[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[Commodore]

Communism

[...] The 10% hammer boost is small but definitely not nothing. [...]

Micro challenge for you: Try and make the +10% hammer boost a net positive instead of negative with rounding losses in the first 50 turns.

[El Grillo]

Also it allows your neighbor to build army while you build [The Internet] for them, and then capture it from you. So there’s that.

I was actually not sure how capturing a city with a finished Project works, and you can't add them in via Worldbuilder to easily test... so I whipped up a mod that made The Internet cost 1h at Agriculture, and here are the results:

- When you complete a project, it does not show up in the city screen of the city that built it. If you look at the Top 5 Cities/Wonders demo screen, it doesn't list a city there either.
- Once you've built a project, it can't be taken from you short of elimination. In the test, the AI built the project in its capital, but if I gave them a second city and captured the capital, I would not get the benefits of the project, and the Top 5 Cities/Wonders screen still showed that civ as the owner of the project.

I wouldn't be surprised if projects were originally supposed to be able to be contributed to simultaneously across multiple build queues or even civs, as they all have a "1 per team" limit instead of a "1 per player" or "1 per game" limit.

[scooter]

Also it allows your neighbor to build army while you build [The Internet] for them, and then capture it from you. So there’s that.

I was actually not sure how capturing a city with a finished Project works, and you can't add them in via Worldbuilder to easily test... so I whipped up a mod that made The Internet cost 1h at Agriculture, and here are the results:

- When you complete a project, it does not show up in the city screen of the city that built it. If you look at the Top 5 Cities/Wonders demo screen, it doesn't list a city there either.
- Once you've built a project, it can't be taken from you short of elimination. In the test, the AI built the project in its capital, but if I gave them a second city and captured the capital, I would not get the benefits of the project, and the Top 5 Cities/Wonders screen still showed that civ as the owner of the project.

I wouldn't be surprised if projects were originally supposed to be able to be contributed to simultaneously across multiple build queues or even civs, as they all have a "1 per team" limit instead of a "1 per player" or "1 per game" limit.

Interesting, I actually wondered about the Internet after I wrote that, so I'm glad you checked.

Micro challenge for you: Try and make the +10% hammer boost a net positive instead of negative with rounding losses in the first 50 turns.

FAIR.

Artillery and SAM Inf are the same cost as Oracle, or a market.

View that hiw you will.

Sure, but also it takes 4 Horse Archers to have a 40% chance at defeating a SAM Infantry for just 30h more, and 5 get very comfortable odds. Plus they have mobility advantage. If those HAs are backed up by an economic tech that results in you having 20% more population at the time of the fight, who is actually winning that trade? I think at worst it's a draw. My guess is both players lose from that.

Yeah I make no analysis, only offer the observation

The remark is a good one though and segues into my Part 2 of Tech Thoughts, because in practice it's a bit more complicated than HA trading. I wanted to do a Lightning Round of other techs I've thought about that are probably not good enough here, and the military techs are sort of all in their own grouping. First, a few fun ones.


Steam Power - Workers are 50% faster, but more interestingly pair it with the Dutch and have Dike access everywhere as soon as you can muster the hammers to build them. Any size 8 city with Forge + OR can quadruple whip them with just 1h for example, or a size 6 city with overflow + triple whip could also do it. This sounds really fun, but I suspect it's just a tad too slow. You also see Coal early, although all that really does is give you a couple extra hammers. I could be convinced this belongs in the consideration tier. I wonder if I'm underrating the worker speed thing.


Economics - T0 Free Market to fuel expansion, aka free nerfed GLH. (I just remembered that is un-nerfed in this game.) If we were playing CtH, this + Protective would probably be in a higher tier. Also can pick Portugal and have Feitoria access. Basically, full trade route economy. Nobody would sign OB with you, but it wouldn't matter. Ultimate power here would probably hinge on whether there are IC trade routes available or not. If the start looks watery, maybe this is a consideration.


Superconductors - Pick Russia, build Great Library everywhere?


Ok, let's talk about the elephant in the room.


The Military Techs

The two that got brought up earlier were Artillery and Rocketry. Rocketry nets you SAM infantry - 18 Strength for 150h with no resource requirements. That's probably the single scariest unit. Artillery nets you Artillery and Anti-Tank, 18 and 14 Strength for 150h and 120h respectively. There is no way to trade evenly on raw hammers against these units in ancient or classical or really for a long time, although in the right conditions you can get reasonably close. My example above about odds is crude - what happens if the SAM infantry is on a hill or forest? You sure don't attack it. However, the larger point is still important here - you do have options at your disposal to deal with them.

That said, I would bet the player with SAMs would probably win the fight if they played it right. So why am I not prioritizing it? Well, because this isn't a duel. To me, it's the same age-old trap of all the games here where we've seen someone take Aggressive Rome, successfully rush, and then watch as a player on the other side of the world built cottages, settlers, and wonders instead and ran away with the game. Sure, SAM are better than Aggressive Praetorians (although, are they actually on hammer efficiency?). However, the economic options are better in this game.

So, sure, you could win a duel with a few SAM Infantry. But what are the other 3 players doing? Settlers are also cheaper than SAM Infantry. Victoria + State Property will have twice your cities and a bunch of FIN cottages and be an era ahead of you tech-wise and maybe get Kremlin up and running. Pacal + Bureaucap or whatever will be laughing the entire time and doing the same thing. I think picking Rocketry is a free ticket to finishing 4th place. The other problem I have with Rocketry or Artillery - they're all 1-movers! We've set map expectations to be somewhat roomy while not huge. As a result, a 1-mover rush is going to be sloooow. You could take the rather enormous time to get 2 of them built and then spend another 6-10 turns walking them at a neighbor I guess? And then you can only kill 2 enemy units per turn while your health possibly gets chipped down. So, if you're going to go the military tech route, you really have to go with 2-movers.


Gunpowder would be my choice. You obviously pair it with France. An 80h 9 Strength 2-mover is absolute lights out for anyone. Add on Shaka and good luck. I still think it's weaker than the economic techs because while you can get land, you have to find a way to convert it economically, but at least with these units you could feasibly go after multiple players. What do you need tech for after all when killing everyone pre-Knights would actually be vaguely plausible. So I think this is the clear best military tech. Speaking of Knights.


Guilds would be similarly terrifying. Obviously you have to tech HBR, but you also need to build cities, so by the time you've done that you can probably slip in HBR. You also need Iron Working which is a bigger barrier. I'd just say don't overthink it and take Byzantines, but you could get cute and take Arabia in order to skip Iron Working. I like Musketeers a bit better because they're cheaper and have defensive bonuses, but this is an option. Plus I guess you could Oracle Gunpowder, not that you'll want to spend the hammers or tech time on it.


Like I said, I wouldn't do it. But there is one big huge caveat to all this - how does the draft unfold? Let's say someone takes Communism with pick 1. That's easy. Let's say I have pick 5. I then watch in horror as 3 players take Rocketry, Artillery, and Gunpowder. That probably changes things. The reality then is the military players are not going to target each other, so they're going to feed on the greedy builders. In that case, yes, my calculus changes. The draft will be really fascinating, and if the wind starts to blow a different direction, it could really force my hand. You also have to consider if you really want to take one of these techs that unlock a killer wonder only for someone to wait for you to build it and capture it with the unit they have. So, the short answer is "not interested in a military tech" while the long answer includes "... but let's see how the draft goes."

[greenline]

BtS Fin would adore having SP watermills everywhere once machinery comes in.

[Cyneheard]

Communism

[...] The 10% hammer boost is small but definitely not nothing. [...]

Micro challenge for you: Try and make the +10% hammer boost a net positive instead of negative with rounding losses in the first 50 turns.

Expansive Workers are about it.

[Cyneheard]

Constitution feels like the underrated pick of the draft - I'm with Scooter, Communism is the best overall. Democracy and Constitution are the most consistent of the other options.

I think it's hard to give full advice without the starting screenshots - those impact a lot of the decisions (like Steam Power + Dutch). I do think the 50% worker speed boost is relevant - it's better than 10% to hammers at least.

The problem with Gunpowder as "the military tech" is it's great if we're the ONLY military tech. Otherwise, we're horribly outgunned by the bigger fish and Muskets are too expensive to suicide 2:1 or 3:1 into SAM Infantry and the like. The "3 players have military tech and 2 don't" scenario leaves Gunpowder on the short end of the stick - either the military plan fails miserably and Fin/Imp/Communism Victoria goes nuts, or it works and now we're facing SAM Infantry or Artillery in numbers that we can never beat.

[scooter]

I think it's hard to give full advice without the starting screenshots - those impact a lot of the decisions (like Steam Power + Dutch). I do think the 50% worker speed boost is relevant - it's better than 10% to hammers at least.

Yeah, the starting screenshots are really relevant here. A lot of my discussion has sort of assumed the first round would be heavy on techs, but it's not guaranteed if there's a super juicy starting location, or things like Pacal/Inca/India appeal. It's pretty impossible to figure out how those value in until we see how much they vary and how they're constructed. A particularly juicy starting location would probably be worthy of being picked at #2.

The problem with Gunpowder as "the military tech" is it's great if we're the ONLY military tech. Otherwise, we're horribly outgunned by the bigger fish and Muskets are too expensive to suicide 2:1 or 3:1 into SAM Infantry and the like. The "3 players have military tech and 2 don't" scenario leaves Gunpowder on the short end of the stick - either the military plan fails miserably and Fin/Imp/Communism Victoria goes nuts, or it works and now we're facing SAM Infantry or Artillery in numbers that we can never beat.

Yeah this is a good point. Honestly if I saw that, maybe the play might be to just take Civil Service + Egypt and Bureaucap War Chariot rush the nearest military neighbor and hope I can kill them before they get their death units online. (Or Holkan/Impi/etc.)

[scooter]

The espionage discussion in the setup thread just made me wonder whether you can pop a great spy and EP bomb and steal your opponents uber-tech.

[civac2]

Communism depends on map size. Off the cuff, I think the map is to be homungous or on deity for this option to be any good.

[scooter]

Communism depends on map size. Off the cuff, I think the map is to be homungous or on deity for this option to be any good.

Yeah it's true that State Property is probably not actually that special for awhile. I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say I just checked PB70 and it would be worth something like 2 gold per city right now, and that's fairly far into the game. Earlier it would be less than that. That's obviously straight up worse than having Mercantilism or Free Market immediately.

Communism partly hangs though because it has other stuff going for it too. Pop an Engineer for Kremlin and you have turbo whips right in the phase of the game where you care about that the most. The other thing is it unlocks Intelligence Bureau and Scotland Yard, and I sort of wonder if the game is breakable with those. Build both in your capital and you'll net 30 EP/turn pre-Courthouses from your capital. Throw in an EP bomb or two and I think you legitimately could steal an uber-tech from someone? In the mid-game too you can get full strength workshops going an era or two earlier than you're "supposed" to.


I think it's a fair point though that the economic engine portion of the tech is not really that special compared to some others. Bureaucracy's commerce bonus alone would surely out-perform it in the first 100 turns. It's possible I'm slightly over-valuing it.