[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[MindyMcCready]

Uhhhh, won't be doing that. I'm just sitting here at 50,000 feet seeing if I can see anything. I'm happily missing pertainent info such as the turns that forest chops come in and I could only hazard a guess as to how many workers we have.

So, certainly, no critique intended,.... you're very strong in micro in my books. Just seeing what I can see. I've never dived into any type of micro but did gain some valuable insight from constructing that little spreadsheet.

If I was to play a game with my pre-spreadsheet micro skills I'd be getting a whole bunch of

[WilliamLP]

No world screenshot this turn because there are no surprising moves: settler will plant next turn, horses will be improved.




Ichabod has been building units like mad. I'm getting kind of worried for WT, honestly. But maybe he and Cheetah are developing the kind of cosy relationship that we've been having with our blue neighbor.

[Ceiliazul]

Wow, that's a nice looking power dive on the blue line there.

My Friday plans are as rich as you could infer from the amount of time I spend on RB forums! Actually, ironically I have a rehearsal tonight for an opera in concert I'm singing in.

wow, post a sample?

[WilliamLP]

Wow, that's a nice looking power dive on the blue line there.

Yeah, I wish I could say we didn't need the RNG for it!

wow, post a sample?

Here's me in a duet. Don't expect professional quality - I've been doing as a hobby for a while.

Turn report:




- Retep has completely withdrawn. I actually do think we can build a settler here now!
- Die Walküre was founded. (German opera by Wagner, with the famous "Ride of the Valkyries").
- It has horse available (and a decent tile at 2/3/2!). And it sure looks like it should be connected over the river to WT, but the game says it's not connected, and hence the horse isn't online anywhere else. I have no idea why. I guess it will either correct next turn or through a road.
- The barb axe is invading. The 9/10 XP axe is intercepting, and another is poised in case we somehow lose the 96% battle.
- I'm moving 2 axes east, the new one from the north and one through the south. This is so 2 barb axes showing up from Cheetah's direction don't embarrass us.
- An archer is going to go sit on the plains hill SE of WT for vision.
- Gold is finally connected again. We'll work on silver next.
- I want to 4-chop Walkure, to get a terrace and barracks, and get the border pop and fur ASAP.
- Bacchus has a scout heading toward the Carmen ruins.

[WilliamLP]

Mindy defended against the barb axe at 98%:




There's apparently a 25% bonus listed for a city defense against a barb? I didn't know this, and was expecting 96% instead of 98%.

That is our HE unit! Also a C2 Shock axe is a pain for Retep to deal with - it will have very high odds on whatever top defender he can bring in in any stack for a long time.




I'm happy to hopefully play some boring development turns!

- Walkure needed a road to be connected (I still have no idea why!) So I built a road on the horse.
- It will quadra-chop a terrace and barracks to get the furs and cow pretty fast.
- There's a barb spear moving toward Traviata and another axe is poised to kill it for free experience.
- I'm having Barbiere start a library since it's our best commerce city and will be for the foreseeable future. The earlier 40% border pop is useful too.
- Visibility is pretty good and the hills east of Walkure and SE of WT see nothing very interesting, fortunately.

[MindyMcCready]

Heroic Epic! Yay! Thanks for giving me the honours.

Time to talk about 20T plans especially with that library. Once the silver is hooked up we might be looking at as few as 15T before we can land construction. So maybe we're talking about our 15T plans?

Q. Are we still pushing to take out Retep?

To be honest, I'm a little surprised that he pulled back. I was really pretty convinced that he was suicidal with the regropuing (but not retreating) that he looked to be doing 3T or so ago. It's a bit of a shame really that he didn't take one last run at us because we probably could have killed him off within 10T or so.

Now I think that we should try to destroy Retep and as soon as possible. Retep is almost certainly going exclusively military tech. So this move to cats will be one of the few chances that we have to outclass him unit-wise for the near future. Once he gets cats, defending Barbiere may be easier or tougher depending how close we keep our defensive cats and invading will require overwhelming force.

Retep could also be teching HBR over construction since it should be pretty clear to him that we'll beat him to construction. Now if he lands that we should still be ok if we move quickly. If we move quickly and outproduce him those HA won't be that dangerous since he doesn't appear to have barracks and it'll take time to make stables. So his HA would have less than 30% chance of flanking our cats (12% victory - 17.6% retreat). And I believe that flanking damage has been reduced in RBMod but I don't know by how much.

If we wait for him to build barracks and stables then an invasion becomes much more dangerous. A Shock HA vs a C1 Spear: 31% victory and 13.8% retreat for 45% chance of flanking damage. If he goes flanking II then we're looking at 56% chance of flanking damage. Well promoted HA will have survival odds on every single unit that we can field. So if we want to avoid the risk of losing a stack of cats then time is of the essence.

So invading doesn't seem too risky if we move quickly and with focus. The main risk of not invading is having Retep go suicidal again and sending his whole army into our lands again while leaving nothing at home and then, us having the pleasure of watching Bacchus take those cities for a song.

We still have a fair number of forests should we want to convert into cats and we should be back to happiness. With our territory expansion, its going to be harder to concentrate our forces. We'll have 3 cities that we'll really want protected WT, DW, Carmen while we're on our little expedition. Can our eastern Quecha move to that grass-hill SEE? Do you think that that would cause Cheetah any anxiety? A quechas not very threatening, but maybe a scout sends a better message.

Another point: Construction provides 4K power and HBR provides 10K. So Retep won't be sure whether we've landed Construction unless he's got tech visiblity on us. Do we know if he's got tech visiblity on us?

So the value of the library should be measured in the context of an aggressive war. If you think that we can fit it in before an aggressive war, then no problem. But even with the gold and switching to 100% science we're probably talking about 4 bpt and at breakeven science maybe 2 bpt? Given our future need for combat engineers + rapid deforestatation I'd say that a couple extra workers would be hammers better spent and/or maybe a settler for that 2 seafood location as our future settler pump? That city would hold its own commerce-wise.

[MindyMcCready]

Could you post the most up-to-date maps of both Retep's lands and our land between Cheetah?

[MindyMcCready]

I also want to note that we look to have redeployed a fair enough chunk of our troops that Retep's 10 unit stack could give us a little bit of problem once again. I guess this is a consistent with my message on the library.

A few turns earlier you didn't feel comfortable replanting Carmen. It appears that we've produced no additional troops, and moreso we've redeployed a fair bit of force eastward and you're now comfortable planting Carmen AND building a library in Barbiere? Are you sure about this?

So what would I want instead of a library? A couple of chariots would be nice. You know, the reason that you wanted to plant DW over Carmen. :LOL:

[WilliamLP]

Q. Are we still pushing to take out Retep?

I don't know. I think the right question is, is it more cost effective to try and do that, or to continue to expand while defending. There's a still a lot of good land to be had that isn't going to whip axes or hide behind 60% culture.

To be honest, I'm a little surprised that he pulled back. I was really pretty convinced that he was suicidal with the regropuing (but not retreating) that he looked to be doing 3T or so ago. It's a bit of a shame really that he didn't take one last run at us because we probably could have killed him off within 10T or so.

Yeah, I didn't think he was playing rationally at all and was expecting constant harass until he was dead, hence the need for chariots ASAP.

Now I think that we should try to destroy Retep and as soon as possible. Retep is almost certainly going exclusively military tech. So this move to cats will be one of the few chances that we have to outclass him unit-wise for the near future. Once he gets cats, defending Barbiere may be easier or tougher depending how close we keep our defensive cats and invading will require overwhelming force.

On the other hand he's got 3 cities, and only 2 that are worth anything. His relative power and tech rate is just going to get smaller and smaller. Taking him out would be awesome, obviously, but I don't know how cost effective it is. I do like the idea of trolling him and containing him though, in any case. Like you say we probably need HBR ourselves fairly soon.

The main risk of not invading is having Retep go suicidal again and sending his whole army into our lands again while leaving nothing at home and then, us having the pleasure of watching Bacchus take those cities for a song.

No matter what we keep looking at the power graph, and a couple more great generals would be nice. Defending will always be a massive advantage, particularly when all the relevant cities can be forked by 1-movers in 2 spots.

We still have a fair number of forests should we want to convert into cats and we should be back to happiness. With our territory expansion, its going to be harder to concentrate our forces.

I still don't like saving forests. Imagine you had a possible build where you could spend 30 hammers, and then you wouldn't get anything, but you'd get the ability to cash out 30 hammers later. Would you build any of those? I probably wouldn't except under special circumstances like wonder races. 30 hammers earlier is just worth a lot more as a rule (e.g. a worker or settler will be worth more than its cost over that time), and I don't see the necessity of a precise timing attack here, though a case can be made for it.

This might be one of the several points you and I can argue about forever and never agree on.

Another point: Construction provides 4K power and HBR provides 10K. So Retep won't be sure whether we've landed Construction unless he's got tech visiblity on us. Do we know if he's got tech visiblity on us?

I can check. I've been spending more EP on Ichabod since he's more interesting in the long term.

So the value of the library should be measured in the context of an aggressive war. If you think that we can fit it in before an aggressive war, then no problem. But even with the gold and switching to 100% science we're probably talking about 4 bpt and at breakeven science maybe 2 bpt? Given our future need for combat engineers + rapid deforestatation I'd say that a couple extra workers would be hammers better spent and/or maybe a settler for that 2 seafood location as our future settler pump? That city would hold its own commerce-wise.

I haven't calculated, but I think a library (which will be whipped probably since we have +2 happiness fairly soon) actually will speed construction. And surely we want a library in there eventually - for post-construction / HBR research.

I also think the culture is pretty crucial to keep the second ring when Retep's capital borders pop again.

A few turns earlier you didn't feel comfortable replanting Carmen. It appears that we've produced no additional troops, and moreso we've redeployed a fair bit of force eastward and you're now comfortable planting Carmen AND building a library in Barbiere? Are you sure about this?

I think so. We're still quite a ways ahead of Retep in power. Eastward units are also potential defenders of Carmen as long as I'm wiser (this time) about keeping a close eye on its threats.

But even with the gold and switching to 100% science we're probably talking about 4 bpt and at breakeven science maybe 2 bpt? Given our future need for combat engineers + rapid deforestatation I'd say that a couple extra workers would be hammers better spent and/or maybe a settler for that 2 seafood location as our future settler pump? That city would hold its own commerce-wise.

Barbiere in the near future (size 5 next turn) will be working Gold + 3 cottages + some river tile, which is 2(city) + 8 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 1 for 20 commerce. So that's 5bpt at 100% science. It can easily get to size 7 within the next 5-10 turns as happiness comes online with 2 more river cottages. And cottages will grow.

And it needs to have something to build while growing! (This can't be workers or settlers.) It could be a barracks or chariots (setting back GNP a bit) but I don' think we'll regret having it as a better commerce city.

[MindyMcCready]

Bacchus has a scout heading toward the Carmen ruins.

Missed this.

Didn't we trade maps already with him? Hmmmm, I wonder want he's interested in seeing that he can't already see from the map? Nice of him to use a scout this time instead of a pair of chariots. But I'm taking this to mean the exact same thing. Battle stations! Red Alert!

If that's a lone axe that I'm seeing on Carmen's ruins, you need to pull him out or get a spear in there. Bacchus will have a lot of mobility if he gets a stack of chariots on those roads.

Why he wants to take a stab at us I'll never know. Enemy of my enemy. Counter to Ichabod. Team that's tying up all Retep's troops while Bacchus gets all the good land between the two of them.

I'm not sure if we're getting beneficial trade routes from him, but I would seriously want to kill that scout to send a message. Calm,...play nice,...kill him later. Please ignore that scout-kill request. I'm pretty sure that our little Quecha on the hill prevented us from seeing a bunch of Chariots show up at Carmen.

Yeah, it's pretty important that Carmen is up and running before we launch any cat attack on Retep. That's going to be our weakest spot for quite some time, especially if we lose our eyes in the area.

- An archer is going to go sit on the plains hill SE of WT for vision.

Do you mean the desert hill 3S-2E of William Tell? I see a grass hill and a desert hill on my patched together map. Your archer is there now so I assume that's what you're referring to.