Mobilization

[Paul#42]

We should not ask BABE to dow before their settler reached our "comfort zone"

Maybe we should offer rop this turn? Will others see that on F4?

We should also make sure that we have some prebuilds available beyond 110s for bigger investments in mobilization if we want to switch next turn. Is the palace a valid prebuild?

Apart from palace it's just US, UN and Battlefield Med available.
IA we'll build soon and using Manhatten is not a good idea imo...
But three prebuilds is quite a number...


Btw does FREE currently build any of US, UN?

 

[Niklas]

Yes, others will see it on F4.

No, FREE is not building any wonders (nor is SABER), I checked the F7 screen while playing.

 

[Paul#42]

But they won't be able to see it if we offer rop with accept, they accept and use it and dow us.

 

[PrinceMyshkin]

I'm not sure others will see rop in F4 without an embassy. We can't even see that Saber is at war with the Babes in F4.

Also, neither the palace nor US are available as pre-builds during mobilization.

 

[Niklas]

Right, without embassies they wouldn't see anything at all. Can we be sure that none of them have embassies with BABE though? Maybe we should ask Whomp.

 

[Paul#42]

We could offer rop with accept and tell them just to seal the deal if the have no embassy with anybody or are willing to dow us right away on the same turn...

If they offer peace with accept right away, nobody could even see that we had a war because we are playing right after them

I wonder if such a half-turn war would be sufficient to cancel mobilization. But I'd think so because our turn starts at war and we get peace only after we accepted their offer.
Maybe even after rejecting it at the first screen and sending any offer with accept later in that turn...

 

[donsig]

We don't need BABE to declare war on us - we can mobilize in peacetime. Demobilizing requires a war so we can make peace. It appears that eliminating the civ you are at war with automatically puts you back to normalcy.

Did anyone know we don't get the extra mobilization shields on artillery, bombers or cruise missiles? Probably don't get them on nukes either. It does appear that the extra mobilization shields accumulated on unit prebuilds are not lost when normalcy returns and the unit prebuilds are switched to city improvements. (I didn't try switching to a wonder though in my test game.)

 

[Yilar]

Once we go mobilization we should declare war on babe, so they don't just quit one turn and leave us in the dirt.

You don't get bonus from non-offensive units. That beaing bombers, cruises, transports and artillery and buildings. You can however prebuild offensive units (tanks, mechs etc.) and keep the mobilizied shields you already got if you switch.

 

[donsig]

Good point about declaring war on BABE. Nice insurance policy.

 

[Paul#42]

Once we go mobilization we should declare war on babe, so they don't just quit one turn and leave us in the dirt.

I'd rather have them dow us. We could use the wh replacing their luxuries...

You don't get bonus from non-offensive units. That beaing bombers, cruises, transports and artillery and buildings. You can however prebuild offensive units (tanks, mechs etc.) and keep the mobilizied shields you already got if you switch.

Not sure if this is banned. Looks like an illegal exploit to me.

 

[Yilar]

Nothing in the rules against it and It would be rather unpratical if there was.

 

[peter grimes]

The only thing in the rules concerns breaking into the build sequence...

 

[dl123654]

I equate it to the same thing as hiring an engineer when building a building then switching it to a military build 1 turn before the build completes

 

[Paul#42]

I equate it to the same thing as hiring an engineer when building a building then switching it to a military build 1 turn before the build completes

Those extra shields are lost - unless you cash-rush the building iirc...

At least it looked like they were lost when I switched builds occasionally in this game...

I don't like it.
Not sure why you don't get the mobilization shields for arties and bombers however.

 

[Niklas]

It's not possible to totally abuse it though, since you need to run at least one turn under the non-mobilized shield output to complete one of those units. I don't think we should see it as an abuse, just as a silly limitation imposed by the game.

 

[donsig]

We are set to mobilize next turn (#225). We should be able to remain mobilized for about 30 turns (if we want to). Some of this time would need to be set aside for pre-building SS parts and Apollo. Here is my guess as to how many turns our top cities will be able to produce military units during mobilization:

1. The Treasury: 29 turns, 102/138spt
2. The Chamber: 26 turns, 78/106spt
3. The Institute: 26 turns, 70/100spt
4. The Silo: 29 turns, 60/86spt
5. The Admiralty: 29 turns, 60/82spt (naval)
6. The Arboretum: 29 turns, 40/80spt
7. The Igloo: 32 turns, 38/60spt
8. The Gulag: 29 turns, 37/94(?)spt
9. The Aerie: 32 turns, 25/37(?)spt
10. The Meeting Room: 32 turns, 24/36spt (naval)
11. The Red Tape: 32 turns, 21/30spt (naval)
12. The Bayou: 32 turns, 17/26(?)spt (naval)

The production figures are from CA II using the turn 224 save. (?) means CA II did not give updated mobilization figures and I had to guess. The estimated turns of mobilized production are from my estimates in the CASA thread.

Land and air units:
Modern armor, marines and TOW infantry are 120s and mech infantry is 110s.
Jets and bombers are both 100s but bombers don't get the bonus. Do jets?
Artillery is 80s and cruise missiles are 60s. I don't think either gets the bonus.

The Treasury can make one turn anything. That's 29 units total and an additional 2gpt in support up to 58gpt.
The Chamber and The Institute are close to doing one turn mech infantry. I'll have to hear from the MMers about these cities. But they can generate from 13 to 26 units each costing another 52 to 104gpt in support.
The Silo, The Admiralty, The Arboretum and The Igloo look like they will do two turn units for 29 turns adding 56 units and 112gpt support costs.
The Gulag is close to one turn units so will do 14 to 29 units adding 28 to 58gpt.
The Aerie is close to 40spt and so will make from 10 to 16 units and 20 to 32gpt in support.

Naval units:
Battleships are 200s
Cruisers are 160s.
Nuclear subs are 140s.
Destroyers are 120s.
Subs are 100s.

The Meeting Room, The Red Tape and The Bayou will all be on shipbuilding duty (I assume) and look able to complete a ship every 4 turns each for 24 units and 48gpt support.

The Grand totals are: 159 to 206 additional units adding a total of 318 to 412gpt in support costs! And this doesn't count any units we'd make in our less productive cities.

That's (potentially) 4 cities doing one turn units, 4 doing two turn units, one doing three turn units and three doing four turn units. I did some analysis of the impact this would have on the treasury balances I estimated in the CASA thread. It's not too bad. We only hit a deficit on turns 242-244 and they are small ranging from 2 through 28gpt. Of course this does not include any gold spend on upgrading units, planting spies, etc. This does show us we have to be careful with our treasury if we want to research fast and have a large military.

EDIT: It's actually very bad. (I had been calculating the additional support incorrectly.) We'd hit a deficit on turn 235 and it just grows and grows. Here's a revised graph:

 

[donsig]

I had to revise the figures I put out yesterday since I had the additional support costs wrong. If we try to crank out units as fast as possible under mobilization we will soon reach a point where we have to lower our research dramatically in order to sustain our large military budget.

We need some figures on how large a military we need and how fast we'll get there so we can plan our research times. We need to defend our mainland and SCI. We should look at the impact radar towers would have on the size of our defensive forces. We may also want to build things like coastal fortresses (no maint.), civil defense (1gpt maint.) and SAMs (2gpt maint.) in some of our cities. This would help defend them thus reducing the number of troops needed.

 

[PrinceMyshkin]

I did some testing on mobilization in an old save to clear up some lingering questions.

The bonus only applies to units with with an attack value. Bombers don't get the bonus since they only have a bombard value. Jets have an 8 attack so they do get the shield bonus. Nukes do not have an attack so they do not get the bonus.

Its been asked if the shields carry over when you switch builds or return to normalcy. I have confirmed this is the case. Also, I discovered that the return to normalcy is automatic as soon as peace is declared with a civ you are at war with. We do not get to decide when to end mobilization after peace, it is done automatically upon peace.

Good work, donsig, on pointing out that unit support will drag down our research times as well. However, when we do get to a point we are comfortable with the number of units we have, running wealth in just a few of our core cities would go a long way to defraying our costs. I guess it makes sense to save money by not upgrading our units, but by the same token why run heavy deficit research that depletes our treasury when a one turn delay will preserve it? If we have a problem with unit support then Free and Saber who probably have about 4-5 times the number of units have an even bigger drag on research. No one will out tech us even if we slow our research times a bit.

Also, if we aren't going to upgrade units it makes sense to abandon them for shields, especially our guerillas which would save 12 gpt now. Our unit support is about to go up a small amount as we are completing an aqueduct and hospital next turn. We can also save a small bit of money by eliminating a few useless buildings we have. BabeColony and Oka both have libraries that aren't contributing a single beaker to our research. Also, some of our cities not growing with cathedrals don't need their temples.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

good call Prince. I assume that BABEColony and Oka have expanded borders? that's why we would have libs in them.

 

[donsig]

Good work, donsig, on pointing out that unit support will drag down our research times as well. However, when we do get to a point we are comfortable with the number of units we have, running wealth in just a few of our core cities would go a long way to defraying our costs. I guess it makes sense to save money by not upgrading our units, but by the same token why run heavy deficit research that depletes our treasury when a one turn delay will preserve it? If we have a problem with unit support then Free and Saber who probably have about 4-5 times the number of units have an even bigger drag on research. No one will out tech us even if we slow our research times a bit.

Thanks. I'm not worried about being out teched I just don't have a good handle on how many units we need. By mobilizing we will be able to produce a lot of units: about 90 units every 12 turns. Supporting that number of units will severely hamper our research times. I understand the need to be mobilized - we certainly want to be able to produce units in these numbers if we are attacked. But we just can't keep on adding to the size of our military. At some point we need to cap it, assuming we aren't actively at war. We need to get busy estimating the level of defense we need. I think I'll try to do some work on that and put it in the Preparing for possible invasion thread. One thing that occurs to me is we can use our massive inland production to beef up our naval builds by disbanding units in our low shield producing coastal towns.

I would disband the libraries in BABEcolony and Oka since their borders have expanded. Should we put a temporary library in The Tower to expand its borders? I think we should have SAMs and civil defense improvements in key cities - this might offset anything regained by selling off temples and such, but it is still a good idea to trim what ever expenses we can.

I would disband the tanks, guerillas and two infantry we have.