[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[williams482]

Reviewing all the era score stuff, just to make sure I have everything lined up:

Currently: 118/130, need 12 more.
- 3 for military academy. Builder and Military Engineer movement required.
- 3 for +3 Theater Square. Need two turns of natural production before a chop.
- 2 for Coal Plant: will complete t217. No action needed.
- 1 for corps: need to complete Nationalism by t218. Units already in position near Wild/Bruins.
- 1 for fleet: ditto above RE Nationalism. Two frigates in position near Red Wings.
- 1 for a coal unit (Ironclad) : Nationalism again, for the swap to Professional Army.
- 1 for Tundra city: need to move settler and settle.

That totals 12 points, exactly enough. We got this.

To hit these, here's the plan:
t216:
- Bruins Military Academy at 116/330
- Military Engineer to the banana tile
- Kings builder (currently on the desert geothermal vent) to the mined desert hill 1SW of Bruins
- Wild builder (currently on the campus pin) to the Bruins EC
- Red Wings builder to the grass forest 1NW of Red Wings
- Red Wings switches production from Privateer to Theater Square
- Settler moves to the pinned Hockey Rink tile
t217:
- Coal Plant completes (+2 ES)
- Military Academy at 158/330
- Theater Square at 33/173
- Military Engineer removes plantation
- Kings builder to the hill forest 1NE of Bruins, removes lumber mill
- Wild builder moves 1W and mines the plains hill, evaporates
- Red Wings builder removes lumber mill
- Settler waits or settles (?) (+1 ES)
- Switch research to Nationalism
t218:
- Nationalism completes. Policy swap, Press Gangs out, Professional Army in.
- Upgrade Galley into Ironclad (+1 ES)
- Combine frigates into fleet (+1 ES)
- Combine field canons, cavalry, muskets, others into corps (+1 ES)
- Military Academy at 201/330
- Kings builder chops forest for 115h into Military Academy, now 316/330
- Military Engineer chops jungle for 57h into Military Academy, completes with 43h overflow (+3 ES)
- Theater Square at 64/173
- Red Wings builder chops forest for 115h into Theater Square, completes with 6h overflow (+3 ES)

So that all lines up. Good.

Optimization options: we have the opportunity to swap into Public Works along with Professional Army, replacing either Triangle Trade (32g, 8 faith) or Natural Philosophy (20 beakers). Natural History should be at 512/1050 clefs now on t215, and that will rise to 707/1050 on t218, then 805 when the era rolls on t219, dropping the price to 840. So, we can swap policies immediately if we want to. Do we? We will only have three total builder charges left over once we finish the planned chops + mines, to two more would definitely be nice.

As far as progress on unit upgrade techs, Refining will be at 137/1500 (plus Steam Power overflow) on t216, then a minimum of 874/1500 when the boost comes in on t217, and 1,011/1500 on t218. The era roll will drop it's price to 1200 beakers. Steel we estimate at between 1050/1200 and 1200/1200 on the era roll. Can I get a more precise figure? Looking through turn reports, we've invested approximately 16 overflow from banking + 137.1 + 144.7 + 120.3 = 418.1? That's not a perfectly accurate figure, because it's hard to account for exactly how research rates change between turns with pop growth, amenities, etc, but it's probably close. If true, Steel will be at 1018/1200 at era roll with no further research, meaning we need to invest a combined ~370 beakers into these techs to finish both. If I drop natural philosophy and research Refining, I can finish it on t220 with ~40 beakers of overflow. Probably fast enough.

Unfortunately all that's not ideal, because we'll have a half-completed frigate in stars which would be upgraded in queue, and we really would prefer finish that unit. The next policy swap other than Natural History is likely to be Scorched Earth, 484/968 after the era roll and roughly 5 turns out. If we're confident that Suboptimal won't attack us in that time, we could hop into Public Works + Professional Army, hop back to Press Gangs + Natural Philosophy the next turn, finish the Stars frigate and crank one or two more out of Penguins and/or Red Wings, then have 5-6 instead of just 3 to upgrade into Battleships.

How many of these upgrades can we actually afford? They cost 155g each with professional army. We have 1,114g at the end of t215, and will spend 320g on an ironclad upgrade. With that and no change in current income, we'd have 1081g on t220, and 1369g on t225. in either case we can definitely afford to upgrade 6 battleships. Is this an excessive commitment to a theater we don't have all that much invested in? Perhaps, but opportunities for upgrades are already somewhat fleeting. Curassier upgrades are also 155g, we have two of them. Bombards, likewise (I expect to faith purchase one of them). However we could, instead of swapping back to Press Gangs, turn to the production card for cavalry and crank out a round of Tanks, and try to upgrade half a dozen of those. If we secure a DoF with suboptimal, that's the play because Woden sure as hell won't be taking our empire with ships. If we don't, I'm not sure but we probably won't have time to make complicated plans.

So, for the time being, stick with the schedule above. Once we have answers (or at least threatening non-answers) on that front, reconsider policy card options.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Watching Egypt get steadily ground down and run over by Phoenicia:

[williams482]

Turn 216:

So, what's the post-alliance diplomatic situation with England?

Unchanged, because apparently I don't understand how the alliance countdown works. We are still allied, now with zero turns remaining. I use this opportunity to update the English military pins, the vast majority of which have moved either very little or not at all, and none in directions I would consider threatening. Suboptimal appears to be setting defensive screens around most of his clastlines, while deploying most of his troops towards Egypt's northeast shores. This could be subterfuge, as units in that area can reach Wild with fairly little difficulty, but I'm inclined to discount that possibility, and I think our defenses will hold up just fine without English artillery support regardless.

With that out of the way, lets work through our lovely little list. Bruins has exactly the amount of production we expected, good. Engineer goes to the bananas, all three builders move to their target spaces, Red Wings starts the Theater Square, and our Musket and Settler near Oilers push forward together. All good for the planned portion of the turn.

Capitals has completed it's spy. I can't start another until Nationalism completes, so I start on a cuirassier, currently due in 19 turns. The spy transfers to Bruins, where he will guard Victor as closely as possible. Disabling Liang in Wild would be a fairly minor loss, one random governor is trivially replaced. Losing Victor's Garrison Commander promotion, however, which gives +4 loyalty to cities within 9 tiles and obviously requires that he be established to work? That would be a major blow.

Regarding trade routes, no other surprise completions are in store for us. The only route on track to reach it's origin city before the era rolls is the Penguins -> Blues route we started a little under 20 turns ago, under the faulty assumption that trade route durations worked like they used to. No help here.



Woden and Ichabod have begun long range shelling of Claire Finn and Steve Newton, respectively, although neither has advanced a unit right next to a city just yet. Phoenician battleships have also nearly destroyed Ed Mercer's encampment, and will no doubt move in for the kill shortly. Egyptian territory looks disturbingly devoid of units. This can't last much longer.



The gossip screen reveals more bad news. Suboptimal and Woden are now allies, meaning they clearly aren't about to get into a fight. This points to Suboptimal either planning to conquer us in order to match Woden's pending Egyptian conquests, in which case he's done a lousy job preparing for the task, or he honestly believes he can turtle his way to a culture victory and just wants everyone off his back. That first option makes sense for him, and we'll see if he plans to take it in the next few turns. The second is just silliness, and does leave me worrying that he won't capitulate once Woden crunches through Kaiser, and will force Woden to eat us as well just to prove the point. That would be annoying.



Also of note, apparently Kaiser is trying for a cultural victory now. Where the computer got that idea, I haven't a clue, but I assume Kaiser knows full well he's not going to pull that off.

Blues will complete it's bank next turn. I'm debating dumping a few turns of production into a Settler, to get a head start on any potential oil at Jets. The alternative would be some unboosted unit builds, which doesn't exactly feel optimal but may well be the smarter use of that production.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Note that spies can't operate in allied territory, so I had considered suggesting putting them to offensive use by trying to steal some of sub's offending great works...before remembering that of course the allied prohibition goes both ways. The other option would be to try and steal some of Ichabod's warchest (Kaiser would be more amusing, but again, allies).

I hope that Woden pauses to consolidate after eating Kaiser and then crunches into Ichabod before Ichabod crunches into us. I would expect a natural Brazilian follow-up to taking south Egypt to be the seizure of Venice as a staging ground, which we can do nothing about, followed by a military assault on our Achilles heel at Stars - Blackhawks - Blues.

(is it really an Achilles' heel if our entire empire is weak? We're really all heel at this point, no?)

[williams482]

You know, I didn't look very hard for them specifically (oops), but I didn't see any English spies. Suboptimal might not have any active, despite constructing the spy-boosting government plaza building, which does make sneaking our guy off to Brazil more appealing. However Suboptimal does have more than enough production capacity to crank out several spies in short order, so unless we can renew our alliance I don't feel especially safe doing that.

If we get a DoF but not an alliance and try to steal great works, what I'm not sure of is if that will actually help. Suboptimal has more great works than he can effectively deploy against Wild, but most of them are out of range and can't help him. If we steal a few, he'll probably just move in replacements. Unless of course Civ VI's stupid "you can transfer artefacts between museums until they are full" rule applies after they have been filled and then robbed from, in which case stealing two artefacts from neighboring English cities would be a huge boost.

I might have to test that.

As for heels, we're definitely all heel at this point, but Blackhawks/Blues/Stars isn't that bad. Blackhawks and Blues have encampments up, admittedly encampments better placed to fight off attacks from the north than from the west. Stars probably can't build one in time, but it's coastal, and I'm very confident that for all the advantages Brazil's army has over ours, the Canadian navy exists (a major advantage over it's Brazilian counterpart) and would be able to throw in a nontrivial number of additional ranged strikes in any attack on Stars. We don't win that war, but we can make it slow and unpleasant.

[williams482]

Turn 217:

Our coal plant completes, boosting Refining and granting us +2 era score for our first contributions towards eradicating the polar bears.



Suboptimal confirms he has no hostile intentions whatsoever, offering a DoF. Weird, probably foolhardy, but very convenient. I accept, obviously.

Now, should I send an alliance this turn, and if so, which one? Suboptimal is allied with one other civilization, Phoenicia, and both cultural and scientific alliances are not available. Those are the two types of alliance we have sent out, so this means that Suboptimal and Woden have one of those types. That leaves military, cultural, and economic as the available options right now, and our cultural alliance with Kaiser expires in five turns. Level two cultural alliances are quite good: +1 GPP from each district if you and your ally have a trade route, so Suboptimal should want one with somebody, and if he doesn't have one with Woden then it's theoretically plausible that he'd be willing to have one with us. On the other hand, the short term benefits of an econ alliance are substantial: +22 gpt from the various trade routes between us and England. Suboptimal isn't doing a very good job crushing Wild (he hasn't even moved any great works to the amphitheater Barry built several turns ago), so either he's perfectly content just kinda waiting it out and assuming we'll fall eventually, or he doesn't actually care that much about trying to flip Wild. If we can wait, get Wild into positive loyalty, then pitch a cultural alliance to Suboptimal, he just might take it.

Now, the biggest opportunity cost is the loss of a military alliance. However, I think I'm willing to gamble that one of Ichabod/Woden won't attack us, and we'll be able to get a military alliance with the other. Hell, I'm going to send Woden a DoF right now. I doubt he'll accept, but if he does that makes us much less likely to be his next target, and sets up an easy offer/acceptance of a military alliance if appropriate. It may also allow us to work out what kind of alliance he has with Ichabod and Suboptimal, which could be useful.

Oh, sidenote, guess who got some bright ideas!



I assume Suboptimal is aware that the Avalanche spot remains occupied (and thank goodness) so I imagine this settler is ticketed for Canadiens, Flames, or some site in that area. He may well have others in progress, no way to know at current access levels.

All right, lets go down our list of local affairs. Bruins and Red Wings have exactly as much production invested in their projects as they should. The Wild builder places a mine, the other two builders and the military engineer remove their scheduled improvements and prepare to chop next turn. Research begins on Nationalism and will complete next turn, at which point I'll need to decide if I'd rather have ~40 beakers or two extra builder charges. Those charges plus the three already on the map would likely go into chopping Blues to pop 15, granting us a valuable boost, a small science and culture bump, and some era score we'll really appreciate if we're still both playing this game and not being steamrolled in 30 turns. Unfortunately we are still stuck with the 3/1/1/1 configuration for Monarchy, instead of getting the third military slot converted to a wildcard as we would if we were just entering Monarchy after this latest update, so we can't try swapping out the +2 loyalty from military units card which Wild's upcoming B&C project will render (temporarily) unnecessary. As for the settler, I'm going to just sit here for a turn. This costs us six clefs, but leaves my options open.

Blues has finished it's Bank, Blackhawks will knock out a second next turn. I mulled starting a settler here just in case last turn, which I think is a poor use of hammers until we actually know if we want a settler. The smart thing to do is definitely to kick out a Cuirassier for a future upgrade, but the appearance of Rockefeller (+3 oil, trade routes give +2g per strategic resource at the destination city) has me seriously considering another Commercial Hub project binge. Currently we're at 435/855 and +13 GPP, which will rise to +14 next turn. Currently we're on track to get him in 31 turns. Phoenicia is currently 40 turns out, Brazil 33. Each project is going to be worth 65g and 48 GPP, two of them would cut our timeline down to 23 turns. Yeah, never mind, this is silly. This is a very useful Merchant and we consider making a push in 10-20 turns if he's still on the board and we're not currently in the process of being roflstomped by a far superior enemy, but now is not the time.

However, We can get three turn builders out of Blues and Kings. Building some instead of military feels like exactly the kind of error we've been criticizing our opponents for making, but unlike them we aren't in a position where we can seize this game by the throat if we just dump more hammers into units and go kill someone (like us!). We need units, but was also need oil hooked up, and we need various economic benefits to keep rolling in so we can stay only kinda backwards so those units remain close enough to what the other guys have to matter when we try to fight them off. An extra 10 (and 15 total) builder charges lets us pop chop at blues, but also place farms to make sure the city doesn't starve any of that population back down, throw down a few extra mines for that population to work, grow Blackhawks and Stars a little bigger so those cities can work all of their production tiles and eventually another district, and know with absolute certainty that however many Oil resources we stumble into, we can hook them all up. Ah, fuck it. Build away. If Brazil invades us in 20 turns and beats our army in a close fight where an extra cuirassier would have made the difference, I'll know to blame this decision for my failure. After this though, we're going to swap into chivalry and crank these suckers out like there's no tomorrow. Because for us there isn't.

In international news, the first of the real dominoes are starting to topple in Egypt. We can now see Kaiser's builds, which are almost all military, mostly AT Crew Armies with some field cannons, a spy, and a sewer at Ed Mercer (wait, WTF?).



Our Wandering Warrior has fulfilled his sacred duties, revealing the final fogged land tile on the map. It's one of the Antiquiera Mountains.

Oh, and I was wrong about the War of Territorial Expansion, which is actually unlocked at Mobilization. Had Suboptimal denounced us, I believe the only option available would have been a Formal War, which does not count as a Casus Belli and generates no era score. So, glad that didn't happen!

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I think we don't want another settler, not unless oil is discovered in exactly that location. I'd think that if it existed, Kaiser would have beelined there himself, but given his baffling decisions that might not actually be true. Anyway, though, a settler will never pay off in terms of yields at this point, it's just about resources or other strategic considerations.

Agreed on most of your decisions. Rockefeller is nice to have but unlike suboptimal I really had burning production on projects unless absolutely necessary, and for now it's not a necessity. Instead we should keep up our infra builds - unlike the others, as you say, we have no chance of successfully invading anyone (although if we could reach Flight we might have a crack at our own chunk of Egypt, as if that would accomplish anything other than setting us up to be next on the chopping block). We have to keep building sinew into the empire to have any kind of chance to weather our next customer.

Basically we're playing this game:



Don't! Get! Eliminated!

So, yeah, DoF with Woden is a must. We can probably resist suboptimal and we can stall Ichabod, but we absolutely cannot stop Bombers. Not even Kaiser can.

Shit, I don't even know where AA is on the tech tree, I've never built one. Hopefully easier to access than Fighters, because no way will we get an appreciable air force before Brazil hits Bombers of his own. But with Artillery (and bloons) that needs to be a defense priority.

As for Kaiser building a sewer while his empire crumbles under multiple invasions...yeah. Says it all, really.

[williams482]

Good point on AA guns. I've also never built one, but they are unlocked at Advanced Ballistics, a first rung atomic era tech with Replaceable Parts and Steel as prereqs. The boost is to build two (maybe now just one?) Oil plants, which we sure as hell aren't doing unless we have a ton of oil, and it unlocks the very useful machine gun unit (now with the full two range!) to upgrade our field cannons. Definitely a tech we should be looking very hard at once we have Steel, Refining, and Replaceable Parts in place.

[williams482]

Off the top of my head, we have something like:
- 4 cavalry
- 4 field cannons
- 4(?) muskets
- 2 cuirassiers
- 2 pike & shot
- 3 frigates
- 1 galley
- 1 warrior

Next turn we'll complete a privateer and I plan to purchase a bombard with faith next turn, plus the second privateer a few turns from Completion in Red Wings, and the Frigate in Stars that will finish on t224ish without Press Gangs helping it along (meaning possibly never, I'll need to think about if I should just leave that card in over the +2 loyalty one to get that unit done before we finish Refining).

All in all, our milpower looks much better than it actually is. It will plummet next turn when we merge a bunch of those units into corps, and that soon-to-be-purchased bombard is the only land unit particularly adept at cracking city walls. We can hold our cities against opponents who can't bring major air support, but we definitely aren't strong enough to take even weakly defended cities, nor do we have the ability to pivot quickly into attack mode if an opportunity we can exploit does emerge, cuz Canada.

[williams482]

Turn 218:

Big turn today. Nationalism completes:



Does Woden want to be our friend? Amazingly, yes! He even wants open borders renewed, which we are totally cool with. There's nothing malicious he could do to us with forced peace in our borders he couldn't do with bombers, so there's no real danger here. Maybe he plans to scout out our territory in preparation for a future invasion (I don't recall seeing any Phoenician units in our lands before), but because Brazil's DoF expires well before ours will, that's probably hopefully maybe the direction Woden will send his army once Egypt has been disposed of.

Penguins completes a Privateer, Blackhawks completes a Bank (boosting Economics), and Wild completes It's Entertainment Complex. Currently Wild is at -2.8 loyalty per turn. Running B&C adds 0.5 per pop point, so +6.5. That's a net of +3.7 loyalty with the project running, which Bruins can bump by an extra +2.4 by running a B&C project of it's own, for a grand total of +6.1. In two turns, our +5 loyalty will expire, and we'll need both of those projects plus all the currently active policy slots plus a cultural alliance with one of these two bordering civs to keep this city in the black. Eventually suboptimal will get some great works into Barry, but I'm pretty sure the flooded Theater Square at Compo will be completely destroyed when Climate Change hits level IV and those tiles are submerged, displacing two great works to somewhere they can't hurt us. And of course, every time we complete a B&C project (currently takes 7 turns, with a 25% yields malus) we get a flat +20 loyalty to the city. So long term, I think we can hold this.

Short term though, do we need the +2 loyalty from military card in place? If we drop it, we can crank out two more frigates and upgrade our way to having (somehow) a vaguely competitive navy. Wild is currently at 53.1/100 loyalty, so there isn't a huge immediate difference between being +3.7 and +1.7 for the next couple turns, but we really don't want to drop below 50 when World Congress resolution expires. Those two future battleships are really enticing though, so I'm willing to take the chance.

With that decided, I make some policy swaps. Limitanae and Natural Philosophy out, Professional Army and Public Works in:



Wild's loyalty display has all the correct numbers, but the wrong sign (displaying as -1.7). All the components add up to +1.7, so I'm just going to have to hope that's a display error that won't affect what actually happens next turn.

I desperately wish, for the about the 700th time, that I could see how many beakers/clefs were invested in a tech/civic. I want to get Natural History as close as possible to completing without actually completing on the era roll, because I want to keep Press Gangs in place for more than just this turn. If I knew where I was, I could calculate where I would be next turn. I can't, so I have to guess, and that guess puts us right on the border where one turn of research plus the 20% cost reduction is going to put us extremely close to finishing the civic. I'm going to do the safe thing and put a turn into Scorched Earth.

All right, now we get down to business. I form corps from two each of field canons, musketmen, and cuirassiers, then form a fleet from two frigates. That's two era score. I could have combined two cavalry, but they both have the same promotion (+5 vs ranged units) and with the boost already in hand I can afford to wait and decide if I want to merge one of them with the guy who has +5 against anti cavalry. Our galley becomes and ironclad for the low, low price of 320g, boosting Steel and granting us another era point. Our builder at Kings chops a forest into the Military academy, leaving it a mere 11h shy of completion, and our military engineer chops in another 57f, 57h to complete the project with 46h overflow, netting three more era score. The pop increase from the food chop makes us unhappy, so I decide to dump it into an Arena, due in 3. At Red Wings, our builder chops another 115h into the Theater Square, which completes for another three era score:



Overflow goes into the privateer, due in 2. I micro the city a bit to preserve that timeline while picking up some extra food and gold.

And now, the grand finale of our mad rush for normalcy: the frigid prospecting town of Oilers. The locals, and indeed all of Canada, hope their settlement's name proves prophetic, but for now they take pride in hosting the best ice hockey games on the planet.



Also of note in this screenshot, those dumb chucklefucks in Venice apparently decided that the best place to stick their new neighborhood was on a zero-appeal forest deer tile. You know, the extremely useful tile they stole which stopped us from settling Oilers like 15 turns ago. Great work guys, we're proud of you.

Penguins starts a Frigate, due in 4. I shuffle some tiles to max out production, even though it doesn't affect the current build timeline, because I don't expect to finish this unit with the +100% card still in place. Blackhawks starts a barracks, due in 3. Blackhawks and Blues will both need to fit in Military Academies at some point, best to start now. It might even be worth putting in the +30% production card at the next policy swap, which would slow our construction of new units further, but with DoFs with every civilization on the board (and very long DoFs with the two most powerful) we can afford that kind of delay. Oilers starts a monument it will likely never complete.

We have a governor title. I choose not to use it this turn, and will wait for Refining to reveal Oil first. There are several different mediocre options to choose from, and the location of Oil is quite relevant to which we should go with.

Big news on the international front: Claire Finn is Egyptian no longer, and Steve Newton is clearly doomed:



Egyptian units have pulled back, to where I don't know. Kaiser has also doubled down on the Sewers after completing a round of AT Crew armies:



Here's why Kaiser is doing this:
The boost for the Suffrage civic is to build four Sewers. This is a very useful civic. It unlocks the powerful democracy government, as well as two powerful democracy-only policy cards: New Deal, +4 housing and +2 amenities per city with three districts, and much more notably Their Finest Hour, +5 combat strength when fighting in or adjacent to your own territory. +5 combat strength makes a big difference! Maybe not as big a difference as the three AT Crew units he could build with that combined 800h and the +50% card (or ~1.2 AT Crew Armies, with the +25% army/corp production from Military Academies), but I can see the argument for it.

Here's why this is a bad idea:
The boost for Totalitarianism is to construct three military academies (this is why we need to make sure we do that). Kaiser has already done this, at Gordon Malloy, Isaac, and Bortus. Totalitarianism unlocks Fascism, the perfect late game wartime government, accept no substitutes. It reduces war wariness by 15% (ehh), but much more importantly, gives all units +5 combat strength, and gives +50% production towards military units. That's massive! and exactly what Egypt desperately needs right now. It has the same prereqs as Suffrage, and both are leaf civics with no impact on future research, so there's no reason Kaiser would be forced to chase Democracy if he doesn't want to.

Also relevant international news, buried in the gossip logs for this turn: Brazil has denounced England! What they expect to get out of this I don't really know. They certainly have Nationalism completed already, so they can't be hunting for boosts. Perhaps it's meant as a warning to the archeologist we saw heading that way a few turns ago?

Scores: