ALC Game #7: Frederick/Germany

[Eqqman]

No he wouldn't !

Don't you love a specialist economy?

I'll forgive you .

Don't get another numbers discussion going or I'll report you for trolling .

 

[notoptimal]

I think this turns out to be one of those things you expect intuitively to happen but is not actually the case. Increases in WW are calculated separately for each team you are at war with, but it all goes into the same WW pile once accumulated. It may look like there are separate piles if you only have short wars with little WW buildup and enough time between wars for it to go away. Pile up a huge amount of WW, then make peace and attack somebody you've never fought before right after and you'll see it all come back.

Long time lurker on these threads, been reading and learning much in the discussions...application of said lessons, though....

The war weariness issue came up in the discussion thread for Realms Beyond Epic 6, which is an always war game. According to Sirian here (post #15, halfway down the page), there is no WW for any battles within your cultural borders. He also states that WW is also tallied on a per-Civ basis, meaning that once Khan is/was eliminated in this game, all WW attributable to the Mongols should be removed immediately.

One other note (dunno if this has also been mentioned before) -- WW is based primarily (but not wholly) upon the (demo screen) power of units lots, so losing more modern units will ramp up WW faster than earlier-era units. Depending on what units Sisiutil is losing in the start of the Kill Monty campaign, the rapid ramp up in WW is probably a manifestation of this.

notopt

 

[Phrederick]

No he wouldn't !

Don't you love a specialist economy?

I'll forgive you .

I think you misunderstood me. I meant that if he switched out of representation, he would lose roughly half of his research. Surely you agree with that?

 

[Eqqman]

One other note (dunno if this has also been mentioned before) -- WW is based primarily (but not wholly) upon the (demo screen) power of units lots, so losing more modern units will ramp up WW faster than earlier-era units.

This would explain what I'm often seeing- I get a level of WW from fighting with one era's units, then I attack the next guy with the next era's units. If the increase is faster with more modern units then when I check WW later on it looks like it never went down in the first place.

 

[Betafor]

I think you misunderstood me. I meant that if he switched out of representation, he would lose roughly half of his research. Surely you agree with that?

Yeah i thought you were describing increasing culture, saying "You will lose half your research by incresing culture, but ..."

 

[Phrederick]

Yeah i thought you were describing increasing culture, saying "You will lose half your research by incresing culture, but ..."

Yeah, I didn't word it well. "It is better to increase the culture slider than to lose half your research by changing out of representation."

 

[cabert]

Okay I did some tests to try and prove or disprove this, started a game and used the worldbuilder to start a war and net myself some huge losses. Had 8 unhappiness from WW in the capital, elimated that guy, then started a war on a new guy. Next turn I was only at 1 WW. So now I have to figure out what was going on in the games where it looked exactly like all my WW merged together.

sometimes, you face a defensive pact, and then it may be "collective ww"?

Hmmph.. you'd think with all these emoticons they'd have one with a guy scratching his head in puzzlement, I'll have to settle for .

try this one

 

[UncleJJ]

There were maybe 10 turns, I think, between finishing off Kublai and declaring on Monty, and WW was barely a factor at first except in the Serais--but that was because of Aztec cultural pressure. OTOH, WW appears to be rising quickly in some cities, especially my oldest ones like Hamburg. There, I'm getting a "we will not fight with our brothers and sisters of the faith" ding as well, probably because the city has been resolutely Buddhist for so long.

I'm anticipating WW and dealing with it in several ways. Frankfurt has nothing else to build right now, so it's pumping out missionaries to take advantage of the FR happy bonus. I'm also building happy boosters like markets as well as Jails for WW reduction.

I'm reluctant to switch away from Representation and lose a lot of my research, so I think once I have the Pentagon, if WW is a big issue, I'll switch from Vassalage to Nationhood. I may divert research to Fascism at some point in order to build Mount Rushmore as well.

I hate to sound like a broken record but the answer to WW and Motherland and Brothers-and-Sisters is simple ...

Crack the whip . All those forms of are dependent on the city population so reducing size by say 3 helps much more than you might first think. You will need Mt Rushmore and Jails in big cities if you are going to war continually. I also build temples (of any religion) and even catherals (of state reliigion) for extra in big cities.

With adequate precautions I've found that the best civics at this stage when at war, which is pretty much all the time, are:

Representation, Free Speech, Slavery, Mercantilism, Organised Religion.

I find that provides the best balance of productivity and control of unhappiness in my home cities and the newly conquered ones. Run the culture slider at 20% and that will give a lot of extra happiness in developed cities and enough culture (with Free Speech) to expand the fat cross in newly captured cities.

Good Luck, I am most interested in your approach and the variety of advice you're getting..

 

[cabert]

don't bother with high cost solutions to ww!
build theaters, everywhere
use culture slider
enjoy

don't forget you need the border expansions anyway!

 

[Phrederick]

I would not run Free Speech. As the culture slider rises, you'll be getting a lot of culture anyway. Nationhood provides +2 in all cities with Barracks, or Vassalage with it's +xp. After the war ends and all the cities have come out of revolt, then it might be useful to run Free Speech, but I really don't think it has much use until then.

Also, why Org. Religion? I doubt many missionaries or buildings will be constructed, and it's high upkeep.

 

[Nares]

I haven't followed this game much, though it seems the SE is running strongly.

I think the most important thing to keep in mind, however, is that with the start of the Industrial era, you should begin looking to switch to a Cottage based economy, which I fail to find any mention of anywhere in the thread.

Biology is very much helpful in making the transition, as it allows you to convert those pre-Biology Farms to Cottages without sacrificing specialists.

This is certainly the point where a Cottage based economy begins to outpace a specialist based economy, as access to the most important Cottage related civics and assocaited techs finally plays a role.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Actually switching to a Cottage based economy is probably Not worth it... with Biology an SE is almost as good as a CE and a CE takes a long time to convert.

 

[UncleJJ]

Sisiutil is currently running Free Religion for diplomatic reasons I think. Organised religion lets him build missionaries anywhere with the religion, and gives 25% bonus to building buildings and it would cost him 17 gold more than Free Religion. Even if he does want to run Free Religion in the long term spreading the religions he has will make that more useful and net some money.

Actually switching to a Cottage based economy is probably Not worth it... with Biology an SE is almost as good as a CE and a CE takes a long time to convert.

Most of Monty's land seems to be farms already so it will be an easy takeover if he sticks with farms and specialists.

 

[Betafor]

This is why i have ALWAYS been against switching from SE to CE -

People say the reason to switch is that a CE becomes more powerful then a SE in the later game - But people don't say WHY a CE becomes more powerful.

The answer - Towns. Towns get all the bonuses of printing press, free speech, ect.

Sure - if we can harness the Town CE after running an SE, i'd say go for it! Except we can't - It takes over HALF the game for towns to really come into their own! Think about it - if you swich to cottages, your cottages will have to take EXACTLY as many turns to go to towns, and by that time not only is your econ crushed from running less specialists, the game is pretty much over time wise - meanwhile the AI have probably almost launched the ship!

 

[Tennyson]

I'm trying an experiment with my current game - dedicating one pop in big cities to building towns. When the town is built, I leave the town as-is and move him to a new cottage. That might give me the option to "transition" later.

edit: I should note that it's already given me a nice option when I want to switch around the hammer/wealth ratio of a city for a few turns.

 

[Phrederick]

I think the most important thing to keep in mind, however, is that with the start of the Industrial era, you should begin looking to switch to a Cottage based economy, which I fail to find any mention of anywhere in the thread.

One thing that I have heard mentioned in threads on specialist economies, is that because it loses some advantages to cottages in the later games, it can be worth it to transition to a cottage-based economy.

UncleJJ: Org Religion would only make sense to me during a buildup phase of the game. If Sisiutil chooses domination, and I think he is, then the rest of the game should be spent building units.

 

[Eqqman]

I think the most important thing to keep in mind, however, is that with the start of the Industrial era, you should begin looking to switch to a Cottage based economy, which I fail to find any mention of anywhere in the thread.

There's no mention of it since we're trying to disprove the idea that you're forced to convert to cottages to keep up in the late game.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

There's no mention of it since we're trying to disprove the idea that you're forced to convert to cottages to keep up in the late game.

My impression is that the real need for the conversion to a cottage economy comes from the space race technologies, some of which cost nearly twice as much as those in the current era. Since Sisiutil isn't going for a space race victory and should have the game finished long before any AI is threatening to win by space race, I don't see how this game will prove or disprove that theory either way.

At this point, once research on Flight is completed, it hardly matters how long it takes to research any other technologies. Panzers, infantry, and destroyers should be adequate to take out Hatshepsut. Artillery, Electricity (prereq for Radio), and/or Radio (bombers) would be useful follow-on technologies to speed up the war's conclusion and/or to help take out Caesar's border cities if necessary, but even the most expensive of those (Radio) has the same beaker cost (3000) as Industrialism. Genetics, Computers, Composites, Rocketry, Robotics, Fiber Optics, and Fusion all cost over 4500.

 

[pigswill]

Minor point:electricity is prereq for industrialism so bombers relatively cheaper to acquire.
OTOH artillery requires steel, physics and rifling making it easier to acquire than industrialism.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

Minor point:electricity is prereq for industrialism so bombers relatively cheaper to acquire.

Good point. I didn't notice that arrow on my chart.

OTOH artillery requires steel, physics and rifling making it easier to acquire than industrialism.

According to Sisiutil's last update, Physics and Rifling are already researched, and Railroads is in progress (implying that Steel has been researched). I think that means the remaining useful military technologies and their costs (not necessarily in any order) are

• Artillery = 2000
• Combustion = 2400
• Assembly Line = 2600
• Electricity (prereq) = 2800
• Industrialism = 3000 + Assembly Line + Electricity
• Flight = 3000 + Combustion
• Radio = 3000 + Electricity

Note that I'm not actually using the saved game to construct this list, so I may be off here or there. I've ignored mechanized infantry, modern armor, and the stealth airplanes. Those are far enough away that I don't think it's worth considering them.