A Record of Joey's Journey to Immortality

[GermanJoey]

T151-156.

So, war continues! And it's been a success so far!



A big fat blank space in the buildings column is not exactly what you're hoping to see when you take an enemy's capital.

I've labeled how the battle went down. Basically, Donovan moved most of his southern garrisons up to defend his capital in a more substantial stack. So, I moved to go around that with my 2-mover stack, forking Juneau (a city just as big as his capital), while also slowly advancing with my 1-mover stack. (swords, cats, eles, a phalanx or two, etc). His capital would get slaughtered regardless when then 1-mover stack arrived, so my 2-movers force him to try and attack out with his 2 cats and 4 Horchers. He had some pretty lucky rolls here, managing to kill a Knight at 9% odds and also getting an additional withdraw, plus maiming two other Knights. However, because I had reinforcement Knights coming in, I was still able able to take the city 3-4 turns earlier than with just the 1-mover stack.

After this, it's been mostly cleanup.



Took this filler with cats + swords + knights... two cats retreated at like 20% odds, but then a C3 Knight died at like 95% odds.



Now that's more like it!



Good, good.



Getting these forges is a huge help, seriously. The cities that didn't get them will need to be whipped for 3-4 pop right away. =/ (after Granaries and Odeons, the latter of which I need since I'm not in caste)

Donovan's down to one size 2 island city with 2 archers, 2 workers, and a city wall, which I'll be able to take in 2-3 turns or so. On this past turn, I caught Krill trying to sneak a settler over and plant a filler right in my face in the new territory, so I parked a C3S Knight in front of it, so we'll see what he does, heh.

Also, good news, I hit my goal of 1M soldiers by T155!



(these are post-GA demos; #2 MFG was DS, in a GA, while #1 CY is of course dtay)

I've lost a total of 6 Knights, 1 sword, and 2 catapults so far to Donovan, so I woulda overshot a bit if I hadn't gone to war. For the next 10T, my goal is a more modest 1.25M soldiers... a much smaller soldier increase per turn, but then a.) I need a million Galleons, which give a lot less soldiers than Knights, b.) I won't be in a Golden Age, and c.) I need to build some key infrastructre (a few harbors in cities with negative health, missionaries, and a Grocer in my capital).

Astro finishes this turn... after that, I'll pick up Drama, Bureau, Banking, Nationalism, Monotheism+Theology, and Gunpowder, in some sort of order. Maybe that order, actually. I'll be able to fire another GA in ~9 turns, but this time I need to make sure that I'll be able to achieve all the civics I want to end up in because my 4th GA won't be for a long time from now... at least past T200. The biggest consequence of this is that I'll have to forgo Rep for a little while, which will cost me dearly later. Well, I might be able to delay the GA, but I'll have to see how much my economy improves once Donovan's cities finally start bringing in income. Right now my thought is that my economy is relatively poor, and so I need the GA commerce income just to keep pace with dtay and put some pressure on the guy so that he doesn't try to guard lib forever and then snag something insane. I'm also gonna chop out my Forbidden Palace very soon in one of Donovan's old cities.

I ended my GA switching into Pacifism and Buddhism. Pacifism is a pretty unusual choice to be sure, but I have some pretty big cities running a heck of a lot of specialists, so I'll get a lot outta it. Furthermore, it didn't end up costing too much... Vassalage pays for 33 military units for free, and no-upkeep Pacifism saved 28gpt (pre-inflation) over Paganism. So, IIRC my expenses only went up maybe 9gpt in total. That's a pretty good deal for +100% GPP, IMHO. Seriously though, my expenses are just, like, so goddamn high right now. Pre-inflation, I'm spending like a 120gpt on units, 160 on cities (despite being in the conquerer's plateau and having 17 courthouses), and 130 on civics, which again, is only so low because of Pacifism. Oh, and inflation is at 21% now. My gold-saving rate is something -100gpt compared to when I started my golden age despite having larger cities and better civics. Arrgh!

Internationally... the game is weird. I'm having trouble figuring out what the hell the other main contenders planning. Luckily, I have civ vision on Krill, dtay, and CoeurvaChumchu, and will soon have it on DS. The biggest mystery is Gavagai... I don't understand why he's had Astro for 13 turns, and I think Guilds for like 8 now, yet still hasn't attacked anyone. He just wardeced Krill but I don't see any of his units in Krill's territory.  dtay seems to be turtling up and teching, but I'm still baffled as to why he raced for Nationalism before Astro. He's saving ~450gpt (presumably including wealth builds) with 1300 in the bank and has a stashed GS, but still, it's gonna take him another 4 turns or so to have it at least. Why take such a big risk?

Also, fun fact: the former Ethiopian city of Regna has now been captured a total of 6 times so far this game, by 3 different civs! Someone please put it out of its misery!!

Any questions?

[GermanJoey]

T157.

Bonus Report.

Eliminated Donovan's last island stronghold this turn... and of course, I lost a 90% Knight battle. Also, Donovan deleted his last 2 workers, how rude.

Krill settled his filler 1 inland, which is fine I guess. Still pretty ballsy seeing that his capital is *EMPTY* (yes, empty!) and I have like 50 units right outside his borders. But, well, if I could just take half of his land without even making another unit, I really don't need another war just right now, so I guess Krill reads me right. I need to recover my economy. (my expenses are just SO GODDAMN HIGH!)

The bigger news of the turn is this!!!




Holy moly, I did not see that coming! This is really surprising to me; dtay's islands aren't exactly lightly defended and Gav could have easily hit Krill many turns ago while I was still occupied with Donovan. Or he coulda hit DS, who is much weaker than either of them. But I guess dtay's islands are so large and juicy, and if Gav takes them now it is unlikely that he'll ever lose them, completely controlling that sea.

Gav is one of the few other players with any courthouses, so I have a pretty good feeling that he has civ vision on dtay. His stack compositions lead me to suspect that, at least. At any rate, dtay is 3T from Astro and has a stashed GS, but Gavagai's navy is simply too huge for Astro to make any difference now, IMHO. And even with castles and ultra defenders, Gav has simply too many attackers... dtay's eastern wing will fall for certain...

I'm happy to report that my own Galleons are finally coming out, and I'll have a decent sized navy in each coast within 5 turns or so.

[GermanJoey]

T162.

The insanity that is this game in one screenshot:




That's what, 35? Incan units seiging a size 2 Carthaginian city stuffed with 16 units. There are 14 Incan Galleys on this screen plus some galleys and triremes; Carthage has 8 Galleons nearby plus lots of units stuffed into every coastal city.

Power graph:




Gav took 3 cities of dtay's but for HUGE unit losses, apparently. A reminder of what I said about Protective being a bullshit trait that shouldn't exist in MP back on the second page of this thread:

Pretty much the same reason, actually.  I've posted about this at great length before, but in short the problem is that while all other traits are proactive, this aspect of Pro (just talking about the traditional BTS pro, walls/castle/CG, not the Granary part) is mostly reactive. Or, in other words, all other traits help can help you win by actively exploiting the advantage that they give you, but Pro can make your opponents lose just by passively existing. 

Seige can allow the attacker to still eventually win against Pro defenders, but seiging is very, very slow, and you'll likely still end up trading, for example, 1 catapult per 1 longbow. And a hidden cost of using seige is that the defender has much, much more time to whip in even more defenders. At any rate, your conquest will be slower and more expensive than had your opponent been non-Pro. In a big FFA game, that can essentially result in a lost game despite a nominally successful invasion.

Of course, Pro has a small active component to it too - you can get away with less defenders in an aggressive forward plant - but this aspect could still be retained without free CG. It just has no place in an MP game.

Meanwhile, dtay may have tilted because he ended up whipping SIXTY EIGHT POP within THREE TURNS. So, I've vaulted way past him into the CY (and score) lead. Things are looking up, if only I can get my expenses under control... with China's lands coming out of revolt, my expenses are now like 650 gold/turn in total. For reference, I was saving gold at +160gpt about 5 turns ago, and am now up to +225gpt, or whatever the hell that screenshot shows. (with no wealth builds... will start factoring them in soon, once I finish spamming castles) I have courthouses in like every city but my capital, some brand-new fillers, and Donovan's cities, which are just coming out of revolt. I'm building my Forbidden Palace, should be done in 6-7 turns, but I never really have a good feel for how much that wonder will earn for me... well, it should be better than nothing, right?

[GermanJoey]

T164.

Tech thoughts. (warning: much rambling ahead)

So, I've got two main drives right now:

1.) Get Chemistry for Frigates.
2.) Get into midgame civic set by the end of my upcoming 3rd GA, because I'll be in it at least ~40-50 turns.

That civic set will be Representation, Nationhood (really!), Caste System, Mercantilism, and Theocracy. I had been of the mindset that I'd be easily able to do this with the help of my GA, but actually running the numbers was pretty sobering. In total, I estimate that I'll need:

(note: I don't have Paper, so all KTB's are guesstimates)

Gunpowder - 2415/1.2/1.24 = 1623 base beakers
Chemistry - 4347/1.2/1.12 = 3234 base beakers

Banking = 1127/1.06 = 1063 base beakers
CS = (1288-315)/1.4/1.12 = 621 base beakers
Nationalism - 3621/1.2/1.06 = 2847 base beakers
Constitution - 4830/1.2 = 4025 base beakers

Monotheism = 193/1.2/1.18 = 136 base beakers
Theology = 805/1.2/1.06 = 633 base beakers

= 14182 total base beakers by the last turn of my GA. Right now, my break-even beaker income, without wealth, is about ~290bpt at ~27% slider, and I have 1300 gold banked. At that rate, and without counting bonus GA income, it would take me 43 turns to finish all this tech!!! Of course, my income should be much better that just ~290bpt across this period. This turn, I started 56hpt of wealth, and I'll ramp that up to about ~100hpt pretty soon, once a few castle builds finish. I'll also have 6 more courthouses and my FP finishing soon, plus 3 observatories, a few castles, a few more libraries, etc. And then there's my ex-Chinese cities, who will have expanded borders and theoretically be productive soonish. (although there were very few commerce tiles in the Chinese empire). So, let's say, optimistically, that my average income over this period will be closer to about ~500gpt. That knocks it down to 25 turns. Now lets factor in some extra GA income... lets say I can pull in an extra, I don't know, 2000 base beakers over the first seven GA turns. That knocks it down to 21 turns. And then lets say that since I have to wait so long to throw my GA anyways, and I have another GP coming in 8-9 turns or so, I might as well use my Great Merchant to bring in some cash and then convert that to tech... I'll soon have a size 23 capital, so I should be able to score maybe 2100g-2500g from a trade mission? That would bring me down to a very optimistic 15 turns to get all this tech, meaning I'd be waiting at least 8 more turns before I can fire the GA. Yikes. That is far longer than I had hoped!

So that means I absolutely have to get Gunpowder -> Chemistry before any of these utility techs, unfortunately. Gav is the only one I don't have research vision on, but I do know that he had Gunpowder possibly as far as 9 turns ago, given its been 6 turns since he wardecced dtay and he had brought along several Janissaries on his invasion. However, given the large time gap between when he bulbed Astro and when he invaded, I suspect that he only got Enginering after Gunpowder. However, he is currently teching something, so I've got to assume that he'll have Frigates any turn now. And while I think I could hold off fairly well if he tried to invade with only Galleons and a few Frigates, as I'm up to like 14 Galleons now and have a far larger land-based army, I'd be in big fucking trouble if another naval power jumped in at the same time. And everyone but DS has Astro now, and he's just 2 turns away; and then dtay/Krill/JR/Chumchu are either teching Gunpowder or saving gold on Chemistry. So, I can't be too late on Chemistry either.

A direct consequence of this is that Liberalism is gonna turn into a big fucking bomb - if everyone needs to get Chemistry first, then whoever gets Lib gets to take Steel for free, which is worth almost 7000 beakers. That's an enormous amount considering that I can't even hit 300bpt right now without contorting my empire into a knot to do it. Steel is one of the next critical techs for this game, enabling Drydocks, Ironclads (actually have a use here!), Cannons, and the Ironworks. All of those things are stuff I don't want any opponent to have before me... however... the only way I think I could actually win Lib would be to ignore Chemistry and Civics and then race for it. Shit!

[GermanJoey]

T166.

Funny story, I thought to myself last turn, y'know, if I turn on a bit more wealth, I could 4-turn CS and Nationalism and then snag the Taj with my GE. So lets put our EP on dtay to get full city visibility to see what his progress is. And so this turn he finished it.

Well, at least I didn't turn on tech just yet...

dtay's GA MFG is roughly equivalent to my non-GA MFG, so at least there's that I guess. He has forges in his queues everywhere, so I guess he finally realized what his problem was. I'm not sure how much of a boost he's getting to his economy, but he was saving gold at like 400gpt before the GA. He's 1-turning Paper so I guess he's gonna tech Edu at break-even (might as well, right?) and then head to Lib via back-to-back GAs. I guess he still has a 8 turn window to get Chemistry before his peace with Gav expires.

Gavagai got a big score increase last turn plus whipped like 25-26 pop away, so I was afraid that maybe he had Chem already, but from what I can see with my scouting ships, he's mostly whipped Knights it seems.

Krill burnt a turn of anarchy to revolt into Merc. I had been considering doing that a lil while ago, and it probably woulda paid off by now if I had. But, I felt that I needed to carefully conserve my income each turn... once I get to Rep and Chem I should be locked and loaded, but until then I need to be very careful.

[GermanJoey]

mackoti, post in my thread too..........

[GermanJoey]

T168.

dtay threw his GS into Education and then finished it up last turn. So, I decided to see how far behind I was:

(note: all KTB are guesstimates)

I'm up:
+ poly: 161/1.2/1.42
+ aesthetics: 483/1.2/1.3
+ alphabet: 401/1.2/1.42
+ literature: 322/1.2/1.3
+ drama: 483/1.2/1.12

= +1205 base beakers, 2654g, 1 GM, 1 GS, 1GE

dtay is up:
- cs: 1288/2/1.2/1.06 (I've been saving gold on CS for a long time, so I actually have it 50% completed)
- banking: 1127/1.2/1.24
- paper: 966/1.2/1.06
- education: 3621/1.2/1.06
- nationalism: 3621/1.2/1.06

= -7717 base beakers and 561g

So, a pretty big lead, but not one I'm concerned with in-and-of itself. Nationalism isn't worth anything anymore if he already has the Taj and isn't using Nationhood, Paper is nothing, and Education's universities are pretty marginal considering how high expenses are on this map (although does give him a discount on gunpowder). And then there's Liberalism... I think Environmentalism would be better for me than Nationhood, economically, but considering dtay whipped down like 70 pop or whatever I can't see it being super good for him. (and there's the production question - enviro wants Caste and Rep, but if he's not in Nationhood or Slavery, how the hell does he make units?). OTOH, not having a National Epic or Heroic Epic is really gonna cost dtay later on.

Of course, the real problem with dtay's tech lead is if (when) he, say, double-bulbs Chemistry with his first two GS's and then Libs Steel, giving him half-priced Drydocks and access to cannons. Fucking yikes.

dtay is currently generating 4 caste-starve great people; a clean GM (due in 2T), two clean GS's (due in 4T and 6T, I think), and then a mixed-but-mostly-artist that wouldn't be due in this golden age.

In better news, I have tech vis on Gav and he's not as close to Chemistry as I feared... I'm guesstimating that he can't be closer than 3 or 4 turns. At any rate, all of the new units I've seen from his few cities that I have vision on are Knights or Trebuchets. I believe he's about to wardec Dark Savant any turn now, which is honestly fine with me. It'd be nice to snipe a city or two, but it looks like Gav is positioning to deny me that opportunity and as such I have no interest in getting tangled up in a war that won't help me win.

[mackoti]

for you to know is the first thread  which i read  in the morning if there are any updates.Till now you didndt had any games mechanics wrong  so i didnt post, but what I can say I like your updates.A question is mercantilism giving a free specealist in every city?

[GermanJoey]

heh heh heh, I'm glad you're enjoying the thread, I had just seen you had last-posted in two other threads when I was taking my morning break and got jealous.

Yes Mercantilism is still giving 1 specialist in each city. Krill nerfed the super-powered Mercantalism from the last version of RtR (which gave 2 specialists) back to just 1 specialist, but now it is low upkeep and doesn't restrict foreign routes. So, I'm squeezing out some settlers from my high-food low-hammer island cities to fill in the little gaps in my core... these cities will be stuck at size 1 with no buildings forever, but will still give some small profit from trade routes, the free merchant specialist from merc/caste, and working a workshop and running wealth. RtR Free Market is high upkeep now... it would give me more income than Merc for sure, but people have been so weird about trade routes this game, and I certainly can't be peaceful with gav and dtay forever, that I don't think its worth teching economics.

And I finally did decide that I am going to be running caste soon until the end of the game, probably. Slavery would overall be more production but a.) I'll have Nationhood to make up for that somewhat and b.) I have to accept that I can't compete with dtay's economy unless I dedicate some cities to wealth. (seriously, it's crazy, I have so many freaking courthouses yet his overall city expenses are still less than mine from the looks of it, because all my Chinese cities and fillers have no courthouses yet and yet he gets his Agg+Ikhanda discounts right away!) And, for a certain amount of hpt in wealth, it makes the most sense for me to put my lower-hpt cities all on wealth and drafting, and then let the big muscular ones make all my boats for me. With a barracks and Theocracy, my drafted troops will still get a promo, and I have GGs planted in two cities for some stronger units to be top attackers/defenders.

[GermanJoey]