[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

Turn 137

Not a particularly detailed report, but I'll drop a few things. We're workshopping as fast as our limited workforce is capable of:



Also going with max hammer configs wherever we can, so that's why some tile choices may seem odd. Also, I think we should seriously consider farming over that hamlet at minimum. Anything to let us work more workshops here. Here's a little overview shot with bubbles off:



We spent awhile chatting through logistics and whatnot. Our current attack date is T142, and I think we should definitely be able to do it. Not everything will be ready, but absolutely enough will be ready to immediately take 2 cities (we're going to ignore his tiny city on the plains hill by Tigers initially). Either pindicator or I will outline the tactical plans as the time approaches. Demos have one thing that's pretty awesome:



Despite our golden age being over, we're still 2nd in MFG, behind only golden age Dtay. Pretty big improvement over pre-golden age when we were down in 10th or so. We're obviously going to be a bit skewed towards hammers in Caste since we can't whip, but this is still encouraging. The nice thing is the islands are getting strong enough now that are able to maintain some sense of expansion for us while the mainland is devoted wholly to the war effort. We're doing a lot at once here, which is either going to be our undoing or a huge bonus for us, all depending on how the next 20 turns go. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Ichabod is kicking butt and taking names.



This would be scarier if he wasn't capturing the land of the guy with the worst land in the game... but that capital is a serious prize (the cap Ichabod just took, not the city Slow's cap just bounced to). Now, if Ichabod can convert this into a conquest of WilliamLP's fantastic land... now THAT would be a winning move. Popcorn and whatnot.

[NobleHelium]

There's a Taj Mahal in those forests.

[pindicator]

I haven't tried to crunch the numbers yet, but I took a look in game and I'm not sure we can get 12 knights on that staging time at end of t141. The second one from the capital won't make it in time, for one. We may need to delay a turn to 143 or go with less on 142. Let me try to crunch some numbers tomorrow and find out something with a little more certainty.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Yeah, as you point out slow got seriously screwed on food by the map here. Oh well.

[pindicator]

Scooter, I'm working on logistics and getting a firm number of units for our attack date, but I just had a moment

DO NOT MAKE ANY MORE WATERMILLS (unless there's a REALLY good reason)

Why?  Because farms and workshops do the exact same thing now that we have Guilds, but at a fraction of the worker-turns to build them:

2 watermills give a net of +4h over those two tiles and cost 16 worker-turns to build
a farm gives +1f and costs 5 worker turns
a workshop gives -1f & +4h and costs 6 worker turns
a farm + workshop gives a net of +4h over those two tiles and cost 11 worker-turns to build

So unless we decide to switch out of Caste in the near future, we should just farm and workshop everything.

[pindicator]

Considering the popularity of Caste & workshops in rbmod, i wonder if it makes sense to adjust the build times of watermills in relation to workshops

[Zed-F]

In RBMod, it seems you're intended to use watermill/windmill more when in Serfdom than when in Caste. You can get better tile yields with Serfdom watermill/windmill than with Caste workshop/farm, but of course the tradeoff is you lose out on Caste specialists.

[pindicator]

In RBMod, it seems you're intended to use watermill/windmill more when in Serfdom than when in Caste. You can get better tile yields with Serfdom watermill/windmill than with Caste workshop/farm, but of course the tradeoff is you lose out on Caste specialists.

Oh absolutely. But unless we play a gimick map (tons of hills or tons of jungle), caste is going to be more frequently the one right answer. Having watermills cost more worker turns to build is yet another factor against them. You already are restricted by needing a river

[pindicator]

Now the real important part: how many units exactly can we have ready for Nakor? I crunched the numbers and this is how cities will finish knights over the upcoming turns (assuming we don't radically change things around):

Turn	TB	RW	Ori	Tig	Bil
137	X
138
139		X	X
140	X
141				X	X
142	X	X
143			X
144	X
145		X
146			X

*I'm assuming that the workshop being built between Tigers & Orioles will be given to Tigers upon completion, otherwise there's no way it gets a knight out by t141. Otherwise that knight gets delayed another 2 turns.

Our staging tile is going to be the banana (red square), and here's a map showing how many turns it takes from each spot of our empire to get to that staging tile:



The reason all the lines are jagged and uneven is because we don't have construction and also because our road network sucks. Mostly because our road network sucks. But still, most cities can have a knight reach the staging tile within 2 turns. Bills and Gators are the only ones (I didn't bother drawing in Gators because it won't produce any units) that will take 3 turns, and there isn't any helping that.

So now we can tell how many units we'll have ready for an attack on each turn. Using that here are the number of knights that we can have ready to attack for each turn. I start at turn 142 because turn 141 is the earliest that we can move the HAs and Chariot to the staging tile and upgrade them.

Turn	Knights	Zerkers
142	10	6
143	12	6
144	12	6
145	16	6
146	16	7
147	17	7
148	19	7

Since speed is of the utmost importance, I think we attack on t142 with 10 knights. That will be enough to capture and keep Red Springs Hold, even with bad luck, and we will have 6 more knights arriving within a handful of turns.

Also, very important: We need 2 workers to road the banana tile on t141. Then on t142 they will road towards Red Spring Hold so the knights cannot attack. We'll need some of our extra spear & axe units to cover those workers, unless we want to draw out Nakor's troops.

(And yes Noble, I already checked in worldbuilder that the banana tile is under fog for Nakor with the current cultural borders.)

[NobleHelium]

In RBMod, it seems you're intended to use watermill/windmill more when in Serfdom than when in Caste. You can get better tile yields with Serfdom watermill/windmill than with Caste workshop/farm, but of course the tradeoff is you lose out on Caste specialists.

Oh absolutely. But unless we play a gimick map (tons of hills or tons of jungle), caste is going to be more frequently the one right answer. Having watermills cost more worker turns to build is yet another factor against them. You already are restricted by needing a river

They'd require fewer worker turns in Serfdom.