[SPOILERS] Cornflakes and Q Eat 'Em for Breakfast!

[Cornflakes]

Well, borders popped on NCIS, covering Krill's stack with 2 full culture rings plus granting a hill on the border for lots of vision. Nothing doing in the north anymore. The Currassiers will now be used in the south. Maybe against BJ and the Bear, maybe against NCIS. Hopefully an opportunity presents itself. If not I just stack everything and brave the collateral storm. He'll probably abandon NCIS to make a last stand at the hill city further back (forcing me to walk through his culture for quite a while). Upgrade may now wait another turn so I fired most research builds. I's a powerful option at our disposal though in the future to burn through tech quicker.




Bigger revolted to Free Religion, which means he loses the benefits from University of Sankore and Spiral Minaret. Is +10% research enough to balance out 4gpt + 4bpt per city (20 cities)? I doubt it. His GNP dropped from ~900 to <800 from last turn to this turn.

[Qgqqqqq]

Maybe he needs the happy?
It does signal a big research push, which is weird seeing as he's nearly finished democracy.
Also, its +2g/bpt IIRC (he shouldn't build too many monastries, they take a while to pay off), and he may not have made all his temples.

Maybe Jowy bonked him? The timing is conincidental...

Is Krills stack enough to kill your (projected) stack if you have to slog?

[Cornflakes]

There is trouble on the horizon! 2metra is back hoping to make a surprise attack. Thanks to my spies he's been spotted just in time again! I hope 2metra carries through with the invasion, because he's going to have a nasty surprise waiting for him. We can hold the AT front indefinitely since I established that forward city plant. I'm switching to defense mode there and moving our knights-soon-to-be-Curassiers up to the 2metra front.




Here is the threat ... 11 galleys and 4 caravels. 800 hammers invested in ships. A total capacity of 22 land units onboard. I'll have 15 curassiers by the time he lands in addition to the forces already in the area. I drafted a full compliment of 4 muskets this turn, including the Globe-now-NE city. In retrospect I probably shouldn't have drafted since the NE just completed this turn.

2metra doesn't have Steel yet (I didn't trust him enough to trade it) so no invasion from him is particularly scarry. The biggest threat from him now is a feint with empty galleys while he throws his main army at Mars and Sheep. I'll be stretched thin WRT cannon deployment since I only have 7 in my standing army on that front. That was enough for defending 1 front, not enough to split for 2 fronts. Fortunately I have several in-transit to the AT front that can turn back in time.

More details and pictures if I have time. We'll be ok, and if 2metra continues the attack he'll get smashed

[Cornflakes]

The biggest threat is empty galleys forcing me to draw my forces towards Porcupine and then a knight strike in the east using spies to remove the city defenses. I think that I've take sufficient measures to prevent this. I just ran Counterespionage mission this turn against 2metra and will build a spy each for Mars and Sheep.

Another concern is that 2metra missed his turn yesterday ... and then played early this turn. I really want to get the first half of any split for ease-of-play. 2metra is terrible at playing in a timely manner.

[Cornflakes]

We'll be ok on the 2metra front. I'm just going to try holding the current position and make an economic push here. There really is no rush to crush AT/Krill. Their production capacity is insufficient to overwhelm our front, and I'm hoping that the reality of Mutually Assured Destruction will prevent anyone else from attacking.

I'm showing force mobilization that is hopefully sufficient to deter 2metra from attacking. I'm going to hold my knights in a position where they can have time to promote and deal with a 2metra threat from either land or sea. I'm going to wait to promote and hopefully be able to save the gold for teching.

I started working specialists at Pork Chop this turn. GP is born in Porcupine next turn and Pork Chop in 5 turns. Assuming I don't have to upgrade my knights and I run 0% research I'll have approximately 1300 gold in the bank. My goal is to research SciMethod > Communism in 7 turns so that I can swap to State Property on the last turn of the GA.

– Communism is 4500b base. Divide by 1.2 for prereq = 3760
– SciMethod is 3860 base. Divide by 1.2 for prereq = 3320
– 3760 + 3320 = 7080 ... so I'll need 1010 bpt

Is 1010 beakers per turn doable during our GA? Right now expenses are 425gpt. Hammers are roughly 400hpt, estimated over 500hpt in GA. By running wealth I can run full slider indefinitely. I'll have enough gold for 3 turns before having to run research everywhere.



– Representation ... I have 23 cities so this is worth 69bpt from the free Merc Specialists alone. Plus I'll have about 8-10 more in the NE city so let's call in 100bpt (actually, this is probably in correct. The
– Bureaucracy ... This will raise the expenses, but it's worth 45 commerce at Grand Slam. Adjust that +100% is 90 bpt.
– Caste ... I've been in this forever now and have no plans for starting to slave during the GA. Useful for hammer bonus and spec slots that can be either merchants or scientists as needed.
– Mercantilism ... I've been at war with everyone recently so nobody would give me very good trade routes. Plus I don't have any guarantee that 2metra and/or Bigger won't close borders immediately.
– Religion civic I'm not 100% sure about. I would like to use OrgRel and knock out some infrastructure quick during the GA, but wealth to support the research push is more important. Free Religion isn't as useful as it sounds since +10% is weaker when added to the current multipliers. In reality it's only maybe +6%. Still, 1010/1.06 = 950 so Free Religion is worth about 60bpt (reasoning backwards that I would only need 950bpt from elsewhere rather that 1010).

Let's assume that 70% of my tiles make 1C already. I have 200 population which means the GA will provide about 140 commerce, adjusted + 35% (estimated nationwide multiplier) = 180bpt.

So now add everything up. Current 100% research rate is 681bpt. I'll assume that I can scrape together enough wealth builds to maintain 100%, which should be quite doable.

680 (current) + 180 (GA commerce) + [100 + 90 + 60 (civics)] = 1110bpt. I'll be growing a few pop and swapping tiles to maximize commerce or hammers-to-wealth so I think I'll have some wiggle room in there to safely get Communism in 7 turns.

Now i guess it's your time now to tell me all my assumptions are wrong and i've wasted more than an hour :P

[Qgqqqqq]

I'm logged in now so I'll respond later, but two questions: Why the specs in Volcano?
Also, a tile flipped that lets Commodore two move Potos Village. I don't know his strength there but I've moved the knight stack in just in case (it had like 2 longbows there).
Oh and your micro sucks

[Qgqqqqq]

Okay we make roughly 700bpt, make that 800bpt with growth and improvements etc.
So can we get 400bpt (to be safe)?
Rep (I'm assuming 23 is right). We therefore gain 69bpt at the cost of 10gpt, so make that 80bpt with extra specs and relatively equal gold-beaker conversion.
Bureaucracy gains us about 90bpt but costs 40gpt. I'm going to say NO to this for two reasons - firstly we will suffer a lot from losing cheap ikhanda happy, and secondly it removes the ability to rush units which makes us a lot more vulnerable.
No reason to leave caste, I agree. Or merc.
I think OR for a few reasons: firstly, we want to get out a bunch of missionaries ASAP as we have like 8 cities (more with new plantings) to convert, secondly I think we need the hammers more then we do the beakers (because I think I can micro enough beakers) to push out the builds. It would also enhance a failgold economy (I'm thinking Temple of Artemis, Shwedagon Paya, and Sistine) which should be strictly superior to wealth (only 3 cities can work on it a turn, but if we start now it can work instead of wealth (also allowing a merchant->scientist switch).

I think its defintiely doable, but I think we want to save the GA maybe a turn or two saving gold/maybe researching outside of GA (and this may happen regardless, as I'm not sure you realise the PC GP will come out at 600 - or 6 turns - because of the porcupine hiking it up) to make sure we fit it in without costing too much in terms of actually making use of the GA.

Fake-edit: I just went and counted, and I believe that FS is actually more eco-friendly then Bureaucracy atm! We have enough that it makes a very similar amount of commerce each, but cost 20gpt less. Combined with the culture benefit and we might want to consider a swap.

We do need to rush to finish off Krill/AT in the very general sense (to catch up to Bigger) but I agree we can look at economy first.

[Qgqqqqq]

Also: Bigger is roading unfriendly up in the north.
We need to a) reinforce the cities, and b) replant a city to seal our borders up there, or they're just asking to be attacked.

[Cornflakes]

With free Comm GSpy + 2 GP from from NE we can get out another GA roughly 15 turns after the first one ends (without starving). We could potentially stay in OrgRel through that gap and swap back to Theocracy at the end of the 2nd GA. If we can be certain of getting Communism in 7 turns I'll happily choose OrgRel. We have to hit 1010bpt on the interface to do that in time.

... I'm not sure you realise the PC GP will come out at 600 ...

yeah, forgot about that I just don't want to wait too long because I don't want to risk Bigger or 2metra sniping the GSpy, because that's part of my reason for beelining Communism. The GSpy will help stack on another GA quickly. Otherwise another option is to hit Industrialism (which is too much to complete in the GA ... about 10k beakers after discounting but that doesn't matter for civic swapping).

Right now our distance maintenance is about 95gpt. Swapping to SP would remove our Rep-Merc Specs, which will be bringing in 23*6 = 138bpt as scientists or 69bpt + 69gpt as merchants. SP does grant +1F to WS, which will be a significant boost to food output in our hammer cities.

If we go for failgold I will only consider Sistine. The other 2 are obsolete at SciMethod, so any hammers "invested" will vanish as soon as we research SciMethod (which is our next tech). I have a few hybrid cities knocking out Libraries or Universities over the next 5 turns before we launch the GA. The problem with using failgold funding is that it requires actually completing the wonder somewhere, and the cash doesn't pay until the wonder is finished. OTOH it pays +150% or 2.5g/hammer with Marble + IND (+another 25% for OrgRel in the GA) so it still pays off if the timing of the cash isn't critical. We'll have 6 turns for saving and 5 turns of full burn before the gold would come in real handy to sustain research.

[Cornflakes]

Here's another thing to consider. Do we want to trickle beakers into SciMethod after MilTrad in the 6 turns leading up the GA? Literally everybody has research visibility on us and I don't want someone catching our drift and beating us. OTOH we'll be pulling about 30bpt from the scientists in Pork Chop for the GP, so that'll be close to 200 beakers head start. That might be the difference between making it, and once we hit the GA I don't think we can be beat, so I'll set tech to SciMethod next turn unless you have a major objection.

2metra does have 3000 gold saved up now though ...