[SPOILERS] Bacchus and India's many gods

[Bacchus]

Well, my Apostles got cleaned up. I hoped to maybe at least pillage a Harbor with my Quadrireme, but the damn scouts prevented even that from happening. Fun little hack: you know how embarked units now get a "default" strength according to era, so that you can't use a knight to beatdown a galley? Well, that strength gets set according to era, so that Ichabod's scouts, when embarked, now have a strength of 35. Not shoddy, certainly enough to stop any classical ships in their tracks, even if not enough to stand up to Caravels. Given that scouts are almost free, makes them incredibly versatile backline defenders.

I adopt Wars of Religion and Bastions, time to turtle up. Ichabod is miles ahead in GPP generation, he makes 10 Science and 10 Merchant points. Swimming in districts, and good for him. I still want to fight a defensive campaign against him, so am not going to concede yet.

Edit: albeit, I'm sure that what will happen is that he will just go conquer Rowain, who has 400 mil strength to 700 of mine and Ichabod's. Ouch. Also, Rowain keeps refusing both of us the Inspiration for Diplomatic Service, instead he gifted me Niter. Useful, to be sure, because, as with Iron, I don't have a single fucking source in my lands.

[Bacchus]

For now Ichabod is not attacking, and I'm as militaried up as needs be, so I decide to push out a couple of settlers, I am two cities behind England.

I have also completed the Coloseum, which for now lets me stay equal in culture to England.

There's really not that much point in continuing the game from a victory perspective, but I'm somehow enjoying it nonetheless.

[Bacchus]

America finally deigns to sign an alliance with a cavalry unit on its borders. This lets me get Diplomatic Service the turn after I get Mercantilism, staying ahead in the culture race. Alliance also brings a bunch of intel, which all pretty much sums up to "England wins". For some reason Steam didn't save my screenshots though, so next turn. I adopt Triangular Trade for an extra 28gpt, I also faithbought a Musket, boosting my city defenses nicely.

Timeline to Nationalism is ~15 turns.

I am not running Trade Confederation for the lack of eligible city-states, but may move my trade routes to Washington if Rowain hurries up and builds another district or two. Overall, I am making less culture than say Davy was in PBEM4 at this stage, so this development is really nothing to write home about.

Really, there was no point at all sending in the Apostles without escorts, even if sending escorts left me completely unguarded. I don't know what I was thinking, if I didn't have courage for a major conversion attempt, I should have just resigned. But know I kinda want to let Ichabod win it properly.

[Bacchus]

The slow falling behind the leader continues. I'm about to plant some cities and buy monuments, but it wont make much difference. I am keeping par in culture though. Will trade a more detailed update for a signup to Leerdam: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...n=lastpost

[Bacchus]

So this is what slow and certain death looks like:


The size of the deficit is revealed by the score screen:


Ichabod has since declared war on Rowain and captured a city with his Cavalry, which really forces me to think about some action from my side to overstretch the English forces. England has also captured lots of prime, fat city-states, to which I simply have no access because of geography, all are across the desert. I build some settlers, but the return on peaceful expansion is laughable compared to military.

I also built a spy Gonna try to attack the English treasury as much as possible. In return I expect some great works getting stolen from me. Speaking of which, I just got my second great writer, and will soon have the first great artist of the game. Lets me keep up in culture, even though I am hideously behind on science.

What's interesting is that it's not really clear how Ichabod is going to win. Conquest, eventually, probably, but it's a long-long slog towards that. The carpet of units, fortification and ranged unit advantage just make defense so advantageous.

I'm mostly playing along to see what happens, and to demonstrate just how worthless science is. England has had double my science for good 60 turns now, if not more.

[Bacchus]

Scrolled back through screenies. Ichabod established a tech lead against me already on T88, being 1 tech ahead. He has since always made more science than me, mostly double, and now has a five tech lead. I'm gonna say that at least for 35 turns he enjoyed a very strong tech advantage (3+ techs, even with deep beelines, e.g. Military Science). And for none of these 35 turns has he had a real opportunity to take the game. Now, it could be that he has no appetite for that, he is comfortable that the long-run favours him, as it does immensely, but you can try a counterfactual. If he wanted to end the game, what would he have done? Beeline Ballistics together with MilScience? Not much of a beeline already, to be frank. I'm not sure on what turn he could have got Ballistics, and I don't think quickly enough to bring his cannons before I get mine (I am already at Ballistics, just waiting for forts to be built).

Also, hilariously, Ballistics doesn't require Mathematics.

[Ichabod]

Just read your thread, Bacchus, and it was very interesting. I don't have time for a proper response right now, but I just want to point out that the scouts in my backlines was to get the +1 amenity from military units (and those are the cheapest things you can produce), since I suffered a whole lot from lack of amenities before suzeraining Zanzibar. I had them in most of my cities, which also helped countering the faith strategy.

A dedicated knight attack on my backlines would cause a lot of damage, for sure, as I lacked walls in some cities and I wasn't expecting that at all. Yerevan changing allegiance was a nasty surprise and it only made little damage because I was very close to a new envoy. I was very worried about you levying those units, but I checked and the prices to do it are enormous (like 1000 gold, for that many units). If you were able to, though, you could probably take out some of my best cities, as my units were very far away. That whole incident prompted me to get some cavs and capture Yerevan.

Interesting fact, I never gained a single beaker from Geneva's suzerain bonus, as I've been in war the whole game basically. Ever since declaring on Kaiser.

There were a couple of key points that I'd like to address later. It's a pity that I stopped updating near the time you made some of the most interesting moves. But I can answer any questions you have now.

[Bacchus]

Thanks Ichabod, and well played again. I was really impressed with your response to my first Varu foray, I really expected to do a bit more damage than I did.

Otherwise, Im interested to know how your massive advantage in science felt. To me it seemed that its nowhere as easy to convert science to an advantage on any other fronts.

[Ichabod]

Thanks Ichabod, and well played again. I was really impressed with your response to my first Varu foray, I really expected to do a bit more damage than I did.

Otherwise, Im interested to know how your massive advantage in science felt. To me it seemed that its nowhere as easy to convert science to an advantage on any other fronts.

That Varu attack caught me off guard. I had a sizeable army, nicely promoted, from the previous wars (mostly horsemen and archers). But I moved my army to take Jerusalem, which was not a very bright decision at the time, seeing as Rowain's army was about to be on my doorstep and I had no scouts placed in your direction. Luckily for me, the sword was lagging behind the main army, and I could use him for defense against you.

I chopped the Walls in Kaiser's Capital to get the attack from the Camp, which helped a lot and made me feel secure about defending. I placed the sword to defend inside the city because my understanding is that unit bonuses don't work for or against units inside cities (a unit inside the city doesn't get DOF bonus, nor does it get the Varu malus). So I could defend on 36 against 40, which was the most damage I could expect. After that, it was a question of trying to maneuver in a way that I would only get one Veru adjacency malus, while trying to get the best support bonuses I could. I gave up on the attack against Jerusalem, so my army was coming home, eventually. My main fear at the time was that you would go from that city to Lay Lady Lay, which didn't have walls, but Kaiser's capital was already secure, because you had no ram to siege it. I think that, if you had a bit more units, I'd be in great trouble, because you'd be able to promote and pillage farms to recover the damage I made, since I could only damage the Varus in small chunks, due to the strenght difference. Depending on game circumnstances, though, Varus seem to be very powerful units, if you can make up for their lack of movement.

That Varu attack was a very good move. Otherwise, I would have taken Jerusalem and probably opened a way larger advantage. I also lost a city to Rowain (I basically gave up on that city to try and clear Rowain's army as best as I could, which I succeeded in, since at that time I already had most of my main army back).

Regarding science, I think I was at fault for not using my science edge to get a bigger advantage. There were two main reasons: I didn't know anything about your land, so I couldn't really plan an offensive; and I knew the late game favoured me. There was a lot of passivity involved too. When I finally started an attack on Rowain near the end, just then I realized how powerful Cavalry are. If I planned things correctly, I could have attacked way earlier, gaining an even bigger advantage.

When you read my thread, you'll see that I commented there that Civ 6 don't have peaceful first to bonuses (most wonders suck, so all that's left are better yields on tiles, like Industrialization), so science leads aren't that meaningful, unless you can gain something from a military advantage. I think my Cavalry beeline was an interesting idea and I think I could have used it better (I was very unfocused at some parts of the game, building useless things like Theater Districts and some district buildings that would never pay off their costs before the game was over). My science lead also gave me Frigates, and I was getting an attack ready against your coastal cities, the only part of your empire that I managed to scout. So, at the very least, my science lead gave me good offensive options on land and water, which is an advantage. My idea was to raid your coast, try to get some damage against Rowain and wait for Tanks, that I knew I would reach way before everyone else. The other advantage I can think of that science would give me is Industrialization, that I reached on the last turns of the game. At this stage of the game, I had quite a bit of mines, so the production advantage could have an impact.

I think I made a very good job getting the Eurekas before renaissance (I probably missed only one or two, because I got 3 of the most difficult ones for free from the Great Scientist). But after that, my lack of planning hindered me a bit. I lost quite a long time researching Printing and Siege Tactics without Eurekas, on the way to Cavalry, for example (but getting those Eurekas would delay my goal of Cavalry, because they need techs that I would research otherwise).

I was surprised at the end about how I was dominating the CS envoy war against you. The placement of the city states helped me a lot, of course. I invested most of my envoys in Stockholm (that suzerain bonus is crazy), Zanzibar (another crazy bonus) and Geneva (useless bonus) and I got some pretty easy quests from time to time. Those cities survived until the end, while a lot of CSs that you invested on were captured, so I think that explains the disparity to some extent. One of the key moments of the game was Rowain equaling your envoys in Zanzibar, which let me keep the bonus to my Commercial Hubs. That gave me a lot of gold and eventually quests to fulfill. It was very interesting that, at one time, I was at war against you and Rowain, but at peace with Zanzibar, even though the both of you lead me there in envoys. In the end,