[SPOILERS] ljubljana embraces the dark side

[ljubljana]

Yeahhh, you're probably right about city 6. We've likely committed to bearing the brunt of Ioan's legion push with our RS site, so, really, the last thing we want to do from a geopolitical perspective is to be perceived as forward-settling thrawn as well.

What if we move city 4 1NW, the city north of the lake 1W, then move city 6 1E or 2E? That'd block the site just E of the mountains, but that one's already in thrawn's loyalty pressure, so we should probably not try to reach that far anyways. It'd also fix the issue with the tile purchase next to MT, as the new city 4 site would likely pull in two MT-adjacent tiles, and I think we'd get a slightly stronger city 4 site out of it as well.

I assume MT forms roughly the midpoint between our territory and thrawn's, as the Matterhorn does with respect to Ioan. Thus, hopefully, if we can mostly keep our cities to the east of that wonder and out of thrawn's loyalty pressure, we'll avoid stepping on any more toes.

[ljubljana]

Turn 62



Oh, hi there! That's a very convenient quest, since we're going to complete it...next turn! That'll make up for the upcoming Nubian conquest of Anantanarivo, at least. I guess this is how these inland city-states were balanced - they're perfectly conquerable, unlike the offshore CS, but are hampered in terms of productivity by inhospitable desert terrain. From thrawn's renaming of Kumasi ("Desert Rose") and their choice of pantheon (Desert Folklore), I think we can reasonably assume that the rest of the CS are in not too dissimilar of a boat. Wow, now I'm really glad we took Work Ethic, as thrawn would have had a great shot to take it and run away with the game with their multiple free desert cities otherwise.



Our plan at RS goes off more or less without a hitch - Lavra next turn, timed to complete with Military Tradition, then on to the discounted campus. I'm not sure whether discovering the civic on the same turn as the Lavra completion will be sufficient to reset the discounting formula, but we actually have a trick up our sleeves in case of that possibility as well, since our builder is in position to boost The Wheel to completion mid-turn. If that isn't enough, then I guess I'll be stuck building a full-priced campus with nothing gained from our Theology delay...that'd be a pain, but would still take only 10ish turns, enough to hit the RH boost just fine if we're careful.

The new settler also starts slowly ambling towards its destination, the exact identity of which is still not fully clear even to me. We're in for what might be some fairly intense barb fighting at that location, as we (possibly foolishly) broke off one of our archers this turn to scout out the city 6 location, leaving us with just two as an escort.

...and I forgot to turn the lake names back on, dang it . Oh well, I'll try to remember next turn.

[marcopolothefraud]

It seems like RS and Hungary are already at their housing cap, and Scythia can't be far away from it. Are you going to put Granaries in them soon, or is it not worth it?

Also, this might be a good time to check the cities of the other players (through the trade interface) and see how developed they are.

[ljubljana]

It seems like RS and Hungary are already at their housing cap, and Scythia can't be far away from it. Are you going to put Granaries in them soon, or is it not worth it?

Also, this might be a good time to check the cities of the other players (through the trade interface) and see how developed they are.

RS will get another housing point next turn thanks to Classical Republic, but I'll think about a granary after the walls, yeah. Scythia's actually not too close at this point (5/8 IIRC) thanks to all the pastures and plantations and such, so we might be able to hold off there for a while longer; likewise, Hungary's settler buy and now settler build will keep its food supply occupied for the immediate future.

Oh, I didn't know we could do that - great idea! We're certainly far past the point where I've lost track of what their empire score contributions say about their populations.

[ljubljana]

Turn 63



...where is thrawn going? This settler seems likely to wreck our pinmap, but...why up here? I don't see anything nearby that seems to justify a plant this aggressive... If we weren't headed for a Dark Age, a city founded in this area could quickly find itself in deep loyalty trouble, unless there are settlers behind this to back it up. Cutting off our northward expansion is a reasonable enough goal, but I'd think the move with maximum denial impact for thrawn would be to settle MT, not to poach this marginal area... Well, they did take Desert Folklore, so maybe they're trying to settle on the geothermal vent (for instance) and plant a +6 holy site up in the desert while still retaining at least some decent tiles to work. At least, I hope that's their plan, as it wouldn't disrupt any of our high-priority sites and it also wouldn't be that devastatingly powerful of a move without Work Ethic in place.



The interface reacts weirdly to our campus plan, naturally. Discovering a tech/civic on the interturn was not enough to get the discount, but when we boosted Wheel to completion mid-turn, the displayed hammer cost did not change but the estimated turns to completion did! Upon actually selecting the campus, this fixed itself, and, after a bit of micro, the campus is due in 6. Not bad for a city founded just 7 turns ago .

Don't look now, but Ioan's milpower is starting to spike. I don't think this is a legion, since they haven't had iron hooked up for long enough, but I haven't been following their resource stockpiles closely enough to say for sure - I should really add that to the spreadsheet. I set research on Construction, but I may actually switch this to IW if this starts to look like a real buildup. I don't actually think any of our cities is on pace to complete a Watermill in time to boost Construction anyways without some kind of tech stalling, since it's due in just 10 unboosted and I'm not about to delay the essential settler/campus/AH builds just for the sake of a boost.

Let's talk about Great People! Thrawn and CMF both have GG points, which is reasonable enough given their long-running conflict. It doesn't look like there are any other campuses on the map save the one each completed by us, Archduke, and Ioan. Archduke and Ioan are in a pretty close race for the first GS - I'll keep a close eye on this, and see if we can't figure out a way to snipe Hypatia with faith should she become available. I don't think it's worth running the +GS policy to do this, since this would plunge us into bankruptcy, but a small faith outlay for Hypatia's permanent science boost seems worthwhile.

Rome and Nubia are also now in a tight race for the second religion, with Ioan at 9.2 GPP and thrawn at 8. We're far enough behind in expansion that I'm pretty sure Tithe isn't worth the Apostle cost at this point - I feel more or less content to let these two fight over it for now. I sure am glad we drew Russia and therefore didn't have to worry about this .

[ljubljana]

Turn 64 (part 1)

We open the save to a highly significant diplomatic development:



So, if this locked them out of war for another 30 turns like a DoF, I'd probably accept. As it stands, though, they're asking us to put a great deal of trust in them that they won't use the Matterhorn access to turn around and immediately attack us as soon as the DoF ends. Moreover, if they don't attack us, the Matterhorn promotion will give a good deal of additional heft to their Legion push (and they did, in fact, build their first legion this turn), maybe enough to make the difference in its ultimate outcome. I'm actually reading this offer as something of a veiled threat as well. "Okay, you selfishly reached forwards and grabbed the Matterhorn - we'll forgive this and go for someone else if you give us the access we deserve. Otherwise, you are going to get what you deserve."

I see three options for us:

1. Accept straight-up. This carries the obvious risk of them using open borders to stack the Matterhorn promotion on all their units, then turning around and trying to kill us on t83 when our DoF lapses. This is possible according to the game mechanics...but it would also be an incredibly slimy move, way out of proportion to the insult we caused them with our aggressive settling, especially since we'd be being unusually generous (by PBEM standards) in giving them access. I don't really take Ioan for that kind of player, and if giving them access did turn out to be the price for skipping the legion power period, I think I'd take it, even at the risk of strengthening their push against Archduke or whoever. We don't really need to have sole access to the Matterhorn to gain a significant military edge at Cossacks, we just need whoever we attack to lack access, and conquering thrawn is just as viable a route to a won game as conquering Ioan would be. Moreover, even if Ioan does backstab us, they'll have pulled only even with us in terms of hill strength and maneuverability and would still be attacking into DoTF, which seems like it'd be silly from their perspective if the alternative is to smash someone with Matterhorn legions who doesn't have DoTF.

2. Reject with an apology. We can try to signal "we trust you, but not that much" by responding with a rejection, but coupled with a small gift of gold, perhaps via sending a delegation. This could help signal that we at least don't intend to hoard the Matterhorn bonus in preparation for an immediate attack on them, and could maybe be followed up with re-offering at some future time (post DoF renewal?) once we feel safe from an immediate legion backstab. It of course carries the risk of spending gold while achieving nothing, and may well backfire if an irate Ioan thinks it's nowhere near sufficient compensation for the site we stole from them.

3. Reject outright. This means we think their veiled threat is a bluff, and we are calling that bluff. I actually do think it's pretty likely that it's a bluff - ramming their legions into our hilled, swordsman-defended, DoTF, Matterhorn-buffed choke points doesn't seem like a very productive idea, however mad at us they might be for our aggressive plant. They could go around RS, though, and strike at the much less defensible city 7 location, which would cause us much more trouble, especially if we're not able to get walls up there in time. I suppose we could partially rectify this by moving the city SW across the river, but that gives up an awesome campus spot (since we'd then place the Lavra at the southern +4 site) for what are, at best, somewhat diffuse and speculative gains.

Unfortunately, ugh, I noobishly hit escape on this deal screen, hoping to mull it over while playing the rest of the turn, but I now realize the game interprets this as a rejection. That's annoying, but shouldn't be fatal - if we decide to accept, I can just re-propose the same deal, and hopefully Ioan will correctly assume a misclick on our end. I'm ever-so-slightly leaning towards accepting as of now; that said, I actually think I'm going to hold on to the save for a while to think this over, possibly overnight (since I did already play one turn today). In the meantime, any lurkers should, of course, feel free to offer their perspectives.

[marcopolothefraud]

Here's all possible hypotheses.

1. Ioan's not going for a Classical-Era push, and he just wants to scout our territory.
Evidence for: On t49, he had friendships with two unmet players, and by t53 he signed friendship with us. He's making 2 Diplomatic Favor per turn, suggesting that he suzerained someone. He's chasing religion, which gives -3 loyalty in cities without his religion.

Evidence against: He made a Legion *literally* the first moment he was able to. (He only has 2 iron in his stockpile.) He makes 22 gold per turn, giving him a lot of military flexibility. If he wants to scout our territory, why haven't we seen any of his units poking around our borders? Even our Great Writer hasn't seen any Romans.


2. Ioan's going for a Classical-Era push against Chevalier Mal Fet, theArchduke or a city-state. He wants the Matterhorn bonuses for his troops.
Evidence for: He made a settler on t52, and likely settled on t56 (his score went up by a lot). That city, which should be size 2, is nowhere near us - so he forward settled someone else? His friendships with other players are slated to expire before t79 (when we met him on t49, he already had two friendships). He made a Legion *literally* the first moment he was able to. (He only has 2 iron in his stockpile.) He makes 22 gold per turn, so he could be saving it for a lot of upgrades.

Evidence against: He doesn't have any Great General points, but two other players do already. He should be making Horseman, because they're more mobile than Swordsmen - but he has 44 horses in his stockpiles. (Maybe he's afraid of Zulu anti-cavalry units?) He's making 2 Diplomatic Favor per turn, suggesting that he suzerained someone.


3. Ioan's going to fight us on t83, as soon as our friendship runs out. The Matterhorn will help him win.
Evidence for: We may be his geographically-closest neighbor. That city next to Religious Settlement has at least 4 or 5 population, and in all likelihood, is probably a production powerhouse. We have a lot of archers, but we're a bit of a paper tiger: we have almost no gold income, and our religion has slightly held us back.

Evidence against: We have a Declaration of Friendship until t83. We also have Defender of the Faith. He's chasing religion, which gives -3 loyalty in cities without his religion, and probably means he'll need to raze Religious Settlement if he can even conquer it.


I would reject with an apology, but not by giving away gold. We're not going to get gold from anywhere soon, except for "city 7", which has a 3 food/3 gold yield and a 3f/2p/1g yield on the foxes. We should trade sugar for sugar, or we could trade diplo favor. If gold really seems to be a vital resource, we should settle "city 7" sooner - maybe as our fifth city, before the Lavra-Campus-City Center triangle city in the northwest.

It would be helpful to know Chevalier's and the Archduke's military strength, visible through the World Rankings screen. It would be helpful to known if Ioan has met Nubia yet - Nubia was at war with "Unmet Player" the last time we checked, and defeated a few city-states. In the upcoming turns, we can shift our Great Writer to scout Roman lands instead of Nubian ones, because it seems like Rome will threaten us more than Nubia will. I think this is a wake-up call to make 1 or 2 horseman and prepare to defend Religious Settlement with them, at least within the next ~15 turns.

[ljubljana]

Thank you for that detailed analysis! I'm still thinking about this, but here are some immediate thoughts:

- I'd add a fourth hypothesis to your list: Ioan has decided to go for a Classical push, but hasn't yet committed to a target, and will choose between us and someone else based in part on our response here. One of the major draws of attacking us is gaining access to the Matterhorn promotion, which we'd remove by complying. Additionally, taking advantage of our compliance by breaking the RoP and attacking would be a vicious backstab, and would earn Ioan an enemy for the rest of the game - they are surely aware of this, so our compliance could reduce the odds of our being targeted for that reason as well. Note that letting them have the Matterhorn doesn't make us look any weaker relative to the other civs, since we're losing a military edge over them but they're gaining one relative to the other targets of the same magnitude. Thus, I don't think there's any reason why giving them access would make us more likely to be the target...unless perhaps they're still wavering on whether to go for a Classical push at all. Giving them access does make it more likely that the push will be successful, though, which would obviously be bad for us regardless of who the target is.

- I think it's significant not only that the legion was built as soon as Ioan had the resources, but also that this RoP offer occurred on that turn - that timing seems designed to make sure we parse out the implied threat of military attack here, and to make sure we know it's credible. Now, whether that means they're actually going to follow through on the threat, or that they just recognized this as the best turn to make it to scare us into complying, is anyone's guess .

- More evidence for the Classical push against someone else, though: they were willing to sign a DoF ending on t83 with us, which is pretty late for a legion push, late enough that we'll have plenty of time to make swords and horses and get walls in RS. On the other hand, their DoFs with the two unmet players were signed earlier...and I checked this turn and one of them has actually lapsed and hasn't been renewed!

- Ioan's in contact with everyone. I think CMF is a softer target than us, being at war with thrawn, but of course there's rather less to be gained from piling on to someone already under attack than there is by making a solo conquest, especially if it's budding territorial runaway Nubia that Ioan would have to split the spoils with. Archduke had a lower milpower than us the last time I checked, but that was some turns ago - I'll check again and get back to you. CMF's been above us since the Nubia wardec, understandably. I'm not sure city-states are a very likely target, since it looks like they all have pretty weak land for balance reasons, and they might need to race thrawn to the ones close to them anyways (Anantanarivo will fall very soon, and thrawn has no reason not to just keep going after that).

- We definitely need to make horsemen, and probably swordsmen too, between now and the mid t80s regardless of what we do here so thrawn doesn't roll over and squish us as soon as they're not preoccupied with eating every city-state on the map.

- 25 gold isn't much in the grand scheme of things - we're actually going to make that up pretty soon by settling city 4 next to that barb camp (the only way I know of to clear it without taking ES). It's also unlikely to change Ioan's mind, though, if they're currently deciding on a target and are now asking us for a reason not to punish our aggressive plant.

- I'm increasingly coming around to the idea that we should settle city 7 sooner than later, especially if we blow off Ioan here - it needs to get walls up by t83, which is going to be a tight squeeze even if its our 5th or 6th city, and I also think its loyalty pressure might be required to keep Ioan from being able to conquer and hold RS. Well...okay, I guess another option is to delay it until Ioan commits to somewhere, if we think the city will be a defensive liability if they go for us. That would all-but-force them to hit us at RS, which is a very difficult sell, since the northern approach will be very difficult to crack without the Matterhorn and the southern route requires spending many turns out in the open getting shot at from across Loch Awe.

- Unless they hook up a second iron, they can make at most 4 more legions by t83, so we should expect to face maybe 5-6 legions and a smattering of horses. It'll only take 3 swords/horses to lock down the northern approach if we buy the stone hill, so I think 4-5 of those plus our archers would give us good odds to hold RS. That should be easily doable in the next 20t, but I have a mortal fear of thrawn jumping in from the other side and rolling us up. The only real way to lower the odds of that seems to be to cave to Ioan now and hope that buys us enough goodwill for them to commit to someone else.

[ljubljana]

Hmm...I think the biggest reason I'm seriously considering caving is this - while I'm pretty confident we could hold off a legion push, would the amount of military investment we'd need to make to do so really be compatible with us then going on to win the game? Has anyone ever been targeted by Rome at legions, Nubia at Pítatis, etc., and then went on to not just hold off the push (as was Pindicator's unlikely, staggering achievement in PBEM17) but to actually stay competitive for the overall win? It seems like once we're in a hot war with Rome, they'll then need to eliminate us to win, giving them very little incentive to make peace with us and encouraging the kind of protracted stalemate that will end both of our chances to compete.

I don't think we're the favorite to get hit by legions, since between DoTF and the Matterhorn and the long DoF we have to look like a tougher target than someone. But Ioan could be mad at us for the RS plant and decide to attack anyways, either for reasons of (to quote TheArchduke) metagame hygiene or just because, in the real world of humans who play video games, frustration and anger do exert a real influence on decision-making. Reducing the odds from, say, a 25% chance of receiving a game-ending legion push to a 15% chance would impact our odds of winning significantly, probably moreso than the slight increase in the odds of Ioan rolling over someone else with the Matterhorn boost.

Of course, this all begs the question: if we were going to cave to Ioan as soon as they asked for an RoP, why did we make such a big deal over locking down exclusive access to the Matterhorn in the first place? Well, if we do end up doing that, the answer will be...because I'm a noob who didn't think that through and got called on it . That's why this is a Learning Experience . I guess, at the very least, giving an RoP now and a path to the Matterhorn is much more likely to engender goodwill than simply letting them settle next to it...uh, for whatever that's going to be worth. It's also worth pointing out that, if we cave to this kind of thing too often, we'll start to acquire a reputation as the kind of player that folds easily to threats, which might be fine in the context of this game, but would not help our odds in future games...

[ljubljana]

Turn 64 (day 2)

Okay, here's what I think I'm going to do. I want to accept this offer, since we do owe Ioan for sniping this spot and this seems like the best way to build the goodwill required to insulate ourselves from the possibility of a legion attack. I also want them to give us a concrete reason to trust that they won't turn around and backstab us, though. Thus, I'd like to couple our acceptance with some kind of GPT for gold trade, but unfortunately Ioan doesn't really have enough gold to offer to make that work due to their recent legion upgrade. Therefore, I think what I'm going to do is re-propose, but with an offer of 2 GPT on our end for their treasury and a handful of horses (and sugar for sugar too, just to make clear that I'm trying to patch things up).



Ioan, you're right that I owe you one, and I do trust you, and would much rather make friends than enemies with you in this game, Matterhorn snipe notwithstanding. Please don't make me regret that.