[SPOILERS] Cheater Hater hates bad advice. BGN gives only bad advice.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

is there anywhere else I would want it?

A high food draft camp could be useful if you're planning on using nationhood later.

Heidelberg may make a good candidate with three food resources. Similarly, Luxembourg, which actually could be better because it has less developed cottages.

[Cheater Hater]

Another short turn report for T171--lots of fighting happened between Adrien and johns, and even though Adrien burned a city, johns appears to have gotten the better of the combat--notably, both of Adrien's C5 GG units are gone now.

[Cheater Hater]

Another short T172 Report: Adrien and johns made peace again (and Adrien's moving his Knights up north, so I'm moving my chariots north just in case), and I should get Replaceable Parts in two turns (it's three now, but I have a couple Universities completing and I can build research). Sorry for the brevity of these reports--I have a feeling nothing interesting is going to happen until either war breaks out somewhere again (mostly likely Elum/Whosit or ipecac/Elum, maybe ipecac/Adrien--I don't think Whosit/johns is happening since they don't share many borders, and no one should mess with me while I'm still top power) or I get my next military tech. I'm still not sure whether it should be Military Tradition or Rifling--Rifling is two techs away while Military Tradition is four; maybe the plan is to just go Gunpowder next since it's common to both (after saving a turn or two) and see how things are looking after that (when I should have just fired or am about to fire my Golden Age). Speaking of my Golden Age, I think I get the Great Person in six turns--do I immediately fire it off, or do I wait for something first?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Is this RtR? I seem to think it is. If so, you have a strong economy and relatively good hammers. To wage a successful offensive war you'll want rifles. I'd look into whether it is worth it for you to get Gunpowder, fire your GA, draft muskets, then upgrade them immediately to Rifles as soon as you get the tech, then go wreck face. Rifles won't worry about knights and you ought to be able to build wealth to offset the expense of upgrading units. This allows you to draft at one population rather than two. This is theorycrafting, so be sure to apply it to what you actually can accomplish. It looks like you'd need to go back and tech Philosophy and Nationhood to be able to draft. Since this is the case I don't know whether it is best to get Rifling first. Probably it is best to get Gunpowder, then go Philosophy--> Nationhood for drafting muskets and then upgrade to rifles when you get there. Do you have enough collateral to get the job done? Who is your target? I'd fire the GA when it makes the most sense to get the maximum value out of drafting. Figure up how much drafting you can stomach (you don't want to grind your civ into dust) and then draft for that many turns. I'm also guessing you'll want Pacifism to build GPPs for a second GA, so factor this in as well.

[Cheater Hater]

Is this RtR? I seem to think it is. If so, you have a strong economy and relatively good hammers. To wage a successful offensive war you'll want rifles. I'd look into whether it is worth it for you to get Gunpowder, fire your GA, draft muskets, then upgrade them immediately to Rifles as soon as you get the tech, then go wreck face. Rifles won't worry about knights and you ought to be able to build wealth to offset the expense of upgrading units. This allows you to draft at one population rather than two. This is theorycrafting, so be sure to apply it to what you actually can accomplish. It looks like you'd need to go back and tech Philosophy and Nationhood to be able to draft. Since this is the case I don't know whether it is best to get Rifling first. Probably it is best to get Gunpowder, then go Philosophy--> Nationhood for drafting muskets and then upgrade to rifles when you get there. Do you have enough collateral to get the job done? Who is your target? I'd fire the GA when it makes the most sense to get the maximum value out of drafting. Figure up how much drafting you can stomach (you don't want to grind your civ into dust) and then draft for that many turns. I'm also guessing you'll want Pacifism to build GPPs for a second GA, so factor this in as well.

Yeah, this is RtR 2.0.7.2, and Rifles feels like the best plan. I don't know if drafting them (or drafting Muskets and upgrading) is the best plan though, especially if I want to chain Golden Ages. Is it practical to start upgrading all those Axes I built in the early game? Don't forget they have both Cover and Shock, which will be relevant when I'm cleaning up all my backwards neighbors. Then again, I don't know if the upgrade costs are worth it (is there a reference/easy way to calculate that?). I feel like I have the numbers (especially since I'm still top power, especially compared to johns and Adrien) of units, I just need the advanced units to break through all the Knights, as well as johns's Castles.

I do have Philosophy now (I backfilled that a couple turns ago), so all I would need is Nationhood to go along that path (and I probably want Cavalry eventually, in addition to the Constitution line). I managed to get Replaceable Parts to finish this turn (even if it required more Research builds than I expected), so Gunpowder should come soon (though I probably will take a turn or two to save up; we'll see how the numbers line up next turn). After that, I don't know whether I should be heading towards Nationalism or Rifling next; I'll be able to save up a couple turns at least before I need to decide.

T173 has been played, not much new (since Adrien and johns hadn't played yet). I did take another look at Johnny Oro; it does have a Castle, but the defense forces aren't that large, and it's still isolated like you said it was 50-something turns ago. Obviously my troops aren't in position yet (and probably wouldn't be for a while, since I'd need all my siege there to bombard the Castle), but it's a possibility now that Engineering lets me hide my troops better. Also, you said I was doing relatively well in hammers, but I've actually dropped down to 4th recently--I don't think anyone's in a golden age still (since I'm still first in GNP; maybe Adrien's still in one?), and part of it's probably just me growing my cities and/or whipping away hammer tiles to complete infrastructure, but I'm not sure--is there anything I'm missing?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Don't forget that rifles completely ignore walls/castles. It isn't just the base unit strength of the rifle that makes it more effective, it is also the elimination of this potent defensive bonus.

Have you identified which cities you'll want to run specialists in during the GA? I know the NE city will be one. Is this the only one? Do some calculations to see if it is possible for you to squeeze out an extra GP from somewhere else during the GA, keeping in mind that the cost for a new GP increases (I think by 100) with each one you produce. Sometimes you may have to slow down GPP generation in your NE city to allow another city to complete its GP but this is worth it in many cases. Unless your NE city is just so much superior to your other cities that it can fill all your GP needs.

[Cheater Hater]

Don't forget that rifles completely ignore walls/castles. It isn't just the base unit strength of the rifle that makes it more effective, it is also the elimination of this potent defensive bonus.

Have you identified which cities you'll want to run specialists in during the GA? I know the NE city will be one. Is this the only one? Do some calculations to see if it is possible for you to squeeze out an extra GP from somewhere else during the GA, keeping in mind that the cost for a new GP increases (I think by 100) with each one you produce. Sometimes you may have to slow down GPP generation in your NE city to allow another city to complete its GP but this is worth it in many cases. Unless your NE city is just so much superior to your other cities that it can fill all your GP needs.

I know Rifles ignore Walls/Castles; my thoughts about Johnny Oro were about a possible pre-Rifling attack. There's still the cultural bonus though--do Cats have to bombard through the Castle defenses first, or do they start with the culture?

Other than Vienna, the other cities that want to run specialists are Rillanon (though the Bureaucracy bonuses mean specialists aren't quite as good there) and Heidelburg, since those are the only places that really have spare food.

Anyway, turn should be coming soon--Civstats tells us some interesting stuff though...

[Cheater Hater]

Of course the one turn report I would miss would right after I left a cliffhanger open for T174...

Anyway, T175 covers most of the same stuff, including the important news that ipecac declared on Adrien two turns ago and burned(?) two cities, though they weren't part of the main core (they're in a section I can't actually access, since it goes though Elum and I don't have Open Borders with him). If you want some details on what's going on you should look at T174; the majority of Adrien's troops disappeared from my vision between turns. I moved my espionage spending to ipecac so I can get an idea of what's going on (partially since Whosit isn't going to give me city visibility anytime soon; is it worth actually spending commerce on espionage to get it?), and I'll get city visibility in two turns. I have no clue what's going on with Adrien though--for example, he just built Parthenon in the same city he built GL; can he afford to spam wonders while at constant war?

I feel like I'm meandering a bit here--I know the basic plan is to tech to Rifles, get a bunch of them (though drafts, upgrades, or normal builds), then attack either Adrien and/or johns while I have the tech advantage, all while hoping Whosit doesn't come in through the other side. The problem is that I'm getting lost in all the details. For example, my builds suck in general--my focus has been on economic buildings in the places that want them, along with theaters in the border cities, but other than that it's a mess--my military builds have been a mix of LK's, Cats, and Knights with no real rhyme or reason--I think I should be focusing on Cats since I won't be building quite as many of them when I start massing Rifles. And speaking of siege, are Trebs worth it in RtR, and when?

My tile micro also seems horrible--I'm working the majority of my tiles (with a couple of exceptions, notably the cities that still need to grow and the small number of unimproved tiles left), and a lot of my cities have stopped growing--is that normal for this period of the game? I feel like a lot of my tile management is horrible (especially my eastern cities, where I'm not working many tiles other than farms since there's not nearly enough food for all the cities I've placed), but I don't really know what good management looks like this late in a game. In addition, I'm just not spending as much time as I feel like I should be on the game--even ignoring actual C&D efforts (which after my disastrous experience with in PBEM58 I'm trying to avoid), there's a lot going on in the game I should know, and I should be writing better turn reports. Then again, at least my relative disinterest in the game this week is based on burnout rather than rage, and hopefully getting Rifles gets me excited again

[Cheater Hater]

It's been a while--on T176, the eve of my golden age (I get the Great Person next turn, and I trigger it right away, I'm assuming), let's take a good look at my empire (and hopefully get some input before I play the next turn). Let's start with a domestic overview (spoiler has the advisors):

I don't even remember when the last time I posted empire overviews in the thread, but not much has changed since I founded my last city. As I mentioned in the last post, I haven't been building as much military recently (since presumably I'll do so in the Golden Age) and instead focusing in infrastructure (Theaters, Universities, and Banks). If there's interest I can make a bunch of posts looking in my cities, and I might do so when I trigger the Golden Age just for fun

Next, we have a lot of military stuff to cover in various detail. To start we have the Adrien/ipecac war, and the weirdness of the espionage means I got everything this turn right after I crossed the threshold (unlike I did with johns earlier)! Even though I planned on making a composite for it, I got lazy and decided to just dump everything in a folder. The big thing here is the siege going on at Zero-Insertion--I'm assuming there's no way Adrien will be able to take it (especially since it's across a river), but maybe BGN can judge it a bit better? Still, those are a lot of troops that aren't around to try and defend against a possible attack from the other direction--let's see how all my troops are doing for the first time in a while:


Unfortunately Adrien can still see my staging tile that would allow me to take Tungelae on the declare turn, but as we saw earlier a lot of Adrien's troops are fighting ipecac right now. I don't think I'll do it and instead will just tech to Rifles during my Golden Age, but I'm keeping my options open--and we still have problems on the southern border:


That's a lot of Knights and Cats--I'm assuming my current garrison in Magdeburg stops it from being taken in one turn (while not revealing my Knights to johns), but I'm not sure considering I only have the 20% culture defense--is it worth putting Walls in there after I whip the Theater next turn?

My final batch of pictures is the stats stuff: the event log (signaling the end of Adrien's Golden Age), demos, and the graphs (in spoiler tags)--these are mainly here so I can brag about how much my numbers go up

Oh boy, next turn is going to be worrisome since it's so pivotal--I'll go over the basic plan just to make sure I'm not missing anything:

• Trigger the Golden Age, then revolt into HR/Caste/Pacifism (maybe Mercantilism?)
  
• Research Rifling, hopefully complete it in a decent time (maybe even before my saved gold runs out from researching at 100%)
  
• Run as many specialists (Merchants?) in Vienna as possible, get a Great Merchant (at least one, maybe two? If it's going for two, make the second a Scientist?)
  
• Set up a second city with a bunch of food (Luxemburg or Heidelburg; give them three food sources, Luxemburg seems better) and run a bunch of specialists (Scientists?) to get a Great Scientist
  
• Trigger the 2-person Golden Age soon after this Golden Age (or even during it, haven't run the numbers quite yet)
  
• Research something after Rifling--maybe something like Nationalism->Economics (planning to revolt into Free Market at the end of the Golden Ages)->Constitution->Corporation? I think Nationalism is a must, and then I have a choice between that path, Music->Military Tradition, Compass->Optics->Astronomy, or Chemistry->Steel. I think part of it is that I don't have a sense yet of how good my research will be after I trigger the Golden Age and move to Pacifism (all I know is that my Moai city will be insane).
  
• Build a bunch of Rifles, and possibly save up a bunch of gold to do a ton of upgrades of Axes--do you have any thoughts on how good the Axe upgrade plan is BGN?
  

That's the gist of what's going on I guess--is there anything I'm missing BGN? Hopefully you can have some input before I play the turn

[Cheater Hater]

Well, I waited a bit, and no input came, so I played the turn. Unfortunately, there isn't going to be a detailed turn report right now, but the T177 pictures are here.

I did decide not to go into Merchantilism, and I messed up a bit by not doing a couple last-minute whips, but other than that the Golden Age went off as scheduled. I can get the next Great Merchant out of Vienna in 4 turns, and the Great Scientist out of Rillanon might not come out right as the first Golden Age ends, but it'll be close (as will the second Great Person out of Vienna, especially if I starve it a bit more). Unfortunately Luxemburg feels like it needs to grow a bit before it can become a decent GP farm--any thoughts about how I should manage it? (pics of all three GP-producers are in the folder, as well as a gratuitous shot of Ulm)

Rifling is scheduled to come in 5 turns, but with the extra costs of Pacifism I have less than 4 turns of 100%--maybe 3 turns of 100% and 2 turns of 90% will get there? I also have more science coming as cities grow and a couple of Universities complete.