Update later but Commodore is trying to be a greedy little fucker.
|
[SPOILERS PB71]Krill: By the numbers, when the walls fell (on everyone else)
|
|
Turn 138, destruction of Mongolia at hte hands of horse archers, always good.
  Border pop 10 turns after coming outy of revolt, then claim the spices. Good enough with the granary so keep.  Cost of the invasion? One vulture to clear out the units outside Cherry, and one 5XP HA to capture Carrot. Some units are banged up (I must admit to hoping there would only be one keshik, not three, in Carrot this turn but given that I was always going to have to attack a C12 formation keshik I was always expecting to lose at least one HA.  Commodore has his stack of four galleys ready to try and claim the corn/copper/silver city location. To be absolutely candid this would probably put me on war footing to end the game because I will not tolerate him having a staging area on this side of the sea, and that would probably require that I invade his main holdings, and if that were to happen I probably have to roll on to conquest. However, I decided against declaring war because that would make too much sense. He can see some of my units if he tries to land. He steps on flatland and everything dies. I'm already moving some cats down to hold the defensive line off the coast (not planting any coastal cities). I logged in after Commodore played and I can see that he sent three galleys further south and dropped off a spear/chariot pair. Possibly scouting, that'd be fine. Pillaging resource tiles and I will get annoyed. I wonder if he is going to give up on the ONion site and try to settle far southern silver. I'm surprisingly OK with that, because I was not going to settle that far south, and I couldn't really hold it without a disproportionate hammer/unit cost. And if I am not going to settle that area, there would never really be anything stopping Commodore from ferrying lots of units south except the threat I present to his main front.  My army is expensive, so I don't really want to build many more units...except I kind of have to get a few Xbows out.  Commodore has a much better gold saving rate than I do, but this is because of the amount I have to pay for my army and the away costs. The latter will disappear shortly, the former is...not going anywhere. Although next turn I will be making a tidy 11bpt from settled GG and the library free beaker at Rhubarb. Small mercies. But with the capture gold I can get Aesthetics T139, Literature T140 and then I can save gold for a good ten turns deciding what I want to do, probably whilst dumping the beakers into Drama, or maybe Monarchy. Although the costs of the two capture cities will probably be horrible.  Not the greatest overview shot, but you can see the important stuff. Due to the capture gold speeding things up, I'm thinking GL goes back into Apple (13 turns), SP into Rhubarb (16 turns), HE into Cherry (6 turns) then a colosseum and one turn 8XP slow movers or 10XP WE/HA, whip a settler for 2 pop from Pomegranate, overflow back into another settler and then double whip that at size 7 (so I can always work all of the gems). Plum chucks out missionaries for all cities, focusing on those that need border pops first and for an Apple Monastery after the GL. Raspberry can do a few more 4>2 whips of useful stuff (can't turn down easy cats now the city has a court house, but perhaps I instead get another monastery for better religion spread?)  Pax Sumeria. I think that all players may have realised that war at this point is not going to achieve much, the exception is that Thoth may want to declare on Yuri, so I want to prop Yuri up (don't forget he has all the relevant tech of HBR, IW and Construction, so he can build cats and WE, his issue is production base). I also have no desire to take any of that land, it's abhorrent  My demographics aren't great, and I can't really improve them much without growing to use the current excess food to work specialists. All that does is move me along the tech tree faster to knight rush someone. I only have Plum and Rhubarb as core cities without Ziggs, so city maintenance is not going down drastically, it's going to go up.
OK, predictions:
Commodore wants UoS and Sankore, which frankly shouldn't be underestimated even on 10 cities. He needs Paper (can research from Theo), and Divine Right is a GP bulb away. but this keeps him from knights so I don't have much choice but to play this straight. Given that temples and monasteries would give him an easy 40hpt, 4bpt and 40 gpt with no costs I doubt that I can beat that through growth (given that Sumeria just gives stuff early, and not better stuff). I am intending not to copete by building SP, so this is all his as far as I am concerned. He is grabbing HBR and just got Construction, but lacks Calendar, and is ignoring CoL so...down MC and Machinery. A standard WE/Xbow/cat stacck on top of swords then topped off with knights would eat him alive, if it had the numbers. Thoth has grabbed Construction and HBR, and now heading for Mono. Not sure what his play is but he is down on cities now and will have lost infrastructure in the two captured cities. Has plenty of happy though. Wild card, needs to react to other players. Pindicator is just playing sim city and is the tech laggard, down Construction and HBR, Calendar but equal to me on MC and Machinery. Tech has not recovered but is not build samurai, so any improvements at his core are eaten by the eastern developments (and captured barb city in the hills that should annoy Thoth). Thoth will not attack into Samurai though, although G2 protective Xbows would be hilarious in those hills. I suspect he heads for Monarchy and plans a revolt into HR to solve his happy issues (the rest of us are already in a governemtn civic and have been since forever). Bing doesn't count. You know, I think this game is about to get really boring, really quickly. I think everyone is going to sit back to build, and will not stack up at all until knights are in play. Commodore wants to build to his ultimate religious prixe, Pindicator has to build because he is backward and lost two attacks at his relateive strongest, Thoth wants to build and recover and shore up his north with Calendar before turning on Yuri, Yuri wants to hold on to the end of the game (and actually might), and I want to build because I don't want to fight anyone. (August 2nd, 2023, 16:32)greenline Wrote: How much economy do you expect to get out of growing onto Civil Service irrigated tiles, given the terrain? Is that worth doing just to give extra pop for whipping into military? The question is if I bite the bullet and swap into Serfdom or not, because that is what makes most of the tiles close to cost neutral. Growing onto 3/0/0 or 2/1/0 tiles actually slows down my tech pace and only has relevance for building up the bank of hammers via the whip. ie only makes sense for a night rush and has to be balanced against using the food to run scientists to get their faster. I might actually be forced into this despite not wanting to give up the whip under any circumstances. The former is easy to count: Olive gets +2 food from the irrigated wheat and western grassland so can actually grow onto (expensive) 2/1/0 tiles. So grow two pop to size 6 and it can make +1 hammer and +7.5 beakers (or more realistically +3.75 gold and +3.75 beakers) at a cost of increased city maintenace of 2 pop. Pomegranate gets +2 food from extra grasslands, but gives up once to Apple for a cottage and gives up two to the Date filler city. That's about a wash but I get a brand new city capable of making 13hpt or 15bpt Cherry makes no difference. Rhubarb the same, it helps with forge rounding. Apple no difference. Pear is possibly to get to 20hpt without CS at size 10 or so (funky watermill set up). Helps with rounding at Plum and Raspberry could grow over size 5. It's actually not that important in the grand scheme of things, compared to Bureaucracy in a size 19 (at best) city working 12 towns, a gems, dye and lake. Serfdom, OTOH, with all of these gives something like...40 commerce, ish, once set up? It's an important lesson, that growth in and of itself is not a solution to economic woes. You need to grow onto good tiles. I do not have good tiles to grow onto, nor does anyone really. Absolute dearth of grassland compared to most maps, and I probably have the most river tiles of anyone (and possibly the fewest 2 food tiles given the lack of coast, but ten coast isn't that great either). This game is like PB69 and PB64 before it: won through attrition and gradual expansion. (August 2nd, 2023, 17:45)Krill Wrote: It's an important lesson, that growth in and of itself is not a solution to economic woes. You need to grow onto good tiles. pb72 spoilers
Was going to make a similar comment
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Yeah, I'm not trying to say "Oh I'm losing". I'm very much winning this game, just not winning by as much as people probably think. Growing into the Mongolian area is not really going to give me enough to win the game, especially against Stock Exchanges and reglious building output with all the wonders. I imagine the best thing that could happen is that Bing makes the Confucian shrine, and then the right move would almost certainly be to invade him and capture it. That would probably open up seaboard production sites, help teh tech position and then try to squeeze PIndicator from both sides whilst pinning Thoth into his core, but it requires an army kept at the now quite long Commodore border to defend.
I reckon I have an easier path to victory than anyone else, but every other player has to go through me at this point, and I'm stronger now than when they tried it in the past. Which makes me think that this game is possibly lost on a misplay? |
