrow if you're interested.

Nooooooooooo - don't give away our secret spreadsheet weapons!

I'll happily have a read though

Also, I'm pretty much convinced by the OR in this golden age argument. We need to get West point in Hazelnut, SoL, Forbidden Palace and Observatories in our bigger commerce cities.

How many Missionaries do we need though? I feel like a load of our fishing villages can manage without religion...

[Fintourist]

Well, mostly it's the perspective shift that I find valuable. The precise model depends too much on details. I'd be interested to see the breakeven point if you were Phi instead of Fin, though.

With otherwise same settings old PHI (+100 %) gets you ~2300 GPP in the same time as we get 1200 GPP in My Finger together. It's pretty amazing, but with old PHI generating 23rd or 24th Great Person would have been ok in this case

If you're much more organized than I tend to be, and built the sheet with reuse in mind, then I might like a copy - but if it's anything like the ones I build, it'll be easier to recreate than to adapt.

Yeah, it's more just a quick-and-dirty analysis and only built for this particular situation.. But here it is anyways, as OH wanted to check it as well.

Also, I'm pretty much convinced by the OR in this golden age argument. We need to get West point in Hazelnut, SoL, Forbidden Palace and Observatories in our bigger commerce cities.

How many Missionaries do we need though? I feel like a load of our fishing villages can manage without religion...

Yeah, I like OR too. Reg missionaries I would need to log in and see. There are couple of cities in the west that still need culture for border tension reasons. Otherwise cities that we believe are capable of producing more than just 1 or 2 theocracy units are probably worth it.


One further thing, I wonder if one of the main topics for our 3rd GA is a switch into Nationhood and a major round of whipped infantry.

[Old Harry]

Turn 181

If we aren't going to make that amphibious attack on dtay then Hazelnut could take a break from making 11XP Grenadiers to build West Point and have the prospect of 13XP boats, 16XP 1-movers and 18XP 2-movers. With a dry dock it would be 17XP boats...


But hang on... I put enough units here to take Mercadia next turn, get us our great general and (if we don't raze) then we could use the Commando Knight on the empty Shadalar? Probably not worth it unless we can get him back out alive...


Forbidden palace starts in Endive, it should only take about six turns once we start working some hammer tiles in the golden age. It might give us a better discount one city further east, but Endive has the production to make it work.


It turns out that Marmalade already has a bunch of Scientist points from the last golden age - so should we mix with merchants or stick with science?


I don't see Krovice hitting Bell Preston, even though they'd probably take it, because they'd be wide open for a counter attack...


This might be really clever or really stupid. I've put our stack out of dtay's sight, but just in range of his 10 Frigates. I'm hoping he won't chase and we'll be able to join up with our three C2 Frigates (left of the picture) next turn. If he does attack though we should win 2/3 of the Frigate-Frigate fights and if any of our Frigates get a flawless win they will protect the Galleons. We also have a couple of Frigate pairs pillaging and blockading ports off the western edge of the picture. He's saved 3000 gold, so I guess he'll get Steel fairly soon, meaning drydocks and we'll need to up our naval game. On the right is where our 5-move galley just dropped off three Cuirs to start mapping out TBS.


I think TBS' cities get older as you go east, so the capital and possible culture-push cities will be in that direction. He's up to 43 cities now...


Found Boldly's stack in Q's territory, it may take him a few turns (he doesn't have a super medic to speed things up) but I think Q's days are numbered... Cossacks are still trickling towards this front, which is excellent news .


Demos and power along with Score and the victory screen. What do we need to look out for with a culture victory attempt? Turn 183 and max-hammers golden age can't come soon enough for our power rating. Hmmm. How would you feel about Nationalism in this golden age? Or between this one and the next?

[Old Harry]

The discovery of GP points in Marmalade changes things a bit, so I added in a pacifism 3-man golden age to the calculations:

- Launch no-pacifism 2-man golden age -
600 GPP - - K - t190 - Scientist Merchant
700 GPP - - M - t203 - Merchant Scientist
800 GPP - - K - t211 - Artist
- Launch pacifism 3-man golden age -
900 GPP - - G - t214 - Merchant/Prophet/Engineer/spy
1000 GPP - L - t218 - Merchant
1100 GPP - K - t227 - Artist (Merchant)
1200 GPP - MF - t239 - Scientist
1300 GPP - M - t261 - ?
1400 GPP - K - t266 - ?

Meaning we could be launching a 4-man golden age t239. Or if the t214 specialist comes out as a Merchant we could aim to get the Fusion Great Engineer to launch the 4-man GA for a spaceship build... Around t270 Gertie will be fairly close to popping again...

[Fintourist]

But hang on... I put enough units here to take Mercadia next turn, get us our great general and (if we don't raze) then we could use the Commando Knight on the empty Shadalar? Probably not worth it unless we can get him back out alive...

Yeah, I'm not too eager to burn a commando unit for a raze, we might need them more later (to destroy BGN's space race capital for example or for fast conquest of Dreylin or something). If we can burn Mercadia with low expected losses that's fine of course. At this point we are enough ahead of dtay so that just creating mutual casualties isn't too attractive anymore and decreasing the extent of pissing him off might make sense. Razing a city again (it has been a while since the last one) might send a good message to Krovice and Pindi though..

I don't see Krovice hitting Bell Preston, even though they'd probably take it, because they'd be wide open for a counter attack...

Yeah, I would not count on them making gains unless we launch an invasion ourself (and pindicator starts fighting again). I'm happy that they did split dtay in half, his border situation is extremely uncomfortable --> This conflict has improved our position nicely. We just need to figure out how to beat BGN + how to solve roughly 50 other problems to win...

This might be really clever or really stupid. I've put our stack out of dtay's sight, but just in range of his 10 Frigates. I'm hoping he won't chase and we'll be able to join up with our three C2 Frigates (left of the picture) next turn.

Is there actually another place where they could be hidden? Or are the options that our ships are where they are or we deleted them... Well, the positive is that those 10 frigates will be the only ones that can hit our stack and we should get odds in 7 first fights and then dtay probably gets odds in the last 3 ones --> Hammer change should be more or less even, so it remains to be seen whether dtay wants to take that fight.

With how many units do you plan to scout TBS? One is probably enough?

How would you feel about Nationalism in this golden age? Or between this one and the next?

Dropping Bureaucracy is a real cost, need to think about it..


I like your revised GP plan!

[Old Harry]

It would be a great message to send Krovice especially. I'm expecting dtay to do something to protect Mercadia though. If I'd been thinking I'd have put those boats forking both Mercadia and Ravinica so that he can't remove too much stuff from there . We do still have some units able to hit Ravinica if he does empty it though .

Our fleet could have carried on into TBS's waters, but I thought this was the best opportunity for consolidating our forces. I unloaded three Cuirs to get visibility on TBS fast, in case he wants to close borders with us to prevent it.

On Nationalism, we'll have Rifling about halfway through the golden age, but drafting in a GA just feels so wrong. Right now I'm sure BGN is occupied (unless he's playing a particularly sneaky and world-burning strategy) and dtay doesn't have the opportunity to hit us, so shall we just leave it as an option for the end of the GA?

In other news - Pitboss 24 gives us some pointers on how to get this to happen:

It also suggested a tactic for this game - try to get Krill to rage quit. Any ideas how we that?

pssh, that'll happen anyway. over/under is t60.

This game will never even last that long . I'll buy under.

Why does Krill quit all his other games and not the ones I'm in . (Actually, we really don't want him to quit this one as Krovice are going to be dtay's main focus for the rest of his game .)

[Old Harry]

Turn 182

Well there is Good News and Bad News. The Good News is that our Frigates did pretty well against dtay's:
- C2 Frigate won at 23% (15 HP)
- Frigate won at 32% (24 HP)
Great general born!
- Frigate won at 32% (43 HP)
- Frigate won at 32% (24 HP)
- Frigate won at 32% (62 HP)
- Frigate won at 32% (5 HP)
- Frigate won at 32% (5 HP)
- Injured Frigate lost at 95% (64 HP)
- Galleon lost at 99% (86 HP)
- Galleon lost at 99% (72 HP)
That's seven dead Frigates on his side and one Frigate and two empty Galleons on ours . The down side is that we can't pin units in his coastal cities any more. The up side is we're #1 navy again!


Our badly injured stack runs back to the cover of our three C2 Frigates. He has five Frigates in range, only two are full strength, but there is a good chance he kills our remaining empty Galleon.


The six-mover that delivered our Cuirs to map TBS can't join back up, so I thought we should send it around the world to visit BGN. Probably can't go down the dtay-plako coast though .


Our scouting Cuirassiers have done a fast job of uncovering TBS' capital... Nice work lads! Now, how do you get home?


I thought our navy was a bit over the top...


And Q isn't long for this world.


So who's guessed the Bad News?

Its approximately four beakers worth of bad . I knew this happened to TBS in PBsomething so I'd given us ~5 spare beakers, but clearly it should have been ten beakers .

Back to the Good News, dtay didn't reinforce Mercadia, so our Grens get 20%, 28% and 67% against the three defending units.


- C2 Amphi Gren vs CG3 Drill2 Oromo 20%... LOSS (down to 24 HP)
- C2 Amphi Gren vs CG2 Rifle 28%... LOSS (down to 46 HP)
- C2 Amphi Gren vs CG Rifle 67%... LOSS (down to 40 HP)
- C2 Amphi Gren vs Injured CG2 Rifle 97%... WIN (down 64 HP)
Our last two units are a Cuir and the commando Knight, I'd rather not leave the commando exposed and he only gets 80%, so I stopped the attack at this point . I guess we were due some bad luck... I put another boat in place to attack with the remaining Grenadiers next turn if he doesn't reinforce.

Due to the Bad News Zucchini is on a wealth build to preserve the 100 hammer overflow. It only delays the build by a turn but it's still another horrible missed-it-by-milimetres moment... If we lose this game we've got all the excuses ready. It also means we get that 8% known-tech-bonus on Corporation . Edit: Because TBS is completing it this turn.


Five turns to the FP .


We discussed Universal Suffrage vs Rep for the golden age. With ~50 towns in the empire US would be worth about 100 hammers while we'll be running ~36 specialists which Rep would give us ~110 beakers for. US would also allow for rush buying units if we get more paranoid and some infra in our particularly crappy iceball fishing villages... So it's a US/Bureau/Caste/FM/OR switch on the first turn of the golden age (next turn) and then we'll have Rep and think about Nationhood and Vassalage at the end...


Demos and power

[Old Harry]

Just to clarify on the research slippage - we had plenty of gold saved so it wasn't inflation increasing our costs and pushing the slider down. The only reason we can think of is that Krill and Gawdzak (Bacchus) both whipped after I finished turn, so perhaps a trade route being multiplied by buildings and Free Market would be enough to account for the beakers?

[Old Harry]

Turn 183

To Do:
1. Start golden age... DONE

2. Check foreign affairs... DONE
I don't know where dtay's injured fleet went, but we're falling back in an orderly manor to get our Frigates healed. There was also a little plundering along the way...


3. Check if any whips are required... DONE

4. Whip... None needed

5. Revolt to US and Caste... DONE


Before the GA at 50% research our finances looked like this:


After the revolt:


6. Assign all the specialists on the spreadsheet... DONE
It turns out Kirby doesn't have as much food as I'd thought, so tomorrow I'll have another go through the spreadsheet to see what that and the pre-existing GP points in Cornelius do to the timetable.

7. Start the Statue of Liberty... DONE
Zucchini will slowly starve during the golden age. I don't know what the end of our GA does to the ETA, but I think 12 turns seems reasonable. RP will get us another five base hammers per turn towards the build, I wonder if we can finish researching it next turn? The potential competition is Plako, GermanJojo and TBS who all have Constitution, but they're probably going for Corporation before Democracy...


8. Obligatory capital in US golden age picture... DONE
Beautiful! The overflow from this Catapult will make Wall St a six turn build here, just in time to benefit from the last turn of golden age. After Wall St should we build a Jail and Security Bureau here or in Gertie? Actually G will be working a spy for the foreseeable future so that would probably be better.


Almost lost in all the important stuff this turn is the fact we now have three commando Knights (we'll upgrade them to Cavalry when Rifling comes in.) Now we just need to figure out where Boldly's capital is...


I didn't end turn - there are a few worker moves still to do and I wanted to figure out the specialists properly when I'm actually awake tomorrow.

Demos and power