[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

262

one more turn of the stalliest game of all time? i say, complaining about a gamestate i deliberately encouraged and am actively profiting from (and actually, can we please have 20 more turns in which nothing happens, pretty please)



ohhhh man did we make a lot of random infra this turn.... look at that gpt number! and that's not counting the i think 4 libraries that are going to finish..... when did i point out 780 gold/turn as "a number to watch"..... 5 turns ago? anyway tomokaze still doesn't have a library so not stopping here either lol



well, whatever they were attempting to get the eiffel tower, it did not work.... now does that mean they didn't try to rush it... or that they DID try and lost the same-turn tiebreaker...??? i'm noticing a pretty suspicious-looking 2k gold in the bank...... surely not, right? but yeah that means culture danger from mjmd is pretty imminent, they will have 3 legendaries in 98 turns even with no slider investment! i would not at all be surprised to see them turn it on, um, now.... and only ginger has the capability to stop them tbh



or i guess there's kind of, barely something we can do. call to power is one of their legendaries, of course. so build a galleon in one of our neighboring cities, hope they don't notice for a turn (yeah....), and then try to commando-snipe the capital. pretty dubious but it is SOMEthing that could be attempted

and yeah, started research on constitution for two reasons: one, try to deter people from trying demo by dint of us being able to theoretically 1-turn it and GE-rush in response, and two, because abi needs a jail to start the next great person during the golden age



oh nice... the town went UP to 51/48 india with a turn post-eiffel.... does that mean we've now fallen BELOW their cultural rate on these tiles? niceee very nice  oh and i think i see why too - 80% defenses, and fifth-ring borders, at lemmings 51 to the south



well, i found the GE.... just sitting in stonefish.... for what purpose, who can say..... but it does mean we have to prepare to go pretty all-in for the statue if it's still on the board in *checks watch* wow, only 7 turns!





another summary of current projects, this time featuring almost a full page of 35+ hammer cities :O




omg that's a CARRIER..... are we about to sirian doctrine up these guys.... that's pretty fitting as one of their legendary cities is here:



but frankly, if they turn the slider on i imagine they will have other near-legends not far behind it and will have to be eliminated completely, or at least nuked and pillaged back to the stone age, to truly end the threat of a culture win. that's.... not something that seems exactly likely in present circumstances

well, i'm starting to get pretty freaked out about mjmd turning on the slider and just ending the game here.... do yall think i should reach out to civac with a signalled willingness to switch sides? something like i offer stop trading w mjmd for their declare war on mjmd, with a timer attached? considered doing so this turn but it's a big commitment so wanted to run it by yall first. as much as i'd love to stick with our ally right down to the end, i also still wanna scrounge for that 5% and it will become much closer to 0% if mjmd wins by culture lol. i could also wait until they actually DO turn on the slider but that really might not give us a lot of time.... how long do yall think it will really take DrunkenSailor63 to hit legendary if they start going for it? 20 turns? 15? sure, i can always simply not help mjmd if they are attacked but a) it's probably politer to give them some notice by cancelling the defpact first, and i do care about that with someone who has been such a close friend during this game and b) we can't have civac just throwing in the towel here because they assume attacking means facing active resistance or invasion from us... we could also, i guess, send mjmd cryptic diplo along the lines of asking for their legendaries + the number of turns until then to at least make them aware that we're aware of the threat, and to maybe discourage them from trying it.... idk, how do you politely tell someone you have been allies with all game that, sorry, i love you to death, but i'm also not just going to sit here and let you win the game?

[williams482]

DrunkenSailor looks like it can pull in ~50 commerce from tiles and I dunno, 12? from trade routes, probably multiplied 5x by hermitage, free speech, and 4x cathedrals (are there any +50% wonders in there?). That's an extra ~310 clefs per turn from running 100% on the culture slider, a relatively modest increase as these things go. I'd guess that cuts the legendary timeline by half at most.

I am very intrigued by the Internet plan. The nuke timeline doesn't seem radically different as far as being able to respond to mjmd's culture timeline, and tanks are really good units (can we get commando on them too, or just the AGG boosted gunpowder units?) How close are other players to Computers? If we can win that race, it solves our one huge weakness relative to Ginger and mjmd in a single stroke and leaves us in an extremely good position to leverage our huge advantage in tiles towards a victory. Assuming, of course, that there's still a game to be won.

As I think more, I think the Internet is the correct strategic objective towards maximizing our win probability. It's a target which if we can land it, and if we can extend the game that far, will put us in an extremely good position. Considering we're already trying/hoping to drag the game out as long as possible to maximize our territory advantage, this is just continuing that investment into a higher yield hope.

[ljubljana]

nope, only 50% wonder they have so far is broadway in JohnPaulJones (legendary city #2).... unless you count the eiffel tower now adding 50% to everywhere. no commando tanks for us, sadly, unless we can find 3 more GGs under a rock somewhere - one of the big advantages of CHA over AGG in this endgame, as i'm starting to realize, is that they can get commando on any units they want, not just the gunpowders that we can get it on with AGG (although they are paying what must now be a metric shitload of unit support for the privilege)..... but on the other hand, i don't know that a commando tank is hugely stronger than an infantry in practice - they have the same movement speed on rails, and my hope is that they will mostly be fighting either obsolete defenders or nuked units, against which the combat strength differential shouldn't be impactful. that's maybe one of those "no plan survives contact with the enemy" statements but oh well

the others are close to computers - plastics is the only prereq that they are missing. and they will probably go for the tech before we get there since it is required for modern armor (apparently). but there's no reason for them to actually build the internet other than for denial, it's a 1k hammer investment that will do literally nothing for either of them. except.... to be honest, most likely one of them WILL build it for denial if it looks like we're closing in on computers tech. i probably would in their position, 1k hammers is pretty pricey for doing nothing but really quite cheap for preventing the emergence of a second credible rival. not sure what we can do to play around that, since it can't be GE-rushed and we're unlikely to be in position for a fourth golden age.... probably we'd have to do overflow tricks to surprise-1t the tech, and then um, just kind of hope that takakeisho is stronger than any individual opponent's city (and that it doesn't get nuked during the build process )

so it certainly has the highest upside of any available plan - god, what an upside! - but it also seems very contingent on our opponents' behavior, in a way that makes me nervous. at least nukes will definitely, for sure, allow us to become a real military threat again.... i fear that with optimal play from our (unfortunately very talented) foes, there's a good chance that we'll get to computers and it will end up just being a blank tech.....

on the other hand. if that does happen, there is actually..... another tech..... that is right after computers...... that unlocks a unit that we CAN make commandos out of and is probably the best unit tokugawa can make on the whole tech tree......... but as much fun as that would be, i don't know if it's really going to win us the game without nuclear support. the era of "big stack of decisive unit" being a viable strategy to conquer someone is just about over (at least according to the PB66 threads), and i have to imagine that's going to greatly degrade the value of reaching more advanced unit models in favor of positioning, tactics, quantity of nukes, and availability of commandos. which should favor us actually as the technologically-behind but MFG-competitive and commando-having faction, but it does mean my dream of a drafted mech conquest is probably silly lol

[ljubljana]

263

today's theme is the pristine uselessness of our beautiful desert region



yo they got mass media! so hollywood is almost certain for them, ottos have been nuke-pathing so they can't contest (barring a GE....!) and.... maybe they'll go for the UN and we can sneak in a diplo win  we actually are, believe it or not, FIRST in population so we would be their opponent  oh and check out SD possibly going to give us the last KTB on education <3 (although unsure of if i'm actually going to wait for that or not; they aren't really 2t away as they just burned their whole treasury on railroad)



omg unexpected positive of india's filler city - they are finally irrigating over to this PLAINS FARM at nishikigi!!!! wooo +1 food surplus, that means we can work the incense someday lmao



believe it or not i'm actually mining these irons out of range of any city.... for mining inc in the capital, for the statue lol. although i didn't realize it would take a full 5 turns to mine and then hook up, which we barely have time for

we're up to 23 workers btw and i'm still shaving some off the cities that can 1-turn them, we just have a totally egregious amount of worker labor required (especially if we want to 3-turn the statue) and with the increased need for combat workers as well i think such an investment will hold up relatively well



kirishima, kotozakura fully railed, and i'm finally daring to windmill this takayasu hill i have been irrationally scared of touching for forever



remember when we founded this filler like 30 seconds ago.... and now it's size 7 and out of tiles to work...



some very suspicious transports have started appearing in a number of ottoman cities........



contemplating settling in this area again.... not to go for ginger's oil this time but to gain access to that copper for mining inc, which i'm increasingly confident that we really have to spread around, hundreds of free mjmd gold or no hundreds of free mjmd gold, to have a chance of competing in the nuclear arms race..... a city 1W of the copper would not be mega-aggressive and would perhaps eventually get cultural control of 1W of the wheat, to take us to +4 food surplus to work 4 windmills at size 6 - that's a city worth having, if crappy..... and we do have the settler just sitting around.... although ehhhh ig i don't like that it is 1-turnable from the fog, boo idk, what do you think?

[williams482]

Do we care that a crap city is 1-turnable from the fog if we're settling it for resources?

I feel pretty strongly that if you're behind you should be looking to take a shot, and The Internet is a fantastic shot to take. Yes it relies on neither of our opponents grabbing it, but us winning at all relies on them getting into a destructive war anyway and that's a really dumb time in which to burn 1k hammers on a denial build. If they are even paying close attention to our tech choices to begin with!

Assuming you go for the internet, what would the rough tech timeline be?

[ljubljana]

that's a good point, i guess i don't really care.... the main reason i'd worry about it is that it will give them access to our rail network from which to commando-snipe the actually-valuable cities behind it. but they will have plenty of ways to execute on such a plan....

i'm sure civac is paying close attention to our tech.... but they are the only ones who have it, we've been in mutual-nonspending detentes with naufragar and mjmd for ages (other than me breaking it with nauf a few turns back....) and superdeath has been getting all our EP for a while and is nowhere near having vis. so really it's mostly them we'd have to worry about, and while that's pretty concerning (of course) i'm confident takakeisho can outbuild stonefish from an even start....

the tech time is, well, honestly a bit difficult to calculate a) our research rate should go through the roof with the coming civics changes, b) it depends on if we try for, and then get, SoL and c) it REALLY heavily depends on whether the military situation allows us to mass-build research after factories or not...... let's see, the cheapest tech we need is astro, which is roughly a 2-turn research at breakeven now, so let's say we can 1-turn it with the statue and modern civics. so maybe ballpark we need

astro 1t
physics 2t
electricity 2.25t
industrialism 3.25t
radio 3t
combustion 1.75t
plastics 3.5t
computers 3.25t

which adds up to roughly 20t.... and every turn we can spend mass-research building, which i hope to be most of them, will shave probably one turn off of that.... but this is just about the ballparkiest ballpark i've ever dared to commit to paper (not to mention that in isolation some of these numbers look a bit ridiculous - clearly we're not going to 3t industrial at breakeven, SoL isn't THAT powerful, right...?) and it still has us pretty far away even post-AL. and every turn we lack nukes while the other don't lack them is a turn of pretty grotesque and comprehensive vulnerability to military annihilation, not to mention a turn in which we can't "influence" the course of an mjmd culture try or, eg, an ottoman spaceship

also, i just logged in /while/ SD was sending me a diplo request, hilariously..... i saw the diplo on my screen for like half a second (they wanted us to stop trading with mjmd, not surprisingly) and then pitboss closed it  seems legit... i sure hope PB isn't about to bug out and decide to interpret that as an acceptance on our end..... but yeah we gotta figure out if we're switching sides or not, and if so, when we're going to start signaling that. my personal feeling is that i only want to switch sides if mjmd turns on the slider or if there's otherwise no way to prevent them from winning, but i'm not 100% confident in the correctness of that and of course it's an impossible position to signal...

[ljubljana]

well, here's what SD actually wanted



all i could do was send back 20-turns of cow/cow.... i think i'd better negotiate with "the principal", so to speak, before committing to anything more concrete with SD.... but is this 13 turns a timeline civac has agreed upon as well....??

and here's the compromise city i settled



shirokuma = white bear; it will go culture -> theater -> ikhanda in that order. it's stuck at size 1 until we get cereal mills in here but frankly, 8 hammers per turn from the city center and a railed coal mine isn't the worst thing in the world. but i have no idea why our expenses jumped nearly 20 gpt upon settling.... its maintenance cost is only 7.45, inflation shouldn't account for that much extra..... i guess the only other option is civic upkeep but that would be a huge amount for each marginal city to add to that cost if so...... (the city does come with 8 gpt of its own from trade routes and the city center so the net gnp cost is not quite that bad)

[ljubljana]

wasted overflow doesn't secretly get converted into wealth or something, right? that's just for whipping?

[RefSteel]

wasted overflow doesn't secretly get converted into wealth or something, right? that's just for whipping?

At least when building units, leftover production beyond the overflow cap is effectively turned into "building wealth." It doesn't matter where the production comes from - whipping, chopping, overflow cascade from previous builds, all work this way. So if your Heroic Epic City with a Forge and no other multiplier buildings is putting [unit cost] + [unit cost again or city's max production per turn into a unit, whichever is greater] + 90h into a unit, then the next turn you get the unit with the max overflow, plus 50g. (Not 90, because wealth is not a unit, but not just 40 because the forge bonus does apply.)

[williams482]

Maybe we *should* be deliberately wasting unit overflow in the HE city.