[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[williams482]

Maybe too late, but I am not a big fan for fish/fish with Ginger right now, understanding that we probably need those 10 turns anyway. Remember, just because we aren't very strong for that period doesn't mean our presence is irrelevant to their actions: they don't (can't) know everything about our troop deployments, and they can make MUCH more aggressive choices with how they deploy soldiers on (or away from) our border if they are locked in to a 10 turn NAP.

It also feels sketchy, and might give Dreylin second thoughts about their chances (and how much effort they should put in as a result). After all, Dreylin is likely fucked without us pilling in on the other side, and we really, REALLY don't want to risk them getting a mite miffed at their allies locking themselves out of helping, and then neglecting their own defenses as a result. Even minor tactical errors can have major effects in this situation.

I say you give your ally ample reason to continue viewing you as an ally, and avoid making treaties you intend to keep to the letter and no further. But that's just me.

[ljubljana]

yeah..... that is pretty fair. i am hoping ginger didn't actually ACCEPT the fish deal.... they haven't in the past but this is a really good opportunity to (minorly stab us and) do so to demoralize dreylin. i'll check in the morning. i really should have added an "and all your cities" rider to prevent that, not sure why i didn't

it does raise some interesting questions about good-faithiness, right? i guess in my cynicism i sorta assume most allies in these games are ALSO on the lookout for opportunities to enhance their strategic position, even if it means undercutting said allies.... eg, if, say, ginger had been less of a runaway and us more of a threat before the GT war, i certainly wouldn't be surprised if nauf were sending feelers to ginger about an attack against us at the same time as they are splitting ethiopia with us. but perhaps that lack of trust is a flaw in my play and is leading me to make decisions, like this one, that will make others not want to work w me in the future... i guess in the commodore threads of ths world, what i just did is known as being a prisoner's dilemma defector and i'd better cut it out right now before it becomes a reputational thing.

would be v interested to hear from vets (at some point) about the degree to which "allies" plot behind each other's backs in the meta here and the degree to which this is considered slimily out of bounds.... i think i am not too good at this whole "cultivsting an out of game reputation" thing and could stand to work on it. maybe i'm too diplomacy (board game)-brained for my own good.... certainly what we are doing now is semi-stabby at least with respect to SOMEone, and while i guess i viewed it as the kind of thing i'd do in a sinilar (eg similarly highly impactful) situation in a Diplomacy game, maybe the var should be higher in civ (or perhaps the meta is for the bar to be higher)

minor point: unfortunately, um..... i think ginger actually CAN know almost everything about our troop deployments right now if they have the C&D patience.... they currently have vision on almost all our troops, either via their scout in lalibela or at our border.... they could also subtract from our total milpower what they can see, plus the techs they think we have, plus pop, plus one ikhanda per city, to arrive at a pretty accurate deduction that the only piece of our army not accounted for is a very small garrison on presumably the greenline border.... not sure if they DO have the patience for that but that is a big part of why i returned fish, because they have all the info needed to conclude correctly that the rest of our land is almost completely empty militarily (and ginger is a detail-oriented player who strikes me as the sort of person who might indeed go through the numbers like that)

edit: i also think that, unfortunately, drey is probably pretty fucked regardless of our fishy diplp tbh.... i do not think getting full-scale invaded by that kind of stack (accounting for the 40 draftees + cuir wave to be added over the next 10t) is something you really bounce back from to win the game, probably it's more a question of survival at this point. not sure how motivated they would be in the best of circumstances to defend (although GT has been, and there are good reasons to be to discourage future conquest). but yeahh if we go back on our word to intervene i could definitely see them slipping into "fuck zulu specifically" mode.

[ljubljana]

finally finished reading all of ginger's past reports and man.... are they seriously ALWAYS within a hairsbreadth of winning (horrible copper game notwithstanding), and won their first game against a strong field?? wow! i was aware they were quite competent but not like that... we should have impi-rushed them when we had the chance well, maybe not as there were good reasons not to, but very curious about the counterfactual

in contrast i have reams of sagacious, talented dedlurkers i keep ignoring, and we have played a charmed game with almost every RNG element breaking our way (all but the code of laws race i think, MoM doesn't count as we were only getting that if nauf slacked off), and i'm still not sure we've really contended yet alTHOUGH with ginger's thrust moving south our odds look better than they ever have

strategically it's starting to look like the game will resolve down to a western and eastern superpower between now and turn 200.... and thus quite likely into an ultra-lategame showdown between the winners of the naufragar/superdeath interaction and the ginger/dreylin/us one (unless ginger ends up strong enough to get concessions without that). right now i think odds of winning look like ginger > nauf > superdeath > us > dreylin, mostly because i think the ginger conflict is more lopsided than nauf/sd who are pretty balanced (but judging from SD's lightly-defended nauf border there could be a significan surprise element)

tbh i am, and have been for a while, really unsure about what mjmd and greenline are doing, and i think time might be running out for them to make a move... but they are first and second in worst military among the not-being-conquered so not sure what their capacity for moves is. i feel pretty bad for greenline especially - as targets go there was always little to gain from us, dreylin was always a throw to ginger, and gav has never really had a free hand to partition mjmd.... not sure what their gameplan even SHOULD have been, kinda feels like they just got RNGed out of this one. i guess that's just an inherent risk in maps where everyone has just two "real" neighbors

so if we think status quo gives us just fourth-place odds of winning, is there something better we should be doing? maybe but the stabbing required would be pretty monstrous. we probably COULD beat nauf with superdeath's help but that seems daft as hell, even after our formal nap expires (t174 i think?), obviously that is a WAY bigger "never ally with me in a future game" signal than my worrying about attacking ginger too quickly after a NAP ends or "only" joining drey the turn we said we would and not sooner, and it ruins our nicest and demilitarizedest border... i guess we could hit greenline with mjmd but then we get maybe 8 cities and ginger gets all of drey, and we're then their only neighbor.... perhaps we should have considered doing a three-way dogpile of dreylin WITH ginger and greenline to deny them some gains - if we each get 5 cities we're still looking at a 30-20 city advantage for us - but the geography is awkward and it's definitely too late now

[williams482]

We're on the weaker (but hardly doomed) side of a fight likely to determine the dominant power in the east, and with that a real chance in the game's final conflict. I'm taking a generally optimistic position here, but I think our situation is relatively favorable: we might lose to Ginger, but if we win we'll likely score the lions share of some major spoils in their collection of wonders and the strong cities near our border. We're also likely to come out of a hypothetical victory in relatively good shape militarily, as it sure looks like the initial hammer blow (and the most painful trades of the war) will fall on Dreylin.

Our win condition is we beat Ginger and take the bulk of the spoils, and:
- Nauf and Superdeath fight to a stalemate, or produce a late nominal winner who is badly worn down and vulnerable to attack, OR
- Nauf and Superdeath fight, produce a decisive winner, and we beat them in a final endgame confrontation.

Our current path includes ample opportunity for dice to fall in high variance ways, so I don't think "we are fourth of five plausible looking contenders" is a fair description even if it's technically true. I also don't like the "Backstab Nauf" plan, both because I hate backstabbing (sidenote: I suck at diplomacy and have never enjoyed playing it), and because I'm not at all convinced that it produces a better endgame situation for you: Ginger will crush Dreylin, you and SD split Nauf, and now we have three superpowers with you the one who has to defend two fronts. Uhh, eww.

In diplomacy terms, you already have (in Dreylin) the perfect sort of ally: one who is likely to die (or more realistically, absorb a bunch of damage disproportionate to the benefits their get from eventually winning) for your benefit. Making use of that to the best of your ability seems clearly correct.

[aetryn]

I agree with Williams. Dreylin is a great ally of necessity. Nauf is a great ally in that we agreed to fight a war together, fought it without messing each other up, and now he also has other serious interests to deal with. This gives us a relatively favorable situation for dealing with a runaway Ginger. Our situation could be MUCH worse. Ginger is still ahead and will still be hard to deal with. We should work with some urgency to get into that war as soon as we can and fight it well. But he's not unsurmountably ahead.

I don't understand MJMD's play in this game much - I think he's probably trying out a variant strategy and it didn't necessarily go how he wanted it to. He hasn't built much military because he hasn't needed it - Gav's been busy, and Greenline hasn't been interested (and isn't there a long lake or some other kind of natural barrier between Greenline and MJMD?)

Greenline on the other hand seems fine. His expansion seems pretty normal. Sumer's tech choices always look a little different due to not needing Code of Laws until you want Constitution. He hasn't needed to militarize much either - MJMD hasn't, and Dreylin has almost surely been giving him fish for fish signals ever since Ginger landed Hanging Gardens. You could certainly argue he missed an opportunity to go attack MJMD and take some wonders, but of course MJMD would probably have built more military if Greenline had, so you can't exactly compare the counterfactuals there. Greenline hasn't "made anything happen", but he hasn't really need to either.

[ljubljana]

yeahhhh i agree with both of you. i think whoever wins ginger/us-drey will be better positioned than the winner of SD/nauf, because a) i expect our side to reach resolution faster (both nauf and SD have geographically enormous empires that will take ages to slog through), b) whoever wins will be boosted by the religious trinity, and c) unlike the nauf/sd winner our side actually has other good options afterward besides fighting another superpower, such as steamrolling greenline. i just listed ginger first and us last because ginger seems slightly more favored in their conflict than nauf (i believe) is in theirs, and because drey and us are stealing from one another's win prob a bit (since we must both beat ginger AND gain more in so doing than the other does)

re urgency: i agree and the intent is to attack aksum as soon as sims show us winning almost all of the time (though your mileage may very about what value of "almost" is acceptable here), then immediately move east. tech goals are military as well, with i THINK the correct play being to follow ginger to nationalism for drafting (but do yall feel the same way?). builds are also military, although i do want to ask if there are ANY acceptable economic builds in times like these.... granaries and ikhandas in new filler cities for sure, and castles for culture where we need border pops, but other than that....? i think i do still want to finish the remaining 33-hammer castles (so, in cities that have walls already for whatever reason, eg the former GT border), and maybe the 50-hammer castles in cities with econ multiplier buildings up (hoshoryu and the capital). what about the other 50-hammer castles? that's still a very efficient +3 commerce build but maybe not efficient enough....? wakatakakage also hilariously lacks a lighthouse despite having fish and almost being out of 2-food tiles because we have never not had more urgent military needs since it was founded and newly-captured adulis is likewise. it would also be really nice to find time for a few more courthouses (we still only have the 6 from right after we discovered CoL) but i doubt we have time for that. oh and the vast majority of our cities lack both libraries and markets soon but i believe that is sub-courthouse in priority so there is no way it's going to happen (possible exception of a market at happy-crunched wakamotoharu). finally mega-border city kirishima can now start on a 15-gold (at 0% sci) grocer lmao..... but at 150 hammers that seems to be probably off the table as well EXCEPT that we may need the specialist slots during the upcoming GA

@greenline well.... they haven't needed to militarize for safety yes.... but what about to stay competitive long-term? city count-leader superdeath is creeping up on double (25, with 7 gav cities left) their (15) city count.... with ginger's hyper-optimized development plan and landing the trinity, they have stayed competitive with that number of cities - but i'd argue that their current buildup indicates that even they realize that they NEED to militarize and catch up on city count if they want to stay in contention. greenline has none of ginger's economic lead so i'd argue their need to militarize was and is correspondingly greater.....

[williams482]

A 50h castle that produces a 3 commerce internal trade route breaks even over wealth in 17 turns. They also make you prickly in case Greenline realizes they need to make a move and decides to go for you (or simply to discourage them from deciding to go for you; an even more valuable outcome). I say build 'em.

For other econ stuff, Lighthouses are pretty cheap and likely worth it; that's food that can be funneled right back into unit whips later and allows generating more commerce now. Courthouses, libraries, markets, and grocers? Probably not for the vast majority of cities, although if Krishma breaks even on wealth just 10 turns after construction and may need the merchant slots, that's very tempting.

I support a Nationalism push, drafting Toku-muskets is very powerful and we have a well-timed incoming GA to power the swap.

[ljubljana]

well ok, i left out one thing re castles which is that all the ones actually on a border (or within 2 cities of the border in ginger's case) are done already or close to it - we are talking about the remaining internal castles, which i think there are maybe 7-8 of that don't fit into any of the other categories. i still wanna build them but i might delay a bit as the best time to have more units seems to be asap so we can be ready for ginger (and rebuild the VERY thin greenline defenses that i plundered for the aksum attack)

[ljubljana]

between now and when i am cosmically fated to turn 30 in the decaying bowels of the new york city subway system, there exists a period of about two hours. and um. i see that it is my turn

157

*sips cute little $20 cocktail at a bar i used to go to in earlier days, to which i have pilgrimaged involuntarily like a salmon at the spawning*

ok, what fresh nonsense awaits us on this day

with graphs regained vs dreylin i hereby report: the graph of hope



and the graph of despair:






well, it does matter a LITTLE bit that GT's turn got skipped, as we have landed williams' iron pillaging longbow. at size 6 now, we should see only one more iron unit whipped out of aksum tops, unless they see what we're getting at and devote units to protecting the road



ginger doomstack on the move (1S of the scout is the REAL, 50-unit, doomstack).... are you telling me dreylin let them have EP VISION on them? oh joy.... well, maybe this is an overreation but if our GT war is any judge, there's very little chance of them making efficient trades on defense if that's true

someone just tried to talk to me at this bar and i explained what a pitboss is to them and why i absolutely NEED to get the turn in now, you're welcome

gdi why is that when i'm actually TRYing to kill time, the turns only take 30 mins?

is this turn report (such as it is) based in fact or in fiction? you decide

[ljubljana]

oh ffs. i come all the way down here, to a place i have come to many MANY times when in the peculiar mood that wants to be spooked by real-life horror movie scenery, to medidate on the passage of time in a living monument to urban decay right in the heart of our crumbling capital... to look for, i don't know what exactly, but maybe something spiritual, or as close to that as i can get, some kind of omen to point me through a weird night at the end of a weird decade. and when i get here, what do i see?

gleaming, soulless, tabula-rasa-ass masonry. the barest hint of the decaying brooklyn bridge mural occluded by a noxious wall of orthodontically pristine tiling. nary a rodent nor trench of standing water to be found.

they. FIXED. it

me and my big mouth.... vibes readings off the charts, but.... wtf is THAT supposed to mean?? that the passage of time ISN'T an inevitable slide down the parastalsing throat of mortality? that i'm Being Dramatic? i can scarcely contemplate the grotesque emotional maturity that would be demanded of LateTwentiesEarlyThirties me to parse out a conclusion like THAT

don't tell me it means i'm supposed to fix ME