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

[WilliamLP]

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!

We didn't trade maps with him. He refused. Twice, actually! (I offered again 2 turns ago.)

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.

Yes, that axe is in transit.

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.

Yes, I meant the generic SE.

[MindyMcCready]

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.

Ok, well the anwer to that is obvious. 8-10 cats costs 400H-500H + invasion costs and a couple of settlers costs 200H. So I'm going to take your answer as a pretty clear cut, "I have no desire to invade.".

Now I personally don't see that as the right question and I didn't see that as the right question back when we could have choked him out with quechas. Making that the paramount question will always lead to the "penny-wise" solutions even while passing up once-per-game opportunities.

I just can't see your long-game with the kind of front you're creating for youself.

[WilliamLP]

Ok, well the anwer to that is obvious. 8-10 cats costs 400H-500H + invasion costs and a couple of settlers costs 200H. So I'm going to take your answer as a pretty clear cut, "I have no desire to invade.".

Now I personally don't see that as the right question and I didn't see that as the right question back when we could have choked him out with quechas. Making that the paramount question will always lead to the "penny-wise" solutions even while passing up once-per-game opportunities.

I just can't see your long-game with the kind of front you're creating for youself.

So what is the right question? And what would you have the objective for the game be? We kill Retep as early as possible?

I'd prefer the loftier goal of being competitive on this little subcontinent as long as possible! Ichabod has 7 cities at the moment - we have some catching up to do. Both Cheetah and Bacchus have 5.

Having a small crippled neighbour next door for a while has its upside as well! E.g. it means he's in the way of the better teching rival further south.

With a state of the world where all the free land is grabbed, and he's the easiest path to expansion, then all goals are aligned.

[MindyMcCready]

The right question is "how to establish the land and border that we can defend and then grow into".

If you were to point to the cities that we currently have that don't require a significant military presense that would be: 1, the capital.

When I imagine our future border, with us conceeding the West to retep (or at least being exposed to Retep), exposed in the south to Bacchus and, in the future, us having very high military needs to our SE and the possibility of the East then we'll constantly be in a position of having/needing the largest military but with absolutely no ability to focus it and turn it into an advantage rather than just a cost.

In contrast, if we went all-in on Retep; took his cities; established a 2-city border with Bacchus; sealed Bacchus off from the south then we can empty out a whole bunch of cities. (by empty I mean, no force critically required for its protection)
-LaTraviata could be empty happiness allowing.
-3W of LT empty again.
-Silver-Fish-deer city further to the west empty again if we've got a decent enough sentry net.
-North for marble-copper empty.
-Barbiere, empty.
-Some better-than-Retep-horse city empty.
-Carmen empty.
-City south of Carmen holding our mobile army to push into either Ichabod or Bacchus.

That would allow us to project our military and take advantage of situations that arise and/or simply protect what we have and develop in security.

The biggest problem that I see, is that we'll be in the position of always putting out 'bush fires' if we grow organically to the most productive city tiles available. We'll never be able to leverage the miltiary that we've been forced to build and I see us being forced to build alot more in the future.

And I do think that we'll need to defend against Cheetah in the future. Ichabod, if he can hold it, will have a nice strong border with Cheetah. Cheetah will know that he won't be able to break through Ichabod's defense and, being forced to look elsewhere for expansion, will probably attack us at some point.

And then there's the land to our NW. Naval bases and look out spots will be critical in the far future and we won't be able to leverage these since we'll get to those locations only late game after finally dealing with Retep (assuming Bacchus doesn't take those cities).

Every way I look at it, now is the time to clear Retep out and establish a strong border before someone decides our border for us.

And yes, forest chops and precise timing are critical in this to:
-prevent Retep from getting double promo HA
-prevent Retep from getting cats
-fast military buildup prevents minimizes the time that our neighbours can act opportunistically towards us.

[WilliamLP]

We have a pretty different vision of what would play out if we invested in enough to take out retep!

My vision is that if we could do it, then Cheetah and Ichabod and Bacchus would all be expanding and out-teching us during the process, and we'd be stuck with a small empire vs 3 large ones for the rest of the game.

This is because (as you concede), taking out Retep is a terribly inefficient way to gain land.

I don't see defending a border vs Bacchus as any easier than defending vs Retep. For all his ire, defending against him is really easy, and will always be. The number of cities that need military isn't that useful a measure, because military can move and react! And the way we set up our border it is more mobile than any attacking force can be by the nature of Civ and cultural movement. The main defense needed is always going to be determined by the total attack he can muster vs the total defense we need to counter that, which is the dominant factor over whether it's a 1 city border or a 4 city one. (Within reason of how wide it is, obviously.)

I don't want to concede the west at all - I'd like to make it as difficult for him to expand into there as possible now that we have a military and tech advantage.

At every phase in the game, it takes a lot less military to defend than to attack, when you'd want 2-1 or so for a decisive advantage. And during the attack we have a tremendous mobility disadvantage (in his culture) leaving us wide open to opportunistic strikes from the east, and from them establishing borders for the rest of the game, exactly the opposite of what you describe, as I see it.

So our assumptions may just be dramatically in opposition!

The game has played out exactly like I was saying it would when retep made the decision to throw away his game and devote everything to attacking us: We were a little ahead then, and despite him making as good as move as he possibly could have, we've been slowly but surely getting more and more ahead as time goes on. This will continue to happen if we continue to do what we've been doing: Defend as needed, don't give him the option to expand toward us, focus on economy as much as possible while not being vulnerable.

So, Retep was already beaten when he made the decision. He's more beaten now, and is just simply not a threat. (You can say I told you so later if you doubt. ) He's exactly the right kind of neighbour I'd want in the west - a much weaker one.

In summary, I see the position vs him as a really good one right now! There's not a problem that needs addressing at the moment.

[MindyMcCready]

Yep,....his capital is 2T from our border, but Cheetah & Ichabod and Bacchus are going to out-develop us in the period? And Bacchus is going to 'define the borders' if we've got a stack of catapults right there?

Well we'll see how it plays out - might as well switch to an economic tech.

[WilliamLP]

Yep,....his capital is 2T from our border, but Cheetah & Ichabod and Bacchus are going to out-develop us in the period?

Yes! Absolutely they would, and I don't even see how that's controversial. 8 catapults is 400 hammers, when they could be building 3 settlers and a couple of workers each. We'd take losses claiming 3 cities' worth of land, while they'd take none settling three cities.

The fastest catapult move to Suit Up would be move-move-bombard / suicide-move back-move back. Any one movers we devote to attack would be completely out of the picture for at least five turns, perhaps significantly longer. This is in the best case scenario if we could strike quickly and win immediately.

Our rivals (other than perhaps Bacchus) are experienced players, and they know this. Ichabod has the same military power we do, and more production. I don't see how we could actually attack without having the resources to defend in the east against a very experienced and skilled player with greater power, simultaneously.

And Bacchus is going to 'define the borders' if we've got a stack of catapults right there?

Well we'll see how it plays out - might as well switch to an economic tech.

Construction is still the best early tech for defense too, allowing a better cost ratio for defensive forces needed. But the Poly -> Mono -> Monarchy line has a lot going for it. (So does Currency, so does Calendar...)

[WilliamLP]

Turn report:

Ichabod offered a peace treaty. I declined, seeing no upside. It means he could settle right in our face and we couldn't do anything for 10 turns. I offered back with a ceasefire. (Which does very little.)




- NW axe killed a barb spear to go to 9/10 xp, taking 0 damage. I figured there can't be a chariot in the fog, because if there were, it could have been attacked by the spear last turn!
- 2 workers moved to improve the silver, guarded by a spear. Retep will see this, and a second spear is on the sheep in case he moves a bunch of chariots in range.
- There's a third spear in Barber. I note that the threat of chariots means we have to have 3 spears guarding the west right now, and our own threat of chariots should mean Retep has to build a similar number.
- Traviata whipped a worker, to overflow onto a chariot. Its second tile wasn't improved - Turandot needs the cow to get the settler out quickly.
- Barber's unhappiness goes down next turn and it will grow to size 5 at the same time.
- Turandot's unhappiness for this many turns is kind of shameful, but at the time its whip was what helped beat off Retep's stack. And double-whipping down to size 5 to be below the happiness cap didn't seem like the right plan to me. It will have a happy cap of 8 in a couple of turns when its whip anger runs out and the silver is connected.
- You're going to disapprove but I'm going to start converting some forests by Turandot, probably starting with a couple promoted chariots.
- We're break-even just over 50%. Construction is 20 turns at break-even, or 10 turns at -22 gold per turn. If we were going to go for religious techs, next turn would be the turn to switch and we could get Poly + Mono in about 6-7 turns. (Calendar is equal to Construction, and currency is even more expensive!)

Bacchus's border:




He may have more cities toward Retep we don't see here - he has 5 in total.

Cheetah's border:




This is all the cities he currently has including one just offscreen to the SE.

I'm torn about moving the quechua SEE - it kind of looks like "we want to plant on that hill!" which is not an ideal message to send.










All graphs are recovering nicely, while Retep's are in the pooper. He may be going for a settler now, which is one explanation for his pullback. As much as I don't think hitting his capital will be cost effective soon, trying to scout and harass (with chariots) and deny him either north or east could be quite worthwhile.




Relative to the world, we're a little below average. New Carmen should help a bit.




Today I learned: it's sailing that enables trade on rivers? (This is not new to RBMod.) I thought you always had trade on rivers! But I guess it's just rivers in your own culture? I think this explains why Walkure did not connect over the river.

[WilliamLP]

Also, Retep does have research visibility on us. There's not much to do about that - he's put basically all EP on us where we've had enough to maintain graphs on 4 people. (Retep hasn't even met Cheetah yet.)

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Today I learned: it's sailing that enables trade on rivers? (This is not new to RBMod.) I thought you always had trade on rivers! But I guess it's just rivers in your own culture? I think this explains why Walkure did not connect over the river.

Yeah that's correct

Any plans for long term survival? Seems like you have the military upperhand over Retep right now.