RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

Originally Posted by Rowain

i wonder what you would have said (towards the mapmakers) had you gotten Jowy's copperless start or the plain-ridden dryness of HRE.

Probably something like: "What the f*@$ is this s*#t?!"

[Adlain]

Originally Posted by Speaker

Constant vigilance!

ahhh, all i can see/ hear when i read that is Harry Potter and that mad Eye Moody Charactor

[Speaker]

Originally Posted by Adlain

ahhh, all i can see/ hear when i read that is Harry Potter and that mad Eye Moody Charactor

That's totally what I intend from the statement.

[Sullla]

First of all, thanks to Voice of Unreason for updating the Table of Contents again, which I've editing onto the first page. Great work!

Second, I disagree that swapping our starting position with Jowy's would necessarily have been a giant disadvantage. True, the lack of early copper would have been a rough blow, but we would have prioritized Iron Working if that had been the case, and probably would have been able to get iron connected in time to stave off military disaster. We only ignored iron as long as we did in this game because we had no immediate use for it.

Also, it's worth considering this: if the starting positions are reversed, we start next to Byzantium, and unlike Jowy we would have sent iron over to regoarrarr and sunrise during their war with Kathlete. Then Byzantium whips a bunch of spears, survives their war (albeit heavily damaged), and we have a solid ally on our eastern front. Maybe Jowy still rushes us, but he wouldn't have support from Kathlete, we wouldn't have had to face a 2 front war, and it's questionable whether Dantski or Nakor would have gotten involved. So it's not a slam dunk to say that we were just lucky in our starting position - although we do have really good land.

Or if you swap our start with Nakor, we have suckier land, but the advantage of seeing a nextdoor neighbor (Korea) get crippled in the Ancient age, and free up lots of extra space for settlement. I tend to think we would have done well in any scenario other than the "Mortius" one, where we lose our capital to an exploring warrior in the first dozen turns.

This turn was all about island stuff for our team:



Here's Vicksburg getting up and running. We landed two workers this turn, who will start mining the plains hill next turn. I know that sounds weird, but there are no other food bonuses in immediate range, and the plains hill tile will allow the city to build 5 culture/turn for an immediate border expansion... which grants access to the fish resource. Hampton Roads produced a second work boat which is heading over there for those fishies. The timing's not perfect, but we should have both the clams and fish up and running shortly.

Speaker and I also want to get another city on the northern city spot soon too, as that will make a powerful naval base with wheat + clams + rice + horses + marble + 2 plains hills. Looks like we can hit that magic 20 base shields/turn pretty easily, and that means another very strong unit producer.

We founded a new city this turn on the inner island:



This is our 16th city, which I dubbed Malvern Hill. The name refers to a relatively unknown Civil War battle during the Seven Days campaign, in which Lee's army attacked a fortified Union position commanded by McClellan. In a familiar pattern, despite inconclusive fighting McClellan decided to retreat afterwards because he believed he was outnumbered, when the opposite was the case. I just think the name sounds really cool, and the new city happens to be founded on a hill, so there you go.

Malvern Hill is also building Culture to expand borders, working the clams resource for early food and growth. One worker is mining the silver (for the same reason workers are going to mine the hill at Vicksburg), and a second worker will be arriving by galley next turn. The immediate plan is to expand borders and then connect the dyes, which will benefit our entire empire at home. You can never have too much happiness in this game - use the excess for whipping and drafting.

Other quick points for this turn:

- Great Person due in 4t in St. Albans. We have 85% odds for a Great Engineer, which would be nice for a couple of different reasons. Spartansburg is timed to produce a Great Person immediately thereafter, while not growing to size 13.

- Antietam was going to be at 39/40 shields on a Jewish missionary, so I hired an Engineer for one turn to get it done sooner. I want that missionary to spread Judaism in Chikamauga, so we can whip the forge and then workers can start chopping forests for Globe Theatre. The sooner we have Globe up and running, the sooner we can start slaving out units nonstop.

- With Gettysburg, St. Albans, and Hampton Roads all working on knight production, we are building knights VERY fast. We'll have to slow down to build universities soon, but the overall pace of knight training is impressive. St. Albans grew to size 13, and is back to our desired level of 20 base/45 total shields per turn. 2-turn knights. And it'll go higher as it keeps growing.

There were no new techs discovered this turn by anyone. However, Nakor received a huge infusion of gold from someone last turn, and continues to research at 100% towards Liberalism. Comparing with screenshots from last turn, it's pretty clear that Kathlete gifted Nakor roughly 400-500 gold; I'm not sure what Kathlete gets out of this deal, but it definitely speeds Nakor to Liberalism. The logical guess is that Nakor will take Nationalism with the free tech, and then use his marble to build Taj Mahal, with the resulting Golden Age boosted to 12 turns by Mausoleum. That's not what we want to see...

But wait! If we pop a Great Engineer from St. Albans, we can probably rush to Nationalism tech and rush Taj Mahal ourselves! Even with marble, it will probably take ~10 turns for Nakor to build Taj (unless he has a whole bunch of forest chops sitting around waiting to be used or something, and since we have visibility on his territory I don't see any place where that's the case). All we would have to do is rush to Nationalism and steal the wonder with our Engineer. If we could convince Dantski and plako to fund our research at 100% deficit spending for about 5 turns, we could pull it off. Then we could pay them back after we land the Golden Age with our enhanced funds. They'd probably rather see us land Taj than Nakor, right?

First, we have to wait and see if Nakor takes Nationalism with his free tech. If he does, then we can kick diplomacy into high gear and try to steal the wonder. 3 turns from now should be interesting.

I sent back a short response diplomatically to plako and Dantski about those group emails that Speaker posted:

Dear friends,

Congratulations to plako and Broker on your recent diplomatic success with Nakor, and the securing of a peace which likely spells the end of Whosit. All of us have been menaced at some point in the past by Aggressive Praetorians, and the world will be a better place without Rome to worry about. We would just warn everyone to be careful about signing any indefinite NAP with a long cooldown; 15 turns is a very long time, and greatly limits the ability to react to changing events. It's also completely impossible to pull off a surprise attack with such an NAP in place. Just be careful of what you sign.

We believe that Kathlete fed about 500 gold to Nakor last turn, which will allow him to run 100% research and finish Liberalism in 3 turns. His likely target is Nationalism, so keep an eye on what Nakor does and watch out if he revolts to Nationhood civic.

I don't know why all these teams want these long NAP deals, personally. Seems like they create more problems than they solve. Broker already responded to the group with this:

My personal preference is a rolling NAP with 10 turn cool downs and avoid the specific turn for cancelation as that also removes surprise and give longer than the 10 turns warning. Would you have any suggestions on how to structure a NAP. I agree 15 turns is too long except in the very early game. Actually I am finding the later the game the shorter the cool down should be.

We are actually looking for 1 some safety to consolidate our gains while also having the flexibility to react as necessary. Any suggestions would be helpful.

They'll probably end up signing something with Nakor, which is OK, I guess. I don't have any immediate thoughts - Speaker (?)

I have some more fun stuff to post here later today, so check back soon.

[Sullla]

Fun Stuff with Maps

Now that we have at least a rough map of everyone else's territory, we can do some more in-depth analysis. Part of this is just for fun, but the more we know about our opponents, the better the decisions we can make going forward. I'm going to try and look at one civ each day for the rest of the week, one per turn, and see what kind of information turns up. After going though just one civ today, we've already found some good stuff.

But before getting to that, I realized that I'd better post some vital stats on our own civ for comparative purposes! Here's the low down on our individual cities, starting with the original core in the south:



Gettysburg (17): Palace, Barracks, Stable, Granary, Forge, Academy, Library, Market, Grocer
Capital, tech center, Academy, good shield production with Bureaucracy

Antietam (14): Barracks, Stable, Granary, Forge, Monument, Library
Hybrid city balanced between commerce and production

Fredericksburg (16): Walls, Barracks, Granary, Forge, Monument, Library, Market, Grocer, Courthouse
Strong commerce city

Hampton Roads (13): Walls, Barracks, Stable, Granary, Lighthouse, Forge, Monument, Courthouse, Colossus, Moai Statues
Naval base, strong unit producer, two wonders


St. Albans (13): Forbidden Palace, Barracks, Stables, Granary, Aqueduct, Forge, Monument, Courthouse, Heroic Epic, Hanging Gardens
Top military city, three wonders

Fort Henry (9): Walls, Granary, Forge, Monument, Library, Market, Courthouse
Good commerce city, no production

Spartansburg (12): Barracks, Granary, Forge, Library, Theatre, Market, Courthouse, National Epic
Great Person farm, one wonder

Shiloh (8 ): Walls, Granary, Lighthouse, Library, Theatre
Inner sea naval base, fair commerce city

Bull Run (8 ): Walls, Castle, Granary, Forge, Theatre
Commerce city, defensive border city

Chikamauga (6): Granary, Lighthouse, Theatre, Courthouse
Future Globe Theatre draft camp

The Wilderness (6): Granary, Theatre
Commerce city, defensive border city

Spotsylvania (5): Granary, Theatre
Commerce city, defensive border city

Atlanta (5): Granary, Lighthouse
Fair commerce city

Vicksburg (1): none
Malvern Hill (1): none
Just getting started

Now for some overall stuff:

Total Population: 148 (#1)
Food: 371 (#1)
Production: 165 (#2)
Total Beakers: 10,522 (#1)
Soldier Count: 656k (#1)

Soldier Count Breakdown
Population: 74k
Technology: 80k
City Improvements: 75k
Units: 427k

City Improvements Breakdown
14 Granaries
9 Forges
7 Barracks
7 Libraries
6 Courthouses
6 Theatres
5 Markets
5 Monuments
5 Walls
4 Stables
4 Lighthouses
3 Grocers
1 Aqueduct
1 Castle
1 Academy

5 National Wonders (Palace, Moai Statues, Forbidden Palace, Heroic Epic, National Epic)
2 World Wonders (Colossus, Hanging Gardens)

* * * * *

So why bother to post all this? That way we can compare our empire to that of the other teams, seeing where everyone's strengths and weaknesses lie. First up, our new neighbor to the east: Kathlete.

[darrelljs]

Originally Posted by Sullla

Also, it's worth considering this: if the starting positions are reversed, we start next to Byzantium, and unlike Jowy we would have sent iron over to regoarrarr and sunrise during their war with Kathlete. Then Byzantium whips a bunch of spears, survives their war (albeit heavily damaged), and we have a solid ally on our eastern front.

Darrell

[Sullla]

Kathlete's eastern core:



Coruscant (13): Granary, Barracks, Library, Hamman
Coruscant looks nearly identical to Atlanta, its mirror image on the west side of the Donut. However, this is shockingly little infrastructure for their former capital. Huh? You'd think Kathlete would have at least built a lighthouse at some point for those crabs!

Kashyyyk (9): Granary, Barracks, Library, Forge
The original second city of the Ottomans. This is a very strong production city, with five grassland hill mines + horses. Looks like a straight military pump here. The lack of stables is puzzling, given that Kathlete was the first team in the game to research Horseback Riding.

Endor (14): Palace, Granary, Library, Forge, Hamman, Market, Buddhist Monastery, Buddhist Shrine

The current capital and Buddhist holy city (with shrine). Endor is a very strong commerce city with its gold mine and 9 grassland cottages. For whatever reason, Kathlete has never used a Great Scientist for an Academy here, which would have helped their research a lot.



Hoth (13): Granary, Barracks, Library, Forge, Courthouse, Oracle
This was formerly Istanbul, and formerly the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. It has another incredible production location, with iron and SIX hill tiles (4 grassland, 2 plains) with enough food to work them all. Due to its exposed location near the Indian border, this should be our #1 target when we go to war with Kathlete. (I'm assuming of course that Cloud City will fall immediately on the first turn of the war.) I can already see a way to hit this city with fast movers before Kathlete would even be able to react...

Yavin (12): Granary, Barracks, Library
Hybrid city with good commerce and production, very similar to Antietam.

Clakdor (13): Granary, Barracks, Lighthouse, Library, Forge, Hamman
Another hybrid city with a mixture of commerce and production. Lacks a river to boost commerce though.

Corellia (12): Granary, Barracks, Library, Courthouse, Forge, Market
Even though it has some cottages, this is a strong production city with copper + iron + five grassland hills. Speaker, if you're wondering how Kathlete can be ahead of us in production, it's due to cities like Kashyyyk and Hoth and Corellia!

Dantooine (8 ): Granary, Library, Forge, Courthouse, Market
Pretty unexciting city, although it does have horses and copper. I wonder if that incense resource is a goof from the mapmakers, because all the other incense we've seen has been only found on the outer islands.


Alderaan (7): Granary, Library, Forge, Courthouse
This is a *REALLY* strong city location, with 7 resources: wheat + rice + clams + copper + horses + double incense. Given how long Kathlete has had this spot, the development is rather underwhelming, as are the many forests left unchopped and the unirrigated rice and wheat. This would be a fabulous spot for us to capture, as it would be very easily defended (notice how ships can only reach it from the east) and help further shield Gettysburg from assault. We should be able to capture this spot easily at the start of the war, given its remote location from the rest of Kathlete's cities.

Tatooine (6): Granary, Library, Forge
A great commercial location, in a fertile grassland river valley, but little production and only a single rice tile for food. Kathlete should have build some farms here to get the food surplus to +6 per turn (see: what we did at Fort Henry). The low production and low food count has probably slowed down the development here severely. This city should be further along.

Corulag (7): Granary, Library, Forge, Courthouse
This is the bulwark of Kathlete's western defense, with its hill location. Taking this spot will be difficult. Swooping past Corulag to the northeast and taking Hoth looks like a better move. But we'll have to capture this spot eventually, and it will be rough.

Ord Mantell (6): Granary, Library, Colosseum, City Walls
City gifted from Jowy; the colosseum was originally an Odeon. Kathlete built city walls since it was gifted, although that will do little against our projected cuirassiers and muskets!

Cloud City (6): Granary, Library, Courthouse
True border city, nearly impossible to defend due to its location. Right now is engaged in a cultural battle with Spotsylvania, which will be tough for us to due to Kathlete's innate Creative trait and uber-cheap libraries. At least we have a theatre and religion (4 culture/turn) to counter; we'll probably want to chop/whip a library and university both in Spotslyvania to make sure we win the culture battle.

Mos Eisley (1): none
Bothawui (1): none
Just getting started. Kathlete founded the last city this turn, so we don't have map info on its location.

Overall Stuff
Total Population: 134 (#2) -> 148 (us)
Food: 309 (#2) -> 371 (us)
Production: 180 (#1) -> 165 (us)
Total Beakers: 6334 (#4) -> 10,522 (us)
Soldier Count: 602k (#2) -> 656k (us)

Soldier Count Breakdown
Population: 67k
Technology: 68k
City Improvements: 38k
Units: 429k

These numbers show that Kathlete is our biggest rival at the moment. They have the second-most cities, the second-most food, the second-most land, and the second-largest army. Our one advantage lies in technology, so the right play would appear to be leveraging that window into a position of military dominance. This team is simply too dangerous to leave alone. Nakor might have the tech, but he's not going anywhere with his level of food and production. I don't see how he could win a Cultural or Space victory without us seeing it coming a mile away and invading to remove the threat.

Interestingly, Kathlete's army is actually rated equal to ours in unit count, 427k (us) to 429k (them). The overall advantage is entirely due to population, technology, and especially city infrastructure. Looking more closely at that...

City Improvements Breakdown [our team]
13 Granaries [14]
13 Libraries [7]
9 Forges [9]
6 Barracks [7]
6 Courthouses [6]
3 Hammans [1]
3 Markets [5]
1 Buddhist Monastery [0]
1 Lighthouse [4]
1 Walls [5]
0 Theatres [6]
0 Monuments [5]
0 Stables [4]
0 Grocers [3]
0 Castles [1]
0 Academies [1]

1 National Wonder (Palace)
2 World Wonders (Buddhist Shrine, Oracle)

What are the major differences here? We're virtually identical in building granaries, barracks, and courthouses. But Kathlete has a big edge in the number of libraries, thanks to their cheap cost from Creative trait. We have had to build theatres and earlier monuments to compensate - this is part of the reason why Creative is such a powerful trait! Kathlete also built more hammans than we built aqueducts, for obvious reasons, although they haven't really done much with their unique building, all things considered.

Leaving aside techs that Kathlete simply lacks (like Guilds for grocers), there are three puzzling gaps in their infrastructure:

- No stables. Remember, this is the team that raced to Horseback Riding early in the game. They've had the tech for over 100 turns now. Not a single stables?!? Big mistake.

- Kathlete has only one lighthouse, at Clakdor. This despite the fact that they have many more coastal cities than we do! Giving up that extra food from your seafood resources, turn after turn after turn, makes a large difference in the long run. Even with just a single seafood tile, the lighthouse gives you the equivalent of a grassland farm (+1 food/turn) for free. Another puzzling decision.

- Finally, and this is the biggest omission, Kathlete hasn't built a single national wonder anywhere in their territory!!! Maximizing the use of the national wonders is one of the keys to success in this game. Their lack of Moai this late is just baffling; Kashyyyk or Hoth would be excellent candidates - and Kathlete has stone, for crying out loud! Similarly, although most people think of the Great Library when they think of Literature tech, the two Epics are very powerful when leveraged properly. Kathlete almost certainly has a unit with 10 XP from their various wars - they really should have gone to Literature tech and built Heroic Epic in Hoth.

With Moai and Heroic Epic in Hoth, it could be getting 30 shields/turn BASE right now at its current size of 13. Add in a forge and Heroic Epic for military production of 67 shields/turn. That's nearly 1t maces, or 2 knights every 3 turns! Yeah, it's a damn good thing for us they haven't planned that well!

So now we know why Kathlete has so much production (some really strong cities with mucho grassland hill tiles) and where to focus our attack when it comes (Hoth). While this probably doesn't make a huge difference, it's fun to look at the numbers and see how different teams decided to build their civs.

[Speaker]

Wow, impressive post. Sullla is the man.

[T-hawk]

Originally Posted by Sullla

Even with just a single seafood tile, the lighthouse gives you the equivalent of a grassland farm (+1 food/turn) for free.

It's not free! It costs 60 hammers. 60 hammers for 1 food takes quite some time to pay back. That's a terrible ratio compared to a work boat (30 for 3 or 2) or worker or settler (60 or 100 hammers for many food from many tiles) or even units (five 60-hammer units could capture a city with much more than +5 food.)

I haven't followed Kathlete enough to know offhand what they have been building, but in general, a 1-food lighthouse can slide for quite some time in favor of more urgent priorities. I remember we went over this in the Apolyton game a couple times. Rather than mismanagement, this could signal careful prioritizing.

[Rowain]

Great post and comparrison Sullla

@considering map-placement and effect: Of course one can speculate what various positions would have done to the game. (Example Rome closer to you might bring Praets sooner into your land and might cost you some more cities) but this is fruitless speculation anyway.

Good lands (well fitting your Leader too) alone don't build strong Civs. It needed the skills of you two to become that powerhouse.