REM goes on the Sudric Express [Pitboss 33 spoilers]

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Thanks for the update! It's cool that in Industrial starts, Oxford needs to be powered by Farms and Representation Scientists, not Cottages. Is Biology anywhere in your tech path, or is it too much of a luxury?

If I go down the OU route then it is completely needed. Currently it is marginal at best. I have 8 farms total, of which I am not working 1. The 2 irrigating the corn at Edward I feel will probably be better as workshops too... So not yet.

Tbf I don't plan too much and a lot of things depend on where others go. I will get assembly line next, and then facism if the GG is still available (I doubt this though). Otherwise it will be railroad and then combustion I guess.



Now here I come on to a concern - been thinking about this more and more and really I think we should have played this as a sequential PB IMO. The issue is the oil, or lack of it and when production occurs. With production occurring at the turn roll only after everyone has moved this creates a HUGE advantage in the oil age of warfare. Any resource that is disconnected by playing second will invalidate and waste all attempted production by the chap who plays first. In ancient era games this isn't so much of an issue, because if a resource is pillaged there are land units preventing it being rehooked. Also there is redundancy in both copper/iron being hooked and often people will be able to acquire multiple copies.

However here each player has only 2 oils, 1 land and 1 sea based. With the sea based one not being available to plastics I feel it can safely be discounted, so each player has 1 original oil in quite a vulnerable place. The first person to fighters could easily make it a nightmare for it to stay connected, and the other player completely unable to build oil based units.

Usually by this point there are only a few contenders, and they have multiple oils throughout the empire. However here most of us will have 1 copy of oil each on land. Not quite sure what the answer is here but this gives the second player such an advantage in a war I wonder if there needs to perhaps be an addendum where workers can be moved after the second player has played perhaps? I'm just unsure regular rules are not gonna cut it here...

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I would be grateful if there were some lurker discussions perhaps in the lurker thread. I would hate for a war to be decided based on turn order.

[Fluffball]

That's a really good point.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

That's a really good point.

A couple of fighters from the first person to flight could realistically fairly easily keep a war enemy without oil for the rest of the game.

Even later, with a large airforce it just takes 1 to break through the interception and knock out the oil. Plus would you attempt to build any oil units if there were a decent chance the builds would be cancelled?

Then without oil your options for air defence are either 20% intercept machine guns or if you have rocketry 40% SAMs. Not brilliant really.

Unsure how to solve this save allowing workers moving after. Disallowing disconnections of resources seems wrong...

[El Grillo]

Settling on the land-based Oil isn't an option, I take it? I couldn't find the site in your screenshots. I know Forts and Wells have some in-built protection against bombing, but yeah, against a dedicated human opponent, it won't be sufficient. Standard Ethanol also comes too late at Plastics to be relevant. I'll quote your post in the lurker thread and see what the others think about it.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Settling on the land-based Oil isn't an option, I take it? I couldn't find the site in your screenshots. I know Forts and Wells have some in-built protection against bombing, but yeah, against a dedicated human opponent, it won't be sufficient. Standard Ethanol also comes too late at Plastics to be relevant.

No I can't settle it - knew the location after I already had it in the BFC. It's in James's BFC, you can just about see it on this picture. The oil like most of the strat resources is completely mirrored

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Better view - easy for the northern chap to bomb the southern chap time and time over...

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

A couple of thoughts... BGN is very unlikely to want to do anything to me. He has 1 galleon and nothing else. The recon missions 5 range vision from the centre tile is really relaxing. I've calmed myself about all my neighbours with this.

DZ has done some strange stuff with his sliders I think. He went from no culture in my third ring around Percy to more than me. Looking at his culture generation he seems to have had a couple of random spikes in culture on charts and also esp. Probably he wants the forests? Probably a non sinister intention from it.

I will get city visibility on Drey4E soon. Hopefully this is not provoking them to worry about me, but then being the biggest military I want to see where they are massing and see if I can use that to my advantage. After that I will try and get that off scooter who seems to be the other civ who might be able to really do something (but they aren't bordering me)

They also bulbed physics and are currently teching biology?! That seems... Brave. Being so far from either inf or machine guns.

Also I managed to get a good overview of where players settled with the rebase trick and having OB with everyone. Still a little bit of land to be settled out there. DZ/BGN still have a couple of islands positions he could settle.

3 turns to infantry, factories and shale plants (with enough health to not hurt me using them!) not top mfg anymore, I guess that has likely gone to scooter with factories and power as he has levee potential whereas BGN does not. He will probably get the pentagon too with that MFG lead. With agg he will be making some fearsome units! I will probably make a token play for it in the cap after a factory and shale plant, but I don't expect to get it. Just more as it is a good wonder and worth an attempt. No modifier to make it more worthwhile than wealth, but the conversion will be useful either way to power me through a few more techs.

Where to go now? Tech wise facism if it hasn't lost the GG. Electricity could be powerful for the windmill bonuses. Railroad allows me some nice movement and defender options, which need Steel which has the IW and cannon. Biology I feel is a little underwhelming here.

I think moving for electricity - industrialisation, maybe with steel first could be a really nice play here. Fast marines to wreak havoc on backwards neighbours, like pind who seems to be really struggling to keep up in tech, or Drey4E or DZ. would prefer to not have to attack infantry, although this might be a dream to be honest. What would be perfect is if someone ignored assembly line for railroad and was relying on machine guns... Marines off galleons only might be a forum first? I would still be quite far from tanks as I would need oil/combustion for them.

The other key wonder I need to think about in this game is the cristo redentor. The civic switching this allows is incredible allowing free switches every turn. Spi do get the bonus on it but probably isn't worth it for them. Radio required... I hope to be powering ahead in tech thanks to the SoL by then. The 3 gorges dam probably isn't a great target for me as I will be building shale plants in most places and health is quite abundant with the free aqueducts, plentiful resources and harbours.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Whilst playing the turn just now I think I have worked out in part why I am steaming ahead in GNP, over the SoL or any research builds. I am not bothering to work any coast tiles which a lot of players seem to be. I just don't see the point in working those tiles in rep with the ability to hire specialists. rather than a tile that feeds itself and gives 2 commerce, I am instead hiring either an engineer or a merchant, for extra hammers and more sci than that would produce, or a fair bit of extra commerce. In the long run my cities will be a bit smaller, although the gain that the others will receive is marginal at best. When you add this to me likely being able to run factories and shale plants in a couple of turns in all cities with no extra health buildings due to the moderate city sizes I think this is the right call to make. The payback time on the extra pop is not worth it. Now I see that Drey4E are whipping/drafting heavily, so this will play into it somewhat, and can be transferred to other things (extra population is quite a liquid asset in the game) I believe that this approach is the most effective, and gives the best payback overall.

[GermanJoey]

Thanks for the updates! You might have mentioned this before, but I didn't see anything - how many science multipliers do you have right now?