[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[MindyMcCready]

I don't know if I agree or disagree either. I feel like there's no way we could deter him in a situation where he could win otherwise. I think he's a rational guy with more Civ experience than me who I have to assume is obsessively analyzing the what-ifs as much as we are! So trying to imply that if he fights us we're in it for mutual destruction, well that's kind of redundant I think!

I don't see it lthat way.

First, I don't think that it's redundant. Your own Spock comment that you're going to be equal in your vengence is proof that it's not redundant to say it or to think it. You're overestimating how close we all are to perfect information and underestimating the psychological or even game-play aspect of it all.

For example, in PB7 (I think, one with LP) Seven felt like his game was shot from constant (successful) warring with Tyrant. Plako came by looking for easy picking. Seven, in the shared diplo thread basically told Plako that if he didn't back off he would commit his game to ruining him. Plako backed off from a credible threat of MAD.

That is an uneven response. The promise of an uneven response is hugely discouraging to an attacker unless they have an overwhelming power advantage. That is not the case with Ichabod vs us and he knows it and we know it. He might get a couple of cities off of us, but we then have the ability to completely take him out of game contention through permanent harrassment.

I couldn't play it last night, because I needed to wait for William

I think he would have been more careful about how he said that if he thought there was a small chance that an attack would be unexpected.

Agree. He's committed at this point.

I think that chance of him underestimating what we're packing is our only way to win a battle. If he knows we can devote our full attention he'll either attack if he can win or stay home like he's been doing for the last 50 turns. Frankly I think he's a better Civ player than me right now, so I don't expect him to make a strategic mistake unless he has an information disadvantage.

Well there's all kinds of things that can happen and all kinds of things that can go wrong yet are chosen perfectly given the information at the time.

Ichabod's decision to take/keep LaBoheme and/or threaten Don will be the first opportunity for a 'mistake'. If he double threatens with Knights and we upgrade as many spears-->pikes we may do him some damage. He also has no idea of the composition of our army right now.

If he keeps LaBoheme for profit, we might be able to get the drop on him with cats. If he razes, we have a very good chance of replanting and re-taking our culture tiles for a surprise. We're spiritual with Caste of course.

As they say about money,....you can't take it with you.

True! But I'm far more pessimistic about Ichabod's ability to profit from a war with us than you are. I don't think he's going to be able to make permanent gains at all. He'll probably be able to capture or raze La Boheme, but after that he's in the quagmire of our culture where we have all the tactical advantages. The game isn't going to be over if we spend gold only on techs.

So I still seriously hate unit upgrades, in 95% of situations, including this one. The difference between a spear and pike is simply not worth anywhere near 95 gold in a large fight if everything is taking collateral anyway. The only time I think upgrades are ever worth it are either for the few that are cost effective (like Knights to Cuirs) or to swing a very small scale battle with just a few units involved, like what Commodore did.

Well, I do think that he's going to take LaBoheme and easily unless something really breaks in our favour. What comes next is that he can hit any of 4 cities and we have a very difficult front to protect. That means that we'll forever have to heavily guard that border and we'll probably be gimped from taking out Retep and getting his land. Absolutely, dishing out gold is worth it over losing that city.

And just pointing out that Commodore payed a pretty big price to save a pretty unimportant city - you were 100% opposed to doing such a thing in the past but it worked out pretty well for Commodore. What we're talking about here is a very important city commerce-wise and defensively. I mean, what the heck is our economy for if not for saving cities?

How about, we just save gold and see if we need it. If it turns out we don't we can always run 100% science later.

You can see which have moves left in the screenshot a couple of pages back. Most relevant is the 5 (I think) cats that can't move and need to be protected. If you want to recommend which units should move I think we've got time before Ichabod can log in...

I'll see if I can take a look - very busy at work today unfortunately.

[WilliamLP]

I don't see it lthat way.

First, I don't think that it's redundant. Your own Spock comment that you're going to be equal in your vengence is proof that it's not redundant to say it or to think it. You're overestimating how close we all are to perfect information and underestimating the psychological or even game-play aspect of it all.

Maybe... I'd be willing to bet he's doing the same trick with a sentry chariot that we are though, and has been eyeing what we have pretty carefully. And he would know we have a sentry chariot as well.

I think he _should_ have very good information about the force we have, and could have if we turned back against Retep. I think the timing of this move, to the turn, was likely very deliberate by him. I.e. he wanted to attack at precisely the point before we could take Suit Up (and thus have roads available an extra turn to heal with a GG), waiting long enough that we're maximally committed inside Retep's land.

For example, in PB7 (I think, one with LP) Seven felt like his game was shot from constant (successful) warring with Tyrant. Plako came by looking for easy picking. Seven, in the shared diplo thread basically told Plako that if he didn't back off he would commit his game to ruining him. Plako backed off from a credible threat of MAD.

That is an uneven response. The promise of an uneven response is hugely discouraging to an attacker unless they have an overwhelming power advantage. That is not the case with Ichabod vs us and he knows it and we know it. He might get a couple of cities off of us, but we then have the ability to completely take him out of game contention through permanent harrassment.

Hmm, I guess I think such a threat (or its implication) has power when the one being threatened could win the game. Ichabod is far out of contention now. There are literally 7-8 people significantly ahead in tech and a couple of them are just exploding now. He's got nothing much left to do in this game but wage all-out war with us anyway.

Ichabod's decision to take/keep LaBoheme and/or threaten Don will be the first opportunity for a 'mistake'. If he double threatens with Knights and we upgrade as many spears-->pikes we may do him some damage. He also has no idea of the composition of our army right now.

See, I think he'll know basically precisely what the composition of our army is, with a sentry chariot on that hill (the one I wanted to pillage) moving back and forth. The rest of our forces he should be able to surmise to a similar level of precision that you do with Retep's power graph. I have a high opinion of how much he is analyzing this game.

But yeah, we have to still give him every opportunity to make a mistake, and if there are tricks to mislead him into believing something that isn't true, those can be useful. (E.g. your idea a while back of a phony declare on Retep and waiting a few turns was certainly interesting!)

What he's not going to get the chance to do is wipe out a stack of ours and take a massive hammer advantage. We just vacate cities if that's happening.

Well, I do think that he's going to take LaBoheme and easily unless something really breaks in our favour. What comes next is that he can hit any of 4 cities and we have a very difficult front to protect. That means that we'll forever have to heavily guard that border and we'll probably be gimped from taking out Retep and getting his land. Absolutely, dishing out gold is worth it over losing that city.

And just pointing out that Commodore payed a pretty big price to save a pretty unimportant city - you were 100% opposed to doing such a thing in the past but it worked out pretty well for Commodore. What we're talking about here is a very important city commerce-wise and defensively. I mean, what the heck is our economy for if not for saving cities?

There's a world of difference between a border dispute in a 4 vs 2 unit battle and a big hammer attack in a 50 vs 30 battle. In the second one, it's hard to imagine what the numbers would actually be where spear to pike upgrades change a situation where he can attack into one where he cannot.

With Commodore, well I don't think he's going to get a return on his upgrade investment either! But he clearly saw / sees his island effort and something extremely pivotal and important.

I'll see if I can take a look - very busy at work today unfortunately.

No worries. I'm going to respect the fact that I ended turn already, and it's Ichabod's part of the timer where we shouldn't change anything.

[WilliamLP]

I'm going out tonight, but it looks like the rest of my Friday night is going to be staying up late analyzing tactics in a losing battle in an ultimately futile war! I should write a fun pop song about this which will go viral on YouTube. Dammit at least I'm hoping for thread views though.




The forest growing by La Traviata changes everything.




Ichabod already made Mindy's intention-revealing offer for us!




So what are we up against?




Unpacking his army, he has 5 knights that can attack Don G. 3 more knights on the hill that can't attack next turn.

His main force:

16 Knight
13 Horse Archer
14 Cat + 1 Treb
3 Elephants + 1 Spear
4 Crossbow
6 Phalanx + 1 Sword
1 Medic 3 Chariot
---
Total: 57 units

Our defenders:

15 Longbow
13 Spear + 1 elephant

Arriving in 2 turns: 14 Knights.

The first question is what happens if he bombards down the walls and attacks right now? How many cat strikes can he make after lowering the walls to 0%? It depends on how many of his cats can get accuracy presumably.

The options are:
1. Leave all our junk there this turn. Make him grind down units or pause a turn.
2. Retreat everything.
3. Leave enough that he has to sacrifice siege to take the city, and what's left is weakened for the reinforcements.

#3 feels like the wrong play, but it's not obvious that it never is a good idea.

[WilliamLP]

So, not a very complex plan here. I'm virtually sure Ichabod will take a turn to bombard. It will take 13 cats to bombard Boheme down to 0, or fewer if he can take accuracy on some, but I think it would be a mistake to start sacrificing cats before he can use his whole stack. If not, I'm prepared to learn a lesson here I guess. Shame on me for not putting a few hammers into a castle to whip last turn.

I moved just enough into Don G to make attacking with only 5 knights a bad idea... there's 3 spears, a CG1 LB, and an archer there. The odds that he can go 5 for 5 against that (with walls on a hill) should be slim.

I did promote a single spear to a pick. We only have 1 in La Boheme that has C2, and I promoted that one.

I am whipping a bunch of pikes, because I think it's critical that he not be able to separate his knights, and go rampaging 2 squares at a time. All cities are being whipped except Turandot basically. Cottages will be whipped off. This is final war.

We did get the small pyrrhic victory of moving a chariot to kill 2 of Ichabod's workers, and then it pillage 20 gold from a cottage before it killed itself!

[WilliamLP]

I got paranoid about Ichabod's ability to bombard to 0 and then immediately attack with all knights and be able to get a favorable hammer trade like this. So I upgraded 3 more spears to pikes, which obviously should get no objection from Mindy.

We still vacate next turn, unless he has tactics to roll over the city immediately, but if he does that hopefully he'll take losses doing so.

[WilliamLP]

So, with spending 380 gold on pikes, that's nearly 2 full turns of research, so about half of Civil Service we're giving up for 4 units. (Which is itself a research and production snowball tech...)

This, plus multi-pop whipping suggests this is our last war. The island will fall to Commodore when he gets rifles, unless he wants to invest in an overwhelming force sooner. He's in a Golden Age and will tech very quickly. I'm still going to troll him with the hill city plant though.

Maybe it's too early for a post-mortem, but could we have done better strategically here? It may have been Ichabod's plan from step 1 to wait to commit until he was sure we were attacking Retep. Then, since he was and is building power forever, there would have been no good time to attack Retep. And our only other option would be turtling forever until tech advantages in the world become decisive against us.

I wish I had given more thought to the idea of the phony war with Retep to bait an attack. We'd declare on Retep at the moment (where we did) when we had the force to kill him, and wait a few turns for Ichabod to make a move. His current stack has a glaring weakness vs Cats and Knights, since there's proportionately very little mounted defense there. And getting the first strike with Siege is huge.

Was it obvious from the beginning that Ichabod's only viable plan was attacking us, and there was no way he'd turn instead to a technology superior opponent across water? Perhaps.

Meanwhile, Suttree lost a city to Mackoti, and then gave up a city in a peace concession. I don't know why he'd give up cities for peace in such a terrible near last-place position. What's the point? Clearly Mackoti would rather not attack and get cities for free than attack (or he wouldn't make the offer), so why give the game winner the option that he wants, instead of the option he doesn't want? In his position I think I'd prefer to do the world a bit more of a favour by refusing and being as stubborn as possible.

[WilliamLP]

Confusing AI diplo attempt:




What I'm trying to tell Harry is that Ichabod is attacking La Boheme in 1 turn, predominantly with knights, with a combined force of 66 units.

(And I just realized that Harry's cities are alphabetical so it's possible to spell words! Though I know that's "somewhat" frowned upon. )

[Ceiliazul]

Maybe it's too early for a post-mortem,

It ain't over yet! While the chances of you winning this game are, ahem, small... you've still got some stories to change for sure.

[WilliamLP]

It looks like Harry was logged in for a total of 3 hours this turn. More Deus ex Machina, favouring us this time? I can hope I guess.

Inb4: we attack Retep, but need to abort because Ichabod is attacking us. Ichabod needs to abort because Harry is attacking him. And Harry needs to abort when Mackoti attacks.

[WilliamLP]

Logged in to pause for Ichabod. I need to babysit this guy's clock while he kicks my ass I guess.




Ichabod hasn't played his full turn yet (I think?) But he did bombard with 13 cats. This is a bit of a relief since he could have been packing 6 with accuracy and then could have suicided some more and routed our defenses. (But waiting for the full cat stack could have been better anyway.)

The knight we lost to Retep was from my mistake: I was just racing into our borders for the road movement and I should have covered it with a spear or too. Still, retep is going to lose several additional horse archers now, just costing us time. But presumably he's clued in that delaying our maximum reinforcement force is the best way to hurt us right now.