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

[WilliamLP]

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

You can see much debate that Mindy and I are having over this question!

My own inclination is, since we're still in the land grabbing phase, try to get our share of it while we can, while just containing Retep, doing enough to make sure he can't settle toward us. And then when there's no free land left and borders are established hopefully we are in a position to eventually attack with a tech advantage, maybe at maces.

The alternative is try to hit a timing at construction and basically chop everything for catapults right then, and go into his capital. I don't feel that great about this though; he can probably have some horse archers by then.

[MindyMcCready]

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.

Here's how it's controversial.

First there's the "we'd take losses while they'd take none settling three cities". That's an implied double count. If we brought 10 cats with us, even if he's fortified 10+ units in his capital we'd probably only lose the first 5-8 cats before it became a stream of victories. A splash of collateral and even an axe is going to have trouble defending against a CR cat.The copper city and the horse city would probably be a low loss scenario due to little or no culture.

Second, it's well and true that Ichabod could go ahead and turn 300H into 3 cities (because he has an effective border) but we don't actually have that ability. Every city that we plant or intend to plant, with the exception of our northern double seafood is going to require a minimum of spear + axe to stop Retep from easily razing it and more units than that for anything that we send in Ichabod's direction. So a much more appropriate calculation is 100H for a settler + 70+ hammers for military + worker costs per city.

And then there's the fact that Retep's cities are at least somewhat developed and may even have some population, although admittedly not much if whips to the ground. There's also the capture gold which should more than offset a short military campaign.

So for this one, brief period we have a war equation that comes pretty close to neutral while landing us more land, and freeing up the high units-per-city requirement that we have. And we can certainly defend this land from Bacchus with catapults even if we must shy away from Ichabod for a short period.

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.

First 5 turns is very little. If we saw a skirmish in Ichabod's land unless we went on a mad whipping spree (which we wouldn't) there's no way that we would be able to leverage such a small window of opportunity.

Second, this is the point of rushing to construction. What would Ichabod need to bring, and how quickly to take out those fortified archers on a hill with culture? And then there's the visibility that will give us at least some warning and the fact that he'd be taking a massive risk to be running headlong against our culture-reinforced cities while having no cats of his own and facing the possibility of our stack-killing cats. Unless he's 100% certain about the location of our cats (which he won't be) he'll hesitate and that's all we'll need. Add in his concerns on Cheetah's border, and a fast ramp up with forest chops and this is about as low risk as war can possibly be. And then, finally there's the possibility of signing peace with him immediately before we make a run at Retep.

Third, your argument about Ichabod having more production will forever apply and invalidate all future possibility of a military campaign. His land advantage, his production advantage, and his resulting natural power base means that we're never going to make a move and we're choosing to concede the game. Tech advantage will save us you say? Well, we have a tech advantage now (or will with construction) and it might be our last one of the game and we're still choosing to stay safely within our borders. Didn't Napolean say something about 'an opponent who stays within the safety of his walls is already defeated'. Might not apply here but it sure sounds good. :LOL:

You know, I wasn't going to write this up because it's pretty clear that you've already decided. But I have to question the logic to speaking of some future advantages (tech or otherwise) while having one now. As much as our relative power to Retep is going to grow, it's going to fall relative to Ichabod and Bacchus under the straight builder approach.

All of your reasons for inaction are even more applicable in the future then they are now. We're watching our opportunity sail away and it will be nothing short of a disaster if Bacchus lands Retep's cities.

Lastly, this path may open up additional opportunities if we catch Bacchus unprepared. The future is not known in that respect. After being set back, Bacchus has been enjoying a nice little period of playing builder. It is unlikely that he's rushing military tech and instead enjoying the show of watching Retep and us waste our economy on units. His military builds will only be enough to stand against what retep is showing. If Retep's cities suddently dissappear and a stack of cats show up, he could be in real trouble with no ability to defend.

[MindyMcCready]

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.

Hey Oxy!

Tell him to kill something! Tell him that the lurkers need blood! :LOL:

[WilliamLP]

Here's how it's controversial.

First there's the "we'd take losses while they'd take none settling three cities". That's an implied double count. If we brought 10 cats with us, even if he's fortified 10+ units in his capital we'd probably only lose the first 5-8 cats before it became a stream of victories. A splash of collateral and even an axe is going to have trouble defending against a CR cat.The copper city and the horse city would probably be a low loss scenario due to little or no culture.

The horse city is also a near zero gain scenario (other than shutting Retep down). The copper city is very far away.

Retep is widening a gap on last place in score, and hasn't gotten a tech for a while. I'm betting he's near HBR right now, and certainly would have it, and could whip a few horse archers (with or without stables) by the time we got there with a force of cats. Because it's substantially cheaper than Construction and doesn't have the Math prereq. So we'd have to bring lots of spears too probably, basically go all military to the point where there's no econ left.

Second, it's well and true that Ichabod could go ahead and turn 300H into 3 cities (because he has an effective border) but we don't actually have that ability. Every city that we plant or intend to plant, with the exception of our northern double seafood is going to require a minimum of spear + axe to stop Retep from easily razing it and more units than that for anything that we send in Ichabod's direction. So a much more appropriate calculation is 100H for a settler + 70+ hammers for military + worker costs per city.

I think our border is more effective than you make it out to be! E.g. if we settled a SW site west of New Carmen it would help defend Carmen. And a lot of cities can be fork-defended. Particularly with chariots, one chariot stack can almost effectively cover the whole border with Retep. Yes he can bring spears but that is still quite a barrier to entry that he doesn't have now.

I think (Defense needed per city) times (Number of cities) is the less dominant calculation. I think the more dominant one is always going to be the total defense needed if Retep (etc) decides to focus everything available at any one city. As long as we stay above that in the empire and have 2-3 turns warning on any given possible effective attack, we're fine, and it doesn't change with number of cities.

So for this one, brief period we have a war equation that comes pretty close to neutral while landing us more land, and freeing up the high units-per-city requirement that we have. And we can certainly defend this land from Bacchus with catapults even if we must shy away from Ichabod for a short period.

We can go around in circles on "brief" and "more land".

First 5 turns is very little. If we saw a skirmish in Ichabod's land unless we went on a mad whipping spree (which we wouldn't) there's no way that we would be able to leverage such a small window of opportunity.

Probably not if we were reacting after the fact. But it would be different if we were poised to attack anyway. During about as brief a military campaign as possible, Retep had literally a 1 turn window of opportunity and he hit it perfectly! Whether by luck or by keen intuition and observation it was still a big problem.

Also if we see a mutual power drop between Ichabod and Cheetah, you can bet we're going to want to expand in their direction as quickly as possible!

Second, this is the point of rushing to construction. What would Ichabod need to bring, and how quickly to take out those fortified archers on a hill with culture? And then there's the visibility that will give us at least some warning and the fact that he'd be taking a massive risk to be running headlong against our culture-reinforced cities while having no cats of his own and facing the possibility of our stack-killing cats. Unless he's 100% certain about the location of our cats (which he won't be) he'll hesitate and that's all we'll need. Add in his concerns on Cheetah's border, and a fast ramp up with forest chops and this is about as low risk as war can possibly be. And then, finally there's the possibility of signing peace with him immediately before we make a run at Retep.

I think Ichabod would have a much easier time taking WT than we would taking Retep's capital. He's got the ability to build double-promoted axes as long as he likes, for one. Immune to chariots, he doesn't really risk anything making an approach, he can always just retreat.

Third, your argument about Ichabod having more production will forever apply and invalidate all future possibility of a military campaign.

I don't see it that way! I see it more like:

1. We expand and defend. We get the stuff toward Retep, e.g. west of Carmen, and the rest of the NW, the seafood sites, we can compete and probably get a wines site, maybe even that plain hill site SE of WT. We have enough land to be near what we could support in terms of maintenance constraints. What does the midgame look like? Retep is a crippled troll neighbour who must defend in 2 directions. We are insulated against Bacchus by a guy who is forced to build a lot of military and is a rock to take out. When land is locked up and more secure, the equation changes, and we have a future conquest target. The tech and production gap between us and Retep widens even more.

2. We attack, and sacrifice a lot of economy to do so, in terms of maintenance, units out of borders, and opportunity cost of fewer workers and settlers. I think you understate the losses and the ease of this. I'm not saying it's impossible though. Just that the mechanics of Civ are biased toward Retep in a massive way. Meanwhile we absolutely concede borders in the east. Bacchus also out-expands us by settling gaps and settling the other way. And we're in the mid game with 2 powerful neighbors, with more land, who don't like us much, while at a greater economic disadvantage.

You know, I wasn't going to write this up because it's pretty clear that you've already decided. But I have to question the logic to speaking of some future advantages (tech or otherwise) while having one now. As much as our relative power to Retep is going to grow, it's going to fall relative to Ichabod and Bacchus under the straight builder approach.

The logic of "if you're ahead, get more ahead" certainly isn't wrong; it's the definition of a snowball game. I think our seeing things differently comes down to Civ sense: mine is that early war is drastically both more difficult and less profitable (relative to the world) than your sense seems to indicate. There is not a small gap between how we perceive it working out.

All of your reasons for inaction are even more applicable in the future then they are now. We're watching our opportunity sail away and it will be nothing short of a disaster if Bacchus lands Retep's cities.

I won't repeat on why I think the future can be different when land is locked up. But having Bacchus build up military and attack Retep wouldn't be disaster, it would be fantastic! We'd see it happening tens of turns before it did and _that_ would be a golden opportunity.

Lastly, this path may open up additional opportunities if we catch Bacchus unprepared. The future is not known in that respect. After being set back, Bacchus has been enjoying a nice little period of playing builder. It is unlikely that he's rushing military tech and instead enjoying the show of watching Retep and us waste our economy on units. His military builds will only be enough to stand against what retep is showing. If Retep's cities suddently dissappear and a stack of cats show up, he could be in real trouble with no ability to defend.

That part I can't disagree about. If war is as successful as you say, it would put us in a great position vs Bacchus.

[WilliamLP]

Tech options right now:

1. Construction. The plan. I didn't anticipate us being as far ahead of Retep as we are though, which could open up opportunities for other things first.
2. Priesthood. Really cheap and would allow a temple in Turandot for +1 happy, and we could also start the slow clock to a Prophet.
3. Poly -> Mono. (-> Monarchy). Cheap-ish (maybe 60% of the cost of Construction). Allows missionaries, free swap to OR and +25% production for all buildings.
4. Fishing. (-> Sailing). We need it eventually, not immediately.
5. Alphabet! This is cheaper than currency, and it allows open borders. We could almost certainly get trade routes to Cheetah along the coast, meaning +1 commerce in every city. This is the same passive benefit as currency. And it's a prereq to Currency too, and synergizes with it.
6. Calendar.
7. Horseback Riding.
8. Currency.
9. Aesthetics. The new Statue of Zeus is pretty good, giving +3 xp for every unit built in the city. Trololol. Nope, this is probably not a good option. We have marble soon but the rest of the world is too far ahead for us to get any wonders.

[MindyMcCready]

Heh, like I said I wasn't going to write that up. There's a bunch of points that I could make, but convincing you would require an absolute landslide argument that simply isn't possible in a game with uncertainty. Put another way, if you can see the bright side of Bacchus having Retep's cities, there's not much I can really say. :LOL:

So we'll go ahead and agree to disagree. I'll follow along and go with whatever.

Risks identified for due diligence:
-Retep's 3 cities forever producing troops and dedicating them in our direction ties up our economy and our military.
-Retep attacking at a moment of opportunity
-Continued exposure to Bacchus to the south.
-Possibility of Retep vassalizing to Bacchus and allowing a joint attack.
-Possibility of Retep handing over cities to Bacchus by sending his entire stack at us and leaving 1 unit at home for Bacchus to take. However fantastic and golden this may be in your books, I'm still noting that as a risk.
-Settling towards Ichabod before dealing with Retep is pushing towards hot war on two opposing fronts. Not recommended. We do not have the ability to win a 2-front war with a future power like Ichabod.
-Continued conflict on multiple fronts will draw opportuists such as Cheetah and Bacchus where they otherwise might not be inclined.

So if this is what you want to do, I don't feel the need to rush to construction as we have enough tech and units to defend for now. I'd recommend currency, but I know that you have no interest in building our cheapest per happy building :LOL:. Notable that trade routes are also less significant in this always war game, but still powerful economically. Monotheism is also nice. COL for Caste.

[MindyMcCready]

Tech options right now:

1. Construction. The plan. I didn't anticipate us being as far ahead of Retep as we are though, which could open up opportunities for other things first.
2. Priesthood. Really cheap and would allow a temple in Turandot for +1 happy, and we could also start the slow clock to a Prophet.
3. Poly -> Mono. (-> Monarchy). Cheap-ish (maybe 60% of the cost of Construction). Allows missionaries, free swap to OR and +25% production for all buildings.
4. Fishing. (-> Sailing). We need it eventually, not immediately.
5. Alphabet! This is cheaper than currency, and it allows open borders. We could almost certainly get trade routes to Cheetah along the coast, meaning +1 commerce in every city. This is the same passive benefit as currency. And it's a prereq to Currency too, and synergizes with it.
6. Calendar.
7. Horseback Riding.
8. Currency.
9. Aesthetics. The new Statue of Zeus is pretty good, giving +3 xp for every unit built in the city. Trololol. Nope, this is probably not a good option. We have marble soon but the rest of the world is too far ahead for us to get any wonders.

Priesthood for the temple and prophet sounds good.

[WilliamLP]

-Possibility of Retep handing over cities to Bacchus by sending his entire stack at us and leaving 1 unit at home for Bacchus to take. However fantastic and golden this may be in your books, I'm still noting that as a risk.

That would be just blatantly poor sportsmanship, to such an extent that he may not be welcome to play in games at RB anymore. It's city gifting in all but the technicalities. I think we can rule it out and assume he's at least going to try and defend his core. Maybe I'm wrong.

-Settling towards Ichabod before dealing with Retep is pushing towards hot war on two opposing fronts. Not recommended. We do not have the ability to win a 2-front war with a future power like Ichabod.

I'm not sure I agree with that either. Ichabod may have a 2-front war as well (and his second front is more of a power than Retep is), and if we play the cards properly I don't see it as a foregone conclusion that we can't get as much land as he does.

I'd recommend currency, but I know that you have no interest in building our cheapest per happy building :LOL:.

It's priorities and which comes first. Currency is over 640-ish beakers! (More than Construction.) It's 20-25 turns away. And then calendar is another 550-ish, to get the second happy from markets. Alphabet is 400-ish, and Monarchy is similar. Monarchy essentially gives a passive +1 happiness bonus, because all cities have at least one unit anyway, plus the wines (maybe...). So that's a cheaper tech for a free +2 happiness, which is cheaper than 75 hammers per city.

Notable that trade routes are also less significant in this always war game, but still powerful economically. Monotheism is also nice. COL for Caste.

Why are trade routes less significant here than otherwise? We only need to have as many foreign city contacts as we have cities, and Cheetah would supply that. Plus I'm sure we could meet someone else by running a work boat scout around the coast.

[MindyMcCready]

-Possibility of Retep handing over cities to Bacchus by sending his entire stack at us and leaving 1 unit at home for Bacchus to take. However fantastic and golden this may be in your books, I'm still noting that as a risk.

That would be just blatantly poor sportsmanship, to such an extent that he may not be welcome to play in games at RB anymore. It's city gifting in all but the technicalities. I think we can rule it out and assume he's at least going to try and defend his core. Maybe I'm wrong.

Hey, I'm not looking for a response to these,...just pointing out what I think is a risk. I'm going to repond to this one as an example of what I'm thinking but please just accept that I've noted these other items as risks so that we can move on to the game that you're going to play.

So here goes,....Retep is not playing the game that you think he is or think that he should. It has to suck,...and suck bad to envision playing the next 6 months as an absolute 0% chance and 0% hope. And this is 0% chance of even being a regional power,....

He can't win, so his objectives are changing:
1. If his objective is to survive, then logically he vassalizes to Bacchus if they can maintain a respectful relationship. Expect Bacchus troops to walk through his land at somepoint and start razing our cities. So you have no guaranteed buffer that you imageine that you have and you'll never see it coming since we won't have eyes in the area. All he requires is OB for this. If you were forced into a vassal status, would you cancel OB with your 'master' just because he walked a stack of troops through your territory to kill your enemy?

2. It's fairly possible that, given his military movements, his only objective is to hurt you and so those 3 cities will tie up 3 cities of ours for a good, long time. Maybe it was the original Barbiere plant that made him tilt or maybe we're just closer than Bacchus. Who knows, who cares,...he's dedicated all his military toward you for quite some time now and it's likely that he's just waiting for us to throwdown with Ichabod,...which we're going to do given your city plant ambitions. Unlike Ichabod who has two fronts very far away from each other and an interest to protect both fronts, Retep is 100% on stand-by and able to recklessly react in 1-2T to any opportunity.

3. If this game is as unfun as I'd image then his objective could be to be put out of his misery. First come, first serve! As much as you might want him to not do this or think that he wouldn't do this,....he's already done it. That attack with the 5/6 axes through our core + chariots and axes next to Barbiere and LaTraviata,...what do you think that he left at home? Half a dozen chariots probably could have taken his two important cities. What would he do with his stack after that? Maybe retake his cities? Maybe just suicide them against us given that he may well be deep in our culture? This is assuming that he'd even get the choice of not having them strike into non-existenance with that crappy horse city as a capital. :LOL:

So that's why I'm calling it a risk.

[WilliamLP]

A lot of this vassalizing would be a lot more likely or plausible with diplo on! As it is it would have to involve a lot of trust and tension in both directions... And it's hard to see why Bacchus would think it's his best play to march across Retep's land and hit us to get cities that would be separated from his own. But who knows! If it happens you get a few points for foresight and it sounds kind of fun.

Turn:




Random religions for the win. Someone got the world's second general.




This wasn't a complicated turn. I'm going Poly -> Priesthood since poly a prereq we need anyway and we might as well get the bonus. Turandot probably shouldn't start a temple immediately, we need a bit more military at first.

A case could be made for saving up at 0% science until the library is finished but I'm not going to make it.

At home: 6 axes 3 spears 1 archer. In the east: 2 axes, 1 spear, 1 archer (and the one on the hill).

Ichabod didn't take the ceasefire.

Silver will be hooked next turn and Turandot has a whip anger wear off, so it will actually have a happy cap of 8, to grow into building a couple of chariots.