[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Hitru]

And thanks for updating thread, it's a blast to read. I hope you keep up the good fight!

[Ginger()]

I imagine most of your gnp is going into rushbuys, but what are your next techs that you’d like to pick up? I asked that a while ago, just wondering if it’s changed since. Another question, how would you estimate the %winchances of the remaining contenders in this game?

[Miguelito]

Last turn I actually turned up for Laser (for SDI). After that I think Advanced Flight will be necessary; then Spaceship. I have to figure out the order yet, something like Biology-Medicine-Genetics-Superconductors-Fibre Optics-Fusion-Recycling?
Amica is up Biology on us, we have Computers, Composites and a good part of Superconductors (like 2/3?) on them.

If Picc doesn't win I've said it's 80-20 for Amica/us, but that is at least as much my frustration talking as actual analysis. I don't think anybody can challenge Amica after they take us out. Civac seems like the most logical next in line, although he just lost a was against Ichabod/superdeath. Or those, if we go down and they can absorb what we got from Picc.

[Plemo]

I can fully understand your objections. The rule to declare war arose from a necessity, since with the money bug arbitrarily large sums can be generated in simultaneous games within a round from nothing, if two people cooperate. Here, the possibility doesn't exist for now, though I imagine Ramk can also set the timer for forced peace to 0.

With Picca's account balance above 0, no gold seems to have been created out of thin air so far.

[Miguelito]

Hi,

I was taking part of decision and I can say it was tough one to do and I definitely see your point of view. And I'm sorry I did not say so earlier, don't want you to feel the way you are. Sometimes I feel we should open up more on this forum and talk more openly.

I agree that strike is complete joke for him but there were also some points that made us go to this direction in ruling. But we definitely as a community should either mod strike to be more severe or discuss how we treat this in future. I laid down few extreme examples in lurker thread which IMO show that we need some decision.

Thanks.

I feel a bit silly about it, but that acknowledgement matters. I also have to admit that maybe I am not always successful in separating my annoyance with the ruling from my ire over Amica's behaviour.

Oh look, I found them in pindi's CK3 thread!

For what it's worth, all grievances aside I still very much enjoy playing the turns, and look forward to each. The puzzle of breaking through Piccadilly's defense has been very fun (although he has kept the upper hand so far), and the situation with Amica in the east, where on the one hand I am now trying to extort diplomatic favours (resources, gold) in exchange for doing their dirty work, while at the same time a war can break out at any time over their invasion of Lazteuq and Charriu, is pretty interesting. And it is a a lovely empire, even if not anymore the most powerful on the map. So that is why I have been so reluctant to flip the table on Amica, however much they'd deserve it.

I can fully understand your objections. The rule to declare war arose from a necessity, since with the money bug arbitrarily large sums can be generated in simultaneous games within a round from nothing, if two people cooperate. Here, the possibility doesn't exist for now, though I imagine Ramk can also set the timer for forced peace to 0.

With Picca's account balance above 0, no gold seems to have been created out of thin air so far.

what a nightmare

However I think the present situation - one player at war with 2, one of whom gets a treaty for gpt and then the other continues to conquer cities, making the payment unsustainable - is not that unlikely to occur again in the future, and I feel it is pretty problematic (as I've argued).
As an advance on the next turn report, Picc is in fact out of gold as of this turn, and running deficit:





Apparently he is still able to generate maybe half the payment by himself, if you substract the culture? Maybe 2/3 even. Fwiw he had >1500 in the bank as of last turn, so he spent what he had left in order to get into strike asap, as predicted (details later).
So the payment was sustained from turn 240 to 243, meaning that Picc gets 4 turns of peace with dubious merit (he only needs to survive until and including 247), and Amica gets up to 6 turns of gold from the magic money tree (partly), unless we manage an earlier elimination.

Btw I have to blame myself a bit for Picc even sustaining his economy for as long. I should really have committed more to holding Silent (shrine/Ethanol HQ). Instead I just reconquered it repeatedly and left only a token defender. That did rid the city of gold multiplier buildings (importantly Wall Street on the first iteration), but he could still reconquer it every turn and rake in the 500 or so base gold (a market has still survived I believe). Likely enabled him that way to rush another nuke . Otoh I'm not sure we would even have had enough on the transports; he might as well just have wiped a large stack with CR artillery and MAs. As I've said before, if I were to do this invasion another time I would put a lot more weight on the northern flank.

[klops]

If Picc doesn't win I've said it's 80-20 for Amica/us, but that is at least as much my frustration talking as actual analysis. I don't think anybody can challenge Amica after they take us out. Civac seems like the most logical next in line, although he just lost a was against Ichabod/superdeath. Or those, if we go down and they can absorb what we got from Picc.

80-20 doesn't sound good, but its probably exaggerated. From hammers vs beakers to hammers vs bread...
Tough decisions for the last tactics vs picc and the general situation around amica, good luck with those.
But since you mentioned civac and ichabod (or others), that could make it even more complex after you defeated picc. What would they do if it comes down to "you or amica"? I don't know but there is a good chance that they support the one with higher "moral standards" and some fuzzy ideas about "deserving".


Generally, one hell of a game! Thanks again for detailed reporting.

[Miguelito]

Mind that Amica with Kremlin gets 45 base hammers per whipped pop. Meaning that if they whip a size 10 city for 2 pop they get 90 base hammers at the cost of 37 food, and after multipliers that's 180 hammers that don't show in their Mfg. And Roosevelt is just incredible for this kind of economy, with cheap forges, factories and courthouses to make cities become productive lightning fast. I don't know how much happiness is affecting them, but the ceiling is high without WW. The one problem they have is that outside of whipping multiplier buildings or supporting specialists they have no means of converting food to commerce really (O should check if they're in Rep).

I can only hope civac and Ichabod/sd stay neutral. If civac declared it's pretty much game over, and Ichabod (and Frozen!) could try for cheap expansion into former Picc, which I could not even really be mad at. (Frozen/Dulland have refrained from kingmaking against Picc, so I'd expect them to not go against us. I have rather fresh fish/fish offers from both, and I how they go for another round against each other. But I don't think they could do anything meaningful against Amica even if they wanted, outside of directly defending our territory, which would a also be viewed as kingmaking.

[Miguelito]

turn 244 & 245 - just 2 to go   !


turn 244 starts with a little surprise:


to be clear, he went into anarchy for turn 243 for that. Smart move, as he had a size 19 city left, which means another nuke, and what else matters at this point? He made sure to spend all of his gold before revolting though. Spoiler: on another nuke (as we'll see in turn 245).

We take Katsina another time (after losing a Modern Armour duel first )




Burnt this time, as we'll have no more transports sitting around, and coastal cities are liabilities anyways with regards to the upcoming Amica war.

Now the juicy part. To recall, on t243 I had placed 5 nukes in our most advanced inner sea positions. Accordingly Picc spread out his fleet. Of course I would have liked to eliminate it altogether, but he's not dumb, and at least that meant that he could leave only limited reinforcements in range of Stony Lake:


However his setup is pretty nice. Only the forward fleet can reinforce the city itself, but all of the others can attack the island tile with the workshop. The city itself is only covered by 5MGs, an HA and a skirmisher, and the ICBM of course still blocking incoming paratroopers. I bombarded the forward fleet down, but had not quite enough guided missiles to eliminate it, lacking 2 or 3 (and of course the galleons would come last). So nuke time had come:


The damaged fleet was sunk entirely, good.
I present Amica with the bill:


I would have liked to demand more, but that was what was on offer, so gotta take what's available.

I was also curious and wanted to know if I had spent a nuke to sink empty galleons, so I did some accounting:


The infantry unit was on the hill by Zaria. That should be 4-5 units, not bad. The hammer trade is worthwhile even, but we don't have enough nukes on hand to destroy all of his hammers in slightly favourable trades, so the result is a mixed bag.
But it had a strategic purpose of course, and I sent in the boys:



Fast forward to turn 245, and Piccadilly has killed them, off boats:


It is possible that a few more would have been enough. Oh well. I killed the 4 galleons with planes and guided missiles, to sink at least the 4 victorious units left on them. That leaves Spiro isolated, but it doesn't matter as much anymore, because breaking through the canal after turn 245 our transports don't reach his western cities in time anymore.

In the north our big stack keeps advancing, and at the end of the turn I offer two tasty targets for Picc's ICBM:




In fact I think Wounded Knee had 2 nukes even? Tactical nukes consistently die in my tests when hit by another nuke, with very few exceptions, as do guided missiles. The big stack would end up terribly battered, and probably only avoid a complete wipe due to his lack of hitters. So he could cause us much pain here, but he kept the ICBM in place. Having killed the paratroopers, it protects Stony Lake for another crucial turn.

We can still be top GNP:


But it's for all the wrong reasons . We were running a considerable amount of wealth builds, for the purpose of rush buying more nukes.

New turn 245 and we have researched Laser, and are overflowing from Apollo Program:


Sadly not quite enough to one turn it.

In Mali our stack is in range of its next targets now:


However we are much in danger. There is a new nuke in Kumbi Saleh (bought with Picc's remaining gold t243) and in Takedda (4S from Tadmekka ). The "N" signs show their combined range. That is bad news for the citizens of Gao and Tadmekka though: 


With the nukes looming, we can't garrison those cities effectively (we probably would not want to either way, because it would take away too many units from the forward stack). And we absolutely do not want for Picc to take them back, because that new city is vital:


I had been airlifting in workers and hiding them on boats for a couple of turns now. So now we have officially broken through into the inner sea, great! There is still the issue of the nuke in Takedda blocking the sea for our fleet though. In a comical moment, I find myself worrying that if he strikes Zaria he can even hit the nuke that is still there, so I should probably pull it out, until it dawns on me, slowly, that I can do the same:


Not quite in range, but tests show the whole radius being equally vulnerable:


Now nuclear shelters actually are capable of protecting nukes effectively from getting nuked themselves. Here we have one of our own in Angola:




None as far as I can see in Takedda. So off it goes:




Great result!

This is our position at the end of the turn:


On each of the X signs we have a cruiser with a tactical nuke loaded. Another one is in Zaria. Picc has a fleet of 15 battleships just out of reach. Our big land stack is on the tile 2NW from Bilma. I fully expect Picc to nuke us with the ICBM this turn, somewhere. He will see that we have Laser and might expect us to 1 turn SDI, which we would if someone with an actual plan was playing . Also holding Stony Lake is less relevant for him now that we are in the inner sea, although he might as well move his palace there on the last turn (I am somewhat prepared for that scenario, but he has outplayed me before). My preferred option would be to be hit right on top of the selected carrier. That way our nukes would survive. The units on the transports usually survive mostly, even though badly damaged, and I have a supermedic on board to make up for it over the interturn (assuming he survives ). I have tried to make that his target, with another carrier placed NW. We'd lose most of the planes at a bad moment but something has to give...

This turn's major :

• Not having a nuke on one of the missile cruisers, from where it could neutralize the one in Kumbi Saleh . Instead they are all positioned around Stony Lake for maximum overkill, as I had not planned to nuke something from a boat yet this turn.
  
• In a classical post-2am brainfart, I moved all the warships sitting at the entrance of the Spiro canal away, in order to move around the continent or eastwards. So now in case we can open the canal next turn by taking Stony Lake somehow, there will be no ships to sail through. The transports in fact don't matter, as they would not get anywhere, but the missile cruisers and destroyers may yet have .
  
• After the success with setting up the canal city, I had the idea of building a fort NW of Zaria, then going through with the 6 move transport so it could just surprise hit Stony Lake next turn. I even went so far as to dry rush a worker for the purpose (which you may have wondered about). Minor details I forgot: a) the fort takes longer to build on desert so there will not be enough workers and b) Zaria is in revolt so we won't have culture on that tile . Sometimes I hope that these at least serve to confuse Piccadilly, because he may assume some great strategy behind my dumb moves.
  

Over to Amica. They had accepted our demand on turn 244, and also a few free resource deals i requested:


(You see us sending uranium)
So I went with the invoice for the Takedda nuke:


That was all that was on offer. I read this as Amica intentionally running minimum surplus so I can't pester them with more demands . Should have asked for the 50 gold as well.

In the eastern sea the situation is tense:


I placed that mini fleet there on turn 244, upon which they retreated all boats into the city, but refrained from taking mainland cities of Laz's. On turn 245 I retreated a bit. They don't want to declare because they want us to not let Picc win, I don't want to because I am addicted to Mining resoruces. But on turn 247, if we are successful in Mali, this will all blow up. Their power is immense, so I expect an immense fleet somewhere just out of sight.

I got a view of the fleet by Mali:


This has potential to become a big issue. They have OB with their best buddy Picc, so after they don't need us any longer they can unload whatever army and annihilate us, unless we do something about it. Ideally raze their ports.

This is pretty neat by Amica btw:


I usually consider West Point good for commandos only, if you can get there. But here they are producing 10XP ships by the dozen (with vassalage). I reiterate my lamentations for not having picked theocracy when I could.

Piccadilly is curious what's up apparently, and does not seem to think that he needs quite every man:



Finally, a bug report. I can't build the space elevator anywhere.


This city is roughly on the equator. I have tested on other toroidal maps and it was possible, but here something is wrong. Would it be ok for me (or somebody else) to PM Charriu for a possible fix? Given that we have the monopoly on the tech it is a bit of a disadvantage to not have it available. Although of course we might not even build it in the end, need to see yet how the timing works out.

Rival worst GNP at the end of my turn: -801

[Miguelito]

Sigh. Amica really wants me to end this game:


And since they know no shame:


I am somewhat inclined to return it and then stab them in the back, but I fear we need to keep the moral high ground, for when we lose the actual game...

Here's my response:




Along with all of their gold and gpt for uranium, because I threw another nuke at Picc. Does that send a clear message (added more ships afterwards)?
They researched Advanced Flight. We'll have to answer in kind, but will be slower of course. Getting rid of those islands will be extra important in that light.

turn's not finished.

[klops]

...and sweet pictures of nukes and paratroops! Lurkers tend to love these