[Spoiler] PB42: Rusten and mackoti play Krill playing Bismarck of Portugal

[Krill]

I hate Imgur, bitch to upload pictures to and keep in order.

One picture for now, need to run to work: End of turn F1:

[Krill]

Whatever else happens in this game, I feel very strongly that the Privateer fits in nigh on perfectly at Paper+Optics. Because if you opt into the privateer as a defensive measure, it precludes you bulbing Astro AND Chemistry. Or you can can bulb Astro, then grab paper and be left with researching Chem. Or you can just try to bulb Astro and Chem before Paper but be left with a massive hole where you GA plans should go, and down Education/PP. But you can fight Frigates in small numbers with just privateers, it's only when they start appearing in stacks that keep on growing that privateers start to fail.

So it works. Right now I have a clock against OH (although looking at the production numbers, I'm not certain that I do lack on frigate production if I want to rush to Chemistry and Astro now), which is him getting Chemistry and then stacking Frigates. I can delay that clock by forcing him to build land military to deal with the number of land units I can build, but I'm not longer certain what the best option is. I'm going to look much more closely at the game tomorrow. I reckon I could pushing out 5 frigates per turn if I put all coastal cities over 20 base hpt on them. Each turn OH and I play should affect the others strategy at this point.

[Krill]

Turn 169, GA2T1

Oh god, was this only two turns ago? This game isn't so much as sapping my energy, but really isn't fitting in with RL shit right now. Hopefully the RL stuff is dying down so I can concentrate on the game, but I'm not certain. We'll see how it goes.

Casting my mind back to T169, we had just signed a ceasefire with OH. He then went and captured a city from Lewwyn and kept it:




This was why the ceasefire was the right call. OH can't be given time to capture these lands and integrate them into an empire. I've gone over the point of why not, so all that's left to consider is not the why of attacking OH, but what the objectives are. Essentially it comes down to having to cripple him so OH is not a threat, and to open up the necessary land for continued expansion, to rectify the current GNP deficit to Gav and Superjm.

The issue with Frigates remains:

The tl;dr is simple: I can't compete with OH in frigate production, so there is no point in racing him to Chemistry. I'm already on the same landmass as him, so it's SoD and death to one of us. If I wanted to push beakers, from T170 (ie the turn I will play on Wednesday night) then I can get around 1.1K base beakers, and I could have Engineering eot170, Gunpowder eot172, and Astro eot175 due to overflow and KTB multipliers. The then third GA can come sometime around T182-ish. But it's better to build military with the over 750 adjusted hpt and just outproduce OH, and use privateers to disrupt him. OH gets forced to go to Chem, but then has to build frigates and land military, and at some point he'll collapse. I'm not joking when I say I can have over 100 units ready to invade by the end of this GA.

So that's one strategy. I've reconsidered the naval production problem: I'm not convinced I can't compete with Frigate production anymore, but it would not be straightforward because of where the frigate production is located. I end up having to hold at least two fleets, east and west, and I can't easily combine them. OH can, so long as he holds the area around Run On. That means I have to take and hold Free At Last, because then I can combine the fleets, and pushing through to Constant Sorrow then breaks a land defense. I need to be more balanced in my approach, but the point remains: I have to take everything north of Constant Sorrow and hold it, so I need to raze the Jewish Holy City to make Constant sorrow defendable from land. At that point though, OH is likely close to broken and I might as push on. So if that's what I have to do, how do I do it?

Just build more units than he has in that area, take and hold. Keep his units split. Use Privateers as explained to hold off until Frigates in the west and try to stop the units he has thrown at Lewwyn from getting back to defend with.

Anyway, the more fun stuff:




A G2 Musket. Still dies to collateral. FWIW, a CR2 treb against that musket with full fort, after the culture defence is removed (it will build a castle, but I'm going to have a lot of trebs and can do it in a single turn), still has over 50% odds of getting in 2 hits, and then a C2 knight gets odds.








Pre-GA F9 and F1.














Post-GA F1 and F9, but before civic swaps. Bureaucracy generates 41 commerce per turn, through multipliers of 75% gives 71 bpt at best. Vassalage saves 12gpt in civic cost, and saves a further 32gpt in unit costs. Inflation is running at 25%, so that is 55gpt saved compared to running Bureaucracy. So given the XP, Vassalage is a no brainer as the savings will grow with total pop growth and as each turn passes inflation increases, but the capital commerce is only growing as the last few cottages mature. I feel I left this too late TBH, but them's the breaks.

GA triggered with Artist and Merchant. I had to move GE out of the city, and start the GA with the Artist, but no issues. Reason is that I may need the GE to bulb Gunpowder, which it should do once Engineering is completed. The GA bomb is useless to me unless I'm fighting in DZs or Lewwyns lands, but by the time I'm fighting on land there this war would be won, so I reckon the GE is more useful now.








Post civic swap F1 and F9 at max science on Construction, which inflates GNP massively, as I am the last person to research it. I get a 1.62 modifier on it.





Cairo is preparing to attack OH. This is a major reason to go back to war, I Cairo can keep OH honest. So long as that continues until I can get the stack against Free At Last in place I think I'll get down to Constant Sorrow in one piece.





These are the units that are going to be sent at Lewwyn. REM is potentially vulnerable to a quick raid and raze but I'm not planning on doing that. I need the units to take the border region area.





More galleons in position, so I'm fairly sure that OH just doesn't understand what I was trying to communicate to him.




OH has some units down here, but not many. Cairo could take these area I reckon.





Cairo does look to be prepared.





I hate naval wars.

[Krill]

Now onto the cities. Most will not have anything important documented for each one, it will realistically be mostly a picture dump.





The cottage cities do need to get Grocers and ideally Banks down though, that's significantly more efficient than just building wealth everywhere. I think after rolling out the stacked up hammers in these cities, they will all go Grocer>Bank.











The above applies to all these cities.





Courthouse is only worth 3.6gpt, so military from here.





Knights until maximum overflow is reached, then I think I can complete a courthouse in a single turn? Otherwise straight military. I've moved tiles around because it now makes too many hammers, so better to help out the other cities.





The Harbour and Feitoria would theoretically cost 1260 base hammers, but a forge needs 240 hammers going through it to pay back the hammers. I'm not thinking long term anymore, so I may just go with wealth after the market? I'll have to decide by T171, but because of the amount of overflow I otherwise would hide and not use, I think I will end up just grabbing the forge.





Military. Needs a road on the desert tile.





Trebs and cats, but a future frigate city? Given this is the first good coastal city I settled, let's count. 28 base hpt.




Fuck the micro. Military. 28 base hpt, 56 total.





Knights not privateers, then frigates. 40 base hpt, 96 total base hpt, 160 adjusted hpt.





Right, Great people. Scientist for a GA. It bulbs Education, so I have to plan for the next GA to push out OH, and then see what happens.  I will have to slow this one down, and allow the other great person to complete first. The Merchant points were a mistake, but if I get that GM from here, I send two GM on missions for trade bombs. They would have to go Superjm.





Trololol. Barracks next then military, but eventually Frigates: 20 base hpt, 116 base hpt total, 185 adjusted hpt and counting.





Greatest Risk of the war is losing this city. It ends the GA 1 turn from popping the GM, a mere 12 points. So if I can get the GM out at over 99% odds (oh fuck please, please not the GE) eot177, according to AC I can pop a great person from that city eot179 and trigger a GA as early as T180. This GA ends eot176.





Oh look, a 200 hammer paper weight. I just need hammers into boats, so I'm sacrificing this city. I really should have reconsidered where I put hte iNE, but I'm not sure if I could ever keep SA safe. Probably one of the regrets from this game. Military. 20 base hpt. 136 base hpt total, 210 adjusted hpt total.





Military. Not Trebs. 20 base hpt. 156 base hpt total, 235 adjusted hpt total.





As above, military. 21 base hpt, but I'll call it 20 for ease of numbers. 176 base hpt total, 260 adjusted hpt total.





Trololol, military, call it 24 base hpt, 200 base hpt total, 290 adjusted hpt total.





Military.





Moai in a GA shot at last! Minimum 16 base hpt, but by the time frigates come around, it would have to be at size 13, which for the sake of this argument will be 28 base hpt, 228 base hpt total, 325 adjusted hpt total.





Another GA Moai. With an extra workshop, 20hpt is quite achievable...but 24hpt is more realistic at size 11. 252 base hpt total, 355 adjusted hpt total.






Siege until frigates. 28 base hpt. 280 base hpt total. 390 adjusted hpt total.





More military. 36 base hpt. 316 base hpt total. 435 adjusted hpt total.





20 base hpt. 336 base hpt total. 460 adjusted hpt total. So that is 5 frigates per turn average output. OH can about match that without slavery, but with slavery?  He can't manage it permanently. Then there is Steel and SoL at Mil Sci...

The rest of the cities are just for site ATM.




















I don't know which of the captured cities will last longer term. There aren't important, and in fact I don't believe I can hold any of them against CKN without CG2 muskets. The prize is OH's core.

Now for the F screens.

And the graphs:

[Krill]

65 pictures. You know the total screenshots folder for this game is currently 371MB on disk?

[Dreylin]

Thanks for the effort on the update, really good to see the overview and the planning involved.

I can see that gavagai is mopping up OT4E; do you think he'll go straight on into superjm or stop for consolidation first? Is there anything superjm can do about it?

[Krill]

Superjm is in Nationhood and is drafting. I've traded him furs for his gold.

No one has Astro except for OH: OH is bulbing to great effect, but it means that superjm and Gav are only fighting through a narrow isthmus, there are no naval sorties on either flank. Gav has the SoD, and superjm...doesn't. He just lacks siege and unit numbers. There is nothing stopping Gav just rolling up to the end of the continent, except me IF I even had the navy in the right location to ferry the units over to help defend. Gav must have a 70 unit stack by this point. superjm needs a minimum of 20 cats to even put a dent into it, and then needs the other 60 units to clean up. He has about 500k soldier points, so he has probably 30-40 units in position total dependent on the number of cats.


That's why I stand by the decision to concede: I don't see how Gav loses this except through a significant misplay. superjm probably realizes it. I don't know if OH does. But other than that no one matters so if us 4 are ready to end it, we probably should do and then wait for PB41 to finish, complete the 4.1.0.1 mod version and then look for future games.

[Krill]

Turn 170




Superjm got a GA, otherwise, decent stack dropped off to attack Lewwyns front city.





OH is still about 4 units short of being able to take the city, even with no losses. So he needs units on boats to take it. Spoiler from T171: he does not take the capital, but I do not know if he has attacked.





I can't interdict the boats moving from Tom Petty to offload directly into Thomas Dolby. Keeping privateers here is only valuable if I can blockade the tile directly south of Lewwyn's capital. If I do that, I could get a shot at galleons left in the open, but I don't think that happens. I reckon OH sacrifices galleons to kill the nearest privateer and then dumps units into Thomas Dolby after he captures it, and just runs the shuttles between the two ports.

This is not necessarily bad for me, if it locks up units from returning to OH's core.





Lewwyn has units in cities. He can't counter attack, but to take his cities will lock up a lot of OH's units, and it will put OH in an awkward position if he tries to defend and attack in two separate areas, and he then tries to whip out a bunch of units (note from T171, he whipped 13 times, minimum of 19 pop).





End turn position. It looks like the picture didn't take, but I think I lose Jealous sound as OH snuck a galleon through that threatens the main island. I've moved both knights out of the city because they are more valuable.





Last turn there was a decent stack in REM. I figure that stack is now on the 3 galleons cowering out of range of the furthest privateer.





Needs must.





Feisty little chariot.





There are about 13 knights that I can put on the forest hill next turn to threaten GGH. I'm not sure it's a trap though. It's the sort of trap I'd lay TBH.




Two workers, the visible CKN, another 2 cats on the tile SW of GGH, and a stack of knights 2 or 3SE of GGH and I could lose the whole lot. So I'm not going for that. I'm building up...







...only I'll be grabbing Engineering first.

[Krill]

From PB37:

Also this is how you wage war on islands. You need two navies, one for transport, one to hold the water, and a stack that moves between island strongholds and takes the cities as hammer efficiently as possible. Specifically, 8 trebs and a cat, promoted to accuracy can one turn remove culture defense from anything except castle cities with chitchen itza. So 3 galleons to transport the walls destruction company, enough galleons to transport the stack defenders of pikes, maces, Lbow and show, probably another 3 or 4 galleons, and then enough galleons to transport sacrificial cats and city attackers. Once you've built that stack, you just need to keep on replacing the dead CR maces and B2 cats, everything else should be untouched.

This is essentially how I am going to keep the stack moving, considering I just have to capture one city after another.

[Krill]

I just played T172, and it looks like the turn will roll, but I doubt I can play T173 tomorrow due to a wedding.

But here is T171.




No.





Looks like OH isn't taking the hint.





Gav's stack.





Going to go and look at superjms stack. Spoiler from T172, I was right, 30 real units and no siege. I think Gav would win due to promotions, but it would actually be relatively close. If superjm has even 10 cats there he'd win outright, and I suppose Gav thinks that 10 cats is a trivial amount to get into position by the time his units are full healed and positioned. So Gav might need another target.

That doesn't help me.





I sense a trap, or maybe I'm just being really paranoid now.





Lewwyn is still paying attention, but he isn't getting out of this war without some amputations.





I have never pined down the size of OH's navy, so there is a good chance his navy is completely out of position for core defense.





I can start to pin down his galleons for a few turns and make him city hop, but before he gets Chemistry I need to reposition away from his cities so I don't get the privateers sniped.





He doesn't have any galleons around here to even pester carracks.

The rest of hte pictures are overview shots with no text.