Glad to see you on the forums again. I'm doing all right, living alone and working from home has given me lots of time to play more civ. This game seems to be going my way; I'd say I'm the frontrunner right now but this game has been a little unusual in how close everyone has stayed. From what I can see everybody alive still has a chance to win (though AT looks like he may be fading a bit from the pack). So like 20% compared to the field at 14% and AT at 10%?
We're using a new mod that tries to stay closer to Beyond the Sword while balancing the most egregious. Krill's mod had a lot of feature creep towards the last couple of years. But I like some of the new ideas that Charriu gave here. Except he made PRO busted, but at least I'm taking advantage of that one. Oh, and we have full value slavery. That's been exciting to use again.
I opened up the turn to find a peace deal and a request of weregild from Mjmd:
No sir, I need that 80g. I declined and moved my axe up:
Considering how he placed his axe I'm guessing this is some kind of trap, but I'm not sure I care. Losing 1 axe for killing a city plus 3 workers as well as being able to bring 2 workers home is a fantastic trade. Still, there is a benefit to having enforced peace over the next 10 turns as I get Cothons whipped, so I decided to offer peace. After capturing and deleting the worker on the hill, of course.
Shoot, that was supposed to be 8gpt. Now he's going to think I'm just being stingy. Oh well. I couldn't give him the whole 80g and still get Compass. Maybe he'll take it anyway, as I am still threatening an undefended city - well, he doesn't really see unit movement before he has to accept or decline.
Looking at the land more it wouldn't be the end of the world if Mjmd got this all and I was left defending at the chokes. I'm seeing a more established presence than I thought - damn all those barbarian losses that kept me from scouting this out proper earlier.
Superdeath took this scuffle with Mjmd as a sign that I wasn't paying enough attention to him, so he finally did something with his units:
I'm not sure what he thinks he can accomplish with those horse archers - pillage the riverside village? Attacking into a city on a hill across a river - he gets 20% against even the archers. I took this as a sign that I needed to pull everything up to hit Coos again, as now he's down to 23 units in that city. I probably don't have enough still but I'll sim it out if he doesn't have anything else there. If I lose my capital to Superdeath getting 5 successive wins at 20%-30% then I'll just accept this one-in-a-thousand as my time. But I also wanted to tempt him into attacking, as I think he may be a little tilted at his predicament.
My food lead keeps expanding
I think I see why: nobody else is growing their cities like I am. That population stat is a bit insane. Perhaps others don't have all the calendar resources that I do? Well, I feel good about my choice to go for Calendar right after Construction. I think I'm going to try and trade for some ivory in a turn or two. It would be great to get a round of war elephants in right after the Cothons.
PRO: 26 (847) FIN: 27 (673)
FIN passed PRO, but still has a long ways to catch up. I'm also going to have to note when I take peace with Mjmd as the turns at peace for trade routes will probably then come into play
So he took the 7gpt deal and then asked me for 35g more when he saw I had killed another worker. Me, remembering what I have been trying to get a deal on, thought that yeah I could give him 35g but I want to tie it to a trade with ivory:
I'd also like to get open borders with him but I didn't want to push things.
My impression of Mjmd so far is that he doesn't want to fight until he has all his pieces ready and he's comfortable. So as long as there's territory for him to try and grab and expand into then he will do so. Then he's going to want to tech up to where he feels like he'll have an advantage, and only then will he build up his army and attack. Here I think he could have made things a lot more difficult on me. Instead I might come out of this with a trade partner. He does seem to be very keen on the give and take of a negotiation. Perhaps I've picked my long-term partner incorrectly by going with Mr. Cairo.
Note that Mjmd also did plant yet another city in the area. He might raze the barb city too. I'd really like a city there but now with all the border friction we're probably looking at me settling on top of the grass hill just for defenses. Or maybe I won't get a city out of this and will need to carve up Superdeath. Honestly, I need to carve up Superdeath with knights. I can't leave him as a thorn in my side. Cause he'll do stuff like this:
I'm a little disappointed in myself for moving the Numids last turn. It made sense that Superdeath might try something the first turn he saw me at war with someone else and so if I had kept them all in place i could have wiped out his little stack for the cost of 2-3 catapults according to my sims. But without Numids it gets a lot dicier so I had to bring everything back last turn, and here I find that he has pillaged the wheat and retreated.
I killed his horcher with a spear at 73% odds and then covered it with the 3 spears I had moved into the capital. Next turn we'll road that tile with a pair of workers and then move to farm back the wheat.
Superdeath has Construction now so I'll likely be seeing elephants and catapults. And yet, I can't help but think Superdeath is a little checked out of this game. His little push here felt half-hearted. I think he doesn't see a great way out of this for himself and as long as i don't force a confrontation he won't whip everything to the ground and keep on trucking along. So when I do come after him I need to come after him with overwhelming force.
Another benefit to peace is that my trade routes with Charriu all went through Mjmd, so I have full foreign trade routes again. That will probably change with Cothons going up, and so I'm going to want some settlers here soon too. There's about 2 highly important locations and then 2 more that I want to get to set up borders with my neighbors.
Also, I found out that Charrius has wines connected so he was the Monarchy researcher. That means Mjmd has Metal Casting. Hopefully that will make him like the Gems even more.
Superdeath, whether through boredom or seeking to ditch the unit expenses, threw out a bunch of units and attacked my spears. He got depressingly lucky
Well, maybe not too outlandishly lucky. He lost at 31%, withdrew at 31%, and then won at 34% odds. So the withdraw was the lucky bit. Then he cleaned up with more horchers but they were all badly wounded and so he moved 2 axes and a shock horcher to cover.
This left a lot of exposed units for me to kill.
I lost a Flanking 2 Combat 1 Numid at 27% to win / 36% to withdraw, because of course I'd lose another fight where I had ~30% chance of dying. But after that I cleaned up all the rest of his units. So I end up losing 4 spears and 1 numid to kill 6 horchers (7 if you count the one last turn) and 2 axes. That's losing 190h to kill 420h. I'll take that trade.
And then it was Cothon time:
Mjmd has not yet played his turn so I don't know if he took the deal yet. I could potentially try with Charriu too - he wants my gems (I just canceled gems i was gifting him) and he also has Ivory.
PRO: 26 (899) FIN: 30 (731)
(July 31st, 2020, 23:12)NobleHelium Wrote: Giving away 105g for peace to someone who has no threatening units seems weird to me. I never did that.
I don't like doing it, but i have a known quantity on one side of my empire (in superdeath, who in this situation I can best describe as Commodore-lite), and I really don't want to start a two front war. Because this I have to worry about more than one neighbor unlike Superdeath who only has to throw all his forces towards me. Yep, still ranting about that one. But even if it's a bad trade I think it's good strategy to keep my wars on one front until I can finish Superdeath off and then turn around and only then take one my next foe.
The way I'm selling this to myself is that it's just like I "bought" two workers and facilitated an ivory trade from Mjmd for 105g, as well as stopped him from settling a city. And that does seem like a good trade in that context, at least I think so.
Mjmd was able to raze the barbarian city, but it looks like his horse archer only barely survived. And then Superdeath lost another horse archer against the spear I left by his city, then mopped it up. This means I'm now very close to my third Great General. And it looks like AT started a war against Charriu. That would explain AT's tanking GPT over the last half dozen turns: he's been churning out units.
Meanwhile, Mjmd took my trade. I hope he considers the matter between us good now. I mean, if he leaves cities or settlers undefended again then he's going to get what's coming, and I would expect the same in return. But I dont' expect any lasting enmity between us. In fact, I am ecstatic that he gave me this trade. I'm going to be building elephants everywhere now because this might be the only 9-turn window I get.
Speaking of trade, it seems only us PRO civs are willing to trade with each other. Unfortunately that will not be enough to fill out my trade routes with cothons. I think other players are rightly realizing that they're benefitting us by giving us these trade routes - yet if they are not able to fill their own foreign trade routes then it's going to just equally hurt them. In addition, us PRO civs are going to be able to mitigate the loss a bit with our own island cities. An ICTR domestic will give as much as a same-continent foreign, at least until the harbor/cothon +50% bonus comes into play. So if I can't get external routes then I'm going to plant an island city in the lake. And I'm going to try to sweeten the deal to those who aren't offering me open borders currently:
I've got all this sugar, so I might as well use it. Hopefully that is something that can entice AT into giving me some more foreign trade routes. I'm going to need them between cothons and my newest city:
The only purpose for marion is to lay claim to those dye tiles. I'll worry about actually hooking them up later, but we need to get the city and get borders popped before any of that can happen.
Marion only cost me like 1 or 2gpt to settle so I don't need to ask much of it. I'm starting granary first but I most likely am going to chop that forest into walls in here just to be safe. I don't want to put a lot of infrastructure into this city until I get the situation with Superdeath under control, so this is just going to be a unit pump. Granary, walls, units.
And the superdeath situation gets a couple new twists this turn.
First off, those 3 galleys meant I had to swap my coastal cities to galleys myself. Metal casting absolutely has to be my next tech now as I need to get my triremes going before he gets his. We'll probably have to whip galleys in the capital and Lincoln next turn. If the odds hold out then he'll lose his first two galleys against mine and his third will kill one leaving us with 1 wounded galley apiece. Another possibility is that he's going to just unload units next to the capital or on the forest. We'll just have to assess again when the time comes.
The next wrinkle is that Superdeath has possibly left me an opening with his impatience. With all the units he's lost - now 8 horse archers and 2 axes - there's potentially an opening for me to hit the city next turn. So I have moved up all my 2-movers and put a pair of workers in place to try for it. My sims have all been successful so far: after my 12 catapults crash in to the city then I'm able to mop up with minimal losses. If he doesn't do something to significantly change the equation next turn then I am probably going to do exactly that. Especially now that I have a fresh wave of elephants coming after.
I forgot that cothons were at a premium over harbors: 100h instead of 80h. So instead of having 2 pop whips all around I instead had 3 pop whips and if I wanted to wait for 2 then I would have to delay several turns. I did not want to wait for several turns. So I whipped away 15 population and got 5 new cothons in. I tried to whip off of mines so I could grow back faster.
When the turn rolled, I was making 30gpt more from those 5 new cothons. Hurray cothons! Hurray! Hurray!
I loved planting island cities as soon as reasonably possible for trade routes. They also make good Moai locations, obviously. Moai can be hard to build in an island city, but if you've got Stone and some forests it's often quite feasible. Whip overflow is also useful.
This might be the turn we won the war against Superdeath. We certainly struck a blow.
As hoped, we won the first two galley battles and then lost to his third. I whipped galleys in the capital and at Lincoln in response and so he won't be able to pillage my capital's fishing boats (again). His galley is at about 50hp so my next galley should clean up.
Jowy's golden age must just about be up as he has revolted civics. We are going to start our own golden age here very soon, within 10 turns I think.
Jowy also offered me a trade that I had no idea how to take:
Is this meant to be a shakedown of some kind? Like he'll ignore me if I give him what he wants? Instead I countered with the same deal I gave to AT: Give me open borders and I'll give you Sugar. I realize now that if they both accept then I'll have traded all my sugar away, but I think I'll be okay with that.
And most importantly, no change from Superdeath on the units in Shrimp Skampi. I did about 10 sims and had great results so it was time to do this!
First the catapults went in:
I only had 1 withdraw, which was a bit unlucky. In my sims I had averaged 4-5 withdraws, which admittedly was a little high. But I also didn't score a lot of hits on my attacks and that led to some dicier battles later on.
Next step was to send in the Numids. They took on his spears and high health Numids. Here I got a lot luckier than my sims, as I would lose about 2 numids in each sim. But here I didn't lose a single one. My first couple battles were in the uppers 60s to 70s but after winning those everything was 85% and above. I sent in the swords and one of the axes as they all had high odds against defenders.
However, I ran into a bit of a snag around here:
My last Numid would go against an archer at high odds, but I wanted to get it against a more worthwhile target - anything of mine could kill an archer. My last axe would go against his somewhat health horcher at 70% odds, and all the rest I had were spears which were up against his axe at 35-40%. Maybe if I could send my chariot in against his archer then I could get a more favorable defender with my numid: against an axe or his horcher? But at 80% the chariot lost without doing a single hit. So back to the original problem down a unit. I decided to just send in spears and power through that axe; it was wounded already anyway. The C2 spear lost to his axe at 41.5% odds but dropped it down to 5hp. From there my spears all went up against his archers and all in the 80% range. I got lucky in that i won every single one. Then my Numid did go up against his horcher with the healthy archers gone, and I killed that at 96% odds.
It was cleanup from there:
And all that Oracle culture from before meant that I still had dominant culture in the city and didn't have any revolt turns!
F1 C1 shock Numid vs 56hp C1 spear (72.0% / 8.4%) - win
F2 C1 Numid vs 56hp spear (68.4% / 15.8%) - win
F2 C2 Numid vs 64hp C2 horcher (85.9% / 7.1%) - withdraw, horcher down to 4hp
F2 Numid vs 44hp C1 spear (84.4% / 7.8%) - win
F1 C2 Numid vs 55hp C2 horcher (95.2% / 1.4%) - win
F1 C2 Numid vs 55hp C2 horcher (95.2% / 1.4%) - win
F1 C2 Numid vs 55hp C2 horcher (95.2% / 1.4%) - win
CR sword vs 50hp C1 axe (85.0%) - win
C2 sword vs 50hp axe (88.8%) - win
C2 axe vs 56hp CG archer (93.4%) - win
F1 C2 shock numid vs 52hp CG archer (95.7% / 1.3%) - win
F1 sentry numid vs 50hp CG archer (88.0% / 3.6%) - win
C1 medic chariot vs 50hp CG archer (79.5% / 2.1%) - lose, no damage
C2 spear vs 50hp axe (41.5%) - loss, axe to 5hp
GG born for superdeath
C2 spear vs 50hp CG archer (82.6%) - win
C1 spear vs 52hp archer (81.2%) - win
C1 spear vs 52hp archer (83.7%) - win
spear vs 37hp CG archer (86.7%) - win
spear vs 37hp CG archer (86.7%) - win
F1 C2 numid vs 55hp C1 horcher (96.3% / 1.1%) - win
axe vs 26hp C1 axe (98.4%) - win
C1 spear vs 25hp archer (99.6%) - win
C1 spear vs 5hp axe (99.9%) - win
C2 formation spear vs 4hp C2 horcher (99.9%) - WIN!
I moved up one of the withdraw numids into the city along with the great general spear. I'm hoping that he isn't prepared for this and there's nothing behind so next turn I will be able to pillage his ivory and kill any elephant builds he may have going right now.
Unfortunately all my numids are hurt bad, so there's no rushing on to trying to take Pyramids from him. Boil It is my next target, however - that city gone will completely cripple his economy. I believe I've destroyed most of his army now anyway and he's going to have to whip heavily in order to replace it.
(August 1st, 2020, 20:19)NobleHelium Wrote: I loved planting island cities as soon as reasonably possible for trade routes. They also make good Moai locations, obviously. Moai can be hard to build in an island city, but if you've got Stone and some forests it's often quite feasible. Whip overflow is also useful.
Normally yes. But with open borders back to Writing i ended up having open borders and foreign trade routes before I got Sailing, and so I just never had the need. In fact, getting an island city just to get a trade route would have only given my opponents a stronger trade route and not me. So I intentionally decided not to settle an island city unless it really was a good city on its own.
However, now that I'm not going to be able to fill up my trade routes with all foreign routes, suddenly island cities make sense for the ICTRs, so we want them now. And once we conquer Superdeath we'll have Pyramids AND Great Lighthouse and that will mean lots of trade routes.
Finally, there was one more hard decision to be made this turn, but I did it. I paved over the banana village:
I just think that Clatsop needs the food. +3fpt when working all the mines just isn't good enough.
Metal Casting due in 3. My research rate is picking up!
So this turn I lost 615 hammers and killed 770 worth, not counting galleys which were even (100 apiece), and counting the last couple turns I've lost 215 and killed 470 for a total of:
Superdeath is in full retreat, with the forces he had put down south to claim land all rushing to Boil It to defend. I would love to press this advantage - but all of my units are badly wounded and I will need several turns. So for now we regroup. Unfortunately this gives him time to recover, but I wouldn't be able to threaten a city for several turns even if I rushed in now, and then we'd be seeing his whipped units arriving at full health against my wounded band.
I still chopped into a Walls at Marion because we don't know what the future will bring and I want that city to be a bullwark in case we have catapults or war elephants incoming. Unfortunately superdeath has hooked up a second source of ivory in the south so there is no point in pillaging the ivory right outside of Coos. And a lot of my Numids need 3 or 4 turns to heal so there will be no mad rush to capture or raze Boil It. Sadly Superdeath gets to keep his economy, but like I said before: our advantage is long term and there's no need to rush things. Besides, he whipped at least 5 cities this turn so there's a round of elephants or catapults coming.
I also used the overflow at Lincoln to 1-turn walls there. Now that Superdeath's army has been pummeled we're seeing Mr. Cairo as my strongest neighbor. I don't have any reason to suspect Cairo has intentions right now, but better to be prepared. I'm also sending 2 workers up north here to chop those two trees, while they are in my cultural control. Speaking of Cairo, I believe he finished Metal Casting this last turn. That would make both my neighbors to the east as having triremes, so it's about time I finish the tech myself.
Neither AT nor Jowy went for my "sweetened" open borders deal offers, so we're stuck with the trade routes we have. Guess I need to root for Charriu in his war against AT, though I see he's already lost a city to AT this turn. My power is still #1 in the game, but no longer by such a large margin due to all the catapults I lost and will need to replace. But I think this round of elephants will solve that. Still, it's interesting to see that only the PRO civs have open borders with each other and the non-PRO civs - with the exception of Mr. Cairo. I'm not sure why he's getting a pass, but he has a very strong economic combination with Ikhandas for cost reduction and PRO for the extra commerce. I guess it helps to not hit the top of the scoreboard, but he's still very much in it.
Finally I need to decide how I'm going to use this guy. I have to tasty options: I could put him on a pair of boats and get a pair of 4-move galleys. I could just attach him onto my first elephant and make a strong 2-move anti-cavalry unit, similar to my existing spear. But what I'm leaning towards is getting a super medic unit. Consider we have a lot of warring still left to do against Superdeath I think a GG medic would be very helpful. So I swapped Tillamook to a chariot for that purpose.
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