[pb72 spoilers]: the esteemed gentleman's literature and book club

[greenline]

the overview pictures are actually pretty helpful - they do a good job of showing how dangerous the strategic picture looks for us. the problem really seems to be borders - Aetryn and Bing have mostly 2 fronts each to cover, while we are looking at 4 or 5. With cereals out of the picture, I think now is the time to go forward with proactive moves. It sucks that we had to blow the merchant that way, and it was my fault for not pushing tech harder when I saw Bing wasn't in slavery. I guess the silver lining is that the costs of spreading MinInc would have meant we couldn't have beaten Aetryn to Biology as well, but it still hurts.

Since the turn did not roll yet, I changed our 0% tech to Democracy. Why? I think now is a good time to go for Statue. The payback will not be as good as Cereals, but it is still the equivalent of adding 26 towns to our empire (which can be pure beakers or gold), and it will come instantly without needing gold to spread it. We have a super ironworks city set up and I do not think anyone can beat us to it without using an Engineer. Bing hasn't even researched Constitution and Aetryn will need to burn an Engineer not on CreCon to grab it.

After Statue, I think we should push hard for some kind of military option. Whether eliminating Xist or prepping for a direct attack on Aetryn. I would like to signal to Bing the option of splitting Aetryn without coming off as desperate.

Is a flight beeline viable for the industrial age?

also, what settings did you use to grab the overview shots? I have not used flying camera before in civ4, it seemed hard to zoom out without running into the globe view

[Tarkeel]

Since the turn did not roll yet, I changed our 0% tech to Democracy. Why? I think now is a good time to go for Statue. The payback will not be as good as Cereals, but it is still the equivalent of adding 26 towns to our empire (which can be pure beakers or gold), and it will come instantly without needing gold to spread it. We have a super ironworks city set up and I do not think anyone can beat us to it without using an Engineer. Bing hasn't even researched Constitution and Aetryn will need to burn an Engineer not on CreCon to grab it.

Statue sounds good; I wasn't sure how sold you were on Biology. If Aetryn burns his engineer on it instead of CreCon, I think that's a win.

Is a flight beeline viable for the industrial age?

Honestly, I'm not sure. I wouldn't skip over AssemblyLine for it, and Electricity is very good for us here.

also, what settings did you use to grab the overview shots? I have not used flying camera before in civ4, it seemed hard to zoom out without running into the globe view

I'm not using flying camera, but I did adjust the Field-of-View (FoV) slider (which is a BUG addon in CtH). I usually plkay at 62-ish.

[greenline]

I took a look at the tech tree - I thought there were more techs before Assembly Line, but we can research it directly right after Democracy. Not bad.

Tech path will probably look something like Assembly Line -> SciMeth -> Physics ? Combustion ? Biology. Will have to keep a sharp eye on where Aetryn is going.

[Tarkeel]

Combustion isn't as essential on this map since we don't need Destroyers, but getting Oil online before Tanks (and Flight!) is good. Do remember to build a few airships though, they are better than fighters for recon.

[greenline]

From what I saw of the industrial era PB airships can be pretty brutal on the offense as well - hoping to have some Machine guns in place to guard against that a bit. It would be nice to grab the free physics scientist, but Aetryn will have a head start if he skips Democracy.

[Qgqqqqq]

I find it somewhat scummy to use a post in the tech thread from another player to change one's own behaviour, so I hope that wasn't a significant factor in your decision making.

[greenline]

I find it somewhat scummy to use a post in the tech thread from another player to change one's own behaviour, so I hope that wasn't a significant factor in your decision making.

Without bringing his post in the tech thread into it, it was still very easy to infer he could reach Corp the next turn, just from seeing how quickly he had gotten to Railroad and that he was running likely close to 100% research on the slider. I would have been very concerned about leaving MinInc up to the chance of whoever logged in first. Not sure if Tarkeel wants to comment.

I don't see why it would be offensive to take tech thread posts into account, though. It just seems like a bit of information that comes out inherently in the PB format, like with PBspy showing player whips.

[Tarkeel]

I find it somewhat scummy to use a post in the tech thread from another player to change one's own behaviour, so I hope that wasn't a significant factor in your decision making.

Speaking for myself, it wasn't. We knew it was a race, and would have kept an eye on his tech regardless of what was posted in the forum.

E: I am however interested in adding a better method for resolving what would have happened if we both could found the corp on the same turn though.

E2: Also, for all we know, that Merchant was wasted as he couldn't one-turn Corporation, but that was part of our risk calculus.

[Qgqqqqq]

You could have calculated it, but would you have?

[greenline]

I would have figured it as a significant worst case scenario when I saw that they finished Railroad in 1-2 turns after researching Constitution. Corp is a cheap enough tech that you can one turn it at that rate.