[PB72 SPOILERS] Aetryn learns humility

[Mjmd]

Agreed cereal mills is much more important to get cities up fast then do creative const after courthouse.

Note on recon mode. Its god mode. You literally can't intercept it. I actually made a suggestion to change this in mod thread, but it never gained traction / unsure if it would have been too hard to implement. One of the reasons I was fine with you building 5-6 of the things. They literally don't go bad.

Aetryn and I actually had an EP conversation because Bing is spending SOOO much on Aetryn. And I pointed out that we've basically gotten to the portion of the game that city vision through EP doesn't matter anymore. Investigation if he gets that far MIGHT* but city vision he can basically get most of it anyways. In fact it might be better if he has city vision and doesn't do airships for vision as might still be able to hide stacks.

[aetryn]

Turn 244-245: Milestones

Domestics: Same ol' same ol', spreading Corporations, mercilessly whipping Marines. Next turn Combustion finishes and once I hook up oil I can start mercilessly whipping Tanks instead. And maybe planes after that.

Bing has now spread my food corp, Cereal Mills, 3 times, to his large cities. I'm wondering if he thinks he'll earn enough back through getting out from a food/health cap on these cities to pay for feeding me 37 gpt (4 gold x 3 branches x 3.1 gold multiplier in my capital), but at the very least it funds my research engine. Bing is in Nationalism, but not in Slavery, so he can draft but not whip, but it's possible he plans to switch Civics soon. Well, he can't replicate Kremlin, so I think this favors me.

Romehonor Isthmus:



Notice Bing still building a fort on the one tile I haven't managed to claim yet, but looked how far it's ticked up in my favor! It's not going to be his for more than another handful of turns. Worse, I may push Circei off some of its productive tiles, including a second gold. Finally, note that I've claimed stone for the first time all game! Take that, mapmaker!. (No offense actually intended, Krill, just amused it took me 245 turns to secure a source of stone).

Demos:
Another milestone is that I have passed Bing for the strongest army.



I still have a serious promotion disadvantage, but the tech edge from having Marines out probably outweighs that for now.

GNP chart just to show off, this is HEAVILY skewed by Creative Construction spewing culture everywhere, but still:



What next:

My moment of vulnerability in the south has basically passed. Technically he could move all of his troops to the one tile he controls, then declare war, and then move them further, but it's still not quite at Rome even in that case. Plus, I now have superior forces in theater, and have fairly minimal commitments elsewhere (in the Colony War area Greenline has mostly Machine Guns, which stymied my attackers but are no real threat to take Julian back). It's time to start thinking a bit more long term. What are the win conditions here:

1) Decaptitation
Bing (and Greenline) have HEAVILY spread Mining Inc. Greenline's economy is suffering because he doesn't get the HQ revenue. Bing's economy should suffer even worse if he doesn't get it either. Razing that city seems like it ought to lead to a concession fairly soon, once it becomes obvious they can't keep up in tech. The plan would be this:


Get Open Borders with Greenline, use his territory to liberate Diamond Age back to him, at which point the light blue line gets put back into his culture and opens up a strike on Creation, which I would raze. The problem is, Bing is guarding heavily against this. Diamond Age is chock full of Machine Guns, and Creation is also still very heavily garrisoned despite "technically" being safe from Greenline's immediate attack. And before too long the culture on the important tiles will equalize and this will no longer work. Still, it might be in play if Bing decides (or is forced) to redeploy some of these defenders elswehere.

2) Weather the Storm
Bing (and presumably Greenline, assuming they can put aside their differences and unite against me) attack into me, I use superior tech and Kremlin production to push them back, they concede because they can't possibly break me after that. Not much I can do about this scenario except continue to grow/tech/spread corps, but the moment has almost passed for this, as I'm on the cusp of Tanks and planes won't be far behind, and they probably aren't going to enjoy Bombers getting at their tile improvements and rails. But I can totally flub this through boneheaded play or just the awful Civ 4 unit interface (click on the stack, guess how many units will be selected? Nobody knows!), so I need to stay on my toes.

3) I knock Bing down
There's a possibility Bing does something like Electricity->Radio and ignores better units. If he does this, I probably just sweep into him with tanks and planes and do enough damage to win a concession, though without taking out Mining Inc HQ, there's a possibility this lets Greenline back into the game just enough to keep us going and we end up in a (later) scenario 2.

4) To infinity, and beyond?
Finally, there's the highly unlikely scenario that Bing continues with military tech and builds up enough to make me attacking him a poor idea, but continues to faff around with Greenline and never gets around to attacking me. Here I assume I just amass enough of a tech lead to show they can't stop a spaceship, or if they're particularly stubborn, actually launch a spaceship, but we can't actually have a Pitboss ending with an ACTUAL game end condition, can we? This seems unlikely just because it basically requires the opponents to stop playing to win when it's already clear that I'm in the lead and will be even MORE clear in about 10 turns.

While we wait, I'm working on some ideas for striking at Bing in the event of war that I'm not quite ready to share yet.

[aetryn]

T246-249: Gearing up for tanks

Nothing much to report here. I momentarily rested from whipping a bit while I put up an oil well, but the first two naturally produced tanks roll of the assembly line next turn and then the Great Tank Whipping will happen. Meanwhile, Bing continues to spread Cereal Mills, and I ran out my gold supply spreading my corps to my own cities and had to slow down tech 1 turn to Flight (probably worth it). I founded a new city at the Northeast end of my border with Bing to exert more cultural pressure on that area, and Bing pulled out the stack he had positioned in the center of his border. Some of the cities showed beefed up garrisons, but the vast majority of that stack went east, as I spotted Greenline threatening some of Bing's conquered cities. Also, I have Open Borders with Greenline now, so Bing has to beware of attacks through his territory. I expect in 2 turns after I've gathered up all the new tanks I will decide what area looks most juicy to target, or if maybe I just wait even longer. But Bing looks very stretched at the moment to defend all the places I can hit, and my cultural tide keeps sweeping closer to his cities. Next turn the Romehonor Isthmus is finally fully flipped to me, so I can pull those garrisons to a more central location for action.

Also, I've decided to promote OceanQueen to a first class city, as it has lots of mature cottages sitting around to work. So it's on multiplier infrastructure in the near future so that it can get those tiles working and productive. I probably don't NEED more economic dominance, but it will be good just to help solidify tech edge. Chastity, which is primarily a fishing village, is also getting rested a bit and building some multipliers (it's built some already) just because 3 commerce coast is now worth more than a lot of farm/production tiles simply because I can artificially create food and production with corps but I can't artificially produce commerce.

[Mjmd]

So I've been trying to find AirBombDefense values for tiles, but have been utterly failing. However thought I would post how bombing tile improvements works. This is something I inquired about in PB66. Because I was trying to kill forts and it was proving VERY hard. Plemo had also tested and thought it was impossible. 

Charriu — 04/23/2023 4:03 PM
So here is how bombing works.

You roll a number between 0 and iBombRate and compare it to a random number between 0 and iAirBombDefense.
If it's higher or equal to AirBombDefense the improvement is pillaged.

Taking your example of fighter against fort. That would be 8 against 20. Therefore less likely to happen

Fighter iBombRate = 8
Jet Fighter iBombRate = 12
Bomber iBombRate = 16
Stealth Bomber iBombRate = 20
Guided Missile iBombRate = 16

So basically you roll a D8 vs a D20 in my example and you have to hope the D8 wins. Once I got bombers I made sure to use bombers vs forts when I could. 

From experience forts are hardest and other things are much easier even for fighters. I swear I found the defense values somewhere at one point, but my googling is failing today.

Edit: BTW for the record if you do destroy a fort the units get kicked out. Aircraft go to nearest base. Both of which you can use to your advantage situation dependent.

[aetryn]

T250: Fireworks?

The news of the turn:

Bing cancels open borders. Scouts he kicked out almost certainly don't matter due to airship visibility, but there's a few places I can't reach. Not sure it really benefits him to do this unless he can't use the trade at all. I assume he also cancelled his swaps with me at the same time though I forgot to look, which costs me one happy and one health, but costs him happiness as well.

Greenline is moving:



That's a lot of Infantry. Here's what Bing has on defense:



Of course, Bing has a turn to respond. And I'm not exactly the most reliable analyst of modern combat odds, but that looks like a stack Greenline can take at the moment. I suspect this will force Bing to pull more forces off other fronts, which may be good for me.

Finally, how about I get some tanks:

[xist10]

Fear the spearmen.
And 300 points in tanks ? After that another round ?

[aetryn]

Fear the spearmen.
And 300 points in tanks ? After that another round ?

It's not all tanks - there were a couple buildings in there. But mostly tanks. Some of these cities don't grow fast enough for another round immediately, as I'm only able to spread Cereal Mills so fast without killing off my tech rate. But there will be more. Then the question becomes what to do with them.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I'm only up to page 4 so far (just after Generosity's founding) so I don't know the full game-state yet, but it seems to me that having a lot of a military unit and one clear rival left for the win - well, the solution suggests itself.

Were I in your position, I know my first plan to win would be to use my economic lead to mass up enough forces to take or burn just enough of Bing's cities to remove any chance of him coming back later, without taking enough risks to expose myself to greenline. Is there any available plan that would do that?

[aetryn]

I'm only up to page 4 so far (just after Generosity's founding) so I don't know the full game-state yet, but it seems to me that having a lot of a military unit and one clear rival left for the win - well, the solution suggests itself.

Were I in your position, I know my first plan to win would be to use my economic lead to mass up enough forces to take or burn just enough of Bing's cities to remove any chance of him coming back later, without taking enough risks to expose myself to greenline. Is there any available plan that would do that?

That's the plan behind building up a lot of tanks. I'm aiming to gather them over the next few turns, then invade wherever Bing is weak. The geographical shape benefits me here in that it's slower for Bing to get his army from one side of the empire to the other, while I can strike at either end and a couple points further in, plus Greenline is massing a big force to attack Bing in a different spot. I think Bing will have to leave something vulnerable to either a massed assault or a 2-mover assault with tanks. My army's kind of messily dispersed this turn, so I didn't take screenshots, but I will take some next turn to illustrate my thinking.

Greenline CAN take Julian (one of the colonies I took off him earlier) back without much trouble if he really wants to, but I don't know that I really care - I have solid culture behind it now, so I'd have plenty of time to respond and I haven't invested much into that city, so it wouldn't be a huge loss. Beyond that, his only point of attack is Huckleberry Finn, and I have a massive force there (one of the points where I can strike at Bing, so it's built up to enable that). There is some danger he could hit it with artillery and do a lot of damage. At the moment I suspect Greenline is looking for me to inflict some damage on Bing so he can go in and retake his own cities from Bing, rather than turning on me immediately. But I might be misreading his positioning. If I do succeed in knocking Bing back, it is probably a good idea to reduce the garrison in Huck Finn so it's not vulnerable to artillery - this might again be a case of a city I don't really care that much if Greenline takes back, as long as he doesn't kill off a lot of forces in the process.

The real question is what I do with Bing's cities. Most of them have Mining Inc, which I don't really want no matter WHO owns the HQ. But some of them also have Cereal Mills, which pays me. Still, I probably lean toward burn and replace except where it's really clear I can hold them long term. It's just faster with Creative Construction to get a new city functional as a military outpost if I burn and replace than if I take it, and I probably care more about lowering Bing's econ than boosting my own at this point.

[Mjmd]

I don't mind keeping mining inc as long as culture doesn't matter. It is better than create con and you do have a lot of those resources. Saves you a 100h on exec and the econ benefit is going to be min for whomever has HQ.

Mind you I don't support spreading it. I'm very confused why Bing is spreading cereal mills. If he was in slavery I MAYBE could understand. He is Aztec after all, but ya its a large swing in commerce since you have all the multiplier buildings up.