TheHumanHydra Loses His Head(s) [Spoilers]

[Old Harry]

Would waiting to get some known tech bonus be a bad idea?

[TheHumanHydra]

I didn't think of that, but actually, Alhazard should be finished the tech by the time I start it (next turn). Happily, after ending turn it's showing as one turn, as hoped, even without the known tech bonus. In more ominous news, Miguelito has moved six galleons (that's potentially 18 CR II grenadiers) 1S of his capital, threatening Red Star in addition to The Other Side. Defending against amphibious attacks is really stressful - I had to disperse my western collateral stack to defend both Red Star and Emerald (in case of a GG sprinkling Flanking I, Navigation onto four of those galleons), and probably overstuffed Red Star as I was concerned about miscalculating the number of defenders and having to deal with the nightmare that would be Miguelito's culture returning. Just adding galleons at the present rate and keeping them in a threatening location, he can stretch my forces really thin - one galleon forces one or two defenders in each of at least two cities. This will be enough to give me an ulcer. Well, you can see my dispositions here (Red Star selected):




Can anyone suggest any improvements for next turn, if the situation stays the same and I have to prepare for the long term? I can provide additional screenshots if required.

[Old Harry]

Galleons aren't necessarily full but I guess you don't know which ones are or are not... can you guess how many amphi grens he'll have? and what sort of odds will they get on the defenders? if he doesn't have a way to make amphi units naturally that could be where he spends any ggs he's generated.

btw knights are bad defenders vs amphi grens - they're better for a counter attack ...

[ipecac]

Whip The Other Side to 1 pop and hold growth so he can't capture it and use it as foothold or its old culture. Which reduces the number of places you need to defend to 2.

[Old Harry]

Doesn't work if the city has ever been larger than size one....

To elaborate on my Knights comment, I think you need to treat those cities as a crumple zone, put in some decent defenders (Maces or especially CG LBs behind 40% culture are good) so it'll cost him to take a city. Then have your Knight stack(s) near enough to each city to take back any that he does manage to capture. You'll either get a good hammer trade or he'll leave you alone.

[TheHumanHydra]

OH: Understood, and that's what I'd normally do; just want to confirm that that's your recommendation despite the probably three-turn delay in counterattacking that would be occasioned by having to move my collateral through his returned culture (two turns for just knights). This is why I panicked and garrisoned the city so heavily this turn; I guess the flip side is he can't really reinforce heavily in that time frame, just heal, though I'd be scared of Alhazard trying to take advantage.

@Ipecac: Yeah, I wish I could do that! It would be a great idea (for temporary use, of course) otherwise.

[Commodore]

How does he have access to amphibious?

[TheHumanHydra]

I don't think he does.

[TheHumanHydra]

Complicated (?) mechanics question

What the heck? I had set up muskets to be whipped and completed as rifles this turn, and at end of turn, four of them didn't appear at all, and I seem to have lost all the hammers put into them this turn. I'll be if I can figure out why, or how this precise result was calculated:




Locust Haven put its first two hammers into a musket last turn, then triple-whipped that musket this turn for 77 hammers in, plus two from this turn's production for 79, more than enough to complete the build as a rifle at 73 hammers. In the other eight cities where I set this up, this worked fine, but here - no rifle (or musket), and I mysteriously have eight hammers into the rifle in the queue. How in the world was eight hammers calculated? Even if the game just lost me my whip production somehow, I should have four hammers into the build, not eight. Note the other rifleman in the queue which was queue-upgraded from a longbow, and which is (and was) eight hammers in as well.




Emerald put hammers into a musket last turn (I don't remember how many), then double-whipped it this turn, and now - no rifle (or musket), and I have eight hammers into each of the two rifles in the queue (the second again being a queue-upgraded longbow that had been eight hammers in).




Perrier's rifle again failed to complete, and now I have two in the queue with - astonishingly - 19 hammers each. That assuredly wasn't what I had put into its queued longbow several turns ago, as I had arranged for them all to receive eight or less hammers so they could be double-whipped (not single-whipped) in an emergency (as I believe double-whipping is more efficient than single-whipping) - the point being that something fishy has happened both to my to-be-completed and to my queued unit in this city, and that something bears a disconcerting symmetry.




Kiwi - same story. The hammer numbers match again as well.

Now, these were all cities (save for one) in which I had done something (mildly) tricky as well - I wasn't able to get enough hammers into the builds in these cities to be able to whip the muskets to completion as rifles, so I was counting on this turn's production to finish off the builds after both the whip and the queue-upgrade had been applied. So maybe that is what caused this issue - but two exceptions attest against this: Locust Haven should have had enough hammers to finish its rifle after just the whip, as all my other cities did, and -




- this city had no difficulty preserving its production after whipping a musket but coming up short on turning it into a rifle. The only difference is that this city wouldn't have completed its rifle using its natural production this turn anyway. I'm not sure why that would make a difference, though - it's still existing hammers - double-whip - upgrade to rifle - oops! the hammer total now comes up short - add this turn's hammers. In one case those hammers - and those from the whip - were lost, in the other they were preserved. But maybe this is all a red herring - note this city does not have a longbow (turned to rifle) in its queue from previous turns, unlike all the others, including Locust Haven. Something makes me suspect the fact there was another unit with hammers into it in the queue being converted to a rifle simultaneously somehow messed up the game's logic in these cities' cases, and caused it to leave two duplicate rifles with the same number of hammers into them in the queue, rather than continuing to track each's production separately and in fact causing one of them to complete as it should have. Rather I have lost all my production for the turn in these cities - and thus the nine points of population I whipped away - and am short four rifles.

So, three questions:

- should my 'trick'/plan of whipping to near-completion (after taking the upgrade into account) and relying on this turn's production to finish off the build have worked under other circumstances? (If not, what should have happened?)
- what in the world happened to my hammers/is my theory about the other queued build interfering on the right track?
- is this occurrence sufficiently bizarre/unaccountable/unforeseeable for it to be considered a glitch, and something that would qualify for a reload to correct, or is this something I should have seen coming and thus a legitimate error?

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

Preview-edit: It occurs to me the second build may display with the same number of hammers as the first if all the production previously put into it was deleted, too - you know how if you have hammers into a unit and you queue a second unit of the same kind behind it, if you hover over the second build in the queue it'll show the same number of hammers as you have into the first? This may help explain why the game glitched, if that is what this is, as you can't normally have two of the same unit with separate hammer amounts into them in the queue at once, so maybe when the queue-upgrade forced this, the game got confused. This still doesn't fully explain why I lost all my production (and thus the units didn't complete), though. Again, thanks for any insight anyone can offer, and let me know what I should do with the turn.

[Old Harry]

If you have two items that upgrade to the same thing in your queue it confuses the game. I would assume it would choose the one with more hammers in to complete but perhaps whipping screws that up?

The fix is to replay the turn but remove anything else that could upgrade to a rifle from your queues. I'd say that was fine, but I'm a biased dedlurker so you may want to ask someone else.

the only comparison I've got is pbem 46 when I got a great artist from a city with no gpp artist points because I built the national epic that turn. I had to eat the artist because it was my own fault and fixing it would have entailed changing a build. This looks more like a bug (that it chose the item with fewer hammers) and you don't change a build, only a queue.