Good News, Bad News

roadcage · December 31, 2002, 03:43

I have just finished reviewing the 1305 ab save. The good news is that the German Democracy has fallen into Anarchy. This effectively costs Germany one full tech since they are not religious and thus have long Anarchy periods. The German Democracy was still there in the 1295 ab save so there are still a few turns of Anarchy left. All we need to do is keep pushing so when Gov't change time comes for Otto, he selects Commie.

We get Nuc Theory next turn, and G-Town completes ToE the turn after that. This will put us 3 full techs ahead of those AI's fortunate enough to have something to trade for Sci Meth, and even furthur behind for most AI's.

Our full Sci beaker potential is now 1701 per turn. That's up about 10% versus 6 turns ago. This is adequate to do all remaining Industrial techs at the minimum 4 turn rate. We will need to boost this beaker potential another 20% to do the Modern techs in 4 turns, but we have 5 techs or 20 turns to get ready. A Hospital flood followed by a pop boom will do the trick.

No doubt about it, the good news is extremely good. But I did say that there were problems to overcome or atleast lessons to be learned.

Soapbox mode....

Military Execution
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Considering the success enjoyed over the last few turns, how could there be any problems here? In the last turn we committed a MAJOR MAJOR tactical blunder which will become evident this turn and slow down our advance into Germany. Look at our Artillery disposition.

10 units off road, adjacent to target (Berlin) 2 tiles deep into enemy territory, instead of on Rail standing off but still in range of Berlin and within our border. 10 Arty will most likely take multiple turns to wound Berlin enough to consider Cavalry assault. There are probably 5 maybe 6 rifles there which ALL need to be badly hurt before Assault.

10 units on enemy road standing off target (Frankfurt) one tiile deep into enemy territory. 10 Arty has slightly better chance of wounding Frankfurt compared to Berlin due to lower expected garrisoning but still doubtful because Frankfurt is on a hill.

Remaining units properly positioned for effective use in Southern theatre.

Now if the Berlin and Frankfurt forces had not been divided, there is a reasonable expectation that one city or the other could be overrun this turn in a cakewalk. But not with this disposition.

Artillery is slow but powerful. It is critical to keep our Artillery on the rail grid as much as possible in order to be able to mass them wherever we want. On previous turns we divided our Artillery, but since the units were always on our rail grid, speed was not an issue. We simply fired as many as necessary at each target till all were used. However this turn we have the majority of our Artillery divided and off grid. Yes, it is not possible to Bombard either target from our grid or... Eureka! why oh why did we move Stuttgart? If Stuttgart were still with us, there would be some railroad tiles in our territory that are within Artillery range of Berlin.

And THAT is the tactical blunder. We were so hot to relocate that city for city planning issues, we failed to grasp the tactical significance of the border position. Will this cause our German campaign to fail? No, but it will extend it by a few turns.

Worker utilization
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We have so many workers, this is almost moot but please explain why we have many workers both foreign and domestic stranded in undeveloped mountains and virgin jungle tiles that cannot be used by any city? This is not really a killer as there are an adequate number of workers on the grid which can work usefully next turn.

But the next issue is a hybrid of worker utilization and city planning. Look closely at Chartres. Sitting there with 3 shields short of a factory. 9 pop with fully developed mined railed grassland tiles begging to be worked. If 2 of the huge number of workers now stranded on useless tiles had instead been allowed to join Chartres, or even better one worker allowed to join 2 turns ago, there would be a Factory there and 6 more beakers per turn.

/soapbox

I am sorry if this offends, but I believe this lesson will improve our game.

Ssgt roadcage (retired)

Spiffor · December 31, 2002, 05:13

Roadcage :
I am glad you put so much attention to the game. I don't take your criticism on worker utilization badly, since I have made a mistake, and thanks for pointing it out

Now, if you have any suggestions for future worker allocation that I may have overlooked, please tell me about it. I'd be very glad to improve our performance with all these little things

Donegeal · December 31, 2002, 10:56

Good call on the Chartres Factory Roadcage. I will take blame for not seeing that (er thinking of that). I do not generaly use reintergration of workers in my games and didn't even think about it. But, alas, even if I did use that stragety, I dout that I would have seen it as I have had very little time for the DG with the hollidays and work (just got a promotion). As it stands, I will also most likely not be able to make too many (if any) in depth orders this week as well.

Kuciwalker · December 31, 2002, 11:11

Wow. You REALLY looked at the save.

Shiber · December 31, 2002, 11:17

Needless to say, your contribution to this game is invaluable Roadcage.

joncnunn · December 31, 2002, 11:50

I'm in full agreement with Roadcage on the desirability of a Hospital boom and worker reintergration for fast modern era research, especally into tiles with a lot of commerce. (Roads + rivers and ocean)