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

[WilliamLP]

So we got peace in the east! May it last for a long and prosperous 10 turns.

What's Retep trying?




This late, his position is far beyond hopeless and he's grasping for any tactics he can. Unfortunately he picked the worst possible turn for this! Since I knew we were getting peace and Retep didn't know it, all knights were already back in Barbiere when he made this move, in range to strike. (On turn earlier and he at least would have been able to pillage a workshop or something.)




All fights were 99% wins. Also note Bacchus declared on scooter!




Maybe he's trying to send some horses at the Seahawks like what worked so well last night?

Note Dhal is getting eliminated by Plako any turn now. He has two cities left. Plako himself had better be pretty careful: the beast has Astro (I think...) and Chemistry and is right by his other coast. Azza seems to have consolidated into a core.

We settled a new city!




I think Lucia is finally not completely worthless when we can spread irrigation in 2 turns, with 4 forests to get it started. (Donizetti needed some representation and this is Lucia di Lammermoor, the woman forced by her evil brother to marry a man she doesn't love. She stabs him on their wedding night, comes out to spoil the party in her nightgown covered in blood, goes insane, sings for half an hour, and everyone dies. Really nice tunes though!)

Troll adventures:




We're solidifying on this island. I could have taken a 70% shot at Comm's north mace with a shock LB, but the chance he has something to kill it with are good, and that bow is more valuable to us in the city I think, fortifying on a hill. In two turns, Comm may have to deal with 4 knights rushing Bathurst off of a boat. I'm hoping he underestimates my desire to play troll chess with him, yet again.

I also wouldn't surprised to see a decisive fleet of Carracks appear on any given turn.

Example of Castle trade routes:




An additional +5 commerce is a nice return for something built for combat tactics.




The shrine is getting pretty awesome! Also note the amazing ToA trade routes. Obviously a castle is needed here too. Again, no rush for the Golden Age, since we want to have cities regrow onto their tiles first.




Triumphant shark fin! Ichabod is now going for Education. That's not an "I'm going to kick your butt" tech. I wonder why? Oxford, sure, but he's missing Banking and banks are typically a much better investment than universities right now. Also he has gunpowder and could be going for the Nat path.




Our food graph isn't so triumphant. And the hammer graph is even much worse, since most high production tiles have been whipped away. Hopefully we can regrow past Bacchus again. Our GNP is still better because of our awesome shrine.




Now, with this much junk and no commitment in the east for 10 turns, taking over Retep is going to be almost an afterthought.

[MindyMcCready]

Peace with Ichabod,...interesting. What happened to the 'no peace, even for La Boheme'? Has the blood-lust cooled so quickly? :LOL:

Definately a dangerous move to let 35 future cuirassiers + 19 seige units off the hook while we had them pretty much where we'd want them (in a M.A.D. sort of way). In our next skirmish with cuirassiers our castles will be redundant and those mobile hitters will be ignoring culture so defending's definately going to be tougher next round.

I'm not saying that you did the wrong thing. My back of the envelope suggested the defense of WT was going to be pretty bloody on both sides. Surviving his cats & trebs was going to be dicey and we didn't seem to have the option of flanking them away. I guess we just need to make sure that we get Retep's land and plant 5 cities to see if we can come out relatively ahead long-term.

We gave him a bloody nose, but I don't think that it'll be long until he's back.

Tech path: gunpowder --> Nationalism?

[WilliamLP]

Peace with Ichabod,...interesting. What happened to the 'no peace, even for La Boheme'? Has the blood-lust cooled so quickly? :LOL:

Lol, yeah I think so. It was shown that he couldn't make permanent gains, and he did get slapped for it a little. In the end like I've been arguing I think the game is more interesting now, though it's not completely clear.

Definately a dangerous move to let 35 future cuirassiers + 19 seige units off the hook while we had them pretty much where we'd want them (in a M.A.D. sort of way). In our next skirmish with cuirassiers our castles will be redundant and those mobile hitters will be ignoring culture so defending's definately going to be tougher next round.

Actually castles work versus Cuirs and Cavalry since they're technically not gunpowder units! (I'm 90% sure of this. EDIT: And I'm wrong...) And the fact that Ichabod is (curiously) going down the education path means he might not even be that far ahead of us to there.

I'm not saying that you did the wrong thing. My back of the envelope suggested the defense of WT was going to be pretty bloody on both sides. Surviving his cats & trebs was going to be dicey and we didn't seem to have the option of flanking them away. I guess we just need to make sure that we get Retep's land and plant 5 cities to see if we can come out relatively ahead long-term.

Yeah, like i said before I was very on the fence about which path to take. I'm sure we could have crushed his stack now - with nine extra formation knights added from the general! We may have had to get a city like WT (or the mediocre Walkure to the north) razed doing so but a city is a lot easier to regrow than a whole knight stack.

Tech path: gunpowder --> Nationalism?

I'm going CS first. I think the beakers gains from Bureau are enough to make Military Tradition faster in the end anyway. I still do want to pick up Aesthetics and Lit as well. I think we can get them each in 1 turn. After that I think it depends on what Ichabod is doing. If he's going for economic techs (Education, Banking, Econ, PP) we can probably afford at least Banking ourselves for the shine bonus. Or Optics too.

I don't see gunpowder on its own without Nat (which obsoletes walls for us) to be worth very much to be honest. So it might be the last tech we get on the Cuirs path.

[BaII]

Castles do not work vs Cuir and Cav's.

[WilliamLP]

Castles do not work vs Cuir and Cav's.

Ah, I tested it in WB and you and Mindy are right, that's good to know. Culture still works though.

[WilliamLP]

I had a plan for this turn to load up 4 3-promo knights for combat tactics against Commodore next turn. However:




Retep left Hariharalaya wide open with only 3 defenders. The fortified C2 spear is the only thing that doesn't fall over like paper to a knight. So with workers to road 1SW of Rigoletto:

Shock Knight vs fortified C2 Spear 70%: Win
Shock Knight vs Spear 88%: Win
C2 Knight vs Archer 99%: Win




The city came with a Terrace, but I don't know that any amount of infrastructure would make it worth keeping with no food tiles. 1E could be an excellent production city, with irrigated wheat, the plains hill bonus, the excellent horse tile, and an iron mine. It's awfully late to matter for anything of course. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if this game ends on any given turn, though it would be a bit of a shame for us.

Taking the city revealed some stragglers:

C2 Knight vs HA 99%: Win
C2 Knight (slightly wounded) vs HA 97%: Win
C2 Knight vs Axe 99%: Win

Final situation:




Angkor Thom is completely empty and will fall next turn, though he'll be able to whip something in there. We'll definitely keep it. Retep placed spears to guard the knight entry points to attack Suit Up, but it's actually the slow-rolling stack above that's going in. Next turn it will be joined by some knights as well, and I think on T173 suit up should fall. I think with 16 cats we can afford to bombard with 2 promoted to accuracy and attack with the rest on the same turn.

Bacchus took a city from Scooter!! I actually didn't check which one it was, I assume it was an island city. Bacchus has shown surprising life lately, jumping on the conquest of Dhalphir and now this. He's ahead of us in key demos though we should get the lead back if we're allowed to consolidate Retep's land. We might even be able to conquer a little more than that, were Ichabod not still looming.

[MindyMcCready]

Warning: Random thoughts ahead.

Why is LaTraviata building walls?

Is that a barb city to the west as well? If it's N3W of Angkor Thom that'll be perfect.

I hope that we can get a bunch of Knights to take that copper city. It does sound like Bacchus' is busy right now.
-plant double-fish city
-copper city
-barb city
-one more 3S of barb city.

We might have enough costal cities to begin challenging Master Commodore's naval dominance. Or do we want to do this? Master Commodore's losing the unit trade rate pretty decisively right now. Guess that's what happens when you intentionally push for a grinding war rather than a decisive one.

Couple of scenarios for you to consider:

1. Commodore takes the island.
What's our next move? Do we try to regain control of the island? Do we expend hammers on a naval push? I guess what I'm trying to get at is that if we don't make a peace 'deal' with Master Commodore then he's going to continue to give us a hard time after he's taken whichever city by force.
-He's going to harass and prevent development of our soon-to-be-founded costal cities.
-He's going to raze attempt our costal cities forcing a sizable garrison at all times. He'll be able to hit us out of the blue and there's little that we can do about it. Our new cities will have little culture to prevent easy razes.

If we're going to be forced to fight on this front I'd at least like the possibility of profit and I don't see it if we lose the island. TBH I don't see a profit even if we keep the island, although it has been fun to watch.

So I see this island as a bit of an all-or-nothing.
Option 1: Keep the island. Invest in navy, try to win not just troll. Very expensive option but it might keep us safer from Master Commodore long-term.
Option 2: Let him have it for peace. Develop our core and naval cities. Maxes our chances at some of Bacchus' land and surviving Ichabod. Forget navy, rely on our home advantage to stop anything other than a continental take-over invasion.

Q2. Are we getting the copper city?
It's probably no surprise to you, but I'd rather spend my military hammers down here dependent on:
-what techs does Bacchus has?
-His power is pretty low considering all of his excursions.
-He also hasn't responded too much to our Retep DOW. Doesn't sound like he plans to dispute the land between us. Might even be that he's hoping for peace.
-Seriously, if there are easy pickings down south, you can expect that the majority of his army is there to scoop the gains. We'll have to consider this.

On the plus side, I don't think that Ichabod will be back too soon. His power is little more than equivalent to ours and he failed (in what could have been a disaster for him) while we were out of position. He'll think twice before he tries that again and will definately want a more commanding tech and power advantage.

I still say that if we managed to raze Forever Machine, he'd be forced to retreat from Col Conscience.

From Copper city with combat engineers:
-2N of Forever Machine on the DOW.
-If he doesn't have Engineering then he won't be able to get any reinforcements into Forever Machine. Depending on the turn timing he might also not be able to whip.
-Raze the city. If necessary fast movers move to fork his capital and pig-ivory-fish city (wow!).
-We move a slow stack to threaten Col Conscience. Hope for the retreat. Raze.

Replant cities 2E of corn and somewhere N/NW/NE of Col Conscience.

We've got the Knights. We now know that elephants aren't a significant deterrant and neither are spears.

The objective would be to surprise him at Forever Machine + force a retreat at Col Conscience. If we can get that we'll get that land for little cost. We want the gain without trading units and I think that that's possible after the lumps that Ichabod took despite his perfect timing.

I agree with Civil Service for the irrigation and bureau + MACES. I'd vote to then bee-line Nationalism. I agree with you that drafted maces are better than slow-built muskets.

Looks like we're going on an expansion phase. We'll need to be able to hold those gains preferrably through deterrant. A 9K drafted/unpromoted mace is just (or almost) as intimidating on the power chart as a multi-promo 10K Knight or 9K musket.

[WilliamLP]

Why is LaTraviata building walls?

It's not its real build; it's on a settler now.

But the castle at 60 hammers is an awesome economic building! (+150% for stone + OR + forge turns 60 hammers into the 150 for walls + castle.) It typically yields an extra +4-5 commerce per turn from a trade route on this map before multipliers, which is a better investment than a market, grocer, or courthouse for anything but a monster commerce city.

This is null and void if we're planning on going for economics, but I don't think we'll get there in this game.

Is that a barb city to the west as well? If it's N3W of Angkor Thom that'll be perfect.

Yeah, I'm not sure of fog issues, whether it's still a barb city. We'll see I guess.

I hope that we can get a bunch of Knights to take that copper city. It does sound like Bacchus' is busy right now.
-plant double-fish city
-copper city
-barb city
-one more 3S of barb city.

My bet is that after breaking the back at Suit Up, the copper city will be essentially unguarded for knights, and we now have time to get there, so no problem.

The problem with the double fish city is keeping the nets with Commodore around. I'm thinking it may not be worth planting at all unless we plan to invest pretty heavily in Caravels. Certainly, I'm thinking the replacement for Hariharalaya and the desert hill city south of Barbiere come first.

1. Commodore takes the island.

FWIW we've got the upper hand there right now, though it's been a money pit for both of us. Commodore moved his units back toward Bathurst. He surely knows we could unload knights and attack there next turn, though we won't because they were distracted.

If we're going to be forced to fight on this front I'd at least like the possibility of profit and I don't see it if we lose the island. TBH I don't see a profit even if we keep the island, although it has been fun to watch.

No argument about that from me. There hasn't been any profit there. Though, we've lost less than Comm has, and also chopped a zillion forests there and whipped a bunch of pop into galleys. Faust is absolutely only a losing city that is for pushing down Commodore in the zero-sum game.

It's also a metagame play though. I think that island is ours by geography so there's a certain responsibility to compete for it to not be viewed as a pushover. I also maintain that hoping war would break out between Scooter and Commodore wasn't a crazy gamble.

So I see this island as a bit of an all-or-nothing.
Option 1: Keep the island. Invest in navy, try to win not just troll. Very expensive option but it might keep us safer from Master Commodore long-term.
Option 2: Let him have it for peace. Develop our core and naval cities. Maxes our chances at some of Bacchus' land and surviving Ichabod. Forget navy, rely on our home advantage to stop anything other than a continental take-over invasion.

I'm pretty set on the immediate knight play for Bathurst, before thinking about the long term up there. There's a (maybe small) chance we could raze Bathurst itself. If Comm's top defenders are his 0 and 1 promo knights, he might not be prepared for the sudden appearance 6 unloading with Formation and C3, and attacking the city on the turn they unload!

I'm basically discarding #2 irrationally. I think we can beat Bacchus either in war or peace in this game. Doubly so if Ichabod is making peaceful economic beelines right now.

Q2. Are we getting the copper city?

We'll capture it, yeah. This time we have enough tempo to take it and still get knights back to the east if Ichabod attacks again in 10 turns. Bacchus declaring on Scooter and actually taking a city affects this a bit too, since Scooter was and is a threat to the city to make it a beach head for himself soon.

But it seems like the cost to take it over is now essentially 0, and if we are forced to give it up, no big deal. (Before I don't think we could have afforded to have knights so far out of position against Ichabod.)

I still say that if we managed to raze Forever Machine, he'd be forced to retreat from Col Conscience.

Such suggestions don't fall entirely on deaf ears, don't worry! We'll see what the scene looks like in a few turns in the (hopefully) post-Retep era. A lot could happen to change things one way or another.

There's an interesting triangle setting up between Bacchus, Plako, and Mackoti. Plako is either in second or third place, and his logical move is to swallow Bacchus from below. In that case Bacchus might not be able to defend his north at all. Meanwhile Mackoti has Frigates now right on Plako's coast so Plako may be torn as well.

I agree with Civil Service for the irrigation and bureau + MACES. I'd vote to then bee-line Nationalism. I agree with you that drafted maces are better than slow-built muskets.

I don't think you're going to be able to talk me down from detouring to Lit for 2 turns and building the HE. Turandot is a very high chunk of our military production and doubling the hammers there would be massive.

Detouring to get optics is something I could go either way on. If we're not going to do this, I'm of a mind to forget any additional cities on the west coast, as before.

Looks like we're going on an expansion phase. We'll need to be able to hold those gains preferrably through deterrant. A 9K drafted/unpromoted mace is just (or almost) as intimidating on the power chart as a multi-promo 10K Knight or 9K musket.

Nat (in base terms) is 1800 beakers + 800 for philosophy. Gunpowder is 1200. Before a drafting spree, I'd rather wait for gunpowder first, because it won't be more than an additional 2 turns or so. We're going to get a Golden Age around this point. Maces produce power but especially without promos the unit itself is pretty junky against knights, worse than a longbow in a hill city for sure. We already have enough junk to deter a direct knight attack; this has been proven already!

[MindyMcCready]

I don't think you're going to be able to talk me down from detouring to Lit for 2 turns and building the HE. Turandot is a very high chunk of our military production and doubling the hammers there would be massive.

Detouring to get optics is something I could go either way on. If we're not going to do this, I'm of a mind to forget any additional cities on the west coast, as before.

TBH I haven't seriously considered the tech costs. While I don't disagree with Lit for HE + NE with our marble I do want to stress how important Nationalism is for us as Spiritual.

Optics,...hmmm,....I guess what I would want to do is seriously bee-line Nationalism while planting those seafood cities and try to get them up to size 6. Once we're there, we use drafted units to take back that island launching from our Turandot fortress.

If we can do that, then Master Commodore's going to have a lot more trouble maintaining control of both sides of the island and getting optics at that point we could have enough advantages to be at least a naval power on our side of the island.

Aes & Lit,....well we'll be a couple of turns behind at 5(?) drafted units per turn. This could cost us.

Looks like we're going on an expansion phase. We'll need to be able to hold those gains preferrably through deterrant. A 9K drafted/unpromoted mace is just (or almost) as intimidating on the power chart as a multi-promo 10K Knight or 9K musket.

Nat (in base terms) is 1800 beakers + 800 for philosophy. Gunpowder is 1200. Before a drafting spree, I'd rather wait for gunpowder first, because it won't be more than an additional 2 turns or so. We're going to get a Golden Age around this point. Maces produce power but especially without promos the unit itself is pretty junky against knights, worse than a longbow in a hill city for sure. We already have enough junk to deter a direct knight attack; this has been proven already!

Sure, gunpowder is better, but the conversion factor is still very good and sooner might be hugely better for the island or against Ichabod.

2T for Gunpowder seems very quick? As indicated,...might be longer if we do try to get as many cities as possible in time for the draft.

And deterring a Knight attack,...well not really. Ichabod attacked us and took a city. And he'll almost certainly be able to do it again with the culture the way it is. Certainly, we prevented the taking of a second city largely through the advantage of castles + Ichabod's mistake/underestimating us. We might have fewer advantages next time so deterring will be important to our ability to develop our new lands.

[WilliamLP]

TBH I haven't seriously considered the tech costs. While I don't disagree with Lit for HE + NE with our marble I do want to stress how important Nationalism is for us as Spiritual.

Optics,...hmmm,....I guess what I would want to do is seriously bee-line Nationalism while planting those seafood cities and try to get them up to size 6. Once we're there, we use drafted units to take back that island launching from our Turandot fortress.

I feel like there's a very large disparity in how we see the utility of drafted maces or muskets.

The conversion factor is fantastic but the problem is I don't see a 0 promo mace as being useful for anything at all at this point of the world's tech level. Certainly not for ever attacking a longbow behind a wall or defending against a knight or better. When cannons come out they're simply free experience.

A 0 or 1 promo musket, again it's a unit that's much worse than a knight for attacking, and defensively it's no world beater.

(If the world tech leader or near it, it could be very different.)

When you draft, the bottleneck is the happiness, since each one gives you three points for 10 turns. Having to wait a few turns to start this isn't such a massive opportunity cost as it seems. The X units per turn (X=4 here I think?) isn't the right limiting factor to look at - you very quickly run out of cities with spare happiness to tap for that. I wouldn't draft without a very clear and immediate reason why the units being drafted are obtaining a goal. Certainly burning this happiness on a mace seems like a bad idea to me. (Again, not in general terms but at this specific point of this specific game.)

If we can do that, then Master Commodore's going to have a lot more trouble maintaining control of both sides of the island and getting optics at that point we could have enough advantages to be at least a naval power on our side of the island.

Commodore is going to have Astro quite soon I bet (and beat us to Chemistry by miles). And we're well at the point of our "relationship" where spitefully pillaging nets is going to happen for sure. So not only are coastal cities on the west a bad investment, unlike the island it doesn't even deny Commodore anything or prove anything but that we're stupid in throwing away resources, imo.

This is even with optics, I'm starting to think working anything on the seas is near pointless. What optics would do is let us keep control of the northwest channel just a little longer than otherwise though. I.e. we could still hold control with caravels against galleons, but not against frigates.

Again, I want to defer even thinking about it much until we see if this crazy knight attack works or not. If it does and we can actually get Commodore off the island completely, and actually improve tiles there, it would change the story a lot.

2T for Gunpowder seems very quick? As indicated,...might be longer if we do try to get as many cities as possible in time for the draft.

It's quick, yeah, but we're going to be in a Golden Age, and Bureau with a very nice commerce capital. We got CS in close to 3, it's not a crazy estimate at all.

And deterring a Knight attack,...well not really. Ichabod attacked us and took a city. And he'll almost certainly be able to do it again with the culture the way it is. Certainly, we prevented the taking of a second city largely through the advantage of castles + Ichabod's mistake/underestimating us. We might have fewer advantages next time so deterring will be important to our ability to develop our new lands.

There's the matter that he caught us with two thirds of our total force out of position. We'll see... it makes a difference if he's going for something peaceful after Education or not. There really isn't any number of knights I fear, though Cuirs or Cannons are a very different story. I don't think the draft will be relevant in the later case anyway because the units themselves just die easily.