[SPOILERS] Cheater Hater hates bad advice. BGN gives only bad advice.

[Cheater Hater]

If it looks like a lot of war is in your future I'd head for Steel. Cannons make a huge difference and are difficult for technologically inferior opponents to dislodge because they can't be flanked by knights. Does Chemistry still give the hammer bonus to workshops or has that bonus been moved earlier in the tech tree? Anyway, I'd focus on improving your military capacity. It looks like wars are the way of the future, not peaceful development. Astronomy is good for the galleons, but how many cities do you need to attack with boats? I don't know the answer to this, so this could be a good option. But the Observatories are not going to be all that helpful to you. They're expensive (you're not CRE, right?) and you're probably running a low slider at the moment anyway. Best to ignore these for now, except probably in your capital. I would suggest ignoring Constitution too. Focus on the war. If you're suffering WW, your enemies are likely suffering too. If you're winning the war, WW is probably worse for them.

As far as overextending, just keep conquering cities as long as your army has the means to do so and you aren't at risk of losing ground to a counter attack. As cities come out of revolt they'll contribute economically. If you can't complete the conquest you'll want to hold the line in a place that makes sense defensively so keep an eye on where you can draw up a border that will be stable. To give specific info I'd have to log in.

How good is Steel if your opponents are close in tech parity? Whosit has Military Tradition now, though he's a bit away from Rifles--he's actually researching Education now for some reason when he needs both RP and Rifling.

That's one of the bigger problems--I haven't run any science since I finished Military Tradition right at the beginning of the war. I feel like I'm running out of troops to upgrade at least, so that means I should be saving up for a run at Chemistry I guess? I didn't use all my gold for upgrades this turn at least, so that lets me be more flexible at least.

Is there a post somewhere about the basics of how WW works? I know it's based on units lost, and it's worse if you lose your units in opponent's territory, but not much else on that (or if RtR changed it at all, other than the Jail/Rushmore changes). Another factor in all my unhappiness is that I have a lot of draft anger that should be going away eventually, especially in my core cities.

Feel free to log in whenever--if we can ever get this turn played

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I'm no WW expert. Cannons are better than not having them, regardless of what your enemy has. Sorry I'm not more helpful than that.

[WilliamLP]

Try this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=181512

[Cheater Hater]

Another round of missed reports--we have T208 (Adrien, johns, domestic) and T209 (Adrien, johns, Whosit, domestic)

Obviously I'm still doing a lot of warring--last turn I took Tungelae from Adrien, and this turn I took Il Mercario (with surprisingly no losses), Badman's River (which even though I had redlined the attackers last turn, he spawned a GG there and made them CG3--at least I only lost two Cavs) and Tepapa. However, I'm starting to run on fumes, at least on the johns front--I lost a big Rifle stack that was advancing on The Bad, though it did take out the majority of johns's Cats (and some Knights) in the process. As such, I'm trying to make peace--I offered it to johns if I get two more cities (The Bad and Arizona Colt, both cities mainly chosen so my new captures aren't swamped by culture), and to Adrien if I get 4 (everything east of his capital). I doubt either deal will be accepted (Adrien didn't accept it based on CivStats, and johns didn't accept last turn's deal), but I want some sort of counter-offer.

I really want at least one peace deal in the next turn or two, since I have to be ready for Whosit to re-declare on me as soon as the peace treaty runs out. At this point I'm seriously considering offering straight peace to johns--the problem is that I don't want him to get Rifles before I can get a decent supply of Cannons (or do I want to go to Military Science instead for Grenadiers?). One other thing on the johns front is that he apparently stole some of my treasury, so I have Investigate City on him--nothing spectacular, mostly military stuff, but it means I can probably use my spy for something and still have city visibility. As for Adrien, I don't think I want straight peace with him, but he's been more willing to negotiate with me (though not realistically)--I feel like 4 cities is a realistic offer though, since if he's not going to move units out of his SW cities (which he hasn't done as much) he can't defend his entire northern core with only 1-2 units per city (even if he is whipping a lot).

Honestly, a lot of this is that I'm sick of war for now, especially one with 4 different fronts, and when Whosit joins it's going to add a lot more units I have to manage/be aware of. Hopefully I can simplify this war (and the 3-way turn split) sooner rather than later.

[Cheater Hater]

Things are certainly getting interesting, since it appears Adrien accepted my peace deal--as a result, I'm back in second place again!


As I said, Adrien has been much more willing to negotiate--he countered by offering Mtunzinia and The Hellbenders (a random island city in the north) along with 800 gold, and I offered the above instead--part of me wonders if I would have gotten him to accept my original deal (after Old Harry likely said something along the lines of "yes, take peace--he's going to kill you in 10 turns otherwise!"), but this is a decent deal with the added gold. I'll need to keep tabs on Adrien's troop composition and keep a decent garrison in all the border cities, but otherwise I can start shuttling troops over to the Whosit front. I also might want to put them on the johns front, depending on whether he accepts this peace deal:


Again, part of it's that I don't want my rivals to get Rifling that soon, so they don't have time to build up their troops and/or get Nationalism before I can get peace with Whosit again and come back for more.

Rest of the pictures are here--I didn't separate them this time since I didn't take pictures of the johns front, and the Adrien front isn't quite as relevant for a couple turns--the WW problem is getting bad though (I think I'm up to 10 unhappy faces from it in one of my cities), and it's taking up a lot of troops that could be used to guard the Whosit front and/or reinforce the johns front--should I be trying to manage unhappiness with military police, or should I manage it by letting cities shrink?

As I have a (likely brief) break from the fighting, is there anything lurkers want to see/know about? What about you BGN?

[Commodore]

When you invading Elum?

[Cheater Hater]

When you invading Elum?

When Whosit invades him and decimates both of their armies

Seriously, I have no idea where I would start with Elum outside of that possibility, and even that doesn't seem that even since Whosit is pretty far from Rifles. At least ipecac is giving Elum a bit of fight--he stuffed a ton of promoted units into a border city and Elum just doesn't have enough units (Cats in particular) to break through. It also appears that I have a slight advantage on military techs, simply because I've turned on my Chemistry research while Elum hasn't. Other than that, his main advantage is Astronomy--I have Drama, Monotheism and Theology while he has Liberalism, which are both roughly equivalent in beakers (I think) and don't have that much use (though Theocracy isn't meaningless). Of course, the major problem is that production advantage (leading to the power advantage), and hopefully my new cities can help that a little.

[Cheater Hater]

While Commodore posts his treatise on how I actually have a chance against Elum because of factors X, Y, and Z, I'm still playing. T211 pictures are here, and there isn't much new other than my new cities--though importantly, those cities are bringing in enough research to cut a turn off Chemistry! Unfortunately, I got rejected again by johns--if he rejects my last offer (no cities, only 500 gold), I'm about ready to go scorched earth on him. I also tried to get another spare happy from Adrien by offering him a bunch of resources--I probably should have asked ipecac first, but we'll see if Adrien accepts first.

[Cheater Hater]

T212 time, and we started with an event! It gave me +1 happiness in all my cities for 15 turns (since I already had the Academy in Rillanon, and one Scientist isn't worth an unhappy (would it have been permanent?)), and combined with Adrien accepting my generous deal (probably too generous), I have +3 happy in most/all of my cities, giving me a lot more freedom to shuffle troops around and get more Rifles/Cavs at the front lines (both johns and Whosit, as well as keeping a halfway-decent garrison for Adrien). Other than that, I'm just waiting for the inevitable Whosit declaration--it appears that he isn't much of a threat, since he just turned off research at least temporarily, and now I'm going to start Steel in a couple turns (I think it's ~9 turns at break-even/sustainable surplus and 7 turns at 100%). Still no sign of his army, though I'm assuming it's all/mostly 2-movers (which means Curs--he might still be upgrading them though, giving me time to finish off johns/shuttle over more troops from the Adrien front).

[GermanJoey]

Yeah, the scientist woulda been permanent. The unhappyiness would be like whip unhappy, lasting for 10 turns, IIRC.