A Record of Joey's Journey to Immortality

[GermanJoey]

T170.

Some good news and bad news these past couple of turns.

The good news is that my Forbidden Palace is pretty good, bringing in 36gpt pre-inflation (so, 45gpt). I'm feeling more confident that I might be able to outpace dtay economically in the long run now. GA will be in 3T to 5T, leaning on the 3T side, depending on what sorts of last minute whips I feel that I need to crank out. I'm also crushing dtay's Golden Age MFG now, up something like 35 hammers as some forges come online in China and those cities grow back up to their original populations.

The bad news is that when I said this:

I believe he's about to wardec Dark Savant any turn now, which is honestly fine with me. It'd be nice to snipe a city or two, but it looks like Gav is positioning to deny me that opportunity and as such I have no interest in getting tangled up in a war that won't help me win.

Man oh man was I off. Well... I was completely right when I said Gav was about to wardec DS (and on that very turn, in fact), but completely wrong when I implied that I didn't need to care about it! You see, I totally thought that DS would be able to put up some kind of resistance... like, at all. Kill a lot of units, make conquest slow and painful, drag Gavagai into War Weariness hell.

The events, as much as I can piece together: on T168, DS had a pretty large Knight stack (at least a dozen, IIRC) plus a dozen catapults on that front, plus assorted pikes, longbows, etc. His total power was about ~1M troops, according to my MS Paint math. He also has Castles in just about every city, plus the Chichen Itza. Gav, OTOH, invaded with a pretty huge stack - IIRC, around 20 Knights, 20 Jans, maybe 10 Trebs, plus whatever else was on Galleons wherever. His total power was about 1.25M or so. When I log in on T169... rival best power is still about 1.25M, but rival worst power is about 780k, and that's with 4-5 fresh new Knights whipped up in various Ethiopian cities. And I can't find DS's Knight/cat stack anywhere.

I don't know exactly this happened, but if I had to guess I think DS parked the whole stack on the diagonal behind the city, thinking that the castle would buy him a turn to barrage or whatever. (the cats weren't in range to hit on the first turn of the war) However, Gav probably had a Sentry Knight, saw the stack behind the city, and took it with Jans (which ignore walls/castles) after some mild treb losses. Then he used the city's road tile to obliterate the unupgraded stack. On T169, Gav had a 20 unit Knight stack thrust deep into DS's core, forking the Chichen Itza city and his capital. It appears that DS was able to stuff enough stuff in his capital to save it, but the Chichen Itza city has fallen.

So the question becomes, what the hell do I do now? DS has 19 cities, and it would be a huge disaster for me if Gav takes them all very quickly. OTOH, I really don't want to get tangled up too much in that business over there. Gav's peace treaty with dtay expires soon, and it would be much better if dtay and Gav get back into it against each other. So I don't want to wardec on Gavagai with the goal of "saving" DS. That would just be stupid. But I can't just cede 19 cities.

Now, theoretically, Chumchu should be able to at least take 3-4 cities on his side of Ethiopia's borders, but I have yet to see any movements from over there... perhaps Carthage is still tunnel-visioned on Krill. So perhaps I could just dive back in on DS to try to raze some cities if I can? How little can I commit for it to be worth the hassle? I don't want to move too much of my standing army away from Krill, as that guy would surely try to fuck around with me if he thinks that I've left an opening, and I don't want to go all-out on unit production again while trying to close the tech gap with dtay. =/ Like lets say I round up all my cats and swords, throw in a few lower XP Knights... could I raze maybe 3 cities this way? Is that worth some of Gav's emnity?

Well, something's gotta give somewhere, I just gotta figure out what I guess.

[GermanJoey]

T174.

MMMmmm. *licks lips*




I'm 99% sure that dtay is also sending a merchant of his own to my capital on a Galleon that just entered my territory, but I don't really want to wardec and kill it given that he just libbed steel this turn. I'm 3T from Chemistry myself, but I whipped a lot of triremes this turn (and then switched the cities over to wealth) so I'll have a bunch of Frigates all ready to go right away.

OH, and also:






Dat MFG.

A funny story. Like, I have a pretty good capital, right? And in a GA:




So, Bureau would net me +49 commerce per turn, +50% regardless of what slider I'm at. So, 73.5 beakers or gold per turn. However, it costs 66gpt more than Nationhood in maintenance, plus 18gpt from inflation. So Nationhood is actually the better economic civic.

Gavagai seems to have stalled out on DS, perhaps getting too greedy with his Knight stack. So I'm just gonna watch and wait for now.

[GermanJoey]

I've been arguing with Krill on Discord about his proposed 2.0.9.1 caravel/privateer change and IMHO he's completely in fantasy land. Apparently the changes are because he's somehow convinced that an early Astro bulb results in complete and total victory that an enemy is powerless to stop. And its extremely difficult to refute him using specific counterexamples (without being just as hand-wavy as he is, which just seems to lead us in circles. and y'all know both krill and i LOVE to be hand-wavy, and so our argument so far is so circular to make your head spin) without referring to PB37. So I'll do it here.. if anything, just to get it off my chest, I guess.

1.) The 3 players that got an early Astro bulb in PB37 all pretty much failed to accomplish anything. The two players that did not beeline Astro are the ones who jumped away from the pack. A big reason for this is because the amount of profit (i.e. land) one can obtain with a land invasion usually far exceeds that which one can win from a sea invasion.

2.) An Astro bulb is highly telgraphed to other players. For example, when Gav bulbed Astro, I whipped extra longbows, had longbows pre-built, and then kept a galley with 2 Knights and another galley with 2 longbows in the middle of my western sea to be available to reinforce against a potential invasion. Would I have taken some big losses and gnashed my teeth into powder? Absolutely. Would my entire western empire have collapsed though? No way.

3.) The Astro beeline yields no strong land units, so all you can put on your Galleons are Crossbows, Swords, and Trebs. Swords are pretty cost efficient, but can't do much against other Medieval units - Crossbows, Longbows, and Knights. Especially Knights, which would butcher any unit in that stack plus flank the seige to oblivion. Just a few knights - say, one galley snuck through plus a freshly whipped one - would knock that stack down really hard, at least to the point where advancing past an island or two would seem unlikely.

4.) Somehow Krill assumes that Gav didn't do much against dtay because of "bad tactics." I guess he thinks that dtay was somehow able to reinforce his cities with galleys? This definitely isn't the case, and IMHO, my opinion here is a little more accurate because I literally watched the war happen via EP-maphack! Gav's invasion failed because he forgot that fortfied CG3 longbows behind castle walls give a ridiculous +250% defensive bonus, and thus, even sacrificing seige for collateral, he was trading units 3:1 and thus was pretty much spent of units after just 3 islands. 

5.) Krill said that he thinks that the optimal naval invasion stack is literally 9 trebs, 1 cat, and hitters; I guess that means equal parts longbows and swords? (Of course, my saying "he thinks" is making it sound like he was humbly suggesting it, rather having the tone of an angry Severus Snape. ) So, assuming that we have two civs that are roughly equal at the end of the classical era, but then choose two different medieval tech paths, the other civ at this time has Knights and possibly even Engineering. Thus this invasion stack would get flanked to fuck and back by Knights, so invading a mainland with it would certainly fail. I agree that it could take islands, but, by the time you take one island and move on, the other islands are whipped down to the ground and flooded with Longbows. Longbows are still fierce enough defenders that you're gonna lose hitters even with the castle bonus stripped. So you're gonna end up with gaining 2-3 shitty islands and a bitter enemy for the cost of 2000 hammers worth of units and 2 Great Scientists.

6.) The above invasion stack is worth like 20 Knights worth of units. Like, its about as much hammers worth of invasion units as I had in total when I invaded Donovan... except that some of my units hadn't yet reached the front lines, so I actually invaded with less. At that time, I was by far the #1 in the world in soldier-count. In contrast, the 3 Astro rushers were far behind in soldier count, especially Krill, who had maybe half my power rating at that time. (which is the reason I assume Carthage thought it would be a good idea to invade him!) So somehow Krill is assuming that he has all these units built and at his coastline (which conveniently has 7 cities capable of producing Galleons) at the moment he gets Astro? No way! Pure fantasy. If he could have produced all these units he wouldn't have had any problems with Carthage and coulda taken Donovan 20 turns before I did.

7.) Krill dismisses massed Caravels against rushed Galleons, but I think he's overly assuming his specific situation in PB37, where he had both Theo and Vassalage. First of all, if someone is rushing Astro out-of-sequence, so to speak, they aren't gonna have either of those civics. Secondly, Caravels cost 50 to a Galleon's 80, so a defender that knows that a rush is coming (again, because the bulb shows up in the scoreboard) should be able to produce 2 Caravels for every Galleon. The Galleon stack will probably be OK if it stays together, but if it stays together then it can't block galleys from reinforcing its target. Furthermore, a massive Caravel stack can guard galleys effectively because the Galleons can't risk attacking the Caravels; first of all, the Galleons are needed to carry cargo, and thus the risk is higher if they die, and second of all, the coast bonus alone pushes the odds too close towards the Caravels.

All this on top of the fact that a player with Astro *SHOULD* have an advantage over a player without Astro on a watery map!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's the damn "Water Tech" on a water map! Its super expensive and you have to give up a lot of other stuff to get it, so if a player ignores that fact it should be a huge risk!! They should feel like they're on their back foot on an edge of a cliff when those dreaded Galleons come into view! All the proposed RtR 2.0.9.1 does is make Astro completely ignorable on maps like this one. It would take weirder maps like PB27, with this huge New World islands, to make getting that tech early be worth it at all.

[mackoti]

I totaly agree with you joey about what you wrote and i even asked someoene showing a game which was won by this astro bulb.Nothing.But you know krill likes to make the game to be good for his game style.

[The Black Sword]

I'm not bothered figuring out the changes to see if I think they're good or bad but I agree I've never really noticed a problem with an Astro beeline in the first place.

Still enjoying the thread btw. 

[OT4E]

When Krill gets some idea he doesnt listen to others much. I agree that there is nothing wrong in Astro beelining. With the same reasoning you can say that Guilds beelining is too good and knights must have some nerfes. I wait till he proposes to give catapults + 150 attack against knights or something like that.

[Ichabod]

RtR has become like DotA and LoL, where the changes seem to be more for the sake of "creating a new metagame" than due to needed balance changes. I don't feel like playing RtR games anymore, but, unfortunately, it's staple in big games due to the civ/traits balance changes. It's a pity that has to come with all the changes to civics, buildings and a lot more.

[pindicator]

I'll add my agreement to the chorus. Except I could stand to see naval movement toned down. Or maybe my beef is just with navigation promotions, I don't know.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Joey, I agree with virtually everything you posted. My beef has always been with the inherent 10% defender's advantage at sea. Why should that be the case? Is the defender always fighting with the wind and sun at his back, sails full and enemies' eyes blinded? What ever happened to the concept of initiative in battle? If anything, there should be a 10% malus for uncertainty defending against the attacker, but I certainly don't need to see that modded in.

[GermanJoey]

Thanks fellas.

For those just tuning in, the changes are here: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8966

And, most relavant to this discussion are these lines in the changelog:

Privateer, available at Gunpowder, require Compass, [Copper or Iron]. Strength 6, 4 move, Hidden Nationality, Can Attack without Declaring War. Cost 80 (only change from current stats are tech requirements and loss of sentry).
Galleon, available at Astro, strength 4, 4 move, carries 4 land units. Cost 80 (gains 1 transport capacity)
Caravel, available at Optics, strength 3, 3 move, has +135% attack against privateers. Cost 50 (I checked combat calculator, needs to be +135% otherwise C2 privateers get odds on defense, so this is a nerf to CHM specifically)

Ichabod, I don't think Krill is trying to mix up the meta just for its own sake, but trying to fix what he genuinely perceives as a balance problem... his latest post states that he thinks we may have been misunderstanding him, and that he's not trying to nerf the Astro buff but rather trying to make Astro less of a "lose button" for other players? I'm sympathetic to that problem in general (i.e. with the Protective trait), but I can't see it here. I agree with him that it's very expensive to defend against Galleons with Caravels, but then again... its just as you say, OT4E, it's really difficult and expensive to defend against Knights with spears and longbows, same with Muskets against Rifles, etc. And defending against Galleons isn't even as bad as those examples because the invader has to use some of their production to like, actually make land units to put on their boats.

And BGN, yes!! It's also a big reason barb galleys are so incredibly obnoxious! Get rid of the coastal defense bonus all together, IMHO, and you'd have more dynamic naval combat in the first half of the game!! There's already a precedent of all multi-move land units not gaining defensive bonuses, except for a few specific UUs.