What happens after the war?

[Ennet]

Originally posted by Velociryx
you can't "count" the hammers of population remaining in EoTS by NOT whipping, because you never actually convert them into hammers for any purpose--ie, they're either hammers or they're not...

True. But you also have to count for the hammers you lose while not being at maximum size..
Like Blake posted in post #136 you'll lose 7 turns of 6 extra hpt in the capital for a gain of 5 turns of 6 hpt in the new city.. however as we are at the happy cap the loss in the capital will infact be larger. Also note that any later cities or other units or buildings will be further delayed.. (if you whip again this will be even more as you'll get less excess food)
Havn't simmed it, but i think that's correct.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Arrian
In light of there being a 3rd civ on the continent, we may want to re-think the no-barracks plan.

I mean, we think we can beat Vox with or without a barracks, but even after we beat Vox we will not be alone. Therefore, the barracks is more valueable as a long-term investment as the units that survive the war will be more experienced.

-Arrian

Very true. If we get a bunch (heheh) of 4exp axemen then they can level up off of The Voice and we can have a core of shock and medic axes. Possibly city raiders - but I think we can do better than axes for breaking cities.

Build a barracks in EotS and Furs.
Don't build a barracks in Wines/FP2, but still whip the catapults out of them. Catapults don't gain anything special by being levelled up.

We can use Wines and FP2 for our post-Vox settler pumps (ie grow to size 6 then whip) while our barracks cities handle the military side of things.

[Mudhut]

Not that I want to re-open a can o worms that we've just got shut, but doesn't the appearance of a third Civ slant things in favour of a quicker - albeit slightly riskier - pop/chop-rushed attack on Vox? We need to get them out of the way as quickly as possible, before there is any chance of us being weighed down in a 2 v 1 war (with us on the minority side).

Now, I know Banana are 16? tiles from our cultural borders, but they can still have an effect on the war. And if we take 60+ turns to finish Vox, that's plenty of time for them to come up with something and send it down to interfere.

The key questions is this: if you were Banana, would you side with Vox (who are clearly on the losing side of this war) or with us?

From Banana point of view, reasons to side with Vox:
-If GS win, they will be in an unassailable position (flood plains, two capital sites)
-Vox have probably already contacted them and got the PR going (those Evil GSers Attacked us with No Warning!)
-It would significantly prolong the Vox v GS war, which is good for them (they build while Vox and Us waste units on each other); particularly if this is a 3-Civ landmass.

From Banana point of view, reasons they should side with Gathering Storm:
-GS+Banana will easily win, which means that they have good relations with the victors aftor Vox destroyed.

So I guess it looks to me like it will be hard to convince Banana to come to our side of the table... what do you think? How can we sway them to our side? If we think that they might try to help Vox, then perhaps we need to speed up our plans - by which I mean popping more to get units quicker (at some increased risk), basically as described by Vel at length.

[alva]

Don't forget about religion, they might go to war with us (longer term) or with Cox (short term) for the same reasons we went to war with Vox.

Come to think of it, what if they try to snatch the holy city while we are waiting for cats to show up.

[Blake]

Hmmm...

I don't think this makes the quick kill any more feasible.

If anything it gives Vox more ... well... hope... to cling onto survival and try to exhaust us.
Instead of "Cling to survival until being stomped flat" it's "Survive until rescue arrives". It gives them a low risk strat of playing very defensively, no need to try anything risky/stupid against us because they can cling to the hope that Banana will do it for them.

I'd also like to point out that Vox *already* have 3 Archers and 2 Warriors. I think what their next build is will be critical, if it's another archer then that makes an axe rush incredibly risky - we'd need about 8 axes (worth of hammers, so like 2 more skirms and 3 axes or something) to break just those 4 archers - the forces they pretty much already have, to to mention that with half a brain they can whip out 3 more archers (when they get around to researching bronze working!!!). So i still believe - and even moreso than before, that for this rush to work, Vox have to have somewhat less than half a brain when it comes to CIV.

If nothing else a battle IS going to be lossy. Assume they don't throw away their archers like retards and stick with a ~4 archer garrison for The Voice - we can bet on losing at least that many units. Will we be able to hold off a determined "liberation" force from Banana? We'd be back at square one - no army, no new city. It's twice as risky to go in hard in fast.
I'd much rather a bloodless (for us) solution which leaves our military assets intact. Even if it's slower.

Something else is we NEED to grab that Elephant source since The Bunch will have the Bananaphants site. We don't want to be purely on the recieving end of elephants. Whether or not Banana are hostile, they'll be less hostile if they enjoy less real or percieved military advantage over us.

Okay, diplomacy.

It'd be a hard nights drinking to convince me that we AREN'T evil, if not evil incarnate then at very least we are greedy and unscrupulous.

I think the BEST tact would be to encourage Banana to stay out of it altogether, to look the other way while we do the grizly deed. Non-interference may well be attractive to them, especially when you consider the barbarian infested mess they'll have to march through. In fighting Vox we have the advantage of contigious line of sight preventing those currs from hurting units and disurpting road building efforts.

In terms of putting a spin on it, we could claim that we are just containing Vox while we take the good city sites. As we proceed to take the good city sites that would tend to reinforce our story. Altough it's still not very nice.

Our strongest case will probably be "Might makes Right", as long as we have enough might they can't argue with that. I do believe we'll be able to outresearch Banana by a tidy margin (they are after all Ind/Cre) but we'll need to see their graphs to know more.

The worst case scenario is Bananas with a site... like 2 grassland gems on a river, capable of packing mad research and thus getting elephants and pults at the same time we can. Also bad would be if they have very high hammers and can thus put together a stack to match ours, albiet about 8 turns slower to the scene. The Bunch graphs are going to be a wealth of decision making information.

Anyway I'm posting half self deprived (the first time i attempted that sentence started as "i'm sleeping half...") so hopefully this rambling post makes some sense. We do need to see the graphs from next turn anyway.

[Ennet]

We might just aswell say that we felt that we thought Vox actions were somewhat hostile and that we made the best of the situation.
They did run around us to mislead us of their location, not nice if they were planning on peaceful dealings. They did break their word about staying off our borders, one turn after saying they would.
(And then they did have an evil religion, threathening to spread to our city =)

Obviously they would sooner or later go to war, so we pressed the attack while we were at advantage.

[Arrian]

I'd simply say that two civs in such proximity were destined to come to blows. They founded a religion, which we saw as a major security risk, and then they gave us the opportunity to whack their scout. We took it.

No apologies for our actions. They're perfectly rational when you consider all the factors.

It's different vis-a-vis Banana. They are much farther away. We can realistically coexist peaceably (for a long while, anyway) and cooperation may be quite benificial.

-Arrian, spinning

[Ennet]

Now the winning question: What is north of 'Nana? They should have made some exploration, and the jungle would prove good cover for their explorers.. is likely there is some nice land north of Banana where they've sent their explorer(s), unless they stay put or we've run past them.. Also some units been lost so they could've lost it to an animal or something..

So plans? How about: Spinebreaker II - Beyond the Banana? (unless they object to it directly, that or patrol the jungle..)

[Krill]

*Cough*, RP, *Cough*

Teling someone never to explore someones land that is not currently within their borders never works well

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Krill
*Cough*, RP, *Cough*

Teling someone never to explore someones land that is not currently within their borders never works well

The RP forum was never opened up, right? .... I had nothing to do with that decision.

[Krill]

No, none of the private fora were ever opened.

A pity, as I still want to read the Lego threads on the Legos War

[Mudhut]

Originally posted by Blake
Hmmm...

It'd be a hard nights drinking to convince me that we AREN'T evil, if not evil incarnate then at very least we are greedy and unscrupulous.

Well, if we can't even convince members of our own team that we are the Good Guys, what hope do we have of convincing Banana?

Seems to me that Banana will do one of two things, based upon their land situation:

-If they have good land up there, sufficient to expand and have a good sized empire (5-6 decent cities), then they should keep out of it entirely. While we waste resources on war, they build, and hope to beat us in the medium term because we've wasted all those hammers on Vox.

-If they don't have good land up there, they must join with Vox now and slow us down somehow, because we will be unassailable once we've taken Vox down.

So really the best thing is for SB to do more scouting up there, as that should give us a heads up on what the best play for Banana is.

Originally posted by Blake

Our strongest case will probably be "Might makes Right", as long as we have enough might they can't argue with that.

Here, here

[Velociryx]

True. But you also have to count for the hammers you lose while not being at maximum size..

Actually, this has already been taken into account (see pg. 6, post 162, Edit 1--the footnote, detailing the hammer comparison using the two approaches).

Like Blake posted in post #136 you'll lose 7 turns of 6 extra hpt in the capital for a gain of 5 turns of 6 hpt in the new city.. however as we are at the happy cap the loss in the capital will infact be larger. Also note that any later cities or other units or buildings will be further delayed.. (if you whip again this will be even more as you'll get less excess food)
Havn't simmed it, but i think that's correct.

Here, the 6hpt loss at the Capital is actually more than made up for by the earlier foundings of cities one and two (this demonstrated via Blake's own numbers, once the Enron Accounting of hammers never actually converted are removed).

The abuse method is clearly superior hammer-wise, and is also clearly superior growth wise (for instance, the five turns faster founding that Blake admits to in his own analysis translates into a whole extra city size worth of growth for Wines and FP2--because growing via flood plains exclusively, it's 5t to grow from 3-4, which means that when the cities reach size 3 under the stable hammers approach, they'll be reaching size 4 under the abuse approach--thus, we're two pop points ahead overall) (and we spend more time working the best tiles we have...the FP's)

(from post 65 of this thread:

Here's how quick a floodplain city grows to size 4:
2 growth: 22f @ 3fpt = 8 turns
3 growth: 24f @ 4fpt = 6 turns
4 growth: 26f @ 5fpt = 5 turns

(emphasis mine)

So even if you accept that the ONLY benefit to the faster method is five turns of turn advantage...even if you use Enron-inflated hammer counts for the preferred method in an effort to make that method come across as offering better total hammer returns, the other option still translates directly into two extra points of pop.

My original statement was that we could get most, if not all of our stuff set up before we even GOT pottery, and that's been demonstrated to be correct. We'd be one hammer and one unit away from our stated goals, and primed for absolutely explosive growth. The ONLY way that the stable hammers approach is superior is that it preserves more of the capital's native hammer production. IF that is a desired goal, then yes...it has merits. To make the claim, however, that it can somehow produce more hammers is patently false (again, unless you count phantom hammers that are never actually converted).

Further, the abuse plan sees us get all our essential stuff up and running quickly (the core cities with which we'll actually win the war) and then sees us spend a nominal amount of time idling on non-crucial stuff like extra chokers (not that the chokers aren't important in their way, but given the assets on the board, it's clear that founding the cities that will win us the war are vastly more important than redundant chokers, especially in light of recent map discoveries).

It's neither here nor there tho. The team has decided against any plan for speeding things along, and that's fine, but let's call it like it is....in this instance, it has more to do with a given plan falling outside the parameters of a comfortable playing style (min-max, with the focus squarely on the Capital) than it has to do with raw hammer counts, because in a comparison of raw hammer counts, there's a faster way.

Having said that, however, I refuse to drive an ideological wedge into the team, and would ask that any other comments about the rejected plan be directed to me via PM, which I will still check. After this post, I'll leave the team forums for a time, however, since I do not want to be seen as an antagonizing force (and it's clear that I've already started down that road...sorry Blake ). The team doesn't need that.

-=Vel=-

[vmxa1]

It is not for me to say Vel, but ...

Either we are all adults or we are not. If we are then a debate does not cause friction, it enables chosing the best route. So I suspect we can handle a bit of disent during dialog.

You never know when a good point will be made.

[Ennet]

Discussion is good, we learn. =)
Still, growing back from size 3 to size 5 will take 9 turns total with food plains maximised. The time it takes for the unhappiness to go away is 10, so you'll lose another 4 hammers from not being able to work the plains hill for 1 turn.
60 + 1 * 9 + 8 = 77 hammers (10 turns from whip)
city 2 will be founded 5 turns earlier and will cap at 4 pop and 6 hammers, 5 * 6 = 30 hammers.
77 + 30 = 107 hammers
+15 commerce

non-abuse method:
12 * 10 = 120 hammers

commerce wise there will be little difference as the worker wont be able to build more cottages than the non-abuser can work anyway, and two of the hills are along the river, so infact the non-abuser will gain 5 commerce for the 5 turns the abuser were at size 3.
The new city will however generate +5 commerce -1 maintainance for 5 turns at maximum hammers (unimproved). That's an additional 20 commerce. (minus 5 that was lost to the non-abuse player)

In the end there is a trade off 13 hammers vs 15 commerce. I did also count the land at city 2 unimproved as Im doubtfull to that a lot of it will be improved before we hit the cap anyway, as our worker will be quite busy.
Counter to that is ofcourse the fact that any new production in the capital will be delayed, if the next build after the first settler is another settler or worker the lost hammers will also increase due to the ineffiency of being frozen at a lower food/hammer count for the duration of the build.

So weighting it all in, the difference is small.