[SPOILERS] Back to Basic - Mardoc plays Augustus of China

[Mardoc]

Well, I've got a couple Caravels in queue, maybe we'll get visibility on Sian pretty soon. Test these bits one at a time

In this turn's news, more depression of GNP, more boost to future viability if I can hold on that long:



I'm pretty sure I've had # of cities maintenance maxxed out for a while now, so it's just the new city itself that costs.

Ruff sent a note that he thinks he'd have won the settling race if it weren't for the barb city - at least that suggests he's not yet thinking war. Still, I need to get culture out here, and garrisons, and workers galore. Working on all of those, but the settlers were highest priority.

Anyway, this is likely to be a slow weekend for the game, only 2-3 turns/day likely as I've errands scheduled. But we should at least get to the point of finding out if vision on Sianic cities is enough for trade. And hopefully to the point of Hindu reaching all the heathens, including the foreign ones.

[Thoth]

Lien's culture is definitely not going to expand further out into the water, even though I've been wrong about the trade route rules twice now.

I thought the water culture rule was "2 tiles max"? If so the tiles on the diagonal's should be in Mardoc's culture after 2nd pop.

[NobleHelium]

The water culture rule is any tile that can be in a BFC of a city on that continent.

[Mardoc]

2 more cities this turn. We're going to pause again, though - the only other city that's a priority for me is the tiny little island to the SE corner of the continent. That's not even for itself, as for the boost to trade routes beyond what Sian and Ruff can do for me.




Now that the last crop of cities is growing up, we're back to seven cities at size 1 with hefty maintenance bills. Things'll look good once they're solid contributors to the empire, but for now they're just a drain. Need to push workers, missionaries, and garrisons east yet. But at least I won't be building settlers for the near term, and my core and ex-Celtia are both becoming solid. And my EP lead on Sian and Ruff continues to increase.

[Mardoc]

Had a couple turns since the last time I had a chance to report. Some highlights:

Our first two Cho's are out, and marching eastward. They're going to pause near one of Ruff's sentry units for a turn or two, just to ensure he knows that a drafted-Samurai army would have issues coming after me I'm aiming for a couple stacks of 10 or so each, one in the east and one near Tarquin. Wouldn't hurt anything to accumulate more, though.

EP lead continues to increase, especially over Sian. Which is good, because:

Sian entered a golden age, putting his GNP up to ridiculous levels. ~700GNP now, to my 200ish.
Ruff's GNP is merely continuing strong around 500. Both are well ahead of me - although my acceleration rate is pretty good, gained 35 gpt in the most recent IBT. Since I'm finally out of places to put new cities, I think I ought to be catching up now. All that's left is an island or two, and whatever can be conquered. And maybe eventually a filler city or two, without food.

Hinduism is spreading well - even got a free spread in the city that needed it most urgently, Blackwing. Haven't gotten it to the foreigners yet, but soon.

I've got a settler hanging out in Blackwing and a galley in production in Wizard Guy - as soon as I can combine them to settle the island to Blackwing's SE, I will. That should be worth 20-30 gpt just for existing.

Workers are headed east quickly, the situation out there should be less embarassing soon.

Roy's getting close to maxxed out. Only three food surplus at the moment, and no real way to get any more - at least not without plowing over cottages, which would rather defeat the purpose. Not immediately, but soonish, I'll be swapping from Bureaucracy over to Nationhood - the +25% EP would be enough of a reason, but enabling drafting is also vital. My empire is huge, food is my primary lead, and I have a lot of excess happiness - perfect conditions for drafting. But that will mean Roy declines in importance soon thereafter. Of course, we can't really get there until we steal Nationalism from someone.

Notre Dame is paused one turn from completion in Roy. I'm debating with myself again, whether I should just go ahead and finish it, or spend some time building it elsewhere first. Can't use the happy now, but it would let me stack drafts higher later on, when it comes time to push for victory.

I'm trading Gold to Sian for Spices. Helps him more than it helps me, but it also is a free way of making war less likely. Still in the 'nice doggie' phase, still looking for my stick .

So far, all we're doing for the EP econ is getting the enabling techs, building Courthouses and Caravels, and working the occasional spy. Tarquin's now hired a spy to go with the Great Wall, which results in a Great Spy due in ~40 turns. I think realistically we can't count on Great Spies from anywhere, just mix some spy flavored GPP into the various pools and hope to get lucky.

What I still need to do for EP:
- Get Hinduism spread further. I think I'm going to try to mask this by spreading it far and wide. With the happy side effect of more cash inflow and making counter espionage a pain
- Build a bunch of spies and park them in cities
- Collect more EP. More Courthouses, more Spy specs, and eventually the slider.

Longer term:
- Get Representation and Communism, and build Jails and Intellegence Agencies. Hand research them if Sian and Ruff don't go there on their own.
- Get Nationalism, revolt to Nationalism.
- Consider building other EP buildings

Other debates:

When do I get Astronomy? Losing Colossus will hurt badly, but trade with Sian might partially counteract. And/or conquest of Sian Certainly allowing myself to be Sirian'd would be bad.
How should I win? Just push straight for Domination? Stop here and go for Spaceship? Might go for the more peaceful route just due to being busy, even if it's got lower odds of success But really, I can play a peace turn in ~15 minutes, a war turn would take at least an hour.
When do I switch to making it obvious that I'm going for EP?
What do my final civics look like? When do I swap?

Littler stuff: when do I start working specialists various places? Representation still makes them very economical - especially Spies at 4 EP and 4 beakers, plus the GPP
Anything besides tech stealing worth doing with espionage? Tech stealing might not cost me open borders and peaceful neighbors, the way other actions might.
Any wonders worth still trying for? In general, any techs worth hand-researching?

[Mardoc]

Been a few turns since I've reported. So have a few pictures this time.

(helps to have the turn in the evening instead of the morning while I'm rushing to work)

First up, here's what I've found out about Sian so far. Pretty big island! He's currently in a golden age, and couldn't help mentioning to me that, by means of starvation, has his next GA lined up to fire when this one runs out.



A funny little barb city popped up in probably the only part of the continent still fogged I'll probably wait for it to grow and keep it, instead of razing. It's a pretty poor city, but it's a decent enough filler, and since I've maxxed out on # of cities maintenance, it can definitely produce the ~6 or so commerce it needs to break even after city tiles and trade routes, and then some more for profit. One day, it may even contribute a rifle to the rest of the empire!



Thien Ho here is my first new city, and the first one to grow. I promptly whipped it back to size 1, of course . Need that granary, and a citizen without improved tiles to work isn't worth a whole lot to me.

I think I'm going to be very unsubtle here, just farm everything and turn it into another specialist city, using the whip to get it started. Perhaps eventually put in workshops and watermills instead of farms. But I should probably start acting as though I built the Mids




Demos are still skewed. My food lead continues to increase, while the other demos could use some help. Not depressed about this, because...




My EP lead over the other two continues to increase, without even really trying yet.



I've only three cities left to spread Hindu to in my own empire, and missionaries en route/being built for them all. Then it'll be a matter of spreading to several of Ruff's cities while waiting for my Caravels to return, and a couple of Sian's cities after that.

Speaking of Sian's cities: I'm feeling a lot safer now. I've apparently crossed the threshold for visibility on most of them, and all I see is warriors. Makes sense for a defensive posture, he's got nothing to fear until Ruff and I have Astro. But it does mean even my ancient units can protect me against Sirianing - for the moment anyway. And I can keep an eye out on Sian to see if that changes.

Oh, yeah, and you can see one other accomplishment in the picture . Decided to stop sandbagging it, I need to deny the happy potential to my foes.

[Mardoc]

Julio's finally beginning to be worth something now, too! A bit more infra (boosted by the whip and one or two more chops) and it'll be a solid contributor.




Finished exploring Sian, decent size core but nothing spectacular.


Well, that is - finished exploring him except for the new stuff he's got. And his interior. And anything he's founded completely outside my vision.

I'm actually a little glad he's got room to grow outside of, well, me. Replaceable parts incoming from him means I'd best hurry up with my EP econ, and catch up!

[Mardoc]

So, some strategic thoughts:

I'm now only ~30 behind Ruff in GNP - 320ish to 350ish with us both at 100% gold. That makes me pretty much caught up, since I should be getting a 15% known-civ bonus on basically everything. But, caught up in beaker rate is definitely not enough. In beakers known, I'm way behind - and I expect him to enter a golden age or two of his own fairly shortly. Still banking on the EP economy to save me here. Sian continues his extremely high rate, pulling ahead from us both, but that just makes him the primary EP target. He'll slow down in 8-9 turns, when his GA ends; as long as he doesn't see any reason to spend on EP I'll be fine with that.

I probably won't have all the pieces in place for EP for another 10 or so turns. Have both missionaries and spies in production, but not out and moving yet.

EP-econ is weird. I'll get more tech for the same EP if I invest all the EP I can before spending any of it - because that makes the discount based on the ratio improve. That means I want to do my catching up pretty much all in one burst. So...first step, get Hindu to Sianic cities. Next, start piling up spies, at least 5 turns before I plan to do the theft to get the full stationary spy discount. First couple may be best used to scout his interior, so I can be extra confident of warning if he changes his peaceful stance.. About when spies are incoming, turn on my slider full 100% EP, and keep going until I'm either out of cash, or out of things to steal. Then, use all my spies at once, one for each tech. Then reset and look to do it again.

Somewhere in there I'll want to turn research back on, for the occasional first-to bonus. Communism, in particular, I hope to reach first, but there'll be several like that. Plus I absolutely need Communism and Representation, whether or not Sian and Ruff choose to research them. Eventually the goal is to have a hybrid economy - hand researching with all my commerce, and using Courthouses/IA's/Jails to steal all the branching techs. Basically, to imitate Plako's PB8 game.

GPP is starting to be less embarassing. Haley's got a Great Merchant due in ~20-30 turns, and I can speed that up by working a merchant on top. I don't have an obvious second source lined up yet, but Nale's up to two specs worked full time (spy and engineer) and still has a lot of food surplus for use once I get the library and market built. On top, I intend the new eastern cities to be pretty much just food and specs, for now anyway. I think I'm going to aim to have a Golden Age about when I steal Nationalism, for a revolt. Ideally I'll be nearly done with Slavery by then, so I can ditch it for Caste System, too.

In military, I've now got a handful of ChoKoNus out, and migrating eastward. I'm going to leave Roy and Elan on Cho duty, since they've got the settled Great Generals - and keep them there until I've gotten 30 or so built. I don' t plan any further conquest at this time, but a stack of 10 Chos should be pretty decent zone defense, and I have at least three zones to defend. Chos stay useful after the tech situation improves, so I'm not afraid of overbuilding them, particularly if they're born with 2 promos . For the moment I don't really need military, since Sian's still got just warriors and Ruff has stopped increasing, but some insurance never goes awry. Most of the rest of my cities are still on infrastructure, but those with extra hammers will probably dump them all into missionaries and spies and the occasional ship - the sad part about an espionage econ is that it requires a certain hammer investment to function at all.

Other thoughts? I'm still not sure how I want to try to win, or what Sian and Ruff are trying for. At the moment I'm just aiming for tech and demographic parity, and then dominance.

[Mardoc]

So, I promised this a while back, and finally got around to delivering:

Lessons Learned

Mardoc's Understanding of BtS war, ancient era (with contrast to FFH2 war)

Defense is much more favored in BtS than in FFH2! Several reasons, both tactical and strategic.

It's important not to confuse the two. When you're on strategic defense, you still face disadvantages on tactical offense, and you still have to overcome them before removing an enemy stack from your land. It's easier due to the strategic advantages, but don't forget to do it.

That was probably Twinkletoes' biggest mistake. When he attacked out of Bibracte at my army, he was on the wrong side of the tactical question, and that's why he took 10 casualties to my 3. If he hadn't done that - well it might not have stopped me in the end, but it would have been a lot more painful and taken longer.

So, first, tactical level. Defense is favored because:

• Terrain defense bonus and fortification always only help the defense or are neutral. Contrast to FFH deserts.
  
• Rock Paper Scissors favors the defender, greatly! An attacker always fights whichever unit is worst for him. A reasonably mixed stack on both sides will have the defender favored for every fight.
  
• Stack combat means damage to units is irrelevant until every unit is damaged. It can all be healed, for free, given time.
  
• You can't wound units without fighting them.
  

To overcome these disadvantages as an attacker, you need

• A lot of units. If you have enough to soak the first round of poor matchups, and then come back to clean up the wounded units, you can do decently. Realistically this requires at least a 2:1 advantage in numbers, and is likely to only get you parity in hammers lost. And only if the terrain/fort/unit mix isn't too much against you
  
• Luck or a mistake giving you favorable unit matchups - like when I let Twinkle hit an only-HA stack with spears at Tolosa.
  
• Catapults! Holy cow, catapults are awesome. But it's got to be *enough* catapults; use just a couple and you're throwing away hammers for a temporary benefit.
  

Contrast to FFH: Well, there are several bits that make attacking and defending much more even in FFH, even leaning toward the attacker by Tier 3:

• Rock-paper-scissors is mostly absent. Counter-bonuses are weaker, and the branching tech tree means you probably have a mono-unit composition. And so does your foe.
  
• Magic only works on offense, lets you remove defenses and inflict lots of wounding on a defender - this is probably the biggest contrast
  
• Tile defense bonuses are smaller
  

Strategic level.

Defensive advantages:

• You already own the stuff you're fighting over, so it's easier to be on the tactical defense
  
• Culture gives you lots of things:
  • better vision
    
  • better healing
    
  • more mobility
    
  • handy defensive tiles called 'cities'.
    
• Logistics. You're closer to the fight, with roads. So you've got more turns of production that can reach the battlefield by the time you fight. For the last few, you have perfect knowledge of the enemy stack. On top, Slavery means that your burst production rate can be well above your steady state production.
  
• Unit supply costs only apply to attacker
  
• War weariness applies only to attacker, too.
  

Remember, these do *not* help you much to overcome tactical defense. Once there's a stack in your land, you still need to manage a tactical advantage, or else you'll still lose the fight. Usually, patience is indicated. These strategic advantages ought to help acquire a tactical advantage - especially healing and logistics - but you still need that edge.

Again, in FFH these are much smaller. Cultural defenses are reduced, making tactical defensive situations harder to acquire. Hawks and Floating Eyes negate the vision advantage of defense. Overall mobility is higher and there's Raiders, and reduced Slavery, all of which reduce a defender's logistical advantages. Required separate training buildings for all units mean that you can't react nearly as quickly on a logistical level.

Attacker's advantages:
I can't actually think of any tangible advantages. An attacker does have some, but they're more meta:

• Chose the war. Presumably that means more planning time, and you have a strategic advantage of some sort, right? More production, a tech edge, something? Otherwise you wouldn't be fighting, right?
  
• Sometimes, surprise. Requires an inattentive or outclassed opponent, though.
  
• Initiative. You pick where the battles will be. If you're clever, you can fork and feint and in general hit where the enemy is weak. This is where pillaging and blockading and such come into play, too, you can do damage without fighting. Do enough damage this way and you might provoke the defender to fight where he shouldn't.
  

Unit analysis:
Warrior: For those situations where you only need 'a unit'. Soaking collateral, killing a gravely wounded unit. Inferior to everything else, but if you have it you might as well bring it along.

Axe/Chariot/Spear: straight up rock/paper/scissors. You really need at least two of these in any stack, barring successful flanking moves, and all three is best. Bias your stack toward either what your opponent is missing, or axes.

Sword: Superfluous? They seem to be intended for city capturing, with their high base strength and city attack bonus, but it seems that axes do just as well against anything but archers, and not bad against archers. Only axes also are useful in the open. UU swords might be an exception, and maybe I'm also missing something.

Archer: City/hill defender. Cheap, outside the RPS, but the way it's built, it's only useful when defending a city; preferably a city on a hill. Or for being numbers to soak catapult damage/kill that last 0.1 health unit.

Horse Archer: pretty versatile. Good for forking, strong, and probably the answer to a cat stack in the open (didn't try Flanking, but that's what it looks like). Still lose to spears, but it's not quite as one-sided as chariots vs spears. Probably best used in exactly the way I didn't: taking advantage of initiative to make the battle happen somewhere the defender is unprepared. Marching straight up to the obvious target wasn't wise.

Catapults: City/stack cracker. Requires absolutely that you have a critical mass of these. One is worthless, just maybe a small delay for your opponent. But once you hit the threshold of enough, they let you just wreck a stack, and massacre at even a good hammer ratio. I was incredibly lucky that TT chose to fight in bits and pieces, never threw more than 3 cats at me in a turn. But since they can't kill, you have to back them up with hitters.

I now see why bombarding is considered a secondary mission of theirs!

War Elephants: weren't relevant in my experience, so take this with extra salt. They're very strong, so they look useful for every situation where you can tolerate a slow moving stack. Spears can kinda-sorta-not really handle them, if you didn't bring axes. And conversely, they can attack through spears easier than either HA or chariots. If you have WE available, though, you ought to have cats, and cats are more vital.


To summarize the war in general: I made some mistakes, but Twinkletoes made more. And my hammer advantage meant that my mistakes didn't hurt me as badly. The biggest mistakes made on both sides were fighting without a sufficient advantage. TT hit me several times with small attacks, that my stack was able to just clean up. Similarly, sending off those HA on their own at Tolosa was foolish - and I really should have been more cautious other places, too.

Edit: Realistically, I shouldn't have fought the war. I didn't have enough advantage to win if Twinkle hadn't made mistakes. I got lucky, in that he was more aggressive tactically than he should have been.

So...what did I miss or misunderstand? It's probably not relevant anymore, we're out of the ancient era and should be well out by the time we war again.

[Krill]

You misunderstood that TT usually makes some rather dramatic mistakes.