PB81 - Continental Drifters (TBS)

[Zed-F]

The scientists that were settled were the earliest ones, before we could get good value out of a bulb. Settling those early scientists gave good value over the course of the game but once we got past our first GA, the time for settling scientists was over.

Ironically if we continue to get scientists we might have to start settling them again. After our next GA, we won't have anything we want to sci-bulb, because our next sci-bulb target is Scientific Method, which would obsolete our monk economy. We don't intend to do that unless the game goes way way longer than we hope it does and we run out of other stuff to research after Corporation and Assembly Line.

[The Black Sword]

Even right now, a bulb is worth ~1600b when you divide out pre-reqs and a settled GS is worth 3.75hpt, 32bpt. So the settling pays itself back in ~40t (plus a few more hammers at factories). I don't build things that pay back in 40t in general, but it gets almost to the stage where you might consider it in peace time.

The key point is that the UB and specialists were so good that we had to get them going ASAP. Then we had to find good use for them before the mid-game when bulbs start getting full value.

I expected to only settle 2 GS, I thought we had enough gpp pollution that we wouldn't get the extra early one but it's been relaly good. 

I actually think we should have settled a 4th, that we got on T116. Since then we've always had at least 1 GS sitting around waiting for it's bulb target/golden age until T149 when we got Chem. We didn't have Oxford/Uni/Observatory at the time but it would still have made up quite a lot of beakers in those intervening turns. I guess the GPs came just slightly quicker than I expected and the tech rate just slightly slower than I expected, which was enough to mean we always had one sitting around.

[The Black Sword]

The initial armadas did good work:





We took 4 and auto-razed 1 city in nauf's Astro land in 2-3t at the cost of 1 knight. I then got sloppy, thought he didn't have any Carracks left in the area and he burned one himself. Still not sure what units are going to be tasked with finding these rogue Carracks.

It was a bit slower taking M's island because of the depth. Still we took 3 and burned 2 with no losses. He's since resettled LifeSaverLament. 

We had units outside Grimbsy but at this stage nauf had advanced his land stack pretty deep into our territory:



It had made it to the hill 2E of the choke city, Celsus. At that stage he couldn't get it out without getting hit by our cannons. I'm not sure how much M had in support, but I felt if they both dropped their stacks beside Celsus, we would probably wipe nauf's stack, M would burn our city and we would be able to regroup before he got to Antioch.

Hitru suggested offering M peace, with his remaining island cities as the carrot. We should be able to catch nauf's stack before he retreated and then hopefully we have 10t to take out his core and be ready for M. I didn't really expect M to agree to peace tbh, but he did. And this turn, just as nauf's troops saw the safety of their homeland approaching, we had enough assembled to catch up with them. This was the result:



Cannons initially had 50% odds vs anti-siege maces, so we threw in a couple of cats first to soften them up. Then the cannons odds started at 80% and moved up into the 90s. We still managed to lose 3 cannon and not get many collateral hits. The drafted muskets stepped up to the challenge though, and won all the tight-ish fights at the start of the combat. The luck definitely turned in our favour, we didn't lose a single fight after the cannons.

There's a big push now to try finish nauf off quickly while we have the peace treaty.

Meanwhile, since we weren't at war with enough people anymore, the units from the inital island assault carried on to start the harassment of xist's coast:


Oh, and on T160 I settled a 4th Great Scientist in Alexandria. 

[The Black Sword]

I guess xist is the holdup in the concession proceedings, but just to be clear, I'd really prefer not to have to go through a bunch of invasions when the conclusion already feels inevitable.

[Qgqqqqq]

Well played! Was good to see the settling strategy work out decently well.

[naufragar]

GG TBS! (And sneaky lurker Hitru! Didn't realize you were part of the brain trust until late in the game.)

Pity I can't catch up on your discord. When I invaded with maces towards Antioch, how did you feel about your odds of holding the city and how damaging would losing the Parthenon have been? I've been very curious about that sequence.

[Hitru]

We were quite confident. There was an issue with worker placement ( we assumed you would step on hammer tile and set city to prioritize production, but pop still moved to non-hammer tilr ) that led to 2 units not completing eot. With those units we would have been absolutely sure you can't make gains, and without those units we were still quite confident.

I guess I should have announced more clearly I was part of the team, my apologies on that. I think you can get an invite from TBS to our discord, we have had plenty of global lurkers there, for example.

[naufragar]

Thanks. That makes me feel better. I had wondered for a while if I had a chance to break the GPP plan but didn't take it.

Good game!

[The Black Sword]

A last look at America, before she inevitably would have orchestrated regime changes in the rest of the world:





And the jewel of the empire:



Alexandria is incidentally our best hammer city too, 94hpt into that Ship of the Line. America is definitely broken, but I think Emancipation at +2h per spec is too good also. I was skimming Mjmd's thread and saw he was expecting our economy to fall off compared to cottages eventually but it never really falls off when you have Emancipation coming in.

Also, I know there's a temptation to put the settled scientists down as purely a Carnegie Library thing, but I really think there are cases where it would be worthwhile for a generic Mids/Philosophical civ. Once you have a library up, the scientists are too good really not to work and they actually scale really well with Oxford coming online. You can see each one was making 32bpt by the end here.

[Hitru]

I do think that eventually cottage economy still wins pure eco fight eventually, but specs eco hits earlier and has also good GP base to do some tricks. Also we did not run out of wonders etc, which might happen in larger game. So I don't think we have proven that spec eco is always better than going for cottages.