[PB56] Amicalola and Tarkeel are Feeling Spicy

[Amicalola]

While I have 10 minutes, here is a list of pros I made to try to cheer myself up. I've said before, my biggest weakness is morale, so I probably need to find strategies to improve that in these games, not just in regular life.

- Noble's GNP lead will remain, but his GNP dominance may not. When Noble reaches Astro, that will obsolete the Colossus, which is (at a guess) 50 commerce per turn, before multipliers? That's significant. He will also obsolete the Great Lighthouse at some point. He still has the most land and population, but the GNP gap might shrink.

- Delaying him is very much to our advantage, as eventually the 2 further players will be able to cross the ocean. Spooking him with the army movements, and hopefully with the war declaration as well, will help a lot with that. For starters, he's already whipped a tonne. It's impossible to know if he would have otherwise, but I think we were probably a factor.

- We have higher base production than Noble now. We can't whip anymore, but eventually he won't want to do that either.

- we're about to unlock Stock Exchanges, and are FIN. That should be a huge help to the economy. It will be really good if I can find a way to squeeze the Spiral Minaret in there.

- eventually we'll unlock redcoats, which should help win any late-renaissance struggles in our territory.

- Mjmd and Civac, if not directly attacking Noble, both seem open to working against him. Mjmd is conspicuously not attacking our very open border, while Civac is giving us a weirdly good deal on Marble, and also not attacking Gira.


Yes, Noble is still very likely to win. But it's not 100%, and I should keep playing this out. By God it would be satisfying if we somehow found a way to stop him.

[Amicalola]

My day has calmed down, and I've noticed Noble and Serdoa both posting today. I thought I'd go through what was in my head throughout these turns. Mostly because I regret that the whole thing happened. Anyway, these aren't really excuses (and I'm not sure they need to be); they're more just explanations. 

So yesterday when Noble suggested we couldn't play at the same time as him, we were obviously pretty annoyed. Tarkeel posted because he's much better regarding both temper and word choice, and I think he did a great job expressing how we felt in a neutral manner. I guess that's another reason we are a good team.

But the message we got was that basically, Noble was full of shit, and we were allowed to play before, during, or after his turn (him camping the timer the next turn didn't exactly help our perception). So this turn I wanted to play after him partly to make a point, but mostly because I was thinking about attacking. I regret the first part now, because it seems so petty. The second part because after using some sentries, I realised that with the number of CKN's the Noble has, we can't attack anywhere without Pyrrhic losses. So while the timer will matter later, it didn't this turn, which probably makes it all look even more petty.

I still think we are *technically* in the right - we absolutely had the right to play and attack after Noble. But I do regret that we (I) actually did it, because of how petty it looks in retrospect, and because I think the game will probably slow down a bit now, from an already-slow pace.

[Old Harry]

1. Chin up! I hope you're enjoying the puzzles that complex war turns bring...

2. Don't worry about asking for timer extensions - they are annoying when you're just moving a scout, but with a multi-way turn split at this point in a game they are a fact of life and you shouldn't be rushing yourself (but don't drag your heels either - lurkers want blood as soon as reasonably possible!)

3. I can't see anything that you've done that you'd need to regret. It's just a game, and part of the game is that you can decide who you are at war with. Emotions can and will influence that - your job is to make sure you're channeling them to get the best for your civ. And cause blood.

4. Did I mention blood?

[Amicalola]

Thanks Harry, enjoying the puzzle is a good way to reframe it.

I will try to bring blood! Unfortunately, what's best for my civ right now probably isn't causing masses of blood. I can raze a city or two, but they're just average cities, and Noble has 23 of them. I'm very wary of a full-scale invasion, because the last time I tried against an opponent with similar tech/units my entire military was wiped out to a man. So unfortunately, probably not going for a full-frontal assault yet. I think our best bet for now is just to psych him out into whip/drafting as much as possible to slow him down, and try to have a big dogpile when everyone has Galleons. I can afford to have less units than Noble for now, because Mjmd seems to want to just tech up. Anyway, EVENTUALLY, there will be blood.

Alternatively, I'm actually quite confident that we could defend against even a large stack, so if Noble gets really psyched out and decides to attack, that could be good for us. We are the only civ that has higher hammers than Noble (in a non-GA), so I am happy to trade units in a defense of our homeland. The big worry is he keeps just enough units (especially obnoxious CKNs) in his territory that we can't invade, and is able to successfully attack Gira. Hopefully Mongolia also has a solid defense set up.

I think the tech path I'm looking at is most likely Banking->Divine Right for some serious eco oomph, before heading to galleons/privateers. We should be able to psych Noble out a lot better when we could theoretically attack 10 cities instead of 3. The big thing will be keeping an eye on Noble's tech and units, so he can't surprise us with galleons or a higher-tech stack of his own...

[Tarkeel]

Spooking your opponents into whipping units is a rather effective attack in itself I think.

It sounds like superior mobility will be the key in a war with Noble, so I'd rather lure his units onto our territory first.

[Amicalola]

T153



Thought I'd give a proper overview of the Noble front. There are way too many units on both sides to do any kind of 'stack cut/pasting,' but suffice to say we both have a ton of classical and medieval units stuffed in our cities. No one is attacking any time soon, most likely. Unfortunately, it looks like the psychological effect of us joining the war has mostly worn off, as this turn Noble drafted but didn't whip anything. 

There is a caravel on the fish by Iuniper, which is really obnoxious. I forgot to build enough triremes on that side to defend against Noble's Optics units, and I'll need to get some quickly. We may lose the seafood at Kaffir Lime too thanks to this mistake, which would be a pretty big blow. I'm a bit annoyed about that, it's definitely something I should have thought about prior to declaring! I'm so used to SP, where the AIs don't really use boats, and in 55 there wasn't any boat action either. It sounds dumb, but it just didn't really occur to me. I guess it will next time, thanks to this.

Here is a sample of one of Noble cities, though bear in mind there are lots of CKNs, catapults and elephants behind it. You can see why I'm reluctant to march in:



Meanwhile, here is one of our armies, in combined city and behind. This is the slightly larger of two:



So yeah, I don't think either of us is killing the other anytime soon. One thing I've been thinking about just as a theory question: I'm not sure if the game extending is in our interest or Noble's. When I think about it, everyone else getting a chance to catch up sure seems great. But if Noble has higher GNP (and always will, to some extent), then maybe his lead will just extend endlessly until we finally concede. I'm actually not sure what the correct answer is. If any lurkers have thoughts, let me know! If you're allowed to... 

We're definitely finishing banking this turn, because afterwards we'll be able to tech everything else much faster. After that though, I'm torn between beelining Astro or grabbing Divine Right first. We'll stop at paper either way, for Sankore and the Galleon requirement in CtH. The major problem I see going forward is how much faster Noble can get to Astro, even if we beeline it. My hope is that he's greedy and doesn't want to lose his Colossus, but I suspect someone playing 3-5 hour turns will think it through more than that...

[Amicalola]

Here's the thing: I'm actually thinking about offering Noble a ceasefire or peace treaty. He might not take it, and if he does it obviously lets him attack Gira more freely, but Gira still has enough units that I don't think he'd fall. Noble has whipped all the psychological stress away already, and if I can guarantee a round of banks, Sankore, and Spiral Minaret, I might actually start to compete with him economically. Or get closer, at least. But maybe that's really dumb... I'm going to have my shower and think about it.

Yes it makes all the crap that happened last turn look even sillier and pettier, but sometimes you just gotta suck it up and take the L. Or maybe, in this case, you don't. I'm really not sure!!

[superdeath]

[Amicalola]

I think I'm going to offer peace. There are three ways Noble can look at it, broadly speaking:

1) "This peace gives me the chance to attack Gira more freely, and time to abuse my GNP lead even more! I'll take it."

2) "This war hurts Amica a lot more than it hurts me, so I'm going to stay in it."

3) "Fuck Amica, I'm annoyed about before, sick of this tense border, and I'm stronger than him. I'm going to stay at war." (I actually think this might be the most likely)

So I don't think there's a high chance of peace, but I think it's worth it for us to try. I am thinking about offering peace next turn instead of this turn, to give me 1 more turn to work on my eco stuff before he can attack again.

[Amicalola]

Ok, so I didn't offer this turn, but next turn there is a strong possibility. I'm delaying it because the longer I can get of 10 turns closer to the monk wonders, the better off I'll be. We'll see if that means 1 or 5 turns. This also gives Tarkeel time to contribute his thoughts.

Edit: this is the first time I fully understand the power of ChoKuNus. They might be as good as BE's pre-nerf!