[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[DaveV]

To make matters worse, I suddenly got a "brothers and sisters of the faith" anger.

That's wild. I always thought that was only from two civs with the same state religion fighting. No idea where that's coming from.

I think it's a city by city thing; if a city owned by you contains your opponent's state religion, you can have the unhappiness.

Edit: so in your example, the problem is that your city contains Taoism, which is Bing's state religion. I don't think it matters how much fighting you've done, just the fact that you're at war. Bonus points for him having the holy city?

[Commodore]

Confucianism is the culprit, yes.

Appreciate the reporting in the dogpile. I know it is stressful, but what direction are you looking to push?

[scooter]

To make matters worse, I suddenly got a "brothers and sisters of the faith" anger.

That's wild. I always thought that was only from two civs with the same state religion fighting. No idea where that's coming from.

I think it's a city by city thing; if a city owned by you contains your opponent's state religion, you can have the unhappiness.

Edit: so in your example, the problem is that your city contains Taoism, which is Bing's state religion. I don't think it matters how much fighting you've done, just the fact that you're at war. Bonus points for him having the holy city?

Yeah I was mostly wondering if the actual combat triggered it or simply the state of being at war with Bing. I think the latter, but the former would be much funnier in a sad sort of way. "I killed a Caravel and all I got for it was a dead frigate and an angry citizen in my best city."

Confucianism is the culprit, yes.

Appreciate the reporting in the dogpile. I know it is stressful, but what direction are you looking to push?

My strong suspicion is the player I need to convince is Yuris. I think he's the only one left trying to win. SD's heart does not look in it. He's whipping, but he's playing fairly quick turns. He definitely looks like he intends to swipe at me and with a significant force, but it doesn't feel like significantly more than that. And he lacks the well-promoted Privateer buildup Yuris has done which limits how much he can actually advance. Unfortunately though, I think his exit from 81 was bad for me as it brought some of his attention back to this game.


But I think if I can shatter Yuris' belief that he can make gains, or at least stall him out, I think he'll tap out, and nobody else will protest. It's possible I'm wrong in some assumptions here, but it seems the most likely.

[scooter]

Another extremely tense turn. Most noteworthy, I discovered why SD stopped whipping the last couple of turns. He completed Chemistry at the end of his last turn. So he is technically at tech parity with me for a brief moment. Well, sort of. I am adding Frigates to that front as fast as I can, but I'm also adding a SotL to give me a trump card. So ok, not at tech parity. Again, mostly looking for a stalemate on that front. The Yuris front is where the real action is happening.


There was no combat from either of us last turn, but he's preparing a punch.





That is 4 Galleons preparing to aim at S Island next turn. More on that later.





However, I've kept advancing my boats. The key choice here was to stuff a Frigate into both bay tiles west of Nagoya. That is because he has plenty of workers available to complete the Fort, and this blocks that. Now, there is still one danger here which is the possibility he has preforted the Lumbermill 1NW of Nagoya, so I need to leave a tiny bit more in reserve than I'd like. I did spy him parked on that tile once or twice, so I strongly suspect he's holding that play in reserve. Also, Satsuma is where his recovering boats are harbored up with a relatively light garrison.


At this point I'm eying the question mark tile just south of Nagoya. This would let me threaten both cities. The puzzle I had to figure out was if it was possible to defend the Galleons and my cities all at once. If so, I could throw a nasty threat at him. The Frigate moving up near Nagoya was the last piece of this puzzle. If there were 5-move Privateers on that tile it could spell trouble, but there were not. I still need to cover the Galleons of course, but I need less coverage this way. So let's dial up a threat and see what he does.





6 Grens - including the 3 that were all completed islands away last turn - all here and ready to go. If Satsuma is not reinforced, this would be enough to raze it for sure, especially because at least one of these Grens can take Amphibious. Of course, he can cover it. I'm reasonably confident Nagoya's boats are pretty full, for example. But I want to force him back. I can bring even more units to the party if my defense needs are lessened, for example. But right now his Galleon threat is causing me to have to think hard every turn.


Really interested to see how he responds. I don't actually need to make gains here, but I'd prefer the fighting take place 5+ tiles from my cities so that they aren't constantly under threat. This does that. Also, he's going to have to make a stand somewhere. If I'm allowed to truly consolidate, I can keep on the pressure. In fact, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out one additional option I have.

This is more or less what I mean by forcing him to back off. If he decides to keep his Galleons in Nagoya and continue threatening, I can go for the throat. It's not the most likely scenario.


Now, I am far from cocky here. It's entirely possible he's found an angle I've missed here, or there's a fogged tile I didn't consider, etc. So we'll see what happens. I'm nervous for sure. I could easily just do here what I did on the SD front and stick all these Grens in front cities and dare him to try to crack them. But I need to either shatter morale or get someone out of the war, and Yuris makes more sense on a few levels. (Some factors too are pure logistics - I'm sort of running an East Empire and a West Empire in some respects and they don't have equal military output or tactical options.)





I decided not to reinforce S Island despite the fact that I absolutely could have with one of those Galleons. I also had a Gren in the queue there partially complete I could have whipped and opted to complete the Frigates in both. I'm basically calling his bluff here and telling him I do not believe he's got enough. I'm assuming 4 boats full of his best units, so I ran 12 Samurai through vodka Amphibiously attacking, and they get absolutely slaughtered by my well-promoted and fortified defenders. So he cannot do that and would need to land, which to be fair, it appears he plans to do based on placement.


So if he lands, I can upgrade both Crossbows to Grens and whip the partial Gren to completion to get to 5, all the while using the fresh Frigates to kill off the incoming boats to keep it a one-way trip. I'm pretty sure the city holds in that situation, though it would depend on the actual unit mix which is a total unknown. So I've decided to bet that this play won't work for him. He does have a Caravel, so he's got perfect vision, so he may well come to the same conclusion and simply defend his core instead. But if so, mission accomplished? I want to condense the fighting to a smaller area.





On an extremely minor note, I came up with a way of convincing Bing to sign peace. How about a single Frigate sailing up and down his coast and pillaging every single seafood he's got? His best units are Caravels. His presence in the war is purely ceremonial, but I'd like to at least take him off my brain. Speaking of Caravels, I've killed around 10 from all 3 dogpilers over the last few turns. It's been nice to do a little purge. A fun mini-game has been hunting them down. Also lets me farm some more GG XP.





Can see my military spike despite the bad turn where I lost like 5 Frigates.

[scooter]

That is 4 Galleons preparing to aim at S Island next turn. More on that later.

I probably should have taken a shot at this with my Privateer. I have been dancing out of sight and trying not to lose it as it's also watching SD too. However, those two Galleons are uncovered and surely both full, so I would have had a good odds chance at killing 4 units. Oh well.

[Zed-F]

Ok, I guess we’ll see what kind of dice Yuris would like to throw here. I would have said overall he seems kind of conservative strategically but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be conservative tactically. He did risk a bunch of fights with our initial frigate wave despite not-great odds and got away with it, so he might decide to press his luck with the attack on S island. Hopefully this time his lucky streak doesn’t repeat itself, if he does.

[Tarkeel]

Been a bit busy the last few days.

2) Offered peace in exchange for me giving him all 3 of those cities and 9k gold via 900gpt . Honestly I might have considered it for all 3 cities, honestly. But 9k gold is hilarious.

SD does have quite the history of hilariously bad-faith peace offers. Back in PB58 when he was upgrading frigates to destroyers to the tune of 2K gold per turn, only to have them be immediately sunk, he wanted me to pay him 2K gpt for peace. I think it was worth the attempt to offer Bawaiting though.

As a practical issue, I am 12 days away from a Civless 1 week trip. The plan was for Tarkeel to sub, but I am not wild about having a sub during game-deciding dogpile war turns unless Tarkeel is excited about the prospect. So it looks like a one week pause is coming up.

While I am available to play these turns, I do agree that it's not a good time to swap drivers.

Most importantly, I have a large decision to make next turn. I have plenty of gold in the bank to turn tech back on. I can 2T Steel, or I can 3T Physics. My feeling has been Steel all along. But now I think I should do Physics. I think Airships would be more immediately useful. Drydocks are huge, but they take some turns to pay back. 2-3 Airships would make a world-changing difference on both fronts in terms of vision and the ability to pre-chip defending boats when attacking. Basically, I think it will help me make better decisions immediately while also improving my odds for some fights. As a result, I think I should go Physics first. Any strong feelings?

My vote is for airships first, they are absolutely amazing. Scouting missions are just plain broken, and while they can only bombard units down to 80%, that's still pretty huge due to how Civ4s combat works.

[scooter]

Need a little timeout here.





I saw Bing's post mentioning he had a rules question and the lurker thread lit up, and when I logged in I noticed this. I figured it must be related to this. I thought his war involvement was not serious, but it appears he intends to kamikaze his boats at my Frigates or something?


I was surprised at this given Yuris has fought with him throughout this game and generally ruined his game. And then I noticed he is gifting Yuris 30 gold/turn. WTF? I think he paid Yuris off at one point earlier in the game, which fair enough, but that was ages ago. It seems not quite right that a guy still ages from Astro is just going to fund other players. What are we doing here?

[scooter]

I was surprised at this given Yuris has fought with him throughout this game and generally ruined his game. And then I noticed he is gifting Yuris 30 gold/turn. WTF? I think he paid Yuris off at one point earlier in the game, which fair enough, but that was ages ago. It seems not quite right that a guy still ages from Astro is just going to fund other players. What are we doing here?

Uhhhh, Superdeath is gifting him 100gpt too? Ok, officially would like an explanation. I know that wasn't there as recently as 3-4T ago as I have been checking superdeath's diplo trades regularly because I'm paranoid he's going to attack me via Cairo's borders or something

[Zed-F]

Um, isn't gold gifting generally frowned upon? What could SD have bought for that price?