[PB64] naufragar's bingo parlor for assassins

[naufragar]

Ginger recaptured his city but was apparently very convinced I was leaving never to return.


But since I'm a petty bastard, I threw some units at this little stack, primarily to get rid of the wounded cannon.



Well... that was the luckiest I've ever been in one turn, I think. The odds of my 9% knight winning with 0 wounds is 0.16% if I ran the numbers correctly... Hmm. I'll take it.

Oh well, let's see what the damage is next turn before we despair.

I actually doubled moved Amica. I don't think this was forbidden. He could've attacked last turn rather than offered me money for the city, and if I missed this window, we'd be waiting another 24 hours. Oh well. Nothing really changed on the defensive front from last turn. Uruk is still dead with minimal Amicalolan losses and Yue-chi is still in danger of getting mauled by Amica's fleet. So, I guess I repeat: let's see what happens next turn.

[naufragar]

The combination of PB64 and Civforum PB90 are eating me alive, but I should summon up the energy to report.

Amica declared war and razed Uruk.


He lost 7 catapults and 2 knights to my 4 muskets, 1 longbow, 1 vulture, and 1 pike. But honeslty, any trade was probably a good trade for Amica. Preventing me from getting a toehold in the center of the continent was priceless. I've offered him white peace. This would give me time to get cannons, but it probably gives him that exact same window.

In the wider world, Ginger finally researched Astronomy, unlocking both Frigates and Galleons. This means I can no longer take naval supremacy for granted. It also means that Commodore's promoted-galley shenanigans are probably at an end. (And there's no way Comm every researches Astro, right? He can't obsolete the Colossus, so I imagine he just gives up any hope of leaving his northern continent.)

This game deserves a better and more in-depth report, but instead, I'm going to sleep for a hundred years.

[naufragar]

Amica has remained at war but made no offensive moves since sinking my fleet. He has founded a defensive city near the one of mine he razed. I've noted it with a sign. In the meantime, holy smokes look at how ravaged this warzone is:


Superdeath and Gavagai have been trading cities again. I'm not a fan. Would much rather than nip at Ginger or Amica. Oh well.

The sinking of my fleet has had a very bad effect on my power graph:


Next turn, we whip a couple cannons but nowhere near enough to correct this. I'm in a very precarious position. The worst part of losing units is... well, losing the units. But the second worst thing is looking weak and encouraging more attacks.

The power graph doesn't make me nearly as sad as this one, however:


I've had an espionage advantage on Amica forever, but his larger empire working more courthouses is set to change that.

[naufragar]

One day Amica's going to realize he can end this war in one turn thanks to the Cursed Inner Sea:


All he has to do is put a fort on the marked tile and his fleet can sail into the inner sea and fork my 5 core cities. I won't be able to defend all of them and I'll just die. Well, nothing for it.

Ginger has built his first Dry Dock and looks set to challenge me frigate-to-frigate:


Commodore continues to play an amazing game. He's burnt Ginger's northern cities, so Ginger can only build frigates by me. This means Comm doesn't have to research Astro to obsolete his Colossus. And I can't take peace with Ginger because then Ginger can post up on my borders in perpetuity. I wouldn't be concerned; I can throw together a stack that neutralizes him pretty quickly, but all my units are being tied up by threat of Amica, who for his part smartly refuses to take peace. Those ten turns would likely be enough, so kudos to Amica.

[pindicator]

Maybe Amica wants to give you a sporting chance?

[naufragar]

Maybe Amica wants to give you a sporting chance?

Nice guy, that Amica. Or it could be that he had so much fun using nukes in PB59 that he wants to duplicate the experience here. I'm not sure what he's planning. He's doing stuff, but his simplest path forward is just picking a side of Cursed Inner Sea and shoving a gigantic stack through. As I've said about a million times, I can't defend both sides. I would have to cede one. He's sneaking around on the water, too:


It would be exceptionally annoying if he got ships into this other sea, so I've demanded that Commodore close borders with him. I would think Comm would take this without hesitation. He's the only one still propping up Amica besides Ginger, who needs all the help he can get. Plus, I've more than earned this with my help in Comm's Ginger war. (I can't see him refusing the demand, but if he did, I'd obviously start looking for peace with Ginger.)

Ginger for his part caught me being greedy:


I had split my frigates to camp his two seafood resources, which let him kill one. That's a pity. Ginger can, in the immediate future, gain naval dominance. My problem is that I've got really only 1 production center in the empire. (I've got 2 other cities on production, but they're bad.) And that one production center can't produce both cannons and frigates. I've decided on Frigates to contain Ginger.

I'm not exactly happy that Amica's staying at war with me. As mentioned previously, if I had peace, I could do a number on Ginger. On the other hand, every turn that goes by without Amica actually hurting me is another chance for the game state to change. I joined the Ginger war in the hopes of adding some dynamism, and it's happened just not in the way I hoped.


Superdeath seems to be on the verge of killing Gavagai. I have no idea if SD can actually chew through Gav's final stack, but I've got to believe he can. If that happens, then SD's aggressive energies might find an outlet against either Ginger or Amica, either of which is great for me. So...I guess the plan is working? Kind of? Just need more time.

[naufragar]

Something's happening. I never like it when things happen:


That stack used to have more knights. Wonder where they went. And there sure are a lot of galleons within one turn's sail of my soft underbelly. Hmm.

[naufragar]

Ouch! My soft underbelly!


I didn't take pics of my cities' garrisons, but the math is simple enough. Let's say Amica needs two units for every one of mine after bombarding with Frigates. I've got 4 cities within his reach. So for every two units of Amica's, I need 1 in each city (4 total). So I've got to keep double his numbers on my Cursed Inner Sea cities, and that's saying nothing about actually defending the land passes.  We're dead. Well, time to conce-




There goes my hero! Now, I doubt I'll be anything more than a bloodless husk on turn 225, but by thunder I appreciate Superdeath's fighting spirit. Shame it appeared after mine is all spent.

For the record, I'll concede to Amica as soon as Superdeath does. If Superdeath is waiting on me, I concede.

I realize I haven't shown the graphs in a thousand turns. Here's the world by the numbers:


Amica has dominated the GNP since...well, forever. Superdeath can field knights, which on paper are sufficient, but he's behind Amica (and me) by Gunpowder, Chemistry, and Steel, which is a total of 8600 beakers.  I'm going to take a wild guess and estimate that Superdeath is behind the tech leaders by as many beakers are he himself has researched the entire game...

But that's ok! Who cares about gold when you have iron!


Oh. We don't have that either. My own decline started when Amica razed my front city of Uruk, and it hasn't stopped. I don't think Ginger has contributed much to this. I lost a couple of knights, couple of Frigates, and a couple of muskets, but the real story of this graph is my long drawn out loss of the 5th Amicalolan War. (Is it 5th? Honestly, I've lost count.)

But that's ok. Perhaps we can rebuild.


Just kidding. The only player with any industry is Amica.

And nobody has the ability to turn food into hammers:


I had kept Amica within striking distance for a while, but the grind of defending too many angles, having too few cities, supported by too few food resources (more on this later) was too much. Now Superdeath might be able to compete if Amica were to skip the next 10+ turns, but the tech, Mfg, and power leads are too big.

Lastly, here are the demos.


I've just lost a core city and whipped away 14 additional pop for defense. And I'm still #2 in every category. (Also while the science slider is at 0.) Oof. Painful.

The story of the game is the geography. You've heard the tales of the Cursed Inner Sea (tm MagicScience) and the Amican Golden Geese Islands. Have you also heard the story of the Naufragarian empire with no food? Look at the food column.


That +9 food city just took over the +4f plains wheat of the city that Amica burned. That's right. Before this very turn, I had only 1 city with a food surplus +6 or better. Yikes.

We came closer than we had any right to. Superdeath was roused. If I could've held the inner sea, SD and I might just have disrupted the trajectory of the game. Pity.

[naufragar]

Played a quick turn. It looks like Amica doesn't have enough to take a core city. Let me retract the second half of my concession. I'll concede if SD concedes. Let's not concede unilaterally.

[naufragar]

In fact, let's not concede at all.


Superdeath, a turn earlier than he intimated, launched his attack. Amica actually saw this the turn before and declared himself, but he wasn't able to prevent the city razes. Amica's power didn't go down; in fact, it went up 5k points. All the same, this was a very happy turn. Made happier by some interesting diplo.

Can you keep a secret?


I think this is good news.

At least I hope it is. This message followed:


I didn't accept immediately. I re-offered, however. I'm not sure what that money's for. If it was for a tech this turn, then I offered too late. If it's for galley into galleon upgrades, then it's not. My operative principle was: "I think Commodore is my closest ally. I put him in a bad spot by making peace with Ginger. Hopefully this smooths things over."

Speaking of Ginger, he's getting a nice view of my undefended East with his Frigates.


We have 6 more turns of peace. For now there are more pressing concerns. Very soon though.... One simply shudders to think.

I'm going to try to cobble together more Frigates for both Ginger and Amica, although Amica for his part is a handful of turns away from Ships of the Line. And his fleet still gives me nightmares.


I'm not sure how much strength Superdeath has or how much he can bring to bear against Amica's cannons. Well, while we breathe, we hope. What a fascinating game PB64 has been.