Now for some Mulligan Stew:
Hiawatha wants a space ship, not bigger bows and arrows.
Space race victories are about two things and two things only: cash flow (gpt) and resources (rubber, aluminium and uranium are the three you need).
So, war with Hammi is certainly an option but rather pointless now unless we want territory. So let's do the math: Every new village is worth 4gpt in the kitty plus the value of the tax collections when the village gets to town size. so figure 10gpt per town terrain permitting. Hammi controls 21 cities so if we cram in the towns we can probably get 35 in the space he now occupies, each one pop6 with three tax collectors. That is 350gpt after some unknown turns of warfare plus the time it takes to grow them up to pop6. Right now, today, Hammi will gladly pay us more than half that for Flight, and who knows how much more in the future.
So economics argues against war with the Hamster right now. Now if he holds resources we need to launch which we won't know for another 25 turns at best then the conclusion changes. But during those 25 turns he can pay for a ton of ugraded troops as well as some cash rushes to build a modern era army.
To answer scout's tech and resource question: oil, rubber and computers are the three factors that obsolete the dashing cavalryman.
War with Hammi will not have any impact on our reputation as he is paying us and not vice-versa. It just means giving up the gold......
On the government thing Communism is a non-starter for us unless we want to change our goal to domination. You need a handful of shield productive towns to build space ship parts in a timely fashion and you really, really need the commerce kicker from a representative government and the ability to cash rush if you have sudden need for military. I have played it all the ways from Sunday and Communism is the winner if you want to conquer the world, but it slows you down badly when you want to leave it behind. The shields gained in the outlying towns do not make up for the commerce lost overall. You can boost income using taxguys but tax collections do not convert to either added income or beakers in towns which have multiplier buildings.
The war weariness impact of a representative government is another overblown concern. Manage your citizens properly, keep control of luxuries, don't expose your troops in enemy territory for more than a turn or two, don't lose any cities to the enemy and keep battle casualties down by the intelligent use of combined arms and you can fight hundreds of turns of Republican warfare and still celebrate WLKTD. And run 6-8 turn research. At least at Emperor, it is way different at higher levels, though still feasible but it requires a devotion to the details of the game that very few can summon up and insights which I may have but find difficult to share.
scoutsout said:
While Sirian is one of those who truly breathes "rare air" when it comes to this game, we could all learn from the way he focused on the objective; which was cutting off Joanie's oil supply- right down to counting her tanks the turn after he thought he'd already achieved the objective...
One of the reasons that Sirian can breathe that rare air is that power of focus. So focus on the objective.
@General Mayhem
I happen to prefer a less complicated approach to the demise of an enemy, mostly because I rarely have the surplus troops to make a pincer move effective. Put 'em all in a unified command and head straight for Babylon would be my simple-minded solution to that problem.
, but works well for me.
Sometimes I'd like to play 2 separate games with the same civ at around the same time.
)
