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[E. Albright]

What's their Base Design at? A quick clicking-around in your territory didn't see anything higher than the 575HP Mk. IVs (with their 148 BD).

Honestly, I think this infantry may be the highest weapon & armor stats I've ever gotten on non-aircraft (those you can get a lot higher numbers on b/c you can jack up their SD by refining Aircraft/Helicopter/Thoper design linear tech, ofc - I know I've had at least 145 SD (maybe 150) on some of those, albeit not this game).

Additional not-exactly-top-secret data point that seems to match what you're saying about your burghers:

Spoiler: Rapid filers (click to show/hide)

[Il Palazzo]

They're actually 113 structural, not 119. But I think that - together with base - affects only how good a roll you can get on your weapon/armour/engine(where applicable).

[E. Albright]

I suspect that's right. I was thinking it wasn't but the models I posted above pretty clearly contradict that. At a minimum, the BD only affects the roll - looking at my inferior infantry, when they went from BD 78->128 with no weapon design, weapon, or small arms optimization improvement, they didn't change their attack stats at all. The MG model goes from 666->677HP, but there's no armor changes except 5 levels of PA opt, whose 8 armor strength seems like it'd account for the HP perfectly.

Annoyingly, it's harder to compare SD stats. I suppose I could do some redesign tests to confirm it in a new game with saving & reloading, but I'm fairly sure you're right that it's just the sub-element design rolls that are affected. Even though the design log is a bit opaque, it's more consistent with that than the alternative.

[Il Palazzo]

Btw, the charged gauss is a red herring of a tech. Same level as lasers, but is worse in every respect, even with superior linear tech. It seems always preferable to ignore it and spend the research budget on discovery until one gets to lasers.
Unless, I don't know, the energy infrastructure is absolutely horrendous for some reason.

Anyhow, those are some nasty troops you're fielding. In increasingly large numbers on my border. I'm sure it's going to be fine.

[E. Albright]

They're better than they used to be; they used to be on the level above lasers, AND had worse FP. Moving them, regular gauss, and GP weapons down a level at least made them usable even if they're distinctly "meh".

They're mostly useful if the RNG doesn't like you. That, and for cost-efficient anti-infantry aircraft - charged gauss does okay for strafing. I suspect they're okay for defensive turrets on bombers, but like lasers that's a case of "if you can't afford the production/operation costs of missiles".

I expect the real reason they exist is rock-paper-scissors endgame tech - they're not weak against Liquid Armor like lasers are. The problem is that they're just weaker overall, and they're anti-infantry weapons anyway. Now, if they unlocked (or were a pre-req for) cannon-replacing mass drivers to defeat liquid armor, that'd be another story. I could also see giving shields a weapon-matrix advantage against energy weapons that ballistics could ignore... but all of that is so late-game that it's not worth having a lot of development time devoted to it.

[E. Albright]

Not a problem if someone needs more time, but it feels like it'd probably be good to check to see if someone forgot to send the turn.

[Karlito]

No, just slow on weekends as I said. Sent it off just now. This should be the last week I miss a day though.

[Il Palazzo]

I think we should gradually expect slower turns as the game heats up anyway. So no worries.

Q: is there a way to re-friendship-ize a major? I've had 3/4 of a mind made up to go full kumbaya on my eastern neighbour and sign all the treaties, but then they fired a 'senate turns against you' event with impossible odds (unlike the previous times). Now they're cold, despite high relations - which blocks most of the diplomacy - and I don't see any stratagems that could try and change that.

They've also camped some 50 thousand troops two hexes from my city, with rather menacing postures.
I'm not sure how much of this is improved AI simulating human behaviour, and not just me reading things into it, but it does look just as if they were salty about me grabbing that minor from under their noses.

[EuchreJack]

I think Major AI stance is rather fixed.  Throwing Friendship at them won't fix it.  Probably the only thing to do is avoid antagonizing them further and wait it out.

[E. Albright]

I'll second/repeat the "no worries, things are slowing down" idea.

Major posture is something that mostly only changes by random events, and for the most part it only gets worse. It's probably just the RNG making it seem like the AI is pissed at you, though when I think about my current SP game, the one neighbor I've narrowly squeaked by two or three Senate posture changes with has been one I've been competing for indy or hostile-3rd-major territory with, not the two I've had static borders with for 2/3s the game (which admittedly are blackmail regimes, so the diplomacy is different), so it's possible my conviction that it just gets worse may be b/c I almost always treat major AIs like a diplomatic punching bag.

I have vague memories of the possibility of a really rare event that may change their posture for the better, and it's possible you may be able to influence them to make it more likely by manipulating their factions based on their profiles, but waiting and sacrificing birdbeaks to beg the RNG for mercy is probably all you can do...

[E. Albright]

Anyhow, those are some nasty troops you're fielding. In increasingly large numbers on my border. I'm sure it's going to be fine.

Spoiler: We all have our own sources of heartburn (click to show/hide)

[Il Palazzo]

I have three cities with very similar QOL scores. I'm talking a bracket of 3 here. One gets +1 worker happiness due to high QOL vs national level. Another gets -1 for the same reason. The third gets -3. The one that has happiness improving has the lowest score of the three.
I can't even begin to make sense of this shit.

Also: mechanized artillery. For posture purposes, is that an artillery, or is it mechanized?

(New patch. Nothing important IMO)

[E. Albright]

My first thought was that they might be different cultures, but given that you stipulate high QOL, I have to imagine they've been franchisees long enough that your very high Mind profile's bonus to new employee training programs would have integrated them already.

My instinct w/MA is to assume it would be artillery, following the example of motorcycles being infantry with Wheeled movetype. I'm not sure about that, though, even if I'm strongly suspicious it is.

Patch might reduce demand for water. If it does, that'll be a blow to my economy - I've been selling ~80k water every 5 turns or so; i.e., whenever the price creeps back up to where the traders think it's high enough to bother with. It'll be more of an annoyance than an economic threat since I have alternate income streams, but it may be noticeable.

[Il Palazzo]

Hmmm. Yeah, water barons have been bankrolling my high-tech stocks for a while now.

[E. Albright]

That would hurt, yeah. The biggest advantage of my Archive stratagems giving me the not-immediately-useful techs of Nuclear Plants and Rad Cleansing was that it made it possible for me to ensure that High Tech was the only econ tech available to discover after I finally got Heavy Industry. You're still, what, 8 turns minimum from finishing your first High Tech plant?