[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[TheWannabe]

Is cash for units a common exchange around here? If another player offered to gift me 40 gold out of the blue in a game, I would never guess that's what it was for, especially because I tend to think of hammers as being worth more than commerce (though at what exchange rate, I couldn't say).

[HitAnyKey]

Is cash for units a common exchange around here? If another player offered to gift me 40 gold out of the blue in a game, I would never guess that's what it was for, especially because I tend to think of hammers as being worth more than commerce (though at what exchange rate, I couldn't say).

Yeah, I don't know either. As I also know that if someone sent me 40 gold, I would have no clue as to why they were doing so.

[HitAnyKey]

While waiting for the reload I logged in to just do my recording in my spreadsheet of what my cities are doing this turn and take the demo's screenshots for the turn:

Next turn I settle the last mainland city for awhile. We'll also have 4 cities growing in size. Sleepy has started it's Catapult and Hungry starts it's catapult next turn.
That's it for now. Will wait until I can play the real turn to log in again to view anything in more detail. But this turn there isn't much to report. You can always (at least until I stop filling it in) look at the sandbox tab of the googledoc to see what each city is doing. I've been recording what they are building, which tiles they are working, and the food/production bar details. Been doing this since T84 with the intention of using this detail to rebuild the sandbox...but just haven't been able to get around to doing so. And I'm quickly getting tired of recording all the details, so will likely stop soon....maybe.

[MindyMcCready]

Is cash for units a common exchange around here? If another player offered to gift me 40 gold out of the blue in a game, I would never guess that's what it was for, especially because I tend to think of hammers as being worth more than commerce (though at what exchange rate, I couldn't say).

Yeah, I don't know either. As I also know that if someone sent me 40 gold, I would have no clue as to why they were doing so.

This is not an uncommon practice. Yes, there is still chance of misinterpretation. On the plus side there are very few 40H units (swords, spies and missionaries I think) and given that Retep knows that he has Alphabet and we don't there's a good chance that he understands what we want. A spy would be very valuable.

I'm working on the defense strategy but will have to post later. I know that you'll be on vacation so it'll only be my attempt to give you guidelines rather than the burden of discussion. Have a great vacation!



Some housecleaning:

1. I kind of wanted to get the Walls done and out of the way while I definitely still have my Stone and

before GJ decides to take Bedazzled from me.

Ok. Makes some sense.

3. That Axe outside of Bedazzled was protecting the worker that just finished the chop this turn.

I understand that you were trying to protect the worker, but again, if the axe can be effortlessly killed it's not protecting anything. We'd just be down one unit and unable to respond to a chariot grab. It's equivalent to holding out your hand first in a game of rock-paper-scissors. Keep the units together please. Our GJ relationship has to be one of trust/MAD/common problem.

I'm harassing you not because I care about that particular move but because this isn't the first time that you've split your units/stack. Also, your defense of that move suggests that you don't realize how much of a problem it is. You have to have an extremely good reason to split your stack.

Next turn the Axe will move into the city with the Archer and the Worker will board the galley to head back to the mainland. I have no intention of improving any of the 3 Grassland tiles around that city.

EOT it'll have Lighthouse/Granary/Walls), but instead likely just keep building units for it's own defense.

You could consider workshops. It's own defenses is an excellent idea of course. If not GJ then master Commodore.

4. They'll come out pretty close to each other, but do you think I should send the first settler to the island or have the first on settle the Moai city south of Sore? I do think I've fully decided that'll be the Moai city. I should be able to chop it out pretty quickly.

You make a good point about our stone supply. Moai city should probably take prescedent for 2X chopping. Especially true given the choke-straight. We'll one day have to worry about Gavagai,...but not quite yet.

[MindyMcCready]

Here's a wall of text for you. Nothing urgent, so read at your leisure.

It's really looking like an even chance between the 3 of us as to who's going to draw the short straw. Us biggest prize but chokepoint, Retep attackable border but most experience and highest score, Grimace attackable border and low experience but ridiculously effective cheap G3s.

So I think we just have to keep with our strategy of getting WE's. I'll get Construction EOT and can start building some Catapults...not sure where yet, but I will. Hungry will definitely be cranking them out as soon as it finishes it's Market (it really needs those happy bonuses). Sleepy will start Catapults in 2 turns when it's Market is done.

This is your warfare backgrounder. The scenario and results are below.

We'll need to adopt one of 2 strategies.

1. Defensive: Defend by planting an intimidating array of spears. At 35H a C1 spear with full fort will have about 65% odds. For a 90H-35H ratio, that's not going to be an exciting proposition for Master Commodore if we can fill it with a bunch of trash.

C2 Knight vs C1 Spear
Zero fort: 65.4%
Full Fort: 35.7%

-His response would be to bring cats to splash our spears:
C2 Knight vs C1 Spear with full Fort and 88HP: 68%
C2 Knight vs C1 Spear with full fort no culture and 88HP: 86%

So he'll walk right through that defense plan if he brings 1:6 cats to our units ratio. Bringing cats to the party will delay him a bit, but that will be expensive for him to build a knights + cats army so it will cause a bit of a delay. Delay means better tech and more units for us.

2. Offensive defense. Cats + WE.
-We attack out. Cats will do 6 splashes of damage to every unit they target. If there are 10 Knights and 10 cats we'd only do 3 splashes on average for example. Unpromoted we'll do 9HP damage to a defending hilled LB and 10HP with barrage1.

C2 WE vs Hilled G1-D1 LB (no fort) (Base Collateral 9HP, Barrage 1 - 10HP)
LB 100HP - 18.2%
LB 91HP - 21.7%
LB 82HP - 36.5%
LB 90HP - 32.3%
LB 80HP - 37.7%


C2 WE vs C2 Knight (Base collateral 7HP, Barrage 1 - 7HP)
Knight 100HP: 67.6%
Knights 93HP: 71.7%
Knights 86Hp: 75.8%

Bottom line - we need to have a lot of units for this cats + WE strategy to work. We have to have enough cats to weaken his units, then enough WE to get past his hilled LBs (probably banged up by the cats) and then start the killing and hope to be on the better side of an exchange.

This is the better option if we can manage it since those cats + WE will have very good offensive value but we have to have enough military to make that work.

----------------------------SCENARIO----------------------------------------

DTay attacked with 14 knights at T119 I believe. I'm going to double check, but from what I've seen it looks like Master Commodore is noticeably behind in food output. Dtay had more on T97 than top food is on T107 (and top food may not be Master Commodore). I'll try to post what I can see about their relative development tomorrow.

After thinking about the spam that I wrote above I'm concluding that Master Commodore would not try to attack us without cats. For cats to be effective he'd further need some LBs to cover so that we don't attack out with elephants. So the scenario attack should not be as early as T120, but I'm going to double check that.

Scenario:
15Knights - 1350H
3 cats - 150H
3LBs - 150H

So a 1650H base case investment. The alternative would be adding 3 more knights for roughly the same hammers.

Defense option 1: Wall of spears:
-15 Spears = 525H
-This would be a reasonable (but nail biting) force against a straight 15 knights but once we take 18 splashes of collateral we'd go down hard. However, adding another 15 spears would stop him cold even with collateral. So a defense of 30 spears for 1050H as option 1.


Defense option2: Elephants + cats (equivalent 1050H)
-10E for 600H
-6 cats for 300H
-4 spears for 140H to round it out to 1040H
-Elephants also have losing defensive odds with (or without) a splash of collateral. So this is the attack out option.
-6 Cats do 36 splashes of collateral less the proportion of cats so say 30/31 splashes.
-Splash of collateral hits knights for 7HP, LB for 9HP.
-4 splashes hit 3 LBs
-26 splashes over 15 Knights means 11 knights receive 2 splashes and 4 knights receive 1 splash.

What would BATTLE1 look like?
-3 cats beat up 3 spears and 3 die trying.
-18 spears receive collateral damage leaving 9 healthy spears
-First 9 knights face healthy spears and 36% odds. 6 dead knights vs 3 dead spears
-Next 6 knights face 6 spears with 88HP for 68% odds, 2 dead knights, 4 dead spears.

Losses on our side 7 dead spears for 245H
Losses on MC side 3 cats + 8 Knights for 870H

What's left: Our side 23 spears between redline and full health (healed) vs 3 LBs + 7 redlined Knights.

What would Battle 2 looks like?
-we attack first with 6 cats. A fresh knight has 99.6% defense odds, about the same for a G1+D1 protective LB.
-Still we bang up the LBs or knights while losing 6 cats.
-Because the LBs are banged up (this might be optimistic) our elephants get to fight knights.
-11 knights have 2 slashes and 4 have 1 splash.
-First 8 elephants score 3:1 win ratio and last 2 score 1:1
-4 spears attack out scoring 1:1 win ratio vs Knights (EDIT spears would likely face LBs or cats)
Results
-Losses 6 cats (300H) + 3 WE (180H) + 2S(70) = 550H
-Kills 9 knights (810H)

What's left: 7 redlined WE and 2 redlined spears vs 3 relined LBs, 3 health(?) cats and 3 health knights + 3 half-life knights. So round 2 could be ugly and I'm already being optimistic with this scenario.



-------------------BOTTOM LINE------------------------------
A wall of spears is a much more cost effective and sure defense. WE + cats will be more generally useful, but if we're falling too far behind in power we need to switch over to spears.

We should be stacking that border city full of them. Not 30 to be sure, but let's start with 1/2 dozen and get that fortify bonus.

Knights are truly powerful (and only while considering defending against them w/o LBs am I realizing the extent) but largely because they can fork 2 locations. With that advantage removed due to choke point, they are not very cost effective against even spears. Our UU would nicely shut them down. The more cats that MC brings to the party, the uglier our spears defense gets.

LAST: Metal Casting is still important for Triemes. If our choke is too strong he may try to go around that city and if we don't have Triemes we can't do too much to stop him from naval forks. Triemes are also important to stop Grimace too.

[MindyMcCready]

And I'm quickly getting tired of recording all the details, so will likely stop soon....maybe.

I haven't been checking this sheet so please don't do it for my benefit. 13- 16 cities makes managing that nearly a full time job. An F1 city sheet would be a worthy replacement IMO - it allows me to quickly check for over/under investments.

The rules of thumb are granary, LH, Forge, but for us being organized Rathuses we could easily do Granary, LH, Rathus, Forge until the end of the game.

I'd get the most use out of an F1, F5, power graph, demo post.

For right now a GNP graph each turn would also be useful to see if Master Commdore is ahead or behind Dtay's PB18 effort.

[HitAnyKey]

No time for much writeup. Just finished a 4hr drive. Need to sleep before the 8hr drive tomorrow. These are the images I took in the minutes before shutting down the computer before we left.

As you can see this turn we lost visibility of Grimace's research. He finally started putting some EPs into us again. But I need to keep going full throttle EP into Commodore for now.

[MindyMcCready]

-------------------CONGRATULATIONS ON #3 FOOD!!!!-------------------------------


I had a chance to compare MC's game to Dtay's PB18.

The good news:
-MC is about 25% to 35% behind in crop yield to a comparable point to Dtay's game.
-Food Ratio Dtay/MC:
-T97 195/157
-T109 282/213
-Both Dtay and MC built Oracle and Colossus. MC is such a copy cat. :LOL:
-Dtay had a 40gpt shrine by T109 which Master Commodore has forgone in launching his golden age.
-Dtay had trade routes that MC does not(?). MC stood out too early or at least stood out in a game where he could be easily identified. This should be a very good long-term equalizer.
-Dtay invaded Whosit who had archers to defend his capital and multiple cities to fork. Against Master Krill he was deterred either by reputation, output, or his stack of WE.


The bad news:
-I underestimated how many Knights DTay had.
-By T125 Dtay invaded Whosit with 14 Knights,...but he had an additional 14 knights guarding the Krovice border against opportunism.
-MC could beat Dtay's timeline as Dtay teched Calendar and MC has run a golden age.

Overall this doesn't change too much. There are reasons that MC could be ahead of the Dtay timeline (GA, no calendar, less maintenance) or behind (no shrine, no trade routes, less cities, less pop). There are also reasons that his knight attack could be more effective (no Master Krill to guard against) or less effective (less pop=less units). We should probably still have in mind the possibility of a 15 Knights attack by T120 adding say 2 knights for every turn that it's delays (T125 = 25 knights)

As of right now we cannot put together a decent cats/WE defense in 12T. So we really need to be putting spears in there. Try to plan on getting an additional spear in that choke every second turn. Sooner is better since we'll need nearly full fortify before we have winning odds. Not sure if you're aware but Shock makes no difference on Knights.

C2 Knight vs C1 Spear
0% fort - 65.44%
5% fort - 64.38%
10% fort - 63.36%
15% fort - 50%
20% fort - 36.69%
25% fort - 35.72%

C2 Knight vs unpromoted Spear
25% fort - 50%


With 2 spears in there,...adding another 6 over 12T plus showing cats and whatever WE/HA we can put together. That should be enough for MC to look the other way. He's not going to want to whip his whole economy down and only come away with 2 cities.

Note that an unpromoted spear 2T earlier is equal to a C1 spear with 15% fort. Barracks do not exceed warm bodies. Barracks are good but getting the units is critical. If you can manage both, great. If you have to choose, go with the warm bodies. So long as 1 unit remains unpromoted, MC will see the warm glow but not be able to determine how many units that will apply to. The promo matters more on offensive units while defensive units get enough bonuses that it matters less.

As for the power graph,...MC looks to be at 252K on T107. That's well behind the top power of 307K. So Borsche might be in for some trouble and if true, that is excellent news for us. Once we get those 6-8 spears in the choke, then we should focus on offense WE/Cats/HA/Swords. We should have a much easier time taking those 3 Borsche cities than Master Commodore will have taking our choke or taking Grimace's G3 defended cities.

We wouldn't be able to make a move until Master Commodore has committed one way or the other.

Tech path:
1. HBR (need those multipurpose WE and mobile HA)
2. COL (or IW)
3. IW (or COL)
4. Metal Casting (bulb?)

If we tech Metal Casting then COL is the next bulb by the way.

Right now I'm back to thinking that the MC bulb is the best choice. Primarily to protect the island from Grimace (EPing us!) and from Master Commodore. Next GP launches the GA and helps us put up Rathuses everywhere. We'll be an economic contender after we've done that and should get EP visibility on anyone we want.

A GM would be worth more in gold than a tech. We have no OB and can't trust anyone enough to capitalize on that I think.

[HitAnyKey]

Thanks for the insights and for the praise on CY. I've been working on that the past handful of turns prepping for if we chose the GA to make sure we got the most use out of it with high population. But delaying the GA may still be best since so many of the cities have so much growing left to do. And it'd be nice to have Moai city done and of good size to truly capitalize on it.

I'm on the road for the next 8 hours or so. Then will be dinner, getting settled in the hotel,etc. So feel free to use today to log in and even putting cities to doing things you think might be best. Only thing to note is make sure there is a worker going to and chopping each of 4 forests around Frantic. Any of the other workers that aren't already doing something don't have a specific plan.
If you do play the turn don't end it just in case I feel like looking around tonight before bed.

EDIT: ok guess you can disregard but still fell free to log in. I just looked at civstats and realized the turn hasn't even flipped yet with Gavagai still to play. So more than enough time for me to do it when it does.

[MindyMcCready]

No problem. I'm at work so I won't be loggin in.

Ranting is building a barracks for culture? Looks like we have a religion in there so that might not be necessary. While observing Ranting,...1S4W is a 3-way city fork. That'll come in handy.

We probably won't be able to approach undetected however due to those mountains. A ferry ride between Overworked and Sad might not be detected however if we can keep cultural control of those hills.

Not something for the next 10T but maybe for the next 20T.