[PB63 Spoilers] Ginger and Lazteuq find a way to peace

[GeneralKilCavalry]

It was not as bad as expected, on the interturn, I lost about 5 one movers and 9 knights, killing 12cats, 1 mace and 1 knight. CF also made the mistake of taking Cairhein and covering his injured 2 movers with an injured mace and a spear. 

This does not stop knights. 

I swung the hammer exchange back, retook the city, and moved everything to the corn. I upgraded a bunch of injured knights to Cuirs after they moved into the city and I also upgraded the knights on the southern boats (fun fact can upgrade without disembarking when moving through city, wonder if that works with forts too). 

Situation at the end of turn, mouse over is Cairhein

Nice to see everything worked out! Forcing CF to use all the cats to hit the stack was the right choice

[Ginger()]

It was not as bad as expected, on the interturn, I lost about 5 one movers and 9 knights, killing 12cats, 1 mace and 1 knight. CF also made the mistake of taking Cairhein and covering his injured 2 movers with an injured mace and a spear. 

This does not stop knights. 

I swung the hammer exchange back, retook the city, and moved everything to the corn. I upgraded a bunch of injured knights to Cuirs after they moved into the city and I also upgraded the knights on the southern boats (fun fact can upgrade without disembarking when moving through city, wonder if that works with forts too). 

Situation at the end of turn, mouse over is Cairhein

Nice to see everything worked out! Forcing CF to use all the cats to hit the stack was the right choice

Yes! It all worked out well, thanks for walking me through the choices there; your advice to stack up the one movers on the hill contributed significantly to Cornflakes splitting his attack between stack and city. It probably saved 4-5 knights at least and I’m only fielding 14-16 ex-knights in that area now, so it was huge.

[Ginger()]

The war progresses slowly; Cornflakes' cities are at a distinct tactical disadvantage against Cuirassiers, because they cannot run away.

I'm slowly marching up my siege towards Thebes, which should fall in 3 turns*. I expect the smaller Praetorian/Cat stack in the east to capture Akenhaten. 
The strategy of 'using equivalently sized but tech-superior stack to lock down Cornflake's bulk while relying on smaller detachments to make the actual gains' has been incredibly successful so far. 
I think it is because of the threat of two-movers storming the gates if CF dilutes his defensive stack between cities, but I'm not sure. His lack of knights thanks to the first strike also has a lot to do with it. 
*I could've probably captured it next turn if I just charged with the Cuirassiers, but with only 4 siege and a river crossing implied in that attack, I've decided on advancing the muskets, praets, and Cats. 

 SD has ended the war with Jack, I didn't check if it was ceasefire or treaty, but I'll assume the worst that it's a treaty and Superdeath decides to intervene in the Egyptians' fortunes. Since he doesn't have banking (fatal misstep IMO, Guilds-Banking is so synergistic precisely because you get the gold modifier right as your slider is about to be dropped by intense knightmongering) he will be building only military, and I expect to face a stack of Knights on my border in 10 turns. Mjmd finally built the Paya, I expect the 3-man GA from him as soon as he pops a non-sci, non-engineer. But Mjmd remains embroiled against Cairo, and I've signaled nothing but friendship since he gifted my silver back after his culture overtook it. (Never mind that I was sharpening the knife before Cornflakes offered his Knights on a plate, Mjmd doesn't know that  )
Graph Dump:
   
   
   
   
   

We've finally broken double the rival top MFG. This is very encouraging news. Printing Press comes in next turn to increase our already ludicrous GNP advantage. I seriously worry that the score inflation from Sistine will trigger a dogpile harder than is already fomenting, but I'm going to need that culture badly in the conquests. I've diverted from Economics because PP gives immediate gains and I'm up Education on Mjmd, the only other contender for the Merchant. If I'm very greedy I might go for Replaceable Parts before Economics, but I don't want to tempt the bear. 

   
While this screen is promising and shows just how far ahead we are of everyone but Mjmd, that power graph is very, very far from decisive. Luckily nobody but Cornflakes has Music, so unless he pulls an epic troll move by building Sistine without marble as bottom power, I should be good (Mjmd can likely one-turn music and use his great engineer, but I suspect he wants a Golden Age to catch up instead). 

   
In case neither Bing nor Jack are reporting, here is an overview of their frontline. The city has a lot of Berzerkers and Pikes, but if they dont move out they'll die to Bing's sizeable cat stack. Jack's two problems are A) lack of medic/wounded stack and B) no Cats. Bing's stack has a few knights and very many defensive one-movers like pikes and Xbows. He can't really start storming cities. So I expect a slow, steady advance as long as Bing's catapult supply holds up. If Jack was healed he could probably repulse. I wonder if he just peaces Bing for a city. 

TL:DR
Good News:
New, rich land and cities joining our empire. Our golden age makes both teching and army trivial, I love PHI. Jack still has 30 hitters so unless he tilts and throws away his wounded stack, he will probably be difficult to digest. 

Bad News: 
Ottoman lands really are a cursed poison pill, I expect SD to be knocking on my door soon. Will probably attempt to war-peace him, will definitely do so if his wandering pikes start pillaging the towns around TarValon.

P.S.  Praetorians aren't a classical era unique, they're a renaissance era unique

[Ginger()]

Well SD declared and wiped what I had outside Akhenaten    Melee reacts poorly to Knights on flat land. I could've advanced through forests but that would've taken some additional turns. Plus, I thought it was funny to cut CF's irrigation chain  
Faced with the new time crunch to crack CF's armies and remove his culture, i stormed Thebes with my Cuirassiers. The losses were pretty high, at the end I took 2 coinflip battles with 2 redlined Cuirs in an effort to finish the city, and both lost 
Ah well, it comes around, it goes around
   
See if you can spot the incredible blunder. Yeah, I've been playing too much Old World and got cozy with the ability to change the order of attacks. I attacked Memphis first like an absolute dumbass. 
This is relevant because I could've cleared the remaining defenders of Memphis amphibiously and saved the knights on the forest tile to clear out Thebes.

Superdeath also revolted to Vassalage. You mean to tell me that on turn 175 with 2 capitals, Superdeath still hasn't produced his 3rd GP? Seriously? Come on man, get it together. Pop a GA, limp to Banking, THEN revolt into Vassalage. I've got filler cities with higher pop than Long Live Pindi. Population is power, stop whipping and grow onto your goddamn tiles. Nobody likes plains cottages at first, but eat your vegetables. I really admire SD's willingness to take risks and drive the course of the game rather than be driven. Attacking me is absolutely the right move*, but at this rate, he's fucked anyways. Even if he vaporizes all my armies in Egypt, I come back in 10 turns with cavalry and rifles.

*It's only the right move when you peace out with Jack. Otherwise increasing land would be better.
On the off chance that he still wants to increase his land with Jack, I've offered Superdeath a bribe for a peace treaty, I think it was about 250 gold. I would accept a 500 gold delta for peace, but any more is too much. If SD doesn't accept peace, I'm debating razing Thebes and putting the countryside to the sword. Remove his positive incentive for attacking, I imagine virgin lands would not be worth fighting over in SD's eyes. For me the loss is minimal with serfdom improvements.

If his knights can hit my redlined Cuirassiers outside Thebes I'm in deep trouble, otherwise I might be able to stabilize.

[Ginger()]

Let no one ever question SD's tenacity.
He responded with a suitably insulting return offer after I offered 600 gold for peace. I had to strongly withhold the temptation to offer back 1 gold to convey the extent of my sympathies.

I've decided that Oxford is dumb and I'm dumb and while I'll finish some of the universities I've started, everything else goes back to Cuirassiers. As soon as rifling hits I'm swapping to Nationhood and either Police State or Universal Suffering (as well as Free Market because Merc without Rep is painful), as well as back to Theocracy now that I've spread religion to my capital for some dumbass monasteries. Why. Instinct to builder is strong. I would've been a peaceful man if SD let me be, but Nooooooooo, in the words of MGRR, It Has To Be This Way. Once we get double rival top power I'll start building infrastructure 

I've decided to burn all of Cornflake's cottages, not going to use them before this game is functionally over, serfdom watermills and farms will do just fine.

City liberation is off, right? That could really wrinkle my jimmies if SD liberates Thebes and CF gets his culture back. otherwise I think I'm trickling in enough to adequately trade back and forth for the capital and raze it if need be. 

I also sent CF a peace offer for Pi-Ramesses because I'll never capture it without Astro or Amphib Cavs. 

Sorry for the language in my reports, I'll try to tone it down, I'm not actually that mad, I enjoy the game, it's fun, there's a couple turns of tilt that sets in after a setback but it usually evaporates, swearing about civ is largely a way to vent other things going on in life.

[Charriu]

City liberation is off, right? That could really wrinkle my jimmies if SD liberates Thebes and CF gets his culture back. otherwise I think I'm trickling in enough to adequately trade back and forth for the capital and raze it if need be.

Could you clarify what you mean. Do you mean it is technically disabled or it is not allowed? In any case as long as enemy units are in the BFC of a city the city can't be liberated.

[Ginger()]

City liberation is off, right? That could really wrinkle my jimmies if SD liberates Thebes and CF gets his culture back. otherwise I think I'm trickling in enough to adequately trade back and forth for the capital and raze it if need be.

Could you clarify what you mean. Do you mean it is technically disabled or it is not allowed? In any case as long as enemy units are in the BFC of a city the city can't be liberated.

Well technically disabled and not allowed by the rules of the community are functionally the same thing, although I believe CtH has it enabled iirc from my singleplayer games.
If I peace out CF, can SD (by the rules of this game) liberate thebes?

[Charriu]

If you mean the "Can't trade cities" game option. That only affects diplo deals. The liberation mechanic is not disabled by any technical matter meaning game option. The main reason for the trade city game option is to prevent loosing players gifting all their stuff to third parties. This of course is not possible with the liberation mechanic or at least in that magnitude if at all. To my knowledge liberation is separate from the no city trade rules and in the past players were allowed to liberate cities. Lurkers if I am wrong here then let me know.

I wrote an article about liberation: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid781327

but to answer you question. If you peace out CF then SD still can liberate Thebes technically. The game determines which player should benefit from liberation (most of the time most culture in the city). It then checks if enemy units of that player are in the BFC, which prevent liberation. Therfore to prevent liberation you would have to stay in war with CF and station at least 1 unit in the BFC of Thebes at the moment of conquest.

[Ginger()]

Nothing like Mjmd posting >4 times and Tarkeel, Mack, Mig, and Amica posting in Mjmd's thread to make me anxious. Better be something about favorite burrito types

I took screenshots of each city in golden age, and when I get the time, I'll do a city-by-city overview because they're beautiful, but Civ morale has been low lately.

   

I move everything into Thebes and invite SD to hit with his 12 catapults. He has more cats on the way, but I'll be upgrading to rifles. Hopefully the threat of incoming upgrades induces him to toss away his cats now and hope for the best. The alternative was to pull back out of range and set up to trade over Thebes.  

It just occurred to me that maybe I should run a trade mission with my merchant to expedite this army modernize. Likely target would have to be Mjmd's Mingulay. I didn't swap into slavery, 2-pop drafting felt sufficient and Serfdom bonuses too good to give up. New civics are Police State, Nationhood, Free Market, Theocracy

It's clear I've got the driver's seat in this game, but I'm not sure how to close it. I'm thinking of launching Cavalry raids against SD's mainland through my OB with Bing or Mjmd. Passive option would be to conserve my troops and just stack up to prevent Mjmd from invading (I have Sistine one turn from completion ready to pull the trigger whenever I no longer care about upsetting Mjmd, but for the moment, friendship is valuable). BING actually voted for religious victory lol, which I guess means he's on my side? Fingers crossed. The problem with consolidating Cornflake's holdings is the dormant culture, I'll be unable to eliminate cornflakes without a lot of effort and probably Astro or Ironclads, as Superdeath is massing Caravels. Plus it's very open to invasion from China and Mjmd has his own cities there which would be crushed by my Sistine Culture. The only threats to reach Rifles before the heat-death of this game are Mjmd and Bing, which leads me to hypothesize that maybe kneecapping Mjmd would be the way to go to trigger a concession. But I'm loathe to do that. Full on wars in other's heartland is a real commitment, it's like marriage—"till death do us part", and it seems that Mjmd is the kind of player to try and maximize his chance of winning. If he gets peace from me, he might not gear for a war he'll lose just to hurt me like some other players will. Safer choice would probably be to stockpile gold, complete Oxford, and then race for Assembly Line to draft Infantry.

[Tarkeel]

Nothing like Mjmd posting >4 times and Tarkeel, Mack, Mig, and Amica posting in Mjmd's thread to make me anxious. Better be something about favorite burrito types

I love stirring up some meta-induced paranoia.