[SPOILERS PB71]Krill: By the numbers, when the walls fell (on everyone else)

[Tarkeel]

PB58. Drydock was intentional I believe, as we had plenty of dedicated shipyards, and we did have some health issues.

(Go look at Corellia in the final report, that IW city was a beast)

[Krill]

PB58. Drydock was intentional I believe, as we had plenty of dedicated shipyards, and we did have some health issues.

(Go look at Corellia in the final report, that IW city was a beast)

Those games all past me by. Joys of working in an A&E department at the start of Covid

Corellia is a good example of how Levees just broke everything for late game production, and corps pushed everything off balance as well. 12 hammers from a levee, 9 from corps, 16 from the GA, leaves 50 base hpt.

For example, Cherry can hit 50 hpt with railroads and biology allowing two workshops. Not fantastic but there is not much else achievable. But I have one city on a river in the entire empire: Plum.




Plum can hit 55 base hpt with a levee and biology, swapping over to a bunch of watermills. Maxes out at size 16, and then add on corps hammers. This is my probably IW city. Not bad for a city which only has a single flood plain for food

Ultimately if I could land Mining Inc (13 resources) and Cereal Mills (3 resources) then those numbers will be greater. None of this really helps me except to increase the rate at which I could reach a space victory.

But all this is just wishful thinking to me. I'm far more interested in how it fits together, how we manage these cities as the tools to get what we need. I agree with the point that a good earlier HE is better than a late great one, partly because there are far more modifiers available later. But if an earlier HE opens up a conquest that wouldn't otherwise be possibly, well, I see that in a far more favourable light than having a slightly higher number.

[greenline]

Levees seemed a good addition on their own, since you need terrain and careful city placement to get the most out of them. Corps definitely weren't as well thought out, since you get hammers / food / culture for basically free per city so long as you have the right great person handy. It's not like the Civ 6 trade routes where you can either get gold or foodhammers per city (and with a much higer production investment). With levees you get more overflow and more cities 1 turning tanks lategame - corps are the breaker for turning ICS style cannibal cities into super producers. Or juicing up the kremlin.

[Krill]

Anything that adds hammers in the late game pushes everything towards war, but yes corps increases the balance towards ICS. Both of them drags the "right move" towards Ren era preparation and then just ending the game via domination (except in truly huge games with way too many plaers).

Even this map, with it's low food and low profit areas ends up following that path of least resistance.

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah, corps need some reworking. Scaling per population size or similar, so you don't have iceballs that can overperform. Besides, even though levees similarly add output, them affecting the map feels more tangible than coming out of thin air.

[Krill]

Over the years I've tried to come up with ways to implement corps in civ 4 and it always comes back down to scaling and maintenence.

Corps can be instituted as national wonders, which resolves the costs issue, but then one still has to rescale unit, building and tech costs. One can change them so its one per city, but you have to strip out the resource creation (pr create new resources like hit singles etc, so expanding the game boundaries significantly). It requires rebuilding the entire game economy, and even now I think the smart move for balance mods is to just remove corps completely.

Levees are fine though.

[Krill]

I want to write an update, but I don't think I have much to say at this point: Thoth, Commodore and Pindicator are the main actors for the next few turns, then I can show the attack on Babylon and cleaning up Bing.

It looks like Thoth will fall. If Commodore is smart he will leave the two northern cities to Pindicator as a buffer whilst he tries to take the area towards Yuri. I have counted tiles, and even if I take all of Yuris lands and settle every tile, I will be a good 125 tiles short of domination, but if I take out Yuri then this becomes a three player game and it might actually see a victory condition reached.

The earliest I can attack Babylon and take hte city is T202, but I will probably delay a turn for better unit positioning due to a river. That would allow Bing to die by T204, with any luck. Then I would need to heal and reposition to attack Yuri. Given the distances, I could not attack before T210, more realistically closer to T215 (from the north). But that does give me time to position units to also attack from the east. Commodore has a slower mover stack but has to attack a series of castles.




He captured Murder Squad T199. Assuming that removed culture for him and given Commodore has Engineering, he could be outside Dayglo Abortions T201 and attack T202. It looks like that could have a decent size stack in by T202; Commodore might need to remove the culture borders. He has 14 cats, assuming they are all 5XP, he could promote to accuracy and it would still take him two turns, with every cat, to remove the culture border. And he has to leave units behind to defend Murder Squad.

Still, the fastest he could reach Random Killing and attack is T205. We'll see how it pans out, but the fast he moves, the more casualties he takes. I'm sending over a knight to scout him out (or rather, supplement the city vision, I need to rediscover each city asd ity is captured to regain the EP vision). The big question is can he interfere with any operation to take over Yuri. I reckon he can, the question is, how would he do it when I have the option to attack his core? Would he be better off repositioning and trying to attack at Cherry?

There are certain decisions I can make now: finish Gunpowder. Put all cities back onto military, push out another round of pikes and then muskets (Yay formation muskets, get odds on everything). Keep on saving gold whilst researching Chemistry.

There are future options: move over to wealth/research builds and rush Steel is the main one, but for now I need the hammers into units, as I just need the numbers.

[Krill]

Push through the pain Krill. Write an update, and upload some pictures for once.







Thoth asked for OB on T200, which I granted, and then offered this. I accepted, and then offered gems for sugar. ULtimately if any deals get cancelled I'm not fussed, but I propped up Pindi earlier, I'll prop Thoth up now. I just don't want to physically intervene.





Defied, not that it matters.





Only one screenshot took. Shame. I would have shown all the units.

Essentially my army is split into three. I can attack next turn (using the trebs to the south, behind a river) to remove the culture defense, then go in with the four cats to the west. The knight and HA stack can take the final city (all units should get odds), but more importantly they stop Bing retreating everything to drag out his demise and delay me getting to Yuri.

I can wait a turn, and move everything onto the hill so the river isn't an issue, and bring in two knights and a HA to attack over hte river as clean up. Bing has the option to attack our, but he promoted all his units to CG2, and I have enough units in each stack to take the brunt of it. The knight/HA stack is the most likely one to get attacked if Bing does go for it, but that's also the one that is most replaceable (yes, it's highly promoted, but I can build 10XP knights from two cities. Only two of the units are four promo HA).

Given that I only need three accuracy Trebs to remove culture at Babylon, I theoretically have four 5XP cats on the right side of hte river and then two cats and two trebs on teh wrong side to collateral 11, possibly 12 longbows. Then I have four knights and two WE on the right side of the river, and a slightly damaged mace and four or so WE are elephants on the wrong side, plus the HA able to attack either target. Essentially, Bing is not long for this world.







Thoth is scrambling defenders, but lacks the numbers. OTOH, he will whittle down Commodores' numbers.





This is slightly more interesting, but Commodore has two longbows behind a walls so both stacks might go splat on T202.

[Krill]

Full update to come late, but straightforward conquest of Babylon gave the Shrine as the quest reward, and Bing upgraded a bowman (I thought he would when I reflected on the turn last night) in his last city, so no quick conquest. Full sledgehammer time.

[Krill]

No fancy creations this turn. It was a really straightforward battle with one exception: The order went:

1. Trebs remove culture defense,
   
2. 4 cats promote B2 and attack (not over the river),
   
3. Then the knights went in. At the point the fourth knight was done, I decided the fifth knight was needed and I was leaving Bing alive this turn (I thought earlier on I would have to do this, but the way the collateral damage spread was the final nail in this coffin).
   
4. Promote two trebs to CR2 and attack over the river. This was unusual but they had the best odds, and teh mace wasn't quite good enough IMO, but it also opened up the last battles (in fact I probably should have only used on treb to maximise XP, but whatever).
   
5. Clean up with the mace (went from mid 70's to mid 90's by using the trebs) and the rest.

11 cats, two maces, one vulture and one knight attacking into Bing, plus a longbow and a chariot on defence whilst scouting (still a little irked by how lucky Bing got with that). And 54 hammers into a monastery. And two HA cleaning out Yuris' units. Cost real 995 hammers.

Total destroyed: 2 Bowmen, 19 longbows, 7 cats, 1 chariot, 14 axes, 9 WE, 1 HA, 10 spears. Cost 2845 hammers.

That could be worse.








Watch how Commodore gets through this pass. It won't break his assault but it will affect his position in 10 turns time.





Good quest.