Any update?
Mwin
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[Spoiler] Any volunteers for a human sacrifice? Brennus of the Aztecs, by Krill
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I get Communism eot T230 and Kremlin eot T233. And oil fucked me again, but not in the manner you would expect.
EDIT: And I'm pissed off because it looks like the screenshot didn't take. I had PD set up to get to 299/300 on a Buddhist Cathedral, to set up 1 turns worth of overflow into the Kremlin and the turn it was supposed to hit 299 I popped oil at PD. Result? I get an extra 2 hammers and complete the Cathedral, leaving me with no good building to use as overflow into Kremlin. Does it matter? Not really, I will just suck it up and use an aquaduct, but I will use up most of the food box to get it to work. Krill Wrote:And it looks like Pingo have turned their tech back on, finishing SM this turn. They have 1700 gold in the bank and do not have Lib, and show 1700 GNP. I'm still not worried, because if this is a race, next turn I will go past 3500 base bpt if I have to build research, and will finish SM in 2 turns with overflow then do Communism in 2. MWIN Wrote:Any update? OK, what's happened since T227...well, it's been rather simple, actually. After deciding I wanted Kremlin, T227 and T228 I researched SM, building Research in almost all my cities cities for those two turns to ensure I could two turn Communism afterwards. On T229 I then turned a couple of cities back to unit builds because I managed to trade Rifling to scooter for SM, so I could build the rifles. Then micro Communism to a two turn tech but with as little overflow as possible because I'm not sure if I want to tech anything afterwards, and if I do, it is probably going to be Mil Trad in two turns which shouldn't need research builds, and that then enables the billion cav army. The point of this is that tech is not the aim, I only want enough beakers to enable the units, civics, buildings, that I need to fulfil a predetermined strategy, which in this case is one of denying boni to Pingo, and setting myself up for the final war against everyone else. I don't want to tech off into the distance, although I am almost have all of the GP in place for my next two golden ages, which I can use to either build the armies I need, or to get another couple of techs, like Assembly Line for the Pentagon and infantry, Democracy for the SoL, or...Artillery for said unit. But It's not just that I want what is enabled by the techs, I have to pay attention to the turn advantage I will have, the amount of turns that I will be able to use them before someone else gains a way to negate my advantage.
Wow. Just...wow.
That GNP stat is amazing. When do you win?
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Oh, I should say, I swapped into Environmentalism the turn I started the GA, for one specific reason: I'm still working a bunch of farms, and the single commerce that the tile makes still gets the GA bonus, and it is still worth 60bpt over bureaucracy in Crapital, working 12 towns and a river silk plantation, plus the 20 commerce in trade routes. But the real advantage is that I'm saving 100 gpt over bureaucracy, which is high cost, whereas Environmentalism is only a low cost civic.
One of the points here is that Environmentalism is a second choice for a player that focusses on using specialists. Not only does it provide an extra 1gpt for each spec (with Rep it turns specs into 7 yield tiles) you work, it also provides that commerce to farms and pastures that makes GA much stronger for those players. And as they are working those specs, it's not difficult to set up the golden ages. This is one of the reasons why I do not think that empires using a high proportion of specialists over cottages fall off as much as expected, even with increases in tech costs slowing down research speed after Education. But it's a balancing act, specialists still fall off compared to towns, but it's put off a bit more, which is what gives that player a bit more time to capitalise on their medium term advantages to get more land and hurt people. Tyrmith Wrote:How much has having the island changed the game for you? How big of an impact is that having on your production and research rate at this point? Just looking at the city screens from T230, the cities make 450+ bpt, but they cost me 40 gpt in city maintenance, and as they have 75 pop total on that island, and I have almost 500 pop total, call it 60gpt in civic costs, that's 150gpt in total costs including inflation. That doesn't account for the benefits to internal trade routes because I do not have enough foreign ones any more, nor from the decreased unit costs. The main advantage is that scooter doesn't have it, and that I do not have to defend the coast on the mainland. If I had to do that, I would have to divert so many resources to holding off his boats, with minimal production cities on the coast. That's a strategic advantage that I would have difficulty to explain, and even understand fully, because of the effect it would have on scooter's actions. Him with that island would just be so dangerous though, as he could probably invade Nakor and actually hold most of the land, and even have plans to invade me that would work. But because I hold it, that entire island is just a huge roadblock in any attempt by scooter to win the game, he has to capture it before he can invade the mainland and that is why I settled the cities how I did, so he couldn't invade me. Settling that island was one of the important steps on the road to victory, up there with Holding Opportunism against azza, and succeeding in Getting Music first.
Got Kremlin, revolted to Nationhood and SP, dropping my GA max bpt to about 1950bpt. Not great, but Nationhood works out as about equal to Bureaucracy because Bureau is high cost, and NH is no cost, so the only difference is about 10 bpt, and the hammers for Bureau, compared to the extra EP, happiness and ability to draft in NH. Swapping out of Environmentalism was necessary because I was turning most of the farms into workshops due to SP, so I was losing a lot of commerce making it considerably less profitable to use.
I then turned tech over to Steel, to enable dry docks and cannons and will then either save gold for a while or get Military Science for Ships of the Line, and i can finish both of the techs with the current gold I have, as costs are now around about 600gpt.
So, we have now lost 5 of the original 10 players. We lost:
Lessons to learn: long drawn out wars still work, but only if you can balance the unit production with building, settling land, and tech. I did, and Commodore couldn't, and that is down to the land layout, positioning of opponents, and bad resource trades... Short wars still work, because of the decrease in the effectiveness to slavery, Nationhood, making standing armies more important because you can't just magic a defensive force out of thin air any more. yuris collapsed to a huge knight force thrown right at him, without any supporting units: the defence against that is really simple, a bunch of pikes sitting in cities and some cats to thow at the knights when you get into position to attack them. But before anyone comes along and says that it's impossible to defend, Pingo did manage to defend against Commodore invading early on in the game.
In addition to those wars though, there have been shorter wars over land, between myself and Nakor, and between Nakor and scooter.
The defining reason for these wars to occur is that Nakor has tried to claim land that he couldn't hold, and we relieved him of it. This is down to Nakor not building enough units and not positioning those he did have effectively, and that's because he should have researched different techs (straight to Nationalism and taken Taj, instead of OU, for example). Nor did Nakor build decent hammer cities, he cottaged everything and didn't build units until after I had declared war and taken a bunch of cities, and after that he again teched too far before building units, researching Rifling just as scooter started to wrest control of the islands from him. The point here is that successful wars require good judgement from the attackers, who have to find a weakness in an opponent and exploit it. If they can judge the weaknesses well they will not attack when they expect to lose, so they will not be involved in wars that the defender can force a stalemate in, so you will not see many good defences when you have good attackers playing. That is the other reason it's not reasonable to say that defending is impossible, defending is about positioning your empire so that you both are not weak, and you do not appear weak. It's not just about moving units to hold cities and kill enemy stacks. |
