[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Are you sending the ram to Angiers or to the capital? Either way, I kind of think we should let Kaiser's south be for now (since it doesn't really threaten us anyways) and divert all our berserkers there into joining the ram in the attack. It seems more efficient to just throw everything at his core and then see if we have time to take his outlying islands after instead of trying to do both at once, especially with the capital area starting to turn into a major quagmire.

The good news though is that China's remaining cities are about to be an even worse quagmire for CMF . He is not just building medieval walls, he already has them everywhere, and most of the cities with them are not even reachable from the sea. I am getting more and more confident that CMF will not be able to conquer China (and therefore will not be able to even hold cities in China) without building ground troops, which would take forever. That does mean his fleet will be free to murder us while he does that, but I'd still prefer that to him crushing China and then doing so anyways. Good job, roland!

And yes, I will send you a deal for gold, though hopefully I won't need too much. Thank you so much for all the niter you have supplied me with, by the way - I am not sure I can crack the remaining TAD cities with just my 6 frigates, but with the 11 I will have next turn it should be very doable.

edit: I think I will shoot at Kaiser's capital again next turn...unfortunately, my reading of the city range rules on civwiki is that he will be able to hit your caravel SE of the campus even though we can't hit the city from there. I have one frigate that is two shots away from a promotion, so if he goes for your caravel, I will get there in time and can get in an extra shot or two before needing to heal.

edit2: Question about overflow. Cuneiform will be sitting at roughly 55 hammers per turn after next turn, which is significantly more than it needs to one-turn quads. If I just do that for a long time, will the overflow build up or will I just lose it unless I alternate quads with caravels? I am starting to rethink the urgency of my planned workshop build since factories are SO far away and since it will take more than 30 turns to pay for itself...I may just put Cuneiform on +25% XP ships immediately starting next turn.

edit3: after the spy which, I'm dumb, I do need to build so I can send him to MPF for a CS boost. He will be coming after our Japanese holdings with his new, decently-sized navy and I do need to help defend them, after all (which means future me swap to Machiavellianism don't be dumb). It would also be pretty darn nice to have a +3 CS boost against Japan given our current situation...

edit4: hey future me - check the trade routes, dumb-o. if CMF is sending one to me that is a dead giveaway on his intended war timing, as well as a strong play to look out for...

edit5: should I be making an encampment at Oracle Bones? That location is a prime target for CMF since marco can trigger his +100% hammers by liberating Hod, so maybe...

[williams482]

edit2: Question about overflow. Cuneiform will be sitting at roughly 55 hammers per turn after next turn, which is significantly more than it needs to one-turn quads. If I just do that for a long time, will the overflow build up or will I just lose it unless I alternate quads with caravels? I am starting to rethink the urgency of my planned workshop build since factories are SO far away and since it will take more than 30 turns to pay for itself...I may just put Cuneiform on +25% XP ships immediately starting next turn.

Overflow seems to vanish after a second build completes. You will not be able to carry an overflow balance for very long at all without losing it.

[ljubljana]

yeesh well, I guess that pretty much figures. Guess Cuneiform's going to be caravel city then. Nothing wrong with that though - caravels tend to be hard to promote anyways (since they tend to die too quickly to get there), so maybe they can make better use of the +25% XP. They also have two promotions that are useful in a force vs. force naval battle, while frigates really just have the one.

[ljubljana]

Got it, that makes sense. I guess this is the kind of thing that is intuitive to think about only from the perspective of what the developers' coding logic must have been and not some abstract notion of "what makes sense" lol...but I am capable of doing that so I guess it's alright.

So that means that any production in excess of 48 hammers/turn (which is the magic number for both one-turning quads and two-turning caravels) is actually completely useless to Cuneiform from the perspective of making ships, since I am definitely not going to get close enough to one-turning caravels that any overflow would carry over. This means I should try to get the city's production DOWN to 48, or as close as I can, by swapping tiles (so other cities whose names start with an H and end with an ieratic can suck less), and then should just build whichever ships I want to at the city. It also means that I definitely should not bother with the workshop here until factories are right on my doorstep, since having more base production is not actually useful right now! It's fine that I built this shipyard, since I was not way above 48 without it (51 iirc), and now I can vacate hammer tiles for other cities to use, but I shouldn't bother with any more hammer infra here until I expect to make things other than ships.

I guess the other thing is that I am going to start having amenities problems here intermittently, and I don't know what the game will do if it decides to reallocate amenities away from the city while I'm one-turning quads...most likely the quad will fail to complete and the game will laugh at me. That is an argument for getting to 53 base production at least to that I can withstand this if it happens...though at least in that situation I would end up something like 12 hammers away from finishing the quad and therefore would, in fact, get overflow. Another option is to just accept the risk and, if it does happen, run max hammers the next turn so I can hit 48 in overflow for a one-turn caravel.

It also has implications for running the IZ doubling card, actually...Cuneiform doesn't need it, and Linear A/B's magic number is 32 for three-turn caravels and they are at ~24 now (itself also magic for 2-turn quads/4-turn caravels), so they won't need it either. It will someday be important for hotfixing the amenities issue as it arrives though. Speaking of amenities...there is a time in the not-too-distant future when I may resort to desperate measures to keep my cities from all going -1 at the same time. That measure's name...Republican Legacy .

[ljubljana]

I'd better find some excuse to use it now, really, because it is utterly unimaginable that I will ever take it in any future game, so really this is RL's time to shine if it's ever going to get one .

If all my cities are at -1 it will be pretty good though! 5 hammers in Cuneiform, 2.5 hammers in Linear A and Linear B, 1 and change in every other city is roughly 20 hammers/turn, the same as a maxed-out Isolationism, plus all the science and culture it would add...although those latter two are admittedly somewhat less than what they would be if I were, uh, actually economically competitive in any resource other than gold .

It's kind of hard to directly compare all these different currencies in terms of economic utility...but under my personal ad-hoc equivalence of 2 gold = 1.5ish food = 1 hammer = 0.5 beakers/clefs, I can definitely imagine situations where RL would be worth running in the near future.

[ljubljana]

Totally unrelated observation: when we do eventually divide up our holdings on the TAD/Kaiser continent, one of the main things we're probably going to need to look for is a split that keeps Wars of Religion online for both of us. Actually, that +4 in combat strength is one of the only arguments I see against the "Woden just keeps everything" split - I think in general the CMF/MPF configuration of one superpower teamed with one minor power is stronger than ours with two middle powers, because the minor power can follow along and get all the boosts while the major power can field a technologically advanced navy. An even split puts us at more risk of falling behind CMF in tech (remember that only one of us really needs to keep up because the size of our navy will be coal-limited anyways), but a one-sided split would mean turning off the +4 CS for you which might be worth it. We could also wait and see if we get attacked or not before deciding, but I think that borders on "cheese with city gifting" so idk.

If we do end up doing a one-sided split, I definitely think you should be the one to keep the cities - you are competitive in tech while I am far, far behind, and it is more important for you to retain that advantage than it is for me to catch up. The only argument for giving the cities to me would be the cheap harbors, but that's moot since they almost all have harbors up anyways. Once frigates go obsolete we might run into trouble fielding battleships since you don't have too many frigates, but that is so far away that I don't think it's really worth worrying about.

[Woden]

I'd better find some excuse to use it now, really, because it is utterly unimaginable that I will ever take it in any future game, so really this is RL's time to shine if it's ever going to get one .

If all my cities are at -1 it will be pretty good though! 5 hammers in Cuneiform, 2.5 hammers in Linear A and Linear B, 1 and change in every other city is roughly 20 hammers/turn, the same as a maxed-out Isolationism, plus all the science and culture it would add...although those latter two are admittedly somewhat less than what they would be if I were, uh, actually economically competitive in any resource other than gold .

You forget, you also get -10% culture, science, and gold. Not worth it for micro porn.

It's kind of hard to directly compare all these different currencies in terms of economic utility...but under my personal ad-hoc equivalence of 2 gold = 1.5ish food = 1 hammer = 0.5 beakers/clefs, I can definitely imagine situations where RL would be worth running in the near future.

4 gold = 1 cog = 2 faith.

[Woden]

Turn 146
Your next civic should be Humanism...
   

I pillage Kaiser's Government Plaza and a plantation to finish Humanism. Time to get ready for building ships...
   

I dropped War of Religion since I am no longer following my religion but still get the bonus (I shouldn't). Maybe I will switch back into it after Nationalism completes in a few turn. Here is the war zone...
   

Kaiser pulled a few surprises and struck out with a few caravels. He also hit my berserker with a Frigate (location pinned). I am sailing berserkers over to Kaiser's cities. I should be able to finish Steam Power next turn if I can get 4 science pillages. I had planned for 5 but the one in the north has a swordsman stilling on the Campus. Hopefully none of the other do next turn. With the added embarked movement, I can have 2 berserkers over to take Fort Miln in 4 turns. Then they will sail and remove the walls for Angiers. Actually, I will have 1 hit Fort Miln and 2 to remove the walls at Angiers.

And I have more techs than CMF now. And I forgot, China came asking for a cultural alliance. I accepted since he has 3 trade routes to my capital.

[ljubljana]

Guess I got greedy last turn, and Kaiser did have a caravel in the fog north of Fort Miln which killed my frigate. And then I lost another at the capital which shouldn't have been possible? That is, unless it was just produced last turn, under CMF's blockading caravel...

Down to five frigates in the south, I don't think it's possible for us to both take the capital and burn TAD's city-state capture, and honestly the capital by itself may be out of reach due to the constricted terrain and the blockade. I will fight like hell to get us into Fort Miln anyways, though. I move before MPF (eg right now), so I will put my caravel on the tile next to the city. Hopefully, Kaiser will kill that unit and open the tile up to you at the end of the round. Does that sound okay?

[ljubljana]

Turn 147 - Phoenicia

I think we might be stalling out here...



EOT deploy in Japan. Killed both caravels, and am daring Kaiser to attack out of the capital with the third so we can make ANY kind of progress against its defenses. We have to reinforce this front from somewhere, but nowhere really comes to mind given the distances involved. But, okay, the walls at Fort Miln should (should) go down next turn unless some other bad thing happens - they are at 37 health, so 3 shots boosted by the GA should do it. Kaiser will probably block the tile next to the city center with his own caravel that we will then have to do something about, though, so idk if we will get those 3 shots...



51/100 health on the walls at TAD's capital. They probably won't go down next turn, though, as one of my frigates is guaranteed to die from the city fire + Kaiser's frigate in the fog. The Elizabeth Bonaventure survived, though! Kaiser guessed wrong about which direction she went, and TAD didn't bother looking. The selected caravel is out of position because...I tabbed out of Civ to make sure one of my screenshots had taken, and when I clicked to tab back in, the game interpreted that as a command to move them in some random direction! Aaargh, totally my fault but still.

I think Kaiser and TAD will finally bring all or most of their frigates out to play next turn to try to squelch this attack. If that happens, I will probably need to call it off for a turn to try to clear the seas of them, which will hopefully work. This front should be okay long-term, though, because...



...5 more new frigates on the way. I'm going to upgrade another one per turn for the forseeable future, too, so please keep sending me your niter for as long as you feel able to <3.



I came THIS close to forgetting about Machiavellianism but thankfully remembered at the last second. I guess spies cost 300 hammers though because it's still a 4-turn build in 57-hammer Cuneiform lol. Anyways I am now super broke (I begged you for 720 gold for libraries but some of that may get seized by the military and redirected towards frigates...) and my caravels will now be squishy and easy for Kaiser to kill. Even if both those caravels by Japan die, though, it was probably worth it (depressingly) as I need to keep those tiles clear from MPF's blockade. At least now there is a CHANCE that we will get our 3 frigate shots in. I am going to lose a lot of units on this interturn though (like, as many as 5 units potentially), and while we should be able to get good results in return, I am starting to get a bad feeling about this...

edit: I am still going to have some culture problems...I will make it to Nationalism by t167, barely, but I will not quite have Reformed Church. I hope we can find some way to stall the attack for a few turns to make that happen somehow... At least we can be pretty confident MPF won't have fleets, so we can expect to pretty much walk all over him with any appreciable amount of force in Japan. But Ichabod's ships will outmuscle us both unless we can catch him before he gets to ironclads. That is also another good reason for you to keep all of TAD/Kaiser's territory - you will be able to see (and therefore use) their coal and I will be nowhere close. If we are lucky we can catch Ichabod with only 6 ironclads from 2 sources of coal, with you able to support as many as 18! Also, I know I asked you for money for libraries, but you can say no if you think you'll want it for upgrades. Maybe you should say no, even - 18 ironclad fleets will cost you a LOT.

edit2: You might want to post a screenie of the Fort Miln area again before playing the turn... I think we will have to coordinate some to figure out the optimal way to kill Kaiser's caravel (assuming it comes out) without opening up the tile next to the city to MPF. (If the caravel is still inside and the tile is open you can feel free to ignore this and occupy the tile though.)