[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

revolt to classical republic instead of oligarchy for a few turns at poliphil just to get the 3 amenities we need to keep the third city happy long enough to get the holy site done on time??? hahahaha no way, man, that's way too desperate, there's no way that'll work.........unless....................

the sad thing is, this would actually be a pretty awesome time for an ilkum builder wave if we didn't have all these giant problems...

you guys know i straight-up haven't put one turn of production into a builder yet? i only bought the one that won the chev race by pathetically begging for TAD's gold and then blowing it all on chops

[ljubljana]

um, wait, how much does a missionary on turn 42 of the game cost, anyways? i know the cost scales over time but this is, like, a good 60 turns before i've ever thought about buying one before if we can get a missionary for closer to 100 faith and convert TAD's current cities, and ALL of their future cities via free spreads, to crusade RIGHT NOW i think that could be worth doing

[williams482]

I believe the first missionary is 100 faith, always, with cost scaling up for each subsequent missionary (not with tech/civic progress).

Opening with a non-Oligarchy government isn't crazy as long as we have the ability to swap into Oligarchy before either fighting Thrawn or building Ancestral Hall (Or I guess Audience Chamber, I'm still just blown away that the devs decided to nerf the obviously inferior GP building by tacking on that -2 loyalty debuf in a patch).

[ljubljana]

oh really! if that's the case, maybe we actually should get a missionary right now! is that crazy? the potential to get the crusade religion into ALL of TAD's cities with just one missionary purchase via free spreads seems really strong, especially if 60 turns from now we end up stacking cross-cultural dialogue or tithe (chev may need DotF now) on top of it. the window to do so is also going to rapidly close as TAD founds the next two cities and starts growing up to size... hmm hmm hmmmm......

[ljubljana]

YUP



371 milpower on turn 43 = 11 longships, exactly as the math says should be possible with a dedicated spam plan. even if there are no more behind them, these two can take any city with multiple access points, which is all of them other than the capitals! or they can raze mogadishu which we have not even a prayer of defending before they can get there. shit....

and just LOOK at their science and culture numbers, and this is WITHOUT pingala as they have just four civics discovered. i guess that's what happens when norway gets 4 size-3 cities for free like this......

note also that hong kong has spawned a galley at the worst possible time, likely killing our otherwise quite nice-looking attack, at least until we can get crusade and japan ships up here. but maybe that's for the best as it looks like we need portugal's ships in the south now :|

do i have to swap hakuho to galley too, even though that kills monumentality? gotta think about this....

[ljubljana]

well, i suppose the sober, rational response looks roughly like this:

step 1: assume chev/inc are in always war mode with them from here on out, as they must be to have any chance to survive, and will take at least some of the heat off us. they are not at war with thrawn yet but clearly that can't last. maybe we should pre-emptively DoW on this guy, honestly, just to send a signal to Chev - though i do NOT want to boost DT for them, i am not too sure we can avoid that if we're aiming to contest moga...
step 2: abandon hong kong for now, which we cannot take anyways with a galley in there, and try to use these ships to contest whatever gains we can in our sphere of influence, which in this case means Mogadishu. it's quite scary to advance our ships as they are exceedingly vulnerable to being surrounded and killed if there are more longships in the fog. but we are going to have to try to block Mogadishu somehow. if they only have these two ships in the area we might be able to do it, and we do know that some of that 370 milpower is at home eating CS, and some of it is in Indonesia eating THEIR CS. if they can kill mogadishu and start pumping longships from there too, while doing the same in indonesia, that will be a truly hopeless-looking situation...
step 3: get that crusade missionary of course
step 4: once TAD is 3t away from state workforce, i think we have to take Victor so we can promote him for the +5 at TAD's capital. and thank GOD i took him myself for the +5 at Terunofuji which will come online JUST in time to help with these longships if they come that way.
step 5: pretend there will be a long-term. by that i mean still attempt to hit monumentality with hakuho's settler and PP by not giving up at vatican city, which we need to pump more boats anyways. then japan needs to get its ass in gear and send boats over to help as quickly as humanly possible, which unfortunately is not that quickly :| but they are 5 turns from teru/asa if they head that way and we HAVE TO block them if that's the case so i think asa stays on the boat for now and I will just assume the VC attack will succeed....

[ljubljana]

i will play this turn, but after that i am debating holding the turn until TAD gets back. situation seems too critical for me to make major decisions on his behalf.

[ljubljana]

Turn 43 - Portugal + Japan

Here's my final deploy in Portugal:



Unfortunately, I messed up quite badly with the injured galley in the west. I should have moved east or kept it in place to retain some prospect of hitting HK if its galley moves away... this western move accomplished nothing except putting us in quad range

I didn't farm the rice this turn to keep all four of TAD's builder charges around. If they feel upon their return that we need to use all four of them on galley chops, I want to at least have left them the option to do so...

In Japan:



Well, shit. 150 faith, but it does now seem mandatory as soon as we can get it, which is in 4 turns. At the very least, I do not THINK Terunofuji is in danger if thrawn heads straight there, as the new galley (and thank GOD we swapped off the shrine for that) will fight at 40 strength with Victor, competitive with thrawn's boats. Until they hit Oligarchy, of course... At least that will take a little bit of time even with 12cpt - since they still lack State Workforce, the soonest they can get there without further acceleration is 7 turns from now. They could speed that up with Pingala, but frankly I'd be shocked and relieved if they did that - surely they can't pass up Victor in the capital for Embolon longships every 2 turns...

At least the Portugal dark age + Japan golden age plan is looking vaguely feasible, which is good because I don't think we have much choice now  I do not think any of these ships can be spared for scouting, especially the precious promoted ones - we need to throw everything we have at thrawn as quickly as possible or this game is over. That means Hakuho campus, Asa GP, and pray we can take and hold VC long enough to get to PoliPhil...

Here is the situation at VC, which I do think now needs to be taken successfully or it's GG:



If we do this right, we will go from 1 Embolon galley to 3 while adding an exceedingly strong city that can 3t galleys once we get builders over here. Then we must race back home before thrawn burns down our core. Figure 3 turns to take the city, 3 to make it home - that's just barely in time to turn the tide at a potential Battle of Asanoyama. And, um, this is not a fun thought to have, but if thrawn torches Terunofuji because we wasted time here, that is in fact a positive trade for us as VC is a much stronger city  But if VC ALSO spawns a galley between turns to kill our attack, I think I might cry :|

Foreign policy: Banzai finishes two RNDs! That's, uh, good for the odds of someone other than thrawn winning, I guess? A lot will depend on how Woden/Banzai break in this game - if they are aggressive and throw everything at Norway ASAP while also being close enough to make a difference, maybe thrawn can be beaten down. But if they knife us in the side at Asanoyama, this thing is over. I am pretty confident Woden knows that would spell the end of the game, though, so hopefully they too are prepared to do what they can to confront this menace.

oh and thrawn has Shipbuilding, so ocean tiles are officially no longer safe. Grim tidings at Mogadishu, that is. After looking at the position a bit more closely, I'm not sure we can save the city even if thrawn just has these two longships - they can swap between the ocean and the one tile next to the city center and keep up the pressure for a long time by promoting the second galley. Also, they can do something else that no other civ can do, which I didn't fully appreciate until just now - use coastal raiding to pillage farms to keep their ships healthy. So while Japan and Phoenicia typically need a third ship in their wolfpacks to make CS conquests reliable and robust to outside intervention (contrary to my hopes during testing), Norway can indeed make do with just two, and can spit them out faster than anyone else can, as well. Before the game I thought Norway would be tier A1 at city-state rushing with Japan and Phoenicia close behind at A2; now it looks like Norway is in S tier all by itself.

Let's see what thrawn does next turn. If I were them, I would probably not rush things by going right for our cores - it seems better to take Mogadishu and HK first, build up to around 10 longships here while crushing CMF on the other side of the world, then try to roll us over. But I could be wrong and they might try to strangle us before we can get Crusade up and running. These two longships, we can handle, I think, but if there are 4 more behind them I will be much less confident. Until we have PP + Militrad + Victor up and running, they will have a window where they can outfight us quite badly on a ship-to-ship basis while they have both but TAD and I are still crawling towards PP, and if they are at our throats en masse by that time, we may not be able to hold them of.

But god, what are we really supposed to do against someone with 15 population and 3 free monuments on turn 43, which is what thrawn has? Rushing city-states is just THAT powerful, especially when you have four in strong terrain right next to you at the start like this. I feel like we tried our best to rush them ASAP ourselves, but TAD got tied down with barbs activating before we even had a galley out, and I wasted time racing Chevalier, and we just didn't end up scouting the extra pair until it was too late to pull off the same kind of snowball thrawn has accomplished. Looks like going for religion AT ALL was a mistake - we were in a race with thrawn for Hong Kong and Moga starting turn 1 of the game, and that galley spawn at HK plus thrawn's contact this turn combine to indicate that we just did not get it together in time to win those races. It is really dispiriting to learn that our team went what seemed like overboard spamming galleys in the early game and it was still not enough, with the only non-losing move being to spam even MORE galleys at the expense of EVERYTHING else.

Not that I intend to do anything other than go down fighting, of course. In addition to appearing somewhat erratic and willing to make stupid decisions to win religious races, a dead-hand "don't tread on me" strategy for future games also demands spiteful defiance to the end of time against any would-be conquerors, even if the best we can realistically hope for in so doing is to throw the game to Woden/Banzai

[ljubljana]

Trying to decide how badly I misplayed at HK... On the one hand, interference at Mogadishu is likely not realistic, and our only chance to take HK is RIGHT NOW before thrawn scouts it as there is zero possibility of doing so against longships. But on the other hand, we need the galley to move out for that to be possible, and even if we do take the city there is no holding it against longships until we get Crusade in place, which can't happen for 10 turns or so, plus if TAD's ships try to take the city in a few turns and there are longships nearby they will be trapped and annihilated. But perhaps it's better to gamble on that than to allow thrawn to burn it unopposed...

sigh, i played too quickly today due to demoralization from the galley spawn :| sorry about that, folks

[ljubljana]

ok, it seems clear that priority 1 now is to prevent thrawn from taking our city-states and gaining a foothold here, if possible. hong kong is not really defensible from the west though - once thrawn gets ships on those ocean tiles, it's over, there's no way to hold the tiles next to the city versus that. but maybe we can defend it from the east? i suppose we should sail a few ships up there and try to figure out if there is not some kind of geographical feature where we can make a stand...

but the question is, how many of our joint resources do we allocate to HK defense, and how many to mogadishu? well, it depends on if mogadishu can actually be defended or not. right now my instincts say it cannot... but if it CAN be held, what has to happen is: there need to just be these two norwegian ships, and we need to find some way to get a unit around the back of the city so we can hit the lead ship from two directions (no way thrawn lets his ships get one hit from death in hostile territory). i am not sure how worthwhile it would be to send some ships down to probe the possibility of that.... doing so could lose us HK and i am not sure there is too much to be gained.

but do we have to try it? there is certainly no way we can TAKE the city once thrawn captures it until shipvuilding at least, 4 longships stacked up in front of it would be impregnable if we can't cross oceans. they also may raze it tbh, mogadishu is very powerful for us and they might doubt their ability to hold it long-term against crusade.

blah, idk man. i will try to think it through more tomorrow after we see what they do.... i am expecting a DoW and attack on Moga but i could be surprised. i will be pretty happy with any other move i think...