RBP7 - SPOILERS - Genghis Khan of Egypt

[AutomatedTeller]

And get a GG, don't forget that.

Did you take pride and change it's name? or take it, destory it, and build another city?

[sunrise089]

So a few turns ago I planted Cosmopolitan, which at the time was planned as my penultimate city:



You may notice in that screenshot a sign for Stratosphere, which was to me my final planted city. In fact I 2pop slaved the settler for the city in The Palms that same turn. Upon logging in the next turn though...



Mali had deviously (ok, totally innocently) sniped my city from me

This sucked - it's never fun to log in and see something like that, especially when I had taken somewhat costly steps to go for the spot, especially when I was already feeling worried about my total land area as the map filled in.

So three options presented themselves:

1) Do nothing, and just keep the settler around. 70 hammers wasted.
2) Plant in the far east. Plenty of good land over there, and someone has to claim it. But I keep envisioning a situation when my city winds up with Malian, Mayan, English, and Chinese culture all touching my tiles, and therefore requiring a huge garrison. That may be overly cautious, but I just don't like planting peninsula cities.
3) Capture or raze Pride and plant the city I wanted.

I won't walk you through my entire thought process, but suffice it to say I ended up going with option 3. Why attack Mali, who I had decent relations with? Well, nothing really justifies it, at least in a way that makes me out to be an angel. Consider though:

*The city was an aggressive plant - I've seen far worse, but when you contest fat cross tiles you're making something less than a totally peaceful plant.
*The city was an exposed plant - Quite simply, it's a flatland border city. I've tried to avoid those all game, and 4 of my 6 border cities are on hills (Tropicana, dictated by Mali via diplo, and South Point, in an area without hills, are the exceptions).
*"Cover your crap" - Someone said this in the public thread. This is an always war game. If you're going to plant risky cities you need to do some combination of diplomacy, covering with plenty of good units, getting walls and/or culture up right away, or having good sentries. Sitting an unpromoted spear + unpromoted skirm in a the city while another unpromoted skirm sat outside isn't covering your crap. Not making an diplo overtures before or after you plant is not covering your crap either.
*I recently asked Mali for a mini-NAP to chop a forest tile. They turned me down. They were very friendly about it, but they still turned me down.
*Mali recently sent a scout to explore the land north of The Palms and south of whatever Roman city is in that area. This was done over my objections.
*Mali's EP spending on me is out of control. They've known me for 112 turns, so the maximum EP they could have invested at base levels, assuming no anarchy, is 448. They've invested...424. 95% of their EP is going into me I know why they're doing that - they can sell intel on me and collude with other teams by having one team put EP into civ X and another into Civ Y. But from the first turn we met? And without even being able to see anyone else's charts???
*Finally, who the hell names their aggressive border city "Pride?" :neenernee

So in the end is all of that just a search for justification? Sort of. I'm not actually justifying the attack, as I said publicly, it's dastardly. Still, this is always war...

The next question was whether it was possible to attack. I've already explained how the city was exposed, but Mali had one powerful advantage over me: the aforementioned massive EP level. That meant they had city visibility on any city, and tiles visible from that city, they had seen before. That meant an attack with one movers, even though swords would have been an excellent choice vs that city garrison, was all but out. There just wasn't a way for me to move 1 movers around both my capital and Venlazzo in any sort of reasonable time, and I suspect Mali has visibility on both of those cities.

That then meant 2movers. Fortunately I had just the UUs for the job I checked tile visibility, even loaded up worldbuilder, and found a path Mali couldn't see [Aside: couldn't see without spies. I knew if they had a spy in my lands this would be for nothing. I'd not captured any though, so I thought there was a good chance I was safe]. You can see my signs in the above screenshot. Fortunately I was actually able to move things up another turn, moving in on t121 and hitting the city on t122. Likewise I shifted my landing and hence city plant tile 1E when Mali hooked up the bananas so quickly. The plan was for me to use 10 war chariots, which I felt was the sweet spot between power and speed. I used one chop, no whip hammers, so the cost was mainly the turns of my units being out of position in case China or Rome attacked me. The key though to all of this was the road 2S of Pride. Normally roading that sort of tile is a dead giveaway an attack is coming. Fortunately I was already roading it when Mali planted, so not only was the worker in place, but he also completed the road the same turn. If Mali was being careful, which they often are, they'd notice that and know the road was planned before I saw the settler/city, and hence possibly without hostile intentions.

While I was getting the road built Mali offered two distractions which I resisted. First, up until t121 they had four workers improving their rice tile north of Tropicana, covered only by a single unit. Second, the aforementioned annoying scout landed 2t from The Palms on t119. In both cases I could have gotten a nice hammer return by attacking, via a double moved sword in the first case and just a simple axe via-road attack in the second. I sat tight though, since the main goal was not tipping Mali off. I knew I could still take the city even if they got another defender or two into it, but the goal here wasn't a Pyrrhic victory. I gain nothing if I lose 180 hammers to take 200 from Mali, since China, Maya, etc don't lose anything at all.

On t121 the attack force was ready to move into position:



10 war chariots and a settler are on the road network. I also have a worker closer to the landing tile and 2 pairs of 1move city defenders able to cover the city I hope to plant but not able to take part in the actual assault.

All that was left was for me to move and end turn. For that to happen required some more dastardly acts though, in the form of clock management. I earlier posted the recent login times for Mali. I noticed they pretty much never logged in during Brazilian overnight hours. Obviously if the turn rolled then I'd be in little danger of Mali being able to react. I decided though that while I'd take advantage of the double move rule as written, I'd not actively manipulate the clock to gain an advantage, such as by delaying ending turn when last to play. If that meant I ended turn last and Mali had time to react during the 3 hour penalty, so be it. So earlier today I ran some errands with my daughter, came home, and found only Yuri and I left to move. Perfect! Civstats showed Yuri logs in at all different times, but only once per turn, plays quickly, and doesn't miss turns. If I could move and end turn before Yuri the rules would allow me to immediately attack upon the turn roll. I logged in and waited. And waited. For three hours my baby and I sat at the PC reading books and panicking every time her hand strayed near the Enter key Obviously super long logins late in the turn are huge red flags, but like I said I was willing to suffer the consequences in order to not fully embrace the Parkin school of clock management. Finally Yuri logged in, I moved, ended turn, and waited about 5 minutes.

Here's right before the turn roll:



The battle went like this:

*Shock war chariot vs spear at 10% - WIN!
*C1 war chariot vs skirm at 24% - Loss with only one round won
*C1 war chariot vs skirm at 47% - win!
*C1 war chariot vs skirm in open at 70% - win!
*Unpromoted war chariot vs scout at 99.9% -
*Finally, war chariot vs 2 workers - capture -> delete

I declined to press the attack in two directions - I didn't use a war chariot to capture the solo worker, even at a 30h-for-60h ratio, and I didn't send all of my surviving chariots forward to threaten another city. Basically I wasn't willing to pass up two workers, but otherwise I wanted to preserve my army. Speaking of that, one of the awesome things about mounted attacks is that you can reposition quickly, and my first group of WCs will be back in the southern theater next turn. Pindicator could definitely do some damage with the right moves (I saw that Sentry chariot pind...shame for pretending to be offended by my scout down there!), but his window is thankfully short.

All that was left to do was plant my own city on a hill, cover it with promoted axes and spears, and tally hammers:



I ended up losing one WC and will probably lose a second: 60h. I killed a spear, two skirms, two workers, a city, and a scout: 320h. GG as a bonus, and best of all my naming scheme is complete, in that all of the Vegas properties I wanted to use are ticked off the list. That said there are still lots of names out there...
_______________________

Did you take pride and change it's name? or take it, destory it, and build another city?

This should be clear now, but the city auto-razed from size 1. I'd have replanted no matter what though, both because I wanted to be closer to my land, and because I wanted to be on a hill.

[waterbat]

When you said you could have kept the 4 workers if you were a turn faster - is that because your 1-movers would have been up and in place?

*The city was an aggressive plant - I've seen far worse, but when you contest fat cross tiles you're making something less than a totally peaceful plant.

they contested 1 workable fat cross tile Isn't this standard as the map fills in?

Thanks much for the detailed report and reasoning! Great use of those missionaries!

[sunrise089]

When you said you could have kept the 4 workers if you were a turn faster - is that because your 1-movers would have been up and in place?

No, it's because the workers moved. Mali is using big stacks of workers, even in border cities. That has one advantage: quicker tile improvements, but with two disadvantages: you burn more worker turns moving multiple workers onto 2move terrain, and you also expose them to capture. Up until the turn I moved in Mali had four workers improving the banana 1E of Pride.

they contested 1 workable fat cross tile Isn't this standard as the map fills in?

Obviously my map knowledge is limited, but even on smaller maps I contend cities fighting over tiles are either aggressive or need some sort of diplo agreement. You saw how upset pindicator was when I planted 6 tiles from his border cities! Every one of my other border cities doesn't fight over tiles.

[regoarrarr]

Nah - that's not too dastardly. Dastardly would be somehow faking the server going down so you coudl get a double move in

[sunrise089]

I noted in the public thread that top GNP has shot to 300+ (even at 100% I'm only at a bit over 200 ). I suspect that's MackSeven with their Rep scientists somehow, but there's also a binary component too since it's still a big spike. Maybe it's binary science via food, where you alternate growing and researching?

If it's parkin or one of the other high score civs then props to them. I have top land and top pop, so even factoring in Fin I don't think it can be normal binary research via a big empire (meaning a civ that has a lot of base commerce but high expenses, so their "research on" phase is very impressive but each turn of research requires multiple turns of gold stockpiling). If instead it's a civ that managed to keep their expenses much lower than mine then I guess it's my own fault for expanding so much.

[sunrise089]

No, that's a bloody Sunrise.

You'll understand what I mean in some turns. Let's just say that one of the players made a mistake when he decided to get into the dark arts "That-Must-Not-Be-Named".

I'm guessing that's a double move threat. Well, if they think I won't go to great efforts to be logged in when the turn roles they're going to learn they were mistaken

If I were them I'd be considering a city revolt mission combined with a mounted attack, so my defenders would be wounded and not strengthened by city culture. A turn at 100% EP may be in order soon...

Honestly as long as Mali tries to attack me by themselves I'm not too worried. They could certainly get a city, but I think I can keep any hammer exchange at survivable levels. Even if a city gets razed I can re-plant cheaper than they can thanks to Imp. Obviously neither of us can afford to slam stacks into each other while slaving to pop1, but I think (hope) they know that.

[sunrise089]

Chinese UU (spelling???) spotted in pindicator's lands. I have to assume he wanted to show it to me, otherwise he had better choices to cover a worker with. I'm not too worried defensively - yes they're very strong attackers versus my cities considering I don't have archery tech (much less feudalism), but building crossbows just extends the lifespan of my War Chariots. 2 first strikes, collateral, and anti-melee is nice, but my WCs cost half the hammers and on flat terrain it won't take many catapults to let me clean up on the attack.

One downside is that it forces me to keep building WCs, which are sort of a dead-end unit, as they're useless during the gunpowder age (so are crossbows, while maces and pikes are still useful). However a good number of WCs can be utilized as MP units where they excel - low cost to produce and high mobility to turn into emergency defenders.

[Gaspar]

I just want to say its interesting to hear you talk about the game. So many of us learned MP through PBEMs and have a very different perspective - your MP perspective is really interesting and insightful.

I'll make sure to mock you next time I post to make sure I don't lose my reputation.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

There's a world of difference between 2 city elimination and beating everyone else into submission