[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

IF we can manage it, a balloon-driven conquest of an Egyptian city would be delightful. However, probably unachievable. As is regrettably common with Canada since about turn 40 or so. I hate this stupid civilization and it's almost soured me on actual Canada, which is impressive since I'm French-Canadian American myself.

How many baffling diplomatic messages have we sent this game? Kaiser seems to have give up on whatever he was trying to tell us earlier. Perhaps we could offer a trade of, I don't know, culture-generating luxuries plus a gold-for-gold countdown to Woden to signify that we'll want a cultural alliance?

The usual speculation on players having more fun than we are:

1)Kaiser's play has been baffling from first to last. He has never seemed to act with a clear goal in mind - sort of attacking us but making a pig's ear of it, and then apparently just giving up and aimlessly building wonders and infrastructure with the vague hope that if he piled on enough something would come of it? Why is he building sewers instead of tanks (much cheaper with a production card) or AA guns (only 50 hammers more expensive and would help him stop Woden's fighter)? Why did he sink so many hammers into the Potala Palace? Why did he stretch all the way to the borders of Venice in the south and then not-even-turtle in the middle but just sit there and wait to eventually get pummelled? What did he do with all that science he built? Absolute madness. Swap our start position with Egypt and I bet even Canada could make something happen with all that tundra. Although we still couldn't have conquered those city-states. Man, screw Canada.

2)Suboptimal is also baffling, though at least less so. It seems he determined to push for cultural victory, perhaps as a self-imposed challenge with Eleanor. I don't know why he built that massive army 3 months ago and then did nothing at all with it - it was certainly far more than he needed for Geneva. Maybe the Punic navy spooked him, but then he should have built more battleships and not so many cuirassiers. Maybe he intended to invade us all along but then decided it'd be more fun to try and flip Wild...but then why has he resolutely refused to settle the Avalanche site? Maybe he just plain got his nose bloodied by Kaiser and expected Woden to push more aggressively, and changed plans after that. Still doesn't explain his refusal to settle the fertile peninsula until -checks notes- turn 219, or his delight in building irrelevant wonders.

3)Ichabod has played an excellent game strategically, I think, and had he not been cut down to size by Woden earlier I think he'd be the favorite just based on the combination of his level of play with the strength of his civ. He played really well getting Brazil + Sacred Path + Work Ethic, got a little suckered into wonder chasing with his newfound production and was probably caught off-guard by the Carthaginian invasion. Since then though he's made all the right choices - stabilized the front against Woden, raided him and even captured a city, buried the hatchet and is now pivoting against the weak horse of Egypt. Given all that, we can expect him not to make the same mistake as Kaiser and suboptimal and will come straight for us once Egypt is wrapped up. That will be a fun fight! I expect he can win, eventually, but we can perhaps make a fight of it long enough for Woden or suboptimal to decide the game.

I'll be interested to see if Ichabod pivots south against the tempting and cut-off Cassius, or if he pushes deeper into Egypt for a bigger share of the pie. Personally, I'd get greedy and drive for the better cities further in, knowing I could conquer Cassius at my leisure. I need as big a piece as I can to have a hope of challenging Woden down the road. Obviously also suboptimal would be my best friend in the future, so, uh, I probably shouldn't have denounced him.

4)Woden has played overall the best game here. He made good use of Phoenicia's strengths to expand while Kaiser was tunnel-visioning on tiny Canada, and he's done a very good job in his last series of wars, pivoting from Kaiser to Ichabod to back again. Like I said above, his earlier attack on Ichabod probably saved hte game for everyone else, and the only real mistake I can point to is, again, too many wonders and not enough units earlier, otherwise he shouldn't have stalled out in Brazil and the game would be over by now. His military power is holding steady so I think he learned from his mistake. He should wrap up Egypt fairly easily (will Kaiser last even 19 more turns? I put the over/under at 15, place yer bets), and then has his pick of targets. He'll definitely keep rolling while he has the momentum and the units to do so.

5)Canada has played a magnificent game, clearly far superior to this babbling, bumbling band of baboons, and has only been at the bottom of the scoreboard for literally the entire game entirely due to our enemies and the universe itself conspiring to keep our Glorious Tundra Utopia from ascending to its rightful glory.

[williams482]

That's a great thought on sending bizare, incomprehensible trade deal messages to our opponents. I'm going to try to send suboptimal a luxury trade countdown, because I think our odds of him accepting the alliance are higher if he has time to think about the advantages first, instead of the likely gut response of "you're just trying to save Wild," which is incidentally completely true.

As for Woden, if (when) Suboptimal does reject the offer and we make an alliance with Kaiser, I'm going to try sending Woden a culture luxury exchange with gold equal to Kaiser's city count, and send it again every time Kaiser loses a city. With luck, he'll see the pattern, put the pieces together, decide he doesn't want to just eat us like he almost certainly should, and save Isaac for last anticipating an alliance offer from us when Kaiser is destroyed.

In practice, we'll get to read some extra expressions of bafflement in their threads after the game, so it's basically win-win.

[williams482]

Turn 219 World Congress:

Well I've made a minor error here. Had I realized this was the world congress turn, Bruins would be running a B&C project, and Wild would have taken back several production tiles to speed it's own along. As it is, we're going to take a real hit next turn when our +5 loyalty wears off, certainly falling below 50 total loyalty. Hopefully we can recover relatively quickly.

Here are the options for this turn's session:






This seems like a good time for some crazy nonsense.

Heritage Organization: If Suboptimal is actually trying for a Cultural Victory, he'll go all in on boosting Artefact tourism, and he'll win unless Kaiser decides to snub him. My singular objective is to survive without losing cities, I'll be perfectly happy to fall to Suboptimal's Quixotic culture push if it means I'm alive and intact ~100 turns from present (as staggeringly improbable as that appears right now). I'd also like to signal my intent to cooperate with anything Suboptimal wants to do that won't cost me cities, and I'd love to rack up a few diplomatic victory points from picking winners, on the 0.000000001% chance that is somehow relevant to this game. So, let's get some artefact tourism! +1 to that.

Sidenote: "Landscape", "Portrait", "Sculpture", and "Religious" are all separate categories here, for some completely inexplicable reason considering those are all types of artwork that come from artists and are already plainly inferior to artefacts because they are almost impossible to theme. Another example of finely balanced mechanics here. 

Mercenary Companies: This is an easy one (famous last words...). Kaiser desperately needs units, and if he's got a clue he'll realize that him being able to build them twice as fast makes him much harder to conquer, even if his opponents can also build units twice as fast. He should dump every bit of favor he has into passing this. If Suboptimal has leftover votes he'll probably try to increase costs in some currency, Woden and Ichabod could probably go either way because they (should) know the big armies they have already give them a relative advantage over everyone that will last longer if units get more expensive, but also that they will not be able to win with just the units they have. So I dunno, but I think the -50% towards production costs is likely to pass. Good, because we really want it to pass! I'm dumping as much favor into here as I can. +6 towards cheaper military units.

Diplomatic Victory: I do not anticipate anyone is going to put much into this vote in either direction, so carefully placed my freebie plus one extra from my 10 remaining diplo favor can probably swing this. Two directions I can go here: swing for the fences and put two votes on myself, netting three diplo points (2 inherent, +1 for voting for the winner) if nobody else puts multiple points on themselves. The only civ that's as desperate as we are with regards to actual win expectancy is Kaiser, who has a ton of favor to burn. The alternative is, therefore, to put my freebie vote on Kaiser, bank on that tipping the balance, score my +1 for voting correctly, and save the 10 favor for a future vote which might matter more. Right now I'm feeling go big or go home, so lets bet on ourselves to get slightly closer to a victory type our opponents will never allow us to win anyway. +2 to Canadian Diplomatic Victory Points!

World's Fair: This is a competition that requires zero effort to compete in. You get points for passive great person point generation. We will 100% lose that competition, and we aren't about to throw a bunch of production into district projects trying to compete in it. However, I suspect it will be relatively popular because of it's passive nature, and it's existence gives Suboptimal just a little more reason to accept and maximize benefits from a cultural alliance. So we're in! +1 towards the World's Fair.



Sidenote: I have no idea how many diplomatic victory points I or any other player has. That seems like extremely relevant information towards making a decision here, so obviously you can't be showing it to the players or anything like that. This does give our preposterou Hail Mary victory plan a much better (minuscule) shot of success, however, as our opponents are much less likely to vote us down if they are unaware we are close to winning this way. Just to be clear, we aren't, and we still won't be even if all of these votes go our way. But we can dream, because hell if we've got anything else to go on here.

Anyway, we'll see how that works out soon enough.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

let's sneak to 16 points and then build the Statue of Liberty at Penguins while sub Woden and Ichabod pound each other

[williams482]

That... could maybe possibly work. Like 2% chance level of possibly work, which blows any other chance we have completely out of the water.

Statue of Liberty is a complete garbage wonder. It costs 1240h, grants two four diplomatic victory points, and makes all cities within 6 tiles 100% loyal. It doesn't even give the two settlers it used to, removing essentially any chance of anybody ever wanting to build it in this game. It would be a great help to Wild, except that Wild isn't within 6 tiles of any tile we could build it on so who cares.

Penguins is the perfect place for something like this. I don't think any of the other civs have laid eyes on the city with the exception of Suboptimal (via boats and then shared alliance vision) and maybe Kaiser (who knows where his early scouting warriors went). Both the Fish and Crab tiles adjacent to the harbor should be eligible spots. Penguins also has the absolutely critical component here: a whole bunch of chops. Currently within it's borders (or tiles we could swap over, and obviously would) we have four forests, one stone, and one deer. there's also a third ring tundra deer forest we could purchase and clear. Cutting all that down right now with Magus' assistance would be worth 1,376h, which will increase further with extra techs unlocking and the +15% wonder card. We can absolutely without a doubt build this thing in the five turns it would take for another civ to realize what we are doing, denounce us, and declare war.

The hard part, then, is getting to 16 diplo points. If we're very lucky here, and very lucky in the next session, we might get close. I think we're probably sitting on 3 or 4 right now. Everything going perfectly here nets us 6, next session probably gives us a best case outcome of 6 more, but realistically it will probably take a third session to get us over the line. Of course realistically we're stone dead long before that so I'm going to ignore that bit.

Hooray for false hopes! I suddenly have some.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It only gives 2, not 4? Damn. They nerfed even that?

[williams482]

No it definitely gives 4. Says that explicitly here, where I was reading from, and I booted up the civilopedia just to double check: 



I don't know what got into me there. Too much hope, it's breaking my brain.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Okay, so IF we c an somehow survive through two more Congresses (counting this one?) and IF we have 4 points already and IF we can get 6 in both and IF no one wins, we could MAYBE chop out the Statue of Liberty and sneak a "the enemy's gate is down" win? Canadian Diplomatic victory, just as we all expected?

C'mon, lurkers, admit you all want to see that happen.

[williams482]

And uhh, hey, before anyone else gets their hopes up, this is what the diplomacy leaderboard looked like entering this turn:



Let that be a sordid reminder that I am not nearly as good at picking which resolutions the others will support as I apparently think I am. 

Eeking out a win on this is possible. Unfortunately, it will not happen in the next 30 turns, and the absolute best case scenario would involve winning multiple emergencies/scored competitions on top of maxing out diplo points in both this World Congress session and the next one. A more likely scenario involves pulling in a majority of possible points over the next three sessions and supplementing with a few emergency votes. All of those scenarios require that nobody in the next 30 or 60 turns manages to:
1) kill us
2) figure out what we are hoping to do
3) win in any other way, including a concession (which we might be able to get away with blocking, but only if we're confident we won't be a military target of the presumptive winner)
4) start chasing their own diplo victory and build the Statue of Liberty themselves

Tall order, but that's not much different from what we were fighting for before Chevalier brought up the possibility of a Statue of Liberty play. I guess we proceed with plan "don't die," and hope the diplo chips fall in our favor eventually.

[civac2]

These votes are really silly and gamey.