Agreed that I shouldn't get tunnel-visioned. Our central cities are still building settlers. Combat settlers. (The Venus axe is just to requeue a partial build -- it'll have 5/35h, incidentally -- and to regrow eot.)
I did make Malepartus chop an archer instead of granary, just to be sure RFS doesn't jump into this funny warmonger business.
Charriu will be shown that we're prepared, I hope. I think he will still declare and move in as he just sees the 4 archers + spear; but this is what we can bring for reinforcements:
In case signs are unreadable, the western ministack is 2 axes, 1 arch, and the eastern is 3 axes, 1 arch. All the axes are Shock iirc. It's a pity that the 3-axe detachment north-east is too far to reinforce Schilda. It is, however, not too far away to get spotted by Charriu after it moves 21 on T88 and he moves onto the hill 1S. Nor to kill what's left of his stack after the attack (archers get a first strike, too), and he'll know that. I'll just throw him a 10t peace T88; if Charriu wants to roll the dice in such a situation, fine, but we might have skipped the strategy game, you know... I'm assuming there will be some chariots in the attack as well, but the unit mix will hopefully stop that.
I must have put a turn into Iron Working last turn without swapping back to Currency -- sorry. We can repair that now (this also allows us to upgrade the Venusberg warrior if we really need to). It's an unnecessary delay of 2t on Currency that makes me no less angry at myself than Charriu, but IW is a very immediate target anyhow, and we might not get to build research for it later. It'll all be fine.
Also, RFS-81 might at least be otherwise-engaged:
Persia is just west of Rocky Paths, which also means we will find it hard to hold that city, if we ever capture it.
The only one profitting from Charriu's actions is, evidently, shallow_thought. I want to make that clear. I can sort of understand Charriu planning to attack the city from what he sees now, but if he doesn't call it off T88, I'll say it -- that would be plain unsound.
Power. Charriu sees ours as well, btw.
I've sent crab/crab to Magic Science. Everyone else is clearly not working with us, except maybe for RFS who is still chopping neutral forests that would go to Malepartus with unescorted workers (see screenshot), but let him. We'll take the wheat from Space Love later.
For what it's worth, I've worldbuildered us a combat sim. The result so far is that if Charriu just stack-attacks (he won't, but attacking with all the swords first seems likely) and brought seven C1 chariots in addition to what we saw (all seven melee units assumed C1 / City Raider I, and I've even included the two archers), he takes Schilda on 3 out of 25 tries and autorazes it for 2-4 gold.
Needs no further comment. This doesn't consider our counterattack, either. We don't even know how many chariots he has, but I hope it's not that many. He has to have at least marginal garrisons in his other cities, too, and his army isn't that much bigger than ours if you subtract IW from his score -- about 4-6 units.
Sim attached. It's with New Random Seed on Reload and slightly inaccurate because all the Schildan units have 5% fortify instead of some having 10% and others having none. It might not matter anyway.
Man look at this from the other side. This guy is pissed off, you took his spot and landed SH in it so he is doomed to fight culture war for his own rice.
He whipped his cities for 5 turns and brought all he could. Most likely it is his first war declaration against human so he must be excited. Give him a minute to realise that it is not so easy. If he attacks he almost guarantees us GG which will serve us well in our own conquest.
Nothing special happens for is to feel offended. We teased him and he is showing his teeth. Lets act in a most pragmatic way...
I think you control everything well. Great job so far.
Five chariots. He's not breaking through. Go bother RFS-81 already.
I haven't ended turn yet. I've set a trap with one axe and archer -- if he attacks these with chariots, we can lunge at the injured chariots with the hidden axes next turn, and those would be chariots not participating in the attack, decreasing his chances of razing from 0% to 0%. If he doesn't, all our units reinforce Schilda anyhow. Otoh, any axe not placed on that tile is missing in the counterattack.
OT4E, I have looked at this from the other side. I'd agree that Charriu's actions do make some sense up to this point, although he teched Iron Working long before Stonehenge being placed next to him was even apparent. Never mind that the stack he has could easily break the back of the incredibly obvious target of Mongolia, who are #5 soldiers while we are #2 and have been very evidently preparing for a Chinese wardec.
Nor does Stonehenge threaten the rice, it's third-ring from Schilda and first-ring for him, so Forza's barracks probably generates enough culture to keep the tile already, and Schilda obviously won't add more culture at any point. Look at the current culture split: neither can alphastrike the city, both can see inside the other's. That's as equitable as it can get here!
If he attacks, I'll spare no sympathies for him because he's banking on an insane gamble in that case, and that must be punished in the interest of having an actual game to play with him in the future. Or would you rather that I never improve from "lol galleons"? Because what Charriu is doing is just that. Most of how I've played here is a direct result of not wanting to repeat PB37, and appropriately, I seem to have come full circle indeed.
I forgot to make the sandbox RtR, lol. It doesn't matter. I tried 10 times today with an RtR sandbox, five chariots (all C1, and the melee units still all C1 CR1), and it was a catastrophic scenarriu for Charriu every time where he loses every single unit to our counterattack at the latest, and never razes. He usually wipes 3-5 of our units, but this is nowhere near worth the hammer investment of his 13 units all disappearing mysteriously.
Yes, yes, I'm being "mean". Krill was also "mean". He was also mostly right.
superdeath took peace btw. I forgot that he couldn't see the Charriu war before accepting. Good for him, good for us. I'm much more willing to throw Zulu a bone now, though he's in fact the #2 GNP, I think (not RFS). He'll settle his city, probably even in the dream spot, but we don't need to worry about our flank now and can kill Charriu with everything we have and will soon have. Namely praetorians.
Quote:Most of how I've played here is a direct result of not wanting to repeat PB37
Dude, why such an attitude? It was a great first game, and pretty solid a performance for any game at all -- if you look at what's actually been played out on the forum, rather than the 'Best of'. You are turning it into some kind of birth trauma here. There were lessons to take away from it for sure, but what you have in your record is a very solid base to build on, not something to be rejected with contempt. Being contemptuous to yourself generally doesn't help. Ask OT4E, if you think I'm too biased.
Contempt is too strong a word. In fact, I've recently reread some PB37 player threads (not ours) and fondly remembered the absurd crescent we planted to reach gold with our four-move galley, which we barely got away with because Joey had visibly invested in the Great Lighthouse. Nonetheless, I'll always be disappointed with PB37; any baseline good play was annulled by key mistakes regarding (1) a mismanaged Classical economy (everything up to T90 Currency was fine and I'm evidently repeating that here, but "it came naturally" so why be proud or mindful of it) and (2) absurd grand strategy (attacking Russia far too early with a gamewrecker, attacking Inca even after they signalled Astro, not attacking Russia with beelined Numids before dtay would cash in on his patent). I think Joey gave the most fitting assessment of my game, in fact: some serious balls and some serious ball-dropping (not his exact words).
So when I mention PB37 like this, I mean mostly the particularities of that game, which mostly means errors in this case, and not the triple #1 demos part which is demonstrably repeatable (but also shows that triple #1 demos mean nothing if you can't convert, both in this game and that one). In fact, I wouldn't be nearly as disappointed if I didn't think I squandered a good position -- it's easy to just forget a game where you think you've played it all abysmally, but not one where you choke.
Considering the whole deal, I think it was a mediocre first game purely from my own contributions / ideas. Once we add yours, it's pretty solid, sure -- I've read Civ6PBEM2 and saw how the Bacchus Effect of that game transformed TheArchduke into the serious competitor he had inside him all along (a process complete by PBEM4), despite getting eliminated. It's also funny that after a game with you where I didn't want to deal with such trifles as economy and politics (this is gallows' humour, yes), now I have a game with OT4E where I don't want to deal with such trifles as total war in the Ancient era.
I'm pretty sure Charriu's actions are partially motivated by his performance in PB39, btw. He built no army, built no economy, and was whacked repeatedly by all his neighbours, so of course he'd try the opposite approach now. Granted: he has still not built an army, but he believes he did and that's what matters.
I dont mean you need to spare Charriu. He deserved any kind of counter-actions and he will definitely feel consequences of his gambit.
What I wanted to say is that we dont need to sacrifice everything now to do what we can do in 15 turns. Also attacking him even in case of success will put us in complicated situation of having 4 land neighbors.
Without any test I see that he have no chances to take this Schilda. The only concern is that he can move forward and try cutting road with chariots or if RFS or MSci somehow pop power out of their #5 and #6 place and pile in.
(The Venus axe is just to requeue a partial build -- it'll have 5/35h, incidentally -- and to regrow eot.)
-- sorry. We can repair that now (this also allows us to upgrade the Venusberg warrior if we really need to). It's an unnecessary delay of 2t on Currency that makes me no less angry at myself than Charriu, but IW is a very immediate target anyhow, and we might not get to build research for it later. It'll all be fine.
