[SPOILERS] naufragar and Rusten get nickel-and-dimed

[Rusten]

I can log in but there's no need, there's still plenty of time to put the barracks in queue before the city grows.

[naufragar]

I'm going for another display of greed and suggest getting another settler in capital after either the current samurai or the next. We could use the ivory happiness and it should be around the time DD has pig available for food.

This isn't greed. This is cautiously making sure we can keep whipping all our samurai.

I just noticed we have a plains hill mine by Scylla, what's that about? I can't see that ever being worked. We have 5 workers and this is what you do with them?
I hope the barb axe pillages it to erase it from my memory. Pretend it never existed

This was before I was converted to the windmill lifestyle.

[Rusten]

I'm going for another display of greed and suggest getting another settler in capital after either the current samurai or the next. We could use the ivory happiness and it should be around the time DD has pig available for food.

This isn't greed. This is cautiously making sure we can keep whipping all our samurai.  

Good! In that case make it after the current one. I was only hedging with after the next one to ease you into the idea.

Remember that we have flood plains to irrigate near Scylla very soon. That's a very important improvement given its lack of food.

[naufragar]

I'm going for another display of greed and suggest getting another settler in capital after either the current samurai or the next. We could use the ivory happiness and it should be around the time DD has pig available for food.

This isn't greed. This is cautiously making sure we can keep whipping all our samurai.  

Good! In that case make it after the current one. I was only hedging with after the next one to ease you into the idea.

 Oh no! Played like a fiddle!  It shall be done.

Remember that we have flood plains to irrigate near Scylla very soon. That's a very important improvement given its lack of food.

And here is where we start to feel the lack of workers. I want to keep three workers moving with our settler to farm the sugar, just in case we need to quickly chop a defender. Working from memory, I think we can get the other two workers to that flood plains by the time Scylla's borders pop. This worker deficiency is only going to feel worse and worse as we plant more cities and finally let the cities we have grow to respectable sizes.  

[Rusten]

At the risk of putting even more work on our strained labor force, does B/GKC have gems? If not we should improve our 2nd gems shortly after culture unlock and trade it to them for a different luxury. I noticed on login that they have plenty, but I can't remember the surplus situation. We could even trade for it right away and then take gem #2 for ourselves (in which case it has the highest priority of all tiles in the area).
edit: Actually we can't do that as we have forges. The gems give +2 and a normal luxury only gives +1. We can only preemptively trade for silver or gold.

Capital settler should probably be a 3-pop whip. Finish samurai and grow to 6 --> settler.

[naufragar]

We found out that Superdeath does indeed have a source of horse in the fog.


Never let Superdeath tell you he isn't lucky. Us winning 6 87% battles and losing a 36% is expected. His horse archers surviving in exactly the configuration and health he needed so I couldn't counterattack is amazing. I've put the combat log in spoilers. The one battle highlighted in black we won. The red ones he won.

I spent some time with the combat calculator. I don't think any of his horsemen can promote. If any can or if he has an extra horse coming in from the east, he can wipe out our stack and retake his capital. Our reinforcements are quite far away. Even if he doesn't have promotions or reinforcements, maybe he still can. I would bet a lot that Superdeath YOLO's the stack into the capital next turn. He shouldn't win. But he's Superdeath, so I'm naturally nervous.

The final position:



Here's the bigger picture:


Obviously I've kept Draft Dodger on the spear. The takeaway is that SD has three mainland cities to our 6. He has three overseas, I think. We have 2. If we can keep capital (more importantly, the three samurai in the capital), he's still dead. If we can't, he's probably still dead, but we have to think very hard, because we'd have to assemble a samurai stack from scratch. Despite my bitching and moaning, of which there will be lots, I am nothing but grim determination. If the thing to do is to start over and grind Superdeath down from scratch, I'll do it. Note how tiny Superdeath is now. Note that Mr. Cairo's power is at least as high as ours. He's still selling SD luxuries while having fantasies about hurting MSCC.

Superdeath, by the way, has more happiness resources than us, I think:


I was so angry playing this turn and I still am. And since this is my thread, I'm allowing myself to be angry here. That said, Superdeath is playing correctly. Boak/GKC are playing correctly. Dear lurkers, please let me be white-hot, seething mad, despite my knowledge that my opponents are doing what they should do.

In my blind rage, I had a thought:


And that thought was that I'd rather see Magic Science's troops dance on my grave before I showed an ounce of kindness to boak/GeneralKilCavalry this game. Their power is less than Superdeath. I want so very badly to make them prove they've built archers. I want so very badly to land a kamikaze samurai pair in their lands and pillage cottages until dead. I'm sure Rusten, who's a more competitive sort, will cool me down.

I hate playing against Supedeath's luck. I hate playing against B/GKC's interference. I hate playing against whatever Cairo's calling his game of footsie against MS. I need to take this out on someone, and despite wanting to make peace with Superdeath and turn my entire civ into galleys and samurai in defiance of B/GKC's predestined coronation, I think the best play is still to stay the course and see this ground out til the bitter end. If I can't win, hopefully I'm exhausted enough that Magic can conquer Japan and show the Vikings their shortsightedness.

[Rusten]

That's rough. I can try to talk you off the ledge tomorrow, but I'm out for the day so hang in there.

[Zalson]

I'm spoiled so I cannot give much specific advice. But in terms of general advice: just remember to do things to your advantage. It's good to injure your opponent, but don't cut off your nose to spite their face.

So if you can get a big advantage from dropping to Samurai into boak's land, you should do it. But if you don't think it'll pay off, then don't do it.

What was the total cost of the superdeath attack?

[naufragar]

That's rough. I can try to talk you off the ledge tomorrow, but I'm out for the day so hang in there.

Who me? Nothing but stiff upper lips here.

Thanks for the reminder, Zalson. Here's an evaluation of the game state:

Attacking Boak/GeneralKilCavalry right now isn’t a winning play. I shouldn’t have even moved the galley those two tiles west, although it’s not a huge deal. That said, there are plenty of metagame considerations that might also factor into an attack and there are reasons that knocking b/GKC down even without helping my own position might be a good idea. Still, don’t worry. I’m not totally insane yet.

As for the cost of the campaign, I couldn’t tell you. A Pyramids and a half maybe? We’ve lost something like 9 samurai and 2 axes so far. I know I’ve been preaching hammer ratios when evaluating civ combat, but that cost doesn’t actually matter strategically. If there is one winning road (and here I’ve been playing like killing a neighbor is that road) the cost of going down that road doesn’t matter.

More on this: we know we couldn’t win with the land we had; that’s Civ Rule 1. We were going to have to take somebody’s land. Because we couldn’t trust that a neighbor would exhaust himself, we had to make an opportunity. Although our samurai opportunity has been excruciatingly expensive, Civ Rule 1 doesn’t change. So cost doesn’t matter.

While I was thinking about boak/GKC, I found myself thinking about Borsche’s land. It’s possible that there was another line in which we don’t attack Superdeath but use the threat of samurai to expand onto the small continent. Perhaps. I don’t have the heart to check on what turn we found the Vikings and realized what that land west of Blood’s House was. Still, best case we’d have two halves of an empire on two continents with angry opponents all around.

A lot is going to depend on whether our three wounded samurai survive. They are almost certainly dead. I’m pretty sure Superdeath whipped a horse archer last turn that can arrive to fight this turn. This gives him enough units. (I should pause here to praise Superdeath’s whipping strategy. I saw he 2-pop whipped and wondered if he found horse. The fact that he had 5 horse archers but I didn’t notice any 2 pop whips means he did a good job of hiding his production. ) If our samurai can survive, fighting on is an easy choice. If the samurai die, we still have a city advantage. We still have a unit that is very difficult for him to fight. He’s down to three mainland cities, for heaven’s sake! As for Superdeath’s resources, he did land another Great General so he can produce yet more highly promoted units. (And this Great General is less because of the few defensive battles he won in his territory and more because of the low odds offensive battles he’s been winning.) And he is getting an entire civ’s worth of happiness resources for free (I say free, I mean for the cost of one riverside village (but he gets to keep the food)). ...I’ve sort of lost the structure of this paragraph; let me start again. Superdeath has three cities relevant cities. We have six relevant cities and the ability to produce samurai and trebs. Why on earth wouldn’t we turn that into a kill?

I should also walk back my criticism of Mr. Cairo. He’s playing 5 min turns generally. He no doubt knows that this game belongs to B/GKC, unless MSCC pulls off something surprising. It’s too much for me to ask him to invest in a different goal than punishing MSCC for grabbing a city off him. His game; his play.

Well, this was cathartic. Back to the fight.

[Rusten]

This game has been an exercise in patience. Between:

a) bad combar RNG at crucial stages (both now and in the early skirmish)
b) facing a stupid axe attack around T80
c) not having any 5+ food resources outside of capital
d) Losing GP coinflip
e) rival getting eliminated early (while somehow not getting capital razed) AND the two of them happen to be on their own continent

I'm not sure I could keep going personally. Some games are just not meant to be won and are better left shrugged off without being over-analysed. I applaud you for sticking with it. I'd still play personally, but I wouldn't have the determination to post updates as you do. I'm just taking this opportunity to say that if you're ever fed up with the game, feel free to take a step back and stop reporting. Don't worry about me (or the lurkers). You've endured more than most and I'd understand. If you still have the fire, great!

On the game:
Given recent setbacks I'm fine with not settling sugar city and consolidating west. You may have made such steps already (maybe even posted about it but I was kinda low on time and had to skim your last two posts). This also means not getting the 2nd settler in capital and using the existing one for ivory. We need the spears over there.

On the alternative path viewpoint: Maybe. If I were to ask you to take anything away from the game it would be the importance of scouting and getting that work boat that headed west earlier.