[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

Ah yeah, that makes sense on the road. I did some mental math and I don't think we gain anything significant by chopping now and delaying those two improvements slightly vs chopping after improving both, so I'll stick with the plan. Thanks for the clarification.

[scooter]

Turn 273

Well you've already heard the big news for the turn, but here's a few unexciting things.



Finally completing a settler EoT. Hopefully we can beat BGN to 4 cities and not be completely dead last. Chop incoming at Cotton Gin means a quick 1T worker.



Last turn I finally made my first micro mistake. I'm honestly amazed it took this long! I neglected to swap the watermill/workshop between Telegraph and Cotton Gin. I've done it as planned in this picture, but last turn the two tiles were reversed. I don't think it's going to delay anything - the settler will still complete on time, and Cotton Gin will still grow EoT275. But our numbers are very slightly off as a result.



I also took a quick shot of our finances because we're slightly behind the sandbox here too. We're 3g down, and also -1gpt down too. I'm pretty certain this is just due to extra unit supply as we've done more exploring than we did in sandboxes for obvious reasons. I'm only making note of this because our plan has us finishing Steam Power with 1 gold to spare on T276. We may have to shuffle a tile or two on that last turn to make up the difference. Overall I'm really not concerned - it'll be fine.



All of the big 3 numbers are massively distorted by Dreylin (I assume) running all those specialists.

[BRickAstley]

9 MFG

[Sullla]

Some long thoughts on the overall status of the game right now. I'll try to talk about what each team is doing and then finish by talking about our own status.

Dreylin/OT4E
Cities: 4
Total Population: roughly 27 or 28



This is the team that's currently winning the game as it stands right now. They have what we consider to be the strongest leader/civ pairing (Spi/Phi of Khmer) and they've done a great job thus far at leveraging it. The Spi/Phi pairing has a lot of positive feedback synergy, with the Spiritual trait opening up access to quick religion swaps + Serfdom/Slavery + Caste System/Pacifism specialist play, and the Philosophical trait allowing for a guaranteed first Great Engineer on the board = free Taj Mahal. That early Golden Age has helped Dreylin out markedly. Not only did it allow them to develop faster, it also let them push out three more Great People (a Scientist and two Artists) via the +300% GPP bonus from Philosophical/Pacifism/Golden Age. Now they're the heavy favorites to land Communism first, followed by a Kremlin rush with the Great Engineer, which will catapult them far ahead of anyone else.



I think that it may have been a mistake to allow the Gandhi of Khmer pairing as one of the choices. That's not a knock on Brick's setup for the game, just a reflection on how we didn't know coming into this game what the best choices would turn out to be. The free Khmer Barays in every city are also helping this team a lot too. +1 free food in every city, every turn, forever? That's pretty crazy. And I'm not knocking Dreylin and OT4E in saying that, they've played brilliantly thus far. We couldn't understand their Universal Suffrage play earlier (and I do think they could have been in Representation for more turns), but their decision to save up 600 gold and cash that it for a settler cash-rush worked out really well. That allowed them to do all of their specialist shenanigans without sacrificing expansion. Now they're at war with Donovan and may be on the verge of capturing that barb city on their respective border. We honestly don't know if this is a serious war or a play to snag a random worker. Dreylin's team landing a fifth city via capture would not be good for the rest of the field in this game...

There are a few silver linings here. One is that OT4E has the reputation of being amazing in duels but somewhat weaker in free for all environments. Something that would be a crushing, game-winning move in a 1 vs 1 situation doesn't always work that well against a larger field. There's a potential for something like that to happen here with Donovan, if Dreylin and OT4E would end up wasting resources on a fruitless war instead of settling the map. No idea if that will happen, but the potential is in play, depending on how Donovan responds. (Banana vs. PAL redux? We can pray.) Second, if Dreylin's team focuses too much on their neighbors, we might have the potential to claim some of the island between our teams. That's nothing more than a hope at this point though; we'll be sending our early settlers elsewhere.

Like I said, the short story at this point is that Dreylin and OT4E are currently winning the game.

REM
Cities: 6 (!)
Total Population: roughly 25



REM is the wildcard of this game. He has the only Imperialistic leader (he is Imp/Org of Japan), and thank goodness for that. One of the things that I definitely underestimated was how quickly teams would be able to produce settlers through whipping. The sweet spot seems to be the 3 pop whip from size 6 down to size 3, as the food costs start to increase substantially at higher population sizes. Non-Imperialistic teams can get 112 shields from doing this outside of their capital, and 157 shields in their capitals with the Bureaucracy bonus. That makes it viable in non-capital cities with forest chops, and a solid choice in the capital even without them, assuming that you don't mind slaving your capital back down to size 3, of course.

REM's Imperialistic trait allows him to get 157 shields for a 3 pop settler whip in his non-capital cities, and a whopping 202 shields in his capital. That makes the production of settlers very cheap indeed, and he's doing a great job of pushing them out onto the map and claiming as much disputed territory as possible. He produced 3 settlers, led to them to their destinations, and established cities before we finished a single settler. Very impressive for him - and/or a condemnation of our strategy.



Now there is a tradeoff for this strategy, and that lies in the fact that REM has a lot of very small cities. The ones we can see are size 6, 6, 4, and 2. I don't see any completed buildings when I look at his cities, and judging by the number of connected resources on his trade network, REM has to be working a lot of unimproved tiles all over the place. He's essentially sacrificing development to claim as much land as possible - and I don't think that's necessarily a mistake. We've generally seen two different results from Imperialistic trait in past RB MP games. Either the Imperialistic team claims so much land that they run away with things, or the land that they claim ends up so underdeveloped that the economy crashes and the Imperialistic team becomes a non-factor. I have no idea which is the case here. Dreylin/OT4E have managed to keep teching along at a good clip (despite running 100% gold for a long time on end) via Great Person lightbulbs and lots of Representation-boosted specialists. REM is doing no such thing, and I'm pretty sure he's been Rival Worst in GNP for most or all of the game.

So how this will play out is anyone's guess. We know that REM and Gaspar/Noble are already right on top of one another over by REM's city of Gordon. I believe REM has a similar plant in the east over by Donovan, although Donovan doesn't have a similar city over there. The saving grace for us is that REM is not one of our neighbors, and he's about as far away from us as possible. This will help us out enormously, especially if the tensions REM causes by pushing settlers right up to the borders with other teams sparks more conflict. The luck of what neighbors you get in these games always plays a huge role, and we're very fortunate not to be starting near REM.

Donovan Zoi
Cities: 4 - for now
Total Population: 33



Donovan has the most resources claimed and the most total population of anyone in the game right now. He's been in Serfdom making use of Expansive Fast Workers, and he's never whipped or drafted at any point to date. With so many large cities, I'm presuming that he has the Food lead in the Demographics screen. Donovan has made some odd choices thus far, rushing to produce an early Academy in his capital via a fast library -> Great Scientist move, and since then he's also built a cheap Philosophical university. So he has library + university + Academy in his size 12 Bureaucracy capital, and that means a lot of beakers in there. But the tradeoff is that Donovan has built not settlers and doesn't seem to be close to finishing one in any of his cities. His capture of a barbarian city was a huge stroke of luck; he'd be the last team to 4 cities for sure if that hadn't happened.



Despite all of that, Donovan has some serious problems. The biggest problem is that Dreylin just declared war on him, and we're pretty sure that Donovan doesn't have much of a military. Donovan is not Spiritual (he's Exp/Phi) and he's not in any civics that allow for rushing stuff: no Slavery, no Nationhood, no UniSuff. If Dreylin wants that barb city, he can probably take it. In addition, Donovan's territory is a strategic nightmare to defend. His cities are all strung out in a line, far apart from one another, all highly open to attack. That might not matter, but then again, it might hurt him. I also have to point out that his native religion of Judaism, despite being the "best" at natural spreading, hasn't appeared in any of his other cities, which actually wound up with two different foreign religions instead. Whoops. He'll have real difficulty making use of any religious civics, much less picking a state religion to use.

In the long term, we think Donovan could wind up being prey for other, stronger teams. It certainly doesn't help him that his closest neighbors are Dreylin and REM. We're the other close neighbor, and that could leave us some poaching opportunities. It also should allow us to settle aggressively on Donovan's border, and claim more land than we otherwise "should" be getting. Neighbor luck - always good to have. Donovan has also been prioritizing commerce-based tile improvements over production-based ones, and while that works great for a normal start, we think it might be the wrong approach for an Industrial game. We sure would love to capture some cities with villages and towns already developed by someone else. So there may be some opportunities here for our team, even though at the moment Donovan looks like he's in a strong position. I definitely prefer our position over his going forward.

Next three teams to be considered in the next post.

[Sullla]

OK, I ate some lunch and now let's look at the remaining teams.

Boldly Going Nowhere
Cities: 3
Total Population: 28



BGN has been playing the game most similar to ours thus far. He has a similar trait pairing (Spi/Org compared to our Spi/Agg) and he's been pursuing the same "going tall" overall strategy as our team. BGN was the first to discover a tech via a Great Scientist lightbulb of Scientific Method. He followed thus up by producing a Great Artist and a (possibly unwanted?) Great Merchant. BGN looks to be racing for the Communism prizes, but unfortunately for him, Dreylin's team with the Spi/Phi trait looks to have the inside track.



BGN's biggest problem is that he doesn't have any additional cities. He only has the starting 3 cities, same as us. The placement of these cities is also problematic: none of them are on rivers, and therefore none of them will be able to construct levees. While that's been irrelevant here in the early going, we see that as a major drawback going forward. His Holy City has 8 tiles that could benefit from a levee, and they'll never be able to build one. A non-coastal capital could also be a huge problem if BGN needs to get into a shipbuilding race early on.

BGN is quite far away from us and could prove to be a good trading partner later on. He is the only team that we share Open Borders with. We're very content to follow BGN and Dreylin in terms of research and benefit from them discounting the Scientific Method / Communism path. Even though BGN's score is in first place at the moment, I don't think his position is that great. BGN has invested a lot into the Communism race, and it appears that he's going to lose out on the first-to discover prizes there. Maybe he can leverage early State Property into a stronger position.

Gaspar/Noble
Cities: 4
Total Population: 20



These guys are our neighbors to the north. They have played a game most similar to REM thus far, but they don't have Imperialistic as a trait and I don't think it's working all that well. Their trait pairing of Fin/Org seems out of place in this Industrial start. Perhaps they'll prove me wrong, I just don't see either one as being that helpful. The Dutch civ will be very nice once they can start building some Dikes, so I'm assuming that they're going for Steam Power tech like us. They will generate their first Great Person from Mercantilism in a little bit (27 * 3 = 81 GPP), and I expect that it will be a Great Engineer for a Steam Power lightbulb. Their general gameplan so far has been doing 3 pop whips for settlers, which is why they have 4 cities and another settler likely to be whipped to completion shortly. (Their fourth city is right next to REM's city of Gordon, almost certainly on the tile northwest of the horses.) But is a low-population, heavy-whipping gameplan really the way to go for a Fin/Org team? My instinct says no.



As the trade screen shows, Gaspar/Noble haven't connected a lot of resources either. They are in the unfortunate position of having REM as their eastern neighbor, and that forced their first settler to go over in that direction to lock down the border. This was obviously good news for us. We're hopeful that Gaspar/Noble will ignore the island to their south and allow us to claim some or all of it. I know I'm crossing my fingers there.

Basically, Gaspar/Noble are a weaker version of REM. If the strategy REM is using proves to be the most effective way to run an Industrial start, then they should be OK. If it turns out that the REM strat only works for Imperialistic leaders, then Gaspar/Noble are in a lot of trouble. They are one of the trailing teams already, and the teams that have gone "tall" (ourselves, BGN, Donovan) haven't fully been able to make use of our size yet. What's going to happen in 10 turns when our capital has a levee done, we're using Caste System workshops, and we're rocking a Golden Age production of 90 shields/turn? A repeatedly whipped low size capital won't look too impressive then. So I think this strategy is working great for REM, but I'm a lot more dubious about how Gaspar/Noble are set up. I think that if we can secure that island in between our teams, we'll be in a position to dominate them much further down the line. Our settling ETA for that island looks to be roughly Turn 285, so let's hope they ignore it for the next dozen or so turns.

pindicator
Cities: 4
Total Population: ???



This is the team we know the least about, as it's the only team for which we don't have maps. Pindicator is technically our eastern neighbor, although neither of us have had much contact to date. He has the Agg/Chr combination, which is one of those all or nothing setups. Great for fighting and terrible at everything else. I don't expect this combo to win the game, but it sure is great for ruining someone else's game! Hopefully not us.

Based on the resource screen, we have a good idea of where pindicator placed his fourth city:



Note that there's a corn resource there. The corn resources (and fish resources) all seem to be placed on those narrow isthmuses between teams. That means that pindicator may have already claimed the land where we have our "city #4" sign. More likely, however, he settled the corn resource 4 tiles away from Mussorgsky, rather than the one 9 tiles away from his western city. If true, that would be another break for us, with pindicator settling towards BGN instead of our team. Scooter is bringing an explorer back through this region to give us a sentry along our eastern border with pindicator.

We know very little about what pindicator is planning. If we're lucky, he'll go off and attack someone else, leaving us to keep doing our thing in peace. I don't think the Agg/Chr combo will hold up well over a full game.

And then there's us:

Scooter and Sullla
Cities: 3
Total Population: 24



Things we've done well thus far:

* I think our overall worker and city micro has been pretty solid. We identified a general plan of action (grow the capital to size 10 and then build a settler) and it's been going as planned. The logic of growing the capital early on followed by pumping out rapid fire settlers at a larger size seems like it should be effective.

* Our exploration has been very good. We have a picture of almost the full map, and excellent knowledge of 5 of the 6 other teams. We also know exactly what's on the islands, which I'll bet are a blank space for virtually all of the other teams.

* I've been happy with how research has been working out for our team. The formal GNP and beaker count has been low, true, but we're only 4 turns away from finishing Steam Power (eot 276) and it appears as though we'll get a nice known civ beaker bonus on our following Scientific Method -> Communism run. The other teams haven't been discovering a lot of techs either, only Dreylin and BGN picking up SciMethod via Great Scientist lightbulbs (which we'll be doing as well).

* Spiritual trait has been fully as awesome as anticipated. I almost wonder if we should have run a second 5 turns stint of Slavery civic to pop out a settler somewhere. Maybe we could have done that at Telegraph to get an earlier settler. Something to consider for the future, the next time RB does an Industrial game.

* We've been lucky in terms of our neighbors. No one is pushing to settle on our borders, and that's worth a lot. Can we take credit for this? Ummm, sure, why not.

Now for the bad stuff:

- Our expansion has proved to be slower than we expected compared to the rest of the field. I don't want to belabor this point, I'll just repeat that the 3 pop settler whips have been stronger than expected.

- The choice of the Cotton Gin city location didn't work as well as we thought it would. I take credit for thus, locking in on that location early on due to the micromanagement possibilities that it opened up. I didn't realize just how green and resource-rich this map would prove to be - although I likely should have guessed that given recent RB maps. I think we've been very efficient with the cities that we've had on hand thus far. The problem has been that Cotton Gin only brings in a single native resource (the deer, and the dyes someday across the water) which makes it tough to compete with teams that have 3 or 4 resources at their third city. We've had some nice specialist use so far out of Cotton Gin; how much better off would we be if we'd chosen a spot with double food resources instead? I think we'd be further along for sure.

- The in-game score and Demographics aren't as good as we would like them to be. This is largely a reflection of the first two points above. I will say that being #1 in Production is a good sign, since our gameplan is all about emphasizing shields.

Anyway, going back to Commodore's question from yesterday that scooter answered so well ("how will you win the game?"), I don't think we're in quite as bad shape as the scoreboard makes it appear. The biggest factor is neighbor luck, which is working heavily in our favor thus far. If we were next to REM, pindicator, and Dreylin right now... well, it wouldn't be a pretty picture. Instead, it looks like we have time and space, and those are what we most need.

Basically, there should be a crossover point at which whipping for production starts to fall behind larger cities with strong production tile yields. My best guess is that this crossover will happen when we get access to levees and swap to Caste System civic on a permanent basis; in other words, when our capital and upcoming fourth city have access to 1/5 riverside workshop tiles. Once a size 10 city is hitting 40 production/turn, it's hard to justify whipping any longer. If the crossover point doesn't occur there, it almost certainly will take place at Communism tech, as State Property adds a ton of food and the +10% universal production bonus. That will further advantage larger cities over smaller ones. Now perhaps we should have been more aggressive about whipping first and then switching over to manual production in the post-Steam Power, post-Communism world, but that's a test case for another game. We're about to bring levees on line and swap into Caste System while still retaining the +50% worker bonus of Serfdom, and that should be a very real boost indeed.

That combination will help out our expansion significantly. The good news is that we'll plant two cities in the next 6 turns, and that should keep us in roughly the middle of the pack. Then we trigger our Golden Age on Turn 281, and we should be able to get three settlers done in that span (two from the capital and one from Telegraph), taking us up to 8 cities by Turn 290. How that will compare to other teams is beyond me, but getting 5 cities in the next 17 turns feels like it should be pretty strong. I think we can use the Golden Age to get out a pair of Great People for lightbulbing purposes (a Great Artist from our Donovan border city and a Great Scientist from Cotton Gin) and that will clear our path to a fast Communism tech. We can get 9 GPP/specialist while in Pacifism and Golden Age, which shouldn't make it too hard to amass the 240 GPP and 320 GPP we'll need for those Great People.

Finally, we do have some more advantages coming later from our leader and civ combo. Aggressive trait has done virtually nothing thus far, and when we do get into combat later, it should help a fair bit. Thanks to the free Combat I, it makes it vastly easier to reach Formation (anti-cavalry) and Ambush (anti-tank) promotions, which require Combat II to take. That's probably the biggest benefit of Aggressive trait, not the Combat I promotion itself but easier access to Formation/Ambush. I also think the cheap Drydocks will be really helpful on this water-heavy map. Further down the road, our German unique building is a factory that builds at double speed and allows 4 Engineer slots, so we get to be pretend Organized and throw up factories extra fast. Then in the lategame, we have German Panzers that kill other team's tanks with a +50% bonus, and just as you can't really stop a big stack of horse archers/knights/cavs, nothing really stops a big stack of tanks... especially tanks that get +50% versus other tanks. And we'll always have Spiritual trait in our back pocket to swap civics around at the drop of a pin, which should continue to be super useful.

If we're lucky, time will be on our side here. We sit in the middle of the pack for the time being while our neighbors worry about other issues, then our Golden Age catapults us up among the leaders. It can all go terribly wrong in so many different ways, but that's our hope.

[David Corperial]

You guys do look like you are ramping up really well and am excited to see how this game goes, and this is another ded-lurker for you guys.

[Sullla]

Our explorer brings back news from the Donovan/Dreylin war front:



Looks like Donovan is clearing out his forces and evacuating the barb city. He had a machine gun and a rifle (with City Garrison promotion) in a city on a hill, which means that Dreylin must have some sizable forces out in the fog. A machine gun/rifle pair with those defensive bonuses should be able to kill 2-3 rifles barring poor combat luck. How many units does Dreylin have (?)

Donovan did not revolt his civics either. This might be a short, opportunistic grab of a city by Dreylin, and that would be the worst outcome for us. Anyway, Dreylin should play his turn soon, and our explorer can check out what he has on our next turn. I'll be out of pocket and away from a computer for most of the day, so the controls are all yours scooter.

[scooter]

WOW. So I think it's safe to assume Dreylin is the one who is #1 in power? For Donovan to just abandon Tartar like that... Anyway, Civstats suggests that Dreylin/OT4E did capture the city. That puts them up to 5 cities, although in this case it's a sz1 with no infrastructure, so that helps a little bit. But suddenly with 3 cities and no known settlers in production, it looks like Donovan is essentially in last place while two of his neighbors (REM and now Dreylin) now hold aggressive borders between them.

It also looks like from Civstats that OT4E did bulb Communism mid-turn, so with 5 cities, free spy, and Kremlin... It's safe to say they are our new leader.

Turn just rolled (and OT4E did get a Kremlin-sized score jump), so I'll go take a look at the aftermath.

[scooter]

Turn 274

Things are not looking good for Donovan.



First off, I'm a little puzzled. I'm pretty sure Machine Gun + CG Rifle both on a hill would beat an unpromoted rifle + 2 unpromoted Grens. Either Donovan made a big mistake here, or there were more units that were pulled back. I did move up a little with the Explorer, but I couldn't get my sights on anything else. I retreated back, but I did end turn on flat ground. However, I think these guys both have bigger fish to fry than killing an innocent bystander.

However, it gets worse for poor Donovan.



The demos for this turn indicate a large jump in power for the previous #1 - they went from 275k -> 303k at EoT (we were second in power both times). I noticed some score drops for OT4E last turn, so I assumed he was whipping.



Uh-oh, he was drafting. He's not even in Slavery yet. It looks like he's really going for the kill here - I have to assume he's got a boat somewhere. With that power, he's got to have around 6 rifles by now, while Donovan has to have a small enough number that he felt the need to abandon that city. It looks to me like OT4E did a round of drafts the last two turns, and now Kremlin comes in just in time to swap to Slavery and do a round of whips. The power jump is large enough that at least one natural-build seems likely too.

So... with that in mind, we may need to consider getitng ourselves ready to be opportunistic.



I'm not proposing a specific plan yet or anything, but I do think we need to be ready to pounce over here. Here's my suggestion:

* Red dot gets the Machine Gun, and spare Rifle slips back to Telegraph to keep it happy. That'll keep those cities plenty safe.

* West city get the extra 2 rifles + Gren. If Delhi falls (or is about to fall), we can move them all in on Bombay and scavenge that spot from Donovan.

Granted, that may not be enough, but it's enough to put the city in play should Donovan totally collapse. We definitely can't afford to let Dreylin take everything. Any thoughts on this? May be worth slipping in another Grenadier from Telegraph after the settler completes.

To be clear, I'm definitely not proposing we declare regardless. But I just want to be ready in case the opportunity presents itself, and it's sure looking like a possibility. Anyway, on to the very-boring-in-comparison domestic stuff.




Next turn can't come soon enough. We also need to name this city if anyone has any suggestions.



Sullla - your plan said "wheat, sheep, iron, Gmine x3, pmine, gwsh" for this city. We don't have 3 grass hill mines, so this is the closest I could come. I'm pretty sure this is what you intended (32h is what we were expecting), but I figured I'd take a picture just in case.



Finally, I should also note that we will likely get demos on Dreylin/OT4E next turn, so that ought to be pretty interesting.

[Tyrmith]

Next turn can't come soon enough. We also need to name this city if anyone has any suggestions.

Haber Process? Essentially responsible for the explosive growth in human population of the early 1900s.



What kind of military force do you think would be necessary to take the city? Do you think it'd distract from your settling efforts, or do you think your soon to be extensive MFG could handle both?