[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

ok; does it need to revolt 2 more times to flip back to them again? or will one revolt do it?

guess it's time to get our 20-unit impi stack back together then lol

[williams482]

I don't know if a gifted city can flip back. A captured city cannot. In normal situations it's pretty unlikely to flip regardless, but given you're 3rd ring to a city with 60% borders and probably lots of cultural stuff... hmm. At a minimum you're in some danger of losing the sugars again.

[ljubljana]

semi-laboriously simmed it and it appears that a city that is gifted back after a culture flip can still revolt, but will not flip back to the gifter even if it revolts twice.... at least, assuming this game was created with the same (default) settings related to culture flips that i used in the sim

we definitely will lose the southern sugar, but i think the northern one is safe - it's first-ring to us and "only" fourth-ring to them. that's good enough for me, and if (when) our impis are needed to fight off another ginger invasion, i am content to simply let the city spend 3 out of every 7ish turns in revolt while we are in existential war. i'm also going to move all our ancient age MP units from across the empire to hungary rush to minimize the number of impis we have to permanently commit there, since impis are apparently still a relevant military asset while archers and axemen really are not

btw guys, i did the most SP thing ever this turn and started the forbidden palace in magnus  not sure if that's the objectively correct location (it should have gone in lalibela ages ago if we're being honest) but it amuses me so i'm doing it. actually, one significant reason for the choice of greenline as an attack target that i'm not sure i mentioned at the time was BECAUSE they are playing sumeria, which has meant that almost all of our captured cities have come pre-courthoused food for thought the next time i am tempted to call them the consensus-strongest civ in the picking stage... sufficiently-obsessive readers might note that, after the mercantilism swap, our espionage production has nearly doubled and that'd be the reason

[ljubljana]

hey, how are great merchants typically used in this game? i see that yield is determined mostly (entirely?) by how much gold the opponent would get from a trade route to my capital, so if i think i might get one, i'm supposed to grow the capital as quickly as possible first, and then ideally launch the trade mission in the temple of artemis city (pre-scimeth which is imminent for the others...) or one with a harbor, right?

and um..... more importantly, can't my opponent just declare war on me and kill the merchant when they see it in their lands? it's hard to imagine even mjmd, who just signed a long NAP with us, not doing that given the chance, right....?

(i am trying to figure out ways to use abi's 3t-away national epic build [don't ask....] as a lever to get us to either rifling or biology faster, instead of get us to the third golden age... right now i see that an engineer can potentially bulb replaceable parts, and a scientist can bulb scimeth, but that is insufficient to fill all of abi's 5 workable specialist slots)

edit: deranged, related thought: ginger has a great merchant on the board too, which they are likely using for a trade mission themselves. i am thinking about sending mjmd diplo asking for

- stop trading with ginger
- 1300 gold (my proxy for a "typical" trade mission yield)
- and the ToA city (i believe mjmd owns this)

do you think there is any chance at all that that will convey to them what i want it to convey, which is that i think they should DoW ginger and try to snipe their merchant?

[ljubljana]

207

nyhhh its no-meds nursday again so idk about reporting;;;; good thing this is happening during a not-war turn (it says something abotu this game that i consider a turn when i am quite clearly at war to be a "not-war turn")

everyone is logging in and logging out again on pbspy over and over which always makes me nervous.... that indicates strategic re-evaluation, which makes sense in this context. but one of the ways someone's (naufragar's) strategy could be re-evaluated is in the direction of ending our game. we really have to do some thinking about nauf... obviously we want them to go west instead of east, but equally we need superdeath to um.... survive whatever happens to them. so i am not sure how much of a free hand we're supposed to be giving them here. i do think SD can proooobably live a 2v1 right now but they'd be seriously weakened at least which isn't great either. of course i don't think there's much chance of nauf sitting around and doing nothing either as really this is about as late as they can make a major move and still continue to contend, i think



magic has given up trying to defend the capital - looks like the whole stack is holed up in VA to await the end. so we have a choice: push through wastefully with cuirs (c2 cuir has a 2/3 chance to die vs the top defender) or wait a turn to bomb down the defenses. that's a tough call as the one turn is highly significant and looks like the difference between eliminating greenline on the turn ginger can redeclare or on the turn after. but equally if we're expecting another attack immediately we can ill afford to just waste what could be as many as 3-4 cuirs trying to push through the defenses here either

of course, they just whipped on their turn so going in now does save us from having to kill another defender. also probably saves us 5% fortify bonus on the VA stack. and it.... ugh, it looks like even with the defenses down we don't exactly get odds on these defenders (though it's true that we gain the ability to crack them with muskets). but man, a lot of the cuirs we'd want to attack with are a little injured or only singly-promoted so we can't even really expect to rush this down as we could with a wave of fully-healthy c2 cuirs (which again, get only 33% odds to live with the defenses up)? ok yeah you got me, fuck that noise



WAAAAIT a second, i see what these random wandering ginger units are doing.....they're spite-pillaging all our towns! nice, it's really cool that this is possible during a quote-unquote enforced peace treaty  well, sadly there is not much we can do about it besides pillage them ourselves faster than they can, while building culture in a desperate attempt to save some of them. so that'd be the downside to taking peace with an enemy who is willing to do everything in their power to mess with you 



re the discussion of a possible great merchant: the temple of artemis is in mjmd's capital. so there is a way.... and it involves a boat.....

[ljubljana]

rules question: ginger moved before us last round, and hasn't moved yet this round. since we are in a race to pillage tiles in "neutral" territory (which is to say, in MY conquered territory ), it would be an illegal double-move for me to go before them, right? if so, am i supposed to ask them for a peacetime turnsplit until no pillages remain? i could also play now and not pillage any tiles they are in range of, but i did pillage some such tiles last turn and ginger would have no way of knowing if those pillages were the result of a double-move or not

timer's getting low and there is some risk of me holding up the game if i wait for them, but if it would be an illegal game action for me to play the turn now of course i won't do that (which also means i don't think i can play until i get a lurker opinion on this question)

[ljubljana]

208

well, it looks like ginger played so rules question is mooted for this round. but i'd still appreciate an answer if yall have one as the same situation can easily arise next round as well

man i sure am out of it. not a lot i want to do less than play the turn right now but the thing must go on



.... uh huh. well, i wish i could help but i'm pretty much at my limit as far as foreign entanglements go.... sorry SD  frankly it'd be kind of a miracle just to survive long enough to get to rifles and hold this territory against the slavering gingerian hordes. really i have next to no prospect for offensive war any time in this era of military tech

and then scooter wants silk, which i actually have to think about. normally i'd do this without a second thought but if the enemy is SD, and we think SD is going to get mauled by india, actually we WANT SD to conquer scooter efficiently so they are less likely to be run over by mjmd and what i still think is pretty likely to be a nauf pile-on as well

well we're here for this of course



you can see just the smallest bit of (extremely understandable) spite-whipping on MS's end as well, with the city whipped on this turn into a unit it will never complete. oh well, probably was still worth saving cuirs by waiting a turn to attack. and venetian arsenal is also getting pretty whipped-down, so with all the towns we're about to cut them off of, there's some chance of non-AGG greenline's garrison starting to strike down in the coming turns. uh.... or at least i can hope so

thought about using a cat for collateral, but decided we'd better save them for the real stack (which we don't have too much hope of taking down efficiently otherwise, oops....). so we just bomb out the defenses and go in i think. we're slightly favored to win or retreat with a flanking 2 cuir and... that's pretty much what we've got going for us here

first attack gives greenline a great general, right there in the capital..... in a reminder that things can always be worse

anyways dice semi-hate us and take 4 cuirs away, two at 70+% odds. but a captured capital is a captured capital



no granary :| nor an easy way to get one since here at least there are no free chops for us. but it did keep the market AND GROCER which probably matters more, believe it or not. and there is a captured military instructor here as well, in case, uh.... in case naufragar decides to take aksum away from us and we have to rebuild the heroic epic....

now we have to immediately pillage the village to the west of the city so mjmd doesn't start coming at us too



don't ask why i'm not working the rice at ouch here.... actually no, please do ask. it is because i feel that we must pop the borders here in 2 turns to save the plains towns and block ginger's janky-ass cuirassier and maceman from advancing further west..... not to mention it brings the 2 forests into range which, thank god, greenline never chopped, so we can now chop them into an emergency granary here. you can see in the chopped theater at work ethic another manifestation of my desperation to keep these cities from getting 1-turned from the fog during the inevitable next ginger attack

district discount is also working the quarry for a similar reason. 3h quarry + 1h city center + 1h from a citizen specialist (over the spy it could also run) just barely equals a 2-turn border pop, which finishes next turn. so the pikeman is too late - he is on our village (with just 5t left to grow to a town) and looks all set to pillage, but as soon as i hit end turn the borders should pop here and kick him back out to where he belongs



actually.... after a pretty complete border survey, i don't even see any superdeathian troops in egyptian territory? don't.... don't tell me this is an elaborate feint to lull mjmd into a false sense of security and actually india is their primary target??



finally found something our woodsman II muskets are good for.... sneaking down onto these PFHs and occupying them before magic can not to mention pillaging the roads so that troops inside the city can't attack our stack next turn, and ideally won't be able to attack it until we are on the PFH right next to the city center

first to 40 cities wins, right i have to say it is wild to have this much territory and still (as i see it) almost no chance to actually win the game. i guess uh... city count really isn't everything, huh?

[RefSteel]

Yes, given the pillaging race in progress, you are correct to follow a peace-time turn split, because taking a double turn gives the player a tactical advantage they shouldn't get: You can see where the enemy has moved, and take two full moves to react to that before they can respond. For instance, when they move to tiles you can't both reach and pillage in a single turn, a double turn lets you still move to those tiles and pillage the improvements out from under them before they have a chance to play - or on the other side, you can expend your movement moving to a roadless flatland tile and deny their two-movers the chance to legitimately snipe-pillage it from under you since they won't even see you're there until you've played again and done your pillaging.

[ljubljana]

ok! thank you so much for that answer yeah, that is pretty much what i was thinking - i guess i just wanted confirmation given that i made everyone wait for several hours on the turn last night in service of such logic hopefully this issue shouldn't arise again though - our border expansions kicked ginger's cuirassier all the way out to the east side of sumeria, so they only have one maceman still in position to pillage, and i think we can stay ahead of it from here on out

209



the nasty pillagers have been defeated  (borders will expand at ouch this turn so i think they can't reach the plains towns even if i don't pillage the roads out from under them this turn)



n a t i o n a l   e p i c



collateral, prepare to be absorbed



oh.... so that's why mjmd hasn't murdered us all via golden age yet



spotlight on our one singular strong city, which can 2-turn cuirs indefinitely and which i am vaguely trying to grow up to size in service of bumping up domestic trade route yield to 3 gold in a bunch of cities (ok, and in service of 1-turning cuirs). still unsure of if i'm supposed to be stacking our 2 extra GGs in here and building a stable to go for 17 XP cuirs.... specifically, do i really trust naufragar that much. upside to saving the GGs would be for use on a super-medic, or in case this city gets burned someday and we have to rebuild somewhere else. not sure how much XP it is worth giving up to hedge against such a hypothetical though

[Jabah]

If you are building cuirrassiers non stop you probably should finish the stable if it is only 2t.