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

[Coeurva]

We can always war declare just to get through, ita more the issue that we don't have a fast moving unit for worthy scouting.

If only there was a well-worn Shakespeare quote about a dire need for domesticated ungulates for the projected purpose of fast transit. for which is offered the exchange of feudal mandate to an arbitrary third party implicitly addressed.

Alas: there isn't.

Animal Husbandry next.

Also, we do have that other half of our traits to put to use.

CHM has actually come in handy already, saving us the need for military personnel inside Rhapsody (1 happiness currently) and soon, a few other cities. Although technically, unhappy citizens don't consume food while building foodhammer units, so it's a wash right now.

[Mardoc]

Of course, of course, no epigrams from your source.

[Coeurva]

Reminds me of that one challenge in You Don't Know Jack, where you have to extract proverbs or quotes from more-or-less nonsensical rhymes. Ever played that?

T56

Blood for the lurkers, I guess:



He didn't move the worker and moved the settler onto the hill as expected. I've declared war, as he must have expected (the worker's action was cancelled this turn when I moused over). We've observed the turn split on this turn and the last, CML has the first window.

The worker can't really get back towards us for the next few turns and the road 8 of Cuckhokia poses further danger if he somehow gets a metal unit out next turn. Since the settler (very presumably) came out of here, even discounting the lack of Wheel until just now, that shouldn't be possible from raw production unless he's allowed to whip on his window of the turn split (and he isn't, right?) or has a chop about to finish in the fog. But in any case, I'm thinking of deleting the worker; that would make the trade favourable for us (45h -- EXP -- vs. 15h). If he recaptures we've achieved nothing and are in for royal fun. Deleting the worker needlessly, though, would sour this whole endeavour just as well. In the end, I've decided the reward was greater than the risk. Indeed, if he recaptures, he might be more inclined to settle sheep hill again, which we can pressure.

The one indicator that this wasn't a trap is that the worker's action was cancelled when I moused over him. Presumably CML didn't cancel it on his last turn and the worker just did his worker thing.

I doubt CML will settle on the hill now... He has alternative copper in the north-west. We can stop him from hooking it up. We might not be able to stop him from hooking up his capital copper, though. It might already be done.

It's possible to whip the axe in Vermin (food 5/24, 11/35h) but that runs the city into the ground. Still -- we'd be attacking with two axes, and power will be spiking, which might make CML consider peace. Therefore I'm considering it. dtay has also whipped twice last turn, but I'm not sure if that's military units, probably not. Savant's whip last turn was a granary in Harmondale; he also has one in Ironfist.

EDIT: Look at how these units trickle in, this is not a recipe for success; I don't expect to gain much from this war directly, but if we can take/threaten any of CML's cities, we might be able to obtain a truce. Whipping Lifeblood gives us 3 axes in 4t with which to harass CML. I've considered switching research to Animal Husbandry right now, but we need those libraries quite direly (GNP 27, still #7, Avg. 32) and there's no guarantee for horses in the first place.

I've also wasted a worker turn because of river movement rules. Apparently, crossing the river first means that moving across two roaded tiles does consume all your movement. Said worker is now on the silver mine, I was planning to road it for the axes to arrive in sync.

Turn not ended yet. The game has become much more stressful now. I'm thinking the declaration was a mistake already for that reason.

EDIT: Neither the axe was whipped (for the reason that we're not sacrificing growth for a war at parity where nobody makes gains anyway) nor the worker deleted (since CML cannot have a metal unit 1t from completion if the settler was the last thing produced without a whip, unless a chop just so happens to finish this turn, and he somehow also has roads onto the copper -- lack of capital granary further indicates lack of Pottery, i.e. very recent Wheel, which seems to make this unlikely). I've ended turn.

[OT4E]

I've also wasted a worker turn because of river movement rules. Apparently, crossing the river first means that moving across two roaded tiles does consume all your movement. Said worker is now on the silver mine, I was planning to road it for the axes to arrive in sync.

Turn not ended yet. The game has become much more stressful now. I'm thinking the declaration was a mistake already for that reason.

Road across river doesnt work before Construction.

The game become less stressful if you KILL your neighbor. I guarantee. Muahaha

[Bacchus]

To me it sounds like you are having fun maybe too much fun. I guess one thing is that you shouldn't twist yourself in knots trying to chess out all the possibilities and countermoves, there's just not enough life for that. Not deleting the worker is a right thing, after just considering the production queue as you did. He has protective terrain to plod home over.

I wouldn't go to a total war mentality, again as you rightly abstained from. If he wants to bring the war to us, let him do that, but we don't really want major offensive operations until horse archers. The worker is a big enough gain that we will just outgrow him and munch at leisure. The only pressure is that dtay may do so first.

[Coeurva]

Good to know that river roads just don't work at all before Construction. I thought they'd halve movement to 0.5, then add 1, then floor... but it obviously doesn't work that way. Better to learn this now than during wartime -- well, I mean...

The game become less stressful if you KILL your neighbor. I guarantee. Muahaha

Sure, I'll take it. But in this war, where we don't even have a proper stack (in PB34, you had 5 chariots at this point iirc; we have one axe), our highest aim can probably be to set back CML sufficiently that he can't resist Num Cav later, or at least that he can't build the Oracle unimpeded. The tech path from here will probably be AH -> HBR (with Academy); we've crossed the Rubicon in the south already. Sailing and Maths are worthy of consideration. Probably no SoZ for us.

If CML recaptures with an axe next turn, we maneuver our axes defensively to induce him to build more, then build 3-4 chariots and go all-in.

If CML recaptures with a chariot, we'll have to build (whip) a spear in Vermin (another reason not to whip right now) and road the appropriate tiles to cover both cities, then counterattack him.

If CML doesn't recapture, we'll go on with the generic war plan to harass him. His settler in particular can be screwed with if he moves e.g. 17 to avoid settling near us. The north-western copper can be denied to him even by a slow-mover.

Right now he has about 1 warrior / city, has chopped Stonehenge, doesn't have Pottery (so the whip hurts him more if we induce it here), doesn't have Archery, and has just now finished The Wheel (unless that was a gross misreading of graphs and even grosser coincidence when he increased by 3,000) to potentially connect his strat resources. He may or may not have researched AH already, but in either case, he might never be so vulnerable to axes again.

We'll be putting our best foot forward.

Only problem is that so will he.

EDIT: Hah, crosspost with you, Bacchus. Yeah, now I've listed short possibilities for what he can do and how we can react before you could tell me not to do it but it'll ensure that I won't think about the game anymore for today. Agree that we can just let him come at us; the defender has the advantage in this war. If he goes total war, we can put our extra build queues to use. It's a tangled opening situation where we have just captured a pawn and will see whether he has a strong response.

[Coeurva]

T57



First, the good news: CML didn't recapture. We're moving the worker back towards our land a.s.a.p.; I doubt we could use him to prevent copper (he could always whip at Hokey and just swarm our warrior on flatland). He's also settled Cuckcinnati on the hill where his warrior is; what he can't see (yet) is the inbound axeman 3t from the city, which gets 99.6% odds. The city can't be reinforced in time, except if he can finish a chariot at Hokey right now. and sends it straight into the city.

Now the bad news:



The Peninsula of Power doesn't joke around. This kind of invalidates our settling plan for now. In fact I'm not sure if Sicil will hold; in SP I would whip the axe next turn and know that I'm safe because production resolves before barbs move, but I don't know if it gets resolved differently in PB... If so, I'd never have left this city empty. The planned granary micro gets thrown to all hell, but I've moved the local worker the hell away from the cow and into the last first-ring forest; I think we can still get what we want using the chop and a library wasn't planned here anyway. At least it's another 6,000 on the power graph...

The warriors near Rhapsody are also homing in, maybe. Opting to go axe -> granary (whip) instead. It's annoying to delay infra and workers, but we kind of have no choice. We're falling behind in soldiers anyway (Rival Best 52,000 (!), Avg. 42,000, us at 35,000 -- although our immediate neighbours' power graphs have been stagnant for a while)

So Sicil's settler goes towards X-6 (same speed), to make sure he doesn't get whacked, and we'll just found X-5 with Rhapsody's settler and a bit of delay (or refound Sicil, if I don't die of embarrassment before that). I don't want to settle near CML in this situation just yet (drain on defending units we could better use to gain momentum; increases chance of total war), and it will be better for our economy to stagger the settlements anyway.

[OT4E]

Barbs move after units are produced.

[Coeurva]

Alright, that's good to hear. We might lose the pasture (4 worker turns; that does hurt), but whipping the axe means we don't get to work it for a few turns, anyway, and we still have the mine to fall back on at -2f / turn. The palliative effects of slavery.

CML logged in 10 minutes after I did and stayed logged in for an hour. The problem I have is that he could technically finish turn, wait for us to play and end turn, then adjust everything we can't see (build queues, unit movement, whips). I'm not insinuating he actually does any of this, or whether all of these actions are actually against the rules (only sure that movement is), and it's understandable that he wants to look at the situation right now, rather than waiting for the turn to roll (Ventessel, in this case, has yet to play). Nevertheless, I'm thinking to ask him (by PM, not by IT thread which would spoil the entire rest of the players) whether we can agree on a strictly sequential turn order, with no log-ins by either player after finishing turn until the other moves again. Thus the questions:

1. Would this be a good idea to build mutual trust, or just paranoid lawyering that would rather undermine it?
2. What is CML allowed to do during our (i.e. the second) split of the turn? Can he whip? (as far as CivStats shows, he didn't) Can he change production? And so on.
3. What can we do on CML's split? (My current guess is: nothing.)

[Bacchus]

Oh, that's a pretty unlucky spawn. Nothing to be done for it, this is exactly the kind of risk that's far too low-odds to merit preventative mitigation. In any case, the cost of the whip is reduced a bit by being CHM, and it just so happens that we can actually use an axe elsewhere.

Moving onto the questions. The rules on what you can do a pretty simple -- outside of your window, you are not allowed to affect the game state in any way that would give you an advantage. No build changes, no whips, no slider adjustments (to quickly expand culture for example), taking promotions, etc. The easiest interpretation is that you are not allowed to do anything at all, except view the game.

I wouldn't ask for no logins -- if you cant trust him to follow rules, you cant trust him to stay out of this thread, so what's the point. You can perhaps offer to abstain from logins and ask him if that would make him feel better, on conditions of reciprocity.