Short fun game (immortal)

[Silu]

^ I think the matter is a bit simpler than a full quantifying analysis for both plans. In my mind the Caste-first plan is clearly better in the long term, and the question is, does it give us enough Cuirs to start our war fast enough? BBP's great breakdown gives us 20 Cuirs in 11 turns, I think that's clearly fast enough. Slavery would give us more during those 10 turns (after the revolt, which is huge), but clearly less after that. Maybe it'd get 20 in around 7-8 turns (?), but would leave us less hammer potential later.

TBH I've never liked post-renaissance non-Kremlin non-Aztec whipping buildup strategies (unless going for an all-in, which clearly isn't needed/optimal here), since generally the cities are so big that whipping&growing is inefficient and whipping them down really bogs down any long-term potential, which we do need here for a Conquest spree.

 

[babybluepants]

^ I think the matter is a bit simpler than a full quantifying analysis for both plans. In my mind the Caste-first plan is clearly better in the long term, and the question is, does it give us enough Cuirs to start our war fast enough? BBP's great breakdown gives us 20 Cuirs in 11 turns, I think that's clearly fast enough. Slavery would give us more during those 10 turns (after the revolt, which is huge), but clearly less after that. Maybe it'd get 20 in around 7-8 turns (?), but would leave us less hammer potential later.

Agree. Production on quick is, well... quick Considering how long it would take to actually move these units, the difference in production capacity between civic choices seems a bit insignificant. Also, after the 15t I broke down, we'd have slightly larger cities, almost certainly Guilds, and a golden age - meaning easily another 30+ in 10t or so.

I'm ok with either, since I think that we might have this in the bag already. Personally I always prefer to stay in Caste and crank out GP's, but that's probably only 'cause I also suffer from FPS.

 

[Silu]

Oh, the game is in a bag alright, for me SGs are (have been so far at least!) more about getting into the end movie as fast as humanly possible rather than struggle for either a win or lose Kinda like TASes for Civ

Main benefits of Slavery in addition to faster buildup IMO are the Theo that comes with it and the possibility to optimize the tech path a bit more with regards to trades. My reasoning is that the former won't matter that much with either 5 or 7 XP Cuirs as non-CHA. The trading circles have been so fluctuant this far that I'm also not that sure we get any great trades off any more.

I know I'm kinda shoving Caste down this thread's throat... Mainly because slight boredom and not that much else to do than make redundant posts here

I could play today if we get some kind of agreement here. So far it looks like 1 Caste, 1 Slavery and 1 abstain. BBP, you could be the swing vote

 

[shyuhe]

I'm ok with caste. To be honest, I normally am in caste at this stage of the game I should learn to whip more aggressively but I'm such a big fan of big cities with large hammer bases. So feel free to whip ... er workshop up some cuirassiers

 

[babybluepants]

So, I guess no one really wants to whip away hard-earned population, but everyone thinks it's the correct play. Reminiscent of our SGOTM end-game. Except, ofc, that was the end-game, and we have a long way to go here still.

I'm for Caste.

@Silu, go build me a nice army, so I can just kick some ass.

 

[Silu]

1120AD-1280AD: Ta dig en Cuirassier, tavarits! En liten Cuirassier!

T116:

Put St. Pete on crack-scientist mode, renegotiate trade for +2gpt. Research set for Guilds.

Change a lot of worker orders. Tavarits! We need to shop it up along the river Volga. I see a lot of semi-useless improvements made, while the people need hammers! Sickles in the provinces can wait for now.

Fun fact: Churchill is kinda taking it up the pooper, 0.9 of our power vs 0.5.

Oh, and now my Civ crashed At least I have this nifty documentation of what I did so I can redo it.

T117:

I shall henceworth keep "plop" as a synonym for a newborn Cuirassier.

Plop.

And wouldn't you know it, Churchill opened up Guilds and Construction just now. Good thing I was still feeling into this "binary research" thingy so we didn't even lose any investment in it. We may get PP from Gandhi next turn with brokering, research set to Banking full steam, due in 2t (we aren't going to get that in any trades as far as I can see).

Hopefully we can bribe Gandhi to peace with Churchill while we're at it, Church is going to go down and fast. I gave some serious thought to bribing him now with Education for peace + cash + Drama + random crap. Didn't do it though.

In other random news, Mao got a GA and went into Bureu.

Forgot to swap EP last turn to Biz, did it now.

T118:

Plop.

Trading is on a knife's edge. We can't feasibly get Gandhi to peace, and we can't get even trades without our cash with either Gandhi or Churchill. Trading with Gandhi first would give us more but take cash or give WE hate, same with Churchill but vice versa.

I opt for this. Will delay Banking and mess the beautiful binary research routine but I decide to screw that. PP is a big chip and to get it without WE hate is nice. Some might say that putting our worst competitor that much (not that much in any case) closer to Rifling is bad, to them I say: ruki vehr, I got Cossacks soon!

And the flipside (Drama to pad to avoid WE hate, I estimate a fair chance this is our last meaningful tech trade ):

Ha! We even got enough cash to reach Banking there. Also currently we're the uncontested tech leader.

T119:

Plop. Plop plop plop.

Banking done, set research to Replaceable Parts. This means watermills are racking up in usefulness soon enough, could start doing those as well at least in some areas (maybe those with rivers, ha ha).

Gandhi went Constitution, ha. Wish he has time to build SoL for us when we arrive in Delhi.

And just to prevent the asshat from vassalizing Churchill (very, very close now with Knights and all), I made him do peace with Liberalism. Also got some pennies and his map, revealing:

Not too sure what that means. Wonky culture. Could buy Biz's map, but the idiot wants Music for it, our 44g isn't enough. Not that we need that map so badly to pay money for it.

T120:

Plop.

Apparently I've forgotten to set some options after I had to wipe clean my Civ a couple days ago. Got this helpful advice:

Talked about Biz's map last turn, well turns out he got 440g from somewhere this turn (up from 0) so I sold Music to him for 375g plus his map.

Somehow I don't think they will be very hard to run over when we manage to get a couple of Galleons going.

T121:

Plop. Plop. Plop.

Gandhi builds the Spiral Minaret.

T122:

Plop plop.

Plop plop.

Got scientist, changed to merchant grind. ETA 10 turns, which is a bit more than I anticipated.

To keep our Cashcow, sorry, Moscow growing, queued a Grocer there. Actually queuing a University post that. I think our war machine's gears will keep on grinding without Moscow.

Our first watermill means that Novgorod is now making 67 military hammers per turn. Cuirassiers cost 67 hammers. I sense a pattern here...

T123:

Plop, plop.

Biz converts to Taoism Heh.

T124:

Plop, plop.

Moscow's water got poisoned. That kinda sucks on Quick actually. Hurts a lot more than on Normal, and hell of a lot more than in the Marathon games I've been playing lately.

Hum, noticed I played 8 turns. Seems around 7 has been the norm here so I cut here, 1 turn from RP.

---

Well that was straightforward. 17 Cuirassiers done so far. We could well DoW on the next turn or even this, haven't seen any fancy Mao stacks and they are almost completely CKNs and LBs.

Churchill got Compass, should trade that with Music, looks to be an even trade with his gold padding.

Techwise GP and MT are still monopoly, and only Gandhi knows PP. Now it should be pretty straightforward and fast pewpew Rifling is about 7-9 turns away probably. Cossacks vs Knights and Longbows is always fun.

 

[shyuhe]

Looking good here. Is Churchill interested in becoming our peaceful vassal at all? It'd make our lives easier if we don't have to burn through his cities too...

Roster:
shyuhe (on deck)
Ras - AWOL
mysty skipped
Silu just played
bbp - UP

 

[babybluepants]

^ I don't think that's gonna happen for now.

Everything's looking good. The water pollution sucks, but it's not that big a deal really. I think we can get rolling any moment now. I'll have to have a closer look tmr and post a plan then.

 

[Silu]

^ We don't have enough population quite to peacevassal him (54 vs 94 or something, need double as far as I can tell) since he's giving us the finger called DENIAL_POWER_US We should have enough power and land. I'm not 100% sure if we need Friendly or not (he's not lenient on that like the mighty quintet Mansa, Cathy(!), Louis, Fred and Gandhi; checked after the above), I think that also depends on our power so we might get him when we get double his population. I tried to look it up but got lost when the code starts to add integers to attitude enums... So my response is DENIAL_RECENT_CANCEL:

"Not right now... maybe we'll change our mind in a few years"



EDIT: Never mind I figured it out. We need a quasi-Friendly for that, namely for SUM_ACROSS_LAND_TARGETS((3 * RIVAL_POWER) / OWN_POWER - 2) + ATTITUDE_VALUE to be 10 or more. Our part in that is 2, Gandhi is 4 I think, so we pass the attitude test provided we stay at +5 or more with him (+5 now). Of course our rising power helps for this as well since we're a land target.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Hello team!

Still no internet here... but I hope for this week or the next (yeah I tell that every other week )...
Though, you are definately doing great... the longer I stay out of the loop, the better for the team

Ras

PS: nice display Shyuhe in BOTM25

 

[mystyfly]

OK I'm ready again... so we're back to a 5-player-roster

Had a look at the game. Really nice how we got those cuirassiers

Now we need to prepare to wage war with them - as it is waged best: quickly. I suggest OB with gandhi in order to attack the 3 southernmost cities at once... the cuirs we have plus those we get in another 3-4 turns should suffice. We can then join 2 stacks to move on shanghai - beijing and the other moving north capturing eastern chinese cities.

We'll get a GM soon which I assume will be used to trigger a GA together with the GS we have waiting... During that I'd switch to merc and FR. Not sure about slavery vs CS, CS is good now for workshops, OTOH, whipping new cities is a nice way to "avoid" starvation and we might need to do some emergencywhipping if we have to reinforce defences in bordercities. Staying in CS probably will be best though...

We'll get rifling in 8-9t, afterwards we'll want to put down the slider to 0% for cav upgrades. BTW, silu, why are you not using binary research? I noticed comments by you about this, care to explain more thoroughly? When we start capturing cities we can keep running 100% until we get rifling.

Worker actions are quite clear I guess... Watermills and workshops as many as possible...

As we want to win by conquest, we should vassal our victims quickly (to avoid domination ). This way we'll also end our wars quickly and can turn on other targets.

As to teching post-rifling, astro definitely is our next tech goal as we can use some intercontinentual trade routes (unless in merc) and we need galleons anyway to get there. After astro it's either communism (my preference) for SP or chemistry for frigates... Either way, I think we might as well trade for compass... churchill is no threat in any regard so booasting him a little doesn't matter. Gandhi is target #2 and biz will be killed easily anyway with some help of revolts and he's not popular anyway thanks to the AI's stupid habit of converting to religions they founded themselves...

 

[Silu]

Now we need to prepare to wage war with them - as it is waged best: quickly. I suggest OB with gandhi in order to attack the 3 southernmost cities at once... the cuirs we have plus those we get in another 3-4 turns should suffice. We can then join 2 stacks to move on shanghai - beijing and the other moving north capturing eastern chinese cities.

Sounds OK, the less turns he has to react the better. Much emphasized on Quick.

We'll get a GM soon which I assume will be used to trigger a GA together with the GS we have waiting... During that I'd switch to merc and FR. Not sure about slavery vs CS, CS is good now for workshops, OTOH, whipping new cities is a nice way to "avoid" starvation and we might need to do some emergencywhipping if we have to reinforce defences in bordercities. Staying in CS probably will be best though...

Yeah going to a GA is the plan... and to revolt to Slavery and Theocracy. I don't see a point in FR to be honest, but being closer to level 4 is nice. We should aim to convert most of those workshops AND farms to watermills now with RP anyway, so losing ws hammers isn't a big deal really. Slavery will greatly speed up our victory here, many cities have crummy production even with caste WSs.

The Caste prior to this was mostly to avoid anarchy += get that second GA production rolling. Slavery has diminishing returns if used massively so the delay wasn't that bad as it means we gain a turn plus a GA.

We'll get rifling in 8-9t, afterwards we'll want to put down the slider to 0% for cav upgrades. BTW, silu, why are you not using binary research? I noticed comments by you about this, care to explain more thoroughly? When we start capturing cities we can keep running 100% until we get rifling.

What are you referring to? Of course I'm using binary research as you can see from all of my screenshot except the last Don't really remember why I ran out of cash there, maybe due to some trade, or anticipation for extra $$ from some trade that never got made... Anyway, we won't lose any "binary research bonuses" with RP anyhow and getting it as fast as possible is key to get watermill hammers.

Slaving yourself to always using binary can be more trouble than it's worth if some key techs could have been gotten earlier with trade-induced cash boosts.

As to teching post-rifling, astro definitely is our next tech goal as we can use some intercontinentual trade routes (unless in merc) and we need galleons anyway to get there. After astro it's either communism (my preference) for SP or chemistry for frigates... Either way, I think we might as well trade for compass... churchill is no threat in any regard so booasting him a little doesn't matter. Gandhi is target #2 and biz will be killed easily anyway with some help of revolts and he's not popular anyway thanks to the AI's stupid habit of converting to religions they founded themselves...

Yes, Rifling->Astro->Communism and then we don't need to tech anything, really, even stuff like building Levees probably only hinders us at that point. Should just shut tech and revolt to US after grabbing Washington and rushbuy our way into victory from there. Unless something drastic happens like Infantry on that backwards isle. We should aim to DoW with a massive invasion so Frigates should be unnecessary and hammers better spent on Galleons and land units.

 

[mystyfly]

I put FR instead of Theo since it's cheaper, adds a nice amount of and will enable us to trade with the overseas civs who will only be our last targets. But then, I rarely use theo... may be ok as well... OTOH I don't think the +2 xp make that much of a difference...

I recall some comment about binary research but I'm not sure now. Well, fine then

 

[Silu]

Yeah I mentioned I was glad I was using binary instead of cutting it a turn short, since on that very turn the trade for the tech in questoin (Guilds) opened itself

Trades would be a point if those islanders have anything worth trading for. I highly doubt that though, seeing the island and knowing we won't meet them before we limp a caravel there probably. Plus that the only techs we'd even want badly enough to affect our civics at that point are SciMet and Communism Still it's a possibility. They aren't bad zealots though so gifting pennies upon meeting will keep them in trading range.

IMO XP7 units are very good to get from the get-go - remembering that we're gonna get a bunch of GGs soon and the second is probably going to settle in Novgorod giving straight level 4 to a significant portion of our reinforcements. Combat 3 units survive significantly better against low base str defenders due to how Combat promos work and are just a promo away from March (VITAL on quick).

 

[babybluepants]

@Team,
I've been really busy IRL the last few days, only had a cursory look at the save. Won't have any time to get into it 'till at least tmr.

EDIT: Feel free to skip/swap if you want.

 

[shyuhe]

Since mysty is back, the roster will be temporarily this:

Roster:
shyuhe
Ras - AWOL
mysty - UP
Silu just played
bbp (on deck)

Agree on mysty's points, although I don't think FR is really necessary. We're not going to need that much more research - we should be able to win with sheer numbers soon. I'd tech rifling -- astro -- chemistry -- SM -- communism -- physics. We shouldn't need anything more than that as those blimps really are broken. We should also try to vassal as soon as possible to avoid having weak vassals running around (the whole power averaging thing).

March sounds like a pretty appealing promo given our game settings.

I slightly prefer slavery over caste if we can switch during a GA. Now that we have guilds and soon chemistry, workshops will be fine even without caste system and slavery will let us put those angry citizens to work.

 

[mystyfly]

Got it then.

Good point about march... but would you skip shock entirely for that? I spent some thoughts on promos and thought about having a mix of combat only/shock combat and few withdrawal units to knock down top defenders...

I was not intending to adopt FR for the research bonus but for diplo and . Especially Gandhi's cities shouldn't be angry anymore afterwards. Also, since we're vassalling, the extra culture from NSR will help...

Why would you tech chemistry before communism? I'd rather boost WSs sooner and get rid of maintenance...

 

[shyuhe]

Without caste, grass shops are 1/2 with guilds, 1/3 with chemistry, and 2/2 with state property (but no chemistry). Since chemistry is cheaper than SM + communism, I thought it'd be a better choice. Plus it'll open frigates too. When do we want to start building boats?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Roster:
shyuhe
Ras - AWOL back on track since 15'
mysty - UP
Silu just played
bbp (on deck)

Catching up the thread

 

[shyuhe]

Catching up the thread

OT, but BOTM 25 was pretty fun if you didn't go the sushi route. Thankfully I went state property and ended up with one of the few saves clocking in under 10 hours

Do you want to be moved to the end of the roster Ras so that your turn comes up sooner?