[SPOILERS] Dazed and scooter play Stalin of Vikings and make a big mess

[SevenSpirits]

I don't think the world will ever again see such appropriate application of Stalin of the Vikings.

[scooter]

Always fun to watch some pillaging and burning, nice job. :war2:

Well thanks, glad you're enjoying it! It's even more fun to play. I can't underscore enough how enjoyable it is to combine 3-move galleys with Amphibious killing machines.

I don't think the world will ever again see such appropriate application of Stalin of the Vikings.

Thanks . I was pretty unhappy with our luck on the civ/leader draw and I felt we had gotten one of the worst combinations. And in a vacuum, that may still have been true. However, it's been fun trying to leverage what we've been handed - Aggressive, Industrious, Vikings, stone, and islands. My only regret is the 0 happiness thing - even a gems + a calendar would have put us in dramatically better shape. Our two obstacles to victory are: A) no happies and B) Krill apparently lapping the rest of the field except for maybe Egypt. We're working on A, not sure we can do anything about B before the Modern era at which point it's too late.

That reminds me, I want to talk a bit about victory conditions. [EDIT: Y'okay this got long, so I'm going to branch it into a new post so you don't freak when you see a wall of text]

[scooter]

Ok, victory conditions. The main problem we have is we just don't have a viable victory condition that doesn't involve tons of wars. Our options:

Conquest - yeah no, not happening.
Cultural - would seem perfect, except it's terrible for us. We're using a ton of GP slots on non-artists, so that's one problem. The second is that having Legendaries that are accessible by sea is the 100% worst thing ever. That's just asking for it. So this just is not feasible for us IMO even though we are otherwise set up for it fairly nicely with multiple religions, shrine, wonders, etc.
Domination - See: Conquest except 15% more feasible.
Space - Our "best" option - aka the default for everyone. Problem is, space is really difficult too. Some reasons:

1) I think late-game teching will be slower than pre-RB Mod. See, there's 2 things going on here. First, tech trading is ON. To counter-act that though, modern techs are much more expensive. Also, there's a significantly higher "known research" boost in the modern era. (I know I'm repeating myself, I just repeat some of these changes occasionally in case you're just tuning in.) This makes me think later-era teching will still be a bit slower, and I would think this is logically an advantage for anyone who is aiming for a cultural win which we can't attempt.

2) Where are we going to get our production from? We have an islands-centric empire which is fairly sucky for production. Obviously we'll want to aim for State Property and go full-blown workshop economy, but is that going to be able to produce enough hammers? Someone on land can also go State Property and yet have the advantage of far more land tiles that they can workshop. Can we keep up?

3) We are again vulnerable to capital razes in space race for the same reason a cultural team is vulnerable. This is less of a concern since we'll have +1 movement and possibly another +1 if we get circumnav (probably will if there's no galley passage which I doubt there is), but it's still a big concern.

4) Because of reasons outlined in #1, I believe our tech lead will thin at a much more rapid pace than you'd expect normally. Often (LP in PB4 for example) you see someone hit the "point of no return" where they're so far ahead they are not really beatable. I don't think this is nearly as possible here, and it certainly isn't without happy sources. So yeah, our one primary advantage is much harder to exploit long-term IMO.

5) Where do we get our tech after Astronomy? By that I mean, will full-blown specialists + workshops + Representation be enough? Or will it crash and burn against those with cottages and considerably more land + luxuries than us (Krill, Nakorazul). Hard to say. Nospace's PBEM17 game was pretty instructive, but this map is a bit different in that it's not nearly as food-rich, so I'm skeptical that we can stretch it as far as they did.

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So yeah, a lot of bumps in the way of us actually winning, and none of this is to say anything about Krill's consistent domination of the demographic screen. So I've been trying to think lately on how to actually go about giving us the Best Chance To Win to go all NFL coach-speak on you. Here's my rough thoughts on a long-term gameplan. Highly subject to change.

1) Neutralize Brick/Mist. We don't need full conquest ASAP, we just need him completely neutered so we can continue pushing across the islands without worrying about a stack coming from the guy with nothing to lose. This has been my fear for awhile - when you are hopelessly behind and you have a neighbor with shiny things and a promising future and nothing better to do... Why not go all-out on military and see if you can conquest him? It's the reason I've noted the bad track record of Pyramids builders in Pitboss games (I was having that discussion in my 32 thread ironically as I was building it here so I clearly ignored my own advice ). More players = more opportunities for someone to aim at that target on your back. Anyways, if we can take maybe 2 cities quickly and neutralize the rest, we can gradually kill him while still maintaining expansion. How to best do this? Continue strangling him as we are. We're about to finish Construction. We'll build 2 catapults from Baskervilles + Redhead (essentially our two primary military pumps) as soon as that comes in, wheel them up to Goosegrass, and that'll be it. We'll just hold down that big garrison there by forking with Galleys while killing other stuff. The southern two Berserkers can choke his capital fearlessly (You aren't killing Cover Zerks on a hill with the stuff he has in a million years). They might even be able to take his capital. So this is phase 1, and it's in progress.

2) REX across the islands heading north and then southwest. The goal is to claim the Marble, which is quite a ways away and is probably easier to reach for Nakor. The Marble would be for Taj primarily. If we miss on it, we hopefully would engineer Taj instead. The goal would be to get Taj golden age + great person + MoM for long golden age, revolt to Caste during GA and go to town on scientists in a few cities. Pretty standard play, but it's the right one for us. This would let us tech quite far. This would lead nicely into phase 3.

3) Execute semi-modern invasion of the continents. This would likely be the east continent as it's closer, but this could possibly be the west continent where Yuris is and all that. Hopefully we can get some CR3 Zerks out of the deal which we would upgrade to Infantry. Honestly, CR3 Amphibious Infantry is 40% cheating and 60% awesome, especially if your target only has longbows/muskets. HOPEFULLY this would get us a much greater amount of land to be a bigger factor in the late game and increase our chances of having success aiming at space.

4) During phase 3 especially, go hardcore on the State Property workshop economy. It's probably perfect for us in this game. Use this to gear up for modern-era warfare.

5) If/When we feel comfortable with the land we have, make the mad dash for Space and hope we've done enough.

This is all very rough and fuzzy, but it's what I've been mulling over lately, and this seems like as good a time as any to get it into writing which helps me think through it better. It'll assuredly be modified a million times, but I need a base plan. We'll see how it goes.

[scooter]

In actual game-news, Mist whipped two more times just now according to Civstats. They were 2 pt and 3pt whips. I believe this means they were both 1-pop whips, one from a sz2 city and one from a sz3 city. Interestingly, that means he did NOT whip the sz5 capital. I suspect this is because he realizes it's in quite a bit of danger and is building a Vulture there and therefore needs enough hammers to 2-pop it or something.

[scooter]

Our situation. South:



Had to take a look at the capital. That's a bit light. Maybe we can get him to pull back his defense. Did some talking with Dazed - we're probably going to go load back up and cut copper or something instead. We'll see. We don't actually need to get to the copper city, just need to cut the route. The north, first is crab:



That's some impressive unit spam there. Those warriors will be some nice free XP. This city will be tricker since it's on a hill, but we still can get pretty decent odds. Kinda sucks that he has a medic in there - that's a very smart play since that warrior is useless on actual defense. Well done by Brick/Mist. Goose:



Construction in EoT. We have a rough plan in place now for an attack. Hopefully Brist doesn't pull something clever and throw it off, but we have a lot of visibility so we shouldn't get any surprises. We have 3 galleys with 6 Zerks able to attack both north cities. 5 of the Zerks are at 3/2XP, one is 4/2 XP. So all 6 have one promo available after the inherent Amphib + C1. We're debating pretty extensively on what promotion route to go. For instance, shock is the best for clearing the Vultures, but will shock make an archer top defender? Maybe? Is it worth the risk when we could just get CR instead and work down the awesome CR line? Do we just go combat instead? These are the things we're walking through right now. Our feeling right now is CR is the way to go, primarily because the CR line is just awesome. But we'll see. Would be tempting to use just one shock on a Zerk.

[dazedroyalty]

I think if we want to cut copper we will need to unhook it because he has sailing. So, unless we cut roads AND blockade he'll still have it. I don't think we should use our galley to blockade.

[novice]

2) Where are we going to get our production from? We have an islands-centric empire which is fairly sucky for production. Obviously we'll want to aim for State Property and go full-blown workshop economy, but is that going to be able to produce enough hammers? Someone on land can also go State Property and yet have the advantage of far more land tiles that they can workshop. Can we keep up?

3) We are again vulnerable to capital razes in space race for the same reason a cultural team is vulnerable. This is less of a concern since we'll have +1 movement and possibly another +1 if we get circumnav (probably will if there's no galley passage which I doubt there is), but it's still a big concern.

2) I've yet to see hammers being the limiting factor in a space race.

3) Or just move the capital inland. The palace is a cheap building in the modern age.

[scooter]

I think if we want to cut copper we will need to unhook it because he has sailing. So, unless we cut roads AND blockade he'll still have it. I don't think we should use our galley to blockade.

Will that actually work for him? If so, yeah, that's a problem. We can't actually sail to the copper city - too far away.

2) I've yet to see hammers being the limiting factor in a space race.

3) Or just move the capital inland. The palace is a cheap building in the modern age.

2) Yeah you're right on that one.

3) Yeah sure, assuming we have enough of land for something like that that'd probably be my response. That and prebuilding palaces everywhere and all that stuff. That's why it's less of a concern as the culture thing, but still a concern since we'll have far less land on an major continent than the others.

In more current news, Krill lifted a city off Azza. And kept it. Not what I wanted to see on Civstats. All we need is Krill capturing land from somebody. Just got to hope people around him intervene at some point.

[Merovech]

I don't think the world will ever again see such appropriate application of Stalin of the Vikings.

Haha, that was my thought too when I read Scooter's post. Especially with the whole sacrificing population to build an army.

[scooter]

Ok, that went pretty much exactly as planned. Our luck was pretty average if not a tiny bit above, so things went smoothly. First, the Crab defense:



Pretty similar. Next, our target, the Goose defense:



He added a vulture which is disappointing, but that Vulture will have no fortify bonus, so we need to get a move on before more units come and/or fortify bonuses increase. Also, in the turn split we've been going first, so I went ahead with it. I decided to promote everything with City Raider. The cool thing is that EVERY unit that survives the attacks will get to promote to CR2 next turn, which is awesome. Like I said, my initial unpromoted odds were 34.5%. What were my CR1 odds?



Solid, I'll take it. Attack, and WIN! No more C1 vultures, next is 2 unpromoted Vultures. Next attack odds:



Wow, his C1 promo sure didn't do much - just 4%. Well, we lost this one . That's ok though, we won the third Vulture fight. Then I expected the 4th Vulture to be next, but apparently the three archers were better with their fortify bonus than a new Vulture with no fortify bonus, as the archer came next:



86.6%? Works for me! Attacked the three archers with my remaining 3 vultures and won all 3 of them . Here is the complete attack breakdown:

C1 Vulture 67.4%: WIN
Vulture 71.7%: LOSS
Vulture 71.7%: WIN
CG1 Archer 86.6%: WIN
Archer 87.5%: WIN
Archer 87.5%: WIN

I lose one Zerk and kill 2 Vultures and 3 archers, and badly wound a third vulture. Pretty good. Resulting battlefield:



I've edited in both sets of units, so look closely and you see his and mine. As you see, I'll get CR2 on everything next turn. His fresh Vulture will probably cost us a unit as it'll get C1, though actually we may still get >50% odds with CR2 healing on the 6.6health unit. Also, I've moved an additional Zerk forward so I can replace the dead one next turn. Very happy about this turn, Goosegrass will be controlled by Vikings next turn unless Mist pulls something slick to get extra units in.