[PB59] Lazteuq worries for the endangered lurker species

[Lazteuq]

So Civac and Miguelito declared on Charriu but didn't do anything. Miguelito looked like he would threaten the central incense island, but didn't, instead he offered me war with Mjmd for incense. I guess he wants me to do all the heavy lifting?
Now Charriu is attacking Mjmd's astroland cities. I could take them first, but chose not to. In the long term, I'll probably lose those cities anyway, and I don't want to provoke Charriu. We just agreed to fish4fish a couple turns ago (nice timing, Charriu.) I have a bigger target in mind.

War with DZ begins! I could have waited another turn to get more galleons in position, but I think it'll be fine. Watch me eat my words as he shows up with 10 privateers and 10 galleons and stalls me completely...
I also really should have landed some spies in his land first. Oops.
Not much has happened so far, I just sank a few boats and moved ships into position. I might be able to sneakily take his capitol in 2 turns by moving through Albatwitch.
(I would include a annotated screenshot but I'm having technical difficulties)
DZ did finally get Chemistry, but I'm not super concerned. He won't be able to whip many frigates because he has so little pop to whip. Tarkeel has the advantage in the long term against him for sure.
Superdeath is completely crumpled by Amica but still besieging one of Tarkeel's cities. I have no idea what's going on there, but I'll bet it involves spite. Soon Superdeath's army will be destroyed somehow and Tarkeel should be more free to attack DZ.

One of the lessons I learned from attacking GKC was that taking cities can sometimes make the invader more vulnerable and the defender more secure. I don't plan to capture all of DZ's islands right away. I'm going to be more disciplined with how I approach this invasion, instead of just grabbing every city I can, as soon as I can. For example, I could have amphibious attacked Albatwitch and Shenyang this turn, but that would have been costly of units without much point.

Soon I'll want to just ferry units as fast as possible to make sure I don't get collateralled to hell on the mainland. So I need a beachead that's pretty close to my own shore, otherwise units waste a lot of time sitting on galleons. I have no clue what units DZ has on this side of the continent. There might be a catapult+knight deathstack lurking.

Here's a quick picture at least:

[Lazteuq]

Wow, Amica is already shredding Tarkeel now. He has Infantry and MGs, so I expected him to be a pricklier cactus. I guess Marines and Tanks don't care.

DZ(Superdeath now) is probably next. Then me? That war machine isn't likely to stop, unless Amica tries for Space.

What can I even do???


I want to achieve something more before this game ends.

I certainly can't attack Charriu or Miguelito any time soon.

I could attack Mjmd but I want to let him live, and that would be really boring and easy anyway.

I could be peaceful, but that's also boring, since I don't have any development goals.
Doing anything outside my home continent is very questionable since I won't have any sea power.

Now that it's Superdeath playing China, I doubt he'll take peace. He knows that challenging Amica with China's level of tech is hopeless. So he and I might as well just keep fighting!



I kinda want Amica to win this game. But that probably involves me being a target. Eh, whatever, I'm already a target of Miguelito anyway.

Picadilly got Internet, and I'm expecting Apollo Programs to start dropping any moment now. This game might only last a couple more months. I doubt we'll hit 1 year. 
Isn't it kind of weird that you can have Tanks without Artillery?

DZ managed to assemble 9 frigates and 11 privateers up north. That's more than I expected. I'll have to consolidate my own ships to counter it. Thankfully I'm not seeing many galleons, so a counter-invasion isn't likely. Not sure how I'll proceed, but I think it involves taking the capitol. I do have to be careful, if I screw up, Superdeath definitely will be able to push me back.
On one hand, I don't have to hurry, time is on my side since I have the production advantage and I'll get Assembly Line soon. On the other hand, time isn't going to help either of us, because we're both just constantly falling farther behind the top players.

[Lazteuq]

I'm on an collision course with Amica. At this rate, Tarkeel's going to be dead in about 3 more turns. Amica is probably already planning how to attack DZ/Superdeath's China. Considering how Tarkeel's compact Industrial empire is collapsing at >3 cities per turn, barely-Renaissance China will collapse much faster, maybe 6cities/turn? That means I might be bordering Amica in as little as 10 turns. I won't even be able to get any captured mainland cities out of anarchy by then! So basically I see no profit in fighting China anymore.
I offered just a plain peace treaty, followed by a treaty+war with Amica, followed by another plain treaty. That should be pretty clear. I also landed just a few units on the mainland to show that I'm serious.

I had landed a spy next to Beijing and it just got found immediately after landing. That's what I get for trusting RNG and only bringing one spy(that only costs 40 hammers!). Now I'm even more vulnerable to a hidden stack if the war continues.

I feel paralyzed because it's like there's nothing to work towards anymore.
As I've said before, I'd like to fight Charriu but I think I stand no chance against his Destroyers and Machine Guns.
It would be fun repel an invasion with AGG cannons and infantry, but I think anyone who wants to invade me will do it with such overwhelming force that I can't hope to stop them. It's only logical.

Also Charriu moved his cavalry stack more than 6 tiles from our border. I returned the gesture by moving my own stacks away from the border. I hope he notices.

[Lazteuq]

DZ/SD took the peace treaty, but now there's a problem: I have units trapped within their borders in the city of Baoding. So I offered OB. If they don't accept plain OB I'll sweeten the deal with 200 gold or so.
I got about 10 completely blank diplo offers from them, no idea what those were. Maybe they were sent while we were still at war?
Now we hurry up and wait.

[Lazteuq]

DZ/SD were one step ahead of me and offered 300 gold plus a peace treaty. I took it.
Now I'm not sure where best to position units. Amica will be able to instantly shred any sentry net I put up. So the big question is... do I try to stuff enough Infantry in coastal cities to stop the initial amphibious attack, OR do I leave the coast scarcely defended but position big stacks 3 tiles inland to counterattack with collateral?
With only Rifles, the choice was obvious. Now I'm not sure.

I'm a bit worried about Commando units, I was thinking about cutting roads in my territory to limit them. Especially Commando Tanks are scary, but I haven't seen any in Amica's conquests so far. Miguelito might also be producing Commandos, but I'm not seeing them either. Both of them are probably smart enough to not do the promotion until absolutely necessary.

Charriu suggested war with Amica in 10 turns. I responded with a defensive pact offer. He didn't take it. Not sure what to think. Maybe Charriu wants me to cut deals with Amica? I'm kinda afraid to do that.
Also I realized that Charriu moved back his 2mover stack because he has railroads all the way to the border. That wasn't actually a peaceful gesture. So I moved my stacks a bit closer to the border.
Charriu took a def.pact with Miguelito. Miguelito has Mechanized Infantry now.

Here's a comparison of my and Charriu's GNP throughout the game:

You can really see my economic mismanagement over the course of history.

[Ginger]

T113 ...
Serfdom economy is working OK, but not great. These large cities are all out of useful tiles to work, so I'm running way too many coast tiles. Machinery should be where it really gets good though, and I can start reaping the reward of saving all these forests (It probably wasn't worth it).

So in and effort to help answer your question I read through your past posts and this struck me. Following this post, further down the same page was a screenshot of on your empire and many many farms. If the cities are growing onto non-Fin or non-Colossus Coast, it means that you over-farmed and underbuilt cottages. Especially when the map is as lush as it is. The comparison between serfdom farms and Cottages gets much less rosy when you consider the delay in the growth of cottage. Each cottage is always actually a 4 commerce tile not just 1/2/3. Because by not working it, you are delaying the ability to work it after maturity.

[Lazteuq]

It's certainly true that I underbuilt cottages. I was playing shortsightedly and more interested in less stable sources of research.
I see what you mean about the delayed growth, but I didn't replace any farms with cottages. I replaced them with Watermills. I think that was a reasonable idea, but I got Machinery too late to make it work.
My tile improvement choices also lead me to build cities which weren't very specialized. The core has a lot of decent production and decent commerce, but nothing stands out.
Those excessive farms are a symptom/cause of running large cities far too early. I should have done more 5-turn Slavery cycles to more efficiently convert pop to hammers. If I'd done that, I'd probably would have more economic infrastructure (Courthouses, Banks, Markets?).

Amica is potentially 2 turns from attacking my mainland. I'm going to completely give up on defending all islands. The only chances I have of repulsing an invasion are on the mainland by counterattacking with collateral. Of course Machine Guns counter idea that pretty hard.
I really wish I could pillage my own roads to reduce the Commando attack paths, but I can't.
I desperately need Railroad. If anyone attacks before I get Railroad, I'll probably have to relinquish all of GKC land because it's too hard to defend both sectors.

This turn I whipped a bunch of Factories. This may turn out to be a bad idea...That was a lot of pop that I could have whipped into Infantry and Cannons instead.

I now have two Great Scientists that I don't know how to use. Scientific Method can be bulbed, but it's useless alone. I don't have any important places to put academies. So I'll just sit on them.

I'm guessing if Amica attacks me, Miguelito will join in. That will nullify the Mig-Charriu defensive pact, but I don't think Miguelito cares. Then Charriu might invade, but I doubt it, he probably won't want to directly confront Amica on foreign ground.

[Tarkeel]

I'm a bit worried about Commando units, I was thinking about cutting roads in my territory to limit them. Especially Commando Tanks are scary, but I haven't seen any in Amica's conquests so far.  Miguelito might also be producing Commandos, but I'm not seeing them either. Both of them are probably smart enough to not do the promotion until absolutely necessary.

You can't pillage roads in your own territory.

[Lazteuq]

Invasion from Amica is imminent! I'm looking at at least 16 transports. Maybe they're not all full, but I think they are considering how many excess units he has in DZ-land still.
He didn't declare war, but might as well have. When you park transports here...

the message is pretty obvious. (I did some more whipping+drafting even after this picture was taken. The citizens are suffering big time)

I'd been spending EP heavily on Amica, but I won't stand any real chance of blocking city vision.
I got both Factories and Coal Plants done in quite a few cities, but Amica was a bit too fast. Now it's panic time.
I've been saving gold instead of continuing on Railroad, which has turned out to be a good choice, since now I can spend it on unit upgrades. I don't think I'll make the push to Railroad, it's still around 3000 gold away. That's nearly 30 Rifle->Infantry upgrades.

I have two GGs saved up, will use them to make sure all these drafted infantry have at least 1 promotion.

As I said before, holding islands is hopeless, I've been building Spies on them so that I don't completely lose vision of what Amica is sending.

As soon as I lose the islands between me and DZ, there will be bombers over my homeland. Should I split into lots of mini-stacks to mitigate the bomber collateral? I think so.
I'm trying to use ironclads to block 1-tile straits into my capitol, but it's probably hopeless.
My only hope of success is to concentrate on the mainland and hope Amica makes a mistake, leaving a stack vulnerable to counterattack. I can't really hide units though, because bombers and fighters will recon my territory. Oh, if only I had railroads...

I declared war and managed to at least pillage a few things. Hopefully me being the one declaring has some psychological impact on people.

Will Charriu attack? Will Miguelito attack? Probably. If they both attack, I'll collapse in 5 turns or less. If neither attacks, I might be able to stall better.

I suppose this means Amica isn't trying to contest the space race. It's so late in the game that conquering me won't be profitable soon enough to matter. So this is just a fun war I guess. That's fine by me.
Unless of course Picadilly and Miguelito both lose their capitols after launching spaceships, then the game might be delayed long enough for Amica to actually win. I assume they'll be clever and move capitols inland so they're harder to snipe.

[Ginger()]

What are your Gov/Eco/Reli civics atm?