[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

yeah, i think that's probably right. it's interesting, either of them could have had it any time in the last 30 or so turns but nobody has gone for it.... maybe there just aren't enough techs left for it to seem worthwhile? or both expect the game to be decided in the 20 turns it wohld take for the research cost to pay back? i can definitely see neither of them wanting to delay nuke access for it, in which case we'd have a legit shot - IW + bureau cap in a GA could seriously probably just 5-turn it straight-up. i also wonder if perhaps nauf's (mausoleum-boosted, then never got nationalism!) GA could indicate their own run at it.... if so, i am sorry to say this but attacking them would become way, way more tempting

but yes, SoL would be crazy for us but this is an era in which everything is.... simply swifching to rep will at least match it with no hammer investment needed and a tech that's on the AL path. and then you'd think we're supposed to combine mercs with rep as ginger is doing, but we actually have SO many windmills that i think enviro wins not by a huge amount mind you - i think with just windmills they are close to even, but the bonus to water tiles and especially the 6 free health will push it over. imagine if we can skip the health infra at every city post-factories and build research instead.... that is a bigass whack of free marginal commerce we'd have to play with

anyway if we live another 20 turns we should be in fine shape - still 10 techs back of the leaders of course but i'm guessing our demos will all look pretty competitive, not just food. the leaders will have nukes but why nuke us when they could be nuking each other? here's hoping anyways.....

edit: we also have to decide on free speech.... we have 75 towns or eventual-towns, and the culture actually matters for us, but it requires giving up the draft... then again, in rep, specialists are actually worth working so i guess i can see us not even wanting to draft as much post-GA?

[ljubljana]

anyways

255

event log:



SD defpact with naufragar? fine by me - so india knows they're walking into an insta-coalition if they declare, even though it's not obvious that i'd think about switching sides.....

well, ottomans made a few more tanks this turn from a first look, but still not the 30 i'd expect if they were really going for it, and they're a bit scattered + they haven't started massing what they already have. so i guess i feel comfortable starting THIS



hiring an engineer gets us down to an 11t eta. and yeah, i've decided to build either oxford or wall street elsewhere to enable this - no point in pushing for the optimal national wonder configuration if it'll come too late to matter. plus in all honesty, i may not even double up on nat wonders other than HE + west point - i don't want to create too many high-value nuke targets if it can be avoided.....

note also the extremely cursed build in tomokaze, in contravention of a long-term pledge of mine never to make one of these..... i'm mostly trying to start infra stuff with shorter build times than this in case ottomans go for a buildup, but that city specifically has nothing faster with an equal or better ROI to build (other than the library and we'll be in cash-buildup mode when this wave of infra completes, so trying to focus on gold multipliers for now)

oh and 2 massive levees one turn from completion?? well, let's see if we finished any this turn



....heh. ok, that's not amazing but i will still defend building it! i guess. 7 extra hammers proooobably pays back before the end of the game, not for sure but it will if we can put a factory here, and if we think factories will have time to pay back i'm pretty sure even the weaker levees will as well

ughhhh



stupid ankyra might be building culture (( this is UP to 52% from last turn's 51% ottoman..... ok, maybe this wasn't such a good idea

other three tiles are, in descending order, at 53/46, 53/46, 59/40....



bbbbattleship! yeah cmon, start a naval buildup, i dare you



....can forts not be pillaged? or is this just so they can stack units on the oil tile with a defensive bonus



and mjmd now has at least one tank as well, coolcool



don't mind me just admiring our full page of 30+ hammer cities (pls ignore that a significant number of these are boosted by market builds lol)



we sure slammed out the cannons pretty fast in just 4 turns of having steel huh



am i interpreting this correctly, that (once we're out of mercs) we can spread india's corps even though we're not the founder with the free CtH exec? mining inc in the ironworks capital seems worth doing, and i can think of a few filler cities that could be viable with cereal mills at these prices......



case in point.... i'm thinking 2S-1SE of takanosho, which brings a ton of currently-wasted hills into range while also locking out any of ginger's own defensive settlements in the area, which i otherwise vaguely expect them to someday go for

actually, if we don't think such a spot is too provocative, we could settle it like, now, so it can do the granary in anticipation of receiving cereal when we pop the GA..... is that an insane plan? not sure how badly the ottos will freak out over something like this, which on the one hand is a legit border spot that poaches no tiles but on the other is right next to their oil

also wait, there is also a large upfront cost to spreading a corporation, yes? it might be worth it in this specific spot because it's so strategically significant (right next to one of just two ginger oils......) but if so ig i shouldn't make a habit of it

idk, what do yall think of this idea? deranged?

edit: ooooof i just realized something abt these econ builds.... a "6 gold courthouse" according to bug mod is actually /stronger/ than a 12 beaker library (assuming 50% avg slider).... because.... 6 gold of city maintenance gets multiplied by freaking /inflation/ of all things, which is like 1.6 at this point, so it's more like TEN gold savings (or, i think so?)..... so pretty much every time i built a library or market before a courthouse was incorrect luckily there were not many such cases, even gondar above actually came with that market - forge and levee are i think the only pieces of infra i have actually built there lol, unless you count walls + castle. remember 15 turns ago that city was a size-6 nothingburger like all the others

[ljubljana]

256

i have 30 mins for the turn today, i can do this

perfunctory screenshot:



oh we're still negotiating huh? hmm...... well, this time i'll cave to avoid pissing them off too much. i guess? but i'll def wanna take this back if i end up doing the cereal mills ginger border colony plan

ginger finished radio, comma, is casually 4-turning flight



zephyrion also made a battleship







i'm about to finish this settler for the eastern coal cereal spot.... please someone stop me if this is way too reckless and is about to bring ginger crashing down on our head to defend their oil

[williams482]

You're settling three tiles from the oil, right? It's suggestive, but if you don't put any culture in there it probably won't be too much of a threat? And you shouldn't have any real chance of culturally flipping the oil tile anyway.

I dunno, I'd definitely notice that city and wonder about intentions if I were in their place, but I don't know that I'd feel compelled to do anything about it.

[ljubljana]

yeah, 3 tiles away. we couldn't culturally flip the oil but.... if we flip and road the hills NEXT to the oil, we can hit it with cannons and such and make the oil itself pretty indefensible.... which kinda is the intention tbh (that and to redeem ~25 hpt worth of hills with cereal mills).... but it would probably take a long time for the city to redeem its second-ring tiles (especially if ginger fights for them, which i'm sure they would) so maybe it's too clever by half and dubious in terms of ROI (the corp would be really expensive pre ikh + courthouse, and funds mjmd of course). if we wanna be safer we could settle 4S of takanosho, which saves one more hill and i think shouldn't be perceived as offensively (but then such a spot doesn't help much if we actually, um, DO want to use it offensively). or i can save the settler for another filler spot i have semi-in mind that, while inordinately crappy, at least does not require cereal to function

i guess one more point in favor of not settling the area is this: abi should get a few good chances at a great artist before the game ends.... and a culture bomb from 2 tiles away actually might flip the oil (and certainly should flip the tiles next to it, since the ginger city in the area is still under 500 culture). but any settlement like the ones we're considering would lock out that option

(also are you proud of me for finally building banks and hoping)

[ljubljana]

omg guys guess what

257-258 DOUBLE turn



can we talk about how for the past like 80 turns, i have sent nauf a cow/cow every 8 turns on the dot and they have returned it every single time, and our border cities still have one longbow each in them on both sides <3333



mjmd drafted off ginger to radio.... still unsure why they're going for this unless the eiffel tower matters?? here's hoping ginger lands it so mjmd is not further accelerated towards a possible culture try



guys i.... may or may not have.... completely forgotten that AGG gets +100% production on these 



...yeah



levee, the last of the really major ones save at 8-specialists abi and in the culturally-delayed kirishima corridor



ginger tanks are gathering in stonefish, it seems, which is in range of a WE/RFT fork but thankfully is not in range to snipe kirishima from the fog lol



well, i finished this settler but am having second thoughts..... do we reeeeally want to potentially piss off ginger to drop a city of such dubious utility, that will probably be a net drain until the ikhanda and courthouse are up at least and will give mjmd free money? blahh maybe not.... so what, we can keep the settler around as a military asset, or to refound from any surprise razes? i guess that's not insane....

anyways, hit enter and



"you have discovered railroad!" :D

so 780 is our baseline for 100% gold from last turn, which is about where we've been over this military buildup period. now over the next few turns we can see what slamming market builds everywhere + growing to size 18 in work ethic (next turn) and ouch (the turn after) does to our GNP..... you can see we're already up to 821, after the very leading edge of the market wave has started to complete...



oh shit yall they actually turned off EP spending again...?!



with harbor complete, CSR is going to race up to size 18 as well.... and LOOK at those trade routes <3

[ljubljana]

hey williams, seeking your wisdom: if the others allow it, should we try to start the statue immediately after ironworks, or 2 turns later when we pop the GA and swap to bureaucracy? the former gives us the fastest possible finish time (by probably just 1 turn), while the latter gives the others the least time to respond if their plan is to start demo research as soon as they see someone ELSE go for it.....

also genlurker question: is there a cap on research overflow, as there is with production overflow?

[RefSteel]

also genlurker question: is there a cap on research overflow, as there is with production overflow?

Nope. You can even save optional techs, one beaker short of completion, until the Future era, then research them all at full burn, cascade thousands of beakers of overflow from one into the next, and then one-turn an end-game tech with the overflow from (several techs including, even as the last in the chain, say...) Archery.

[ljubljana]

:O ok that seems like an oversight from a design standpoint but uh, i'll take it?

so there really is no excuse to not 1-turn democracy when going for the statue..... just save for 5 turns, take rep and education to a few beakers from completion, and then go max into each of them and overflow into demo if and only if the statue is still unclaimed.... worst-case we just blast through economics and corp with the overflow instead like we probably should be doing anyways

[williams482]

I'd say just do it. We've got a good plan to knock out the wonder in a relatively short timeframe and we won't be too badly off if we're beat to it anyway thanks to the failgold. No need to get cute here, delaying one turn to give the others two fewer turns to respond doesn't seem likely to matter much. Even if someone is sitting on an engineer, they'll have plenty of time to pull the trigger on it regardless.