[PB65 - Cornflakes] Rising from the Ashes

[Cornflakes]

I think I’m at a major decision point here during/after this GA. Do I continue economic development and head for Rifles? Or do I just swap into Police State now and use my production edge to dominate now? The issue I see is that Superdeath’s cataphracts + MJMD’s pikes + Pindicator’s depth/distance combined are enough to prevail on defense because their combined production is equivalent or slightly ahead of mine. With Banking already that is one prerequisite out of the way for rifling. From here is’s about 10,000 beakers. The first 3,500 I will get in the 8 turns of GA and if I build banks + Spiral Minaret during the GA I’ll be able to run about 300 bpt easily afterwards without wealth builds. That’s 20 turns (total of 30 from now), by which time Pindicator should just be finishing the assimilation if Bing’s territory and reaching Guilds + Engineering. Cavalry are then just “3” techs away for me, lumping the Music line together as equivalent to one Renaissance tech. At that point I ignore cannons/siege units and just ravage the countryside. Rifles as stack defenders, cavalry to fork and pillage. I don’t think I will build wealth, rather continue pumping Camel Archers after the banks (for later upgrade once Cavalry are unlocked), allow the bank bonus to assist in raising the breakeven research rate, and use production to put pressure on the rivals as well as assuring defense in the intermediate term. I believe that I have a clear lead now that Pindicator has joined me in pressuring MJMD and thus the long game is strongly in my favor.

[Cornflakes]

I logged in after MJMD played and the EP vision kicked in! It looks like in sequential mode, the other player has an opportunity to counter the spending and deny EP vision … but he either didn’t notice the spike on the EP graph, or didn’t care to counter. Anyway, he has enough material to cover the capital. At least 5 catapults and 5 war elephants that could hit my stack of 5 Camel Archers plus 10 HA+Chariots, and he has enough other junk in range with Engineering roads to throw into the capital to outnumber everything of mine that survives. He had sent me another peace + war with Pindicator, followed by straight peace which I declined to look around. I sent back a peace treaty. Peace will suit me well during the heavy infrastructure phase of the GA and will get me past the 5 turn civics lockout period after swapping at the start of the GA.

[Cornflakes]

Here's a screenshot of the aborted EvilPlot™ towards MJMD's capital:

   

MJMD made the correct choice to get Engineering ahead of Guilds. Without that I might just have had enough, but that puts 2 extra catapults, and 2 war elephants in range of the tile where my knights would land ... and a half dozen Impi/chariots that could be stuffed as warm bodies into the capital.

Also of note, MJMD captured one of Pindicator's border cities MORE CHAOS PLEASE!

And here's my latest EvilPlot™ that I'm pivoting to now:

   

20 Mounted units strike for the capital. Two sets of 1-movers hit the border cities. Only 5 or so defenders in each. I can hit each with 5 catapults + 10 hitters I stage next turn (T149), then invade T150.

[Cornflakes]

*logs in to get a bunch of screenshots and explain how we are definitely 100% in control of this game after conquering India*

*gets to Pindicator’s border city and sees a massive stack of catapults*

   

… sure the “hitters” are mostly longbows, and the stack looks defensive, but when you have 10 cats vs a half dozen defenders that doesn’t matter. Plus I know he has HA which can make it here in a couple turns. Money is a critical city for me and would set me back immensely if Pindicator razed while my armies are off on a campaign. Can I afford to take a chance here? Or do I keep my foot on the gas and keep blazing through the tech tree? As I’ve pondered the situation overnight I think I need to stay the course and continue my “boa constrictor” squeeze.

   

   

On the tech tee I have everything to the left. MJMD is up the Music line + Calendar, but down Guilds, Banking, CS, Paper, and Theology. His current GA is about to end in 4 turns, and he has at most 1 more MoM GA. I have not yet burned my 2nd GA which means that we both have the same number of GA turns remaining (me 8 + 8, him 4 + 12).

Pindicator cut off my research visibility while I was getting city vision on MJMD but his research has been stagnant since the Bing conquest. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have Machinery yet, and is missing everything that I am up vs. MJMD, plus no Engineering or any of the Music line that MJMD has. Sure his city count is higher and he has a little bit of a land advantage … but he’s down something like twice the number of beakers that he has actually researched.

I have lost several games by successfully completing a conquest, only to be knocked down and had the conquest stripped from me. My goal coming into this game was to not let that happen again. I’m quite pleased with the trajectory of the game, why take a bigger risk now? On defense I can easily hold back all of Superdeath, MJMD, and Pindicator while outpacing them all in research. Why force action when I have the positional advantage? I’m going to squeeze the opponents, grind out the steady advance, promote my pawn to a queen, and then seal up the victory.

   

I forgot to sort the units and buildings tables, posting the stats for the number of improvements. I have 5 or so new windmills under construction and will then will work on converting the mines over to windmills. Each of those windmills is a commerce added vs. the mines, and I have several spare happiness in most cities to grow out onto the extra windmills. So Replaceable Parts will be worth around 30 hpt base when we get there.

[Cornflakes]

Money is a critical city for me and would set me back immensely if Pindicator razed while my armies are off on a campaign. Can I afford to take a chance here? Or do I keep my foot on the gas and keep blazing through the tech tree? As I’ve pondered the situation overnight I think I need to stay the course and continue my “boa constrictor” squeeze.

Thanks to SAC missing a turn over New Year's I had some extra time to think and realized that there was a 3rd option:

   

The War/Peace! 10 turns of security from Pindicator, 9 from MJMD ... all systems are GO!

Also the 2nd GP was an Engineer. I've been thinking about my options there as well. I could use the Prophet for a shrine and the Engineer for ... Taj? But Nationalism is 15 turns without the GA, and I'll have around 15% Engineers for my next couple, and then close to 50% engineer from the capital in around 25 turns.

[Cornflakes]

GA time  just in time for Charriu’s T150 report? Or does that take start-of-turn stats? Demos, spoilers have the “before” shot:

   

   

My GNP in the GA is still behind MJMD’s but his is inflated by 10% KTB on Guilds, while mine is lacking any arrow bonuses on Divine Right. But just look at that MFG 

My food is lagging pretty significantly behind Pindicator, due in combination to my focus on production from mines and windmills on my brown land, working a dozen specialists, and his extra few cities and pop. I am not concerned about the food deficit. For one thing I’m fixing the city and pop deficit now by conquering SAC. But also I’m intentionally trading food for research and production to further my long-term squeeze. I’ll have +80 or so gpt from banks (post GA number), +60 from Spiral Minaret, and +60 from the Shrine by the end of the GA. That will bump my research rate up from 0% (   ) up to 50%

Top 5 cities, and the wonder ownership, are fairly even.

   

Note however that Pindicator's wonders are mostly 1-shot whereas mine, MJMD's, and Superdeath's provide ongoing bonuses. My capital is somewhat stunted due to cranking out a couple specialists earlier on, and then stagnating on plains hill mines for the Bureaucracy-boosted production. Now that the mines are being converted to windmills it will be able to slowly grow again. Around 10 more turns for the first pop growth since I depleted the granary while running specialists in the previous GA. After that around 8 or so turns for the next, but creeping up again as the added plains windmills eat into the surplus.

But now the moment that you all have been waiting 100 turns for ...

   

WAR!!! CONQUEST!!!  

First a question for Charriu, a Curious Civplayer request: Can you investigate how the Sentry promotion works? It is advertised as "+1 visibility range" ... after moving one HA to the highlighted tile with my 2-mover stack, I promoted to Sentry expecting to reveal the two RED circled hills to check for catapult stacks. I'm certain that SAC doesn't have anything worth noting since his power graph has been flat for 100 turns except for bumps corresponding to longbows, but I wanted to double check as an extra precaution. Instead of getting visibility on one extra ring of tiles like I was expecting, the only tiles that were un-fogged when I took the Sentry promo were the two in the YELLOW box The promotion does not add 1 ring of tiles, but it also doesn't work by "elevating" my unit +1 (as if my sentry was on a hill instead of flatland) because from a hill I still wouldn't be able to see those two tiles in the YELLOW box.

And now to answer the big question you must be wondering: Why did Cornflakes wait until now, rather than conquering the weak and backwards India 100 turns ago? The answer has two components:
1) Because after conquering SAC's territory I would be in a clear "Early Leader Syndrome" position with no cooperation from either MJMD or Pindicator. As-is I was able to get Pindicator to strike MJMD with me during his GA and thus slow them both down somewhat in razed cities and military buildup. Now that I'm launching this upcoming GA and making my civics swaps there will be no more doubt about my position as clear game leader, and thus no additional impact of the diplo malus.
2) Cataphracts. Sure I could have easily whipped up an army to conquer India, but then that would certainly have set back my tech rate. As-is I just barely reached Engineering about 5 turns ahead of Superdeath's Guilds. Somehow I have managed to gain a solid tech lead while running a budget deficit at 0% for half of the game (*cough* PHIramids *cough*). In the alternative SAC early-conquest if I reach Engineering 10 turns after Superdeath's Cataphracts come online, I'm dead. Not literally dead, but I'd have to give back the Indian conquests to Superdeath, while MJMD puts additional pressure on my western core cities.

SAC has longbows now thanks to the delay, but not more than 2 per city. I'll lose a few catapults and bleed off some of my outdated axes which are costing me a fortune in unit maintenance The capture gold will also help fund research during the GA

[Tarkeel]

My understanding is that Sentry works exactly as described: It gives you an extra tile of vision, but as you say, does not change elevation. So the red tiles are hidden behind hills, while the yellow tiles are over lower ground, and thus visible.

[Cornflakes]

One more screenshot ... since I have city vision on most of MJMD:

   

I find his choice of unit types curious. His current-era military is all War Elephants or Catapults. To me War Elephants seem expensive for what they do. They don't get defensive bonuses, but they are only one move so they don't make good active defenders and they can't flank away catapults. His 28 catapults will shred any stack and then I would rather have 30 HA for cleanup due to their mobility and the ability to flank Catapults. A stack of 30 HA can also cover a lot more ground quickly than his war elephants can. He could have thrust a stack of HA at Pindicator's core and forced peace before wheeling them back to fight me off, instead of abandoning his border fortress for me to raze.

[Cornflakes]

My understanding is that Sentry works exactly as described: It gives you an extra tile of vision

but then with an *extra* tile of vision would you not expect to be able to see the RED circled tiles which are 2 tiles away, since the *normal* range is 1?

[Tarkeel]

My understanding is that Sentry works exactly as described: It gives you an extra tile of vision

but then with an *extra* tile of vision would you not expect to be able to see the RED circled tiles which are 2 tiles away, since the *normal* range is 1?

No, since the tile between them is a hill and your unit is on flatland. I'm unsure if you could see them if your tile was a hill. Similar to how your ships don't see inland after Compass.