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

[WilliamLP]

Clearly, I'm upsetting you so I'm going to lay off the posts for awhile.

Sorry, there are some days where having to reason about this game (and PB11 at the same time) stresses me out, and I was having a bad one. You've consistently pointed out a lot of things I miss and worst-case analysis is really valuable so thanks. You're certainly welcome to keep posting anything you want, in the light that I'll misinterpret tone sometimes in writing and I have bad moods sometimes.

At this point we're not going to win this game, obviously, so some of this comes down to what metagame we each have the taste for, which is pretty different. And yeah, we're going to have to agree to disagree on this.

Just to think about it and focus for myself, here are the (subjective) goals I want:

- Retep is in last place out of 18, or near it, punished for assuming he could get the better of us in early war when we have defenders' advantage. This is accomplished already.
- Ichabod does not win the game, after making a terrible (against any competent player) city plant that showed contempt.
- We do our part for the rest of the world to try and prevent Ichabod from grabbing a massive over-share of land.

Inevitables:
- Ichabod will have significantly more land than us anyway, just by Jared Diamond-style geographic predestination. And eventually he'll far surpass us in the game.
- Retep will die, either to Bacchus or us quite a bit later.

[WilliamLP]

So Bacchus offered a peace treaty. From him, I suspected the hidden text of this was "I just moved a unit I don't want you to kill".

And sure enough:




The chariot moved 2W and killed a scout. This is kind of spiteful, but Bacchus has shown zero signs that he wants a peaceful relationship for the whole game. And that scout was valuable to him - keeping an eye on Retep and our troop movements. He'll either have to build another scout or use a chariot, which may alarm Retep a bit.

Manon got its religion spread. The RNG is actually doing a pretty good job this game.

Retep retreated his stack back into is borders yet again. Also notice that he pillaged the cow and deleted the chariot that did it. Talk about spite! But we have enough spears that his chariots are nearly useless in our war and just a drain on his non-existent economy.




Note the barb city sprung up a couple of turns ago. Ideally Cheetah will get this but it's more likely that Ichabod will. I don't think we can really spare units to go after razing it right now.




The settler is in Barbiere now. I'm having a hard time feeling great about any city plant. Ichabod has nothing to do with his military other than move it to our border, really.

- Part of me still wants to go for broke with that desert hill spot. It's true that if we were a few turns ahead on construction it would be a big difference. Chopping out walls would mean it's quite defendable But it's also the site most likely to ensure war with Ichabod forever, and it leaves Manon hanging as a soft underbelly.

- Cherokee's spot is solid in terms of dotmap. It will need walls.

- The N wine has some points, like blocking the desert hill settlement from Ichabod, and also being able to use his pre-constructed cottage.

- 1N of Cherokee is not good for dotmapping but is still the least aggressive wines claim, which may be worth something.

I guess Cherokee is still the leading contender... But I could be easily convinced about other spots (except the desert hill, even though it's the best city).

I'm also trying to think of where the border cities should go between us and Retep and Bacchus. They are all full of compromise, and again here I think we need to value defensibility over ideally dotmapping resources.

[WilliamLP]

Retep moved his stack back into the fog, until it's ready to crawl out from under another rock. No detailed report today, because tactics aren't very interesting. We'll settle on Cherokee's ruins next turn. I'm not sure we can defend it but I'll try to get walls in there asap with axes, and if we can get a catapult we're fine. I admit that the extra few turns to get Poly a while back (for the discount on Priesthood and for Mono eventually) was a mistake because 3-4 turns off of construction might be really crucial.

I offered peace deals to both Bacchus and Ichabod, though the likelihood of them accepting is pretty near zero. I was tempted to offer peace to Retep just to piss him off more. But I didn't.







This could be worse, given that a really important city was razed at a crucial time. If Carmen had been alive and grown and maturing cottages right now it would be much better situation. Maybe the most surprising thing is being #1 in land area still, since Ichabod has 10 cities to our 6 for instance. I guess this is from having no coastal cities, having easy-ish border pops, and a huge cultural radius on the capital.

[WilliamLP]

I logged in to pause for Azza and Retep. And we now have 10 turns of enforced peace with both Bacchus and Ichabod! This was surprising to me. Would Mindy approve of these deals? I think my first guess would be the correct answer.

This actually means we can focus only on defending Retep for a while, and it also makes the desert hill to the east a viable land-grab, with 10 turns to get a couple of cats and walls there. I still am leaning on the Cherokee location though, to fit with a more conservative long term gameplan, to seal up the east somewhere reasonable and then fill in the west, which is a decent chunk of land all told. But man, I'm torn... if fortune favors the bold it's obvious what the bold play is.

A big question is would Ichabod plant on the desert hill himself if we don't. If he does, we would have two cities pushing on him culturally with SPI and cheap temples. And I think Cherokee is the option that has a chance of us not playing this game with a two-front war fifty turns from now.

[WilliamLP]

A crazy development:




Retep declared on Bacchus? This is craziness. Retep's capital is down to size 3 now - it's clear he wants out of this game, I think.

There are two ways of looking at this: time to strike or time to sit back and finally grow cities and build cottages. You can guess which I prefer.




La Boheme is settled. Our economy is getting a little crashed - breakeven is at 30% now. Quick growth of Manon will help a lot. WT is going to need some cottages too if we ever want to get basic techs and still expand a little more.

Overall, with these developments (peace and retep declaring) I'm feeling more optimistic about this game than I have in a long time. We have a decent amount of land and it is pretty fantastic. We'll finish Construction just before crashing and so our defense will be rock solid for quite a while, probably until knights show up.

Comparison shot of what we know about Ichabod's empire:




Those cities are size 8-8-6-6-5-2. He's been growing beautifully. And he has 4 more that we don't know the location of, presumably a few are filling out the southwest. His GNP is getting quite good now. He's pretty far ahead of us in this game, without a doubt. But... ultimately land is a bit of an equalizer and we'll get a chance to grow into ours.

[MindyMcCready]

I logged in to pause for Azza and Retep. And we now have 10 turns of enforced peace with both Bacchus and Ichabod! This was surprising to me. Would Mindy approve of these deals? I think my first guess would be the correct answer.

This actually means we can focus only on defending Retep for a while, and it also makes the desert hill to the east a viable land-grab, with 10 turns to get a couple of cats and walls there. I still am leaning on the Cherokee location though, to fit with a more conservative long term gameplan, to seal up the east somewhere reasonable and then fill in the west, which is a decent chunk of land all told. But man, I'm torn... if fortune favors the bold it's obvious what the bold play is.

A big question is would Ichabod plant on the desert hill himself if we don't. If he does, we would have two cities pushing on him culturally with SPI and cheap temples. And I think Cherokee is the option that has a chance of us not playing this game with a two-front war fifty turns from now.

Just to show that I haven't totally abandoned you.

You definately earned some points with me when you unnecessarily killed off Bacchus' scout.

I'm glad that you settled Cherokee.

[Ituralde]

So what's the deal with La Boheme? No further information?

Yupp, I'm only here for the operas!

[WilliamLP]

La Boheme




La Boheme is possibly the most quintessential Italian romantic tragic opera, and it may be the most performed. It is the true to life ("verismo") story of a poet Rodolfo, barely scraping by in an apartment with a band of starving artists, who has a fateful encounter with Mimi, who is slowly dying of Tuberculosis. They fall in love immediately but she leaves him for a wealthy count who can keep her warm and alive. She returns the next year for a final moment with her true love. Notably, an opera is about the only place where someone with the stature of Pavarotti (and many others) can act as a starving artist, non-ironically!

[MindyMcCready]

I'm going to throw out some possibilities about all this peacenik stuff.

PEACE with BACCHUS
-Bacchus offered peace? So he's got a settler ready and wants a spot. That's probably a no-brainer.
-Setting aside my feelings of Bacchus' 2 attempts at us and the razing of Cherokee.... I don't feel that we should let him settle so easily.
-He's running a very light military. Why should we let him take those south lands uncontested? We remain the world's #1 power through being forced by Retep but we're bypassing our advantage and forced investment.
-Retep's not going to be killed of by Bacchus' anytime soon unless he really exposes his underbelly. Retep's also not expanding so the only thing to dispute in the area is south of Carmen.
-So overall I don't love the idea of peace with Bacchus. He's set us back a city quite recently and now we're going to allow him a nice city location? Not a fan of this deal.
-So what's in it for us (comparatively)?

Peace with Ichabod.
-That can only mean one thing - whip out a settler ASAP and land that desert hill.
-Even if you were to give me complete free reign,..I'd definately want to prioritize that desert hill over any Retep action (I'm still happy about Cherokee first though,....).
-That will be a decent border with Ichabod to be ultimately flilled out with that grass hill 1S of corn. If that can happen, we would have a good chance of expanding into enough land to give Ichabod a run for his money.
-There isn't much that I wouldn't sacrifice in order to achieve that objective while the opportunity exists.
-The stars are aligning for peace with Ichabod. Ichabod's stronger than us, but we have a bigger army that'll soon include catapults. If he doesn't dispute the desert hill too much then I don't see why we couldn't have lasting peace as we both develop and try to compete with the big dogs.
-I have no problem with this deal but hope to land a solid border through it.

RETEP DECLARED ON BACCHUS. Some thougths/possibilities:
A. Retaliatory action. Bacchus' new peace city plant must be close to us and maybe too close to Retep? Bacchus grew a little too comfortable with their cozy relationship. Let's hope.
B. Retep really wants out of the game and is coming to the realization that you're not going to give him the Kerverokian assist.
C. Retep grew a conscience and is trying to balance out the harm on all sides.
D. A fake war to drop our guard. Doesn't look like Bacchus has whipped yet,...
E. A real, ambitious war. Looks like Retep could actually pick up a few cities from Bacchus given the power differential.

A is good, B is good, C is good. E is remote in possibility given that it could extend Retep's miserable existance and is counter to his every action so far.

D,....haven't seen Bacchus whip yet so it seems the most likely but it's too early to tell.

Peace and development are fine,....but my top objectives are to strengthen our border and support a bunch of cities through an army stationed in Carmen/Manon. So these are purely defensive objectives. For now. And, to the surprise of exactly no one, I think that if Retep exposes his underbelly to us I don't think that we should hesitate to take 2 cities with developed land if we get an easy chance.

Are we ready to rename Manon yet? And wouldn't you want to keep the name Cherokee in honour of recently desceased almost brethren?

[MindyMcCready]

La Boheme

Well that certainly seems interesting. You might actually get me to attend an opera before this game is over.