JAR02, Always War Emperor

tjs282 · Jun 30, 2019

Turnlog is fairly uneventful...

Spoiler :

Handoff

First and most important: (if we weren't already sure?) the Byzzies do now know Astro (they are building CopsObs!), but no-one else even knows Theo yet. (Just before it sank!) one of our Galleys saw some Byzzie ships (Caravels or Galleons, not sure) heading north into Indian waters, which suggests that Dora may actually be fighting Gandhi at present: if so, they likely won't be tech-trading anytime soon. And Willy only just got Lit -- possibly from Gandhi.

So us getting Edu/Astro from the GLib is likely still some way off, and we may want to consider cranking up SCI% already, rather than waiting for those techs to be supplied for free. We might also want to consider starting a Palace-prebuild for Magellans somewhere: if so, Tzintz is probably our shield-richest coastal town.

Apart from that, most of what I've done this turnset is move Workers and Settlers around. I've been mining around the 2 new towns I founded in the Incan interior, because these will be useful shield-producers once they've grown (Tultitlan is only 50% corrupt as is). Workers are solo-roading Marsh and Jungle near Ulanbataar, to allow slash-n-burners to arrive in force later. The far north/ east fringes of Incaland can probably stay irrigated though, and I haven't done anything in former Mongolia.

(I did send one newly built Slave down towards Kazan, to be shipped over to Tlapanaloya, but on second thoughts, that's probably a waste of time -- as is Ta-tu's just-started Courthouse-build)

On the NW Tundra-island, Ica and my mooted Tobacco-town are also close enough to Tenoch to be potentially productive towns -- if they get Courthouses. (Ica is 'only' about 60% corrupt as is: if set to harvest 5 SPT, 2 SPT can be used; although the town will riot if you do this without a MilPol garrison!).

Ica's current Settler-build can/should be cash-rushed before hitting Enter: it's intended for the Tobacco-corner. I still recommend that Ica then be Settler-disbanded to refound 1SW. Between them, those 2 towns should then be able to build most/all of the Settlers/ Workers/ military needed to finish colonising and defending this island. In the meantime, I left our victorious Maces sentried both as fog-busters, and to show where the priority-towns should go for max. tile-age (dots mark other town sites).

Spoiler NW island plan :

Based on CKS's thoughts about the southern Tundra-island, I revised that map (to get all Coast tiles with minimal Culture)!

Spoiler Mongol Tundra-island plan :

The 2 Workers will finish chopping the Forest (clearing the next intended town-site) on the IBT; the shields will go to Jilot (the current Temple-build could be turned into a Settler if the team prefers; the rest of the shields can be cash-rushed). I would suggest that the Workers then clear the coastal Forest SSW of their current position, for Chalchi's current build (Temple or Settler).

The remaining Tundra can then be Forested/chopped for any (other) buildings we wanted down there: with a Temple+Harbour, Jilot and Town 4 would be pretty food-rich, and we could run 1-2 excess citz (in all 4 towns) as Taxmen/Geeks. Might want to ship some mil-units over there for defence, though...

There is a Galley near Zitlalt, containing a Settler+Mace heading to the NE island. I was thinking it could found a town here:

Spoiler NE Tundra-island plan :

I've also continued to try and get a Galley doing overseas coastal-exploration. All of our westbound Galleys sank (the only one that made it into Byzzie waters got flamed by a Dromon!), but replacements continue to be built in ex-Japan. One Galley did make it to the northwest coast of Byz/India, and we shall see how far it gets...

Spoiler The lucky winner :

For invading the Dutch we will definitely need Navi to be safe, and the shortest passage I found (that avoids the Byzzies!) is probably (to Arnhem) via Kazan...

Spoiler The westernmost Dutch town? :

... so when we get close to ~~Astro~~ *derp* Navi, I would suggest stockpiling Galleys in Kazan, and start sending our Armies, Knights and Trebs (I upgraded all our Cats) down there to climb aboard those boats (after they've been turned into Galleons, that is!).

Save is below...

CKS · Jun 30, 2019

Looks good.
India isn't doing very well, whether they are currently at war with the Byzantines or not.

I'm in favor of cranking up the research either right now or as soon as we get theology. With everyone else not trading, I think it will be a while to get education via the GL. We're big enough now that it won't take long to get through navigation on our own.

jarred! · Jul 1, 2019

Roster:
1. jarred
2. CKS
3. tjs (just played)
4. @Judminder (up)
5. suede (on deck)
6. Elephantium

I haven't dled the save yet, I should have time this evening.

Judminder · Jul 1, 2019

Great progress, team! I've DLd the save, but I doubt I'll have time to play / look at the save seriously for a couple of days. If someone else has more time on their hands and would like to play then I'm OK with being skipped for this round; I don't want to hold the game up (?)

tjs282 · Jul 2, 2019

CKS said:
I'm in favor of cranking up the research either right now or as soon as we get theology.

Gandhi and/or Willy are likely to be now working on Theo (= SisChap, 2 follow-up techs) rather than Chem (= no new builds, 2 follow-up techs), so I put nothing into Theo during my set, expecting to get it soon from the GLib (though maybe I should have started lone-geeking Chem instead). In the meantime we're banking 180+ GPT.

But once Theo is in, yeah, I agree we should max SCI% for Edu -> Astro -> Navi, deficit-spending our gold-pile if necessary. Dora has already smoothed some of that path for us, so we might be able to do it quickly with just the Libs we've built so far: if not, we could always (pre)build some Unis in our core/ Tzintz.

Once Astro is in, we can upgrade all remaining Galleys to Caravels (30g per boat), which will be fine for transporting individual units; if we still have enough left over after Navi, we can upgrade a few of those Caravels to Galleons (60 g per boat) to use as Army-transports. (And since Dora can already sail her boats safely in Sea-tiles — and has Navi as a possible research-target — we may/will also need to [pre]build some Frigates to defend our invasion-force against Dromon-/Frigate-attacks).

jarred! · Jul 2, 2019

If we can increase our science to 321bpt, we can 4-turn Edu once theo is in, and then (@336bpt) we'll 5-turn both astro and nav. Being able to increase sci to 100% would make that possible, but we'll need to build markets (+CHs) in cities larger than pop8, and use geeks*. This means 14+1 turns after we get theo until the Armada sails! I think the passage to Eindhoven is one tile shorter than that to Arnhem, but it's 13 vs 14 tiles, so not much gained.

*Ica, Tamuin and Edo can have their clowns changed to taxpeople or geeks. They aren't needed as clowns currently, but at 10% lux, can't work tiles. Almarikh, and possibly other pop6 towns w/o 'ducts, have citz that are just gaining food that will be wasted so they could become geeks as well. Ex-Incan Cori and VB could be MM'd, it depends on how fast we want them to grow, but there's enough food for 3 specialists each (4 in VB if you starve it every other turn). I think we'll want cities that will become small-scale science farms growing until we want to tech again, and then specialize them (ie growth is more important than tax revenue, we'll need the extra beakers later).

tjs282 · Jul 2, 2019

jarred! said:
I think the passage to Eindhoven is one tile shorter than that to Arnhem, but it's 13 vs 14 tiles, so not much gained.

The Eindhoven passage also appears to be much closer to the Byzzies, so more dangerous...

jarred! said:
*Ica, Tamuin and Edo can have their clowns changed to taxpeople or geeks.

I did have Taxmen running in most of the (Incan) towns building Settlers/Workers, but some of the larger conquests needed a Clown to keep order (a Taxman left more unhappy than happy) — or starve.

Ica's Clown was me making the best of a goof. Ica was still at Pop2 when I moved the Mace out, but grew to Pop3 (and then rioted) while I wasn't looking, so I put a Clown in on that IBT, and it's only just come out of disorder. Buying its Settler-build now (27g) solves the problem of unhappy citz, and gets us a new town (for another 2 free units: so I think we can afford that!).

Or @Judminder could move the Mace back in, and finish the Settler-build with harvested shields (5 turns at 2 SPT and 6 FPT, if the 3 citz can work both Hills and a Coast).

jarred! said:
They aren't needed as clowns currently, but at 10% lux, can't work tiles.

10% LUX% is more than enough to keep order in the core, but upping it to 20% would reduce our (core-generated) income while doing mostly diddly-squat in the 90% corrupt zones, since they mostly aren't bringing in enough unwasted commerce to convert to a Happyface.

jarred! said:
Almarikh, and possibly other pop6 towns w/o 'ducts, have citz that are just gaining food that will be wasted so they could become geeks as well.

Almarikh and the conduit-towns, I think I switched from Ducts to Courthouses, since allowing them to grow past Pop6 without gaining more unwasted commerce would likely result in riots. That said, they're so close together that Pop12 isn't really an option for half of them, so I'm not even sure it's worth putting Ducts in them. Taxing/geeking the excess pop likely makes more sense.

jarred! · Jul 2, 2019

I certainly wasn't criticizing your turns! Just trying to see if we could 4-turn the next 3 techs (we could also 4-turn Theo if we wanted to).

The crossing to Arnhem is better. If we ship-chain across the ocean, then it doesn't really matter how long the passage is.

I was looking forward to dropping lux to zero, not raising it! I think (short-) rushing markets would be a good use of our money, and maybe harbors too. Markets for tax revenue and happy faces, harbors in those coastal towns that we don't want 'ducts in (and those that have 'ducts too). Then all the citz work 2+ food tiles, and at least the 6th cit can become a specialist.
My point about tamuin/edo was we had a few cities w/o markets using a clown that could be a taxer/geek due to having an odd numbered pop, you know, because 3 breakers will make or break this game

tjs282 · Jul 2, 2019

jarred! said:
Markets for tax revenue and happy faces, harbors in those coastal towns that we don't want 'ducts in (and those that have 'ducts too).

IIRC, most of our core and semi-core already have Ducts, Harbours, Libs and Markets, or are building the last one of those four.

Exceptions being the new towns in Incaland, which first need Courthouses to make all subsequent builds more efficient; and the peninsula-towns east of Atzca, which only just got their Ducts done, and are now working on their Libs (or they should be: if they aren't, muh bad — @Judminder, please switch!) in anticipation of us being about to go full-SCI% (they can build their Markets later, once they're bigger).

Remember, the SCI%–LUX%–TAX% split happens at the level of each individual town, not the nation as a whole. So there's little (economic) point in (prioritising) commerce- or TAX%-multiplier buildings (1) in boonie-towns which aren't collecting significant amounts of uncorrupted commerce anyway (because they're 90% corrupt), and/or (2) when SCI% is going to be cranked to max. (and hence TAX% will be low/zero).

This means that the Lux-Happies are the only 'good' reason to build a Market in an already 'Ducted boonie-town: but even then, mass-irrigation and Specialising excess citz is (usually) a more cost-efficient means of keeping order.

jarred! said:
Then all the citz work 2+ food tiles, and at least the 6th cit can become a specialist.

This is... kinda pointless, though. Under a cash-rushing gov (i.e. we're not whipping our excess citz into shields!), building a Harbour just to allow a farm to grow to (or stay at) Pop6 doesn't do (us) any good, and might even do the opposite. If a (coastal) farm-town only has 2-FPT tiles available (even after building a Harbour), it will only ever be able to run 1 Specialist (or maybe 2 as an AGRI-Civ, but it will be boom/bust), regardless of whether it's at Pop1 or Pop6. So it might as well just stay at (or starve down to) the minimum number of citz to support the maximum number of Specialists (i.e. Pop1-2), which is a lot easier to keep happy/content.

Unless a Harbour will increase the total food-output sufficiently to support an extra Specialist (from e.g. a Fish on a nearby workable tile) — thus 'paying' for its construction and maintenance (and eventually going into profit) via increased beaker/gold output — then the only good argument for a Harbour in a 2FPT-tile farm-town is to allow it to grow to Pop7 (thus increasing your free-unit allowance). Even then, that's really only applicable if there's freshwater: if you need a Duct as well, then the net payoff still isn't all that great.

jarred! · Jul 2, 2019

I was planning for our return to research, and markets in a few cities are more or less the last hurdle between us and 0% lux. In our core towns the added tax revenue will pad our pockets leading up to our invasion, and the happy faces allow us to lower the slider. The plan has never been to build markets and CHs in the corrupt areas, and I wasn't insinuating we should, though I was ambiguous.
Same with the harbors. Specifically in the conduit region, where happiness is a non-issue and the towns aren't cripplingly corrupt, harbors in the towns that don't have them will allow the 6th citizen to become a specialist instead of working a corrupt tile just to break even on food.

Elephantium · Jul 2, 2019

Hmm...If corruption in the conduit towns is low enough that we can build stuff there, specialists don't matter there. OTOH, if they're corrupt enough that we want to use them for specialists, the Harbor is redundant; we can run them at size 2 or 3 for the specialist.

jarred! · Jul 2, 2019

We weren't going to build aqueducts there, if the game was going to last longer, I would vote to build ducts there. Since growth is being stopped at 6, the specialist will be more useful than working a tile that is subject to corruption. If others don't see it that way, I'll drop it.
I don't think suggesting to starve the towns is useful, since we're trying to win by population. Moving the population away from this area via settlers or workers is something I would also vote to do.

Elephantium · Jul 2, 2019

Err, I wasn't suggesting that we starve anything, just that we don't need to spend shields on Harbors in hopes of growing them to size 6 -- we could immediately hire one geek in each town and let them stay at whatever size they are right now. In any event, 'ducts wouldn't make sense for Chalco, Ixtapaluca, or Charity: Water (they're all too crowded to get 12 tiles). Almarikh might work at size 12 with both Harbor and Duct, but it's corrupt enough that it's not really worth it.

jarred! · Jul 3, 2019

That's all I wanted to do, hire some specialists instead of having citizens work corrupt tiles. We have citizens that are working mountains and hills, I wanted to move them to 2 food tiles so we could hire some specialists. My issue was not registering that we're AGRI and get an extra food from the city center.
I'm not worried about the ducts here, but they would get us extra pop towards the Dom victory. Not a big deal if we're more concerned about paying maintainence, and we'll get more population from the Dutch anyway.

Elephantium · Jul 3, 2019

Oh, I see. Yeah, the cities near Charity: Water are probably corrupt enough that we don't care about working hills or mountains -- best to hire specialists and keep them at a static size (or pop Workers to get them down to size 2). I expect us to hit 66% population long before we hit 66% land area, so I wasn't thinking about trying to boost population on our home continent.

jarred! · Jul 3, 2019

Seems like we've been in agreement the whole time. I only wanted harbors where they were needed to support 5 laboring citizens and a specialist (specifically because the conduit towns are size 6 or approaching size 6), it turns out they don't need them or already have them. Y'all thought they were smaller/needed harbors to get to size 6? We just misunderstood each other.
:beer:

Judminder · Jul 3, 2019

I'll aim to start playing in earnest tonight. Apologies, I'm snowed under with work so haven't been able to read this every day so I'll do my best to stick to the plan. In summary, I think the plan is to stay at 0% science until we acquire Theology, then crank it up whichever way we can to get towards Astro / Nav. Build a fleet of Galleys and point them towards the rally point, get armies and military down to the rally point, send some protection for island towns. Get settlers out to found new towns as per dotmaps.

Judminder · Jul 3, 2019

I'm up to Turn 7, but I'll have to finish tomorrow. We still haven't got Theology so shall we bite the bullet and do it the hard way or wait it out whilst generating cash?

Judminder · Jul 4, 2019

Not a lot has happened....
Here's the really boring turn-log:

Turn 0 - 1050AD
Rushed settler in Ica
Switched Knight ->Palace (Magellans pre-build) in Tzintz
MM builds

IBT
nada

Turn 1: 1060AD
MM builds

IBT
nada

Turn 2: 1070AD
Chiauhita founded in Tobaco corner

IBT
new build orders

Turn 3: 1080AD
move units, change builds

IBT
...

Turn 4 1090AD
Cattletown founded (NE tundra island)

IBT
Jilot riots (it was fine before the IBT - I always go down the list in F1 to check happy v unhappy faces...)

Turn 5: 1100AD
Moved stuff

IBT
Dutch want to talk
...

Turn 6: 1110AD
Move units

IBT
Kyoto riots - wtf, it was fine!

Turn 7: 1120AD
Itzapa.... founded NW tundra island
Asked the team about Theology and I decided to just stick to the plan (conscious that we have a magellans pre-build going on...)
IBT
Finally learned Theology from GL

Turn 8: 1120AD
Dutch building Sistine Chapel
Science-> 60%, MM some taxmen / geeks, Education due in 4 at +2GPT, 4041gold

IBT
Learned Education from GL
We are now learning Astronomy
We learned Chemistry

Turn 9: 1130AD
Not sure what happened but the turn ended (mis-click probably Grrrrrrr)

IBT
Indians building Sistine Chapel

Turn 10:
Ayutzinco founded Southern Tundra island
MM to try to get astronomy in 4, but 5 seems to be the best I can do. Keeping them happy is the problem.

Hand off:
A more optimal Science / geek balance is needed to minimise waste. If we can't get Astronomy in 4 then we can probably re-assign geeks to working land / tax collecting.
There are galleys to the North of ex-inca land making their way down the east coast to the rally point.
Magellan's pre-build in Tzintz

CKS · Jul 4, 2019

Looks good. SuedecivIII should get us to navigation, and Elephantium should be able to start invading.
If we are going to shut off research after navigation, we should cancel a bunch of library builds. If we want to continue to military tradition or magnetism (so we could transport armies), we should keep building them.

JAR02, Always War Emperor

Stone \ Cold / Fish

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