GAVAGAI

[Gavagai]

Military situation. The city is now vulnerable to chariots but the moment my spear reaches it, it will become incredibly difficult to take. Ginger has the right idea to cut me off from reinforcements but his execution is piss poor: he has only one axe on this job while the other two axes are doing nothing. I moved forward a couple of workers, a spear and a chariot. He can now take out the chariot, sure, but the spear and the workers will survive, his axe will be damaged and he won't be able to immediately reinforce it. I, on the other hand, have more units incoming and will be able to road the hill next turn. Ginger's blockade will not stand.
He has two turns to take back the city before my spear enters it. And meanwhile, I will be able to stockpile HAs starting next turn.

[Gavagai]

Ginger played quickly. He chose not to take out my chariot and just reinforce the plot with a chariot of his own. It turned out badly for him: my chariot took out his axe and then my spear cleaned up the chariot. The blockade is broken.

I am a bit confused actually about what happened here. His axe was chosen as a defender even though my chariot had almost seventy percent odds. It means that his own chariot had even lower odds. But my only advantage was having combat one, so I am not sure how it was the case.

[RefSteel]

If your C1 Chariot attacked an unpromoted chariot, it would indeed still have gotten odds close to 70% - at least as good as it did against the unpromoted forest hill axe.  +10% strength makes a really big difference because of the way civ's combat mechanics work: Each combat round is only slightly more likely to go your way, and you do only slightly more damage per hit, but the net result is that you're doing a little over 20 damage each time you "win" a combat round and taking slightly less than 20 each time you lose one, which means you only need to "win" five rounds before you lose six.

I'm still sort of surprised though - I know I've seen cases where e.g. an archer defended against a shock elephant when a sword in the same stack would have given the elephant worse odds, due to high cultural defenses and the difference in base strengths; I had assumed it was because units avoid defending against an opponent that has a special bonus specifically against them, but obviously I was wrong about that.  (It may have just been a case of the game overvaluing first strikes, or the rules for choosing defenders might be different in cities than in the field; not sure...)

[Gavagai]

If your C1 Chariot attacked an unpromoted chariot, it would indeed still have gotten odds close to 70% - at least as good as it did against the unpromoted forest hill axe.  +10% strength makes a really big difference because of the way civ's combat mechanics work:  Each combat round is only slightly more likely to go your way, and you do only slightly more damage per hit, but the net result is that you're doing a little over 20 damage each time you "win" a combat round and taking slightly less than 20 each time you lose one, which means you only need to "win" five rounds before you lose six.

I'm still sort of surprised though - I know I've seen cases where e.g. an archer defended against a shock elephant when a sword in the same stack would have given the elephant worse odds, due to high cultural defenses and the difference in base strengths; I had assumed it was because units avoid defending against an opponent that has a special bonus specifically against them, but obviously I was wrong about that.  (It may have just been a case of the game overvaluing first strikes, or the rules for choosing defenders might be different in cities than in the field; not sure...)

I think C1 advantage typically gives 68 percent chance. I think my chariot had 69 on the axe but I am not sure whether it included retreat chance or not. It might be that the chance for axe to survive was actually higher.

[Gavagai]

Ginger surrendered to me this important hill, not sure why. For now, I am camping there, it is a hard blockade to break. But I do not think there will be any more action there on my part because my scouting of SD's territory discovered something very interesting.

Superdeath offered me a deal: I fight Ginger, he fights Commodore. But now I scouted his land and... where is Commodore? He has see on all sides except south where he has me. He cannot reasonably go to war with Commodore. As a matter of fact, he cannot go to war with anyone, except yours truly. Which, surely, makes it very convenient for him that I am now engaged in a war with Ginger at his suggestion.
I'll be frank, I did not expect someone to just straight-up lie in a diplo offer as that would make his diplo offers worthless not only in this game but in all future games of which SD in particular plays quite a lot. But SD did this thing anyway and this will have consequences, both on this game and on meta-level.
On meta-level SD is now a known lier and cheat for me and I encourage others to treat him the same. His word means nothing. In this game I do not consider myself bound by a pseudo-NAP we had earlier. And that is quite a bad news for SD, as he decided that my war with Ginger is a reason for him to get comfortable: not only he stopped building units but he also sent out an axe (!) to scout Ginger's territory.
If there is such a thing as Superdeath's fans, you might consider praying for your hero because he is getting a stack of mounted units incoming right into his fuckface in about five turns.

[RefSteel]

I think C1 advantage typically gives 68 percent chance. I think my chariot had 69 on the axe but I am not sure whether it included retreat chance or not. It might be that the chance for axe to survive was actually higher.

Ah - true; CtH/BUG typically shows your unit's survival chance (rather than outright victory chance) as the first number by default. If only the unpromoted chariot had been defending, it would presumably have displayed 71.2% - very close either way, though the axe was technically the "better" defender with the forest hill and (I think?) a 5% fortify bonus. Regardless, it'll be interesting to see how your neighbors react to the emerging situation! Thanks for reporting on it!

[Gavagai]

Ginger made a very timely peace offer. I rejected, then reoffered, then started to doubt whether it was the right thing to do. It is unlikely he would be able to organize a counter-offensive in ten turns anyway. He actually invested lots of hammers into archers which is kind of sad given that I am not going to attack him and on the offense archers are useless. Anyway, I guess we are going to shift the focus to the new theater for at least a while:

This is my invasion stack. SD has an archer and an axe defending Hadrumentum and last time I saw Carthage it was warrior defended. He would probably be able to scramble enough units to hold Carthage but Hadrumentum definitely falls and this is his only source of Horses so he will be reduced to a non-entity. Observe the scouting axe 2S from my stack. This is a second axe he sent out to scouting.

The situation in the east. I do not like how Amicalola is comfortable here and am going to send out a splinter force to push him away from this region.

[Gavagai]

A thing I would want to do with Ginger is to offer him back his city in exchange for a really long-term NAP. The idea of expanding in this direction sounds depressing: his next city is crap and a well-defended crap. I would rather go for Amicalola after SD is dead or crippled and take the Lighthouse from him.
I am not sure how to communicate to Ginger my intention. I think after 10 turns of peace elapse, I offer him fish for fish and the city on top of it. And evacuate the garrison from the city so that he can capture it. I am pretty sure, I am allowed to offer the city, even if he is not allowed to accept the offer.

[Gavagai]

SD logged in and whipped three of his cities for one pop. I think he moved his axe back and spotted my stack. Bummer.

[Gavagai]

I have a friend. She is from Ireland and she is the nicest person I ever met. I once said a very rude thing to her - without any excuse, this is just something I do (as my readers here surely know). And her response was: "I do not admire the fact that you said X". These were the worst words I ever heard from her: apparently, this is what she says when she is pissed off.
With that preamble: I do not admire the way SD treats the clock. He was the last to play during the previous turn and it would be very natural for him to be the first to play this turn. Instead, he declared war against me thus claiming the second part of the timer. He offered peace immediately, probably hoping I would accept by mistake. The reason I do not admire it - at that point he had no way of knowing that I was going to make peace with Ginger and I am playing after Ginger. Which means SD was very willing to force a three-way turnsplit upon everyone. Do not admire, very much do not admire at all.