[SPOILERS] naufragar and Rusten get nickel-and-dimed

[naufragar]

Use the Sam Urai sockpuppet to impugn the honor of your enemies.

"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries!"

[Rusten]

Yes, let's just make the most of it and try to have fun doing it. I know it must be extremely demoralizing to play these turns, but there will be better days I'm sure. And it's not impossible to win still, it's just out of our hands. Play tight and kill Superdeath, settle islands and wait for an ideal opportunity. It may never come, but it's not hopeless.

Superdeath will soon realize who's got the biggus dickus... err, better military unit.

[naufragar]

My morale's doing fine. There was a low point when I read the combat log and saw we only hit once. This coming turn, there might be a scenario in which I roll on a couple of 67%'s and I had become half-convinced that numbers had stopped mattering. Snapped out of it. PB41 was so rough because I didn't feel I had any goals to accomplish. Even in PB38, I could try to stay alive in the face of a Mack invasion. In this game, we've got plenty of goals.

You're right that winning is out of our hands, but as of right now, neither Magic Science nor B/GKC can win with what they've got. (I think. I hope.) So, as is the hope of middling powers pitbosses over, so long as we aren't holding the short straw, we can watch for the top powers to suffer a setback.

I was thinking about poker in another context, but it reminded me of this game. Imagine you're playing on some occasion, and someone routinely goes all in before the flop. Quite often, this player will win the antes as the rest of the table folds. Now imagine someone with pocket aces. They ought to call right? But I imagine they wouldn't be super excited to make that call since there's always the chance their aces turn out to be duds and the flop turns their opponent's off suit 69 into a full house. That's the last I'll say about the metagame of this invasion.

[Rusten]

It's an inexperienced field so there could definitely be possibilities, yeah. Hopefully MS and Boak/GKC will clash at some point as you say. Later on we can draft with aggressive promos, and let's not forget our UB either. Definitely fun to be had if we can gobble up Superdeath and avoid an immediate death afterwards.

Glad your spirits remain high, and in keeping with the poker talk, try not to tilt from the bad beats.

[naufragar]

As expected, Superdeath burned Scylla's Window and offered peace. Using the military advisor, I looked around. He made the moves I hinted he might when I said I might have to roll a couple of 67%'s. Remember when I said that our wounded axe on the gems had a 45% chance to kill his attacker? Guess what happened.


Woops. Wrong emote.

So, because I stacked units on the gems tile, the unit he attacked with first had to stay behind. He moved the axe and chariot out, which I wasn't sure he would do, so we attacked the unwounded axe at 68% odds (I said 67% before, but I'm bad at all this). But at long last, how do you think that attack turned out?


Did you forget our rule that Superdeath doesn't lose battles where his odds are better than 20% because he is the son of mighty Mars himself? Lost the 68%, but luckily the follow up axe had 99.9% odds and took no hits. Mighty Mars must have been napping, or something. So now we have two full health units, a shock axe and a c2 spear, across a river. SD's axe can probably promote to shock. The river crossing means that Superdeath has a 25% chance to kill the axe, so it's dead if he wants. The spear should be fine. I wonder if he'll accept peace or if we each keep logging in every turn and see that the other has done violence for which atonement calls. Pajarocu stands.

Oh wait. I forgot to mention. Pajarocu. Remember how I said his axe had a 4% chance of killing my defender there and "if he's rolling on 4%s with lone axes, he's not playing a civ game"? I forgot to take a picture of that part of the combat log, but he did in fact attack Pajarocu at 4% odds and lost his axe.

That's the last I'll say about the metagame of this invasion.

Not often I prove myself a liar within the space of an hour. Let's go back to poker: Superdeath attacked Pajarocu with a 4% chance to win. There are two explanations. The uncharitable one: Let's say his cat walked over his keyboard while playing. The charitable one: I read a poker rule of thumb once that said if your odds of winning match the percentage of the pot you'd need to bet, go ahead. So, if you only have a 1/50 chance of winning but you only need to put in 2% of the pot, go for it. I'm not actually a poker player, so I have no idea if this is good advice.    But it stuck with me. If Superdeath identified Pajarocu as our GE city and felt that unless we lost it, he was doomed, this 4% attack makes some sense. On the other hand, he would have needed to weigh the 4% chance of delaying our axes by about 8 turns (capital's forge) with having an intact axe. I'm a nice guy. I like to operate under the assumption that my opponents are the reincarnation of Napoleon. Maybe this is the last I'll say about the metagame of the invasion.

More good stuff overseas.


I put some signs in game for a dotmap, but I must've taken this pic first. I wonder how close the other continent is. Perhaps I should roll some maps.

Here's a domestic overview, and a question for Rusten.


Next turn I whip New Viron for its settler. It can found two turns after that if we're going for horses. Assuming Superdeath takes peace, should we go for the horses, especially given all my alarm bells about MSCC? Or should we use the enforced peace to plop a city right on the ruins of Scylla's Window? I can get roads in place to make that founding happen one turn after when we would've founded for horse.

More domestic stuff: I'm working some weird tile arrangments so I can two pop whip the cap's forge rather than 3-pop. Lander gets military police a turn or so late, but then contributes to units. We get Machinery on turn 90, so right now everybody has to be slow building units, so the slow builds can complete in time for the second round of production which is axe-->samurai whips. One silver lining of being forced to whip Pajarocu instead of chop its forge. Now those forests are intact with the forge bonus. Those 3 forests = 1 trebuchet.

[Rusten]

I was able to log in.

Did you re-offer a peace treaty to SD after mopping up units?

Lander: Permission to switch Lander to working clam over PH and switching production to axe. I realize you're doing it for happiness reasons, but shouldn't it be much better to 2-pop an axe instead? Whip unhappy is about to wear out as well. The overflow can finish the archer as the garrison unit. Please let me know what the plan is here, because its current tiles and builds makes no sense on its own. Until you reply I switched the fish to unworked clam [and gave capital fish over PH as it doesn't slow down 2-pop whip and is a much better tile]. If you're planning to 1-pop the archer into forge overflow hammers then that's a reasonable plan. I could get behind that. This city has sooooo much food and some hills so it will benefit from it fairly quickly. Needs the happiness too.

New Viron: Is working grassland  (yes, just grassland) over furs or loaning the mine in capital. Switching to furs at least as it can whip the settler next turn anyway.  If I had full control I would switch the furs to grass hill mine this turn and give the grass hill mine back to capital next turn. Capital still reaches 2-pop mark (45+6+9=60) on forge in 2 turns.

I'm very torn on your question on gems vs horse. Short term we really need the happiness, but giving up the horse spot is not fun either. Looking at our tile usage and struggles with happy caps I'd be inclined to re-settle gems. +1 and +2 in some cases would go a long way.

And lastly, I don't know if you were serious about the frozen Moai before, but it's usually better to get it in a city that has more land tiles and can produce it quickly. It will take too long in that tundra city.

edits:
Capital can squeeze out a settler before samurai. If the horse spot is still open I suggest to settle it then. If not, head overseas.
I made the decision to switch New Viron to hill. Capital works FP cottage this turn and switches back to hill next turn after New Viron is whipped. We don't need the furs commerce right now -- rather all the hammers. The extra food in capital speeds up regrowth and let's us get said settler before GE bulb.
The iron tile I talked about earlier shows only 2 hammers for us in yield when it should be 3, so I think my point stands and it proves SD does not have IW. But I can't guarantee it in this specific scenario and the parameters take some time to set up in WB.
If you can make a case for the happiness being available in time if we settle horse first and then gems with the capital settler you can convince me that's the best approach. I'm logging out now so I can't look into it until later, but if I had to pick just one city then the gems are far more important. I mean, we're taking SD's horses aren't we?

[naufragar]

I was able to log in.

Did you re-offer a peace treaty to SD after mopping up units?

Yes.

Lander: Permission to switch Lander to working clam over PH and switching production to axe. I realize you're doing it for happiness reasons, but shouldn't it be much better to 2-pop an axe instead? Whip unhappy is about to wear out as well. The overflow can finish the archer as the garrison unit. Please let me know what the plan is here, because its current tiles and builds makes no sense on its own. Until you reply I switched the fish to unworked clam [and gave capital fish over PH as it doesn't slow down 2-pop whip and is a much better tile]. If you're planning to 1-pop the archer into forge overflow hammers then that's a reasonable plan. I could get behind that. This city has sooooo much food and some hills so it will benefit from it fairly quickly. Needs the happiness too.

Go for it. (I wasn't working the clam? We got that this turn and I thought I started working both food tiles.) I'm not sure which archer you're referring to. The cap can straight 2-whip in a couple turns. I don't think Lander has time to get a forge. I'd like it to get an axe and samurai by itself to use for a naval invasion.

New Viron: Is working grassland   (yes, just grassland) over furs or loaning the mine in capital. Switching to furs at least as it can whip the settler next turn anyway.  If I had full control I would switch the furs to grass hill mine this turn and give the grass hill mine back to capital next turn. Capital still reaches 2-pop mark (45+6+9=60) on forge in 2 turns.

2 pop whip in RtR is only 50 hammers. The grassland was the weird tile assignment. I can't remember if working the furs slows down the settler whip. If it doesn't, I straight up missed it and we should be working that tile instead.

I'm very torn on your question on gems vs horse. Short term we really need the happiness, but giving up the horse spot is not fun either. Looking at our tile usage and struggles with happy caps I'd be inclined to re-settle gems. +1 and +2 in some cases would go a long way.

edits: Capital can squeeze out a settler before samurai. If the horse spot is still open I suggest to settle it then. If not, head overseas.

I'll think about horses vs. gems. Yeah, I'm very torn as well. We still have a turn to figure it out. I'll try to write up my thoughts.

And lastly, I don't know if you were serious about the frozen Moai before, but it's usually better to get it in a city that has more land tiles and can produce it quickly. It will take too long in that tundra city.

I wasn't serious about that, but given my other...interesting ideas, I can see why you might think that. Actuall, how do you feel about Lander for the Moai?

(Thanks for checking on all this. I know it's a lot of fiddling to do.)

[Rusten]

Go for it. (I wasn't working the clam? We got that this turn and I thought I started working both food tiles.) I'm not sure which archer you're referring to. The cap can straight 2-whip in a couple turns. I don't think Lander has time to get a forge. I'd like it to get an axe and samurai by itself to use for a naval invasion.
[...]
2 pop whip in RtR is only 50 hammers. The grassland was the weird tile assignment. I can't remember if working the furs slows down the settler whip. If it doesn't, I straight up missed it and we should be working that tile instead.

No, it was working 2x seafood and plains hill and is currently building an archer. I suggest you log back in and take a look to plan it. I didn't make any changes other than fish to idle clam.
You're right about the capital, but in that case whip it for 3 population. We have more food than we know what to deal with right now, so it's probably better to do it for 3 in any case. Whip overflow can be put into a settler for instance --> switch to axeman while growing --> whip settler.

edit: Also make sure to read my other edits.

[naufragar]

I logged back in and switched Lander from its plains hill mine to a grass forest. This puts 4 hammers into the axe, so it can be two pop whipped. As you say, this completes the archer on overflow. Planning is not my strong suit, but my plan for Lander is to produce those two units, grow back to four while putting hammers into a forge, switch to a settler at size 4 and two pop whip that. It will have enough hammers to get a samurai by our deadline, too. (I think.  )

The capital's more complicated. We can three pop whip the forge next turn. We grow back the turn after. I had wanted to start running an engineer at the capital as soon as possible. This gives us the best shot at an engineer if get a library in the capital. (I worry about trying to get the capital to do too much. We're going to need tons of units.) Running an engineer and making a settler seem like conflicting goals; I can grow to size 4 on an axe and whip a settler. This seems more important.

In order to respond faster, I'm not going to be exhaustive about horse vs. gems:
The whipping the above plan entails means happiness is crucial. (Plus poor Pajarocu still suffers.) In addition, gems would have 5 forests. We can chop the granary, while still having enough for the city to produce a samurai! (1 whip + 2 chops = 70 hammers.)

Horses would enable chariots. Since I expect Superdeath to field axes against us, this would be great. In addition, travel time to Superdeath is very long. Samurai reinforcements take forever, while some chariots do not.

The possibility of an extra samurai inclines me to the gems plan.

edit: Also make sure to read my other edits.

You're absolutely, 100% spot on when you point out that the map maker accidentally put our horses down south by Superdeath.

[Rusten]

If you're 2-pop whipping the axe and getting a settler then it should be better to stay on PH and manually build archer for 2 turns (with stagnate growth). At full food bar turn off avoid growth and switch to food tiles and put axe in queue (with less than 5 production). Whip 4-2 and put the overflow into settler. Finish archer before the city has grown back to size 4*. This has the benefit of reducing the amount of turns we're producing a settler and we whip the moment the whip unhappiness runs out. We should remove as many turns as possible where 1F = 1H.
If it grows too quickly to manually complete the archer (would only be by 1T I think if so) the axe can stay there until then. I'm not sure why we're putting hammers into a forge if we're not going to finish it?

IIRC Lander needs 10F to grow and has +5 if working the seafood and plains hill. That's why I advocate avoid growth. It will spend less turns below size 4 after whipping this way. But you can easily just grow and whip a turn sooner too, it's not a major difference. Just a little less efficient I believe. At any rate, axe overflow should go into a settler (if we're getting one), not the archer. This might have come out as a mess in written form, let me know if you're confused. But it needs to be done before MS ends the turn.

GPP in capital is a luxury and we're behind on our projections due to interference. If anything has to go then that would be first. But as soon as we're approaching unhappiness you should run it over FP cottages I think.

*IIRC it will be happy on size 3 even without military garrison.