[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Hopefully the tanks are ready in time. I think Ichabod will take a turn or two to consolidate after finishing off his sector of Egypt, perhaps even push on Venice first. So we probably have 3-5 turns, but obviously can't count on that. Meanwhile, Woden's rapid progress shows both the power of bombers and why it's important to push through the initial stages of a war. It takes a while to build an army in Civ VI, meaning once you lose your starting forces you often collapse quickly. Woden needed about 5 turns on the borders to chew through Kaiser's forces, then he is taking a city a turn, even more quickly than I thought.

I wonder if there's lessons to be learned from that? When we lose Blackhawks, maybe we try to keep our new forces back and try to put something together possibly even at Kings? That gives up the capital, but if we fling our guys in before they're ready we'll lose the capital anyway, AND then get rolled at Kings, while if we hold back we might buy a few turns to stand at the river? I dunno. There's no good choices for the military weaker power.

That said, we aren't actually substantially weaker than Ichabod yet, and unlike him we can focus everything at the front. He's got to keep at least SOMETHING back for suboptimal, and if he leaves himself glaringly open to Phoenicia then when their alliance expires (when does that happen?' The gossip screen should give a clue), then Woden will be sorely tempted ot backstab to essentially seal the win.

Kaiser has a lifeboat settler out, but he'll be eliminated whether he has a settler on the map or not, I'm pretty sure. He might be aiming for the Avalanche site and is going to be gravely disappointed when he finds our anti-suboptimal unit plugging the hole.

[williams482]

That's an interesting thought about trying to reset the defenses, and I think there's some logic there. We only want to engage when we have massed forces or can trade favorably against isolated units, so it will be important to remember that suiciding scattered reinforcements after the initial line breaks is a bad idea. Likewise, leaving an elite unit inside a city which will die that turn regardless is usually a poor trade. This is also a point in favor of backing off with our 3rd artillery corps, which thanks to it's inability to move and shoot isn't actually much use as a third row reinforcement unit. Keeping that unit near Blues might be a better call.

I do think this is a time when we can build military fast enough to slow Brazilian forces with reinforcements. Pike and Shot units have an effective price of 83h with the current World Congress resolution and the +50% card in place, cheap enough that our core cities can two turn them. They definitely suck (55 strength, 65 against tanks), but they can survive one hit from most things, and should allow us to at least body block Brazilian units and set up some "suicide trap" kill zones in front of more powerful reserve units. AT Crews are much better (70 strength), but also much more expensive to build (400h, no production card until Rapid Deployment in the late Atomic era), and obviously we'd have to research Scientific Theory/Sanitation/Chemistry first.

Given our approximate parity in military power, I fully expect Brazil to have a spearhead force with units stronger than anything we have (tank/infantry armies and biplanes), but we should have a numerical advantage and fortifications on our side. As long as Ichabod doesn't get bombers or a bunch of additional ground units, I think we can hold the walls at Blackhawks for at least a little while. I was hoping I could break up his air unit advantage with some suicidal cavalry raids, but it turns out that's not really on the table because air units cannot be "caught on the ground" and destroyed by land units the way they could in Civ IV, and will only scatter to other eligible bases if their current residence is pillaged. That's a tough ask for not much benefit, and likely not worth the attempt except in desperation.

Once we have Combustion in the bag, I think the smart tech choice is to push down the Scientific Theory/Economics/Replaceable Parts/Advanced Ballistics path, to unlock machine guns and AA guns. I suspect we can get those in play long before we can build an air force worth a damn, although any honest assesment will reveal that either is far too little, too late to stop Woden, and only relevant against Brazil if we can properly quagmire things until Woden is capable of getting involved in our favor anyway.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Yeah, our only real shot to slow down the Brazilian air force is AA, not an airforce of our own, so now we get the delightful experience of playing the Wehrmacht ca. 1944. Assuming we manage to scrape up some tanks, of course. :P

But our goal, of course, isn't to win, it's just to muck things up and go down swinging, hopefully enough so that we're still in the game with a ramshackle but respectable empire when sub and Ichabod concede. In fact, our resistance will probably play a direct part in how willing Ichabod is to concede, so we've got that to play for. Meanwhile...well, I daren't speculate on what's going on in the councils of state in London (I don't know sub's naming scheme well enough to know his capital's name), but hopefully sub throws in the towel without dragging this on too long.

[williams482]

Turn 228:

What news from Brazil?

No diplomatic messages from that way come. The walls of John Lamarr have suffered some serious damage, and Brazilian scouts appear at our border:



Charley Burke falls to the Punic horde, and the citizens of Isaac decide they don't think to terribly much of their Egyptian rulers anyway.



Said ruler has an offer for us:



Well, this is fairly transparent. Kaiser is giving us a gift of useful things we can use to fight off his enemies once Kaiser himself is dead. I seem to recall some debate over whether this sort of gifting is in the spirit of Realms Beyond or not, but as 1) this is neither technology nor cities being exchanged, 2) we have no shot to win anyway, and 3) we could really, really use that gold for next turn, I'm going to accept it. If that turns out to be a faux pass, these resources are easily squandered.

With extra gold in hand and Combustion arriving next turn, Blackhawks resumes it's cuirassier prebuild, and Blues, Kings, and Stars all return to their max beaker config. I chop the rice tile into Blues, bringing it to pop 12 and 31.6 food of pop 13. I believe the danger on a double chop comes from situations where you chop enough food in one go to grow two population points, which will if left alone grow one pop instantly, grow the next when yields are processed next turn, and lose any remaining overflow. That is not going to be the case here, with a chop yielding 119f and the 14th pop point requiring 152.6f, on top of the 31.6 required to reach 13. So lets give this a try, expecting to come away with 152.6 - (119 - 31.6) = 65.2 more food needed to hit pop 14... and we actually get 64.2 food needed. some favorable rounding there, perhaps, but I'm certainly not complaining. Our beaker rate is up to a clean 146 per turn, and we should have no trouble finishing the job on t230.

We have the ability to call up another emergency, for Woden's capture of Bologna. Again. I don't know why, and I pass because I'm not insane. Now, if this were one of those emergencies which actually granted bonuses, and I thought my non-Woden rivals (suboptimal especially) were sufficiently in tune with things to jump at a chance to gang up on the leader, then this might be worth doing. One of these things gave +2 combat strength and shared visibility to members, nice perks for three inferior civilizations trying to take down the big guy. But under the circumstances, I'm definitely keeping my head down and hoping Woden decides to roflstomp someone a little more threatening than meek little Canada.

Wait a minute. Was Kaiser offering that stuff in hopes of convincing me to move my cavalry at Avalanche?



If so, sorry bud. Your city there would last probably three turns, then Suboptimal really would be able to flip Wild off me if he wanted to. Not budging there. Wild does direct some of those horses I was given into a three turn cavalry though.

I briefly debate sending Ichabod a DoF offer, before concluding that I very obviously should because there are plenty of things I'd rather do than fight a probably hopeless war. I don't know if he'll accept and I will continue to treat the war as inevitable until he does, but why suffer and die unless absolutely necessary?

A followup to that: If Ichabod accepts, and also if he doesn't, should I send Woden an alliance at about the same time, or try to stagger them? forced peace periods expiring simultaneously makes for easier 2-vs-1 alliances, and I'm not sure if that makes it more likely for me to be the weaker partner in an attempted gang tackle, or if I wind up as Egypt 2.0.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Dang, I predicted on turn 218 that I doubted Kaiser would last 20 turns, but the onset of bombers led to him folding even faster than I thought - he barely managed 10, and we'll probably get some ggs Kaiser in the next day or two.

I am pleased that our dogged defense of Bruins paid off - not for us, but by styming the Egyptian invasion Kaiser seemingly abandoned all military adventures for the entire game and instead built things like the Ruhr Valley or Potala Palace (honesty if I were Woden I'd've thought about razing the Ruhr city just to rebuild it in my industrial heartland. Probably insane, because I haven't run the numbers, but man that would have been funny). That killed him when he reached the late game and discovered his only sources of oil were from Canadian conquest (or, bafflingly, Jets, which he never settled even despite his desperate shortages and his ability to kick out a settler as a lifeboat attempt).*

He definitely did a great job building his civilization with a mighty snowball right from the beginning, making excellent use of his Sphinxes and his river production bonus. But I feel like his singleminded-focus on choking us out of any sort of productive land at all, while neglecting his own backyard, which he yielded to Phoenicia, was a grave strategic error in the long run. He somehow contrived to border every single civ in the game by the end, and then compounded his error by failing to use his lead to conquer us (with a tip of the hat to williams' generalship), then further compounded THAT error by abandoning military and building a nice, juicy civ ripe for the conquering, counting on I guess either diplomacy or blind hope to keep everyone else from piling onto him.

Similarly, I think suboptimal being the only contending civ to utterly fail to extract anything at all from Egypt, despite his massive military advantage ~40 turns ago, is going to be pointed to as the reason he didn't win this game. If Sub had flung his military into Kaiser's, as Woden did, and slugged his way through the initial rough turns, with battleship support he -should- have been able to clear Isaac and Ed Mercer, with losses, -especially- when he knew Carthage was also attacking from the other direction.

Ichabod I still think has played the second-best game out of anyone, with only the one really bad misstep leading to a good portion of his empire being burned down. The fact that he survived and has even revived Brazil as a dark horse is a testament to his abilities.

But obviously Woden is winning this game and it's just a matter of convincing suboptimal and Ichabod of that.

*Speaking of, can we spare the production to settle Jets and bring the oil into the fold? I guess if we get peace with Ichabod we can make it happen. It'd be nice just to have another city, even though it'll never pay off.

[williams482]

Kings will pick up a second ring tile adjacent to that oil in (I think) four turns, at which point we'll buy the tile for probably 245g (maybe less if we can put in the discount card). The tile is fourth ring to Bortus and second ring to any possible Jets settlement so I'm not too worried about a snipe, although if Woden decides to sneak a settler down there he could win the resource while I'm slacking. I just didn't think the hammers and pop loss was worth trying to shave a couple turns off the time to acquire that resource, and now that we're this close I don't think I can speed things up any except by buying both tiles (for a combined 405g).

Regarding razing wonders and rebuilding them, it seems they patched that out. I spent a while trying to find Mahabodhi Temple on the map when I was trying to figure out if a diplo victory was something we could dream on, and it was neither present nor in the list of theoretically buildable wonders. I'm pretty sure Ichabod built it, then Woden burned whatever city it was in and destroyed it for good.

Gordon Malloy is a monster city, though, with a ton of mines in range to be boosted by Ruhr. Woden doesn't seem to have a ton of hills in his territory, so building the wonder in one of his megacomplex cities would "only" net him the +20% production plus a few extra hammers here or there. I'll bet he's pretty happy with what he has.

[williams482]

Free to any civ except Canada, that is. Kaiser won't survive the five turn denouncement cooldown.

EDIT: Oh, and we have a DoF anyway. Necessary to convince Suboptimal to give us the cultural alliance. Whatevs.

[civac2]

Why would you need to denounce him?

The DoF (Declaration of Frienship) precludes any military attack? How long does it last?

[williams482]

A Declaration of Friendship lasts 30 turns. It precludes denouncements or declarations of war, and opens up the ability to sign an alliance (which also lasts 30 turns, from the point at which the alliance is agreed to).

I needed a cultural alliance with someone, either Suboptimal or Kaiser, to keep Wild and probably Bruins. Suboptimal refused initially, so I signed a DoF with Kaiser to give me the option of signing a cultural alliance with him (both to actually have the ability to do that if necessary, and to show Suboptimal that I had the ability to do that). Then I offered Suboptimal the cultural alliance again, which he accepted.

I won't know if that DoF was relevant to Suboptimal's decision or not until after the game is over, but it could have been, and given Canada's inability to declare surprise wars (we would need to denounce, wait five turns, and then declare a "formal war"), outright preventing us from declaring war on Kaiser wasn't likely to actually deny us anything.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Why would you need to denounce him?

The DoF (Declaration of Frienship) precludes any military attack? How long does it last?

The reason is Canada's unique "ability", which is also the reason I never proposed to williams backstabbing and taking the free settler. Not out of any scruples towards Kaiser, but because Canada literally can't.

In Civ VI, to declare war, you must first denounce your target, announcing to the world that you hate their guts, and then wait 5 turns before declaring war using a Casus Belli such as a War of Territorial Expansion, a War of Religion, a War of Liberation, etc. The only type of war which doesn't require a denouncement - and the one 99% of player use because it's not idiotic - is a Surprise War, which can be declared at any time outside of a DoF or Alliance. 

Canada cannot be targeted for Surprise Wars, nor can it declare them. :I It also can't declare war on city-states. 

So we literally can't attack the settler without denouncing Kaiser, waiting 5 turns, and then declaring some kind of formal war against him. He'll be out of the game long before we have the opportunity. Early in the game, despite our stronger military, we were also totally unable to conquer the city-states of Antananarivo and Yerevan in our backyard, having to watch Kaiser eat one and Suboptimal eat the other, which caused all the loyalty problems in Wild throughout the game. 

These two "abilities" combine with Canada's total lack of other redeeming features to make it the worst civ in the game. No other civ is as crippled.