Third time's the charm - Mardoc plays the Pirates [SPOILER]

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Here's some more I found from the HOI3 wiki:

1. battlefleet concentration doctrine
2. Carrier Group doctrine
3. Fleet Auxiliary Carrier doctrine
4. Fleet Auxiliary Submarine doctrine
5. Trade Interdiction Submarine Doctrine
6. Unrestricted Submarine Warfare doctrine

ok some of those may be too long .

[Selrahc]

For a land base:
Martello Tower

For a commerce heavy base:
Merchant Navy

For a land troop crank:
Marine Corps
Boarding Action
Scuba Commandos

General:
Ramming Speed
Letter of Marque
Fleet Denial
Offshore Construction
Lifeboats
Mining
Cannon Broadside
Greek Fire

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Greek Fire

ooh, love that one =)

[Mardoc]

Thank you, Gentlemen, that ought to last me another 10 or 20 turns .

Of course, the 2 new cities founded in the forum's absence got named according to what was floating around in my brain, but I'll be adding in those suggestions to the next batch. I'll do a catch-up report next time the save comes around.

And...I do like Sirian Doctrine, but I think I'll save that for my first conquest . Don't feel left out, just because you don't see it for a while!

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there's no shame in renaming bases that don't fit your theme - like torpedo, frigate, destroyer.

Anyway its been 10 days since the last update, what's going on on Planet?

[Mardoc]

there's no shame in renaming bases that don't fit your theme - like torpedo, frigate, destroyer.

Well, they're close enough, and I have them in my head as the old names. Seriously, at the rate our REX is getting to, I still expect to come back for more names soonish.

Anyway its been 10 days since the last update, what's going on on Planet?

Well, not really a whole lot. I think we've had 3 turns in that time, between my absence and Sareln's busy schedule. I'll aim to do a full update tomorrow if I get the save, but briefly, the REX continues, as does the spread of Voice of Planet. We've founded 2 new bases, I think, exactly where I said I would . We got Psionics in, and now our Planet rating is skyrocketing.

Going to save cash for a bit, then turn research back on.

I'm waffling between Magtubes-Fusion Power- Cryogenics, for destroyers and offensive planes and courthouse equivalent Reactors, or going Biofuel - Atmospherics - Fluid Dynamics for Drop Troopers and Interceptors and unlocking both methane ice and oil (a health and a happy resource, which we have lots of sources of both). Leaning toward the Biofuel approach, actually, since it does provide useful military - the difference is that it's defensive in nature. But we've still got a ton of peaceful expansion available to us, so that doesn't seem such a handicap. The Biofuel approach is definitely better for us economically, as it gives us resources, access to Bioreactors and Autarky, and puts us closer to Nanotubes, the tech that will break our economy wide open.

Hmm...actually, probably what I should do is pick up Holographics. Aside from its other benefits, it's the 'enables tech trading' tech of Planetfall, which means it'd let us get a feel for how we're doing compared to Iskender and everyone else, without spending an arm and a leg on espionage. It'd be easier to decide just how urgent military is once we see what level others are at. And it's only a 1-turn tech anymore.

[Mardoc]

And...not only do I not have the turn, but it's stuck with Maniac - which means that it'll probably get stuck with Sareln next, and I probably won't see the turn until Tuesday or Wednesday. And I have time to report, today...well, looks like you're getting a report of the Stasis Pirates

First up, our 2nd newest city, Lane Interdict:


I'm a little embarrassed by my Former micro here, it's not currently working any improved tiles. I've just gotten a land former in place, though, and should be able to borrow the sea formers from Coaling Station momentarily to plant a bunch of kelp. And now that I look at the screenie - I should be able to steal the kelp from Dreadnought and make that city work a trench instead. Lane Interdict is intended as an energy pump primarily; don't really have enough food to work many of those Trenches. It'll grow slowly and steadily, contributing energy and a few hammers, and meanwhile, it's in a good spot strategically, helping our westward push.

Edit: Although - if there's anywhere in our empire that would be an excellent place to try the Biodomed Ultraponics strategy, this would be it - in a while. Put a reactor in here, research Nanotubes and mine the trenches, and we could simply buy all our food at 1 energy per, while working a bunch of 0/6/3 trenches.

Our newest city, which I don't quite remember what I named, is looking much better. We've already got a couple improved tiles here, and it'll definitely be able to grow onto excellent tiles given a little time.


In foreign news, we managed to see a bit of Iskender's land before he expelled our peaceful tourists. That's a lot of hammers, and total disregard for Planet rating. Not as much fungus as I'd have hoped. Still, at least we've gotten our neighboring bases planted before he's got his ports close. We ought to be able to grow them substantially before it's time to start worrying about him.


We've also explored up by Sian and Lal, although we're just starting to get outside the area we'd already seen. I'm a little surprised Lal is still standing; if I were Sian, I'd definitely want those cities. Maybe he's afraid of the Concordat.



In the process of considering taking out that spawning spot, we noticed that Sian's almost extended his borders down to Iskender. I think therefore I plan to not expand or clear worms to the east - we need to leave Iskender an option for invasion that isn't Pirates, and we definitely want to have as many wild worms this way as possible. It's probably worth one more pair of cities, one for the Cyan Algae and one for the Jungle DNA to the south, but I haven't picked spots for them yet. Maybe 1 SE of the jungle island, and 2N? That would claim those resources, without separating our foes from each other, and grab a fair bit of Ocean and Shelf tiles, too.



In other fronts of expansion, here's my current thinking on dotmaps. In the north, we're looking primarily to build a springboard to dive into that western ocean. I think I might add a city to that, on the 1-tile island to claim the oil; even if we delay that branch of the tech tree, we're not that far from oil. And meanwhile it acts as an energy bonus tile.



In the south, I'm pretty much planning to settle for resources. I think it'll have to be the two northern cities flanking the Y island first, and then some scouting and finding a way to grab the crystals. That'll probably be as far south as we want to go, after which we'll need to scout east and west to pick out our next batch of sites.


In other news, psionics coming in and the trade with Lal, combined with aggressive proselytizing of the Voice has gotten our Planet Rating very high. We definitely will hit 2 in the next few turns (gained 0.06 at EOT), and we definitely need to use up that bonus by finding means to grow all our cities, preferably onto Mining Platforms .


What else is going on...Sareln, Sian, and Maniac all have Holographics, so I could check out their techs. Only they're by and large not the ones I'm worried about, so we'll probably be grabbing Holographics ourselves soon. Need to know about Iskender! I'm feeling lazy, I'll do relative tech analysis then.

Finally, the net result of all this, the demographics. I'm a tad worried about slipping back to #5 Power, but everything else looks strong.

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I think #1 is MFG from the sea (always harder to get hammers in the ocean) is quite impressive!

I'm a little sad you built a base on land though! I hope you aren't turning into a landlubber :/

[Mardoc]

Played T110, not a whole lot new to report. Voice of Planet is nearly spread; we've only six colonies without it, and four Acolytes en route to various places; the last two can happen at leisure.

But there's an interesting twist going on at the moment. Voice of Planet is letting a lot of our cities grow...which means they need something to build aside from colony pods. I'm generally alternating between Marines and Empath Guilds. Only, ooops...Empath Guilds add two more to our happiness caps . In short, we're going to be growing the bulk of our cities by three sizes, from size 6 to 9.

This seems like a good time for it, anyway, as there's only a couple new sites that are super awesome, and our expenses are now up over 100 gpt. In any event, the really food rich cities will hit size 9 pretty soon, and then they'll be free to go back to Colony Podding.

I expect, in about 10-15 turns, to have another opportunity to grow all the cities again; we're in need of only 2 or 3 colony pods in the south to grow onto the second crystal source, and 2 techs will unlock oil. Each of those is just +1, but I expect them to happen about simultaneously. We could potentially add yet another growth spurt whenever convenient; I went ahead and picked up Holographics this turn, which enables Holographic theaters - another 2 happiness. Obviously there's no rush to put them up; we need to grow into our current happiness caps before we look at upping them. And improve a lot more tiles. But we now have, or shortly will have, enough tech and resources to have our average city size at 13. In addition to having the most cities of any faction.

The only dark spot in the demos is that we've been #2 in GNP for a while now. My best guess is that Sian, with his Morgan Aerodynamics buildings, has managed to pull ahead of us. This vertical growth spurt ought to help us catch back up. Ought to be very nice for all our demos, actually, but especially for energy production.

Tech analysis to come, um, soon. I've glanced at it, but haven't done a full analysis yet. The only thing so far of note: Iskender has, I believe, the enabling tech for InVitros. At least, he can research Psionics but nothing in the Planet line, and can research Cryogenics too. Str 7 is somewhat scary, although I believe Marines actually have odds on them when defending at sea. Still, it's a reason to keep our eyes on Iskender. And explains how he was able to run over the AIs on his continent so easily.

Edit: the other reason, of course, to mix in Empath Guilds and Holographic Theaters to our build queues, is for the EP. We lost Sareln's graphs this turn, leaving us with just Domai. It's unlikely we'll ever catch up to Maniac, but I would really really like to have graphs on the other three.

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if you're expanding onto undeveloped sea, build more sea formers!!!