[LURKERS] Mr. Gradgrind's Review

[Tyrmith]

Doesn't matter where you start, just where you end I guess.

[Commodore]

Well, Sullla's latest post shows where they are; it's a focus on the long term over the short, seen in the heavy worker labor already devoted to the eventually-wonderful watermills and workshops. Probably the right call, although I'm not 100% sure than Emancipation wouldn't be better for a cash economy...it's only 15 turns to a respectable village, and 20 more nets a town. :shrug:

[picklepikkl]

With how much people in spoiler threads seem to be nervous about things simply because Sullla is doing them, I really can't blame him for the Locke thing back in the day.

[Bobchillingworth]

Are that many teams nervous, though? I don't really see much evidence, save perhaps Team India's thread, and that seems pretty typical for Cheater Hater. I'd def. peg REM as a more frightening player.

[GermanJoey]

Yeah, from what I've seen, most teams think that Scooter is by far the more venerable player on that team. Rightfully so, IMHO, although I think he's still got a bit of rust to shake off after a 2 year hiatus. He the one on that team with actual pitboss experience running a huge empire in the industrial era (e.g. PB13), and, even more importantly, has real respect for his opponents as actual, thinking threats, rather than assuming that they're basically sub-simians idiots if they pursue any strategy that's different than what he's decided would be best for themselves.

[GermanJoey]

As an aside, I'm completely flabbergasted that neither of the Sulla/Scooter team have even considered why anyone might want to use slavery. Not to say that there aren't other advantages to cities that aren't just biofarm whipping posts, but, if production into units is what they're after, and they actually ran the numbers for what a Kremlin whip with factory/coal and police state might look like, they might be surprised to learn that their extravagant watermill bureaucap is actually only on par with the production of a size 4, resource-less filler.

Even without the Kremlin, I have a really hard time seeing anyone producing enough hammers specifically from workshops (especially if you're primarily spamming watermills) for caste to outdo what slavery can do for you, at least as far as hammers are concerned. That 20% unit discount, plus the free forge and an additional +35% production from civics, makes it so much easier to whip out ordinarily expensive stuff like factories, tanks, etc, with just 1 or 2 pop per whip, and then it's so much faster to grow back with bio farms.

[The Black Sword]

The big problem with whipping is the happy penalty - you can't just whip every 3 or 4t. But there are ways to get around that and other advantages. It would be really interesting to see BGN's Aztecs win the Kremlin actually, that problem would go away and he could really abuse it. OT4E's plan is probably the favourite though. I don't really know which is better, but certainly Kremlin+specialists is the first thing that comes to mind to compete with the pure hammer economy.

On the topic of the barb cities, I'm not sure it's a huge problem. They might cost 3x the cost of an ancient era city but you start off with far more than 3x the resources you get in the ancient era. So the relative swing probably isn't any worse.

[BRickAstley]

In my test games barb cities had two rifles. No idea why there is just one warrior here.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah, in the Industrial age they should spawn Rifles and build Grenadiers. There was a similar problem with the late-start EitB PBEM, the barbs were only spawning with the ancient era units until around 50 turns in, at which point they suddenly started deploying era-appropriate ones.

[The Black Sword]

I didn't know GPs were discounted 20% in the Industrial era too, is everything? Makes them even better value.

BGN's update a few turns ago mentioned 2 artist bulbs into Communism too(as well as Dreylin/Ot4e). If that's the case, you'd imagine he'd win the Great Spy by virtue of being in Rep over US rushing settlers. He says he's not planning things though, so still possible to lose it. GPs are cheap for Ghandi, but you still wonder if it was worth delaying the city a few turns to ensure the Great Spy. Cash Rushing settlers seems a really good idea in general, but it'd be even better after you get into State Property and you're not giving up Rep-Merc beakers.

Early State Property and Kremlin will still be great whichever way it works out of course.

Also, if ever there was a sentence to lead to .

so owning this city has a symbolic meaning rather than serious advantage