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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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Thread of Lost Tales: Bismarck of Japan
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Quote:Potential bug: Naval initiative doesn't seem to work when your ship is in a port. That's intentional - here's the exact description of the effect: Quote:“Naval Initiative” mechanic: Naval units that attack with their first movement point from a water tile get +15% attack. IMO, ships in ports already have a huge advantage by being immune to attack. I only wanted to reward positioning on tiles that you're vulnerable on.
Thanks Seven, that makes sense. Probably a good thing I found out in the age of triremes instead of destroyers.
Update time!
The most important news of recent times is GJ declaring war on Haram, which is pretty surprising. It seems unlikely it can be a serious war with me still lurking in the background. They're both still well below in me power but their graphs have started to uptick recently. It seems too late for a small skirmish though, their borders are pretty well set. It's great news for me obviously, even just in the trade routes they lost with each other. I'd be their other biggest market, and I just switched into Merc. The war needs to be at some level where the benefit is worth the lost trade but small enough that it won't blow up into a full-scale conflict. The only two options I can think of: one of them trying to surprise the other with a play on their shared island(possibly pre-emptive war dec) and GJ trying to use his Astro advantage to blockade Haram's coast. Neither seem very likely though. It certainly has had an effect on Dreylin anyway:  These guys were probably meant for Tsargon originally, it's a bit unfortunate for me that he's not going that way but a war with Haram would be almost as good. I wonder if Dreylin has more scouts in Haram's land and info about the GJ war than me. I think you'd want to ensure that war was hot before you committed to this attack. Meanwhile the last Scipio mainland city fell recently(costing me 2 catapults, again rather lucky) and I sent a chariot scouting into Tsargon's other side:  He's wide open here, only a spear and a Phalanx in the front city. In comparison his front with Dreylin has a bunch of longbows behind walls. I have about 15 HAs and 5 Knights in Metal land that would be free for attack. But I don't know if I want to be the first one to declare. Tsargon just threw a golden age, he's about to get Guilds and Engineering and he could whip away a bunch of population. In comparison I have only 2 cities on military duty these days and they need to beef up the defenses on my southern island. I'm afraid I'll stall out too quickly. Why do I need to beef up the defenses on my south island? Because Jowy has what is probably the most well-fortified city in the world there:  Fenn also put a bunch of EPs on me and whipped ~7 times last turn. Hopefully he's just dealing with Scipio's last city though, where there's actually a quite decent garrison:  Still, you wouldn't think it requires such effort to break, I should figure out who else they might look to attack. In my own lands, I swapped to Mercantilism, which never does as much for my tech rate as I hope. I just can't resist those engineers. Maybe I could have stuck with slavery but caste's value will continue to increase and I won't have another revolt for a while. Anyway, I've already decided that the immediate techs don't look that tempting while I'm overloaded with things I need to build. I'm trying to get all my land working, put up key infrastructure, upgrade my defences and prepare for a Tsargon invasion at the same time. I picked up Engineering at the end of the GA and I'll now head for Astro before Chemistry I think. The jump to galleons/frigates is a lot bigger than the one to Grens. If Scipio isn't dead by then I'll ferry some units over to put him out of his misery. The WW is under relative control, it shouldn't get any worse now and I'll be connecting up sugar, wines and whale in the net few turns. Complicating matters, I rolled another great engineer this turn. This time it was at really low odds and I'm not sure what to do with him. The next two things in the future that I think might be worth rushing are the Statue of Liberty and Mining Inc. But we're probably talking 40+ turns away. Alternating I could bulb ~1500b up the Gunpowder/Chem line. I'm not sure tech is really snowballing at the minute though.
Haram brushed off the attack pretty easily. He switched into Nationhood for a bunch of cheap maces and with 40+ defence in his front cities, there's no way Dreylin will break through and Joey peaced out pretty quickly. Dreylin really should have done the same and wheeled on Tsargon. Instead he's traded some expensive knights for drafted maces and given both of them a GG(so HE incoming for Haram). I wonder if Haram will even let him peace out now. His big problem has been the lack of any easy invasion targets but now his power has almost caught up with mine and Dreylin's army is sitting inside his culture.
On other hand, Dreylin needs to take a bite out of Tsargon to stay in the game because he lost his north island to GJ in the expansion phase. Maybe Haram can be patient and wait for that war-dec. Metal-land has been developing pretty quickly for me:  Maintenance is damn expensive:  But with courthouses going up and the forbidden palace in Helloween, that shouldn't be a problem for much longer. Additionally I finally got one of my target island cities to size 14 on the turn roll, giving each of these guys a 3c trade. Another will follow in a few turns and they'll all be making 13c back before any tiles. Metallica is going to be a science farm. I'm not sure if it will catch up enough to generate a great scientist but it will get a library, a bunch of farms and run scientists.  Nightwish will be my ironworks and get filled up with workshops. Hopefully in a few turns it can start supplying military units directly to the area. It also should head to size 14 ASAP to give a 3c route to all my island cities.  I figure I might as well turn Helloween into a commerce city since Scipio's improvements are pretty well suited to it. They'll probably be the last cottages I ever put down. First though, I need to go Forge -> CH -> Forbidden Palace. I'm putting the FP here instead of Nightwish, because that suits potential invasions of Tsargon and Fenndit's island better. In comparison, I don't see myself invading Haram to the north.  I do wonder whether I should have razed Iron Maiden and resettled for the fish. 4 pop points and a GG was too tempting though. Anyway, I guess we'll just get this city to size 8 working 4 more workshops and build me some ships.  Judas Priest had a culture fight on it's hands to regain control of that fish from Haram. Via build culture and artists it's almost popped 3rd ring so that shouldn't be a problem anymore. As the main border city with Haram, I think I want to put up a castle here. It's giving it's river tiles away so it will probably just workshop the remaining grasslands also. We then have the 3 recently planted fillers; Silmaril, Gurthang and Mithril. Mithril went first to ensure I kept the crabs from Fenndit. Then Gurthang picked up the corn and spices. Both of these cities will mostly be commerce based from water tiles, with the few land tiles giving some production. Gurthang will also take the gold from Metallica. Silmaril meanwhile gets no new resources but a bunch of levee-able river tiles. It can steal the wheat from Helloween, farm a bunch of tiles and try to get up to size for when Steam power comes around. I'll probably end up workshopping it. That leaves 1 filler to settle by the iron but it's not an immediate priority. Perhaps I can find a spare build queue by the time the FP is finished.
My south island:
 Brithombar is my first city to start giving out 3c internal trade routes from hitting size 14. It grew on coasts and now switches over to it's primary purpose of specialists. It's remaining tiles will give it access to some production so it can build the beaker multipliers.  Balar is a slow growing commerce city. Again the tiles will get workshopped so it can build a Bank.  I wasn't sure whether I'd grow Himlad on the coastal tiles but then I realised it's location would hit a few cities who wouldn't otherwise get a 3c trade route and it's off growing too.  Belegost is going to be capped at size 6 working 4 workshops and 2 farms. It'll put out a very decent 20-22hpt soon. I'm running the artist right now to pop 3rd ring borders for safety from Fenn. Though he recently accepted OB's(when they're finally not worth any money to him  ) and my scouts see no threat so it's not too important anymore. Finally, Nargothrond is the workhouse of the island. Yeah, I'm working some forest tiles on T143.  I grew onto them for the golden age and my workers will be getting to them soon. It had more tiles to work before I gave them away to other cities and hence the specialists at the moment. Maybe I'll get a chance to draft off them and switch to workshops later. Not the end of the world with Rep though. This thing has spent pretty much the whole game spamming military to keep up with Jowy, managing to squeeze out some other things like a Courthouse/Missionary when allowed. 
At the moment I make something like 300hpt and 400bpt.
I caught the demos in the little gap when Haram was out of his golden age and the rival top was 415hpt. I think that was actually joey in a golden age but Haram was probably about that 400hpt mark. I think I can catch up to that reasonably quickly. I'm only now really putting down some dedicated hammer improvements, having relied on the whip before. In particular when Nightwish gets covered in workshops(and then Ironworks) that will go a long way. I also caught him saving gold during the golden age and he made 600gpt. He probably makes 100bpt as well with specs and Sankore? Plus his beaker modifier is probably a lot bigger than his gold one. 600bpt seems like a realistic breakeven rate outside a golden age? Anyhow, this does not seem an insurmountable number either, I will grow to 500bpt in the next 2-3t before growth slows down a bit to normal levels. In food, I'm about 100f ahead of rival best, which is joey. This time I'm the one with a big population though, I reckon that's more like a 30fpt surplus. Haram is a bit below him, maybe 50fpt on him? What about Joey? I haven't caught him saving gold in ages. Given his hammer figure in the golden age he'll be significantly behind us there, 100hpt at least. He's covered in cottages and wharfs though, so I imagine his commerce generation is a lot better, and I hope for his sake it's better than Harams. Maybe 700bpt breakeven outside a GA? I've got to try make some better estimates of their tech rate. He's got PP coming up too. Anyway, for the moment, I'm reasonably happy with how things are going. I am down a lot of tech to these two guys though. Like a couple of thousand beakers worth. Short term I don't think it's much of a problem but after I get to Steel or Mil Science I will need to work my way through that beaker backlog to get to useful techs. I do think I should invade someone else though. I'm grabbing Dreylin's graphs now to see the extent of his conflict with Haram, which should inform my decision. Dreylin island, Tsargon mainland or Jowy's Pain-in-the-Ass?  Should break 500bpt next turn. GJ was saving 1200gpt though. Is there some wealth building in there? Well I'll upgrade his out of GA breakeven to at least 800bpt. In bloody matters, I think I'm just going to nibble off Tsargon's island and then see how he/Dreylin/GJ react: 
You're pretty eco-concious for the era, lots of lovely virgin forests and jungles left I see.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
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Yeah, late game worker management is perhaps a weak point of mine. It's certainly an indication I could have used an extra worker or two somewhere but there always seemed to be something more important to build. Another point is that Scipio was very careful with his workers(only managed to steal 1) and left a lot of unimproved tiles in his empire via self-pillaging. In my experience most of the time an invasion will steal at least 3-4 workers and inherit fully improved empires. I think I have 18-19 workers for 25 cities.
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