Turn 200-209

[1889]

1545 AD.

Our camel boarded a ship and is heading home from Piffle. Our cavalry continues explorations in Aloha.

Finished Physics as stated previously. Sent it to Aloha. Settled our scientist in Wheelville. Steam power will be done next turn. Epsilon just finished Biology, as if they don't have a big enough population already. I suggest we research contraception and gift it to them.

Also with the war over and scads of new territory and citizens all Epsilon's graphs are off the chart. I’ll spare you the screenshots.

 

[1889]

Its our turn, but I'l be gone for a few more days. Can some one play?

 

[dutchfire]

Sure (xcl)

5555 posts

 

[dutchfire]

I've played it. We completed Steam Power on the interturn. I think Biology should be next. Epsilon completed the Notre Dame. Their graphs are scary!

My game also nearly crashed on me while looking at the demographics.

 

[1889]

Played the save.

Sent Steam to Aloha and started Railroad. We may be able to trade techs with Piffle, they asked for a chat right?

Aloha also wants to chat so we can "figure out a way to kill Epsilon."

I'll try to set something up with Aloha so we can see how they feel about bringing Piffle onboard the tech alliance.

Also Communism enables Permanent Alliances. I've never used them, would that be helpful to us?

 

[Joe Harker]

Didn't Aloha start railroad?, if they did, we should research something else.

 

[Theoden]

Also Communism enables Permanent Alliances. I've never used them, would that be helpful to us?

They would enable us to easily win the game, but they are not allowed unless explicitly checking the option at game setup, which is not the case.

I think the best way to handle the diplomatic situation would be to increase the level of coorperation with Aloha and Piffle seperately and then uniting them. Proposing three-way alliances without something to build it on hasn't really shown much success in the past.

 

[1889]

Didn't Aloha start railroad?, if they did, we should research something else.

Steam power is a pre-req so I don't think they could have, but I'll send a short note to make sure they know what we are up to.

@ Theo, I like that idea but we can't really trade techs without Aloha's permission. And with tech trading off the table I'm note sure what kind of cooperation we would have with Piffle.

 

[1889]

Our cavalry unit finally got his first look at the old Piffle/Aloha battlefield. The war is over BTW and Aloha is starting to resettle the area.

In regards to Aloha's recent comment about attacking Epsilon I was looking over our military. We are paying about 10 gpt for unit upkeep yet we are still the least powerful nation by a large amount. Most of our units are highly experienced but badly out dated. The problem is that we have a large number on units (25 units or 60% of our military) in need of upgrading. Upgrading will cost 4300 gold, which would require 9 turns of 0 science. It would mean a 25% increase in our power putting us slightly ahead of Aloha.

Is this worthwhile?

 

[Theoden]

It might be worthwhile, but not before we actually need better troops in a specific situation. Upgrading in steps is more expensive overall, so we would probably want to delay upgrading until we reach the next military breakthrough (infantry?).

 

[1889]

I thought upgrading costs come out the same no matter the path. Upgrading archer-crossbow-rifle-infantry is the same as archer-infantry, right?

 

[Theoden]

No, I believe the upgrade cost is calculated as something like 25 + 5 * difference in hammers (not sure about the actual numbers). This extra 'fee' that's always added is what makes upgrading in more steps more expensive.

 

[dutchfire]

I believe Theoden is correct.

Can't we just build some new units instead of upgrading by the way? Perhaps disbanding some older units if they're too expensive too keep.

 

[Theoden]

If we have cities that do not have any important improvements to build, then making them produce up-to-date units to replace the obsolete ones is preferable to upgrading, imho. We'd probably want to upgrade old units with lots of promotions anyway, though.

 

[1889]

Yup, you guys got it right. The numbers probably depend on difficulty level but there is an additional fixed cost for each upgrade, so upgrading in fewer steps is a little cheaper.

It sucks being poor.

 

[1889]

I don't really like disbanding good units so I guess well just pay the money for right now.

Railroad in 7, Oxford in 6.

 

[1889]

Looks like the chat has pretty well gone ahead without us. A message on the diplo screen says that Aloha is working on Artillery and that Piffle is working on RR so we should start Assembly line and then trade.

Unfortunately we are nearly half way through RR so no sense in switching now. I asked Piffle to change instead. Also trading? I hope he meant we have a three way tech alliance not just tech trading partners.

 

[Theoden]

Did something in our communications efforts go wrong...?

Anyway, it sounds like there's some hope for an alliance. We should expand to the level of coorperation to more than tech trade very soon and develop the alliance at a steady pace.

 

[dutchfire]

Well, it's better than a two team alliance

 

[Theoden]

Now that I think about it, maybe we should "declare" a "cold war" against Epsilon soon? A complete trade embargo is neccesary if we are to compete with Epsilon's economy and then we need to build up an allied army to make sure they don't choose a world war, but in the end I don't see how we could have any chance without such measures.