[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

turn tilt - the world's saddest divine spark japan

i glumly queue up two holy site projects at hakuho and brace myself for the withering storm of well-deserved criticism to be directed my way for so doing



then our ships start glumly beating the crap out of geneva (which has two warriors and no monument, btw, but a free size 3 city is a free size 3 city)



decent rolls overall, roughly 80 damage in total. i would guess with TAD's incoming attack we are favored, but not guaranteed, to take the city next turn. it's not a huge deal if not though as a third turn will earn us our first embolon galley

if we take geneva we will have to commit on victor vs pingala literally next turn, and i still don't really have any idea who i'm gonna pick. the joy. i do like victor a bit more now that FtW is looking tenuous, as if we do miss it CM will help with the culture catastrophe, and also pingala is a lot less useful if our capital is stuck at size 3 for the rest of forever :|

abroad, absolutely nothing of substance happened - just a pop growth from banzai. other than The Project of course...

tad, if you see this before the turn, please please please accept the deal i proposed in which i beg you for all your gold and don't worry too much about what i'm going to do with it <3 (it will be plains hill at geneva and pfh at teru, just not sure how many chops i'm gonna use yet)

[williams482]

Oh god. Clearly I either over- or underestimated Chevalier, not too sure which. I suppose with Phoenicia there to provide early game thump they have less need to invest in defense, so which makes them less likely to be badly burned for this? Ugh.

And there still exists a possibility that we are racing each other for different beliefs.

Prioritizing galleys definitely wasn't "hubris", FYI.

One item of note for micro plans: Capturing Geneva and boosting Early Empire to completion gets us our 4th civic, which bumps project costs up to 46h and yields up to 14 GPP. Chevalier's project only produced 12 GPP, although presumably he can complete a tech or two to bump that up if so inclined. Also, I'm pretty sure GPP will start to show up the turn after a district or building is completed, so we won't be getting 4 per turn until t35. Gross, because one turn sooner would mean two projects would get us to 60 points on t39. As is that would put us two points short. I'm willing to condone chopping out one project; chopping out two (including burning that forest) is a really not fun option.

Let's think about Chevalier and "whole assing" for a moment. Chevalier has said before that Jongs are basically the entire reason to play Indonesia. We can bet pretty heavily that he'll have planned from the beginning to get together the biggest, fastest sledgehammer of a Jong attack on somebody, and devoted every resource he has available towards that goal. And what exactly does Feed The World do to help there? Let the home cities grow into unhappiness faster? Quads aren't that expensive to build with Maritime Industries in play, so it's not like there's a desperate need to grow the cities to get those out. Extra population makes for very marginal gains in faith and culture, the other core currencies of a Jong rush. We expect to see Feed the World mostly because Chevalier took River Goddess, but Chevalier's last game had him building 700h wonders to scrape up a few extra amenities despite an empire of size 4 tundra cities. I'm a little surprised that a culture pantheon wasn't preferred, but as we discussed here, River Goddess is a unique opportunity to score some serious extra amenities which no other civ will have available. Extremely useful if you anticipate growing your cities tall like we were, OR if you plan on conquering somebody else and trying to make their lands into net assets as quickly as possible.

As for other beliefs, the synergy with Choral Music is obvious. Likewise, Crusade has some major synergy potential too: in addition to the defensive benefits in Phoenician lands, Jongs are uniquely positioned to use Crusade offensively because they not only transfer their movement to embarked units, but actively benefit from the presence of said units. And, their attack is likely to be launched early enough that cities will be relatively small, and religious stragglers won't have founded their afterthought religions yet to make things more difficult. And, the loyalty benefits of having your own religion in captured cities aren't nothing either. Those situations can easily be tenuous enough that an extra +3 is significant. Finally, Crusade is such an obvious pick as the founder belief that Chevalier likely knew from the beginning that he'd have to race Japan for it. In a team game, it's basically just a twice-as-good Defender Of The Faith, plus possible offensive value.

I will not claim to be any kind of expert on how Chevalier thinks, but if I had to wager, I'm betting his plans are fairly close to what I've outlined above. Race for Crusade, pick up bonus culture on the way, go kill someone ASAP, and keep the folks at home as happy as possible in the aftermath.

Remember that it's really easy to get tunnel vision on an objective of our own, and assume our opponents are thinking the same way when they often have something totally different in mind. Indonesia is not Japan, they have totally different strengths that should be emphasized in totally different ways. And I just don't see any reason why Feed the World would be a super high priority get for Indonesia when there's a big Mercenaries accelerant right there.

As for what we should do... Ugh. I've laid all that out and I stand by it, but it's still purely guesswork. I would much rather get that first religion if we can do so without really suffering for it. Final turn faith snipes don't actually help us here, we would get a prophet with no movement points and Chevalier would recruit his prophet and get the religion immediately on the subsequent turn. And we don't really have that kind of faith to play with anyway. Missing out on Feed The World would definitely hurts us, as we are banking on being able to grow relatively tall and profit off of Japanese district adjacencies. But burning two chops and five more turns of natural production in two cities to almost guarantee it (considering Chevalier might have chop plans himself), while not even certain that Chevalier will take the belief? That's a really heavy price to pay.

I kinda like the thought of completing the early project to make him sweat a bit and possibly draw some ill advised project chops, but don't dump in any chops of our own. The justification for the project being that we've already invested a turn, and it will cut down the religion time by a few turns and provide some marginal econ value that way. But that is definitely an in between path, usually a sign that it's a poor choice.

[ljubljana]

thank u for being kind to me after my tantrum last night lol <3

sooo hmm hmm hmm. one thought at a time, which i will index numerically for ease of response

1) re Phoenicia defense: yeah, i guess that pretty much has to be their logic, right? they must be planning on inc building a ton of biremes before Cothons to fend off norway. like, maybe 5-6 biremes in total which would take until like t40 and would give them a defense force roughly equivalent in size to ours. my personal feelings suggest that this underestimates the danger of an aggressive norway, which, if thrawn is spamming longships in both cities, is likely to surpass my and TAD's combined milpower in the next couple of turns, finish shipbuilding for ocean movement, and just send out a wave of CS annihilation radiating outward from their home islands and extending as far as the other players let them reach, with anyone who lets norway eat their home CS falling way, way behind as a result. but perhaps they have insights about this situation that i haven't had yet myself...?

2) re EE completion: sadly, it's only our third civic, i just have CoL and foreign trade. if it WERE our fourth civic, we'd have a much nicer micro plan for shaving off the turn that requires only one chop, which was what i was hoping we could do before i realized 2 civics + 4 techs and 3 civics + 4 techs give the same GPP yield...

3) re gpp timings: wait, are we still short at t39 with two projects? i thought the math was

t33: 14
t34: 16
t35: 20
t36: 24
t37: 28
t38: 32
t39: 36 (+ 26 from two projects > 60)

doesn't really help us though as t39 is exactly chev's ETA if they are pumping 39 hammer projects in the capital at 13 hpt + the second city finishes an HS next turn and starts a project, so unless we shave a turn to t38 they are likely to beat us due to the stupid turn order

4) re the Teutoberg forest (eg, the forest of hubris and/or death SW of hakuho). i will say this in defense of the very ugly option to chop it into a third project: one thing we are not doing, and are not really going to do until we hit construction and a size 6-ish capital, is work that forest right now. it will hurt badly in the midgame, but any snowball effects will not start to manifest until roughly t80, maybe later if we rush cartography before construction as i am considering. whereas if we chop the forest and it's the difference in landing FtW, we will get 6 food and housing for teru right now with more to come as new plants come online and old cities move on to temples. it is not hard for me to imagine this growth curve acceleration resulting in at least one more city around t80 than we'd have without it, which will come with its own forests for us to work...

5) re chev's indonesia plan. i am quite sure that you are right and their gameplan is to execute the fastest possible jong rush backed by phoenician gold, it is just too overwhelmingly strong an option for them to ignore. but i think snowballing from Feed the World and two very early shrines in the first two cities might get them to mercs faster than choral music, especially with the food constrained setup at the capital here, ESPECIALLY because they will likely not be growing into unhappiness until well after the jong timing thanks to river goddess. choral music gives them the option to build shrines that are effectively better monuments that make faith, and between now and t100 they could likely profit to the tune of 200ish clefs from two early shrines, which equates to a nice acceleration of 8 or 9 turns.

but how much will FtW accelerate them? 3 extra food will grow their capital by two marginal pop points in, what, roughly 25 turns-ish - that's 2.6 culture with pingala already, and hammers, and gold... and then the same is true at the second city for another 0.6 clefs, plus acceleration towards the monument. if they funnel the extra yields at the second city into settlers while growing the capital city up up up for pingala with a shrine and fast temple, i could see FtW matching CM in culture acceleration while giving both a faster growth curve and stronger empire overall in terms of foodhammers... that package would be pretty appealing to me if i were an indonesia player - culture from CM is a mostly flat bonus that peaks in value right at the moment of the jong attack, but getting the FtW + RG combo accelerates everything and helps not just in speeding the jongs and increasing their numbers but in growing a strong enough empire larger enough than everyone else's to force concessions after a jong attack, which seems really appealing to a foodhammer-snowball-oriented player like chevalier (as, in my view, it probably should be!).

finally there is the real smoking gun. if chev is really after CM for the early culture acceleration, wouldn't it be better to just....build a settler in the capital and a monument in the second city, which they still have not done, rather than spend a ton of precious early production to unlock the ability to make a second culture building per city when they don't even have all their first ones up yet?

5) re crusade. great point about jongs as uniquely powerful crusade attackers, even a bunch of 30-strength crusade warriors can potentially take cities in the pre-caravel era. this is a plausible plan for them, which sucks because crusade was our first choice secondary belief as well though i think the delta between crusade and tithe from our perspective is much smaller than between CM and FtW at least

6) re feed the world, i would guess the cost of having missed it come frigate fleet time will amount to roughly 2-3 marginal pop per japanese city, which due to district pop requirements probably shaves the +6 campus from hakuho's build order and the harbors everywhere else. that's....a really big cost in return we will get the option to make CM shrines, but honestly the need for settlers and builders and such right now is so high that it's hard for me to see us really prioritizing them until we have at least settled our home islands...

7) re what we can do now. the double chops are pretty gruesome, but not quite as bad as that: we lose 5 turns of natural production at hakuho, but only 2 at terunofuji which will hit 7hpt next turn and can finish a chopped project pretty quickly (though not quite quickly enough that we wouldn't need to chop ) so that is about 80 hammers of natural production, which FtW and 2 shrines will pay back in just 13 turns (not counting the chops, at least). so it would be pure marginal profit starting around the era change relative to meekly accepting CM, which we might not even USE until the era change...

and, yeah, we can't realistically snipe the prophet with either faith or gold, and hopefully the same is true for chev/inc who must have used their 380ish gold of early-game saving on SOME kind of snowball accelerant thus far... and, also yeah, i am a little skeptical that us finishing just one project will mess with chev's calculus in a way that will lead to us winning. in my mind, finishing a project this far in advance of when they would naturally get a prophet can ONLY be a signal that, after doing the math on whichever beliefs they have in mind, they have determined that it is worth going absolutely all out to make sure they land their combo - the only reason to not finish all your projects on the same turn the religion comes in, IMO, is because you are planning on SO many projects that that's literally not possible. if that is the case, and if, as i suspect, their assets right now are a size-3 capital working GFH + PFH + plains hill mine (+ UP) for 13 hammers/turn and a size-1 city about to finish an HS and grow to size 2 (so, just like our setup), then their eta is t39 and the only way we can beat them is if we shave a turn off that time.

it is possible that they can accelerate this with chops but it would be nasty, even nastier than it is for us. first they would have to buy the builder - an HS pop on t25 + a project on t33 leaves room for only one intervening build, and i am taking their third civic discovery as a firm indication that they have already spent 3 builder charges on the craftsmanship boost (unless inc went there before FT and boosted it for them, but that would mean they just finished a full-cost bireme without naval infrastructure?? seems doubtful). then, they probably need two chops, one for each city, as i think their second city will take until t39 to make a project on its own power even if it grows and finishes the HS next turn. i guess they could do this on the last turn with two partially-spent builders (one bought with inc's gold) sitting around waiting for the prophet points to come in, but if they have this setup they will also need to know to pull the trigger one turn early on t38 instead of waiting until t39 (which is our two project timeline and so seems like the obvious target date for them) so they can win the race without chops.

if they do all that, we're dead and there's no way we can possibly beat them. but i think there is at least a chance they will not chop into projects if they don't think they have to, enough of a chance that i'm willing to gamble a little bit here. if i'm wrong and they get the religion t38 or sooner, we will only be out the cost of the PFH chop - we should save the precious Teutoberg Forest, since the race would already be over by the turn we'd be planning to chop it. plus, if they do plan on chopping, i would be a bit surprised that they have NOT chopped the second city HS, which could be up by now and would be a worthwhile chop regardless of the outcome of the religious race (which indeed is why we did it). so the fact that they haven't pulled that lever yet gives me at least a little bit of hope that they think t39 will be fast enough and won't have the builders in place to contest us...

8) do you know how GPP tiebreakers work? if it's GPP per turn, we win via divine spark; if it's the amount of GPP over the threshold you have, we should still have good chances to win as a third project will put us WAY over the line on t38. and if it's turn order, we're screwed and should have been luckier :|

[ljubljana]

well, there must be SOME reason for chevalier to be REALLY invested in this religious race - they're playing during work hours (1:37 CST) which i've never seen them do before (and i've been watching... :eyes_emoji: )

they have been sitting here refreshing the forum all day just like i have too i guess i can't help but admit that this IS pretty exhilarating and surely makes for some high drama for the lurkers

hah, now i remember what these games are REALLY like... and why i got so burnt out after the last one

speaking of watching, i actually caught marco checking in on our new game a couple days ago... i hope they are not too upset about the PBEM20 thing, i at least still like them and have fond memories of their days as my first-ever dedlurker in PBEM19

i really hope i don't get the turn before tonight, tbh. need to worry about this more. i have been poking TAD on steam to try to make absolutely sure they will send me their gold for the PFH buy, but am a little worried they might not see it in time and we might lose out here :/ and also i'm worried i'm being like the most annoying partner ever

i have to say i am feeling really really glad we ended up with TAD's Portugal on our team right about now. missing FtW and Crusade would be bad enough that i don't think i have compunctions about the Heroic Measures we may have to take to secure them. but even if we whiff completely and my japan falls far, far behind in growth and expansion....as long as Portugal makes it to Cartography in a strong position, with a pilot as talented as TAD, we will be a threat to win. and i guess there is a bit of consolation in the fact that, if i were thrawn, the combination of no investment in defenses + a frighteningly synergistic pantheon and belief + what he has stated is his most feared RB opponent in CMF would be as big and flashing a "please attack me now" sign as even my febrile brain can imagine. or, as even my febrile brain COULD HAVE imagined before this last turn, back when i thought chev would make any ships this century

[ljubljana]

ok, let's distract ourselves by thinking about

- victor vs pingala. we have to commit on this in the next two turns - thoughts? i think if FtW were guaranteed i'd be very torn...but in CM, pingala would be stuck at 3-4 beakers/clefs for the longest time with this capital, a far cry from his usual dominance and not even that large a percentage of our overall science/culture once we have a few shrines and campi up (which i DO still plan to do before the era change...just don't ask me how ). on the other hand victor is a 1/3 effective force multiplier on EVERY galley we train if we micro correctly, which will become a 1/3 multiplier on our caravels and ironclads as well.... surely my experience with missing just a 4 point CS swing last game from Oligarchic Legacy should drive home just how irreplaceable that is. and worst-case we can trade 6 early galley builds for 3 monuments and still set a decent pace towards late Pingala... and i think the +5 to nearby units from victor 2 will be very relevant in an early war scenario, it's effectively a one-city DotF

- tithe vs crusade (assuming we don't run into vikings in the next few turns in a position that demands DotF). tithe is snowbally and gets us 6 precious gpt immediately, while crusade will sit around unused for ages on end until missionaries become a better use of faith than settlers. but nothing discourages attacks like crusade. and not just on TAD, though of course that is a factor, but against me as well. holding captured cities with the Crusade religion against any appreciable land army is almost impossible, and if i keep my mercs warriors around and threaten a sam upgrade, i can envision a scenario in which offensive war against japan looks counterproductive because they'd have to raze instead of capture...

- upcoming builds? the free religious spread in geneva is off the table so it's free for a monument or builder as appropriate. we need some culture soon in the worst way as with no more accelerants we stand some chance of missing PP. but probably just one CM shrine or monument with FtW is ok, the latter in geneva as the one city with no early shrine needs. hak will have some space post-shrine and will presumably start the third city settler. GP in hak and the trader in teru, or wherever we have space, then a round of badly-needed ilkum builders. oof :|

- i wonder what still-big-favorite-to-win thrawn thinks of our self-destructive religious squabbling. dear future thrawn: you're welcome :| now please go eat the one with zero boats instead of the one who keeps sneaking into first in the dom rankings...

- misc reminder to myself: as japan we want to NOT RESEARCH IRON WORKING until absolutely necessary. in the event of CM, a nice move to repel invaders would be to build out to 8 warriors (inspiring mercs in the process) and upgrade them all to sams (at feudalism) for 5 iron apiece. but unlocking swords ruins this plan

- misc reminder #2: no pillaging allowed at geneva's fishing boats. not because it's banned (i think health is ok, right?) but because we need it intact for the craftsmanship eureka and it might be some time before i can get a builder down here to repair...

[williams482]

You make some disturbingly good points about how Chevalier might regard Feed The World. His apparent investment in the race seems like further evidence, definitely enough that I don't feel safe preaching caution here.

Let's go for it. If saving Teutoberg Forest until the last turn is possible clearly we should do that, in case Chevalier went REALLY all out and we can't possibly win.

I'm pretty sure Great People Points are processed and recruitment eligibility is handled at the beginning of each player's turn. So turn order is effectively the tiebreaker. What I'm not sure of is what happens if you chop a project to completion to get over the recruitment threshold: can you recruit the great person immediately, or do you still have to wait? That's a question that needs answering. If Chopping to completion doesn't give you the great person on that turn, no sense in saving the Teutoberg Forest chop for the last minute.

For GPP, my calculations this morning were hasty and probably wrong. Your numbers look correct, except: do we really only have 14 points right now? Tallying up the numbers recorded in the spreadsheet makes for 16 on t33, and the changes in GPP rate appear to correspond appropriately (appearing one turn after) to the completion of our holy site and pantheon. Either we have 16 GPP, I'm misunderstanding how this works, or something is badly wrong with the spreadsheet.

[ljubljana]

We do only have 14 - according to the GPP screen our +2/turn rate will spawn a prophet in 23 turns:



Most likely the mathematical mixup is on my end - I think I may have recorded GPP rates in the spreadsheet starting on the turn of the change (eg, +2 on t27 from Divine Spark) rather than on the first turn the change is reflected in the running tallies (t28)

re going for it: you'd better believe i'm on board, driven by spite and an overweening need to justify Divine Spark by converting it into an actual economic advantage. If TAD accepts my gold loan request, I will buy the PFH and chop into a project at Teru next turn for the t38 eta. and yes, we do need a test game to see if chopping the prophet to completion lets us found on that same turn.

Note that in theory we COULD save the Teutoberg Forest by chopping the PFH into Hakuho and the dyes woods into Terunofuji. But I'm not gonna do that, for reasons of timing - that would finish a project in Hakuho next turn and perhaps freak out Chevalier while they still have time to set up forest chops. No, we want the Teutoberg, to complete one project on t36 and two on t37 so they will need to have builders already in place THAT turn to beat us. The chatter in Chev's thread t37 should look like this: "well, mathematically Japan could still do it, but they'd have to finish a project in the second city AND chop a second project in the capital THIS turn AND have overflow from the last one just to save ONE turn off their eta, and they're not really going to do that, right??" That's the kind of logic that could rationalize not pulling the trigger a turn early even if they DO have builders ready to go

At least this is a good dead-hand tactic for future games. If I can cultivate a reputation as someone who is prone to tilting and who will pursue these kinds of races with dogged recklessness even at the expense of my own position, surely others will be at least a little less likely to mess with me in the future

[williams482]

That's really weird, because as far as I can tell you put stuff in correctly? The Holy Site finished t23, the first GPP income appears in the sheet t24. We get the pantheon on t27, GPP income jumps to 2 on t28. That's the way things are supposed to work. Clearly there's an off-by-one error somewhere in here, but I'm at a loss as to where.

[williams482]

I ran a quick test of the GPP screen. By the look of it we probably do have 16 points, the "turns until recruitment" figure is just wrong:



13 turns left implies that we need 26 points, and thus have 4 invested. In reality we have 6, it seems the calculation employed here assumes that you need to exceed, not merely reach, the target number. 

If we actually do have 14 (and will have 16, not 18, next turn) then I have no idea what is happening.

[ljubljana]

wait, DO we need to exceed the target number? i am embarrassed to admit that i actually have no idea :O