[PB59 Suite and civac] Chaos at home

[Elkad]

No, I didn't sim. I just go on feel.

And yes, the dice seemed a bit biased. Wouldn't have changed the outcome of course, but it should have cost you more at least, or maybe bought me a couple more turns.
My York sortie was.. well, only slightly below what I expected, but it was below, so I aborted it.
When you took York you won 5 65% battles in a row I think, and only had to cleanup 1 unit.
I lost most of my 65% battles with the London sortie.

Incidentally, your unexpected 1t delay on EPs didn't matter, because I missed it. My stack of knights had been dodging your warrior for several turns, I don't think you had a count on them, but I moved them before I checked the EP screen on the critical turn. They could have hid either 223 (I think) from of York, or 99 behind the hill. Or scrambled down to save my city that was 1t from popping a GS.

[civac2]

Going back a bit, we double-bulbed Astronomy as planned for a long time.



The idea was to attack Elkad using galleons to reduce his production capacity quickly. This, I had also planned for a while.

Elkad had switched into Vassalage and Theocracy in his earlier GA and was able to produce knights with 3 promotions. He had also managed to reach Gunpowder and build Chichen Itza.

Galleys whipped into galleons and swordsmen whipped into amphibious macemen probably accelerated the attack beyond what he was expecting. In any event, Chichen Itza turned out to be combustible.



I also took two cities in the south ambphibiously.



Norwich was kept to improve logistics. The war effort took a significant toll on our finances, 285 gpt is maybe half to a third of what some empires made per turn. We lost a lot of ground technologically.

The units in Newcastle were wiped out by a stack of super-powered knights Elkad had managed to hide from me in spite of my city vision.



More serious, however, were Miguelito's knights and musketeers patrolling in Elkad's territory. I had considered this possibility, of course, but thought I could tie down Migulito's units with my fleet. In retrospect, this notion turned out be inspired by hopium rather than clear-eyed analysis. Miguelito grabbing the Taj Mahal enabled him to switch into Nationhood. Hordes of drafted musketeers with effective range of six reduced the naval threat to barely an inconenience.

Miguelito declared war and offered peace, presumably to have a free hand vs Elkad. When I denied the peace offer he added some motivation.



His spy (probably, I can't be sure) had reported that I had shifted my local security force in AT-land north east as reinforcements for the Elkad campaign. Without Engineering 'out of position' is not a great distance. So I did take the peace for 100 of his gold pieces. Mostly, to finally make some progress against Elkad. My own spy (yellow arrow) was a turn late.

Miguelito invaded Elkad immediately and captured or razed Elkad's southern cities.

[civac2]

I was somewhat unhappy with my game at the time which led to some careless tactical decisions.



Instead of razing Conventry I landed reinforcements there and now had a second stack next to the force that had taken Brighton to the north. Both stacks were a bit thin. Elkad attempted a sortie against the northern stack but abandoned it after some below average combat rolls.

Elkad retreated everything but some longbows and and muskets to London. Luck stayed with the Sumerians, losing only 4 catapults during the battle of York. Five knights won 65% odds battles and one catapult withdrew at <1%. I left the injured units at York and advanced on London over defensive terrain. This was, again, reckless. Had I waited two or three more turns I could have added 15 units to the stack.

In the actual game, the force besieging London was just at the edge of being too small.



Elkad attacked with everything but the pikes.



His assault was broken by the Sumerian heavy infantry holding the hill against superior odds with half their number falling in the battle. (Which is a flowery and heroic way of saying that I got bailed out by RNGesus again, praise be to its name.) Since only the cavalry was in something approaching fighting shape I lost another 11 catapults, 3 elephants and a knight capturing London against Elkad's pikes.



Despite Miguelito and Rusten running circles around me the final tally is acceptable. I got about 60% of Elkad's territory including the capital albeit at vastly greater cost than what Miguelito payed. He grabbed three decent and one strong city almost without losses.

Economic recovery was amazingly quick. While the war was winding down I was able to finish Printing Press with some assistance from capture gold. Growing back into cottages also increased trade profits significantly. Finally, seven new banks in financial metropoles and some discounted harbors added to the total. As of turn 173, I'm making 850gpt at 100% tax which is not top tier but competitive.

[civac2]

After only a few turns pause, Miguelito invaded Mjmd on the eastern continent.



Mjmd has been at war for ages and is hopelessly behind. Charriu who also inhabits Mjmd's continent entered the war against Miguelito, presumably because he would be next in line.

They have been trying to get me to declare as well.



But Miguelito left a significant screening force behind which includes his first cannons. A similar but smaller army stand in former DZ-land. Currently, I can't act against him on land. Quite the opposite, I would have a hard time stopping his cannons. I have about 20 knights loaded on galleons which I prefer to keep in reserve as a deterrent until I have cannons of my own.

Miguelito and Rusten keep sending me diplo missives like this one:



"Please go play on the western continent and let us conquer without interruption." Unfortunately, the western continent is filled with powerful and belligerent natives (and Cornflakes ). Landing an army there would be stupid. So I have decided to join in against Miguelito after my upcoming GA which is parly intended to get me to weapons parity with Miguelito but also partly to increase my economic output by switching to Free Market which I have yet to research. The delay and split focus may well be a mistake. It depends on how long Mjmd and Charriu can delay the French war machine. I wish I could discuss this with Suite.

[civac2]

I have decided to go for the GA with the split purpose of improving my economic position and my ability to make units. I switched into Nationhood, Caste System and Pacifism.

The alternative would have been to research Military Science (2 turns) and start whipping Amphibious grenadiers. I decided against it for various reasons including Miguelitos hordes of drafted 6 movement range musketeers. Seabourne grenadiers would have much less movement advantage than against normal muskets. Miguelito would have been able to counter the plan by making ships. Most importantly, his screening force is one mass cat upgrade away from being too hard to stop for me without cannons of my own.

During the GA I will go for Steel, almost certainly followed by Education and Economics to switch into FM. Next to cannons, Steel will grant discounted drydocks which are amazing value, ~54 base hammers for +50% ship construction and 4 EXP per ship. Going for Military Science would be more resolute but I don't think I can resist 160 base commerce from FM, quite possibly more. When Steel is in I can use my ~30 seaborne knights to to go on the offensive leaving defense to cannons and leftovers.



(These are most of them but I have a few more elsewhwere.)

Meanwhile, Charriu recaptured a city lost by Mjmd.



That's encouraging. Which cannot be said of demographics.



GA at 80% research with 82gpt loan repayment charges coming in from Amicalola and I'm not even close to the top. Interestingly, the gnp leader is likely Frozen who also just started a GA and somehow squeezes world beater gnp out of his 17 cities.  



Among the contenders, the strongest economy seems to belong to Picadilly (Willem of Mali). Miguelito and Rusten fell off a bit. It's possible they misstepped a bit for the first time. It's too early to say. Their enormous army puts more financial pressure on them then mine due to the AGG trait. Speaking of AGG, maintenance reduction works on Pacifism.



I wish I had known that previously. Pacifism is cheaper than OR despite 200+ combat units.

I can easily make three GP for the next GA.



So much food on this map. If I can somehow aquire a Spy or Engineer a fourth GA wouldn't be so hard either.

[vanrober]

Its really nice to see your thoughts in english, thanks for taking the time!

[civac2]

Is it OK to ask someone not to accept a trade proposal via PM if I sent the offer by mistake?

[Hitru]

That's ok to keep game going I think

[Miguelito]

Congrats Miguelito. You played a frustratingly good game.

Edit: And also to Amicalola, of course.

Thanks, and I think I can return that compliment .
I lived in terror of your fleets at least turn 145-200.
Four things I wanted to ask:

a) Did you have serious plans to attack us, and if yes, at which times, and what dissuaded you? I think the problem for you was that after Elkad you had nowhere else to go, but it clearly wasn't enough yet, less so without an economy trait. Meanwhile we had the outlet of going for Mjmd, and possibly further, but it was complicated by having to maintain a huge army at home at all times. I was very happy when you went for Ichabod's island (did sending you my blessing help?), because it meant that you had a new perspective, and of course another front to look out for.

b) Did we achieve friendship towards the end, or were you just checked out? I was relaxing my watch mostly after you started to take shorter turns, and assumed you did not want to kingmake. It also was clear that if you attacked that was just the end for us, and we increasingly needed to send our forces far from home, so I just had to hope that you wouldn't do anything (ever more so towards the end). Then I was genuinely surprised when you joined the anti Mali coalition. Sorry that you did get no gains from that, I hope you were not annoyed at me there - I messed up communicating the correct launch date. I figured that I'd cede former Cornflakes to you, but then Ichabod stepped in. I had gotten some sort of signal of him joining in, but I'm not sure how I would have communicated that to you, and I was focused on taking down Picc anyways and did not pay sufficient attention to diplomacy (evidenced by the aforementioned failure to tell you the correct turn of attack, I beat myself up over that considerably).

c) On the last turn you had surpassed us in power. What was the plan? Round 3 vs Ichabod, or something else ? Also, when did you start getting nukes? I kept dutifully on patrolling your lands with my scouts, generally playing before you, but didn't notice any. But maybe I just didn't pay attention.

d) What was up with those 2 destroyers and 2 transports that sailed all the way to the Mjmd/Laz/Charriu astro island and then turned back? What was on the transports?

Relevant quote from our thread:

I think I've tried this reasoning before: We (and civac) have been moderately to significantly ahead of Picc most of the time (but we also have more cities) *I was referring to crop yield, but he has had competitive MfG and at times even outclassed us. You can say the same of Amica, although he is more whip-leaning. At the same time, you see the devastating arms race between civac and us. That has just not happened on the other continents (Cairo briefly came to our power level when he went to attack naufragar, but has not increased his power since). So whil most our hammers and pop went into units, including dozens of ships (and a bunch of drydocks), I have to assume that they could use theirs for economy buildings. And you have seen the deplorable number of those that we own. Add to this that for a lot of time we had to prioritize military techs. Starting with astronomy as a response to civac's bulb, which obsoleted our Colossus far earlier than we'd have liked, followed by chemistry->steel->rifling->steam power (ironclads)
To add insult to injury all those units cost maintenance as well.

A big question for me looking back is whether there ever was a chance for peace with civac, which I somehow bungled diplomatically, but I think there wasn't. I suppose in the late renaissance he saw his chance of winning the game in forcing a conquest of us, with the advantage that his Agg trait would give him, while he would not be competitive economically with Fin/Org leaders if he remained at a similar city count. At least that seems reasonable to me. As I've mentioned, he's appeared more friendly and disengaged lately, and the time for a profitable conquest may have run out already. Btw I am quite impressed that despite all the military civac has managed to maintain an economy that is broadly competitive (often better than ours, although I hope we're growing out of that), although he has always been lagging a few techs (or is he? he is up Combustion on us, but has no SM/Physics/Electricity, and just reached AL. But he has at least one GA due yet while we are spent).

I'm sorry you lost your dedlurker on the way, and it sure is a shame that you stopped reporting although I can understand why. This thread as well as the German* one were very fun and enlightening, thanks for that . When AT got conquered in the fog (from our perspective) I was quite preplexed how he could let it happen agaisnt the supposedly bad vultures, but I have to say that you executed an awesome attack there. It was also interesting how, while I was panicking over your early galleons, you were much less secure ofyourself and your attack on Elkad than I thought at the time.

* I admit that I skipped a few of the early pages

[civac2]

I seriously considered attacking you at points but a cold appraisal of the situation showed that there was never anything remotely resembling an opening. The fleet I used to take Ichabod's island was in its infant stage made with the hope it could be used against you. It very quickly become apparent that this was irrational and I kept building it up with the aims of i) of tying down your units so they could not conquer the weak empires on Charriu's continent and ii) taking at least Ichabod's island.

Indeed, I did not want to kingmake and would have let you two superpowers duke it out while keeping to myself.
Your peaceful signals were noticed but at least conciously they made no difference. If I had been able to get close to my own spaceship (and Amicalola's domination win was not imminent) I would have attempted to shoot down yours with commandos and nukes. Since I have never done anything like that I rather doubt I would have been able to pull it off but for the integrity of the game I would have at least tried. Of course, the detente may have had a subconcious effect.

I was quite freaked out by your (and Amicalola's) buildup so I built a fleet of my own and then never stopped making units. (Yeah, I was pretty checked out.) At the time I also harbored lingering hopes to profit from your and Amicalola's war. Even if all of those hammers had gone into Wealth/Research I'm not sure it would have been enough to close the technology gap. Anyway, unlike Picadilly I'm not brave enough to try something like that.

You are correct. Nukes were not done yet. However, there were quite a few tactical nukes and submarines in production. The first one would have been done this new turn I believe, maybe the next.

The small destroyer/transport squadron was filled with 15 xp knights. It prowled the oceans in search for a minor power coastal city with the correct quality of defender (+2xp on win, low odds of defeat). They killed an unfortunate Mjmd crossbowman and one other unit of his (victim of trigger happiness) and then turned back. The point was to enable Westpoint in my HE city for off-the-shelf commandos. I was sure you (or Rusten) would read this play easily. Had to research Music and Military Tradition even.