[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[williams482]

If Ginger gives us an opening for an alpha strike of that magnitude, potentially capturing/razing half a dozen core cities, then we absolutely must take it. That's a war-winning opening turn provided we can follow it up with finding and crushing their main stack, it times well with the mjmd conflict to have Ginger out of position and mjmd disinclined to intervene, and defeating Ginger is one of your few avenues towards actually winning the game: you'll have a comically large empire and two land neighbors on a single border, way behind in tech but with a ton of production and the strategic depth to absorb a lot of nasty late-game gadgets while you chase down whatever the next big military breakpoint is.

It also requires little thought put into weighing the "try to win vs make Ginger lose" decision.

I don't think the research shenanigans you describe would qualify as "clock games" to any egregious degree unless you actually held up the turn to make it happen. It's neither a military maneuver nor a settling race, and the attempt at deception can be trivially circumvented by simply looking at the foreign advisor screen. But I do think the attempt makes sense; why not try to slip Military Science in under the radar? I don't think it matters that much if you are one turn away from finishing another tech on the turn you switch (although it could help). I'd be looking to slip that through on some future turn where Ginger seemed to have engaged in combat with mjmd, hoping to capitalize on focus being elsewhere, and just try to avoid having the tech queued up while Ginger is playing a turn.

[ljubljana]

yeah. i pretty much agree, but i think both of those two "if" statements (well, one "if" statement and one "provided" statement ) are pretty big ones.... tbh i think it's really unlikely ginger lets us get away with this plan - all they really have to do is either stack infantry in ankyra/herring when they see us get rails, or a few in their internal cities when they see us go for milsci. they certainly have the units to spare to do do. we even have to give them a turn of warning at ankyra since we can't move up a worker and road the hill on the same turn (i'd have to pretend to build the windmill there for a few turns and hope they buy it, which, on the one hand could work, but on the other hand is the exact same device we used to hide combat workers from them last time..... at this exact city ) so i think we should be on the lookout, and not do anything that would PRECLUDE seizing such an opportunity, but i'm also not holding my breath...

even if successful, there are some geostrategic reasons to be hesitant as well..... if i'm mjmd and i see an attack like that go off and ruin our main rival's ability to compete with us, i first throw a party in my thread and then annihilate superdeath. mjmd and ginger are running neck and neck in tech right now, so if we are attacking ginger in 12 turns to deny them tanks, well.... then india will be the only one who DOES have tanks, and we'd need superdeath to stand alone against that reality for longer than a (badly-weakened but still capable of fielding infantry and cannons on rails with defender's advantage) ginger holds up against us, or our land advantage vs mjmd would not really materialize. i am also not too confident we could actually conquer the rest of ginger after razing 6 core cities with commandos, infantry and cannons should be able to defend against rifles and cavs, um, pretty much indefinitely without breaking a sweat if they have comparable MFG, and they definitely will have that even with 6 fewer cities if we don't go to factories first

idk, i'll think about it but i'm not sure it's worth committing to stuff like delaying the levee (and library/market) in aksum. we'll see. i think it's more likely that we need to recover our gnp and mfg disadvantage before we can think seriously about offensive war (other than maybe vs naufragar, but that probably just gets us dogpiled unless the others are occupied). i've been underrporting this out of shame LOL but even with 7 turns of bio-fueled growth and spamming forges everywhere, our mfg is still only approaching.....HALF of what the leaders have. now that's still better than nauf and sd, and we can make up some of the difference by drafting off our food advantage, but being this slow to factories is BAD, folks, and it's going to get worse before it gets better too since i think ginger can kill us with tanks unless our next two researches are steel -> railroad (expensive and off the AL path). at that rate, by the time we have factories up and rolling the great powers will have nukes, which apparently come online only 3 techs after tanks....

now in theory we could still win if the others get to nukes, by watching and waiting while they nuke each other into the ground, and i do think we have one major advantage in an ultra-lategame situation in our commando factory that i do not believe the others have access to yet (mjmd certainly doesn't, i haven't been tracking ginger's GG usage closely (oops) but they probably don't either since they haven't warred much and we personally have killed 2 of their GGs that were used on units). if we don't get some magical window to pounce on and kill ginger despite them being an era ahead in tech and having twice our MFG, that's pretty much the other way for us to play this - wait for the ULTRA-ultra-lategame and hope for either an apocalyptic 1v1 between the leaders or an anti-india dogpile that we can either benefit from through direct participation or use to knife naufragar or ginger. unfortunately with mjmd having the two strongest corps on this map, the latter is looking more likely than the former, and i'm no longer so sure that having 10 more cities than them will translate to an advantage in yields given infinite time.

i um.... i guess we have to actually have infrastructure for a land advantage to turn into an advantage in categories that matter perhaps i drafted too aggressively in the immediate post-rifling period, or have spent too many turns building wealth instead of real infra.... or maybe i should have disbanded 40 impis a long time ago (although they are serving a seemingly-important role now to block GG snipes from ginger with commandos, and will be great pillagers in a future war). one thing i am starting to regret a bit is bulbing scimeth, which saved us 3 turns on bio but will cost us... a LOT of time on the upcoming golden age, which we need to swap into environmentalism. we are probably 25 turns away from making that swap now, and we could be.... 8 turns away if we had an extra great scientist sitting around at least the delayed GA timing lines up with the delayed AL timing to allow us to funnel the hammers into factory building

edit: i am also getting more and more afraid that the game will end soon due to lack of motivation from ginger, who has missed..... a LOT of these last few turns, with someone extending the timer on their behalf and now civac stepping up to play the last two i think we still have chances but they require the front-runners to stay relatively balanced and weaken each other while we catch up, and if ginger feels that the game is lost and wants to force concessions, they obviously will be able to do so. not that i consider conceding to mjmd while finishing third overall to be a bad outcome for us given the circumstances (silver medal!) but hopefully we'll get to see this to a conclusion as i think it's still pretty far from decided. if nothing else, i think endgame positions once nukes are unlocked and the main players reach sufficient size tend towards being theoretically drawish overall and we should stand a pretty good chance at sneaking into a share of that draw, a la the last RB game that went nuclear (was that PB66?).

plus it would be fun to play with nukes, even if we are mostly on the receiving end of them.... and yeah, it is VERY funny that, of my 4 games at RB (3 civ6 and now 1 civ4), 2 have ended before turn 100 and the other 2 have gone late-industrial at least

[williams482]

I think the argument for the "wait and see" approach is pretty strong as well. If we're the strongest civ that doesn't get into an all out modern era war, then we do stand a pretty good chance of coming out on top, and there's certainly a possibility that we are both prickly enough to be a questionable target for anyone looking to expand, and yet weak enough economically that nobody really considers us dangerous enough to swat down for the sake of it.

The problem with that approach is that it essentially requires that Ginger continue attacking mjmd and/or others who they can only reach through us or via the sea. Which might happen! But that's betting a lot on the choices of a player who hasn't exactly been friendly towards us this game.

If I were running this game, I probably would favor the long plan just because I'd rather keep building stuff and hope to essentially fall into a position of strength than to burn hours every day in an extremely stressful war. When the odds of success for either plan are murky enough to be indistinguishable, "which approach will be more fun" seems like the really important thing to prioritize.

[ljubljana]

heh. well, all else being equal i prefer WAR (especially WAR at our betrayer's expense) but i am not sure all else is equal.... if we can't kill ginger's stack unless they invade us (which i expect ginger is too competent to try if we can indeed kill it) and can only take cities with commandos (could happen once, but requires surprise value) i'm just not sure i see how the short-term attack plan is going to benefit us.... maybe it benefits us to the tune of 5 or so cities we take in the initial commando wave, if we can hold them (and there might be a way to do so with enough pillaging). but then we have a very pissed off ginger committed to our destruction, and mjmd has a free hand..... it does badly damage the winning chances of our main rival, but while it makes sense for mjmd to try things like an overseas coast-burning for that reason at this point, i am not so sure it does for us. not to mention at THAT point ginger will definitely be conceded, which would make US the last holdout and thus a potentially good recipient of a few judiciously-chosen indian nukes

i definitely don't want to rely on ginger's behavior being favorable to us - indeed, i'm sure given our enmity they will go out of their way to hurt us given comparable options. but, and i think this is part of why ginger has been so disengaged.... what ARE their options? they could try a tank push against us, but india can then either ruin ginger's stack by defending us using our rails + open borders, or trust us to die less quickly than superdeath and attack west. if i'm ginger, i don't like the look of either of those outcomes, especially not the one where i have to fight zulu and india in a 2v1 in enemy territory. so i'd need SD to help, but SD is so far behind technologically and militarily that i think mjmd can hold them off with one hand behind their back and help zulu smash the ottoman invasion at the same time....

ok, so then there's option number 2: naval buildup with the aim of razing the indian coast, and using commandos to burn mjmd's holy city + double corporate HQ. i think this could work - ginger has a much longer coastline than india and so should have a way higher MFG towards specifically naval units. but if successful, it's much less clear that this actually wins them the game than a zulu conquest. they'd probably need to pull this off to remove mjmd as a threat to win, then immediately turn around and nuke and kill the recovering zulu.... which could happen but there are a lot of ifs in that situation.

and i see an option number 3 also, which i think they already tried: accept that india has pulled ahead and is now a clear leader instead of in a 1A/1B-type situation and organize a global coalition, then stab zulu at the moment india seems likely to collapse. this could work but they need our cooperation, and signs should suggest to them that it will not be forthcoming above the level of nonintervention.... if india does invade superdeath perhaps my calculus on that changes, but as of now we require india in our corner to deter an ottoman tank push...

tbh, there is enough parity among the leaders at this point that i'm not really sure what ginger's supposed to be doing here (and would appreciate your take as well, should you be so inclined ) or mjmd, for that matter, since invading superdeath probably gets them dogpiled and i don't think they can get lasting naval superiority over ginger. it makes sense to me that the world has been locked in stalemate ever since the demise of egypt..... i feel like both leaders are waiting for the other to kick things off and make a mistake that lines up a coalition against them, and neither is foolish enough to do so. but if we expect that now, well, where, and in what form, does that dynamic end? in a massive nuclear first strike 60 turns from now with enough ICBMs to burn down every foreign production center in the whole world?

[ljubljana]

anyways 246, which was also rolled by civac to make that three turns in a row....



first thing to notice is that ginger, dreadfully, shaved 2t off their electricity time and has 1100 gold in the bank, when i thought they were researching at breakeven  um..... uh oh!!

so about that "needing to keep india in our corner"



babe's building RAILS for us again  <3333 if they do this with sufficient dedication i will JUST maybe contemplate skipping railroad research (or delaying it anyways)



i'm doing something that might be silly and continuing to start non-unit builds despite the dawning gingerian terror..... in my defense a) 6 gold from a courthouse is really good ROI still and b) if i don't do these now, when am i going to get a chance to.... oh and c) of these cities, adulis at least is out of range for cannons to get efficiently to the front anyways. and then tomokaze is getting a market because it, like tamawashi and kotozakura further east, has no good specialist to work while we wait for 2 specialists to draft off (and the happy might be relevant for drafting as well). i'm thinking about starting markets in those eastern cities as well but they're so close to the front that i'm scared to commit to making non-units for 4 turns there lol



we have a similar dilemma in former sumeria too, btw.... we are finally coming off lengthy infra builds but these cities still lack really basic stuff like 5 gold courthouses and lighthouses..... but nonetheless, despite being first in power still by a fair margin, i feel a mighty need to spam units here instead..... i guess what i'll probably do is make ONE more round of infra projects in the south coast (probably the lighthouses) then make cats to in-queue upgrade to cannon (or on second thought, trebs would also work for that and get us closer to the 100 hammer cost of a cannon, right?)



the clads!!!! (navigation 2 clads :O)

upon reflection on mjmd's rail-building, going to try some very suspect diplo with another friend of ours who could in theory build rails through our territory:



sent the same thing to mjmd as well with the "war with civac" on our side replaced by a cow, to avoid committing to anything concrete and to, hopefully, convey my thankfulness for the rails they have already built for us, along with our request for more pls



well, i am not thrilled about how far we still are behind the leaders in mfg, but i CAN be proud of how far the top end of our production has come relative to not all that long ago



note the last few holes in farmworld about to finally be filled in at long last  and as for the significant number of bare hills we are still working on windmilling... yeah, i will guiltily confess that the +50% worker speed constituted a not-insignificant fraction of my rationale for doing steam power first lolllll

[ljubljana]

mjmd's response to my cryptic diplo:





ok, they thought i was asking for coal.... which perhaps i should have been (and should have gone straight for rail tech, and not waited on steam power to reveal coal for the rails)..... but they are still on our side and down to help us defend this part of the front so that's good! i have to admit i was tempted to accept the first offer to lock them into a formal defpact but that's illegal per game rules even if it weren't absurd from a strategic standpoint lol. and they did at least finish the one rail segment i saw them working on last turn (and hopefully will slowly make more like it over the next few turns while ginger gets tanks)

[ljubljana]

247



well, much love and all that but.... also no  i sent back cow/cow just to not be an asshole



managed to start 10 of our 17 levee cities turn-of, mostly with overflow. swapped all the relevant cities off their merchant specialists or whatever and onto engineers in service of getting these online and paying back asap



sigh. mfg is ticking up relative to ginger, who i think is close to topped out on factory cities at this point, but mjmd is surging ahead on the back of mining inc. well, better to become competitive with the person we need to eventually conquer, i guess....? just.... cmon, just don't run away with this fast enough to become a Runaway and thereby force us to switch sides



i cannot WAIT to free this city from eternal GP generation.... and yeah, pretty good ROI from moai statues here, working one ocean tile...... (though the long, long trickle of prophet points helped a ton)



i have to admit that this is not a city i expected to ever become competent



and here is the levee candidate whose level of shit-togetherness i am most proud of (ignore the only +4 food surplus, the city to the east is out of tiles and so is borrowing the grass farm until its lighthouse is online)

so where are the coals? surely with this gigantic land area we have to have a ton, right? well.....



believe it or not, that's it..... although



we should eventually gain control over this one as well....



is a forever-size-3 filler worth it in this area, for strategic reasons (access to ginger oil) and 12 hammers per turn with a forge and free engineer? maaaaybe.... if we are already at war with ginger and don't need to fear pissing them off lol. now if i were GINGER i would probably put a filler here to secure my own oil access, but they haven't so far so hopefully they are as scared of us long-term as we are of them (not likely)



mjmd and ginger show up with electricity on i think literally the same turn  so when i say neck and neck research, i mean it



been a while since i updated yall on naufragar's gigantic army of  obsolete stuff.... but yeah, that would be able to stop a significant-sized tank stack if it got to attack in with the cannons. and our army is allegedly 1.7 times the size of this, albeit not even close to all in one place

[RefSteel]

(and should have gone straight for rail tech, and not waited on steam power to reveal coal for the rails)

Don't worry, you didn't miss a trick there: Yes, you can trade for Coal with Mining, but you can't actually research Railroad until you have Steam Power and Steel.

[ljubljana]

with us apparently on track to live to see steel tech, we have to start thinking seriously about ironworks..... as far as i can tell, all our options are variously deranged, as usual:

- aksum is out because it has HE/WP already, and even if it weren't, it would be a waste of IW since it can't one-turn military units any harder than it is already doing
- second-highest hammer city is magnus in former greenline, but i think this is out because it's not a levee city and has way too many mountains to maintain its position long-term
- third-highest is the capital which has a phenomenal levee..... but i think it's out too because it has too many cottages (5), and is also the closest we are going to get to a good option for oxford + wall street
- most of our remaining high hammer cities are places like daieisho and meisei, which are strong now but are about to slam into the food cap.... and most of our remaining high FOOD cities are like greenline's capital, with way too many towns to make a good IW city

so we want a city that can work 20 actual, real tiles, has a strong levee, is not overcottaged, and is not hard-committed to any other national wonders. so which city is that? spoilers: there isn't one.... the capital is the best but it has 5 towns and there really is no good backup for the commerce doublers, kirishima is too exposed and would take way too long to build them. and the other options are possibly even derangeder:

- abi! i have been memeing about this all game and it has 4 towns but i mean.... it can work all 20 tiles, and it has a 12-hammer levee..... aaaaand the national epic LMAO. can you imagine a more ridiculous anti-synergy than running 6 specialists in our ironworks city? well.... with a factory and ironworks they can at least be 6 engineers, which will be worth 6 hammers each after all the hammer multipliers.... then we can generate a great engineer pretty much on command, if there is anything left worth rushing with one.... maybe the internet? but i'm unsure of if this is even eligible for GE use since it is technically a "project" (edit: wb-ed this and the answer is NO). but the real point would be that it gives us a way to fulfill the otherwise very difficult task of generating a 4th GP for a modern era golden age that does not conflict with any of the other three. this could be the play but i'd have to check and see if maxed-out abi with IW can actually 1-turn every unit in the game still

- the other option is chichen itza builder atamifuji which is just so, so funny to me. but i mean, it has an 11-hammer levee, and while ivory is a weak resource compared to abi's pigs, being able to work all its tiles is more important. except....the only problem is that it can't actually do that, as 2 of its farms are on permanent loan to food-starved ichiyamamoto, which actually lacks the food to work all the hill tiles in the area even after stealing every farm in range.....

unsure of whether an optimal IW site is more or less important to our long-term success than an optimal oxford/wall street site. i'm inclined to say less given how far behind we are of course, but if this thing comes down to a space race the IW city will be the one slamming out the parts. of course, if THAT's how this goes, at that point we can just ignore the national epic and pave over all of abi's towns and it will come out on top.... um, except for the fact that the actual production of the last spaceship part must take place via overflow chain, and that will require having an unoccupied national wonder slot available so we can overflow 600 hammers into the last part via battlefield medicine or something..... unless we use a 1500-hammer nerfed ICBM, i guess?

[ljubljana]

(and should have gone straight for rail tech, and not waited on steam power to reveal coal for the rails)

Don't worry, you didn't miss a trick there:  Yes, you can trade for Coal with Mining, but you can't actually research Railroad until you have Steam Power and Steel.

omg yeahhhh i'm really good at reading, as yall can tell from the time i tried to use vassalage to draft 2-promo tokumuskets......

248



8 turn industrialism while making 1000 gold per turn..... well, shit. i mean, smells like mass-built wealth so that's something but fuuuuuuck this does not thrill me in my miserable lil heart

so are we supposed to match that to get to rails or continue to pump infra and now the other thing i'm pumping, which is cannon prebuilds? semi-rhetorical as i am throwing every city on units when their current project finishes, but some of those are on the lengthy side.... and i also could reinstitute the draft, which i have been lazy about lately so as not to wreck our recovery on the mfg graph