[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Coeurva]

Imagine what these will do once we reach Nationhood! We'll never run out of multipliers!

[Coeurva]

T149

Krill has three galleons east of Bracken (NavI, C2, unpromoted), two in the center between Foxglove and Bracken (C2 both), one next to Foxglove (C2). I've unloaded our units into various cities (Mandrake, Chehalis, Sweet Water) to protect them from the counterstrike (one of the galleons east of Bracken must hold three swords; another one must be empty, because Krill put three lbows into the city in their stead). The galleons near Bracken would have been out of sight if not for our sentry units.

Most of our galleons can't be hit by Krill; one can (just south of Chehalis), but our entire fleet (including the classical junk) is in range to retaliate if Krill attacks it. We can whip another three galleons next turn, but I think it simply won't be enough in the long run; Krill has eight operational ports and we have three. Unless Gavagai attacks him, he can simply outproduce us and taking Mandrake has barely alleviated this problem.

Savant fired another Golden Age, which could mean a knight buildup. Of yet greater concern is that Joey has declared war on Donovan.

Seeing that, I've offered peace to Krill. He has to keep Joey in check, and he might consider Mandrake not too steep a price for him to pay if he can capture some of Donovan's cities. He can always come back after us later. Of course, we'll use our units to try for Donovan's seaboard (at least the stone island) should we obtain peace here. I'd prefer to focus on our economy and defense against Savant now. If Krill wants to fight it out, we'll carefully try for Bracken as planned, and pour more defenses into Mandrake.

dtay has Engineering; there's a castle in Cuckhokia. Gavagai has surpassed us in soldiers.

The situation is laughably awful. While I'm still convinced that Krill would have attacked us via galleons in a few turns anyway, we're basically as dead in the water as Mongolia is. If Krill doesn't take peace, we'll try to play defensively, with a cautious effort to take (maybe raze) Bracken to salvage our all-too wide frontline. Even that might not be possible. The strategy would shift to hoping for Gavagai to bail us out before Krill gets 25 galleons while we have 15, and can do whatever he wants to do.

JR4 isn't trying to attack us. The garrison in Nambui is minimal and there are no ships around (Savant's city of Tularian Forest blocks the naval access to Nambui from Mongolia's northern half entirely; incidentally, Vulcania still hasn't claimed its first ring). He has also taken off his EP spending on the same turn that we declared on Krill.

[Bacchus]

the situation is laughably awful

Yeah, once Krill has made a strong play for this sea, the game was pretty much lost for both of us -- we have to push strongly against him to make him pay for expansion and maintain what hold over the sea we have, he has to defend the holdings now that the cost is irrecoverable. The amount of hammers sunk on this theatre (even just the triremes he whipped) is ludicrous, and it also meant that he failed to absorb China, whilst we failed to slow dtays advance into Russia. At the same time, I'm not sure what we could have done differently -- we had nothing to gain in Russia, whilst being passive navally would have placed us at even bigger strategic disadvantage than the one we have now. Krill, on the other hand, had a clear alternative -- use the Heroic Epic and Agg land units and go conquer China already. GJ was never running high power to threaten a counter-attack, Krill scored the Music artist to protect borders, but instead he decided to engage in race that neither side can really win. Maybe he hoped that being obstinate would suffice, but does it ever?

[Bacchus]

But really, the fact that we are fighting, rather than allied, and the fact that we are de facto allied with GJ, is a major diplomatic disaster. Especially as from way back when we both registered that we have to confront GJ, not ally with him. It's worth considering exactly what blew us off this path. Well, of course, Krill making a strategic choice to expand into sea and confront us instead of expanding into China and confronting GJ is kinda a big factor, it will be very interesting to find out post-game how that decision went and whether we could have done anything to sway it.

We did fuck up I think in signing OB with Joey whilst making zero diplomatic overtures to Krill and interpreting his overtures as "OMG he is testing out, let's not play his game". Straightforwardly accepting his map trade offer at start might have helped.

[Coeurva]

I think Krill's decision to push expansion in his western sea didn't differ much from ours. At the time we met him, he was weakened by Ventessel's attack, held six cities (when we had nine or ten) and was just about to settle Bates Motel, his first island and current Moai city. Afterwards, he settled three islands in a row. I think his plan was to prioritize "peaceful expansion" (really, a contradictio in adiecto) because a war against Donovan would have left his southern border underdefended, unless he had built so many units that his economy would simply not have been able to keep up; both Gavagai and Joey had stronger economies than him at that point. The problem is, as you've noted, that in settling food-rich sites so far towards us, he essentially took away what we need to keep winning chances in any case.

I do believe that he had wanted a trade of maps to feel out how much of an interest we had taken in this sea, and that accepting would only have accelerated his expansion.

One could claim that weakening Russia for dtay's larger profit early on was a mistake, but then you have to consider that dtay was fighting off CML and JR4's attacks early in the game; suppose they had managed to fully cripple or even consume him instead -- now we're confronting a strong Russia to our south whose coastal cities, being not completely covered in jungle unlike our sites there, would have ensured that they settle the same islands we're fighting Krill over as it is, while our Heroic Epic city comes out much worse, we don't have a canal to connect the seas, and are left to defend a front of two flatland cities against knight forks. That war was ill-planned in the specific draw-up -- but not, strategically, ill-advised.

If anything, we didn't concentrate on building up to absorb Yuri fast enough afterwards, but then again, we might only have ended up being the target of dtay's Colossus + GA to Guilds beeline strategy instead, and either Savant gets to fire dual MoM golden ages at 20+ cities rather than 15, or Joey takes the islands we obtained. None too auspicious, either.

But really, the fact that we are fighting, rather than allied, and the fact that we are de facto allied with GJ, is a major diplomatic disaster. Especially as from way back when we both registered that we have to confront GJ, not ally with him. It's worth considering exactly what blew us off this path.

Essentially, the need to have a free hand against our targets (Russia, Ethiopia, Inca), since our northwestern isles are difficult to defend from Joey; even now, Boneless Foals is vulnerable to a concentrated effort, while Regna is another drain on defensive resources where I'm glad that Joey isn't aggressively running ships around its borders.

As far as I'm concerned, our alliance with Joey was always going to be brittle, and would probably end the minute he attacked Donovan or JR4. Indeed, if Krill signs peace, since I'm planning to move against Donovan's seaboard to deny these cities to Joey, I think we're not going to be allies for much longer. Frankly, the sole reason we still have OB is that he has deals with dtay anyway, pays us 6gpt for the privilege, and his tall cities provide very juicy trade routes, but then so do Gavagai's.

Right now, everything is already geared and destined for eventual war with Joey. But without a much larger fleet, we can't make progress against him; as with dtay, there's simply nothing close to us that we can attack profitably. It's possible to raze Seven Mysteries from the fog with six-move galleons if he gets careless, but that's essentially it. The city east of Regna makes no sense to take, since it will never get its food resources from the bog of Greek culture. See also: JR4's rather sad token of Vulcania from his brief war with Savant, who makes an effort to prove himself the real master at culture-trolling in this game, odeons be damned (I hope Free Haven holds its second ring against Portsmith, because Joey really doesn't need to have a 20fpt city).

Bizarrely, what I want right now is an alliance with Dark Savant, Krill and JR4 against Joey, no matter that we've taken cities off the first two. I hope that neither bears a grudge in-game, rather than seeing the point that we had to take some cities simply to claim our "natural borders" against some forward plants for excellent cities (Regna, Mandrake), but I can understand if they do (Savant is probably building up against us -- but he has a good reason to retake Portsmith and possibly even go beyond that, too). In the same vein, I could have understood Joey aiming for Boneless Foals and Sherrissack earlier in the game, or Savant for Stygian Terrace.

[Bacchus]

Going back to tactical considerations, we should probably try to place a couple of C2-sparepromo knights in Mandrake. They are pretty much as good as Longbows on defence, much more resilient, and they can counter-attack anything that lands, especially if that something is loaded with CR promos, while dealing flanking damage to siege. Once time comes, spare promo can be converted to Amphibious, or get used earlier for healing or otherwise.

[Coeurva]

T150

Agree on the knights, we have Vermin set on that (I think it builds 6 knights every 7t, or something to that effect). There are four 8XP C2 Shock NumCav sitting around in Chehalis for similar reasons (it's within range. Everything is within range)

Krill's response to the peace treaty was "nah I think I'm good, have fun with 4XP galleons" as far as AI diplo allows to make this clear. He even made sure to demand the world map along with everything else (but not the cities, that would have been illegal!). He now has two galleons at Foxglove (one whipped last turn) and five galleons (three C2) 3 of Bracken, which I'm guessing he still assumes we can't see, but in any case, they fork three of our cities for amphibious assault. Which isn't such an issue right now unless we move units out, which we kind of have to unless we just want to stare at Krill's build-up.

In response, I whipped three more galleons in addition to the six we have (curse you, Trireme of Steel) -- I'm assuming they will all be promoted to C1 once in-theatre, otherwise we automatically lose to Krill's C2 galleons. We have walls / lbows up in all target cities (I upgraded the archer in Emerald Isle for 95g, which isn't enough to stop a dedicated Savantian effort, but honestly, fuck Emerald Isle; it'll serve as a good warning to reinforce Regna if he attacks there, but we'll never get to develop this city as long as he and Krill both threaten us). We don't have enough of them, but then we don't have enough build queues to get galleons and lbows at the same time, and our conquests mostly have no production yet. This is going to end terribly no matter whether Krill whoops our asses, if Joey can absorb Donovan uncontested while we get no chance to develop in peace, but had we taken said chance, we'd be on 17 cities next to dtay's 33; this is not an exaggeration. We've attacked CML too early and without enough preparation; I think the map was well-suited for a horse archer rush with all the silver for early commerce. No idea if he would have fallen for that, but I think that the 30t of early war set us back too much economically.

I'm increasingly glad that we're allied to Joey, because Gavagai signed OB with Krill, although that could just be a ruse (is he going to attack dtay's islands? Gavagai has Renaissance graphics, galleons are possible). We might not be riding to victory on his coattails, but I think at this point we have to ponder immediate survival; having Joey border Krill and Savant seems conductive to that.

We do have as much food as Gavagai now, but the two obvious leaders are really far ahead of everyone else. He still surpasses us in soldiers, but not by much, while dtay remains slightly behind us. Unless Gavagai gained a bunch of soldiers last turn before it registered in the graphs, this means that Joey has the world's scariest army at 850,000 (us 770,000, ranked #3) -- which he could go on to threaten Krill with. Besides, dtay and Savant have signed OB (what else) so we might be in for a lot of fun in a few turns! Only good news is that Mongolia has knights.

Krill doesn't have Guilds yet, and we'll chain our first knight into Mandrake next turn. I've refrained from loading our swords onto galleons just yet. Might do that next turn, though to attack either of Bracken or Foxglove on T153.


For what it's worth, here's the economy. Employing an Engineer at Styx speeds up Moai by a turn, which returns the cost of not running a 202 coast instead for those 4t almost immediately (the city can run 6 coast tiles at size10, and has a forge + Confucianism). So I did that. Sherry is also running an engineer because its hammer output sucks (we have a worker building a plains workshop for it, actually, which was probably long-overdue) The capital actually has lucrative use for a grocer, and employs one scientist (might add 1-2 more once the grocer finishes, retaking rice from Westward which needs to build up food for the galleon whip on T152). Chastity's Ark costs enough gpt in maintenance that whipping off 4x coast (we'll regrow at once) was worth the courthouse, considering the +2EP and that we'll switch the city back onto wealth next turn anyway. I wish we had more opportunity to build a few missionaries, but we have to assume a vengeful Savant. At least he also lacks Guilds, but it won't be long now (he's sandbagging his GNP by teching at breakeven).

I get the feeling that we're giving Krill too much time to put his galleons into place, but then Mandrake will come out of revolt in 4t, whip walls, add at least three knights, and become a fortress.

6t to Engineering no matter how we spin it. The problem is actually not our 100% sci (which is higher than anyone else's, funnily, not counting Golden Ages edit: this is probably not true, or won't be once dtay's cities grow, at least) but rather that we never get there because of tremendous unit / city upkeep costs.

JR4 adopted Mercantilism last turn, which also sucks (for us; it makes perfect sense for him, and employing what I assume are 20 merchants has pushed him to 250gpt; Mongolia is arguably more of a contender than us), and so does that he's putting EP into us yet again.

These turns really get too intensive. In time invested and stakes raised. I can understand Krill's reaction especially in this light. Screw galleon-galleon combat, that's the most closed position I've seen in Civ yet (not that I have a lot of experience with Civ -- I've sunk more hours into this one game now than in the 10 years since I first bought Civ). Nobody can move in, everything is constantly under threat, and everyone has to whip more galleons at all times.

Then again, dtay plays all his turns in about 10 minutes and just pulls away.

EDIT: I think we should have picked EXP/CHM and tried to grab Compass earlier. Cheap cothons and markets everywhere would make a huge difference.

[Bacchus]

I think the problem with the war with CML was our inability to convert it to a larger conquest back then. I mean, we were one of the first to currency and alphabet, we were doing OK on GNP. At the same time we were stretched as thin on maintenance costs as we could be, so we couldn't really settle more, not that land was great for it anyway.

[Coeurva]

Krill took Sweet Water via amphibious assault (longbow + 2 C2 Shock NumCav were inside). This should mean he's out of position to attack Mandrake, which means we're free to counter-attack at Bracken. We also need to whip Regna. Or more likely, we'll lose it before we can do anything, in which case that will be where we attack instead on T152/153.

I'm tempted to just upgrade three 8XP NumCav to knights (420g) and try to strike at Krill's active army while it's on land.

[Bacchus]

Upgrades eat movement points alas, and I don't think his army will linger. However, just having 3 knights, maybe with amphibious, that we can pull up on a 6-move galleon, kill some stuff, and pull the galleon back is a super-powerful idea I think. Until he gets pikes it means everything will keep getting slaughtered. And if there is less than two units exposed, we just attack-land with an know.

EDIT: But then, it's pretty difficult to do tactics from the back seat also against Krill, who is probably spending note time on this than both of us combined I don't really understand what his war goals are going to be though. He has even less of a chance of holding Regna against GJ than we do, he can't economically hold anything on the mainland, so what is he trying to achieve? Sink us before we run away with the game? Maybe he wants Mandrake back. But why would we give it up, if it's actually one of the best-positioned cities supply lines-wise?