Dave Fires Up The Epstein Drive [Japan]

[oledavy]

I will not be able to update this thread and reply to your thoughts until Thursday Chevalier, but I want to take a moment to very quickly update on some happenings in game. 

Singaboy has lost a third of his core cities to Archduke. That's net -2 cities for him, but it is notable in that Archduke has made a lot more progress than I would have expected. I'm actually starting to grow concerned, and starting to think my assessment on Archduke's ability to make progress was dead wrong. I used my own cities as a model, of my first 6 cities, 2 can easily be taken from the sea, 3 are difficult to take from the sea, and 1 is impossible to take from the sea (Callisto). This was the rationale for my assessment that Archduke would likely find one or two cities to take then stall out. Half of Singaboy's core has been destroyed, and I don't know when it stops at this point.

I'm monitoring the situation, and beginning to grow worried. But at present, this war still serves my purposes. 

I got a huge break. Woden took Newton, unveiling Darwin (500 science per adjacent natural wonder). I will land him in ~15 turns and then get a cool 1,000 science. I have three techs between me and submarines. The Venetian Arsenal is 6 turns from completion. With Darwin, my Electricity beeline just got sped up dramatically

So, my course of action is obvious. I need to take Jotunheim so I can secure access to Jpper007's natural wonder for Darwin.  This means we're looking at access to subs in about 20-25 turns. I'm burning hard to get to Mercantilism so I can build 3 privateers for the electricity Eureka. At that point, I'm going to pre-build as many as I can, and once Electricity comes in, I am going to shove out as many submarines as possible.  The challenge will be getting enough gold to maintain this fleet. But, I feel if I can get subs soon enough and cram out enough of them, I can swarm the seas with them and ensure nobody else can build any fleet at all. I can then start raiding all the coastlines to help pay for their cost. 

The million dollar question is if subs can attack cities. But, either way, there's an excellent chance I'm going to have an invisible 75 ranged strength unit in droves long before anyone has anything better than frigates. I just might be able to leverage that into a win. 

In the meantime though, upgrades continue on the 1st Fleet, and I continue to pre-build the 2nd Fleet. Hopefully the 3rd Fleet can sew this thing up for me, if not by taking capitals, by forcing a concession.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Just got back from an overnight trip with the students.

But yes, subs can attack cities from range. The AI has never fired back at my subs either - not sure if that's because of AI weirdness or because they can't spot them. You do need a melee unit to take the city, though.

[oledavy]

So, I finally have time to really think about this game again, and Christ, I don't even know where to start. 

So, first off, my assessment of Singaboy's ability to resist attack was completely wrong. Either GA's are just that OP, or he was really tilted and consequently didn't defend well, or some combination. 

Anyway, he's lost 4 core cities in 6 turns, and is now suing for peace. The likely peace settlement, Norway for his core back, and a Defensive Pact with England. It seems likely he's going to just try and beeline u-boats and be relevant in the end game. In the space of a half dozen turns, he's been reduced to near also-ran status, but I do think he'll still be in this, just out of things for the time being. 

So, this is all very irritating to me, because now, after deploying to face his invasion, sniping one of his caravels, and destroying a barb caravel, I've finally amassed 3 frigates and 2 caravels around Saturn and began moving this last turn to take Jotunheim. I've finally mobilized about enough troops to mount my long-awaited attack. Except there is no point now, because the cities I am in the process of gearing up to attack are shortly going to be ceded away. I would complain about cheese, and this does feel like an edge case, but since I am not currently attacking them I don't think I can claim them in good conscience. 

But it gets worse. I need Jotunheim, or guranteed access to its natural wonder for Charles Darwin to be of any use to me. So, I need open borders with Archduke. I can't just take the cities from him, as I have a DoF with him, a DoF I didn't even bother recording what date it started because I didn't think it would be relevant. 

What's worse, I would raise this point in the diplo thread, and enter into negotiations with Archduke to secure Jotunheim/Teeplantage...but....I'm really wary of painting a target on my back at this moment with Venetian Arsenal about to complete. Granted, that might be inevitable, but I really don't want to draw attention to myself. Then again, I'm hardly the biggest fish out there with Archduke about to get almost all of Norway. Our German overlords get replaced by our British overlords in the space of a few turns....

For the record, I find the carping in the Civ6 General Discussion thread regarding Venetian Arsenal to be highly irritiating. Yes, VA is very strong, but I don't think its the win button its being portrayed as. I warped my entire civ around getting this thing. Just consider some of the costs: 

1. Setting up for it with a district
2. Prioritizing SPT and beelining Mass Production. 
3. Buying tiles to harvest and sinking chops and worker actions into building it. 
4. Running a sub-optimal government to build it faster. 
5. Running sub-optimal trade routes to maximize hammer output
6.  The opportunity costs of nearly 1,000 hammers
7. The risk that you might lose it all if someone beats you to it. 

What's more notable though, is the fact that for the cost of the Venetian Arsenal, I could have built SEVEN FRIGATES, ships that would have done me a lot of good in recent turns. This is all to say, that because of how opportunity costs work, the relative value of hammers earlier, I'm not going to see a profit from the wonder for a long time. It's not until about t150, about the time I get my 10th free ship, that the Venetian Arsenal starts paying off. Now, at that point, it's pure profit, but that's a lot of investment over a long period of time for a really long-term (albeit large) payoff. 

Anyway, I once again find myself at a loss of what to do. 

I think my course of action at this point is simply going to be wait and see, wait and see what the next turn brings. Depending then on if Singaboy has brought more naval reinforcements to my front with him or not, I will begin to consider my options. I think I'm going to look to sign peace with Singaboy, as we will no longer have any quibble, and to get Teeplantage from Archduke. Mid-term, the timeline for attacking CFCJesterfool moves up.

[oledavy]

I expect Singaboy to try and troll me and drive a wedge between me and Archduke. 

Archduke's response will be the telling one though. If he is willing to discuss Teeplantage's status, it means he doesn't feel strong enough to push for the win. If he does not, it means he thinks he's strong enough to win and doesn't need allies any more. The latter will be alarming, because with both me and Woden locked in DoFs, there's not much we can do for quite some time. 

Archduke with all of Norway doesn't have Singaboy's massive production advantage, and Archduke will additionally suffer from his current tech deficit. The additional territory will likely only bring him to SPT parity with me, while I maintain my tech lead. However, he's probably going to have double GA's for the remainder of the game.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Looks like the Archduke will not negotiate on Teeplantage. I wonder if he'd be okay with you annexing Toronto? The OIA has been at war with Singaboy longer than anybody, you were in position to counterattack and take those cities, and you've been nothing but helpful to both your erstwhile allies.

I'm just baffled by Singaboy's collapse. Best explanation I can think of is that he had more cities on the coast than he ought to have, he stretched his civ's defenses very thin producing enough military to take Norway while keeping up economically, and then he had a mental collapse when 3 players united against him and Archduke's initial strike went so well, so that rather than keeping calm, marshalling the superior production of his remaining cities to build a land army and strike back, he opted to forgo all of Norway.

It's certainly a slightly smaller threat in Archduke's hands than Singaboy's, but if we can't find some way to counter his naval advantage it's going to be a short game. The VA should help, but will it be enough? We might want to pair it with Woden's MGs - Japanese subs screening Brazilian battleships. I actually wonder if you might want to pursue a defensive pact with Woden - if Archduke can eliminate one of you, then the game is basically over, with Germany rebuilding its navy from scratch and Spain a nontentity.

Anyway, in light of Germany's surprise defeat in the war for Scandinavia, I want to examine the assumption that coastal cities are safe with only one tile of water. It seemed safe enough at the time, I certainly agreed, but now I wonder. Let's assume Archduke has 3 frigates and a caravel attacking a city. It seems more than possible that 3 frigates could bomb down the city sufficiently for a lone caravel to sail in and capture it. The only way to counter this would be ranged units on land (which lack mobility, the frigates could sail and attack another city), or a navy of your own. So that might explain Singaboy's quick defeat - he counted on limited coastline to protect his cities, so when Archduke hit frigates and rolled in, Germany turned out to be a paper tiger. No one has experience with navies in multiplayer, so not too big a surprise.

I guess going forward the thing to do is 1)figure out how long you and Woden's DoFs with Germany are, 2)conquer Spain and justifiably point out it's protection against England, if Woden's locked into a DA with you he can squak but not interfere, and 3)Once you assimilate Spain work out a way to neutralize or destroy the English fleet (can anything short of destroyers or subs spot non-adjacent subs? If not, that problem might go away soon, if you can attack before Archduke hits the next tier...)

[oledavy]

It's certainly a slightly smaller threat in Archduke's hands than Singaboy's, but if we can't find some way to counter his naval advantage it's going to be a short game. The VA should help, but will it be enough? We might want to pair it with Woden's MGs - Japanese subs screening Brazilian battleships. I actually wonder if you might want to pursue a defensive pact with Woden - if Archduke can eliminate one of you, then the game is basically over, with Germany rebuilding its navy from scratch and Spain a nontentity.

I think this is the only path forward. 

We shall see what Woden says to recent developments in the diplo thread. I think Archduke's play from here is pretty straightforward. He already has the fleet he needs to win the game. He just needs to eliminate or neuter his remaining two competitors. What's worse, all it will really take is taking down one of us. He has about 20 turns left on both his DoF's with Woden and I. I expect he takes that time to move his fleet to alpha strike one of our home continents.
 
The fact that he's not even willing to negotiate over the status of Teeplantage, one city of the 8 he just took, to deny me science (when to my surprise I saw this turn we have the same number of techs and are even in SPT), means he knows how strong he is. He doesn't need any more allies to win. 

I don't think I'm going to have time to take Spain before the DoF expires. I'm realistically now going to need to sink every hammer I have into preparing for the inevitable conflict with Archduke. 
I will say, while the first 80 turns of this game were my favorite of just about any game ever, I hate that the last 50 have been spent responding to others. I want to be proactively creating the in-game situation with my actions, not constantly responding to others. But, with the rise and fall of Germany and now the rise of Archduke as a potential hegemon, I don't know what choice that I have. 

Hopefully Woden is not fooled by Venetian Arsenal.

[oledavy]

Okay, it looks like we might have the basis for a new balance of power hammered out.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Given the information you had at the time, I can't see many mistakes you made since the start of the Scandinavian War. 

I think the main misstep that's put the OIA behind the 8-ball is overinvestment in settlers and underinvestment in military in the first 80 turns. The dramatically increased settler costs made it a significant resources in hammers, and while I think given even 30 more turns of peace they would have paid off, in the actual events Germany was able to knock out the Vikings with the small OIA armed forces virtually powerless to intervene. Singaboy's and Archduke's success suggest that the way forward is expanding to only a few cities, then whacking some city states and maybe a weak neighbor. 

But that was all long in the past, and at the time I was enthusiastically backing the expansion program. Couldn't know that Japper would build virtually no military even with a neighbor telegraphing the GG/horseman rush. Once the war started, you did everything you could - sent most of Japan's military even knowing it wouldn't be enough to stop Singaboy entirely. With how close the margins were even a little more Viking support could have tipped the balance (the warrior buy at the start of the war, for example - think of what the swords could have done at the capital a few turns later!). 

Moving forward, I agree, if Spain can't be taken with the ground forces on hand, it's not sensible given Archduke's meteoric rise to build troops for an expedition when a multi-frigate doomstack is en route. 

How to defend against the fleet? Hm, that's a puzzler. If you can get to submarines and get a few out before the war, an alpha strike on the fleet might work. I'm going to be a pessimist again and assume you can't do that. 

My first instinct is to forgo a stand in home waters with inferior forces, unless you can use Divine Wind and DotF to cancel out the GA bonus. Instead, a raid 'n raze strategy on enemy coasts might be the play. Archduke's fleet can chase yours down, with the GA. But, if he deploys for an attack on your coasts, then you can get in a few turns free raiding on his. 

The main downside of this is your huge strategic vulnerability: the VA. Obviously, the English cannot be allowed to capture it, so the OIA needs to devote a significant defense force, which means splitting your fleet or going over to the defensive entirely...I dunno. I'm not smart enough to solve this problem quite yet. Glad I'm just a spectator and not driving this jalopy! :

 Keep the faith - we've seen from Japper and Singaboy and Archduke how quickly fortunes can rise and fall in this game! Anyway, this has been a hugely fun game to watch so far, Dave, and I wanted to thank you again for letting me tag along.

[oledavy]

Alrighty, let's see if I can get back on the reporting each turn wagon. 

Most of what has occured recently you can easily follow in the diplomacy thread. On my end, I've just been continuing to pre-build ships. The biggest events were: 

1. Sniping one of Singaboy's caravels near Toronto
2. Killing a barb caravel and clearing the camp north of Enceladus
3. Losing a quadrieme to Singaboy's reinforcements. 

On that note, this is the one picture I'll show that wasn't taken this last turn.



The set up for this was that my quadrieme rounded the headland to see a caravel sailing to reinforce Teeplantage. I assumed it was a lone reinforcement, and moved a frigate to cover the quadrieme and attack the caravel. 

I opened the next turn to see this, it was a trap, he sent 3 caravels west. Well-played Singaboy. 

That being said, this really irritated me. I'm not going to raise a stink about this, because I can see logical reasons for sending reinforcements west. Yet, once again, when Singaboy is losing core cities to Archduke (Frankfurt in PBEM2), he seemingly sends forces that might have allowed him to more effectively defend himself to fight me for shitty outlying territories.  I get the feeling that he really doesn't like me, and despite Archduke running over his core, may blame me for his loss in this war. 

At any rate. 

Turn 128

So, I hammered out a new alliance structure in the diplo thread, and Woden obligingly offered a DoF. 





Kudos to him for correctly reading the situation. This is the only way the game continues at this point. I do find it funny though, that once again Woden and I find ourselves allying with each other, not so much out of a desire to do so as necessity. To complete the Deja Vu, watch him skip a critical defensive tech, get overrun by Archduke in about ~10 turns, and then blame me for not saving him 

Chevalier, you gave an excellent write up of the opposing players and their motives a couple turns ago, and it's now completely out of date   So changed is the geopolitical situation. Really, I could not have imagined I would be so wrong about Singaboy's ability to hold off Archduke. I was convinced he was going to simply first strike Archduke before Archduke upgraded quadriemes to frigates, or was going to lose one city, then counter-attack with the caravels and frigates he built and force a stalemate. I'll be very curious to see what he was doing after the game. 

So, Archduke is now in the driver's seat. He doesn't scare me as much long-term, since he doesn't have the same production, and Norway has essentially remained undeveloped. Singaboy has no motivation to build anything that sticks around now, and a lot of production in queues will be lost. The biggest threat Archduke has is having double GA's ad infinitum. Well, maybe not forever, I might be able to contest him for the modern one. 

The fact that RND's give double GA points, and they're super cheap makes it really hard for anyone but England to get a GA though. If I want to compete, I'm going to have to run a lot of harbor shipping projects. 

Anyway, I have a DoF with Archduke until t145. 

CFCJesterfool is an also-ran at this point and is basically just waiting for someone to come attack him. He built another city to make himself a juicier target 



Singaboy is probably not going to be relevant for awhile, but he's still a player. I expect he signs a NAP with Archduke, then hunkers down on his continent and beelines U-Boats. 

So, for the forseeable future, there are 3 players in the game. 

As an aside, I'm a little disappointed Woden wasn't interested in economic compensation for Jerusalem. I thought I offered a pretty good deal, all things considered. He alternatively may have just come to the conclusion that it would leave his core undefended to take the city, or he has something else planned. He may just be planning to attack it anyway once I sign an alliance, which would infuriate me, but realistically I would be able to do little about it. It'll be interesting to say the least. The calculus going through his head is: Can I do this, improving my own chances of victory, without sufficiently pissing off Dave that he makes it a net loss for me. My job is to convince him of the former in subtle ways without directly threatening him. 

Anyway, Archduke ideally should try to sew this up while he has a large fleet and Great Admirals, so I expect that he's looking to overrun either me or Woden at the end of our DOF's with him. I think Woden's expires a couple turns before mine. Realistically, he only really needs to take down one of us to have all but won the game. 

However, with both me and Woden in a defensive pact, that makes it riskier for him. If he attacks me, Woden could sail against his core or vice versa. Much will depend these coming turns on how much fleet everyone can get out, and what the relative strengths end up being. 

For my part, I've been debating the best way to defend against Archduke, should he attack me. If he attacks Woden, the choice is between defending Woden or attacking Archduke's homeland, with the former probably being better. If he attacks me, the question becomes: attack Archduke's homeland in an act of mutually assured destruction, defend myself, or both. I've all but decided on just defending my homeland, making maximum use of my interior lines of supply, DoTF, and ability to heal locally. Moreover, I have to hold the Venetian Arsenal at all costs. I may still try to send a small raiding force of privateers and caravels to go harass Archduke's cities though, should it come to that. 

The ball really is in his court, coming after me would involve moving his fleet to the other side of the world, far away from his homeland if he's worried about Woden taking it. He will irritatingly have places to heal though, thanks to Singaboy.

I'm pretty optimistic about my ability to hold of Archduke though, as I have a number of advantages Singaboy did not: 

1. Divine Wind
2. Short lines of supply and reinforcement (I can produce a decent sized navy in just the time it takes Archduke to move over, especially combined with VA). 
3. Defender of the Faith. If I am pinned into defending a city, I can give a good account of myself
4. Steam Power. I should have Steam Power, and, provided I have coal, will be able to upgrade all my caravels to ironclads just before my DoF with Archduke runs out

What I can't negate is Archduke's ability to strike from outside my range of movement. I can limit the damage he does, thanks to DoTF and Divine Wind, but he will likely get to hit first with his fleet. With this in mind, my fleet needs to be large enough to endure a first strike, and then hit back and still win. The upside, any damage I do is likely to stick, forcing him to withdraw to Teeplantage while I can heal in place or very close nearby. I'm also going to be cramming out more ships all the while, compared to his reinforcements needing to sail around the world. 

Archduke is not dumb, and he's going to know all this. With this in mind, and considering his DoF with Woden runs out first, I expect he may attack the Brazillians instead. However, Woden has been planting at least one of his cities inland, so he may be more immune to attack than Singaboy. I'll know next turn with the alliance. At any rate, I'm prepared for a lot of possibilities. 

In the meantime, here's what my core looks like: 



Three turns to Venetian Arsenal. I'm moving my navy to take the pretty weak city-state of La Venta. After that, I'll be sending everything south to Spain and Hong Kong. 

Another advantage to defending against Archduke. Everything has to come through a 1-tile channel east of Uranus. Had I the resources to get them there in time, I would plant some crossbows on the shoreline to make it difficult to move naval units into my waters. 

I have not figured out how I'm going to activate Darwin yet. Do Great People require OB? If so, this was all a moot point. There is also a spot behind Teeplantage where I can put Darwin ashore and get him next to the Natural Wonder that would not require OB. Maybe there is a Natural Wonder in Woden's lands? We'll figure something out. 

@Chevalier, you've made a lot of good points in your recent posts, and I cannot hope to reply to all of them. I'll try to respond to a few here. 

I'm pretty satisfied with my decision-making this game on the whole. There are some minor things I would have changed, but overall I've been content. If it weren't for events abroad, I would be very satisfied with my position, getting everything I aimed to get. Venetian Arsenal is about to become actual reality, and with it, the ability to stay relevant for quite some time. 

I'm going to try my best to start overrunning Spain, and everything is moving in that direction. I will constantly be reassessing what I can deploy down there depending on what Archduke does. 

I definitely can't get submarines before the fleet attacks, but as discussed above, I'm pretty confident I can hold Archduke at bay. 

I actually feel better about my chances to win now than I did just a couple dozen turns ago. Still, we have a long way to go, and I'm not in the driver's seat, which concerns me. Through where he sends his fleet, Archduke is basically going to determine what happens in the near future. At least I have breathing room for now to build my own monstrous fleet 

[Krill]

I can understand where Singaboy is coming from. He's just pulled off a brilliant campaign, completely destroying another player with minimal losses on his part, seizing vast tracts of fertile land. In the singleplayer game, such a campaign would be decisive. Here, though, instead of getting to enjoy the fruits of his victory, he is faced with the prospect of three other players instantly uniting against him. That can feel like a kick in the teeth, even though it's a perfectly logical move from everyone else, and so his frustration is totally defensible.

That being said, this really irritated me. I'm not going to raise a stink about this, because I can see logical reasons for sending reinforcements west. Yet, once again, when Singaboy is losing core cities to Archduke (Frankfurt in PBEM2), he seemingly sends forces that might have allowed him to more effectively defend himself to fight me for shitty outlying territories. I get the feeling that he really doesn't like me, and despite Archduke running over his core, may blame me for his loss in this war.

As an aside, I'm a little disappointed Woden wasn't interested in economic compensation for Jerusalem. I thought I offered a pretty good deal, all things considered. He alternatively may have just come to the conclusion that it would leave his core undefended to take the city, or he has something else planned. He may just be planning to attack it anyway once I sign an alliance, which would infuriate me, but realistically I would be able to do little about it. It'll be interesting to say the least. The calculus going through his head is: Can I do this, improving my own chances of victory, without sufficiently pissing off Dave that he makes it a net loss for me. My job is to convince him of the former in subtle ways without directly threatening him.