RB PBEM #1 - Mehmed (SPOILERS!)

[Dreylin]

t189 - told you all I was an idiot!

So I forgot to account for all his Great Generals and their ability to grant Mobility.

Losses:
1 Machine Gun
2 Tank
7 Infantry
3 Artillery
1 GG Archer

3 Fighters
1 Bomber


Killed:
GG Artillery
GG Infantry
Cavalry

of course I shall be endeavouring to add to that tally the stack which killed the city:

7 Tanks
1 GG Marine
2 GG Infantry
4 Cavalry

If I can do that without further losses, I could probably claim the exchange to have been even ... apart from the city, I guess.


Other events of note:

mh's Fighters in sooooo's territory flew in to fight mine from the Carrier and won 2:1 (though they're now dead from Ruff's attack).

He ran the counter-espionage mission against me - which I probably should really start running against him

Revolted me back to #&^O@&^$!@&!@&%$@!%$ Buddhism again. Someone needs to tell me the conditions for being able to do that so I can do it back to him some time! Anyway, there's 5t left on my GA, so I /think/ that means I'll still be able to revolt back before it expires.


To business; to get rid of mh's stack we use the time-honoured technique of 7 Bombers followed by judicious application of Tanks. With positioning and multiple Blitzes, I only have to use a total of 7 to kill all 14units and leave them on the remains of Bursa.

I want to RR the Forted tile, so I'll leave most of the units there as guards for the Workers. I do send the most severely injured back into New Damascus to heal.

mh has sent a small RR force SW out of Vienna, so I'll need to divert a few units in that direction to discourage his endeavours. He only sent one Worker so he can't add a Railway ... but a single turn would allow him to add a Road, and then ferry further Workers across and stage an attack on Medina! Aha, maybe I'm not so dense after all. Now, can I get anything over there to put a stop to this...?

I have 5 Guerilla2 Infantry in New Damascus that can reach and attack the tile, but most are injured so I'll have to soften them up with my Air Force first. Fighters come in from the Carriers; 7 sent (w/ 1 Interception) to reduce both the Marine & Machine Gun to 1/2 health.

73% vs. MG with a healthy G2 Inf ... wins!
91% on the Marine ... wins.
99% against the healthy Musket ... wins and deletes the Worker.

I decide to leave the unit there as he's still on 3/4 health and we'll see if mh is drawn to attack him. I also move a small-ish healthy mixed force onto the tile SSW of Vienna to deter mh from trying the same again.

Mixture of Tanks, Artillery, Infantry and Jails dialed up for production along with a Settler for New Bursa and a Conf. Missionary is added down a queue to be ready for when I can switch back to the true religion (Theocracy will stop me spreading beforehand, and I don't seem to have a Buddhist Monastery anywhere to spread the Heathen religion for Culture purposes).

Time to delete some of my excess Naval units I think; a Galley, 2 Frigates, 3 Ironclads and my 2 Privateers are decommissioned. Once sooooo's Navy is take out f the running, I'll be able to delete almost all the remaining offensive Naval units and leave just some Transports and the Carriers.

J.S. Bach takes the Railway to Death Valley and is handed across to Ruff. He has indicated that he plans to grab MilSci next and since we've not got a trade agreement in place anymore, I do not feel (too) guilty for turning back towards Communism to grab the free GSpy - after all, I already have 400/2400beakers invested in the tech. I can't get it this turn, but will manage it in 2t at 50% and +294gpt.

[Rowain]

Revolted me back to #&^O@&^$!@&!@&%$@!%$ Buddhism again. Someone needs to tell me the conditions for being able to do that so I can do it back to him some time!

Your target has to be able to revolt to this rel (ie it must be present in his land) and you must be in the religion you want him to revolt to.

[Dreylin]

Your target has to be able to revolt to this rel (ie it must be present in his land) and you must be in the religion you want him to revolt to.

Yeah, I thought it must be something like that - though I'd expected there to be a "percentage of the population" minimum threshold as well. Guess it's not on the cards then unless I slip myslef into Judaism at the end of the GA and flip through Vienna ... nah, bit too much cutting my nose off to spite my face there!

[Rowain]

Was Bursa one of your big 3 or which cities will you use for your culture victory and how high is your culture in those?

[Dreylin]

Bursa wasn't one of the Big 3. It's a bit dificult to assess culture rates fully while in GA, but the highest culture levels right now are:

Istanbul: 12500+
Ankara: 5750+
Edirne: 3200

However, I think that Izmir will take over as the third city now that it has completed both Broadway and Rock 'n Roll. It will need some of the more basic buildings (Theatre, Uni) put in to generate the raw Culture, but since it also has the potential to knock off e.g. the Angkor Wat in 1-2t for an additional 8C, I think that it can catch and surpass Edirne quite quickly.

Couple of other things to note about my civ regarding Culture:

1) Sid's is an excellent source of Culture, but so are Creative Constructions and Civilised Jewelers. CC requires a Great Engineer, while CJ needs a Great Artist ... coincidentally, New Damascus is due a Great Person in 4t which will be 92% one of those two. We have the tech for CC, but CJ would require Mass Media ... which isn't out of the way since it opens up Hollywood.

2) Hermitage is still an available build and can be put into either Ankara or Izmir as needed. I have also not yet built any of the Conf. Academies, so those can be slipped in as well.

3) While Conf. is my base religion, I have access to all others except Islam ... but it turns out that I have absolutely no non-Confucian Monasteries. So I'll have to head to Org.Rel. if I want to spread them to the appropriate Culture cities.


Right now with a peace offer on the table from mh (I'll post in a sec, but I expect you've seen it in his thread) I have to ask myself 2 important questions:

#1: Do I need to end the war with mh in order to have a chance of beating Ruff to the victory?

#2: If the answer to #1 is "yes"; which do I care more about at this point, beating Ruff to the win condition of the game, or beating mh into the dirt?


I've been trying to work out the answer to #2 in my own head all morning and am not much closer to a solution. The answer to #1 is more complicated; certainly it would be easier to take on Ruff if I could bend my entire Civ towards it, but how would things go if I took ~3cities off war duty and had them work exclusively on Culture projects?

I probably wouldn't even need to take Istanbul off Military for long since it's Culture infrastructure is mostly in-place, and Ankara is in a pretty similar position. Also, the island cities are not far from completing their Hammer infrastructure; I don't really need them for teching, so they could be put on Military duty right away to pick up some of the slack....

Right now I'm tempted to see if I can "chase two Rabbits" and not lose them both....

[Dreylin]

mh's latest e-mail; I'm still working out how to reply...

Hi,
well, for a start I hoped you would hold back on playing the turn before negotiations.
For example, I would have happily signed over my Bursa attack force to you.
Vienna is kind of a symbol for me, holding out against your forces for so long. Also it is a core city and holds two national wonders (which you won't get if I hand it over, right?).
But I can see that Vienna is probably a symbol for you as well???
From a game play point of view, Vienna will not be able to use a lot of it's good BFC tiles, because they are still under my culture. So what are you interested in with Vienna?
Same with Medina. Unless you take Prague, Medina is not that useful and might even flip back.

I guess it also depends on how you want to win this game.
By my estimation my territory is not going to push you above the Domination threshold, so you will have to either take a chunk out of Greece quickly or you will have to backstab Ruff eventually.
I assumed by some of your latest actions that you were going for a cultural victory, although Edirne is pretty unimpressive in that category at the moment.
Racing Ruff to space? In which case you should probably stop trading with him soon, switch civics, and get that war weariness under control (I assume).


So what is on the table and up for negotiations:
Game long NAP.
Disbanding or gifting of military units.
Tech trades/gifts. Can only offer MilSci at the moment.
Open borders for trades / switching to Free Market maybe
Do you need Buddhist missionaries for a cultural victory?
I get a Great Person of yet unknown profession next turn. Interested?
Resource trades:
My sole northern Fish for say Banana. Should help your Sushi.
I have spare silver and wine.
The city of Vienna.
The city of Medina.

Basically I have no ambitions to win this game, but I might be able to help your victory along. As far as I could see from the two latest turns in the east, Ruff broke through soooo's defenses.
So Ruff is already ahead of you in the little war game. Whereas you just lost your biggest city holding the Heroic Epic.
In my book I have already won this game. Every additional turn I last is cream on top.
If we agree to peace, I can focus again on building up my cities and re-settle the coast.

Regards
mh

[darrelljs]

1 GG Archer

Double ouch since it would have been a free upgrade to Infantry...

Darrell

[Dreylin]

Here's my eventual reply:

mh,

I guess you're waiting to hear back from me before playing the turn?

I've thought a lot about your offer today. I may be Don Quixote, deluded and tilting and windmills, but I just don't think I'm ready to call time on our war yet.

Regards,

Dreylin II.

Sometimes it's not the content of the message, but the way it's delivered.

mh could have sent me an image of his final unit conquering Bursa with a note saying "what's it worth for me not to raze it?". Alternatively, he could have said "I've burned Bursa; that's my win for the game, how do you feel about peace?"


What did he actually choose say?

In public he posted non-specific images.

In his e-mail he said: "So here I am offering you peace again"; no details, just "I want to get it wrapped up quickly".

And in-game, what was the last* thing he did before ending turn? After burning Bursa, he decided it would be a good idea to revolt me into a different religion; one that I had only just switched out of.

*OK, so he subsequently attacked my planes at Sarmatian, but the point still stands.

Maybe I'm letting my irritation/frustration overrule my judgement here, but my feeling is that nothing says "let's be friends" like kneecapping your opponent just before negotiations begin!

At least use it as a bargaining chip; "here's my Spy ready to put you in Buddhism, what's it worth not to", rather than "btw, you're stuck in Buddhism for another 5t whether you like it or not. Oh, and do you want to talk about peace?"


Besides, who knows if I could beat Ruff's Space victory even if I did get to concentrate fully on Culture!? <shrug>

[Rowain]

I think you are taking it far to personal. Step back, take a breath and look what is best for your empire and then decide what you want to do.

[Dreylin]

I think you are taking it far to personal. Step back, take a breath and look what is best for your empire and then decide what you want to do.

You may be right. I tried to take a step back yesterday and get my head to tell my gut that continuing the war just hurt my chances to win the game, but it didn't seem to work very well!


A couple of random thoughts:

The way I see it there are two challenges left in the game for me; #1 of course is reaching the game-mandated victory condition before any of the other players, which in this case is beating Ruff's drive to Space either with a Spaceship of my own or a Cultural victory. #2 is breaking through Vienna and being able to strike at the juicy core of mh's civ.

As I see it, #1 is a far more commonplace challenge that you can pursue in any game - admittedly against inferior opponents - whereas #2 is unique to this game and this opponent. Do I want to win the game? yeah, sure; but do I want to beat this opponent ... definitely!

Second random thought is this: discounting the city, I came out of the last exchange strongly hammer-positive, possibly for the first time. mh has a total of ~40units left across his entire civ, I probably have a similar number just in the Vienna area, but also have additional support units such as planes staged. Here's the difference though; I'm still producing at full capacity (well OK, nearly full), whereas the more I look at mh's cities the more I'm convinced that he's gassed. Take a look at Nuremburg:



mh was not overly blessed with health resources; he never settled his Northern Deer, I robbed him of his Fish and Pigs through conquest and pillaging, and he just lost access to 3Health worth of resources from sooooo. Nuremburg may be an extreme example, but e.g. mh's largest remaining city Aachen (size10) is running a -7 unhealthy deficit because of running a coal-powered Factory. Any effeort he's making to increase his production is cutting down his potential population at a time when he's running Nationhood and pulling the odd draft.

A quick check of the demographics shows that I'm out-producing him 4:1, so I think that maybe I can set aside 1/4 of my production output towards the Cultural victory, while the remaining 3/4 is steered towards military.

We reached a similar point once before and I accepted peace in order to pursue the Arabian front, but this time that "other front" is the longer-term quest for game-victory against Ruff and I have a much bigger empire to devote to dealing with both. I think it can be done, and I intend to try.