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

[WilliamLP]

First war theatre with Commodore:

C2 Pike vs C2 Knight 77%: Lose (Not the best start to this.)
C2 Pike vs C1 Knight 79%: Win
C2 Pike vs C1 Knight 79%: Win
C1 Spear vs Knight 30%: Win (But a lucky and very significant win!)
Longbow vs wounded knight 97%: Win

That's the knight stack down. Next is the 25% fortified LB in Bathurst. Fortunately from C2 to C3 is a break point here, from 50% to 67%.

C3 Knight vs 25% fortified LB 67%: Win

Crucially, the next two LBs in Bathurst did not have 25% fortification.

C2 Knight vs 10% fortified LB 67%: Lose
C2 Knight vs 25% Spear 68%: Lose

This combat versus a spear was probably a mistake. I thought it was going to hit the other longbow underneath. I should have sent a knight with shock instead to hit the bow, because we have better ways to clean up a spear (like a shock longbow).

C3 Knight vs 5% LB 73%: Win
Formation Knight vs wounded Spear 87%: Lose! (This one hurt.)
Formation Knight vs wounded LB 99.9%: Win

And one more unit that can attack:

Shock LB vs wounded Spear 99.9%:




And Bathurst was burnt down! We couldn't have held it even if we wanted to, since every unit was spent. I call this a victory, though perhaps not the end of the saga. It sure beats surrendering and hoping we're taken pity on though. I believe the law of the schoolyard applies in these games, to stand up for yourself a few times until you stopping needing to do that so much.

Also, we're sure fortunate he didn't have Engineering.

Aftermath:




The follow-up combat itself might be a little bloody. His mace and crossbow can chew up a pike, and then I think spear would be next top defender hopefully. He could kill the LB with a knight but I'm not if he'll want to. The tactics could get dangerous for him and he'd just lose more knights.

Log:




We were expected to lose an average of slightly less than 3 combats out of these 12, and we actually lost 4. But counting the Carrack win and the value of the spear vs Knight victory I'm calling it a wash.

His next move will be interesting! Putting a new city on this island will be much, much more difficult for him than defending Bathurst was.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town:




In Suit Up, we're against 9 archers, 5 axes, 8 spears, and a scout. I bombarded down the defenses with low promo cats, then went in for the suicide strikes:

CR2 Cat vs Archer 26%: Withdraw!
CR2 Cat vs Archer 26%: Lose
CR2 Cat vs Archer 26%: Lose
CR2 Cat vs Archer 47%: Lose
CR2 Cat vs Archer 47%: Withdraw
CR1 Cat vs Archer 44%: Lose
CR1 Cat vs Archer 44%: Lose
CR1 Cat vs Archer 68%: Lose
CR1 Cat vs Archer 72%: Withdraw
CR1 Cat vs Archer 76%: Withdraw
CR1 Cat vs Archer 91%: Withdraw
CR1 Cat vs Axe 81%: Withdraw
CR1 Cat vs Axe 81%: Withdraw

What it looked like after this:




The collateral was getting close to max. So, after all that, we just had mop up, really:




The loss was at 95%, and a couple of those can always be expected.




Suit Up came with no infrastructure, unfortunately. But we kept it, obviously.




8 knights face Retep's final city. Amazingly, lowly protective archers fortified in a hill city behind culture still have a quite reasonable chance to defend against a promoted knight. C3 gets 88%, C2 gets 77%. But this city will fall next turn.

Mindy may not like this offer much:




I don't want to fight Bacchus right now. At all. Maybe he's Machiavellian enough to take this trade offer as a sign of fear and weakness. We'll see.




Up to here our line is pretty solid for being in 3 hot wars at once in a large surrounding triangle! But we'll get a large drop when this turn shows up, that's for sure.




The demos aren't great. However, Bacchus is still in a GA (I think?) and a saving grace is we actually have quite a bit of land now. If we could get a chance to develop it peacefully and work all our tiles, there are a couple of teams we could give a run for their money in the standings.

Whew. This turn was perhaps the climax of the game for us.

[BRickAstley]

[Ceiliazul]

congrats on taking suit up! long overdue, good job.

why is keeping suit up obvious? i havent seen your larger dotmap recently, but a size 1 city with no infra doesnt *have* to be kept.

[WilliamLP]

why is keeping suit up obvious? i havent seen your larger dotmap recently, but a size 1 city with no infra doesnt *have* to be kept.

Hmm, honestly it never even crossed my mind to evaluate its location and whether a different place may in the larger scheme now. I'd just took it for granted that we'd be keeping it. Oh well, it's still a really good site though I'm sure 1N of it has its points.

[MindyMcCready]

Victory on 3 fronts!

Well done!

I'm so pleased that I don't even mind Bacchus living. :LOL:

[WilliamLP]

Well done!

I know you wanted to go try crushing a couple of cities of Bacchus (I'm not going to lie, it would be kind of fun, heh), but it seems like the logic of trying to suggest a peaceful relationship is pretty solid for both of us. Plako is looming to his south and a stronger Bacchus is a useful buffer, and we really can't afford to turn our attention away from the east too much.

The next turns (I hope) should be pretty boring. We'll finish Lit this turn at 60%, build the HE, tech toward Philosophy, and hit a golden age and maybe run Pacifism for some of it. Options there are two more GP for another consecutive GA, and / or an Academy, and / or anything we might try to bulb. Being near the tech leaders earlier on, the Academy would be the play, but actually doubt the game will last enough longer for an academy to pay back for the GP. Another trouble is we don't really have cities we can afford to starve for GPP.

In any other game, I'd probably go Drama for the Philo prereq because it's nearly free in the end, but in this game, with plentiful happiness, the terrace and cultured barracks, I can't see why we'd ever build a single theatre.

One question is if we want to try and rush-settle a couple of coastal cities to the west of the new lands. I think I'll post a big picture map for next turn.

On the big picture of this game, I really wonder what the perception is and close people are to conceding. There's plenty of intrigue (and I'm having fun with it!) but the practical odds of anyone but Mackoti actually winning are almost mathematically zero in my opinion.

[WilliamLP]

Bigger set the turn pace back by a day, though to be fair he's surely in one or more difficult war and turn split because everyone is.

(Just talking to myself here, bear with me...)

On Great People, it's an aspect of the game that I need to get better at. In both the games I've played here I've landed an early religion, which has the really serious opportunity cost (not at all obvious to a beginner) that you are probably using a GP for a shrine instead of other things.

Great Scientist: If we have Paper, he will want Education which is useless to us - there's no way as RBMod-expansive that a university is going to be our best building to build. If we don't have Paper, he'll want Alphabet then Philosophy. I know the Philosophy bulb is really common, and it would be nice for us since it's a route we really want. But unfortunately I think it would come too late. We can't really get a scientist until well into our Golden Age. And we want Philo for the GA itself! We could try and delay Philo for Gunpowder and maybe Compass -> Optics and something like Banking, but the last of those slow down getting to Cuirs as soon as possible. (If one avoids CoL, the Scientist can also be used either for the Compass -> Optics path, or Paper with a weird tech order going the Feudalism->CS path.) EDIT: He's also good for the Liberalism race if you avoid Machinery.

(As a side note, I'd like to play a more "orthodox" game someday: use the first Scientist for an academy, then bulb Philo, then trigger a GA probably.)

Great Merchant: This would grab Banking for us. With the shrine, this isn't bad at all! The Trade Mission is the other obvious use but we'd have to get him somewhere, and friends are scarce and overseas travel fraught with peril. Other uses are for Economics after Education. Not in this game, he can be used to swing for a lot of early techs like CS or Guilds. (When we used ours so early for Currency, it was a shame long term, but we also had a bad roll and really needed an economic shot in the arm at that point.)

Great Artist: These guys want Drama before Music, and while we want music, researching Drama to bulb it is a terrible waste of a GP. After that they want Divine Right, Alphabet, and Theology. DR is horrible, Theo is cheap and needs alphabet as a gateway. We want to avoid Artists.

Great Prophet: He'll jump on the Theology to DR path, which is pretty bad too since Theo is cheap. Though, as SPI it's quite useful to have.

Great Engineer: We'd probably want him for a building. And it's unlikely to get one since we can only work 1 specialist per city. But he could be used for Gunpowder. In other games, Engineering and RP are useful and high in his order.

So, a possible plan is trigger our Golden age after Philosophy, then try for 3 GP: 2 for another Golden age and 1 for the merchant to bulb Banking. (Or the trade mission but that harder and more risky.) Another possible play is to spawn only 2 GPs for another golden age. Another play is just say screw it and use the GA for hammers and beakers only, and assume the game will either end or we'll need every resource for another "no tomorrow" war with Ichabod.

The longer term play would be to use scientists to deep-bulb Education and PP, but I'm virtually sure that would be suicide and we don't have the kind of time we'd need for that to begin paying for the opportunity cost.

In the long run though, specialists that produce multiplied GP are an extremely efficient use of pop points. And that's a big reason why Civ is a snowball game, that those ahead of the curve who can afford to do this will get more ahead. (And those behind can't afford it, or we'd just get crushed by the more advanced civs in the process.)

In this game, I'm not even sure whether to build the NE at all. We have a city for it, but that city probably should be building military right now.

[WilliamLP]

Mackoti asked for our only spice. Heck yes he can have it. There's more in Retep's former lands, and at this point Mackoti can have my right arm if he'll extend the stone loan.

[WilliamLP]

The big news of the turn, obviously, was the battle for Retep's final city. It had 3 CG2 archers in it. I think the fourth went to spite-pillage his copper. There's a big break point between C2 knights and C3 knights against these archers, interestingly, and the odds go from about 76% to 88%.

C3 Knight vs CG2 archer 88%: Win
C3 Knight vs CG2 archer 88%: Win
C3 Knight vs CG2 10% fortified archer 90%: Win




Now we only need to eliminate 13 more and we win the game. I fully support spite-pillaging as a rational metagame play, by the way. If I have two equally conquerable neighbours and I know one of them won't pillage their own resources if they're losing, guess who I'm going to go after?

To the north:




As expected, Comm took the wounded pike and spear out for free. He also killed the longbow with a knight, which allowed us to take a Formation vs unpromoted knight battle at 90% and win. Now all he has on the island is 3 1-movers and 1 wounded knight.

I'd be lying to say this offer did not imply any bravado:




I think for this game, it's not rational for Comm to attack on this island anymore. But obviously I don't give him much chance of taking peace. But if he doesn't accept it's still useful information so the peace offer isn't completely a taunt.

Dhal's galley with under 10HP left is still a myterious thing up here.

So where are we now? Suddenly, we rule not a small amount of new land! Will the game last long enough for it to matter? I have no idea!

There are so many wild cards beyond our control:

1. What's Bacchus up to? He accepted our Cow for Cow deal, but he would do that even if he wanted to attack, obviously. (Though, in his position I probably wouldn't attack with such a deal in place.)

2. Is Ichabod planning a retaliation attack in 5 turns? I think we have to play as if he is.

3. Mackoti just declared war on Scooter!! I have no idea what that's about, since they're not neighbors. It might be an attempt at an attack by Mack to induce the game concede by taking control of Scooter's seas. But with 4 move galleys (and eventually 6 move galleons and frigates!), this may not be so easy.

4. What's Plako up to? I thought Mack might go for an invasion on him but maybe not. If not, Plako's logical move may be to start eating through Bacchus from the south, which would be great news for us.

5. What's Commodore up to? Losing the island isn't that big a deal if he wants to invest the resources to try that, but if he were to devote everything to a Carrack attack on our mainland, that could be a pain. But fortunately our best cities are pretty far inland and quite defensible.

My pregame goals were to finish in the top half, and to be in the top 5 for thread view count. I think the second goal is in the bag! And the first one is still possible. Dtay just took a city off the The Black Sword, and if this game goes on long enough there's quite a chance for us to move up that one spot to be in 9th place.

Power graph:




The dip from Retep should show up soon. We do need to replenish catapults now. I'd like to have at least 25 or so online for defense against Ichabod.

Here's the big map:




HE and the Palace move complete in 2 turns. We'll get Philo in 5 (possibly 4) and probably start our GA then. We could also start it sooner but the more we grow first, the better it will be.

It's not fully shown but to the SE of Lucia there is still a massive swath of forest that Ichabod hasn't taken advantage of. This is simply . There is extremely fine river land there and the forests would immediately multiply the cost of the settler investment even if only to turn them into barracks and military units.

Red Dot will be settled in 2 turns. I could have placed it next turn by putting 4 worker turns into a pre-road on the hill, but worker turns are a little scarce here and I'm putting them into farming the wheat and pre-chopping for the terrace.

Orange Dot should be settled the turn after Red Dot. Note there's plenty of room now for Bacchus to put a city in the no-man's land between Suit Up and Forever Machine. The flood plains are even pre-cottaged for this, interestingly. I could see Mindy wanting a city on the hill where our sentry chariot is, but honestly I don't really care if Bacchus wants to put a conservatively placed city here - as long as it's not the plains hill 2W of the iron! Hmm, I hadn't really considered that and maybe we should even accelerate orange dot by 1 turn.

Yellow Dot is a fine city if Commodore doesn't want to turn up the vengeance slider. If he does it's useless so it's a tough call. If he takes peace (somehow) then I'll prioritize it.

I'm surprised neither Comm nor Scooter has gone for the Lavender Dot island. In other circumstances, that could be a Major League Moai site. But getting that running would be too late and too vulnerable for us.

Similar for either of the Green Dots. They're nice cities, but very far extended and very logical captures for Scooter. But if the war between Scooter and Mackoti is real, maybe it's a different story. Note the island to the south is where Bacchus was able to capture Seahawks from Scooter. So we know he isn't completely focused on might in this area.

Blue Dot is a useful city with the crab and two forests, but it hasn't been a priority in our circumstances. With an era of peace (hah!) that could change easily.

Purple Dot is the awkard and horrible interior of our empire. The only way it's viable is to farm over the silks, but that isn't out of the question. Especially since we have another silk and Turandot is specced out as a pure production HE city now.

Brown Dot or a site north of it (if more seafood there) is a useful site. There's a galley going to check it out right now.

Being allowed to actually develop the NW island would be wonderful too, though I'm not counting on it.

[Ceiliazul]

My pregame goals were to finish in the top half, and to be in the top 5 for thread view count. I think the second goal is in the bag! And the first one is still possible. Dtay just took a city off the The Black Sword, and if this game goes on long enough there's quite a chance for us to move up that one spot to be in 9th place.

Goals are good! I am confident that that Retep will not be the last elimination... chin up, and aim high!

...you don't have a moai site yet? if not horse island, where will you put it?