[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Miguelito]

Drafted our first Poilu:



Big war picture:


Picked up 2 empty cities and a stray knight and pike. I put some defenses into OneMoreDay. Both Guerilla 2 rifles lost against cannons in BullyBoys at >70% . At least afterwards an elite musket won against the third one at some 38% (yes I am that irresponsible occasionally). He has 2 galleons in range to reinforce (or evacuate?) the city.
Regrettably I could not draft Besouro, because even if you found a city yourself on razed terrain it can still be 100% another guy's culture
If Charriu backstabbed us it would get a bit hairy, but he sent diplo to the effect of him joining on turn 205.
Assuming all goes well, keep or raze the coastal cities is another question. Of course right now Laz controls that sea perfectly, but we are not too far away from showing up with the first destroyer... (blue dot and a fort are planned for)

I might drop an artist bomb here, depending on necessity and on what the next roll at Paranauê gives us. Without it I have actually no idea how to get culture into this place at an acceptable pace. Missionaries, even if timed well with the revolt, are sloooooow.... but I don't really feel like researching drama when there is so much else to race for. Rush buy a salon, lol.

First destroyer of civac's sighted, but just 1. I trust our fish alliance, and draft infantry (although mostly for Laz in this first round).
Domestically I'm trying to balance Factories with executives, courthouses and military. Bonfim is interesting with regards to industrialization:


The city will be unhealthy with the factory despite having all the resources! That can be balanced with an aqueduct, but for the coal plant we'll need public transport. Hm, or we draft those merchants away, but otoh they are pretty good (changed the engineer to merchant afterwards).

[Miguelito]

So Laz has evacuated all of former Ramkland, and offered peace. We could take the last city and make peace, and proceed to develop that land.
But, Charriu promised to declare next turn, and I would love for both of them to fight (and for us to possibly take a chunk of GKC's Barbaricum in the process)

Does that make sense, or do I just want to watch the world burn? Going to pay tonight.

[Miguelito]

Curious what would happen if I clicked return to Mjmd, considering that we're playing without city trading. We'll never find out.

I've been shopping around for metals at 3gpt each. Sometimes the response is this:


I don't quite understand it. We are no threat to him, the stuff is worthless to him and we are the only possible buyers. Why react offended?
But some trades are running:


Now these payments, together with the fact that all Mining offices generate negative gpt despite the Wall Street HQ, of course run against our main objective here - somehow become economically competitive with Piccadilly (and the few others who are ahead of us). But first off, we need the hammers, if for nothing else but to keep up in power with civac - and if we consider them a substitute for slavery they provide a GNP benefit for allowing us Emancipation and keeping our pop (outside of drafting, which accounts for 10 pop/turn - but we are growing more than that each turn; this turn it's 14 pop). In the mid term, if things stabilize power wise, also the moment will come to channel part of the corp hammers into wealth and research. But surely not before factories and plants.
With the trades the corporation yield per city is currently 16 hammers. About 3 resources provide an extra hammer (and increase costs), and currently we have offices in 14 cities. I think the foreign payments are justified. An increased hammer yield also makes for a faster payback of the spreading costs (100h for the executive + ~70 for spreading).
6 gpt go to Frozen for spreading the corp (that's half of the proceeds in Bonfim). He actually spread it to a second city which I noted this turn, so I offered a further 6 to encourage further spreading. So my rant above is not strictly true, Tarkeel could also try selling to Frozen.

The war, at times somewhat phony:


All cities were empty when we took them (he counter razed the one on the red dot though, maybe I should not have taken it without being able to garrison properly). A few knights and foot soldiers have been killed, and we have lost a few musketeers and a knight in return.
In the next couple of turns we need to get a diagonal railroad in place. A settler is unloading in Wellerman next turn. We could plant the blue dot, or go directly for yellow, for better control of the conflict zone. Blue dot is of course interesting for the channel, but while we have a few frigates around it will not be enough to break Laz's naval superiority in the inner sea - until destroyers, that is . Another settler is finishing next turn, which should be in time. Destroyers are 3 or 4 turns away tech wise, and while I am building frigates and ironclads for the queue upgrade actually finishing them as desroyers will still take a while without the whip (and I'm not willing to cash upgrade).
That means that for the while being we can't really advance in force, because Lazteuq still controls the whole coast. Now if Charriu stays true to his word and declares next turn it might be that Lazteuq throws his weight in that direction. We can look ahead with the spy and see if we can afford to send a few infantry and stuff forward. Airships are not too far away either and would be a great help (no idea if they'll come in before the first destroyers or later).  
You see I'm spacing the dotmap uncharacteristically widely. Mostly because it's still not quite easy to free cities to build settlers. I'm not sure if it's correct - of course that way the cities grow fast, but at the same time there will always remain tiles unworked, and also a big part of the new cities' contribution is the trade income.

I offered Charriu fish/fish + 100g/100g, after another offer of War with Lazteuq + iron/iron. Despite his earlier (justified) attack on us I am hoping for everlasting friendship, ideally splitting that continent between the two of us.



So this looks nice if you discount the first row. I hope that is Amicalola, who is in a GA, and not Piccadilly who isn't. Top CY is Amica who has Biology and actually has a lot of farms fuelling his Kremlin forced labor - I don't know how he maintains such a good economy with so few cottages. At least he does seem to have a lot of buildings.
I afterwards changed research to almost finish Scientific Method btw. If we build a fort on oil, we should be able to queue upgrade to destroyers upon researching combustion, right? I might need to sim this.

Amicalola btw also took Fascism and got the general. Will he end the GA in Police State? With Kremlin his production should be better than ours. Will he go for a showdown with Cairo (both are at 45 cities), or invade to his west? Superdeath is super far behind tech wise (despite the Buddhism shrine ); Tarkeel has cavalry but he's not very big, and Amica has infantry. Donovan is large but far behind in tech.

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?

I really need to find out why our economy is so crappy, and what to do about it.

[Miguelito]

Charriu did not declare as promised. He just sent me an offer of him stopping trade with Lazteuq, and a return of fish/fish. What am I to make of that . Frustrated I returned Lazteuq's peace offer. Might have been kneejerk; he was showing very little military on our border and it might have been possible to just push ahead with infantry even alone. But with him having total control of the inner sea and surely a stack of cannons somewhere there was always the possibility of catastrophic failure, so at least that way it should play out more relaxed. Maybe we return in 10 turns with destroyers and airships added, maybe we even invade Charriu instead? After him not keeping to his word of declaring on Laz I don't really feel an obligation to honour our friendship. And that shrine surely still is the most attractive conquest target far and wide. He is doing pretty well technologically though.

Charriu, for after the game, I was quite determined to fight this through until we both would have had half of the continent each. Pretty bummed by this, but surely you'll have your reasons.

[Miguelito]

In other news, Ichabod has electricity. I fear he is going for Redentor. I am considering launching the final GA*, cash in the recent GM, build wealth and skip combustion, if it looks like that gives us a reasonable shot. Sounds like inviting disaster though... Rusten, do you want to talk sense into me?


*no way we get 4 GPs up; we just got the first of those and that one coast 1000GPP - outside of a caste GA we have no way to get GPs up in a meaningful tile apart from the NE city, and even there the next one is taking 32 turns right now - and I don't even want to run caste

[Miguelito]

Triggered the GA and set research to Physics because of course I would gamble. We're competing with Ichabod, maybe Picc, maybe Frozen, and need to watch out for civac meanwhile. There will always be the option of researching Combustion real quickly if we start to get worried.

The GA can be justified somewhat because it'll speed up industrialization; we were top MfG by a margin even before and now we can crank out factories, plants and executives even better.

I have a feeling that I will come to regret it, but I'd hate to look back and ask myself what if.

[Miguelito]

ugh, already second guessing myself a lot.
First, even with the GA and GM actually getting first to Radio still looks like a long shot. Even at 100$% research in GA we are 3rd in GNP.

But more importantly, now I'm wondering if we even really want CR that much? I had stated here that I considered it the last big chase wonder, and that remains true imo insofar as there is nothing very alluring left (Frozen built the Pentagon 3 turns ago, and the Three Gorges Dam is not great for us as we are spread on 2 continents and many islands. Space elevator isn't that huge, an additional +50% on the +260% in the IW city. More on Internet below, but it's a project not a wonder :P).

But the reason why I really wanted CR was because it would allow us to change between militaristic and economy civics, like FS/Nat, OR/theo/FR, emancipation/slavery, maybe even US/PS. But lately civac seems rather peaceful, and we have a ton of production in any case... So maybe we could just stay with economy civics and reduce the military buildup - although then again that could change civac's intentions. So ideally after all we get CR and then stay mostly in one set of civics, which we can only afford because CR enables us to switch into war mode whenever necessary.... does that make sense?

Then, Internet could actually be bigger for us, because while I still believe (or hope) that we have the biggest potential on this map, currently we are lagging several techs on the others, and that would of course be a lovely way to fix that. Anyways, Radio is on the way to Computers, so the current push works in that direction as well.


It really is showing that I have next to 0 experience with the industrial / modern era outside of lurking

[Miguelito]

gotta be quick, but have a picture dump:


Laz has literally nothing in our direction. Otoh while Charriu can't defend that border city he can flank away the cannons if they ever move into his territory.


I think we don't have as many cannons


Commodore's last stand. That are two knights and two cats of Donovan's for now


add on top brutal inflation. But if we allow a share of the Corp hammers to go to wealth/research then it's highly profitable. The figure is actually outdated, as it doesn't include yet the trades with Amica that we got going afterwards while both connected:


With that Mining Inc is at 25h/city, while costing 25 gold in Corta Cana, which is currently our largest city at size 20. That is before inflation and accounting for the courthouse and, I believe, Free Market as well.
Amica has a pretty good economy, but this, after his GA, doesn't look like his eyes were on space: (edit: he's Roosevelt)


No power increase on the graphs yet, but his GA is just over. No idea where he wants to go, but he surely can make somebody's life miserable.
eot demos:


That is after witnessing Amica Kremlin-whip away over 60 food (he's building factories and plants it seems)

[Miguelito]

So, of course it sucks to delay Combustion while world top power neighbour has it:


So these could hit the island anytime taking Nav I. I don't think he will, at least yet, because the rest of his units are all super inoffensive - few destroyers, not massed, no further transports, and ultimately he has no land unit yet that can take on infantry on the offensive. And he also will want to industrialize. However I am delaying our own industrialization a bit and am building infantry and MGs in cities that can 1turn them and on the island (2turning). 3 turns before we can switch back to Nationalism

edit: and we're finishing Physics this turn, and if necessary can 1turn Combustion the next with the OF.

In a few places industrialization is overly successful:






All of these are going to produce excess overflow (I *think* it gets converted to gold somehow, but I remember I tested and it didn't? But civac did something along those lines in PB55 with warriors?). The tile assignments are not how I left them, but you get the idea. Angola is the worst offender of course. That city can 1 turn the university and still end up wasting hammers, so I'll have it building research at least during the GA. Viola can't build any unit where OF is not wasted, but nothing we can do about that, we still want units from there. Corta Cana is building an infantry this turn and then, if units are not desperately needed, will move to Research once we start wasting OF in serious numbers.

I'd like to make this feel a bit less like a monologue, is there anything you're interested in?

[Kaiser]

Thanks for the reporting, this is very interesting and I am grateful that you continue reporting this regularily.

I would be interested in your planned next strategic moves outside of redentor.
Did you manage to figure out why you perceive your economy as weaker than the other contenders?