[Spoilers] Bacchus debuts on RB showing unmatched vision and slick dice-rolling

[Bacchus]

I took the two cities from Dhal which I wrote about above, I am now planning an attack against the vikings,. It's probably badly judged, but my thinking is that they are too busy contesting first spot to take notice of a minor loss to an irrelevant power. For me, it would be a bit of fun, and it somewhat makes strategic sense -- the city I'm planning to take is much better supplied from my lands than from Viking ones, it was a bit cheeky of them to plant there.

My tech rate at 100%, which is currently what I'm running, having started a Golden Age is 400. It's shit, of course, but I'll be able to get rifles in time to use them against any agressor who considers me easy pickings. This is plako, really. He would still be able to take me, of course, but I'm hoping that the investment that he would have to make to do so would me excessively large for him to bother.

[Bacchus]

Dhal offered peace for Chau Sara, finally seeing sense in my offer to use all forces to go up against plako. I took it, of course. Empire is busy producing War Elephants as a Knight counter and Longbows as an everything else counter. My power is now as high as Dhal's was at peak, but way below Plako, not to speak of Ichabod.

Correction to the above -- tech rate at 100% is 520 (GA).

[Bacchus]

Unloaded 6HA's versus an LBow and an Archer at Seahawks, offered peace for it. Unless they happen to have a galley with troops within their ridiculous 4-move range, there is no way they can defend the city. Hopefully, they'll accept and we will have a nice ten-turn race during which I'll either prove to them that re-taking is not worth it, or suffer a massive, if not so rational, punitive strike.

[Bacchus]

Okay-dokay, Scooticator accepted the hand-over, so what I had in mind might actually go through, let's talk about it.

Here is the city:



As I wrote above, this city is in much better supply from lines than from Viking ones, which was the basis for the whole venture. The maintenance that you can see is for a city fairly close to the capital and with a small number of cities -- 14 (counting this) to Scoopin's 29 (again, counting this). My guess is that Scoopin's maintenance for this city alone was around 8, moreover this city added it's 1-city-point maintenance to each of their 28 other cities. I'm not sure what one point is worth these days for them net of courthouses, but even at 0.1 it would add up to a considerable 2.8 The revenue, as you can see, is around 20, albeit this will grow inevtiably. In commercial terms alone, this city was probably yielding Scoopin ~9 gpt; the GP generation potential here is low, strategic value for them non-existent, and even production potential not all that, just 4 tles, even if one is, happily, and iron. Most of this prod, for the rest of the game, will basically be used on infra -- they could have built a couple of units, but again, even with their boni to movement, getting them out to where they are actually needed is a bit of a task.

Now, in terms of commerce alone, the situation is very simple -- my maintenance is lower than their, much lower in fact, so I can give them all the gold they would get from this city net of costs, and still leave myself with a profit. Basically, due to lower overheads it actually makes sense for them to outsource the administration of this city — I am not a competitor for victory, and the only damage they would do to themselves is through a laughable, if non-zero, reduction of their proximity to Domination victory. I don't think Domination is realistic on this map in any case. Production and strategy is a bit harder to value, at the very least the city can build wealth, I guess, but it's still some infra-builds away from switching to that. As a starting offer I sent this:




The crab and the clam are the two sea resources at Seahawks, so hopefully they will figure what I am proposing to trade. Hopefully they will also figure that not including Iron is me leaving myself open to a counter-offer. Unfortunately, the game seized up as I was sending it, so I have no idea whether the offer reached them, but I sent a PM asking them to get back in touch only if they have not received anything from me.

Of course, the Vikings will accept this anyway, if only for ten turns, and might still raid me afterwards. In my position, it actually makes no difference, I wouldn't be unhappy if they just outright tried to conquer me, I'd actually have some reasonably amusing defensive warfare and city-whipping. In any case, I'm one-turning Machinery and Guilds, and then running to Gunpowder in the last two turns of the GA. I will be able to finish it by the time of viking invasion, so there will be no easy razes for them whatever -- core cities will have 3-4 Longbows and a Musket at minimum.

[Bacchus]

Oh yeah, something else weird happened — even though the city swapped hands my way, my troops got teleported out, in this case right onto a different continent. Very useful for me, actually, but I just have no clue about why this game does the things it does on occasion.

[RefSteel]

Oh yeah, something else weird happened — even though the city swapped hands my way, my troops got teleported out, in this case right onto a different continent. Very useful for me, actually, but I just have no clue about why this game does the things it does on occasion.

So I haven't looked at this thread in months, but I decided to check in just to see if there's an interesting report on the last page, and somehow the most recent post is a teleportation question? Right!

This one is actually pretty simple: The peace treaty always goes through before any extras attendant on the deal, as in this case the transfer of a city. So the order of events was:

1) Peace is established. Your units can no longer legally occupy Viking tiles.
2) Your units in Viking territory teleport to the nearest legal destination (nearest by a somewhat crazy definition, but since you had no cities on the same landmass and their culture covered every tile on the island, it had to be on another landmass) - which probably means your borders here, but in certain circumstances could get really weird.
3) The city of Seahawks changes ownership. It's now in your territory and it's perfectly legal for your units to occupy any tile on the island, but of course it's too late: They don't get teleported back.

[Bacchus]

Thanks, RefSteel! That's the explanation that I thought most likely, but good to have it confirmed.

[Bacchus]

Guilds complete this turn. After getting Gunpowder, I think I will limp to Rifling, get Drama and then switch Science off, turn cottages into workshops, spare money into culture, and build troops. Workers have been prepping conversions to workshops for a while anyway. I don't think I can get Assembly Line or Communism before the game ends; Astro and Chemistry might deserve investment, but I don't really have a naval rival going forward — confrontation with William will be largely land-based, he has hardly any ports with strong production and these will always be under pressure from Commodore. So no real research goals past Rifling...

[Bacchus]

Carthage at what's likely to be it's peak:


Mfg boosted by getting guilds, having Caste on and GA, of course. GNP is hopeless, but will actually get slightly better as Dhal's cities grow back onto their cottages. I'll also build the cheapened exp grocers (75 hammers), for a bit of a boost.

Both plako and William sent peace-indicating deals: Banana for Rice in the first case, Cow for Cow in the second. William is about to annihilate retep with a handful of super-promoted knights. Quite scary, actually, he could do some real damage to me with these.

Gunpowder even with GA takes 6 turns. Sigh.

[Bacchus]

Any ideas on why it would be impossible for me to sign open borders with Inca? I can with, say, dtay. I have some floods in my culture that could only be worked by planting a new city in a tightish space towards Inca (albeit within my culture), and I wanted to gift a worker to point out that this is NOT a base for a future attack. I mean, it's fairly obvious that it's not -- if they think that I am in a position to launch an offensive they are on crack, but things look very differently from the other side of the border. I guess I can just parade my worker in front of his borders and see what happens, but they might think it's just a misclick. Can't name the worker "Gift" under AI-Diplo I guess

Otherwise, Gunpowder is finished, building some muskets, bracing for the inevitable, limping to rifles.