[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

that's why we're AGG 100 impis costs 50 GPT, and we have 50 GPT (more or less). and.... it's not like we're going to research anything ever again, right?

today's deploy was bad, bad, bad though due to being done both in haste and in tilt.... i would not be surprised if we took a ton of unnecessary losses to help enable spending that kind of cash..... if so, sorry yall

[ljubljana]

196

have i discovered how to care less? we'll see....

had a dream where they took kirishima and wakamotoharu last turn and renamed them after dumb shit. don't remember WHAT dumb shit unfortunately  but based on this experience i'm prepped to endure seeing losses this turn i think



man's got caravels sitting irritatingly on all our seafood.... worth researching optics just to drive them off? i continue to feel like it probably isn't but man is that annoying

no losses this turn, and.... in defense of my sniping all their scouts earlier....



sheesh, look at what these guys are having to do to scout us  wandering completely sacrificial units into our territory just to get a turn of vision on our deployments? yikes.... they named the pikeman "pikemen" and the mace "mace windu" so i will respond in kind









this last guy got a flawless win and now sits nicely in a forest, and is threatening to seize control of the PFH in so doing

then we just whip every single city real quick



except aksum. aksum can 1t an impi without even trying



WITNESS ME!!!!



RFT (moused-over) and magnus have some pretty significantly-sized stacks of muskets-and-friends inside at this point. and, maybe this is a mistake, but i'm making an attempt to defend Work Ethic "for real" as well. top defender is a GC2 tokumusket with 15% fortify and now 45% defensive bonus.... that's what,

9 * (1 + 0.45 (city) + 0.45 (CG) + 0.1 (c1) + 0.15 (fortify)) = 19.35 strength on defense

which compares reasonably with a combat 3 cav. so if they launch a full-scale attack, probably they take 3-4 losses to wipe out the defenders, and then we revenge with a huge stack of cuirs from inside RFT? yeah, it needs a bit of work but in the essentials i think that's reasonable enough

actually, 1E of the city may be a bit better for stack storage.... it threatens a same-turn recapture even if they gift work ethic back to greenline, assuming we chop the forest 1NW of the city. then we can store cats under the cuir stack and collateral any nice big stack they may leave SE of the city to cover the wounded. only problem would be.... if they gift the city to greenline and stick their whole stack IN work ethic, in which case we don't get to collateral it and have to slam cuirs into it inefficiently and possibly unsuccessfully. then if the stack is E of RFT we kinda get owned, huh; if they gift the city back our cats will be trapped by third-ring borders coming back from WE, and can only escape into RFT where they will get massacred. 1NW of WE, on the forest, is no better as then we're just straight-up in range of their 2-movers. ugh....

well, maybe i'm overstating the "get massacred" element of this idea.... we can shift 1-movers from magnus over to cover RFT and could, i think, get enough guys in there to protect the cats if they do go straight for RFT on the turn after WE falls. and well, turn timer's getting low so i'll try it, for this turn. create an opportunity for them to make mistakes, and all that. especially since i'm pretty sure this is the turn their stack will be healed up and ready to move out...



we are also exposing ourselves to potential cav-sniping from the north but i'm willing to believe they don't have a gigantic number of cavs in range getting ready to do exactly that on exactly next turn

[ljubljana]

197

guess i'd better play us a turn



well, nothing much happened this round really, except that ginger laid the final nail in the coffin of our ability to work seafood



ok, now this is a bit more like it



should i spend a bunch of cuirs to try to burn down herring? the city is of very marginal value and it would be almost entirely out of spite. but i do feel pretty spiteful rn.... well, so far as i can tell, there is no other offensive action we can efficiently take without a decently-sized Swarm to hide behind so i think it's worth consideration, if for no other reason than to at least impose some kind of cost to ginger just endlessly staying at war with us... i went ahead and set up the combat workers so we can at least check out the defenses next turn. which means our cuirstack is 1E of RFT as of now

[williams482]

I'd hold back. Wait for Ginger to commit their stack somewhere and look to counterattack, or push forward when the swarm is fully operational. Remember that we're playing for what slivers of win probability remain, and burning units to burn that city isn't likely to help at all.

[ljubljana]

hmm. i am not so sure that razing random ginger cities does not help our wincon.... the logic would be that it makes them pay something tangible in exchange for staying at war with us forever, so conceivably if we can do enough damage it might increase the odds that they sign peace in time to forestall naufragar from piling in. but i'll only do it if the city is quite lightly defended i think, not worth slamming cuirs into multiple rifles (unlike at lungfish where i might do that if i think we can hold the city)

198

greenline resettled no hill start, and....



hahaha awwww. i can see fully 3 things this might be in reference to: the cruelty of our attack on greenline, of ginger's attack on us, or of ginger burning the city instead of giving it back to them. so that means 2/3 odds it's ginger-related so i hereby consider greenline to have emotionally switched sides



ginger has finally found the correct way of scouting us, with a rifle on a hill  thereeee we go. yes, that is the perfect place for a scout. you are right that i'm not going to attack into it (probably?) and it reveals all the tiles you need to, uh.... i guess to decide not to attack into work ethic's  16 defenders. only one tinyyy little problem which is that it's not in range of lungfish now....



we've lost sight of ginger's megastack... it's not in district discount according to our sentry chariot. i wonder if it's repositioned defensively, and is just relying on the threat of it lurking in greenline territory to deter further incursions from us in that direction? i'm sure they don't want to pay 50 GPT to maintain it in foreign lands forever. well, if that is what they're doing, it is working, of course....

greenline has a shitton of pikes in DD at this point, which probably came from the capital. which makes me question how much they actually still HAVE in the capital? if we think the stack might be abroad we could probably push against.... ok, not chop overflow itself but maybe longship spam, at least

herring's defenses are



more than sufficient to deter a snipe attempt. yeah, there's no way it's worth chewing through that many guys



whipped every city again



wakamotoharu and unhappiness until the end of the game, name a more iconic duo

[ljubljana]

199

tbh going to skimp on the reporting quality for the forseeable future.... couldn't take my external monitor with me during the move so i no longer reeeeeally have a setup that easily supports it. plus i'm a bit over this game as you all have probably gathered



.... what ???



ginger is trying to road under the desert hill so they can 1t RFT with 2-movers from the fog. ok, that i can't allow. so... how many pinch tokumuskets does it take to crack a g2 rifle on a hill? apparently 2-3, most likely..... for a rifle and a worker, 2 draftees is not a bad trade if we roll that outcome, but i don't actually have enough muskets in the city to go for it this turn... oops

and then, well.... i realize that i'm not 100% sure the worker wasn't there last turn as well, and i get really nervous about cav attacks from the fog into RFT's cat stack, and i just decide to go for it. and... the dice are with us! i use two flanking 2 cuirs, which both retreat at 45% odds, and then lose only a single musket finishing off the weakened rifle. one musket for a rifle + worker (deleted of course) plus denying ginger some crucial scouting intel is DEFINITELY a good trade  and.... now that ginger will potentially be unaware of the sitch in RFT for a turn, why not shift some cuirs west for a turn and look for a chance to go after longship spam

OH SHIT i hit end turn and then immediately, belatedly, finally realized what mjmd was trying to tell us - this is a WARNING. 43 horse units in range of RFT and WE. well, that is more or less what we already knew.... but the question is, are they still in the south in greenlinedia or have they repositioned north of the border, where ginger won't have to pay for them? however many horse ginger has, we apparently have enough (i think 18 defenders on this turn?) in work ethic to have deterred a full-scale attack without siege, as they are certainly healed up by now and have had a few turns in which i think they could have made something happen... if they take WE and gift it back to greenline we aren't in position to immediately counter on that same turn.... so maybe they just don't want to take losses as heavy as would be incurred trying to crack our musket + pike pile behind 45% defenses? i can dream right?

anyways chichen itza #1 least regretted build of this game

[ljubljana]

200

ugh, the sublime joy of it all



heh.... ginger sends 3 guys including a bigass 5-promo cavalry (upgraded from a cuir?) just to kill my little musket on the desert hill that sniped their worker. and no second worker has appeared, so we have bought ourselves at least a few turns in so doing



rejoicing across the occupied territories as the swam secures its first significant victory of FINALLY getting the damn roads into work ethic pillaged, because ginger was not willing to expose a real unit to attack these two last turn



with the aid of our guerilla troops that ginger has mercifully left unbothered these last few turns, we have the vision needed to establish that there is a tile, 2N of longship spam, that is in range of the city without the possibility of exposure to 2-mover attack from the fog. while we are still waiting for the swarm to finish getting itself together, i think it may be worth sidetracking to take or at least burn this city.... it would free up a ton of cultural pressure on magnus, give us an inroad to the sumerian capital, and perhaps draw ginger's stack down here, which is away from our preferred next target of herring...

and after committing to that i notice another big stupid problem



lungfish has hit third-ring borders at the WORST possible time ((( which may not only defeat our plan to attack there but also expose RFT to ginger  RFT has only exactly 10 culture inside (in retrospect this is a mistake) which means lungfish has the capacity to convert the northern 3 tiles in its second ring to ottoman culture..... if that happens, ginger can 1t us from the fog!!!! so i guess i will be hoping that the city is not building culture, and building culture myself forever in RFT, just to allay this possibility



AHA FOUND YOU!!!! i s2g this guy has killed SOOO damn many of my scouts in nauf territory.... your turn! have fun trying to decide if nauf's about to attack us or not now

hit end turn and a ton of horrible shit happens..... RFT loses 2 of its 3 second-ring tiles as expected (thankfully i evacuated the cats and cuirs from the city just in time), an indian revolt in hungary rush this time (BOTH of the cities on the eastern shore of the moat seem destined to flip to mjmd unless we stack a shitton of troops in there forever, which of course we can't do now).... ugh but whatever that's tomorrow me's problem

i did cravenly offer white peace again this turn once i realized how bad things were about to get down here lungfish-culturally.... i doubt they take it though, obviously. we don't have close to enough defenders to hold both RFT and WE in the face of 1-turning. MAYbe this is our chance to trick ginger into a stack-wipe though.... keep a recapture stack SW-W of the city where they can't easily scout it and then hopefully get them to overcommit to what should look like a golden opportunity to cut off WE? unfortunately i committed most of our actual attackers to longship spam before i realized we were in danger culturally though, oooooops.... do i dare to dream that killing that worker last turn might mean they now don't have the CW in place to immediately capitalize?

i also whipped every city one more time to get another round of impis out, which should put us at around 80.... that miiiight be the last round i go for? not 100% sure, honestly., i'll get back to yall tomorrow. impis are way more cost effective than cuirs as a counter to a pure 2-mover stack but the unhappiness in all our cities is starting to seriously add up

in the meantime check out this calc of what happens if you throw 100 formation impis against 40 combat 2 cuirs




lurker question: does a culture-flipped city spawn one or more free defenders for the recipient of the flip, and if so, what kind? current plan is to let our cities flip to mjmd and then DoW to recapture and walk in with an impi if we have to, but maybe that's idiotic lol

lurker question 2: is "no city flipping after conquest" turned on for this game lmao

edit: oh NOOO in rushing the turn to get in under the timer i messed up the deploy really badly.... our units on the forest W-SW of RFT are NOT SAFE from combat-roaded cav attacks from the north if they kill RFT. and the stack there is all cats, cuirs, and impis and totals a very-wipeable 30-units. oh god damn it i'm so stupid UGH. if we log in to a game-over scenario next turn that will be why.... something about stack-based combat is sooo much more stressful than civ6's version since very slight errors in positioning can be game-losing and this is a good example

[xist10]

question 1) number changes between 1-3, I think and more defenders for bigger cities.
I think the unit the city can recruit ? But longsbows should take priority above macemen, so best archer/gunpowder unit ?
2) "no city flipping after conquest" should only be against the player, from which you captured the city.
So the cities can't flip to Greenline, but they can flip to Mjmd (and then back to greenline, I think)


yes, civ4 combat is a lot faster, so an error has more impact.

[ljubljana]

ok, so sounds like they probably will get 1 rifle for a size-1 city. annoying to recapture but certainly doable enough, but we have to have the units in place to do it....

i need to find a way to evaluate these positions quicker and more accurately..... the problem is i just don't have time, it takes me close to an hour just to move 200 units around, and i was caught off guard by tiles flipping culturally between my turn and ginger's to open up an attack vector but that's no excuse, just gotta get good we maaaay yet still have enough counterattackers in range if they go for it, but it depends on - what else - whether the correct tiles revert to neutrality after we recapture longship spam next turn. if we are lucky, ginger might also be scared to commit beyond just taking RFT, since they do know a 30-unit stack of cat + impi + cuir is not even close to all we have in the area

[ljubljana]

201

these days, ginger posting always makes me suspect they got us really bad somewhere. and we know there is a somewhere on the board where that might have happened. but so be it. nothing to do but open the turn and find out (obviously)



YUP. fuck me man

well, THAT is it for our chances, and i am conceded to whoever can get everyone else behind them

they needed a GG morale cav to do this, pillaging the road on the forest to cut off counterattackers, which of course i always knew was a possibility in the back of my mind but like, if i don't even see the tactic before committing to a deploy of course i'm not going to do that either.

jesus dude. i KNOW i'm better than this (or capable of being better than this?) but it just doesn't feel worth it. i need to find a hobby containing less suffering

edit: it's not all bad, i guess, as we did retake longship spam for free and managed to pillage the roads to it, so we might hold onto it for a bit. so net neutral in terms of city count. and i sort of have a plan to counterattack next turn if ginger is sufficiently complacent (not that that's really going to happen). specifically they have to not pillage the OTHER forested road 1N of RFT. and... nauf renewed our nap and mjmd is still being nice to us as well (i asked if they wanted to attack greenline again this turn, lol), so it looks like the understanding is there that our collapse would end the game in ginger's favor....