[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[shallow_thought]

Canadian Diplomatic victory, just as we all expected?

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

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

These votes are really silly and gamey.

Yes, yes they are. 

The WC is a sort of interesting idea but absolutely horribly implemented. There are far better versions in other games. 

Off the top of my head:

- Impossible to choose what resolutions will come up. Instead, it's a random draw. Why not have civs spend favor to nominate their favorite issues? Who knows! 
- Impossible to check how others civs stand on things like diplomatic victory.
- Impossible to negotiate, even with the AI, over votes, so you are just forced to guess.
- Arcane and byzantine ways of resolving votes, with really weird tiebreakers. Arrow's theorem applies, however. 

On the whole it's an irritating mechanic bolted on top of the game that comes up once every 30 turns and rarely matters even the slightest bit. Worse is when there's an emergency that only affects a few players - you have to do a whole round of interrupting the game for everyone to vote, even those who CAN'T vote, rather than just integrating the WC into your normal turn duties. 

On the whole ti's a mess and I wouldn't miss it at all if removed.

[williams482]

Turn 220:

So, did we make any progress towards our newly discovered hopeless cause?

Not exactly.



Heritage Organization was shut down by Ichabod, Woden, and Kaiser, despite Suboptimal best efforts. This not only denies us a diplo point, but it gives Suboptimal a pretty strong incentive to pursue a more conventional victory route, like eating us. So not great.



Mercenary Companies passed easily. Turns out literally everyone wants cheaper units. In retrospect not a great use of my favor reserves, but I think it made sense at the time.



Diplomatic Victory: Damn you, Kaiser. Damn you.



And finally the World's Fair, popular everywhere except Phoenicia.

And in the end, for our efforts:



A grand total of one diplomatic victory point (because apparently the World's Fair passing doesn't give points). I enjoyed the fantasy, but there is no bloody chance we could steal a victory this way. Certainly not any time soon.

Naval Tradition completes:



Wild and Bruins are both losing Loyalty, Bruins mostly because of starvation. I swap three plains hills (two of them mined) from Bruins to Wild, and reallocate citizens to the wheat, incense, and Commercial Hub. We need one more food here to be food neutral, so our builder in the area spends his last charge replacing the banana plantation while our military engineer begins to railroad towards Kings. Bruins resumes it's B&C project (completes in 3t) and is safely at +7.1 loyalty. Wild is 6 turns away from it's B&C project completing, and sits at -3.2 loyalty per turn before our upcoming policy swap (-1.2 after). It is at 48.5 loyalty overall, suffering the -50% yields malus, but the 20 loyalty from completing the B&C project will bump it back over that line, and from there it should be able to slowly pull ahead completing projects every six turns. Adding back loyalty pressure from the currently-Egyptian cities will hurt, but irrevocably as long as that's a temporary situation.

Suboptimal has a deal for us:



Well, I fully intended to send some vague diplo messages of my own (and will do so still) but this is a puzzle. I'd love to believe it hints at exactly what we want Suboptimal to be after, a cultural alliance, but I can't know that. Some possibly relevant information: There are Wines at Wild and at several English cities in that area, and Wines add gold and food. Any ideas as to the intended message here?

I do accept the offer, and present a counter of my own:



That will most likely draw just as much confusion as Suboptimal's offer to us, but we'll see.

We have completed a frigate at Stars and a privateer at Red Wings, boosting Electricity. We have no plans to build more frigates, so I swap research from Steel to the nearly-completed Refining, to reveal whatever oil sources we may or may not have. We have a bunch of overflow from Naval tradition (how much? I dunno) which we will put into Scorched Earth, currently due in 3. We make a policy swap: Public Works, Press Gangs, and Professional Army out, Natural Philosophy, Limitanei, and Veterancy in.



I went with Veterancy over Chivalry because Blackhawks and Blues should probably get their Encampment infrastructure done sooner rather than later, and Stars needs a lighthouse. There is no production modifier card for siege units, so we'll crank out Bombards while Veterancy is in place, and get out more cuirassiers with the appropriate card later. Of course we do still have some resource shortages there. Kaiser has a stockpile which he can't use, and we don't have a truly urgent need for gold as long as Kaiser stands between us and Brazil. I'm going to offer him 80g for 50 niter, see if that goes through.

Blues starts a barracks, due in 2. Stars starts a lighthouse, due in 4. Red Wings starts a bombard, due in 5, and Kings starts a Catapult, due in 2. Second thought, to hell with buying Niter. I completely forgot we could just build cats if our niter supplies were dry, and they are insanely cheap with that world congress policy in places. Offer rescinded, we'll keep that money to ourselves thank you very much.

The trade route from Red Wings to Foggy Dewhurst finally completed this turn, worth 2 era score for our dedication and the trading post in England. that route is worth 21g, 1 beaker, 1 clef, and one faith, so I restart it. The new Builder out of Kings heads towards Wild, hoping to throw down an extra mine and lumber mill up there before returning to the core. The Blues builder moves towards Stars, intent on a hockey rink and maybe some other odds and ends before returning to Blues. The Oilers builder waits, hoping there is oil to hook up somewhere nearby. With the Barracks on the way to provide another point of housing, I expect Blues to hit pop 12 on t228, at which point it would need 458 total food to hit pop 15. Four food chops would do the job, and spending the 5th to hit pop 16 wouldn't be the worse idea either, same amenity requirements but more yields. Of course the discovery of Oil in the Nubian desert would mandate another Settler out of here, which would change the details somewhat. We'll see about that next turn.

As Chevalier has repeatedly pointed out, the greatest near-term military danger to us is Brazil, who would likely go straight at Blackhawks from John LaMarr. An embarked strike starting at Oilers or Red Wings is also possible, if unlikely. In preparation for those options, I have split my navy to act as a screen towards both coasts (they are in no danger because Brazil has no fleet, otherwise I would hold them back to avoid a first strike) and send all my surplus ground units towards Blackhawks. We will get modern roads next turn, which should help things.

Woden has begun to shell both Kelly Grayson and Ed Mercer, but is keeping his units out of Kaiser's reach. Ichabod has turned his guns on Cassius, but has not advanced further into Egypt except for a few pillagers.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Kaiser's up to 12. Too bad he won't last until the next WC or he could pull off the SoL snipe.

As long as you have catapults in queue, it'll be basically impossible to accumulate niter reserves for any other reason - as soon as you hit the relevant amount the unit will auto-upgrade in queue, something that I found intensely irritating in previous games. I don't know if we need to accumulate niter at all, just something to note.

Let's see...sub's offer is baffling to me. Maybe a "yes I'll take a cultural alliance"? Open borders to signal friendliness? The only trouble with accepting the deal is now we can't offer him open borders as a potential carrot to dangle for a cultural alliance with us, but that's no biggie, I don't think it'd make too much of a difference. Suboptimal has now twice been screwed by the WC, first losing the near-certain capture of Wild last era and now losing his entire tourism base for 30 turns, which is one reason

a)why the WC is stupid and
b)why chasing a cultural win in MP is stupid

Woden should have a comfortable margin to eat Kaiser and decide his next moves now. One wrinkle might be that sub thinks he has an opportunity to resist militarily and we might actually see nuclear warfare in MP, something I thought would never happen.

[Krill]

I dunno, a diplo VC that at its core is based around game knowledge and understanding player psychology sounds awesome. Not commenting on the implementation though.

[williams482]

Turn 221:

Refining completes:



Here are all three of the Oil sources we can stake a claim on:



Well, that's not too bad. Not what we were hoping for either, but we can live with it. Oilers nets us nothing except the Hockey Rink culture and that absolutely critical bit of era score, which I suppose we can also live with. The Builder unexpectedly on that oil tile wastes no time placing a well, and just like that we have +9 Oil per turn, three from that marsh source and six (because Canada!) from Penguins. Fortunate that we settled that site, otherwise flooding would have rendered the tile useless. That would have been infuriating. Not going to lie, I would have really prefered to get more than just a single tundra/snow Oil source, but at least we got something out of this one legitimately powerful ability.

I have moved the Jets pin east one tile to get the Oil into the second ring, instead of the third. Unfortunately that's as close as I can get, the adjacent cities definitely limit our settling options. The Oil is already 3rd ring for Kings, which alleges to pick up the adjacent 2nd ring tile in 11 turns. Unfortunately with the Iron, Ivory, and Silks also second ring of the Jets site, plus no prospect for rapid culture growth, there's no expectation that we could procure the tile without a purchase, even if we settle Jets. Thus, we're left with a choice between constructing a settler (5t build in Blues with the card, 7 without) for a junk city and spending about 160g to purchase the tile, or not building the settler, waiting slightly longer, and spending 245g to buy it. I think I know which of these is going to give a better ROI.

We did get the next round of climate change effects, flooding all coastal lowlands 2 tiles. The only one of those in our empire is that 2f2h tundra deer outside Oilers that we aren't working. The next stage, Phase IV, will permanently submerge all non-city-center coastal lowlands 1 tiles, meaning the pillaged Holy Site and Hockey Rink at Penguins. Meh.

Suboptimal has another deal for us:



I'm going to interpret this as "we want to work together", because I want that to be true and I dunno what else it could mean. I can justify that further, this is an exchange of diplomatic favor, which could be said to speak for itself, and it could be referencing the fact that we just openly voted for something obviously in England's best interest. So I'm just going to run with that. Suboptimal apparently accepted our offer from last turn, which I send again but with two gold on each side. Countdowns!

I have some additional evidence that this was a gesture of good faith: Wild is back in the black! The pressure from adjacent citizens has gone from slightly negative to +4.1, and the English loyalty values on Pearl and Smiler have dropped meaningfully. I think Suboptimal stopped running B&C projects. Not betting on anything until we get that alliance, but I'm very encouraged.

Woden has an offer of his own for us:



This one, I got nothing. 105 whats? Nobody has 105 for their milpower, or any other relevant empire statistic except for Ichabod's wonder score. 105 is the strength rating of Kelly Grayson, but I don't know what we should glean from that. Is Woden asking if he could give us Kelly Grayson to get around loyalty problems? Except that doesn't work, you can't trade a city that isn't out of occupation penalties. Does Woden think Suboptimal will win by culture in 105 turns if we continue to act friendly? I dunno. None of that makes much sense. I rejected the offer just so I could look around at what it might mean, and now that I have done so I remain completely lost.

Research begins on Scientific Theory, now three turns out. I continue on Scorched Earth for another turn, planning to leave both it and Natural History one turn out for eventual policy swaps, then start on Urbanization. By the look of things I have 8 turns (t229) to boost that civic before I would start wasting culture, which is enough of a margin to reach pop 12 naturally and get two builders over there. Micro on that doesn't matter this turn, I'll figure it out later but suffice it to say it involved moving builders towards the city such that they are able to chop marshes between t226 (the first turn we could grow to pop 12) and t228.

Blackhawks has completed a barracks, starts and armory due in 4. I place a mine at Wild and a fishing boat at Red Wings. 

This is slightly deceptive because Suboptimal and Ichabod have had one more turn to accrue GPP than Kaiser or I, but England is still clearly waxing the field in great person point generation. Likely due to those projects they've been running for whatever reason.



Phoenicia and Brazil continue as they were. Kaiser seems to have crunched out a tank army, but that's not going to slow things down to terribly much.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Maybe Woden is signifying something about Kelly Grayson? He's worried about your cavalry there and thinks you'll try to DoF block him or snipe the city when our alliance expires? We obviously can't do either, not as Canada for the sniping and not with only one unit - maybe he just wants us to clear the area so he can operate freely.

[williams482]

That could be. The cavalry pictured actually ended it's turn on the sheep tile 2E of where it is in the screenshot, so it certainly shouldn't be blocking anything.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

also, can I clarify, looking over the last turn's report again, Kaiser has had that unclaimed oil sitting near Jets, while he's been desperately short of modern units, while being invaded by two powerful armies, and has been building sewers instead of one single solitary settler to hook up an extra 3 oil?

Okay.

EDIT: HE LITERALLY HAS ENOUGH GOLD TO -BUY- THE SETTLER, -BUY- THE TILE, AND -BUY- THE BUILDER TO IMPROVE IT IF HE DOESN'T HAVE AN ANCESTRAL HALL SOMEWHERE

I give up trying to understand our opponents this game. They're clearly playing on levels far beyond my own.

[williams482]

Turn 222:

Suboptimal has offered us the same 1 favor for 1 favor swap. I accept, again, and offer the silk deal again now with 1g on each side. Next turn our cultural alliance will expire, and we'll find out if we do, in fact, understand what the other is trying to say.

Cassius and Kelly Grayson have both fallen this turn:



Woden has another puzzler for us:



I accept it, because sure I'll take 10 - 4 = 6 gold, and I can't try to decipher the message here while the trade screen is active because this game's UI sucks. But what does it mean? It does seem likely that Chevalier correctly guessed the meaning of the last message, but this is clearly not annother of the same ilk. Kaiser has now had four cities captured in this war (if we don't count Alara Kittan, which was burned), and he has eight remaining. We have 10 cities, as does Brazil. Is this some kind of threat? Or an offer of a future alliance? I dunno.

We do score a great scientist this turn, the sadly mediocre Alan Turing. Our claim to his services leaves the stronger but far more expensive Erwin Schrodinger (3 random Atomic or Information era boosts, costs 1245 GPP) next on the docket. Currently, Turing can boost one of Combustion, Flight, or Radio. We might be able to boost Combustion (in the unlikely event that Suboptimal left us some artefacts), we definitely cannot boost the other two. I am going to have this guy wait for a bit, at least until we unlock Natural History to see if we can get Combustion without assistance. On that note I switch civics research to Natural History, due in 2 turns (but I'll likely swap off it next turn).

Apparently I royally fucked up some micro at Blues last turn, because that barracks is still one turn (and 8h) from completion. Oops, that's definitely going to slow natural growth to pop 12. Not the end of the world as four chops still leave us with a surplus. I move the Blues builder next to the desert copper hill, that unit will climb it next turn (t223), mine it on t224, move to the marsh on t225, chop on t226, move into Blues on t227, and move to the roaded rice marsh and chop the marsh on t228 (our deadline to avoid wasting clefs). The Oilers builder takes another step closer to Blues. Next turn it will be on the hockey rink pin 1E of Stars, and can place the rink on t224, move to 2NW of Penguins on t225, move onto the roaded marsh rice and chop the rice on t226, move 1SE to the adjacent marsh tile on t227, and chop that marsh on t228. On further consideration, this plan has us making two food chops on the same turn. Food overflow is weird, and losing a meaningful amount renders this entire project pointless. I don't think double-chopping on two turns will cause losses, but I'm not 100% sure and don't want to risk anything. We don't have a pressing need for amenities right now and Stars will not be working a 1f2c tile in the near future. So, the Oilers builder will not build a hockey rink, and will instead make a beeline for that marsh rice so we can chop it on t225, then chop the adjacent marsh on t227. We can throw down the hockey rink after. The Kings builder, not needed for this plan, closes in on the last unimproved jungle tile near Wild and will place a mill on it in two turns.

A quick note on maintenance for armies and corps: corps cost 150% of the maintenance cost for the individual units, armies 200%. Same deal for fleets and armadas. Additionally, corps and armies count as a single unit for purposes of policy cards (conscription reduces the cost of a corps or army by only 1g) and resource maintenance (a tank corp and a tank army both require only one oil per turn). In earlier eras, this would make the decision to combine units a slightly trickier choice, but in our case it's a slam dunk financially and an obviously better use of limited resource incomes. Even a pair of Pike and Shot, the cheapest unit we currently field, cost (4 - 1) * 2 = 6g as individuals, and (4 * 1.5) - 1 = 5g as a corp. Our two pike and shot become a corp, as does our remaining pair of field cannons. This saves us a combined 2gpt.

Our alliance with Ichabod expires in 5 turns (t227). He will be able to attack us immediately because he's in a heroic age and there's no way he didn't take To Arms! as one of his three dedications. On the turn before that, we must have Steel completed and artillery units upgraded or we risk suffering a crippling alpha strike with weakened defenses. We won't have Mobilization for armies until t236ish, but we won't have any non-artillery Oil units unlocked either so we can afford to temporarily support single units and corps that will be merged together down the road. Currently, we have Bombards under production at Kings (2t), Red Wings (2t) and Penguins (1t). We have 1 Niter right now and +6 per turn, so we'll hit 20 on t226, auto-upgrading one catapult in production at that time to a bombard (as happened at Kings this turn). If that is going to be a problem, we can try gifting surplus niter to Suboptimal, who is currently ~50 niter under his resource cap.

We have 1188g right now. On t226 we will likely have about 1428g. Bombard -> artillery upgrades cost 155g with the discount card, catapult -> artillery upgrades cost 315g. upgrading all bombards currently under construction would thus cost 465g, leaving 963g. That's three, with 18g left over. We can buy a catapult corp and a single catapult at Bruins right now for a combined 600 faith. Both units would start with a free promotion, we would want to be careful to make sure they wind up in different armies. That's probably worth doing, and if so those would be the only catapult units we could afford to upgrade. Combined with the three units currently under construction, we could have either three corps or two corps, two singles (which will eventually merge into two armies).

Is it more efficient to be building and upgrading bombards or catapults, given the production discount? A catapult built and upgraded right now costs 60h and 315g, a bombard 140h and 155g. paying an extra 160g to save 80h is a 2:1 ratio, substantially worse than the 1:1 ratio that we'd be looking at without the world congress resolution, but obviously far better than the 4:1 we'd expect to pay purchasing units outright. Of course that's only relevant insomuch as it can be applied in a practical sense, and on further consideration it can't be: the fastest we could complete a bombard that isn't currently in production is on t226 in Penguins, following the bombard due to complete next turn. We need to complete Steel on t226 because Ichabod moves before us and our alliance expires on t227, so that bombard would be auto-upgraded in queue. Except, is that a bad thing? A half-cost artillery unit is only 215h, and that one would be at 149/215 and due to complete on t228. Perfectly useful. Should we be trying to create that kind of upgrade-in-queue situation intentionally, Civ IV style? That would allow us to get our 7th, 8th, 9th, etc artillery into the field faster. To do that we need Niter, and to get more of that we need to make a deal. Kaiser has plenty, and can't use it himself. At one point he was in desperate need of oil, but now he's stockpiled 74 and is building resourceless AT crew units. He has all kinds of gold and apparently no plan to take advantage of it. Nothing I can offer will hold any value for him. Maybe I can buy some with "you wrecked my game" credit?

But, we need to backtrack a bit. We're fully expecting to get smacked by Brazil in 5 turns. I've fallen into min-max mode trying to get as many units as possible over the medium term, and although that's important, it's not the #1 priority right now if we want to defend our lands. We need all of the following:
- as many of the best units we can get, in theater behind Blackhawks on t226
- urban defenses (will complete Steel on t226)
- a corp of the strongest melee unit we can get to buff city defenses, inside Blackhawks on t226

Our entire military excepting our four cavalry (two scouting, two keeping Wild and Bruins loyal) have been filtering towards Blackhawks for the last few turns and will be in position, for all the good muskets and field cannons will do in this fight. Sadly, the strongest melee attacker we can get our hands on is a cuirassier corp (74 strength), already in theater outside Blackhawks. That will bump the city to (I believe) a measly 89 strength. Ichabod is going to crunch through cities with 96 and 99 strength on his way over, so that's not exactly encouraging. Infantry are still 11 turns of research away, and tanks are 10 turns after Steel (although Alan Turing gives us a 1/3 shot at that being just 6 turns). With that plus the gold/hammer ratios discussed above, maybe our best play is just to power through Steel now, finish hard building artillery (plus upgrading the faith purchases), and play the lottery on the Combustion boost hoping Ichabod is slowed enough in eating Egypt that we can upgrade a tank corp or three before he actually attacks us?

If we unlock Steel for next turn, the Penguins artillery will complete on t224 (with 31h overflow), Red Wings on t226 (15h overflow), and Kings also on t226 (14h overflow). Along with the faith purchased catapults, that makes 4 artillery units (2 corps) close enough to get involved in a t227 counterattack, with two more close behind for reinforcements. It also leaves an extra ~500g for tank and/or battleship upgrades. Yes, this is a much better plan. Totally opposite my instinct to exploit the usual meta of upgrades being the most cost effective option around, but that world congress resolution combined with the urgency of our plight really does change things. Additional benefits to this plan: we get the +1h on lumber mills a little sooner, and we look a little spikier a little faster, relevant if Ichabod hasn't yet decided on his post-Egypt plans. Unlikely that will matter, but you never know.

I switch research to Steel, and purchase the two catapults in Bruins:



Some poking around by our scouts reveals little we didn't already know about the deployment and contents of the Punic and Brazilian armies. Kaiser, unsurprisingly, is stretched extremely thin. The only unit likely to be relevant to Brazil's advance in our direction is a roughly half health AT crew army stationed in Talla Keyalli, although hopefully John Lamarr survives long enough to finish the AT crew (single unit, not an army) currently under construction. Kaiser has more troops in position to oppose Woden, but not by much.

Scores: