Great reports! I have several counter-proposals as usual, and I can't wait to see what happens whether we follow them or not!
(October 23rd, 2017, 06:37)JR4 Wrote: It could need more infrastructure, let`s see if we can slip in a Bank and an Observatory. It`s been really hard to decide on Nambui`s builds lately.
Let's slip those in after the war, okay? If Nambui can one-turn a Cat, I would suggest that it do that. If it can't, I'd suggest a Musket, since I'm pretty sure it can two-turn one of those. I'd also want a Cat out of Toregene, a Knight out of Oghul Qaimish, and a Cat or Musket out of Danashri (just looking at the cities I can see in this turn's screenshots). I'm of the opinion that when at war (or preparing for war) with a human player, the time to take a break from building units everywhere is when you are no longer at war with a human player. Granaries in cities that don't have them are fine, and maybe lighthouses and forges in newer cities situationally, and I understand the logic behind Walls -> Castle in Radnashiri, but other than that, I'd be inclined to spam units in all of our cities. (Frigates do count as units for a war like this of course!)
(October 23rd, 2017, 07:26)JR4 Wrote: I`m thinking about landing on the forest Deer with our stack and then return the Galleons to the mainland to pick up more troops.
Am I mistaken then in thinking that the mainland troops (at least in the case of a few Knights) can come to them? One turn could make a big difference sometimes.
Quote:Civil Service next sounds good to me. Would it be a terrible idea to move the capital to Muqa?
Well, Bureaucracy doesn't apply to the shrine gold (nor to specialist yields or anything else that goes directly into gold or beakers) - only to raw commerce and hammers, so I'm pretty sure Borte is a better Bureau capital altogether, and completely sure moving it isn't worth the hammer cost of the Palace.
We have something like 4 Knights and a Catapult ready to jump on the Galleons this turn. Also, we have a few Keshiks if we feel that just a few more units would be needed for a breakthrough. I still think our odds are well above 50 % of gaining a city in this war but if Dark Savant manages to reinforce Tulearean Forest with, say, 3 more Oromo Warriors we might have to reconsider the attack. The turns are going pretty slowly at the moment, it looks like DS (which is 9 hours before me and 11 before Gavagai I think) having the first half of the timer is the worst possible for turn pace. Yup, I`ll have to request yet another pause tonight if he hasn`t played before bedtime.
Okay, Nambui will continue to make units as long as we stay in war. It can probably finish a Catapult right away. If we`re leaving Organized Religion it`s probably better to postpone infrastructure builds for a while.
If Muqa`s Shrine doesn`t get the advantages of Bureaucracy we`re surely better off by letting Borte stay our capital. It really needs more hammers (and more commerce).
Finally I was able to play the turn. Let`s start with the AP elections. Joey voted for himself, Dark Savant abstained but everyone else voted for us! (Krill is in Thoecracy still I think, so the true faith can`t spread to him. Dtay voting for us was a surprise but I guess he sees Joey as a bigger threat long term.
We declared war on Dark Savant! Hmm, the screenshot of Tulearean Forest`s surroundings didn`t take for some reason. Sorry about that. (I can`t log in to take another screen now as we`re definitely in a turn split). Anyway, an Amphibious Knight tried to kill off the Ethiopian Longbow on the forest Deer at 70 % odds. Success! That gave the Knight 3XP (up to 13) and it`s at 6.3 health. So it can still attack if we can weaken the top defender. There is probably another Oromo incoming. (The city was whipped from 10 to 8 iirc). The garrison is now an Oromo, 2 Longbows, an X-bow and a Spear. Forgot to check after the turn roll. We went in with 4 Catapults, a Musket and 7(?) Knights. There are more troops incoming next turn. At least 9 more fresh units. 2 Frigates will bombard next turn. 3 more Frigates are 2 turns away. The defenses still look strong but let`s see when we can get down the defenses.
We are building a lot of military - the cities able to contribute to the war generally do so. D-mishi started an Observatory as it`s too long away from the front. Nambui will indeed 1 turn a Catapult.
Civil Service finished eot with a lot of overflow. We can 1-turn Alphabet at 0 % science! (I`m not sure we want to do that). The bureaucracy bonus will help us out a lot.
Graphs and demos: The smallest Empire in the world now has the biggest population. That`s pretty hilarious.Having a size 24 giga city obviously help our numbers.
Okay, I found the missing screenshot! There are 6 Knights on the Deer along with the Musket and the Catapults. We need that city but I think we`ll have to build it up from size 1 if we can get through..
Look at that Barb Spearman on the second screenshot! It`s not going to trouble dtay in the slightest, but still funny. Also, the third screenshot shows where all dtay`s Knights are. In place for a revenge attack on Gavagai, perhaps!? As long as it`s not us it`s fine with me. City vision is really, really helpful.
Isabella must be utterly delighted at her election as High Pontiff of Buddhism, and will definitely use her holy authority to influence world events by wearing a silly hat. And if I understand the AP mechanics correctly in RtR, we'll have another opportunity to test out her/our popularity in just fifteen turns!
Oh, also we're at war now! Let's see...
Weird that we only have 11 units on the deer tile. I guess one of the Galleons wasn't fully loaded? Probably doesn't matter that much under the circumstances.
Any idea why we don't have vision on the coast tile SE of Tularean Forest? We have units on the land tile 2W of it, with only coast in between, and we obviously have Optics. What gives? (For that matter, shouldn't we be able to see that tile and the ones east of it from Vulcania's plains hill mine? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the vision rules? Otherwise, it's some kind of bug or something weird about the map....)
I guess the plan with the far eastern frigate is to troll Mist by bombarding it once en route down to Tularean Forest?
Since we're presumably swapping to Bureau + Theo this turn, we should whip any buildings we're still building before the civic swap, especially since I think/hope we're only building them in a handful of low-production cities right now. This will give us the full OR bonus on the whip, but the overflow will be treated as though we weren't in OR, since we won't by the time the turn ends and the build completes. (It's not worth doing this in a major city that should be building units anyway, obviously.)
I could try simming different attacks on Tularean Forest, but I'm pretty sure we have to spend at least one more turn bombarding, unfortunately - even if Gav manages to retake Chichen Itza. What units will be joining our force on the deer tile this turn?
(I'm glad you found the missing screenshots! And that barb spear is hilarious! I'm sure he'll get around to sending a boat and an Amphi Musket or something so he can use the tile eventually, but part of me wants to believe it's not a matter of lacking a spare ship and unit because of his other priorities - it's just that until he needs the forest for something important, he's keeping the spear as a pet!)
Turn 175 World Power Update, in my Thoroughly Uninformed Opinion:
1. dtay, as Tokuzulu: Losing several of his islands to Gavagai made it seem for just a moment that his star was fading ... kind of like (we think?) losing an early city to barbs made his star seem to fade once before. Don't be fooled. dtay is still in possession of two full civs' worth of mainland territory, and retains a number of key islands as well. He's the world tech leader with Liberated Steel, and his land neighbors are numbers 5 and 6 on this list of 7 civs, while the guy who took his old island holdings is embroiled - and lately has even suffered a serious setback - in a major war. dtay is also able to afford much larger and further-flung lands more easily than most players in this game, with his Aggressive trait and Ikhandas to supplement the Courthouses he hasn't even bothered building yet apparently. dtay and GermanJoey are head and shoulders above everyone else, but dtay still has a lot more room to grow.
2. GermanJoey, as Churchill of Greece: The other leader with double the land of anyone else on the board has been filling it out with a bunch of new cities lately, so his Protective trait is still relevant for more than just scary gunpowder units even here at turn 175. His Great Lighthouse is still going strong, and he's done a great job of claiming far more than his fair share of islands, and he'd be the clear favorite in this game if not for dtay. The problem is that apart from more fillers, GJ's more or less out of room to expand: Going north through us might hand the supercharged Buddhist shrine to dtay, and going south would mean going up against Krill in a land war.
3. Gavagai, as the Suryturk: There's a big gap after GJ here, and it may be controversial to place Gav this high: He's well below Krill on the scoreboard, some of his island holdings may be tenuous if dtay commits to taking them back, and his war against the weakest civ still on the board has not only stagnated but seen some major pushback within the past few turns. But Gav does border the current weak link in the game, while the player who could invade the other side of his target's land has to worry about dtay to his south and has nowhere near the power needed anyway, and Gav has much greater military power, is about to unlock Frigates, and just found out the wildcard in his war - us Mongols, with motive and ability to take one or more islands from either side - decided to go with him instead of against him, providing a distraction for his target and tying up (or hopefully destroying) units on vulnerable islands that might otherwise have been brought in to reinforce the mainland. Gav is therefore the most likely civ to double his mainland territory among those that haven't managed to do it already, and that means he's got a real chance to win this game.
4. Krill, as Boudinca: There is absolutely nothing wrong with Krill's position except for his neighbors ... but that problem is enough. He started in the enviable position of bordering China, a civ that was practically eliminated during the snake pick (and managed to outlive Russia only because that civ was eliminated back when CML was selecting his computer, before PB37 was even conceived) but Krill apparently didn't hear us saying that in order to win, he would have to claim China's capital before GermanJoey did. As a result, with little more land than he settled peacefully, he now borders a very powerful Greece instead. With Agg/Cha and the Statue of Zeus, he'll be able to spam Commandos sooner than anybody else, and that's going to be nerve-racking for his neighbors at the very least, but I'm not sure he can convert that into an actual victory, and he doesn't really have enough land for his traits to offer much in the way of economic benefit. Krill is still in contention, and if he can stick with this one, he might yet invent a way to get out of his box, or swing a surprise Cultural victory, but he's got an up-hill battle right now.
5. JR4 (and me!) as Izabyella Khatun: This might look optimistic until you remember that I think Krill will need to pull off a miracle to win this thing - and the gap between 4 and 5 might be the biggest so far. There are many things we could have done better here; it might even be that we could have built and executed a daring plan long ago that would have given us a commanding position in the game, though "daring" and "risky" kind of go together here. We haven't gotten as much from Spi as we could have with more-careful planning, certainly, and we missed a couple of possible windows for game-changing plays, but ... let's be real. We wound up in a map position with a well-below-average amount of accessible mainland while also being sandwiched between GJ and dtay when they each had a tasty snack on their opposite border in place of a rival civ. This isn't the fault of the mapmaker, who was told not to mirror the map and who presumably randomized the start positions and couldn't have known Russia and China were going down in flames anyway. (Well, couldn't have known about Russia at least.) When you're up against eight other players, half of whom are highly-skilled vets (with Bacchus as a highly-active dedlurker for yet another) you don't expect you'll necessarily win even if you do everything right, and the breaks have to go against somebody - against several players in fact, usually. (And not all our luck has been bad: All in all, we've had surprisingly good combat rolls in our very small sample this game.) I would say on the whole we've played a very solid game in a field where it would have taken something spectacular - or a much better neighbor draw - to win. So let's see what we can do from this position anyway! (It might actually be really fun to try for a cultural victory. We'd never get there, especially since we could never afford to turn the culture slider on, but it might be fun to go for it anyway!)
6. Team C: Coeurva/Chumchu as Cyrus of Carthage: Another civ with a horcher UU, they seem to have done more with (and even before) theirs than we did, and thanks in part to that aggression, they secured what looked like a pretty strong position until their southern neighbor suddenly became dtay. Even so, Dark Savant's position has been questionable since his opening, and Team C's chances didn't really start to fall apart until Krill started munching on their islands. (I don't know if their early success in that war was an ill-conceived attempt to gain ground at Krill's expense or a pre-emptive attack when they realized he was going to come after them.) At this point, their position is kind of similar to ours, and honestly maybe better if dtay remains passive (or comes after us before them!) and the Musket UU War gives them an opening. Since at this point I don't think dtay's coming for them with cannons right away, they may do pretty well for a while, but you never can tell....
7. Dark Savant: He played a really interesting game with a couple of big gambits that kind of worked out without actually putting him in a very good position. His big mistake was defending his islands even more casually than we did in our west, and so allowing multiple neighbors - including us - to snipe random cities from him in spite of Agg and Circumnavigation. He's done a great job of defending against Gav in their current war, even taking back a major city, but especially with our Frigates piling on and preventing his remaining islands from reinforcing his mainland, I don't see him lasting long unless dtay or Krill sees a weakness on another front and Gav has to retreat. Dark Savant was always in a tough position between Gav and the early strength of Team C, and I'd be interested in seeing what he's learned from this experience and how he'll do in the next game he plays here at RB!
Okay, lots of food for thought. As planned we swapped to Theocracy/Bureaucracy this turn. It improved our gold saving rate with about 50 gpt and our beaker output with roughly the same. Research was set to.. Aesthetics. I seriously considered going for Paper instead en route to Printing Press but we really should get our Epics done soon. We`ve delayed them for a very long time.
So, let`s get down to business! Our expeditionary force near Tulearean Forest grew this turn so we`ll probably attack next turn. We have 3 Knights and 2 Catapults in reserve if needed. All our 6 Frigates on the eastern sea are able to bombard the defenses next turn. If the attack goes well, we might consider heading straight for Mist! Dark Savant didn`t complete a unit in TF this turn so he still has an Oromo (highly promoted), 2 Longbows, an X-bow and a Pike (upgraded from a Spear). Looking good!
Most of our cities are building units like crazy. Strangely, we won`t add much power next turn but on t178 we should be getting a lot of units. Borte is now making more gold than Muqa at full tax! Having 3 super cities (Nambui as well) is good.
Mandukhai is making a Settler for the island right W of the city. It can borrow the seafood for a few turns to get up to speed.
Joey`s Chariot is now SW of Muqa, scouting our forces there. Oh well, we`re keeping an eye on him also.. Our Sentry Chariot went to the Dye tile near dtay and pillaged the tile. Next turn it`ll get rid of the road. Hopefully dtay will get the message...
Graphs and demos (and answering a few questions from last turn): We`re down to 3rd in soldiers but we`re pretty much militarized atm so hopefully the big Empires will look elsewhere for more land.
The reason why our units next to TF couldn`t see the tile 2E of the Deer was that the coast tile in between is actually a coast forest tile! Now our Frigate is giving us vision on the tile. No surprises were spotted. We didn`t move all the units to the deer last turn but now our forces look pretty unstoppable. The eastern Frigate near Mist was protecting a stray Caravel (DS had a Galleon in range of it).
Also, I must say that I mostly agree with your t175 power rankings. We`re in 5th place, but far away from Krill (and being competitive) imo. The one thing I disagree about is the leader of PB 37. I still think Joey is in the driving seat here. I see dtay as the most dangerous challenger with Gavagai having a decent chance of winning and Krill a somewhat lower chance of winning.
