[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

The other game leader right now is REM, who has been using his Imperialistic trait to race out to a huge city count. Currently REM and Dreylin have 10 cities, pindicator has 8 cities, and we have 7 cities (about to be 9 cities in two more turns, assuming we manage the barbarian city capture). Gaspar/Noble have 6 cities and dropping fast, while Donovan has 5 cities and BGN still has his initial 3 cities. Dreylin, REM, and pindicator are likely the only teams with a realistic chance of competing with us for the win.

So here's REM's core:



Like Dreylin, he has a bunch of heavily whipped cities that are all sitting at small sizes. There are more cities that we can't see here off to the east, over by Donovan, but I doubt they're any larger. It's the same general strategy that Dreylin/OT4E used to create their big army: use Slavery for production and keep whipping over and over again at small sizes. That tactic has proved to be stronger than I expected going into this game, and it's served both of their teams well thus far.

HOWEVER, there's a limit to how long Slavery civic will be effective. I stated before that I think Communism tech / State Property tech represents a breaking point of sorts. I think that with levees and State Property watermills/workshops in place, our team's production-based strategy can equal the Slavery-based strategy of Dreylin and REM. Our capital can get something like 70 production/turn even outside of Golden Age mode (with the Bureaucracy bonus) now that it's been buffed up with a levee and lots of workshops. I think we'll be able to 1t rifles pretty soon after growing a few more sizes, and that's more than you can do with Slavery civic at pop 6 or whatever.

So if Communism/State Property allows us to pull roughly even with the whipping strategy, it's Assembly Line tech that will start to blow that setup out of the water. With our cheap German factories and subsequent power plants, every city can function as if it has the Bureaucracy bonus; better, in fact, since Bureaucracy + forge is only +75% while forge + factory + power plant is worth +100% production. We should be able to get 50 production/turn in basically every city, and 75 production/turn in our good cities, with the top cities like Haber Process topping out at over 100 production/turn. Slavery civic cannot complete with that, Kremlin or no Kremlin. Furthermore, the deeper you get into the game, the more expensive the units become too. Good luck trying to whip Infantry at 112 shields per unit, tanks at 144 shields each, or destroyers at 160 shields apiece.

Not to belabor the point, but we continue to think that time is on our side here. We need to keep up expansion with these other teams as best as possible until we can reach Assembly Line tech, and then things will start to swing decisively in our favor. Or, another way of putting it: we can't possibly compete with Dreylin in a war right now, since his Kremlin-powered Slavery is too powerful. But if we can last long enough to get factories and power plants online with almost as many cities in hand, then I like our chances, especially since we'll probably have a tech lead too. (Cavs crush rifles with ease, but they don't fare nearly as well against infantry, especially the Aggressive promoted infantry that we'll have.)

Then there's the other quiet little secret: thanks to our Golden Age, we're not even that far behind these teams in expansion! Here's the resource screen with REM, for example:



He has all those cities, and... just a couple more resources? Yeah, it's nowhere near as bad as I thought. We're holding our own pretty decently against someone who had 7 cities when we had 3 cities. REM's also sacrificed in a lot of other ways to get so many cities out so quickly. His infrastructure is pretty sad, with very little in the way of completed buildings. He has no state religion, and as a non-Spiritual civ he hasn't converted to it or done much to spread it around, with the net effect that his territory is a patchwork quilt of religions. Although we don't have his bar graphs, we know that REM's research has been pretty awful this game, with the very cheap Scientific Method tech finished and nothing else. With so many cities and no State Property civic, maintenance costs have to be killing him. And of course, since REM has been in Slavery civic the whole game, he's never had Serfdom or Steam Power to buff his workers. That's made an enormous difference for our team, having one or the other in play for essentially the entire game. There's no chance his land is anywhere near as developed as ours.

We can't keep up in expansion with Dreylin or REM. They will jump out in front of us in city count once again after we finish our current round of expansion; we need to consolidate for a bit after jumping from 5 cities to 9 cities before we push out settlers again. However, we don't need to beat them in territory, only keep it reasonably close, and we'll be in good shape for the upcoming stages of the game. I think if we can keep playing our game and keep our heads down, we'll be in position to make our move later.

Finally, a few quick words about pindicator:



Pindicator has probably played the most like us thus far, building his cities up vertically while also doing a nice job of balancing that against expansion. He has 8 cities to our 7 cities, and if that were the ending point, I'd say that our teams are pretty comparable. The difference is in religion and technology. Note first that pindicator hasn't converted to his religion or spread it at all, and that's already been hurting him a lot. He's not Spiritual, and that's meant no access to any of the religious civics.

More critically, there's a giant difference between our teams in technology. Pindicator just finished Steam Power tech 2 or 3 turns ago; he was the last team in the game to research a technology. We're 2 turns away from finishing Steam Power + Scientific Method + Communism. That was due to some heavy use of lightbulbs (all three techs had at least one lightbulb!), but the fact remains that we're very, very far ahead of pindicator in research. That let us build levees earlier, adopt State Property civic earlier, and so on. Great People are super useful in these late era starts for snowballing an opening ahead. So the net result is that we have roughly the same number of cities and population as pindicator, but we've put ourselves far ahead in tech. Hopefully we can leverage that into even more techs via the economic snowball.

Anyway, that's a whole bunch of thoughts that may or may not be true. I don't think this really changes anything: we try to keep expanding and get some military together for potential poaching opportunities if they present themselves. Otherwise, we keep our long-running push going towards Assembly Line tech, and re-evaluate from there. That's been the plan all along, and I don't think we have a reason to change it now.

[Sullla]

Dp101, here's the CivFanatics thread detailing how war weariness works. Based on the formula I'm seeing there, where the base mechanic is Pop x Active WW/200, I'm guessing that Dreylin is seeing at most 1 unhappy face in his largest cities, and his team has tons of happiness resources connected to the trade network. I don't expect war weariness to play a factor.

Scooter, I had one other thought: I think we should build a monastery in Cotton Gin and use it to spread religion via missionaries. Telegraph is too good of a city to waste on missionary duty, and Cotton Gin would be a nice fit for that role as a small, low-production city. What do you think?

EDIT: And of course we already have Scientific Method tech, so no more monasteries for us. Guess Telegraph or Organized Religion it is then.

[Zed-F]

I don't think this really changes anything: we try to keep expanding and get some military together for potential poaching opportunities if they present themselves. Otherwise, we keep our long-running push going towards Assembly Line tech, and re-evaluate from there.

So to put things in more concrete terms, about how many military units & settlers do you plan to get in the next 5 turns? 10 turns?

[shallow_thought]

Wait... was that two consecutive signed-up-just-to-reply-to-this-thread posts? That's pretty cool.

FWIW, I signed up to RB to try to comment on a MOO succession game months ago (having got here via Sullla's website), but this is the thread that has made me dig out an email address to which RB forums would actually deign send an activation code.

Really enjoying this; I'm glad your analysis suggests that the runaway might not be unstoppable...

[scooter]

Turn 289



BGN finally got himself to 4 cities, and we got to witness it.



I'm more than a little disappointed that Gaspar just isnt even bothering to whip. I'm not quite sure what's going on here. His power graph has barely budged through this war.



In more enjoyable news, it looks like this city is definitely ours. It'll take a few turns for it to do anything (revolting turns, and then it's useless until border pop), but longterm it's a very solid city.

Here's a thought: we do get our first combat as a free win due to difficulty level. Do we want to use the rifle for that to get it a CG (or pinch perhaps) promo, or are we more interested in the Grens getting a double promo? I could see either of those being useful. I lean towards getting the extra XP on the Grens, but I figured it's worth discussing at least.



This city will settle next turn as planned.



Even without a golden age our capital is pretty ridiculous. There's still some room for improvement too.



Quick burst of workers coming out everywhere to go with our burst of expansion. State Property is just a couple turns away for us, and then we'll get a nice growth period as our food gets a nice spike. Sullla - I went ahead with the Galleon in Cotton Gin as you had tentatively suggested. We can never have too many, really.

I'm leaning towards a couple land units out of Haber Process next. It can get them out relatively quickly, and it's already got a Barracks. I don't think we need any more boats on those waters just yet because nobody else on this body of water have any of their own. But more land units on the northern front would definitely make me feel better to dissuade Dreylin. Any other possibilities I'm missing?



That looks better than I expected for having exited the golden age. I feel pretty comfortable putting ourselves solidly in 3rd place now. Sullla, I think you definitely made the right call pushing for that golden age - I think it was well-timed and has helped us quite a bit.

[Sullla]

Yeah, the Golden Age is one of those things where it didn't seem like a good move until I started testing it in the sandbox, and then it started to make way too much sense to pass up. It's easy to get thrown off by the accelerated pace of this late era setup. Like scooter said yesterday, we're only 39 turns into this thing and most of the teams are already out of the running to win. I doubt we'll see much more than 100 turns total before a victory is declared. Under those conditions, why not try to accelerate your start with an early Golden Age, especially for a team like ours that will perform stronger with additional technology? All of the dominant teams right now are ones with front loaded early game advantages (either REM's Imperialistic trait or Dreylin's Philosophical + Tah Mahal setup). Let me put it this way: I don't think we'll see a lot of enthusiasm for Financial/Organized if we do these settings again.

On to issues for the current turn:

* I would use the rifle to attack first if we know that we have a guaranteed win against barbarians. That way, if for some reason we would get a horrible dice roll with the grenadier against the second barb unit, we'll still have a second grenadier to clean up and take the city. We'll also get more total experience if a rifle wins at low odds. Can we verify that we're guaranteed the first win, and then use the rifle assuming that's true?

* Gaspar whipped twice on his turn, and that was all. I'm also disappointed with his response, and I can only assume that their team has checked out of the game. They should have revolted into Nationhood civic on the first turn of the war, then drafted themselves silly. A size 12 capital can draft a lot of rifles for a last ditch stand. Disappointing.

* Upcoming drafting: we will be swapping into State Property/Nationhood/Theocracy civics on Turn 291. I think that we'll be able to get 7 total rifles via the draft in the T291-T296 span before we pop back into Bureaucracy:

Telegraph: 1 rifle
Cotton Gin: 2 rifles
Haber Process: 1 rifle
Radio: 2 rifles
Pasteurization: 1 rifle

I don't think Spinning Jenny will hit size 6 in time to be drafted, although I might be proven wrong. This will give us enough units to defend ourselves pretty well, certainly enough against anyone other than Dreylin. The question is whether we want more units above and beyond what we need to defend ourselves. See the next question below.

* So we should discuss builds for our cities. I would like to work on the sandbox some more, and additional guidance would be really helpful on what we want to emphasize. Let's start with the capital. After we finish the worker this turn, we're going to grow the capital to size 14, where it can potentially look like this:



We need to convert the grassland watermill next to the gold tile into a workshop, convert the floodplains farm into a watermill, and mine the plains hill tile south of the city (I'll start setting up the workers to make these changes). But once we do, our capital gets 90 production/turn with the Bureaucracy bonus, and that is not in a Golden Age. We can churn out 3.5 turn settlers, and I think that's exactly what we should do for a while. If we didn't need military so badly, I'd say to skip Nationhood entirely... except that we also need to grow 2 more sizes at the capital, and so the Nationhood period is a good time to do that.

That means we have about 5 turns to build something in the capital before we go back to settler duty. Any thoughts on what we'd like? I was thinking either observatory or bank to take advantage of the Bureaucracy commerce bonus when we swap back. Bank grants us a bigger overall commercial benefit (+50% gold), but the observatory helps us when we're actually researching (+25% research), which might be more often. Thoughts?

* Then we have the other cities. I'd like to draft Telegraph once, regrow it to size 9, and then build one more settler out of there, since we're pausing settlers out of the capital momentarily. That ties up Telegraph for the next 10 turns or so. Cotton Gin will be getting drafted twice and building a second galleon, which should be very useful. Radio will also be getting drafted, although it's going to have some pretty nice production too with the copper mine and a series of grassland workshops. We definitely want a barracks there for future military training even though we'll be running a lot of Scientist specialists. The other cities are just getting started for the most part.

So that leaves Haber Process. I think we both want to grow this city as much as possible after drafting it once, since it gets better and better with more sizes. I wouldn't even draft the city except that it's sitting there completely undefended right now. Scooter, you suggested building some military out of Haber, and that's not a bad suggestion, but here's an alternate idea: what if we just use the city to Build Wealth for a long time while it grows? Our costs aren't all that high once we swap to State Property; I think we were losing about 60 gold/turn, although that will go up once we capture the barb city and plant our pindicator border city. Still, I think it makes more sense to Build Wealth and run 100% research than try to Build Research.

Basically, if we're not planning on attacking anyone, and drafting will give us enough units to defend ourselves for the immediate future... well, why would we need to build more units? A settler from Telegraph followed by a bunch of 3.5 turn settlers from the capital should keep us competitive on expansion, if somewhat behind Dreylin and REM. We could choose to plow our growing production into lots of Wealth builds, accelerating our path to the critical Assembly Line tech. We actually have the beaker capacity to get there in about a dozen turns, the issue is funding a dozen turns of 100% research. I'm kind of thinking of a scenario where we sit at 100% research and Build Wealth in Haber Process + Pasteurization (after its barracks) + Cotton Gin (post-galleon) + Radio (after barracks) and so on. Any city not building something important for expansion funnels production into teching faster.

Again, it's a bit of a gamble because we're not investing into units or infrastructure. However, I think that it would benefit us more in the long run than training a few more rifles or grenadier or whatever. Those units will largely be obsolete anyway once we reach Assembly Line tech; grenadier are only good at killing rifles, and they serve no purpose once other teams show up with infantry or machine guns. Would we really want to sink production into a bunch of them, or into cavs that will be largely obsolete as well against infantry or machine guns? That seems like a waste to me. I was thinking this over all day, and I was more and more intrigued by the idea of doing a hard tech push while keeping expansion going at a few select cities.

That's where I am right now in my thoughts. I'll update the sandbox for the current turn, and we'll see where to go from there depending on your answers.

[Sullla]

Two quick notes after logging into the game:



Gaspar/Noble are dying fast. Two more cities fell this turn, and they have four left. I doubt we could get enough units up into this region to play a role in time even if we tried our hardest. I think I'll be content with the barbarian city, assuming we can take that without issue.

There was kind of an odd post from Dreylin directed towards REM in the tech thread that sounded kind of like a question about a turn split. No conflict between Dreylin and REM just yet, but we can cross our fingers and hope. Dreylin did a ton more whipping this turn on CivStats, still pushing hard for more units I guess.



We had our first build order confusion, last turn so we can't fix it now. This work boat out of Haber Process was not intended for Spinning Jenny; it's was supposed to go to the barb city's whales after we capture it. Spinning Jenny was intended to chop out its own work boat to get the crabs connected faster. That was intended for last turn, and unfortunately we put that chop into a levee instead. I should have logged into the game yesterday to check like I normally do, my mistake. Scooter's done an amazing job of following our micro plan with long turns on end without mistakes, so this was bound to happen at some point. At this point, we might as well send the work boat on to Spinning Jenny, and we can get another work boat out for the barb city next turn after the worker finishes.

Side note: let's hop the explorer onto the galleon next turn and move him over to the northern shore. We can watch the war and get a sense for what units are moving around up there. No need to watch the island anymore since we now have a city with borders providing vision.

[scooter]

Ugh, I guess it was only a matter of time before I mixed something up. I guess we should be happy it took 39 turns.

I thought the Dreylin comment was odd too, but I can't see how they would be in conflict right now unless they think he's racing them for Gaspar's capital. Seems like something is up.

------

* I would use the rifle to attack first if we know that we have a guaranteed win against barbarians. That way, if for some reason we would get a horrible dice roll with the grenadier against the second barb unit, we'll still have a second grenadier to clean up and take the city. We'll also get more total experience if a rifle wins at low odds. Can we verify that we're guaranteed the first win, and then use the rifle assuming that's true?

I'll test this tonight before playing the current turn. I know on Prince the first victory is definitely guaranteed even on Pitboss. The only thing I don't know is if there's an "expiration date" on it. So I'll run a test of an Industrial game, let 40 turns pass, and then try to kill a barb mech with a warrior. That should be pretty conclusive. Any flaws in that plan? If he wins, I'll use the rifle. If he loses, I'll use the Grenadiers. Since we don't appear to be in a race for the city, I'm leaning towards promoting the Grenadiers just so we don't lose them. Right now unpromoted they've got roughly 75% odds.

Actually... maybe we should attack with both Grenadiers anyway. They're both 3xp. If I give them both C2, with wins they get to 5xp, at which point Formation becomes available. Dreylin is presumably fielding a mostly rifle/cav army, and formation Grens would basically let us counter both of them in case he decides he wants this city. What do you think?

That means we have about 5 turns to build something in the capital before we go back to settler duty. Any thoughts on what we'd like? I was thinking either observatory or bank to take advantage of the Bureaucracy commerce bonus when we swap back. Bank grants us a bigger overall commercial benefit (+50% gold), but the observatory helps us when we're actually researching (+25% research), which might be more often. Thoughts?

--

So that leaves Haber Process. I think we both want to grow this city as much as possible after drafting it once, since it gets better and better with more sizes. I wouldn't even draft the city except that it's sitting there completely undefended right now. Scooter, you suggested building some military out of Haber, and that's not a bad suggestion, but here's an alternate idea: what if we just use the city to Build Wealth for a long time while it grows? Our costs aren't all that high once we swap to State Property; I think we were losing about 60 gold/turn, although that will go up once we capture the barb city and plant our pindicator border city. Still, I think it makes more sense to Build Wealth and run 100% research than try to Build Research.

I lean towards Observatory in Steam Engine. With State Property drastically lowering our costs, our slider will remain very high, and I don't think we'll get a ton out of the Bank.

And speaking along that line, I think you're right about Haber Process. FWIW, my desire for units is purely fears that Dreylin will be unhappy about that barb city and decide he wants to take it. Ideally I'd like to have that garrison to have a few more units in it pretty quickly. But you're right that we should be able to pull that off with drafting. The quicker we get Assembly Line the quicker we become much stronger, so I think it makes sense to push the tech edge hard. So yeah, let's get there ASAP and hope we can avoid being attacked. Minor note: for a brief window, it's probably ever so slightly better to build research and dip the slider once because we've got markets in every city but a few cities are missing libraries. Empire-wide modifiers are still slightly better for gold (25% vs roughly 17%), but it's a very small amount we're talking about. Once we have an observatory in Steam Engine it's probably a wash.


Full agreement on all other comments. Let's get ourselves some factories and see who we can run over. Unfortunately, Gaspar would have been the ideal target geographically, but obviously that's off the table.

[Sullla]

Don't worry about missing the work boat, it was bound to happen at some point. Justhe clarifying about where the ones on the map should be heading.

I like your proposal to test the free win and attack with the rifle. Even with Formation, grenadiers are garbage against cavs, which will surely have Pinch to counter. Grenadiers are only good for killing rifles, nothing else.

Let's go with observatory in Steam Power. I will look at the logistics of the units tonight and see if we can get two more drafted rifles up at the barb city to dissuade Dreylin. Pray that REM enters the war and/or Dreylin gets bloodied against Gaspar's capital.

[Zalson]

All of the dominant teams right now are ones with front loaded early game advantages (either REM's Imperialistic trait or Dreylin's Philosophical + Tah Mahal setup).

Is there another leader you would have selected in hindsight? There were few choices available but Gandhi of Khmer has to be worth a coin flip, right?

Thanks for the well-reported thread!