[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[williams482]

Culture borders get weird on the same turn after a city capture, but they should revert to normal next turn. If any of Ginger's cities are still putting culture on a (otherwise neutral) tile then they will maintain control, otherwise the culture borders will go away.

With that said, it looks like the borders shown are Prussa's normal 60% borders, so I wouldn't expect them to recede on that front. Ditto the 40% borders from Meleti and Attaletia.

EDIT: yeah it looks like Ginger actually wasn't expecting this attack? A 600g peace offer and some desperately bad defensive situations certainly suggest as much. In which case the excessive caution you've taken at Dreylin's expense may actually pay off!

[ljubljana]

yeahh... what i was hoping for was that, because kirishima has put more culture on the peak tile than specifically meleti, it will revert to us now that ankyra's contribution is gone. but i don't think that's how culture actually works in this game.... back to the drawing board as far as next steps go i guess. unless the peak can't see over ankyra? that would be weird but i guess i haven't tested that specific edge case...? (edit: tested this and it is false, natch)

interestingly we made almost as much money from pillaging and from the capture gold this turn as we would have if we had accepted that peace deal....

question: should i be willing to trade a GG for razing one of meleti/attaleia and 100-200 capture gold? i have the sense that GGs are usually more valuable than that (especially if we're planning to push for mil sci soon) but maybe these are the circumstances in which we are supposed to.... if so, i have arranged our two knights and GGs so that we could hit either of those spots next turn if ginger leaves them defended by just a single unit... (unless it's the pike in specifically meleti)

[williams482]

What exactly is in those cities?

My gut check is that razing Prussa in particular is +EV on winning the war but -EV on winning the game, thanks to the wonder and the (admittedly low-spread) holy cities.

[ljubljana]

i am pretty sure meleti and attaleia are "just" fully-developed core cities, with no wonders - the reason to snipe them would be to hurt their production capacity, which is around 20 hpt for both of them, if we expect to not be able to make further gains soon and for the war to turn into a grind game (which i do). removing meleti will give us a ton of tiles back on the border too (especially once takayasu hits third-ring borders) including The Peak which is blocking our ability to hide units in the north. also, we got ~180 gold from capturing ankyra which is a highly significant amount in the context of a race (against our soon-to-be collapsing economy) for military tradition

re prussa, it would certainly be nice to own the AP but make no mistake, despite pulling off our little surprise attack we are still in a really desperate situation militarily, and i'm not so sure we can afford to pass on any moves that would shift the odds in the war. killing prussa would not just remove one of their best cities, but also take 44 hammers worth of AP hammers out of their 11 remaining core cities (55 if these get multiplied by forges, which i am unsure of mechanically), which is almost a free cuir kill every 2 turns. again, if we think this is going to turn into a grind game, that's a really big deal...

and well.... the thing about the AP and the trinity generally is that christian buildings cannot survive capture due to producing culture, and we'd have to provide the up-front cost of rebuilding them all ourselves.... i do not really anticipate us getting the chance to do that. if we do somehow manage to conquer ginger's core with the trinity intact, i think we will inherit their position as The Runaway and can expect an immediate dogpile as soon as it looks like ginger is headed for collapse. which means.... other than very targeted exceptions with immediate military applications (missionaries, heroic epic) our build queues might be stuck on "all units, all the time" from here until the end of the game

[El Grillo]

AP bonus hammers do get multiplied by forges and other production modifiers.

<Obligatory lurker call for blood >

[williams482]

Actually that's a good point regarding the AP especially. Unlike the others, possession of the wonder won't deny Ginger the yields, so burning the city could arguably be better than even (hypothetical) guaranteed possession.

I'm not fully convinced this is worth a very valuable GG, but I'm intrigued.

[ljubljana]

Actually that's a good point regarding the AP especially. Unlike the others, possession of the wonder won't deny Ginger the yields

that IS a good point.... so it's a good thing you thought of it because i sure didn't  you are right, capturing the wonder does NOT deny them the yields but burning it does! so even if we COULD hold prussa (which we can't, mostly because how on earth are we supposed to get our 1-movers that far east) we should still seriously consider a raze just for "hurt ginger maximally" reasons.... it would be one thing if we were actually on track to, you know, WIN this war, but until we get to that point i don't know if we can really keep any cities that are not comparably-defensible to our core cities (i rate ankyra in this category due to its hilltop nature, relative isolation from the other ginger cities, and the fact that we already have a road connection there)

though it is true that with ginger as heavily dependent on AP stuff as they are, even taking their cities for one turn is.... not tantamount to a raze, but relatively damaging compared to generic circumstances. it is guaranteed to destroy the christian infrastructure, and if we pillage well enough and get good luck on the building destruction dice, we can leave their cities pretty hollowed-out if they do get them back...

as for the GG value, well, they are REALLY valuable, but their value isn't going to fully mature for a good 20-30 turns... they are not doing anything at all for us following the conventional track until aksum finishes the heroic epic which is still about 10t away i think (following the normal and reasonable granary -> ikhanda -> HE -> units forever build order; i might maybe squeeze a castle in there too since it is still a border city after all). and then their real value comes when we hit military science, but that's two more very pricey techs away after miltrad and we are going to royally fuck up our economy in the meantime with drafting and whipping naturally we need to actually live that long for saving the GGs to be the right choice.... there is also a chance, i think, that if we don't have GGs saved, military science will no longer be the right tech choice; we will actually be closer in terms of beaker count to rifles and cavs than to gren/cannon if we are going for miltrad next (steel is REALLY expensive) and as much as i dunked on rifles earlier, dunking on cavs would be a totally different level of delusional (the question there though is: will we be so far behind on tech by the time we hit the next tier of units that we will need cannons to counter naufragar's INFANTRY....)

[ljubljana]

Turn 171 - Zululand

ok, let's see what we've got

i've noticed that one trick to being less stressed when i play these turns is to keep the music off lol..... washington diplo music is always a jumpscare



oh, wtf does this mean..... i though (according to their copper/copper response earlier) that we were IN a nap until t186.... maybe they DID mean that to be a condition NAP if and only if we correctly attacked ginger? well i'll echo this of course, and probably try to get it extended as well.... i offered them another 25/25 deal, hopefully they won't turn around and try to rein us in while we are still worrying about ginger shoving us bodily into our graves...

event log



still no dead units.... would have lost tsuyuko the scout in the captured anglerfish, but she was trapped last turn so i had to delete her

you can see that they are threatening to go for drey's border city with us in the near future as well... if so i plan to be a gigantic pain in the ass about that and attack it with combat workers and the highlighted city raider macemen lol

ginger's defensive deploy



is looking sensible - no cities defended by single units, and while that's not quite in "bigass stack of cuirassiers" territory it's certainly getting there, and it is correctly IN attaleia instead of trying to do some kind of zone defense thing. hmm. while they will need more than that to retake ankyra (in particular they will need cats, imo) this might be enough to close off the possibility of further easy gains, unless we can manage some kind of trickery up here...

i am noticing that they did leave a few very convenient unchopped forests for us to occupy north of attaleia, which MIGHT be an angle.... not sure what it would take to withstand what they have shown us plus the prospect of other cuirs in the fog though

another question is if we sacrifice two impis to cut the road NW of attaleia.... i'm thinking probably? but it is a weak thought at best



note escaping drey workers heading up to ura.... you guys think we could get them to road that tile by using our own workers to road SE of ura? that could also be a nice angle with which to attack ginger's drey conquests. if we do that i will probably give them back to drey so they can reclaim their cultural borders



meanwhile, some kind of major battle is going on here as i play the turn, with a large group of ginger's cuirs looking heavily-damaged and drey birthing one great general and either killing or losing TWO 

ok, we have reached the point where we're supposed to bang our heads against this position and try to come up with SOMEthing to do in the face of real defense from ginger.... ideas? here are some of mine....

- if we can no longer hide our GGs due to the peak, maybe we can hide them in some other way. my first thought is on a boat but the boats are still a fair few turns away on the long return trip from aksum....

- we could use a GG to make a super-healer. that's a pretty standard, normal move, right? maybe out of a horse archer so we can have it hide under our stack on defense, but also have the ability to take a free knight and later cuir upgrade? at least... that is the logic i am hoping ginger will follow when faced with such a unit. the REAL point would be this: we conspicuously take the three medic promotions on top of combat 1 but hide that we have a FIFTH promotion available, which we then use to take morale to snipe some warrior-defended city. we have a few 8/5 horse archers still sitting around that we could use to pull that off.... and worst-case a super-medic and free knight upgrade is a totally acceptable ROI on a GG anyways



well, i don't really anticipate this working, to be honest, but worth a shot...? at least we can get a longbow up on that annoying hill (for ginger) 2 NW of prussa where it can hit the city but they can't hit back, to force them to put real defenders there long-term.... and we do want the super-healer at some point, probably during THIS war, to help sustain our stacks.... i think i'm ok with delaying the nebuilous late-game commando project that we may not live long enough to see in favor of trying a tactic now, and if it fails, gaining sustainability on our units moving forwards

oh what? we're two turns from nationalism so i need to start the golden age? ok i guess so



witness the most powerful farmworld is ever likely to be. don't blink either as we're crashing this ship HARD come two turns from now

where are we getting our great people for the third golden age? well, please disagree if you think this incorrect, but my opinion is.... nowhere lmao..... this is the Payoff Period imo and we can't devote three perfectly good unit-producing cities to working dumbass specialists instead of these monster tiles. if we somehow survive all this i will brew up a national epic city and we can try for a third GA a loooong time from now that way.

edit: well, i am really not confident we are going to make it to miltrad by the end of this GA nor do i want to build WEALTH of all things with our precious GA production. what to do... well.... if in 2 turns we have to take a cold hard look at ourselves and realize it's just not going to happen.... we could swap to slavery at the END of the GA..... then back to serfdom at the anarchy turn later.... then not only can we whip cuirs in all our cities at least once, but all these other cities that can whip 2 or 3 times can whip 2 or 3 cuirs, not just one.... that would likely get us to miltrad a fair few turns faster and in theory we don't have to go back to serfdom until we are really damn confident that we are going to kill ginger dead

[williams482]

Does the city resistance counter tick down in anarchy?

I like the GG medic with Morale held in reserve. it's a definitely useful play that keeps alive some opportunistic attacks.

If we've fired off the GA and you aren't confident that we will make it in time to whip cuirs, maybe the right move is to max out the economic value of a Serfdom GA, flip into slavery at the end, and whip+draft ourselves to the ground then. We should be able to get miltrad or very close with GA boosted serfdom farms in play. It also gives us the ability to really step on the gas should (when) we need more troops against Ginger, and against a possible dogpile if necessary. Reduced tile yields and lower pop will also hurt our demographics in hopefully temporary ways, which could make us look less dangerous (and less worth ganging up on).

There's even an argument to be made that this is the better direction? It's definitely more "efficient": we get serfdom yield bonuses while the GA can multiply them, and slavery whips when losing pop hurts less because we don't have the GA bumping up our tile yields. Economically we're more constrained, but we have more options for the production necessary to crank out units.

I've been waffling a lot on this one myself for the past few turns. I don't think it's a slam dunk.

[ljubljana]

not sure about the city resistance counter in anarchy.... or the more relevant one for us, the whip and draft anger counters..... i will say that if we do swap back at the anarchy turn, we may not lose much economically if we dunk ourselves so firmly in the toilet with whippings that we aren't making much net commerce anymore to begin with  and the hammer loss would be significant but our MFG is uh... not going to be too high after the GA once we have whipped to the bone anyways

Turn 172 - Zululand

DEFINITELY going to be some dead units this time as i sacrificed 2 impis last turn to take out the road NW of attaleia.... but how many?



just the two, and the attacking cuirs took significant damage in killing them - not too bad. no invaders either so we should make it to drafting at least without losing cities. and..... ginger made a very smart move to cut off our city vis and, i believe, ran the EP slider for a turn! they gained hundreds of points against us just last turn, very very smart and cool move which i have to respect

less sure about those cuirs on the hill NW of prussa though.... they are out of position to threaten ankyra, and can't even get into attaleia to defend next turn unless there are combat workers in the fog (prussa is on a hill so no accessing the road network that way). we would have to rely more on the "hope they don't have anything" technique than i am typically comfortable with but it's conceivable we could pull something off at the meleti-attaleia combo over the next 2t...

except, i double-checked and nooo, prussa is NOT on a hill even though it sure looks like it is (to my eyes anyways). okay.... never mind then  might have gone for meleti but the combat workers and our own 2-movers are too far out of position to try it. ok then! nice job friends



ok, actually i'd better wait for drey to play because of this.... if drey does road this hill we might be supposed to move troops on it to threaten a recapture of the drey city ginger just conquered. but first, i cannot resist asking the 20 vigintillion dollar question about what's going on in prussa



yup good call! with 12 cuirassiers in theater the Real War has begun, and we don't really have the numbers to defend multiple locations anymore. i think the time may be coming when we will have to hole up in ankyra for a while and wait for more of..... well.... every kind of unit eventually i would love to take control of that little column of forests which seem to be essential for threatening ginger's cities, but we can only do that if we will not be losing ankyra in so doing...

btw, i have no idea why we have vis on all tiles within 3 of ankyra (i do NOT have a sentry unit in there).... but i'll take it, obviously. the nice thing about that is that they are going to need cats to take it back efficiently, and if they put enough cats together to do that we will be able to see them coming