Depraved Danish Debauchery - Catwalk cooking up a storm [SPOILERS]

[TheHumanHydra]

Yeah, what are everyone's city counts?

[Ceiliazul]

You have eleven cities?

t163

Not sure of others' city counts, as I don't have visibility on all cities.

I do have 11 cities, as visible a few posts up. When I inherited the empire there were 5, so I'm proud of my total. It also the reason I'm under intense culture pressure: I planted five cities tightly on the borders to pump up my population. This is also a strength, as I have long since repaid the settler cost and now have almost a full ring of buffer cities. In the shot below (shot from a few turns ago) you can see the cities I placed/captured on my borders...




Costs are climbing, even with courts almost everywhere. Current distance maintenance is ~50 (after inflation) which is why State Property will be the long term answer. For now I'll stick with Mercantilism and take Assembly Line 5 turns sooner.

Assembly Line finished this turn, with enough hammers stacked to finish 2-turn Factories in my best 3 cities. Then it's coal plants, after which some mines will have to become windmills for food.

Still waffling on how to use the engineer. Bulbs aren't worth enough, it'll either be Wall Street or Pentagon.

Golden Age ends next turn, boo. It's parting gift to the Reborn Empire will be some curious spiral tubes...

I have an economic lead, now it's time to turn that into a Power lead, and smash some skulls! Expect 4+ infantry to complete each turn after the factories are up.

[Ceiliazul]

T165

Two factories finished this turn, 2 more next turn. At EOT my golden age ended and KJN is enjoying his 2nd... and I'm still first in gnp and mfg. The hammer lead in particular is disgusting, and will jump again next turn as 2 more factories finish.

Before the golden sunset, civics swapped to Rep/Bur/Slavery/Merc/Theocracy. It was painful to leave Organized religion, but I expect incoming stacks soon, and I need the 2-promo defenders.

Rifling also finished at EOT, barely. Honestly not sure about the next tech path. Miltary Tradition looks really good for Cavs. Compass/Opt/Astro is my next tech multiplier.

Need to consider this further. As for the Engineer, he'll rush Wall Street in Jesus for an extra ~60gpt at breakeven. Nothing else pays off near that well, a bulb would go for less than 1t toward Combustion. Pentagon tempts me still...

[Ceiliazul]

Engineer Math

My gut says to ignore Pentagon for now, but it' so tempting!  I finally did some napkin math to put the issue to bed.  Here's my options over the next 10 turns, for the cities of Jesus and Achilles only:

Option 1) Rush Wall St., Ignore Pentagon
4 inf from Jes, 9 from Ach

Option 2) Rush Wall St., Slow build Pentagon
4 inf from Jes, 0 from Ach

Option 3) Slow build Wall St, Rush Pentagon
-400g for delayed Wall St.
0 inf from Jes, 6.5 inf from Ach

********

Is Pentagon worth 9 inf now? No.
Is Pentagon worth 6.5 Inf and 400g? No.

Then ignore Pentagon! (For now.)

[Ceiliazul]

t167 -

4 factories up, and the first infantry finish training this turn. Phoenix is a rocking Heroic Epic city, not only getting overflow after the infantry, but also adding the 2nd best commerce in my empire.




Jesus, the Capital, is going to pull a nice trick this turn, using the Great Engineer to rush Wall Street. The overflow will be enough to finish the coal plant next turn. You can see this city is lacking in food, the mine E of the city will become a windmill next turn. All over the empire, mines are becoming windmills.




Yuris contnues his build-up in plain sight. I'm not sure if he realizes I can see these troops. He has to be nearing railroad now, so these will all be within 1t range of my border very soon. Next turn 2 more machine guns and 1 infantry add to the pile at Heracles. Still, these are just border cities really. Size 3 and 4, their job is really just to keep Mali away from my core. In the meantime they build guns and wealth forever.




As you can see in the research bar, I decided to go the Astronomy route. Next turn the combined overflow of Compass/Optics should almost finish Astronomy. I'll run max-tax (during which Wall Street adds 144g!) and then go full speed for physics. The free great scientist there represents about half of Biology, and I hear airships are cool too.

My economic position becomes more dominant each turn, with factories coming online my mfg is really disgusting. Yuris is in a golden age and it doesn't even matter:






I especially like how that mfg shot clearly shows my recent golden age... but the drop off as the Golden Age ended is quite small as it coincided with the completion of my best factories.

Crop yield shows a bit of a downturn for me, which will accelerate as my coal plants come online. All of my core cities will be unhealthy by then.




So obviously the empire is running on fumes and needs a morale boost, right?




Jive! Jive!*

*Those workers just completed a mine this turn! The tile was previously a windmill for growth, but the city is now topped out on size and is being converted to another production center. Grand Kibitzer, fear not the mine without rails, that will be fixed next turn.

[Ceiliazul]

t169

The last turn!

ceiliazul Hey wonder if you'd take a draw?
ceiliazul In 42
Yuri hey, if you don't want to play it out, let's do it
ceiliazul I'll post tonight
Yuris sure, pity we can't play it out, I wonder how it would end
ceiliazul I'd win, but my family would lose ;-)
ceiliazul You have a strong position, a draw is fair
Yuris yeah I'm pretty sure I can at least defend for a while
ceiliazul We'd just bludgeon each other until Stick picked a winner
Yuris and of course family comes first
Yuris yeah very possibly
Yuris ok, a draw it is then
ceiliazul <handshake> "and the Winner is. .. The Subs!"
Yuris lol

Here's why I could probably win:


The screenshot shows me at breakeven. At max tech, my capital alone gets 580 beakers. At max cash, it makes 477 gold... more than AT's entire gnp.

Here's why I didn't want to play it out:


Yuris doesn't want to concede, and he's stacking up strikers fast. He got steam power last turn, so that whole angry horde can rail to any attack anywhere in his lands soon. Stick and AT are just mailing it in, as shown here, Stick is still offering up workers to the slaughter:



I figure I'd sac 2 or 3 knights (total ~150h) to kill almost 240h. I could probably even keep the workers... but I don't need any more!



6 of those workers came as gifts from my generous opponents. Now I'm swapping to full army production mode, and that whole mfg is going into pointy things. Regardless, if Yuris is smart he can and will raze both my uncultured border cities within the next 10 turns, and there's nothing I can do about it because of his cultural dominance. After that though, I still have a large mfg lead, and in 7 turns I'll have physics and biology in the bag.

Here's Jesus one more time, note the horribly placed global warming on my grassland sheep!



And the tech screen. At straight breakeven, I'm ~5t from Physics, and the Scientist will get me biology 2t after that. If AT and Stick has not posted concessions already I'd play on. Honestly though, I only signed up as a sub so *they* could play... it's been fun, but if only the subs have any interest, what's the point?

The map was great, tactically interesting and offered lots of opportunity for shenanigans. One last shot of sunset on the Reborn Empire:

[thestick]

I actually thought those Workers would live...

[Ceiliazul]

That's the trouble with enemy rails: those machine gunners were reachable by my entire empire.

If it makes you feel better, a few turns ago I took out a stack of like 7 mali defenders and stole 3 workers from Yuris too. Also, fast workers suck.