[PBEM22] Friends with Benefits

[Krill]

I don't think we need to test further, we know the pillage yields are duplicated, we know the XP is duplicated, we know that from CS onwards we get +5 strength on every unit (although turn order might affect it ending early and giving other players in front of us a single turn window when we don't have it this is true of any alliance). It gives us a credible defence and offence against England and Indonesia and Japan. Let's do it and see where it takes us.

I'll let you post the pick and I'm very much OK with a thread title referencing FWB.

[Krill]

Yeah, I was. Compared to spawn 1 pillage every however many turns equals the trade route yield, the strengh bonus is better than the fleets effect for that time frame and the armada is just plain uneconomic to achieve.

Biggest issue is that one defence is to not improve coast accessible tiles but if we so it's a straight win for us.

[Krill]

Would war cart upgrades not be the smarter route for a slightly difference unit balance?

[Krill]

Fair enough, but not like we can build frigates without nitre so tech path isn't exactly optional here.

[Krill]

We need to figure out how I will get units to each of your roving packs, but that's not for now.

At this point I'm just preparing for the power couple jobs and Woden planting Oppidum one tile off the coast.

[Krill]

Well I need units to soak up not just XP bit also gold, science, culture and faith, so it makes sense that I get these out sooner rather than later, but how quickly will depend on the map. The XP is just a bonus, I imagine I am going to need that loot ASAP to grow quickly enough to be relevant.

Counter point for you, perhaps I should play Norway and you get Sumeria so the frigate pump is first in turn order I can stream each turn anyway so everything would be played as directed anyway.

[Krill]

There are some pretty strong potential rewards there and it looks like they are not linked to difficulty? When do barb camps start spawning? T20? And I have seen a camp spawn 4 tiles from a capital, in the FoW. Would be nice for that to happen again...

[Krill]

I'll test that tomorrow.

I was looking at Gaul, Ambiorix is going to be a right bustard to break down after landing, so I agreevwith your assessment to just pillage and move on with him.

[Krill]

Here is an idea - we completely drop the land army and I spam longships exclusively for better containment while you do only half a dozen quads to train and upgrade later and then farm, farm, farm.

This way you don't need much production, just pure science, so once your districts and infra are ready, you can spam ziggurats and work them for a very big extra. You can even take a science golden age instead of culture to speed it up further if we are on track to get the alliance before they get caravels/jongs.

We only need to burn a few coastal cities to make them a non-threat and once we crack Japan and Portugal it should be downhill from there. This seems the fastest way to victory.

Ps. Had a look at the tech paths and they are really good. I do sailing->shipbuilding and then beeline nitre with no detours whatsoever, while you only do astrology->celestial navigation for harbours and then everything is on the path to frigates. I also won't be building any districts other than the GP which means a lot more ships. This is probably the most streamlined possible, sacrificing some long term prospects with me foregoing districts but raising our short and mid term power significantly.

Ps2. Actually we aren't sacrificing anything. My districts will inflate by 30 which isn't too bad at all and I can even detour to lock the cost if my science is decent. Getting to nitre is only ~800 beakers with the prerequisites and shouldn't be hard.

And the opening and initial techs are the same either way so we'll see which way to go when we get to it.

Right now we don't even know what our starting areas are like, our access to coast, or what our opponents are going to do. Realistically we can work out various strategies and counter strategies in a general sense, but I am always hesitent to look at them in further detail because there are so many unknown variables.

That said, I can see why we'd do this, but then it is far harder to force a concession if other players believe we are ourselves economically crippled, as they can believe they have a route to get back into the game. I reckon that regardless of our plan, we do need to build at least a half decent economic base and use pillages to bury everyone else. Please keep in mind there is the potential for our pillage routes to be minimized, if there are sufficient land units to destroy a single pillaging unit we would end up trading at a loss even if we limited the naval involvement. ie we might delay but not stop naval development.

[Krill]

Can you test if our builders can do improvements in the other's territory before alliance? I know you can do it in city states where you are suze, but I don't think our territories are considered friendly by default and so the builders won't work.

I've been toying with a few build orders and it will help if I can send you a builder but need to check if it's an option in the first place.

If it turns out to work, can you also check if you can build me a ziggurat? And also once we have alliance and you can build - can you also chop with my city getting the production? (probably not but good to confirm)

I checked, we cannot improve each others terrain either before or after an alliance is signed, even as teams. So if send a 1 charge builder to you it is only useful for popping the barb encampments.