Turn Tracking Thread

[Sullla]

Turn 164 - 1040AD

An uninteresting turn for the most part. Domestic city management takes up the lion's share of our attention.



Our Welcome Wagon scout seems to have reached the end of his journeys. Apolyton won't Open Borders with us anymore, and there's nothing else to do on this miserable little spit of land. I plan to delete the unit to save on support costs. Speak now if you can see any alternative here, I don't.



I'm planning to order the mace to attack the barb city at the stated 88% odds. Winning would grant 2XP and a free promotion to City Raider, allowing us to attack again the following turn. I held off only in case the team had some sort of objection. Keep in mind two things here: one, there are no barbs on the southern island to threaten Jack Frost, and two, CFC cannot see our mace. Yes, the mace is actually not in their vision, so no worries about that. I think we should attack and remove this blight from the map.



Three ex-German cities came out of resistance this turn. It seemed appropriate to rename Warendorf "The X Factor" (Civ3 Epic) given all of the turmoil surrounding it. Willhelmshaven becomes "The Middle East" (also Civ3 Epic) because it's in the east, and it's in the middle of the three cities we captured from the Germans up here. Truly inspiring name choice, I know. The eastern tundra city came out of resistance as well, and I named it "Soyuz" because, uh, it's in the tundra and that goes with the Soviet theme? Not all the names are great fits!

The last German city will come out of resistance next turn, the western tundra city up there in the north. These cities have been adding on to our maintenance costs as they come out of resistance, but the good news is that we're sitting atop the conqueror's plateau and per-city maintenance is a flat 7 gold/turn everywhere now. New cities no longer add to the cost of older cities. Combined with the lush cottages of some of these new cities, and the Great Lighthouse trade routes from the coastal cities, we're in decent shape for the moment. Decent, not great. Break-even science rate is almost 30% now.

Militarily, most of our big stack up here is resting on the tile east of The Middle East. The Great General Medic 3 chariot is inside the city itself. Happily, every single maceman here will be healed to full next turn, and ready to move out; they will have time to reach the front lines in the west before T170, albeit just barely. About half the catapults will be full health next turn, the rest will need a second turn of healing. Every two-mover will naturally be able to go anywhere needed in plenty of time.

Our unit supply costs for out-of-territory maintenance dropped to zero this turn for the first time since the German war started. Now to look at some cities. I've already drafted Starfall for a musket, we have 4 potential drafts remaining to use.



Forbidden Fruit seems like a natural location to draft. Regrows next turn, no current draft penalty, and we need the 5 turns available to walk over to the west. I think this is a no-brainer.



The Covenant is literally the exact same deal as Forbidden Fruit. Note that we will also likely be whipping the courthouse here soonish, as the cost has dropped from 4 pop down to 3 pop. But draft first to get the draft unhappiness clock ticking. That's three total drafts with Starfall included.



I would draft Cutting Edge as well. It also regrows immediately and we kind of need the transit turns to get over to the western area from here. Yes, there's still 4 turns of draft unhappiness from the previous war, but if this turns into a hot war, we're almost certainly double drafting this city again in 4-5 turns for another musket. We have the happiness overhead to do so. Why not?



French Riviera is the 5th and last city that I would draft this turn. Same analysis as Cutting Edge above.



Non-drafting city micro question: when do we whip the granary here in Splendid Isolation? Is it immediately, or half food box? One of you will let me know, thanks.

Overview:

We'll finish Banking tech this turn at 90% science. Amusingly, cities coming out of resistance just prevented us from running 100% science this turn (which costs ~640 gold) but cities coming out of resistance also increased our total commerce by enough that 90% science was enough to finish the tech. We'll be able to swap some of our oldest cities over to banks starting next turn; probably Adventure One, for sure Mansa's Muse, and likely Gourmet Menu and Tree Huggers (after finishing the market).



Demographics. All of the other teams appear to be running 100% science at the moment, making our GNP continue to look bad. Which I suppose it is, but consider this: Apolyton ran 0% science last turn and made 400 gold. When we run 0% science with 35 cities to their 20 cities, and everything in ex-German lands still sitting at size 1 or size 2, we make 250 gold. Growing those cities + Forbidden Palace + State Property (eventually) will pretty much be a win button.

Our advantage in Food and Land continues to be ridiculous, and will only become more so as cities regrow and pop borders. Soldier count rating is also pretty funny. We'll go over 1 million points after we draft this turn.

Some interesting techs from other teams this turn:

* CivFr finished Education. This was the first tech in 10 turns.

* CFC finished Chemistry, one turn after finishing Gunpowder tech. Keep two things in mind here: prior to Gunpowder last turn, they had not researched anything since Drama on T155. They obviously teched Gunpowder to 99% and then overflowed a huge sum into Chemistry. Number two, CFC is currently in a Golden Age, and therefore getting a huge boost to all their numbers.

* UniversCiv teched Feudalism (T162), then Engineering (T163), and then Guilds this turn (T164). I still don't think they have much chance to do anything in the larger picture of this game, but their tech level is roughly comparable to CivFr now, albeit with some gaping holes. Them picking up so many military techs in a short period suggests they think they might be attacked soon, which is probably good new for us. (Apolyton should be looking to attack them with rifles, not us, by far the strongest team on the map in military.)

That's all for now. Please advise with your thoughts on city management.

[Sullla]

Turn 165 - 1050AD

The vultures on the other teams circle as we try to break out of our diplomatic quagmire.



We attacked and won again with our maceman against the barb city in the deep south. The mace is up to 5XP, will promote next turn to CR2, and should be able to raze Ghuzz. The capture gold will be welcome, small or not.



Here are our units moving over from the former German cities. The main stack is in yellow, the other smaller stacks in white. The group behind the rest are catapults who needed a second turn to heal after being redlined in the final battle at Huron River. Until we hear something otherwise in diplomacy, we need to assume that we're going to be attacked in 5t in the west. These units are moving to meet that threat.

This is the massive western front we have to defend, and even this is underselling things because it doesn't include the Seven Tribes / Let It Snow area in the deep south. It's the distances that make this so difficult, not so much the units involved. (If CivPlayers/Apolyton could only hit one city, we'd be in far better shape.)

Most of the recent draftees have been heading to the tile two south of Ditchdigger, northwest of the horses. This is not my favorite tile to put one-movers on; I would prefer a tile east, if that wasn't a peak. However, we need these units to be able to cover Ditchdigger or Brick By Brick instantly, and so that's the tile we need to be on. Fortunately neither city can be hit by two-movers without giving us a turn to reinforce. Also, as strange as it may seem, CivPlayers does not have vision on that tile I mentioned before, nor do they get vision from one of our cities via espionage there. And if they would try to attack that tile, it can only be with two-movers across a river, where our muskets should clean up their knights easily.

Mano is much more difficult to defend, since it can be hit by two-movers instantly on the first turn of an attack. I'm going to put our old maces inside the city (they can just move inside on T170 itself) and that combined with city walls (eot 169) and castle (eot 171 if the city is still standing) should hold against any two-mover threat. CivPlayers doesn't have Gunpowder tech, which means a castle will basically stop them dead. We just need the warm bodies to stall for time, and we'll have that coming down from the German front.

There isn't much of a plan for The Gauntlet, since we can't hold the city against a rifle attack. I should have insisted that we settle on the iron resource itself, which we would have a decent chance to defend. I did not anticipate Apolyton getting to rifles so quickly (with the help of all that gifted gold from CivPlayers, naturally) or them going aggressive so quickly. Ideally, we stand off CivPlayers behind castles along the border, and hit Apolyton's forces somewhere in that desert as they move across flatground. Have to see what they do first.

Does anyone know if a spy can be caught if you move into enemy territory and move back out the same turn? Is that safe (?) We'll be able to do that to check some of the CivPlayers cities on the border starting in the next couple of turns. I intend to move in our two spies on T168, stand stationary on T169, and fire off a counterespionage mission right at the start of T170. We'd have to be phenomenally unlucky for both spies to get caught in those two turns. And while they're standing there, the spies will let us see inside Costalot and the border city down by Brick so we can position our own defensive units accordingly. Them having vision on our cities definitely doesn't make this easier.

City stuff:



Here's a compromise at Mansa. I swapped a grassland cottage for the gold resource, kept the specialists as normally configured. We're losing 2 food/turn with 20 food in the box, so we can run this for a while for the extra commerce and production towards the bank. If you don't like this setup, we can always change back. Please do not run Priest specialists here, they are pretty far inferior to the Merchants.



Ditchdigger is waiting until we get that stone back to insta-complete its walls with 25 production overflow. I put our newest population point into a Spy specialist, since it's worth 1 beaker and 5 EP (with Nationhood bonus) and that felt more useful than working the 1/2 workshop tile. We need to save some pop here for the castle whip, don't go using it up on too many drafts, at least not yet.



This city just had its second draft penalty wear off; we have 20t of draft unhappiness right now. We can draft it again, or whip the courthouse for 3 pop. I have not touched this city yet. We are probably going to draft this city twice more for the triple draft penalty before all is said and done.



When do we whip this city's granary? Now? Half food box? Someone will know the answer to this. We're at 5/24 food and 6/60 granary production.



This was the last turn that I sent units west. From here on, units will be collecting over in the CFC border region. I actually think we could hold off Apolyton/CivPlayers without much trouble. It's the presence of CFC that makes things really bleak. Where do we get units for another front? Well, this southern area for starters. All of these cities don't need to be particularly large in size. We'll likely draft all of them 2 or 3 times to scrounge up something for the CFC border. Along with units skimmed off the top of other cities and the constant abuse of our Globe Theatre city, I can probably get up to 25 muskets on the border by T175. But it will be only muskets, not much in the way of other units. We need to crush our opponents in the west (where the war starts first) and then turn and wheel back to deal with CFC in the east, fighting a holding action until that can take place. I have no idea if that will work. It depends on what CFC brings to the party. Thank goodness they are not drafting yet, although I'm sure that's coming soon.



Demos for the turn, pretty much the same as before. Apolyton picked up Aesthetics tech, UniversCiv grabbed Banking. That was all for this turn.

I drafted Starfall, Focal Point (instant regrow), and Brick By Brick this turn. Drafting Brick allowed the city to regrow in 5t, which means we can draft again on T170, that was the idea there. We have two more drafts to play around with this turn if we want.

The actual moving of the units is not that bad, to be honest, and with all that's going on this would be a poor time to hand off who's doing that. What I don't enjoy doing is all of the reporting stuff, which eats up an enormous amount of time and energy. (This post took an hour to write, for example.) What I will try to do is cut back on the writing side of the game and some of the other tedious stuff, which means no, we're not spending 5 minutes discussing every promotion on every unit like we were doing before. That stuff really does not matter, and it was doing a lot to kill my enjoyment of the game, so you'll have to trust my instincts on the small stuff. Anything major or important we will obviously discuss as a team.

One last thing: Rifling over Military Tradition right now by a country mile. We can draft rifles for essentially nothing, while cuirassiers cost 100 production each. That means this is not even close as an issue. We're also building military in every city that has any kind of production, so please no more of the "SWAP EVERY CITY TO UNITS" stuff. We're already doing that everywhere it matters. The only change I could make would be to change the capital from its bank to catapults, and that I don't mind doing if people want that.

[Ruff_Hi]

Turn 166 - 1060AD

The biggest thing that happened to Team RB this turn was that Sullla has reached the end of his 'fun' limit. He posted a few times about his current feelings for the game and requested to be relieved. After a few days of back and forth, the following shiny new structure emerged ...

Primary Turn-player/Pilot: NobleHelium
Primary Tactician/Co-Pilot: sunrise089
C&D: kjn
Diplo: scooter
PR @ CFC: Ceiliazul

Obviously, the major change is in the top two positions.

Now, here is a question for you ... when wiki reports on Sullla stepping down after 165 grueling turns, do you think that they will get in as much trouble as when they called the military take over of Egypt a coup d'etat?

The other question I have for you is ... do you think that our team has been infiltrated by one of the enemy? I think it is fair to say that this request to lengthen the turn timer to 7 weeks is a direct attack on Realms Beyond ... obviously, the team in question is just trying to stretch the turns so that there is more 'muscle car' time that will eventually cause us to self implode.

Ok, to get down to business of reporting this turn ...



Right - report over. You want more? You know that you might have to work for it?

1] Sunrise reports that CFC finally humbled themselves and agreed to trade us the marble. If only we had a use for it. He also reports that they have 771 gold that we could steal (I don't think that is really a sensible suggestion myself). Oh wait - he has written 'steel gold' on the pic, not 'steal gold'. Ok - Sunrise reports that CFC are saving gold to tech Steel (or they have enough gold now to let loose the research hounds).

There was also an AP stop the CFC/CivFr vote.

He also mentioned the 'Nationalism steal and counter-EP mission have already been mentioned above' but I cannot find any reference to them ... ergo - they didn't happen.

Edit: Ok, they did happen ... but I haven't seen comments about who did it. Of course, I should have checked the C&D thread more closely because kjn reported on the Nationalism steal (with a postulation that Civplayers are heading towards Military Tradition as well, but they will need Gunpowder to unlock the cuirassiers) and the counter EP mission.

Finally, Sunrise provides some interesting screenshots illustrating how easy it is for Apolyton to land drafted rifles quickly in old German lands.

2] Sunrise (again) reports on a frustrating stream run by Noble with the aim of getting his feet well and truly wet. Apparently, there was massive city build changes almost everywhere. It seems we are turning into that old smelly lady that has too many cats.

There were some city micro questions asked ... but I suck at micro so I won't even bother mentioning them here. If you are interested, you'll just have to follow the link above.

Given that I have read ahead before producing this turn report, I feel obliged to say that Sunrise, in the above post, started the 'pillage the roads' stampede.

3] A couple of minor (and odd) things to point out ...
- The marble trade took place on T166
- That trade will have no impact on any in-game mechanic to stop a DOW
- The next GP will pop around 183-ish
- Knights cannot flank cannons (contrary to the Civ4 wiki
- the Bard city (not a mis-type, copied from MWIN because I thought it was funny) is still alive and kicking

4] On the diplo front, we are now prostituting ourselves to CFC by offering them our next GP. I'll report on the results of that offer in my T167 summary.

5] Finally, Noble posted his T166 review stream ('Most of it is just me narrating stuff related to thought processes and whatnot')

I was going to post a few pics (ie the turn log) but Noble is currently in-game discussing possible T167 changes. Note that the pics in this post are actually from T167 ... as I mentioned above, the reporting duties were in a state of flux .

We have two spies in our territory ...



There isn't much that we can do about it. And before everyone starts bleating about getting a chariot down into CFC territory ... someone is turns in front of you ...


It is a C1, Shock chariot (not a sentry chariot). Why? Why isn't it our sentry chariot? Because we only have 1 of those and it is looking into Apolyton land (a much better use if you ask me).

Now - while I am talking sentry chariots ... why do we only have 1? I have been banging on about putting withdrawal on some chariots that had 90+% odds for ages so that we have the option of getting more sentry units. You might not be able to find any posts to that effect (I am sure that they are there) but I know for sure that I have been shouting at my screen about that.

We do have 3 knights that can get the Sentry promotion now. I am not suggesting we do that ... just something to think about. Just in case this war that is coming doesn't come.

We have a boat heading towards some crabs. Crabs that will not be in our territory for a few turns.



By my reckoning, that boat can make the yellow dot before having to turn around and net the crabs.

Finally - I mentioned in the diplo thread that if war on T170 doesn't come to us ... maybe we should take it to them.

Here are the CivPlayer cities that we could hit on the first turn of any war (North on the left, South on the right) ...



They can be hit from the red dots. The center (or centre if you prefer) two cities have 2-3 pikes in them so I don't see those as being nice targets.

BTW - that stupid CFC city has walls. Did anyone else mention that?

[Ruff_Hi]

Turn 167 - 1070AD

Update: The Bard city is gone. It was taken down last turn, contry to the slack-ass T166 report.

Right - with that out of the way, what happened in T167? Not much ... except for the results of the AP vote ...



Kjn spent some time reviewing these results and determined that the AP victory is unlikely to be an issue. CivFr couldn't talk their way out of a wet paper bag and CivPlayers are blocked by CivFr. I am unsure how much time Kjn spent reviewing this ... if only Azoth had been quicker off the mark with his observation that WPC aren't included in the voting block yet and so the AP Victory is (further?) blocked.

CFC is teching (burning about 300gpt) and supporting Sunrise's estimate of 2t to go (they have 600g in the bank). Smart work by Sunrise by dividing 600 by 300 and getting 2. Maybe it is right, maybe not. They might find themselves 1 turn of break-even research outstanding ... or 2 turns? We can only hope.

Based on that info, Sunrise thinks that they will need aggressive whipping to have 10 cannons in our lands on T176. That and a DOW. Oh ... wait ... that isn't true - they could still put 10 cannons in our land without the DOW ... assuming we have OBs.

The demand for road pillaging continues unabated. It doesn't matter what Noble says (I told you, we can't pillage roads in our territory). Further bad news for those road haters ...

I did a WB test, and spies cannot pillage roads in neutral territory

There is also extensive discussion / mention of the rally points of our troops as well as our spy incursion into CivPlayers land - what did we find? Good question ... we found pikes. Lots and lots of pikes. And some cats. Not much else.

Nobles thread also contains this cherry ...



... as well as an estimate on us finishing Rifling (eot T181 - sigh). Kjn scoffed at that and proceeded to show how to do it by eot T180. But don't worry, our super supporting friend, Darrellllll (is that 6 'l's or 7?) then pointed out that T181 is on the good side of things.

There was also considerable discussion about 2-pop whipping the cats and then putting the overflow into more cats. You cannot have too many stinking cats.

I was thinking of reporting that Noble and Darrell got into a slagging match ... but that isn't news ... it happens all the time.


Really Big News

UCiv accepted OB and a map swap. We now have much improved visibility into CivFr and CivPlayers. I'll have to update my geo-political map - maybe on the weekend. Eight is a lot of legs, David.

Antisocialmunky (another name that just rolls of the tongue - everyone should be limited to names of 7 letters like me and Soooooo ... or less like Sullla) got right into the spirit of attacking being the best defense and put together some interesting ideas re Apolyton. He finished with 'Also, color me optimistic but I want to get Galleons and burn down Ankara and the Colossus as revenge for this whole war' which is fair enough.

Zargon also joined in with a nice discussion on who to hit, assuming we want to do it.

And that was that for T166. Oh wait, Noble also played the turn, discussed a bunch of things and streamed some. I haven't been able to chase down the link to the stream ... so it mustn't exist.

Now, on the Diplo front ...

CFC turned down our NAP for GP offer (was that previously reported?) and Scooter caught Yossarian on chat. Two or three major things to note ...

Scooter let it rip!
It wasn't as good as Sullla's because it was typed. The counter argument is that Sullla's was a monolog.

YossarianLives
Your economy is not lacking, you have the most beakers of anyone

Wrong (I think). Scooter, you should have corrected him here. Doesn't Apolyton have more beakers than we do?

YossarianLives
Ok, I understand what you're saying. Well, we do need to hold some cards close to our chest, so I don't know how much more I can say
Anyways, I have to walk the dog, so I should get going

Walk the dog? OF COURSE YOU GOTTA WALK THE DOG BEFORE THE DOGPILE.

... and ...

YossarianLives
Well, a GP would have been great for us, but you have enough land so that if you can develop peacefully then we lose no matter what. At least, that's what our mathematicians have convinced the team of.

Now why am I pulling out this little line of chat?

Because of another chat that Scooter had later with CivPlayers. I think this is actually a T168 chat but I am including it here because I can.

OT4E
I already mentioned that I see no problem in keeping some military. Otherwise your economic will be too strong for us. I dont want you to get it wrong or offended by this. It is just maths.

I find it very interesting that OT4E (another stupid name) mentioned maths in exactly the same way as CFC did. They have obviously been talking and talking about how far ahead we are and using maths to prove it. Ok, that last part is crap ... CFC have been talking about the maths of Civ4 (snowball effect) and leading the other teams by the nose. IT IS EVIDENCE, I TELL YOU ... EVIDENCE!


Scooter also floated the worthless suggestion of talking to CivFr. Are they still playing? They are? Oh. You learn something new everyday. Reading the diplo thread I also noticed this ...

A stab at contact with CivFr.

Hey guys, just wanted to check in with you guys. As far as we can tell, CFC is headed for Cannons. Our western neighbors are also gearing up for war, and I'm pretty sure they'll aim at us. We figure CFC is going to do one of two things. 1) Use the cannons on us or 2) Take advantage of our western neighbor's build-up to hit you guys with cannons when we can't keep them honest.

Not sure exactly what will happen, but it seems we have a mutual enemy, so I wanted to see how things were on your front. I've noticed the war is pretty quiet, but I also saw the attempted AP resolution. Any big updates over there?

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Thoughts?

Sent that CivFr draft by the way.

I didn't think that got sent. Guess I missed it. Ok, so we wait 10 days for nothing and then find out that while they speak perfect English, they claim that they don't ... just like every French person in France.

A few people also tried to twist an agreement around so that we could NAPstab and not trash our name (too much). That was another bit of worthlessness while it lasted.

I haven't shown a picture for a while ... here you go ...



... and another one ...



On the C&D front ...

Hm. CP just did 9 2-pop whips. I would have expected them to either be saving the pop for musket drafts after gunpowder, or cur whips after military tradition. Maybe they just noticed they need a bunch of cats.

Definitely knight whips, at least most of them. The following cities are in the 90-122 hammer range:

Texcoco, Tlaxcala, Xochicalco, Tlacopan, Atzcapotzalco, Tzintzuntzen, Malinalco, Tamuin

Tenochtitlan is at 140 hammers, and Tlatelolco at 78. Of interest is that their Heroic Epic city (Calixtlahuaca) is at 0 invested hammers, so they're probably one-turning stuff like crazy there. Also, remember that CivPlayers have plenty of stables, so their knights will be highly promoted.

... so we will see pikes and knights from CivPlayers.


Finally, the topic that I just know everyone has been waiting for me to cover ...

THE Mustache Incident of T167! As mentioned by Commodore (I wonder if he knows that he has the same name as a car?).



And just to round things off nicely ...

This forum is the Mutara Nebula of the internet, and my sarcasm sensor is non-functional .

Darrell

[Ruff_Hi]

Turn 168 - 1080AD

Sorry for disappearing over the last week - work and home life keeps on getting in the way of the important stuff. T168 seemed like a pretty dull turn. The possible (HA!) war declaration on T170 sparked most of the discussion for T168 with some of it concentration on the actual end of the NAP (start of T170 or end of T170). I am pretty sure that everyone knew it was start but most of the people were talking (wishing?) about it being end of T170.

T167 --> T168 occurred on or about Aug 8th at 10am (RB time).


WAR! not quite yet.

General Sunrise updated his estimation of enemy strength while Mayor Noble chipped in with some management news.

There is some good news / bad news in the General's report ...

(Sort of) Good news - a full range of drafts by Poly this late actually suggests they may wait 1+ turns before coming in. Unless we're missing a city location, they only need to draft 4 cities the two turns before they move in (and 3 the turn before) to get every drafted unit into our lands.

Bad news - the RB portion of the spreadsheet will shrink a bit this evening when I log into the game and check builds. This is due to a few cities where we're putting overflow into infrastructure as well as cities where we won't be able to 2pop whip units out next turn.

... as well as some extended information about the collateral system in Civ4 (gathered from discussions with very learned individuals ([source: IMs with pindicator, Novice, Ruff, and Seven])

He finished with this estimate ...

In my middle estimate we need more. 32 attacks @ 41% means 13 kills, 19 losses. Same 3 kills versus jans. Then, and this is approximate, 17 kills versus the old units. 30 cats losing twice. Then cleanup (19 rifles, 2 jans, 3 old units, 2 cats for 27 total). That's 108 attacking units needed.

Novice chipped in with a screenshot showing that cats don't take all units to 50hp via collateral. There is a max deduction based on unit strength differentials.

General Sunrise then proceeded to run some simulations ...

Sim 1, 30 cats, fewer RB promos: 13 knights (as the last attackers) managed to flank away all 14 cats. We lost 53 units (30 cats and 23 others).

Sim 2, 30 cats, more RB promos: 12 knights (as the last attackers) managed to flank away all 14 cats. We lost 54 units (30 cats and 24 others).

Sim 3, 30 cats, more RB promos, muskets rather than maces: 14 knights (as the last attackers) managed to flank away all 14 cats. We lost 51 units (30 cats and 21 others).

Summary so far: Rifles getting to the collateral max is hurting more than anticipated, and so even 30 cats isn't maxing collateral, leaving a few ~strength 11 units. If we have enough other units to hit first though 15 knights are effective flanking cleanup units.

Sim 4, 35 cats, more RB promos, muskets rather than maces: 12 knights (as the last attackers) managed to flank away all 14 cats. We lost 46 units (34 cats and 11 others).

Revised summary so far: There's an eventual cap where more cats aren't needed, but 30->35 is still in the sweet spot. After the Poly battle we should have ~50-60 standard units left even after accounting for the civplayers front, but basically no cats.

Sim 5, 20 cats, more RB promos, maces -> muskets -> knights: 15 knights (as the last attackers) managed to flank away all 14 cats. We lost 41 units (20 cats, 14 maces, 7 muskets).

Geo-Political Update

We got visibility on a number of new cities following our map swap with univerCiv. As such, I updated the Geo-Political map.



You can also have the 4000px version.

The main take away for the upcoming war is that Apolyton have a very small attack corridor while CivPlayers have a bloody enormous one.


Diplo Update

Scooter did what Scooter does. Talk to people. Here is another attempt with Apolyton and CivPlayers ...

Apolyton and CivPlayers,

I'm sending this to both of your teams since it has been clear for awhile that you are working closely together. I understand the position you guys are in. You don't want to commit to peace with us, but you don't want to leave us alone to tech peacefully. That's completely fair. However, I think you guys are smart enough to know that a full war with us will just be a stalemate. I'm just going to be 100% honest with you guys: we are tracking your builds very closely, and we basically know what you guys have and what you might attack us with. We know it's enough to do some damage, but we also know we will be able to stop it before you guys gain too much. We've even done some simming on killing different stack compositions. Needless to say, our warmongery members are a little too eager about the idea of killing off a dogpile . Regardless, I think the only winner in this conflict would be CFC, and I don't think you guys want that any more than we do.

So I have one last idea for a peaceful compromise:
* NAP until T230 between all 3 of us
* RB will be generating two great persons in the next 15 turns. We will gift you each one of them. You guys can decide between yourself who gets which one.

This is the absolute best offer we can make. It's actually a little too much in my opinion (there is quite a bit of disagreement within our team over this), but our team has decided to offer it. I'd remind you that when it comes to keeping pace with us, this is basically denying us a golden age. If you don't take this, we'll be using this for a golden age at a very decisive time. If you take this, we'll be passing up on that, and our economic recovery will be slowed down considerably. We've also invested heavily in military to defend against both of you rather than building economic things, so you would have accomplished your goals of slowing us down, not to mention the bonus you both would get from a great person.

I would also ask that you please let us know your answer pretty quickly. This offer will have to expire as soon as the turn rolls to T170.

Thanks!
scooter - Team RB

Noble provided an update on our next two GPs ... first one out of Mansa's Muse (11 turns) and the next out of Eastern Dealers (11 turns but out to 13 or 14 once the GP comes out of MM). Both cities mixed GP population.

Their reply didn't take long ...

Reply from Apolyton at 9am NYC time (about 9 hrs after sending the email) ...

Team RB, Scooter

I'm afraid it's too late for peace at this moment, it is since we saw how easily you conquered inca's land.. you got it almost for free, getting every city while inca used their army against wpc, who got 0 cities, then we saw cfc getting into war with maya... so we came into the conclusion that war is inevitable and that we should not waste time or else we will have even less chance to slow you down.
We have no illusions that this will be an easy war for us, right now our hope is that we can make this war more costly for you than it will be for us, but even this is not guaranteed.
So we are looking forward to have a little "fun".

mz

So much for giving them time to think about it.

This generated the typical RB response (internal consumption only) of ...

Ok, finally caught up. Whew. Valiant efforts all the way around, but no dice. Apolyton is the senior partner, no way junior breaks with them at this point after backing Apolyton to rifling. In for a penny, in for a pounding, both of them.

Let's whip the 50pop and send a screen shot of civstats to both teams when it's done with:

... and this from our diplo guy ...

Apolyton,

Ok, let's have some fun then.
I hope you realize soon that this is not productive for either of us. Let me know when you're ready to start catching up with the new leaders instead, and we'll be happy to talk.

Best regards,
scooter - RB

You can see why we keep Boldly on the inside of RB only. Not that we want to ... but we have to.


In other diplo news ...

Nice! Deal!

Could you please give us a rough estimate of when you expect to reach Rifle? That would help us planify our development.

Yuufo

... and the reply ...

Yuufo,

We are estimating that with your help, we can get Rifling on roughly T181-T182, give or take a turn.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Cloak & Dagger

No Steel for CFC. CivPlayers performed lots of whips which seemed a little premature (no gunpowder, no military tradition) so it was mainly for Knights(?) or cats(?). KJN was able to update that 'estimate' to a 'definite' ... knights!



Stream Archive

The stream for T168 can be found on twitch.

http://www.twitch.tv/noblehelium/b/443412444



Other

The T168 award for rudeness goes to Pindicator ...

What are RB promotions? Barrage? Wasn't it discussed above that this just gets units to the collateral max damage level faster? What other promos are available? Will C1 increase the change of getting a few hits on the defending unit?

How do you get this C1 cat and why do people keep suggesting it?

... and the 'We Hate CFC' trophy for T168 goes to Noble ...

You forget that CFC controls the turn roll (all annoying roads lead to CFC).

[Ruff_Hi]

Turn 169 - 1090AD

T168 --> T169 occurred on or about Aug 11th at 6pm (RB time).

This turn can be summed up by one post ...

Turn rolled. Some quickie notes:

CFC's golden age has ended, and we lost the southern spy in CivPlayers land as well.

Lots of techs. CFC researched Steel, WPC CoL, Apolyton Chemistry, CivFr Banking, and CivPlayers Military Tradition.

Univers has a very high gold generating capacity, they are getting 522 gpt right now (was 242 gpt last turn).

Ok, maybe two ...

Poly has 1,000+ gold. Civplayers has MilTrad. Would not be shocked to see neither with any gold at the end of this turn.

And thus the CivPlayer scheme is becoming clear ...

How many knights will 1000g upgrade to cuirs?

I think cuirs are 50g, so 20.

I thought civplayers still need gunpowder for upgrade...

They probably plan on having it when they attack.

Build knights while saving coin / getting coin back from Apolyton and then mass upgrading to cuirs. After stealing gunpowder first.

Our Rilfing estimate was updated ...

Here's a new assessment on how quickly we can get to Rifling. I estimate 7t of research - I doubt we can get it down to 6t (we were at 6.5t last I checked beaker values, so we have some buffer).

Our gold now: 1684
Gold required: 7 * 811 = 5677
Gold needed: 3993

We get 520gpt from Univers (excepting this turn), so that's 3120g over 6t. We also get 60gpt ourselves from the shrine and specialists. That's 3480g, meaning we need an additional 500g. One turn of 50% science might be able to fix that, but we'll have to see.

Ie, I think we look at a Rifling ETA of T177, maybe T176 if we are really lucky.

But we should turn on the research spigot this turn.

... and, finally, General Sunrise's update on enemy units.


Diplo Update

On the diplo front, UCiv started sending us gold ...

From UCiv:

Today we gave you 800 Gold.

Awesome, thanks guys! I see you are getting around 520gpt right now. Is that normal for you? We are trying to better estimate how quickly we can get Rifling. If you are able to supply us with that much gold every turn, we can shave several turns off the estimated Rifling completion date. smile

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

... and scooter returned to his 'nailing Jell-o to a tree' activities ...

CivFr,

We are about to get declared on by Apolyton and CivPlayers (NAP expires t170). Our CFC NAP expires on t175. While we've painfully converted enough population into military to deal with Apolyton and CivPlayers (hopefully only losing 2 or 3 cities), we won't have enough left over to stop CFC from taking a sizable chunk of our land should they move in five turns later. Given CFC will probably win the game if they claim our land on top of Spain's, we were hoping you would be willing to help us in two ways:

1) Can you loan us 200 gold? If you do this, we will give you back 300 gold by T190 at the absolute latest.
2) Refrain from making peace or signing a NAP with CFC. If they are forced to defend their border with you, its possible we can scrape enough units together to slow them down, though defending our Globe Theater seems impossible in any case =[

You guys don't owe us anything, so I will completely understand if you just ignore this and do your own thing. If you do decide to help us, we will do everything in our power to help you in the future, even if it costs us. We would like to win of course, but more important to us is that CFC does not win, as we feel their dealings with us have been dishonest. I would like to think we both feel the same on that last point.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Scooter chatted to CivPlayers and reached out to UCiv about the 'no civic / religion spy mission' agreement with the hope that they will sign on.


Stream Archive

The stream for T169 can be found on twitch broken into two halves ... survey and then play.


Other

'We Hate CFC' trophy for T169 goes to Noble ...

I'm pretty sure CFC's face violates the spirit of the earth, but that's never stopped them.

[Ruff_Hi]

Turn 170 - 1100AD

T169 --> T170 occurred on or about Aug 15th at 5pm (RB time). Note that the clock moved from 36 hours to 48 hours as of this turn.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

How many people consider that this whole game has been heading towards this turn? Or do you think it is heading towards T175 when CFC join in on the party? Or will CFC just sit back and watch while CivPlayers and Apolyton (CFC's pawns) do their dirty work for them? Or ...

Anyway, the turn rolled and there was immediate activity ...

Guerra con Civplayers
Guerra con Lizzy

So it's official.

The funny thing is that the mod didn't lock us out - we could still log in. As such, we did so (being very careful to not move units) and watched first Apolyton and then CivPlayers (in waves) move units into our territory. They claimed the first half of the turn division (it is not a split!).

Both (Ed: CivPlayers & Apolyton) of them have claimed the first half with their DoWs, in my understanding.
Civplayers virtually logged in and DoWed the minute CFC ended the turn.

Their login was immediately when CFC ended. Obviously CFC was holding ending turn for this reason. Death to the infidels, etc.

There was some chatter about being sandwiched between the two but then our own oil on water man chipped in ...

Relax, they very clearly just are grabbing the first half of the timer.

Mayor Noble provided the first update from the war front with pictures from the west showing the initial wave of CivPlayer units.

Later General Sunrise posted a summary after Apolyton had ended their turn but before CivPlayers had. This showed the slow moving Apolyton hammer (8 rifles and a lone trebuchet) [Trebuchet(!) - just to show that humans do actually build these things] threatening The Gauntlet. I think it is safe to say that The Gauntlet is toast. I officially put forward this city name as candidate for the biggest misnomer award. Hmm - thinking about that award, while The Gauntlet is a good award candidate, the obvious eventual winner of the misnomver award is darrelljs' 'Hugs & Kisses' thread.

Anyway, back to General Sunrise' initial summary ... he also provided an update on CivPlayers and concluded with ...

CivPlayers: 20 Cuirassers, 4 Horse Archers, 1 Chariot
Realms Beyond: 15 muskets, 6 maces, 3 Knights, 1 Medic War Chariot, 2 Axes, 10 Catapults

They definitely don't really have enough to take BbB.

It was also good to see Sullla chip in ...

Defense in the south looks relatively straightforward, move everything inside Brick By Brick and dare them to attack through the city's defenses. I don't think they can take the city with those units - I'm pretty sure that CivPlayers only has 1 promo on their units, not two, and thus they'll only be C1 and not C1/Pinch - and I expect simming will show that the muskets will hold Brick. If they choose to move two tiles north instead next turn, then bring in the cats and knights and destroy the stack on T171.

In the north, Apolyton will take The Gauntlet for sure, but I don't think they'll get anything else unless they have a lot more rifles than the 17 in that picture. Obviously kill off the highly mobile CivPlayers stack first, it's actually much more dangerous than the ponderous Apolyton group.

However, from there, the RB community returns to its true roots of double and triple thinking everything ...

Have they got enough eps to revolt bbb?

... and ended with the certain belief that, while CP don't have enough EPs to revolt BbB, Apolyton certainly do, they currently have a spy in BbB and will revolt it next turn.

So we just did a sim by stream.

Conclusion: if the city is revolted, they will get fantastic odds and wipe the floor. I think it's very likely that they'll be able to revolt it, so we need to assume we're going to lose Brick.

Scooter provided a fantastic summary which I cannot improve on ... thus I will lift it verbatum ...

Okay, we talked through a defensive plan in the stream, and I'm here to present what our plan is, and present it to you all for comments. Let me start with the most important front. As I wrote a few posts ago, we did a sim, and if they revolt Brick by Brick, everything we put in it would get slaughtered with very few losses. We don't have precise numbers for the cost of the revolt, but we've estimated it'll cost them 400-600 EPs, and with their massive EP output and the EP slider being available, that won't be an issue.

They are capable of simming too, so I think we absolutely must assume they will revolt the city. Their attack only makes sense if that was their plan, and I don't think OT4E is dumb when it comes to tactics. So we will lose it. After my first batch of screenshots, as kjn noted CivPlayers DID bring up several 1 movers that seem lined up to garrison the city. It seems like a logical bet that they plan on keeping and garrisoning the city. So our defense plan here needs to be to set ourselves up for a recapture and/or position ourselves to wipe their stack. So all that said, here's a picture, and I'm going to do my best to walk through it clearly.

THE SOUTH FRONT



There are several stray units not highlighted here, but I just picked the big stacks so as to avoid clutter.

1) We should leave a group of defenders in Brick by Brick. The point is to force them to revolt the city. We figure if we leave approximately 6 defenders in the city (4 muskets, 1 axe, 1 mace), they will have to revolt the city. Their odds will be in the 20s on those attacks if they don't revolt the city, but they'll be into the 80s if they do revolt it.

The idea here is to burn all their EPs, so that once we recapture, the culture all comes back, but they won't have enough EPs to revolt the city again.

2) With this in mind, pink circle is the best staging tile. Any further south and they are vulnerable to their giant Cuir stack on the hill. Any further north and they cannot hit Brick. If the Cuirs pile into the city, awesome, we can probably wipe their stack. If the Cuirs move up north, they'll be in range, and we'll hit them that way. If the Cuirs head south, we'll have to handle that, but the city should be easy to recapture in that case. NOTE: we will still control the horse row of culture when Brick falls.

3) The one caveat here is the red box. The one vulnerability we have here is if CivPlayers has 4 workers on hand to road those two tiles. If they did that, they will be able to hit pink. If they want to fight on open ground in our culture in range of a ton of units, that's fine, but the main concern is that we put all our cats on that tile, and CivPlayers flanks them all away with Cuirs. I figure the chances they do this are on the low end, but not insignificant. We only see 1 worker that is in range of those two tiles, but we can't know whether or not they have more. The compromise here is we think we should something like 3-6 catapults on the pink circle, and place the rest on the blue circle.

If they flank the cats away, the cats on the blue circle can hit those units, and cleaning up their stack will be trivial from that point. If they choose not to attack the pink circle, 3-5 cats worth of collateral should be enough to take the city, depending on how many units they place into it. And, realistically, if they just pile everything into Brick, we can afford to take another turn to set up.

4) Note the Knight stack highlighted in sign mode. Those will come down. Those will be a big boost.


THE NORTH FRONT



This is much more straight-forward. The basic plan is to move this stack of maces/cats 1NW onto the green signed tile. This is not enough to take out 17 Rifles, but if Apolyton keeps their stack split, this will be enough to take out one of the stacks. Also, if the 2-movers get done in the south are able to come up here, this combined with the Knights would be enough. Basically the hope is to use these guys to keep Apolyton honest while we deal with CivPlayers. If Apolyton trudges through our land and takes a couple cities, whatever, but these guys will prevent them from being greedy and splitting into half. Remember, Apolyton has "just" 17 rifles up here. As you'll see in a minute, they definitely sent quite a few to CivPlayers for defense purposes, so they should not have a large second wave. Finally, the Mano front:



There you see 4 more Rifles in Costalot. Combined with the couple coming to Brick, I can see now why Apolyton just has nothing at all. Anyway, the plan for this turn is to move the Mace/WE mini-stack into Mano and complete the walls. That will likely prevent them from taking Mano next turn. They may just bombard and move 4 rifles up next turn, although the walls will make the bombards pretty ineffective. If they do that, we'll probably lose the city, but this plan will make the city survive an extra turn and force them to commit rifles if they really want to take it, so this seems like the way to go.

---------

So this is our proposed defense plan. Feel free to ask question or make suggestions. I'm pretty confident this is the best way to go, but discuss away. We have almost 2 full days before we need to end turn, and I think we are 100% entitled to using every bit of that if it's what's best for us.

Following that post there was some further posts that didn't really change or challenge this direction ... rather it provided some small refinement or other options ...
- BrB falls without the revolt but with some additional Cuir losses
- Swap from walls to unit as that will cost CPs more to take it


Warning: Personal Opinion Follows ...

Personally, the above is all betting that Apolyton revolt BrB. Consider the situation that they aren't set up to revolt the city ... if that is the case, then we are just giving it away for very next to nothing. Remember, the reason we built SoZ was so that our enemies would have to pay dearly to attack us. If we just give BrB away, then that whole objective was a total waste of time. The focus Apolyton / CivPlayers have on BrB is 100% the right thing - they don't want to have to fight us in our territory while we hold the SoZ. They are focusing their initial war efforts on removing it and, at the moment, remove it they will.

If they take BrB, they will raze it. No question!

As such, I really think we should be doing more to hold that city by betting on the situation that they don't have the units in place to revolt it next turn.

Just to illustrate the point - they are already fighting 100% inside our culture - we should make them pay for their first war objective.






Stream Archive

The stream for T170 can be found on twitch ... Assessment.

http://www.twitch.tv/noblehelium/b/447312387


Other

'We Hate CFC' trophy for T170 goes to BGN ...

Their login was immediately when CFC ended. Obviously CFC was holding ending turn for this reason. Death to the infidels, etc.

... and the prize for 'fun facts' goes to kjn ...

Some screenies ...

A lone barb axe in the tundra:

It is also interesting to note that the number of rifles Apolyton is bringing to the table is less than we had expected. Mainly because they gifted the first round (or two) of their drafting to CivPlayers ...



Finally, two observations / comments / lessons for the next game ...

• why did our discussion move from the turn by turn discussion thread to the war thread? Some people (initially including me may miss posts due to this.
  
• For next game, lets make sure that we put SoZ in a central city that will stand for many, many war turns.
  

[mostly_harmless]

T 171:

Picture dump.

Stream 1.

Stream 2.

[mostly_harmless]

T172:

This is the message log.
No combat.
We caught a couple of spies, apparently.


Here the western front:


Apolyton assembled their Rifle stack W-NW of Beyaz Penir (visible at the upper edge of the screenshot).
Here the composition:



So Beyaz Penir is not going to fall next turn, but we also do not have much in the area to hit that stack now. We could hit it with a few catapults now that they have merged their stack, but we won't have any killers around. And Apolyton might just advance or retreat/heal.

Here the main Civplayers stack S-SW of Ditchdigger.


Mostly Cuirassiers (28).
Again we have not enough in the area to hit this stack this turn. Unfortunately alot of our units are located N-NW of Ditchdigger, out of range to do anything.

Brick by Brick is defended by a couple of pikes and a few outdated units. But we only have a couple of knights within range anyway.

Civplayers could potentially attack Ditchdigger next turn. I think some of their wounded Cuirassiers might still have promos left (?).
I suggest we pile a lot of defenders into Ditchdigger (at least 20 or so) to scare off any attack this turn. The hill defense bonus is the one bonus we cannot lose if they revolt the city before attacking.

Also our main stack N NW of Ditchdigger needs to decide where to go. I think Civplayers is the one we should defend against in force, and there fore I suggest moving down our troops and hold Ditchdigger.
Beyaz Penir, is not as important in my book compared to Ditchdigger. Even Mano y Mano can go to hell. That would allow us to move the elephants south for a potential attack against the Civplayer stack next turn.

On the eastern front, we see another cannon in the stupid CFC city. So, yes they are coming.

If we pile in defenders into Ditchdigger, we should not lose any cities next turn and we might not see much combat either next turn.

In general I would set up any city to have a musket half finished in the build queue, that automatically gets converted into a rifle on T175/176. (Musket get converted into Rifles, right?).
So even if CFC revolts us out of Nationalism, we can at at least slowbuild them.

Noble, I had to select some city build stuff at random after log in. You want to review that.

Any more questions / requests for info?
I will try to answer and create screenshots later for those.

mh

-----------------------------------------------

T172 start (continued):

Western front friendly troops.
Purple dots = main enemy stacks.



Eastern front terrain overview. No major stacks on either side.



Demographics after massive CFC whipping/drafting spree:



Current cities:



Tech situation:


CFC fights with cannons while still missing paper.

mh

-----------------------------------------------

Stream 1.

Stream 2.

[mostly_harmless]

T173 Early:

In the North, there are two stacks of Apolyton Rifles. So Beyaz Penir will fall next turn. Retreating all troops seems a no-brainer.


In the East we have eyes on CFC 7 cannons, all headed towards us.
CFC has three chariots in our land and they know exactly where our troops are. No doubt this will be telegraphed to Apolyton and Civplayers regularly.

Civplayers:
They have razed Ditchdigger.
They have deconstructed the Ditchdigger fort.
They have occupied the Frozen Jungle Fort with a single warrior, killing our galley and capturing all those workers.
I think we must have lost around 10 workers.
Mano y Mano remains with us.



They have also retreated all but one Cuirassiers.
The good news is, that we have the opportunity to hit some scattered units and capture some workers back.

I think the most important thing is to find out where theit Cuirassier stack is, and whether we can hit is again, with maybe capturing those workers back on the Ditchdigger fort tile and hit them with the WarElephants. We dont want to see thos 16 triple promo Cuirassiers back fully healed in 4 turns.
I suspect them to be 2SW of the Elephant stack. Gut feeling. I guess we can figure out where they could have gone from their position last turn.
We do have units like war chariots and distant knights that can hit these two Civplayer mini-stacks, so we should not attack them with any troops that can penetrate their lines deeper until we have to.

Demographics:



We have not received any gold from UCiv this turn. We need 350 to run 100%. Scooter you might want to politely ask, as soon as possible.

Wild dream: We capture Brick by Brick back in 2-3 turns getting our SoZ back! Shame about the galley. Would have loved another defender in that fort. Ah, well.

mh

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http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=5233&pid=411750#pid411750

Stream.