[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Miguelito]

   

The celebratory shots are on the other computer, but have the compressed version:


The yields increased a bit yet after connecting some coal and silver, and we'll connect a little more yet during the turns after. Trading for metals otoh is difficult, as the relevant players mostly have all the resources, and they don't matter much anyways because happiness is easy, mostly because there is no WW. I could connect the second dyes and see if I manage to sell that. But the few players that I think lacked happy resources all rejected the trades - not quite true, I managed to sell whales to Ichabod for a set of metals, after he asked to have them gifted during the civac war. This however was rather blunt:


Afaik Dono has no spices atm. No idea why he's angry.
So trade probably will not really happen. Conquest? Maybe Mjmd's holdings in former Ramk-Arabia. But that would mean a border with Lazteuq, who has been hostile all game already when he had no reason to. The chief mission for our military for the foreseeable future is to prevent civac from attacking even though we are out of slavery.
A few more trades might be tried.
Also seen in the first picture: Frozen (while I was logged in) used his free Mining executive after having him on ice for quite some time. Maybe he didn't want to support Piccadilly if he got the HQ? I'm sending him 6gpt (half of the net earnings), to encourage further spread.
And in further news the world top CY is actually Amicalola. Not quite sure how, they have 44 cities which don't seem terribly large (although taller than ours). I think it's temporary. I can actually imagine for them to try something similar to our Mjmd invasion with superdeath, who also is way behind technologically. Otoh Tarkeel on the same continent is small but already fielding cavalry.

Bear in mind that pretty much all the games over at Civforum are played on Deity instead of Emperor difficulty level, which is also making things easier for them here than it is usually over there at this stage of the game. Probably why many of them are looking somewhere between "ok to really good".

Thanks from me as well for keeping up the reporting! As you have mentioned as well, there are hardly any updates over at Civforum anymore, sadly... This may be due to the shorter time window per turn, I think. In the early stages of the game, this speeds things up nicely. But in the current stage, one really has to think about investing the "proper" amount of time for playing alone, not even talking about reporting, on top of that...

Caution: badly written wall of text following
I want to contest this. Emperor vs. Deity doesn't make things easier. This is not SP and everybody is playing with the same handicap. What it does is that it makes things faster.

I've been lurking the recent civforum PBs (88, 89, 91) fairly closely. My impression is that Deity has a tendency to weed out weaker players early, because they get stuck overexpanded without Currency, and that's certainly an (interesting) challenge, but it doesn't apply to this stage of the game. Deity also warrants a near total focus on cottages, at least in the more successful empires. You see that Frozen here basically followed that recipe, and it did get him a temporary tech leadership and impressive MfG considering the little number of his cities, but at the same time he failed to expand beyond his natural borders and he has no chance to win the game. I know nothing about that continent's early game, but if you fokus all your development on commerce it is plausible that you lack foodhammers for expansion.
Note that Picc, while still commerce heavy, did not develop as onesidedly and has had more success. And all of that was only possible because the 3 strong players on the continent (incl. Ichabod) played that same strategy, keeping average power low (Jowy is not a very strong player and had a very difficult pick. Cornflakes is pretty good and often quite murderous, but played a variant of achieving cultural victory without ever researching MG). If thatwas due to good diplomacy I cannot tell, but if either of them was our neighbour, or worse yet civac's they'd have to develop much differently or be pulverized. Just look how civac ran over Ichabod, who is technologically superior to him (slightly with airships) and has way more cities than Frozen does. 

Also it's a shame that the two best RB players in this field dropped out, especially mackoti being a counterweight to Frozen/Picc would have been very interesting (no offense to Cairo, who is playing fine, but mack does magic).

The other striking aspect of Deity is the very slow going game, particularly in the beginning. That makes axe/(phant)/cat attacks very relevant while here they are niche applications. You seldomly see a siege stack advancing form city to city, in part because by the time it would finish its job it will already be in peril of being outdated. But of course weaker players do absolutely get punished, typically starting at knights, or with horchers if they leave a window, and in niche cases earlier.

Fwiw I am interested in signing up for a deity game if a big field comes together, because it's an interesting variant that I'd like to experience, but I wanted to argue against the notion that it is somehow more difficult. It's a differently paced game with different weighs on things.
I find some interesting (like rigorously having to balance expansion and early commerce, while even on this map we expanded hard and could afford a detour before currency, although we also were Fin and got the Colossus), others rather dull (I like that on this map I have felt like there have been uses for all the different tile improvements - also due to the mod ofc; also I would not love to still be pushing around axe stacks past t100).


The reporting fatigue as the turns get more involved is, I fear, unavoidable. This thread has not been an exception.

[Papa Bear]

I won't disagree with what you wrote, Miguelito. I wasn't thinking about how the difficulty setting affects the game in general terms, but rather like "if you are accustomed to properly balancing growth on Deity, doing so on Emperor won't be an issue at all" for these players. That is the only thing I was referring to with the "easier". Sorry for the confusion!

And I don't mind reading walls of text at all, usually it is me being the culprit with those :D

And I also thought it was a shame that both TBS and mackoti dropped out (not meant as an accusation but rather as an expression of "too bad, I'd have liked to see them go up against "our" guys). They had their reasons and I respect that, of course!

[Miguelito]

You're welcome to disagree, I'm happy we'Re having some discussion here



One last time though, to hammer the point home:

"if you are accustomed to properly balancing growth on Deity, doing so on Emperor won't be an issue at all" for these players. That is the only thing I was referring to with the "easier".

I'm still not quite on board with the statement. Of course those guys will hardly manage to fall into an overexpansion trap on emperor. But if they follow their usual routine, it might swing the other way and they might underexpand. Again, I know too little to judge, but imo it's possible that that is what happened to Frozen here.





Meanwhile I'm thinking whether I have been negligent in not building harbours. Amica, who to note is not Exp but has the GLH (and even a few castles in core cities) has them in literally every city. civac, who is Exp, has a fair number of them, although not everywhere. We, being Exp, built our second one last turn . I always felt like they would not make much sense below size 10, but that's probably a misjudgement. We get 5 TRs in coastal cities now, and if a harbour gives +1 on each that surely is good enough for 40 base hammers (36 with forge). The thing is, for a lot of time it was literally all military in most established cities, and civac keeps increasing his power, so after the GA we'll be back to it (I still want Emancipation though, but we'll have the draft). Now we already have a bunch of drydocks cities without harbours, and I'm not sure how I'll feel about building one over a cannon boat. But I'm queuing some in the backwaters.


We're finishing Democracy in 2 turns comfortably, in time for the end of GA revolt. civac does not have Rifling nor Railroad yet. Frozen has everything before Scientific Method, which I assume he's delaying to keep the monasteries running. Picc has had Railroad for some time and just researched Corporation, so it seems he is not going for Combustion straight, but rather wants to industrialize first. civac may still beeline Combustion, either to keep us in awe or to defend his newly aquired island from Picc. But of course he also needs to do something for his economy.
My plan is to go AL -> SciMeth -> Combustion. That might mean that we arrive 2nd at destroyers, and I'm pretty anxious about that. Otoh, drafted Infantry (and MGs, which I'm starting on) should also help to keep us safe from amphibious assaults. With railroads I'd hope we can punish any stack that he lands on our coast. The thing is, while 1 pop draft rifles certainly are OP, drafting them for 2 really doesn't feel great, and Infantry should be much better.
And of course AL is a crucial economy tech. If we spend the next 10 turns of research again just trying to keep safe from civac, we'll lose whatever catchup to Picc/Frozen we've achieved in the GA.

Oh and Amica built the Kremlin as expected. I still doubt that he could rise yet to contestant status, but his numbers are pretty good. His cities are pretty tall already though, and he has no easy room for expansion, at least not on his own continent, where he has to defend against Cairo who has more land, in a situation roughly mirroring civac's and ours.

[Miguelito]

I figured this might be curious for readers:


Already added 11 or so workers during the last 2 turns, I hope with these it should be enough though.
Also this is the first turn since forever where we have no military unit finishing (HE city is building a courthouse in anticipation of Mining Inc). I feel a bit irresponsible about it, but also several units are stored 1 turn from completion while watiting for theocracy in 2 turns.

[Miguelito]

Some diplo:



Finally! The reason is that he's attacking Mjmd now (I don't love it, but we can't do a lot about it as long as Charriu is staring us down with some 20 cuirassiers and incoming cavalry), also he has a frigate stuck in our culture. I thought I had accepted, but it didn't go through it seems, and there I was wondering while it got us no trade routes. He can accept the reoffer this turn yet.

Anyway, sent this:


Charriu has considerably less cities, but also considerably better military tech and more power than Laz. I'd much rather put pressure on Laz in former Ramkland and support Charriu getting some of his core than face down Laz with 3 cores long term.
Overall we have to take care not to invest overly much into this continent. The value of any conquest will be limited, but otoh if we can claim some more metals for our Corporation it's a significant win.
I also bought copper for 5gpt from Charriu because it was missing for the next Mining hammer, but I don't want to start buying metals for gpt in scale, at least not until the Corp is spread significantly better. Sadly nobody wants to give me some metal for spices or whale even if they have none, because happiness is not an issue for anybody.




He rejected this, but I hope it will work in the future. He has Biology but Medicine might be a few turns away yet. While talking about Amica, look at this, what used to be pindicator's core:



I spot a single cottaged tile. I have to imagine that him and naufragar (GG nauf!) after splitting the conquest pillaged each other's countryside. Of course that terrain loves Biology. Somehow his economy is still way better than ours, might have to do with all the harbours.
Assuming he takes Sushi, with Kremlin his whip production will be incredible. He can't convert it to commerce quite as easily though (while we can absolutely build research with Mining hammers if civac allows it).

A curiosity of our own:


I used artists to get the city culture to 10% - required to draft the city. All the other Mjmd conquests have his culture far stronger - even where we have 3rd ring now after running FS caste artists during the GA - and will not be draftable until Lazteuq finishes Mjmd off, but here we can get started from next turn on.

It's the GA turn, so we had the revolt due:


I've been wondering if this is Iran - everybody has a vote and is nominally free, but Ayatollah Miguelito still calls the shots. Nationalism also checks out, although you could argue that they're rather in involuntary Mercantilism?

Before/after




Costs went down significantly, and so did max research. But we're making more at 100% than before. The hammer boost is very nice, although we'll see how much we'll be missing the whip.
Now let's see what it looks like without the GA coins, and reassuming drafting. I hope we can get to AL in some 5 or 6 turns. Picc already has it, of course. He also has a few more turns to go in his GA . However, we still have a 3 GP GA banked. I don't know if he can get a 4th. I think it's unlikely that we can, as we spent a fair few GPs on bulbs and engineer rushes, and the only one left on the tree is at Fusion. 
I think we want that 3GP GA pretty soon, to get up factories and power plants, and speed up research towards Cristo Redentor. I feel like that is the one last big thing to get before the spaceship. No caste/pacifism as I don't think we'll get a 4th GA, as I explained.
It will be pretty hard to get the tech before Picc/Frozen though, and I don't think we can afford to delay AL or Combustion. Maybe the GA can get us to it, and fingers crossed for a 10% odds engineer at Paraná .
Otoh it would also be nice to grow the cities some before a GA, so I think it should be timed such that Radio finishes on the last turn. We'd need to set up an OF chain in Angola to get it out asap after that.
For a place like Bonfim US is really nice:


Thanks to more and better trade routes, the palast, and the gold that popped up, Corta Cana has a little more base commerce though now that FS is gone. So it could be argued that Wall Street would have been better there, as it also runs less danger from civac's commandos. Whatever, we really should not plan for what to do in case we lose Bonfim.

[Miguelito]

The GA is over, and it's cold turkey time!

To lift up my spirit, let's see a different before/after




The upper image is from the turn before launching the GA, the closest one I had. Note that in the recent picture Piccadilly is still in his GA, topping the GNP and MfG figures. Meanwhile Amica by virtue of Biology has achieved second rank in CY, briefly he was first, but we are growing fast.

The leap ahead in production of course is very nice. It includes 4 cities with Mining, generating 13 base hammers each (we expect 3 new spreads next turn). It is very much needed as well, as we are left without the whip - although I did draft 5 times this turn; I want to reduce drafting to a minimum at least until we get AL, although rifles are pretty useful for the eastern continent both against Charriu's and Lazteuq's troops. 
Now at the same time Picc's MfG has also been increasing massively during his GA. I figure a mix of railroads and maybe his first factories already. But I suppose eventually we'll overtake him thanks to our corporation.

However, in terms of GNP we are still lagging despite some advance. Not just behind the leaders, but behind the whole top group. I'm building emancipated cottages, and hope for growth. Hopefully it is not too little too late, but it well might be. I am also building a lot of buildings that I could not justify when things with civac were at their tensest - courthouses, harbours, a library here and there. On the shot you also see me building a jail in a no WW game - it's for the spy slots; arguably a market would have been better, but this is a bit more fun

The power rating however shows civac still spitting out units like crazy, and we have fallen behind in the power ratio. Before the GA it was around 93%, now after the round of drafting we are somewhere above 86%. The good thing of course is that he has to guard his newly acquired island, where he is keeping a couple of ships and a great lot of knights, if not all of them. Btw have a look:


The sheer size of those cities! Ichabod fwiw was running serfdom.
We're also still paying back the credit he gave us, so I don't expect anything immediately (although that would be a cunning trap).



In more depressing news, Piccadilly also assumes his post-GA civics. Note the complete lack of concern for his safety here - because of course he needs none. I'm trying to think of an argument why civac should join us in a war against him, but it's a tough sell against machine guns and infantry (and soon to come destroyers, but I'm pretty sure civac is also teching in that direction). Nothing can happen without destroyers and transports in any case. I'm also fantasizing about defending Ichabod or Frozen from him, but tbh it's unlikely to happen, just too far away. Maybe if we ever get an air force.

But mostly it seems like we should play full steam economic catch up, to capitalize on our land/city count advantage before Picc gets to Alpha Centauri. Not sure if this can work, mind we also need to keep civac in check. I should probably make a more in depth analysis of Picc's land, number of towns, buildings in his cities etc, but I don't think I can make myself do that.

[Miguelito]

Last turn I sent this, after already having sent a similar message without numbers earlier (without getting an answer)


Rusten, I feel like I should have consulted you for this, but I've had trouble updating recently and the conversation has been a bit stalled anyways. This is the target area:


Lazteuq is actually pulling troops out of there as of this turn (for more on that see below).

So, is war against Lazteuq wise? Possibly not, but just staying on guard against civac for the rest of the game while trying to catch up with the tech leaders - which looks increasingly hopeless - just doesn't seem very fun. Need some drama. I will not do it without Charriu though. So, this turn I was greeted by the following:



What a nice idea, but while I think we can handle Charriu on defense without too much issue by now I don't see how we could advance into his culture - and the same goes for Lazteuq, who would need to attack with knights and cannons into cavalry, huh.

But there was more:


Yes please, although I would have appreciated if he had confirmed t201. Under these circumstances, should I declare on Lazteuq even if Charriu has not before?
We also have a bit of a problem, because this turn Laz played before me, but he's already second in a split with Mjmd. So if I were to declare next turn it would be a 3 way split, but I fear I can't do anything about that (because if I log in before Laz next turn and Charriu has declared then I can't join him, and if I don't I'm still logging in 2nd and the same problem continues the turn after). So probably I can't avoid the 3 way split, and will hope for a quick resolution of the conflict.
I resent the above offer from t199.


Also sent this to civac:


Meaning friendship for the next 100 turns, which should be until the end of the game. Sounds a bit desperate? The good news is that Ichabod has Combustion, so civac has to do something if he wants to protect his new aquisition. He has SM and RR but no Combustion yet. Ichabod still has no slavery, so his capacity to actually get destroyers into the water seems pretty limited, unless he goes for cash upgrades (please do!).
I have seen civac build a good number of MGs which I can't find anymore, which probably means that he's hiding them on boats. I have a good bit of terror of him just putting a large MG/cannon/grenadier/stuff stack in our face. How do we defend against that, besides more MGs? Cavalry actually sound like the best MG counter before tanks, but, that's still terrible of course we don't have the tech anyways. The boats are in position to either threaten us in the inner sea or sail towards Ichabod. civac has split his fleets and for now we should be able to at least block his ship's advance, so we might not be facing an ultra fork scenario. That is, until he whips out 3 dozen destroyers . He will be at Combustion before us most likely, but I feel like we just have to take that risk, and hope that he wants to keep peace. He's playing rather short turns and is invested in PB62, that's good.

Btw, here's the core of Ichabod, who has SM and Physics:


The lumbermill 1E of the cap seems to be making one hammer too many, so that might be oil or uranium? I also considered the windmill, but 2W, but with RP+Levee+Serfdom that seems to be natural. Do you notice any  other suspicious tiles?

Elsewhere there are still pristiine forests:



But not here for sure:



Sent out a bunch of offers for mining resources at 3gpt each.

I have not prepared anything for the t200 update, but if lurkers are interested in anything please tell and I will try to provide.


Btw Rusten if you have some spare time and feel like it, I would really appreciate your analysis of why our economy is so much worse than Picc's, and what to do about it. I suspect he has significantly more buildings, the shrine, AP, less unit maintenance, and maybe a few more grown cottages, but how he's just at double our numbers I still don't quite understand. Maybe he's been building significant wealth/research already?

[Miguelito]

So, of course I went for war. Unwise maybe, entertaining hopefully .
Here we are advancing:


How far this will go is mainly a function of Charriu's stance on this. I showed last turn that he offered iron for iron, and I am going to take him by his word - although he did not renew it this turn, and we lost his graphs because somehowhe hasstarted spending EP   . Anyways, next turn we start drafting infantry, so that's something.
Meanwhile we lost at 9%, 63% and 72% (2 rifles, 1 pike), but at least won the mop ups. Also sank 2 scouting galleons. Btw this is part of my antagonism towards Laz - he was scouting our waters with galleons, and I was alwasy worried he might have something loaded for when he'd find a archer or axe defended island. Much more polite to scout with privateers.

One reason why I don't feel so irresponsible about this adventure:


Civac has Combustion now, but with this message I trust him to at least not start anything in the next 10 turns or so. He also seemsto have slowed down a bit on the military production. I even ran a turn without drafting! Although that will be an aberration for some time to come

[Rusten]

Saw my name in the thread on a quick scan. Can't respond right now but I'll try to find the time to read soon. Was sick all of last week and also away for the weekend.

[Miguelito]

Hope you are better already!
As you see, when the cat is away, the mice will play... let's see where my unsupervised actions take us