[SPOILERS]PB34:Burnin' Daylight - DMOC/gsorel/Ichabod

[Mr. Cairo]

We'll want to see those shark fins on the power graph in a few turns.

I'll be sure to post them in a few turns when this battle becomes visible, but for now, we can take a look at the OT4E - Nyles war:


GG Nyles.

Here is the result of this turn's movement:

Two cities taken this turn.

The military of OT4E that I can see:


I'm going to start dumping my GGs into my capital for a commando factory.

[Mr. Cairo]

Turn 184 Report.

As I expected, Chumchu attacked my stack of injured Cavs and Knights (covered by 6 Rifles and a Formation Pike), with almost everything he had. It didn't go well for him:


I had a look at the odds to see if I was just insanely lucky, but as it happened most of his attacks barely had 10% chances of succeeding. His best odds came from the Curs, which had 38% and 47% odds respectively. Even the WEs afterwards barely got above 20% odds. Maybe I got lucky that my units didn't get damaged much by his initial attacks, but in general, I don't think it was a wise attack. 
I moved the most injured back with the medic (which I gave another 10 xp with the GG nearby), then moved the rest up on to the hill, joined by the Cavs from the other force. The Rifles, Knights, and Cats from that force moved forward one tile. 
I then took his cap Klab. from the sea, with two victories with C2 Amphibious Rifles after bombing the defenses down to zero. The final warrior was killed by a non-amphib rifle, and I unloaded another two into the city. My other two galleons are headed to Money, Money.

After this I'm going back to just putting text in to show the units, since their health wont matter as much anymore.

I also took Waterloo without further losses:



Here's a flying camera view of my empire (sorry for all the signs).

WW is starting to be an issue, but not cripplingly so (those unhappy faces are mostly in cities with 50+ turns of whip unhappy). I'm building the seven Theatres I'll need for the Globe as well. Next turn I'll do a bit on the land to the far East of my core that I'm settling now.

Power Graph:

Nyles is falling fast.


I really want to know what happened at the beginning of this war for Nyles to lose so much of him army at once.

I think that OT4E is going to conquer Nyles quite a bit faster than I will Chumchu, but that's as much due to Geography than anything else. Nyles is a lot smaller, and is more-or-less contiguous. Chumchu is larger and spread out on the "islands"
Also, Nyles is whipping down to the ground, while Chumchu hasn't revolted back into Slavery yet, so I'll be conquering cities with less unhappy faces and more population in general.

Communism comes in two turns (which is requiring a lot of research builds), and my next Great Person in four turns:

That's five WW unhappy   
I really hope I don't get the Spy, since that'll necessitate getting Physics for that GS, delaying the GA by a lot. If I get the engineer however, I may want to use the Physics GS anyway, and burn the GE on the Kremlin.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to fire off the GA immediately, or wait to get Mil Sci so I can adopt Police State immediately, or even wait until I get Mil Sci and run up to Infantry, and wait until the end of the GA to swap. ATM I'm leaning towards the last option. Alhough Chumchu isn't that far away from Rifles of his own, they wont be in large enough numbers to really cause a problem, and thanks to Krill it'll make his drafting a lot less efficient, so I don't think that Rifles are a huge priority. I might instead use the GA to tech as much as possible while in my current civics.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Nyles is whipping down to the ground, while Chumchu hasn't revolted back into Slavery yet, so I'll be conquering cities with less unhappy faces and more population in general

Whip anger doesn't transfer between civs. If his cities had been whipped 20+ times there would still be no whip anger upon capture.
IIRC, having your own cities captured also eliminates the whip anger if you then recapture but I'm not 100% sure about that one.

[Mr. Cairo]

Nyles is whipping down to the ground, while Chumchu hasn't revolted back into Slavery yet, so I'll be conquering cities with less unhappy faces and more population in general

Whip anger doesn't transfer between civs. If his cities had been whipped 20+ times there would still be no whip anger upon capture.
IIRC, having your own cities captured also eliminates the whip anger if you then recapture but I'm not 100% sure about that one.

Well then. I still have a tech lead? I also will have another 12 turns of GA soon. So I've got that going for me.

What I also have going for me is up to 6 unhappy faces worth of WW. I debated turning culture on, but after thinking in a more long-term manner, I instead opted to focus on tech as much as possible. The plan is to tech Mil Sci, Steam Power and Assembly Line before firing off the GA. Communism comes in next turn and I'll get a GSci in 3 turns (hopefully):


I'm running research in most of my cities right now:

Those cities finishing Theatres and Privateers next turn will swap over to Research/Wealth next turn.

This is the city planned for the Globe Theatre:

My problem was finding a city with plenty of food, but also able to actually built the Globe in a reasonable time. I can use the workshops wo build it, then farm over them for the food.

The reason I'm teching like mad right now is so I can really take advantage of my GA. I want to swap civics during my GA to Police State, Nationhood, Caste System, State Property, and OR (at first). OR is for building factories during the first 5 turns of the GA, before I swap into Theocracy for the drafted Infantry. Nationhood and Police State will partly negate the effects of the WW, allowing me to continue my conquest of Chumchu, and the Infantry will make that conquest go a lot faster. It'll also discourage anyone else from trying anything.
I'll probably stay in those Civics for the rest of the game, although maybe swapping back to Slavery. Right now I get a lot of science from specialists thanks to Merc+Rep, with the new set of civics I'll have to make up for that with research/wealth builds in my factory-powered cities, but that's fine. I don't think that Rep+Enviro+Merc is good enough for a very large empire heading into the late game. In PB32 it was enough to send Gawdzak into an unassailable position at around this point in the game. But with OT4E still powering along thanks to his Wonders (and all-round good play), I'm going to need something else. 
I can see two options for a very late game civic set-up. One is a rush-buy cottage focus with US, Emanciaption, and Free Speech (and probably Enviro and Free Religion). The other is with State Property, which necessitates coming out of Representation, and Police State is the only logical alternative, the rest just follow on from there (Nationhood, Caste or Slavery, Theocracy). For me, the latter is the only option.

On to the war:
This turn I took Moskau, which had 15 pop and its loss cut Chumchu's time to Rifling by a turn:


I lost a single Knight to take the city, and I killed 6 Muskets, 2 Maces, 1 Pike, 1 Spear, and 1 Cur. Chumchu also killed the Sentry chariot I had down in NC's land spying on him thanks to his OB with NC. Kinda annoyed at that, but oh well. 

Next turn I'll take Money Money from the sea:

Then use those Rifles to take Super Trooper to the north of that bit of land. I'll consolidate my naval stuff after that before moving onto to the cities to the West.

Here's the power graph as promised:



My demos right now:

[Mr. Cairo]

Couple things I forgot.

Here's a stitch of the bit of land I'm settling atm (although that's on hold while I build Research everywhere)

Twisting was founded this turn, Les Boys last turn. Disease is the ex-barb city with all it's well-developed land, including a pair of towns.
The tundra isn't all that exciting, but there's enough seafood that with a Granary and Lighthouse those cities will be just fine for drafting Infantry out of. This is also where I'm closest to OT4E, so I'm sending a decent amount of units there, including a few Privateers and Frigates. Naval power is where my only military advantage over OT4E lies atm.



Also, here's an up-to-date tally of war losses:

Total losses so far:
Me: 5 Cavalry, 12 Knights, 1 Rifleman, 10 Catapults, 1 Caravel, 1 Impi, 1 Chariot
2415 Hammers


Chumchu: 2 Cuirassier, 38 Muskets, 38 Maces, 10 War Elephants, 10 Catapults, 6 Trebuchets, 2 Crossbows, 3 Archers, 3 Pikes, 2 Axes, 2 Spear, 1 Galley
8045 Hammers

[Mr. Cairo]

First things first, The War:

I took Money, Money:

Killed 2 Muskets and 2 Curs at the cost of a single Rifle. Unfortunately that Rifle was one I had upgraded to Amphib, so it's an unfortunate loss. Next turn I start to move on Super Trouper with the healthy Rifles from Money, Money, as well as a few units from nearby boats.

On the Mainland:

The event log told me that the two knights I had left to the south of Moskau were killed by Cuirassiers, which Chumchu must have then deleted. It's not a bad trade at all as far as I'm concerned. I'm moving on to Pistolero (The units in the box) and I have another force that will head towards Samurai 2 (the selected units). I have a lot of Cavalry healing right now, but thanks to some medics, they'll be back in the fight quickly enough. I'm not sure if I'm even going to take Samurai 2 right away. At least until I heal everything up and have a strong enough force to prevent NC from trying anything.


At home I've decided to go for a max-break-even style of teching, running 100% with Wealth builds, instead of maxing wealth then maxing research. I'm doing it this way to keep a decent amount of cash in my reserves in case I need to upgrade any units rapidly. My cash will actually increase as I capture Chumchu's cities, so I hope to have enough to max out on research at the end of Assembly Line.

My next GP comes in two turns:



My current Great People (including the Spy I got from Communism this turn):



Demos:



Power Graph:

[Mr. Cairo]

Turn 187:

Took Pistolero. It was defended by 2 Muskets, 1 Spear, and 1 Archer. After bombarding the defenses down to zero, I didn't even need to sac any cats. Pinch Rifles were getting 95%+ odds, so I took the city easily with four Rifles. I could have killed the last two units with Knights, but I wanted to give a couple of C2 Rifles some more XP, getting them closer to Amphib and/or Commando, although Commando is quite a ways for them even so.

I'm moving on Samurai 2 with a decent chunk of units, my GG medics are a real boon here. Here's the situation as it stands, including NC's army down to the south:

It's a decent sized chunk of Medieval stuff, but almost none of it is in a position to hit either Pistolero or Samurai 2, he only has a couple of knights there rn. Hopefully he just stays put, but it will tie down a sizable chunk of units. Next turn I'll move all my 2-movers from the larger stack onto the hill with the Rifle/Knight/Cat stack, ready to take Samurai 2 the turn after. Also, those two Curs in his cap, are they the ones that killed my Knights? I guess if they were close enough to kill the knights then run away? It looks like it as I don't think there's any other cause for those to be injured.

I'm also advancing towards the last of Chumchu's ABBA cities:

Frigates are going to make conquests in this area so much easier, and I think after I take Samurai 2 I'm going to shift focus to the cities up here. Although he'll get Rifles soon, he wont be able to draft them as easily in these cities as most of them are already down to around 6 pop from musket drafts, and the 2pop Rifle drafts will hurt a lot more. And I'll be getting Infantry soon enough.

Speaking of Infantry, I've had a change of plans for my GA. I'm going to pop the GA the turn I get MilSci, not Assembly Line. WW is really hurting right now, and those cities I'll want to draft Infantry from need to grow up to the new happy cap I'll have with Nationhood+Police State. So, to facilitate this I've started pillaging in Chumchu's lands, and I turned almost all of my cities over to Research. I should get enough cash from pillaging next turn, and taking those two cities the turn after that to keep at 100% Science for the next three turns while I get Steam Power and MilSci. 
I've also decided to swap into OR instead of Theo, with Theo coming at the end of the GA. I want OR partly to boost my core cities building Factories and Power Plants, and partly to start spreading Judaism to all my cities that I'm going to be drafting from, so that I can maximize the benefit from Theo, and I need OR to build them as I have very few Monasteries (and I can't build any more because of SciMeth).

Here's the result of all this on my demos:



And finally, here's an up-to-date tally of war losses:

Me: 5 Cavalry, 14 Knights, 2 Rifleman, 10 Catapults, 1 Caravel, 1 Impi, 1 Chariot
2705 Hammers


Chumchu: 4 Cuirassier, 42 Muskets, 38 Maces, 10 War Elephants, 10 Catapults, 6 Trebuchets, 2 Crossbows, 4 Archers, 3 Pikes, 2 Axes, 3 Spear, 1 Galley
8625 Hammers

[Mr. Cairo]

New turn, I was greeted with this offer from DTG:

I have absolutely no idea what it means. Usually that 10 gold means that something will happen in 10 turns. But I don't know what the 154 on my side is all about. If he wanted a loan he would have asked for more, I have over a thousand when he sent me that message last turn, and 154 is a very specific number. Does it have some Civ4 significance that I'm not aware of?
While normally I understand that this is the kind of thing that lurkers aren't supposed to help with but since I'm the only one regularly reporting on this game (and DTG hasn't posted since February), I'm not sure if it's appropriate for a more experienced lurker to offer some advice here. If not, no worries.


Moving on. 
I got a Great Scientist as planned this turn, so everything is a go for the Golden Age in 2 turns. Here's the whole gang:



I managed to pillage enough to only have to put 3 cities on wealth this turn, so I'm still researching on full blast. Next turn I take a couple of cities and pillage even more, so hopefully I'll get enough cash to 1-turn Mil Sci (with all the overflow I'll get from this turn's research).

I'm hoping to break 5000 GNP during my GA.

OT4E got Constitution this turn, and Steel last turn (he got within 1 turn of Con before swapping to Steel). Overall I'm up Philo, Edu, Lib, Eco, Corp, Astro, Sci Meth, and Communism. OT4E has Divine Right and Steel on me.
Militarily, OT4E is still ahead of me, although we both have plateuaed for the moment on military. I don't ahve the graphs, but I have a shot of Nyles' last stand:


These are the units OT4E has here that I can see:

A lot heavier on the Cavs than me, at first glance. And that will likely stay the same as I end up focusing on Infantry when I start my military up again.
Here's (most of) my current military:



Finally, here's me advancing on Samurai 2:

[Mr. Cairo]

First of all, GG Nyles. I hope you're enjoying reading everyone's threads. I know that I'm looking forward to the end when I can find out what on earth happened at the beginning of this war that sent your power down so fast.


On to my own war:
I took Samurai 2 and Super Trooper this turn. Super Trooper was defended by 2 Muskets, 2 Cuirs, 1 WE, and 1 Catapult that he must have forgot to attack my stack with? Anyway, I took no losses there. Samurai 2 had 2 Xbows, 2 Muskets, and 1 WE, but since I hadn't taken the defenses down with Frigates, I had a somewhat tougher time. I opted to use my cats to just knock the walls down as much as possible, there's no point in wasting them on the small numbers of units he left behind. As a result, I didn't have as good odd as at Super Trooper (75-80% as opposed to 85-95%) and I ended up losing a Cavalry to a WE. 

That puts the losses for the war at this:
Me: 6 Cavalry, 14 Knights, 2 Rifleman, 10 Catapults, 1 Caravel, 1 Impi, 1 Chariot
2825 Hammers

Chumchu: 6 Cuirassier, 46 Muskets, 38 Maces, 12 War Elephants, 11 Catapults, 6 Trebuchets, 4 Crossbows, 4 Archers, 3 Pikes, 2 Axes, 3 Spear, 1 Galley
9435 Hammers

That's the end of the "mainland" segment of the war. Now my focus shifts up to the north and the naval campaign. Chumchu gets Rifling next turn so I imagine that'll slow down my conquests for now, but I'm getting Infantry soon, and I plan to use my navy to its full effect, hitting multiple cities from the sea on the same turn and shuffling reinforcements as needed. I'll be keeping the bulk of my current military down by the border with NC, where he has moved up with a bunch of Knights, positioned to be able to hit either of Pistolero or Samurai 2. To head him off, at least while I regroup my own forces, I destroyed all the roads leading from his territory north. With workers he can rebuild them easily enough if he wants to do anything before my borders pop. But this'll delay him. Not that Knights can do much against Rifles on their own.

Here's the situation:


I also got a GG this turn, which I settled in my capital. With 1 more GG and West point I'll have access for Commando Cavs, and another GG after that will be Commando Infantry/Tanks etc.

Elsewhere OT4E finished Democracy, which confused me, since he was only getting Constitution 3 turns ago, and Steel after that. Perhaps he was stacking overflow to 1-turn it? I don't know why he would do that, unless he thinks that I'd try and race him for the Statue of Liberty? I don't think Democracy can be bulbed either.

I wonder what he plans next, since he has quite an army, with nowhere for it to go right now. He might go for me, but I hope to have plenty of advance warning with my navy. I hope; I need to figure out how he might send it towards me (this map is really something else) and set watchers. If I were him though I'd go after Pindicator, who has quite a large empire and a relatively small army. Also, my GA and civic swap next turn should discourage him from attacking me.

Speaking of civics, here's an idea of the kind of WW I'm currently suffering, and why I'm so eager for Nationhood+Police State:



Demos and graphs:

My GNP has shot down temporarily as I turn Wealth/Research builds off in all my cities, but as expected I had enough overflow that finishing MilSci in one turn is no problem. 

[Mr. Cairo]

*First of all, need to point out the mistake I made in the last post re: xp and commando cavalry. I forgot that my Cavs don't get C1 automatically, unlike my Rifles. So I'm actually two GG away from getting Commando Rifles/Infantry, and not at all close to Commando Cav.*

OK, with that out of the way, on to the turn. This was a pretty big turn, as I fired off my 5th 12-turn GA, and swapped every single one of my civics.
Rep -> Police State
Enviro -> Nationhood
Slavery -> Caste System
Merc -> State Property
Free Religion -> Organised Religion (Judaism)

Pre GA demos:

Post GA, pre civics:

Post civics swap & city micro:

First of all, that is a pretty huge drop in GNP, more than I was expecting, but not unexpected. The increase in hammers and food is exactly what I expected, and it's through hammers that I hope to make up the loss in teching ability. Here's my demos when teching at 100% and a bunch of cities building research, which I will end up doing to get Assembly Line ASAP:



Not as high as I would like, but three of my biggest hammer cities are currently occupied on other projects:







After Assembly Line, my core + other hammer cities will be working on their Factories+Coal Plants. My other cities are growing back their pop and letting their whip unhappy wear off. Depending on how things end up shaking out, I still don't know if I should swap my civics back at the end of the GA. In retrospect, I probably could have handled the WW for another 5-6 turns while I got to Assembly Line, and swapped then. Right now, Assembly Line probably wont come for 7 turns. Then I hope to have the factories by the end of the GA.

Maybe I can swap back into everything but Enviro (and taking Theo); keeping the ability to draft Infantry, while getting the science boost from the Rep+Bureau specialists. Slavery is a must if I'm getting the Kremlin, but drafting Infantry is still much more efficient (2 pop for 140 hammers vs. 2 pop for 75 hammers, but whipping is still good with the Kremlin). The problem is going to be happiness, especially going out of Police State. I've got my drafting/whipping cities on Markets right now, which will provide 4 happiness once completed, but that's probably not enough if I go out of PS.

Of course, I could make peace with Chumchu. That might be a good idea actually, and then I can either turn on NC/DTG or attack OT4E. We'll see how things shake out. For now I'm going to continue against Chumchu, going after the city to the West of Samurai 2 with Cavalry, and starting my naval campaign to the north. He does have Rifling now, and depending on how quickly he get's them ready, I may decide it's not worth the effort and make peace.

Speaking of OT4E, he did what I thought he might do and just keep going with his army after finishing off Nyles, turning on Pindicator. Who, while apparently unprepared (for some reason), will still be a lot tougher to conquer than Nyles. Firstly, because he hasn't gone and lost 75% of his military in the first turn of the war. Secondly, because he has a much larger, and much more populous empire than Nyles had. And thirdly, because Pindicator has Rifling. Also, Pindicator has a decent sized Astro-navy, so hopefully he'll be able to hit some of OT4E's core cities along the interior coast of their donut.

Here's what I can see of the war so far (although they have a couple other borders):

He has one other, smaller, stack of injured Cavs and Cuirs.
Pin has 3 Muskets, and Axe, a Spear, and 2 Archers in that city, and at least 1 more Musket on the way. He also has enough cash to upgrade those Muskets into Rifles, which will make taking the city really costly for OT4E. My ideal situation is OT4E has some initial success and fully commits to the way just as it begins to bog down and he loses momentum. 

Long term, it's OT4E I'll need to beat to win the game, and I have some ideas on how to do that. After Assembly Line, I'm going straight for Combustion, and once I get transports I can try and set up some out-of-the-fog naval razes on some of his key cities, especially if I go through Pin's canals to get to that inner sea (unless Pin does that sort of thing himself), and as long as I can get enough XP I can do Commando raids.
I'm in serious uncharted territory here regarding my own civ experience, so everything from here on in will be an experiment.