[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

wow! yeah, those numbers are just huge as a percentage of base healing rates.... and i imagine they'll matter a ton in MP as well as it seems like even winning battles at good odds tends to result in significant, unit-debilitating chip damage....

do all these healing promos interact with march in the way you'd expect it to? eg, a stack of march units containing a medic 3 unit would heal at the boosted rate every turn even while moving through enemy territory

Turn 132 - Zululand



SD helpfully tells us about what price for a lux is typically considered fair. hm. i'd rather have their dyes honestly but perhaps that's not correct. i mean this IS strictly positive value for us..... but idk, the risk of helping SD obliterate gav still seems too high for a trade with them specifically right now unless we get a pretty good deal out of it. sorry bestie :'(

today is a beautiful day:



GT chopped into another trireme in lalibela :D still no whipping or obvious military reorganization either. AND... they have finally decided it might be a good idea to scout our border..... with an axe that is positioned JUST too far away to spot our stack next turn, and that now looks destined to get picked off by a chariot completely in the open

next turn is go time and i'm feeling good about it

greenline returned cow/cow extension, dreylin out of golden age

oh and we have feudalism! going to swap some number of builds over to LB, and spend the next turn picking up iron working. then we do finally have to start saving again before we push for.... uh, whatever the fuck our next tech priority is going to be. i still think it's probably machinery! but lmk if someone wants to make an argument for undelaying civil service



we have gav's graphs... but i think rather than go for the full set, it's time to start spending on GT. no worries about tipping them off anymore since we are declaring next turn anyways lol. and getting to city vis not only seems quite practical (it'd only take 8 turns at the current rate!) but also enormously helpful since we're about to lose our main sources of scouting info. i'm a little hesitant to put points into someone we hope to kill (for fear of wasting them) but i guess that's probably wrong, any use that directly helps the war effort at this point is probably the right call



gav sharkfin vs superdeath..... i guess if your opponent is too backwards to tech to medieval units, praets can stay relevant for some time

uh, and re the question of whether they ARE in fact that backwards



concern.jpg

micro screwup:



sooo both those chops were supposed to go into hokutofuji to finish an HA.... but apparently i branfarted and didn't realize the southern chop was only 3rd ring from hokuto, and the game decided to give it to kotozakura instead. so now we get 2 HAs, but possibly too late to actually matter :| i guess i'll single-whip both next turn, or something. does anyone know how the game decides which city to give a chop to if it's third-ring to two cities? and does the player have any capacity to influence this choice?



The Stack, final iteration (with a few just-produced and therefore straggling HAs a turn or two behind). 42 units on this tile, plus stragglers should take us close to 50, and we own 17 HAs scattered across various locations as of this turn.

workers in kind of an awkward situation, where i have to prioritize staying out of sight (and out of range of GT's scaaaary axeman) over not wasting their turns. but next turn obviously they will start combat roading



ethics issue with this chariot. it is too far away to join the main stack (thought about it, but decided the movement would be too suspicious). when we DoW next turn it will get teleported.... somewhere, or i could move it 3SE-1SW into the desert to avoid any teleportation. but then on the following turn i'd be in range of qohaito to force them to whip units on defense somewhere they'd REALLY rather not have to do so, or face a sneaky city raze. where does that stand on the sliminess meter though, given that we're only in this position because of an RoP? do you think doing so would impact our ability to get RoP in future games? slash, what would you guys do with this chariot in this position?



sending drey test-the-waters diplo about a ginger war in the distant future. which, who knows, COULD turn out not-so-distant, as the GT war did....

edit: re tech choice, there's an outside chance we should go for aesthetics/lit next to start the heroic epic in abi. during a hot war though? and before guilds/engi? idk, but we'll get a great general pretty quickly to unlock it and i imagine that the sooner we start it, the happier we will be long-term.... well, ok maybe we don't want it before engi but i think we should think about going for it fairly soon, and probably will need to prioritize the still-missing courthouse there in order to get it done before it needs to transition to full-time military production forever

edit2: logged back in real quick to confirm the plan w nauf



im gonna be pretty pissed if you guys peace out right now >

[Tarkeel]

do all these healing promos interact with march in the way you'd expect it to? eg, a stack of march units containing a medic 3 unit would heal at the boosted rate every turn even while moving through enemy territory

Indeed they do; March is actually quite a powerful promotion, it's just hard to unlock. Cornflakes played Arabia very well in 65 (I believe it was)

[williams482]

does anyone know how the game decides which city to give a chop to if it's third-ring to two cities? and does the player have any capacity to influence this choice?

I don't know how the game makes that choice and he player cannot change it, but (unlike Civ 6!) it will tell you which city that chop is going to when you mouse over the "chop" action button. Best to get in the habit of watching that when chopping outside a city's workable radius.

[ljubljana]

gotcha gotcha makes sense! thank you both for the info! does march require C3 AND medic 1 or is either acceptable? i will be on the lookout for chances to use it

also, what are the standard uses for the early great generals? i am thinking of using 2 to make a super-healer M3/W3 impi and unlock the heroic epic and eventually west point, but perhaps it is better to simply stack them as quickly as possible in the heroic epic city to start the long grind for commando access.... not sure how many GGs we can reasonably expect to get over the course of a game. to make a commando gunpowder unit we need 17 XP with AGG... = 2 barracks + 4 civics + 4 west point + 4 settled GGs? west point itself almost certainly requires the use of a fifth to unlock it. so are any other GG uses considered acceptable diversions from this pipeline? in particular it would be a shame not to stack a military academy with the heroic epic, and we also may not naturally get a 10XP unit for HE eligibility from the GT war and need to manufacture one...

i need to double-check the builds for this turn to see if they make sense strategically..... a few considerations:

- we probably want 2-3 mounted units (probably chariots) to pop in 6t for the sentry promotion.... it is indeed the case that a 5xp mounted unit can take it via flanking I, right?
- the major event in this invasion will probably be the clash of the two stacks, assuming GT's immediately turns around to intercept us when they declare war. whether or not this takes place just before or just after we reach the capital is, uh, pretty significant, and i think our 2-movers need to head for the capital by the directest feasible route to maximize the odds of the latter... if we can get there first, any longbows that can make it there before stack clash date will be extremely helpful in preventing a recapture and should be prioritized.... but if NOT, HAs seem to be the correct build to maximize striking power

[aetryn]

gotcha gotcha makes sense! thank you both for the info! does march require C3 AND medic 1 or is either acceptable? i will be on the lookout for chances to use it

also, what are the standard uses for the early great generals? i am thinking of using 2 to make a super-healer M3/W3 impi and unlock the heroic epic and eventually west point, but perhaps it is better to simply stack them as quickly as possible in the heroic epic city to start the long grind for commando access.... not sure how many GGs we can reasonably expect to get over the course of a game. to make a commando gunpowder unit we need 17 XP with AGG... = 2 barracks + 4 civics + 4 west point + 4 settled GGs? west point itself almost certainly requires the use of a fifth to unlock it. so are any other GG uses considered acceptable diversions from this pipeline? in particular it would be a shame not to stack a military academy with the heroic epic, and we also may not naturally get a 10XP unit for HE eligibility from the GT war and need to manufacture one...

i need to double-check the builds for this turn to see if they make sense strategically..... a few considerations:

- we probably want 2-3 mounted units (probably chariots) to pop in 6t for the sentry promotion.... it is indeed the case that a 5xp mounted unit can take it via flanking I, right?
- the major event in this invasion will probably be the clash of the two stacks, assuming GT's immediately turns around to intercept us when they declare war. whether or not this takes place just before or just after we reach the capital is, uh, pretty significant, and i think our 2-movers need to head for the capital by the directest feasible route to maximize the odds of the latter... if we can get there first, any longbows that can make it there before stack clash date will be extremely helpful in preventing a recapture and should be prioritized.... but if NOT, HAs seem to be the correct build to maximize striking power

Main uses of GG's I've noticed:

• Making a super-medic 2-mover of some sort. Usually one that's very unlikely to defend unless the entire stack is getting wiped (chariots are popular)
  
• Access to Morale on a 1-mover or unit traversing rough terrain/landing from a boat to surprise an enemy not expecting that much mobility ("land a troop, THEN take the Morale promotion to get an extra move which can be used to attack the city next to where you landed"). On this map the equivalent would be if the enemy assumes you can't move onto a hill tile and then attack the city on the other side, so doesn't move troops in to defend, but you move onto the hill, take Morale, and capture the city.
  
• Sprinkling to give overall combat advantage to a bunch of units by getting them an extra promotion
  
• Extra move ships (not a factor YET on this map, but might be late game)
  
• Free upgrade for a highly promoted but obsolete unit.
  
• Settling for key exp breakpoints (this is a lot bigger deal for CHA, which have generally lower exp breakpoints).
  

[ljubljana]

i see i see. so for us i guess the choice for super-medic would be an impi as it is appropriately weak and chariots don't take woodsman...

so does that mean the reason we don't usually see the first 2 GGs go to a M3/W3 2-mover is because the zulus, uniquely or almost-uniquely, have access to such a unit that early via the impi?? sounds like something we should be considering as among our civ advantages and perhaps prioritizing if so

[El Grillo]

Also, normally you need to take combat1 to unlock medic1, so you don't get enough bonus xp to get both medic3/woodsman3, but being AGG you clear that hurdle for free.

Yes, Chariots (or any mounted unit with 5xp) can take flanking1 and sentry.

Best of luck with the

[Tarkeel]

It's also partly that once you have M3 units in general heal fast enough that W3 is rarely worth the hassle, and you could get that from another melee unit.

[ljubljana]

Turn 134 - Zululand

something has prompted a rare post in GT's thread



and it's not this... drey returns identical signals. ok, 50 turns from now is t185ish, plenty of time for GT digestion if our attack is successful. ginger you can see has finished construction and started... drama. what's there for them again, the music great artist?

click through and



drey wants a more specific timeline, which demands a response.... well, i didn't want to have to commit to that but maybe. i'll brood on it



the gods have decreed that iron working will not be of particular help to us this game... we have one iron next to the capital in a totally unworkable spot, with only horribly food-starved cities in range... and that is all our iron. we also have two others just outside our borders but um



they are not exactly in spots that make for strong production cities

GT has apparently determined that SOMEthing is up



but this is too little too late to save lalibela, i think. if anything the more xbows they stack in this city, the more we can get rid of with cat collateral without having to wander 1-movers thorough enemy territory.

the main stack



has not moved in the west. doing the math, they can reach aksum by their turn 136, while the fastest we can attack is our t137... so we will not beat them to the capital as currently positioned UNLESS they talk themselves into delaying for some reason. splitting the stack between aksum and gondar would be not-awesome for us tbh, i do not know that we have enough HAs to kill half of either stack in a city without cat support, and bringing up the cats of course would get us hit by collateral... our best hope, i guess, is that they feel they must leave some units over here to avoid losing cities to a now-aggressive naufragar. after adulis and lalibela we may need to either steal a march on them tactically or resort to attritive tactics and outproducing them to make progress... feasible long-term, but with ginger breathing down our necks, not exactly where we want to be lol



Qohaito has spawned a conveniently-timed crossbow, so our sneaky chariot move now looks not just slimy but also impossible lol. oh well. i think i'll send it SW into the desert to look for opportunities to harass GT's southern desert cities. probably still a marginally more useful thing for it to be doing than joining the main stack

we have located what looks to be one of the main superdeath attacking stacks



tiwanaku has 10 axes and and archer, and the SD stack seems to be retreating... clearly this can't be ALL their forces in the area as the stack contains no cats and tiwanaku is at 6% defenses with walls.... idk exactly what happened here, but good to see rome not immediately making further progress

well, enough procrastination. nauf did not return our war signals, again, which makes me very nervous about a potential peace treaty, but i think we're too committed to back out now and still expect to win the game. our odds of taking adulis and lalibela seem very good and beyond that we might still be able to outproduce them in a 1v1 to make progress if it comes down to it.

carefully move all our units out of GT's territory to avoid even the appearance of abusing teleportation and



first blood should come against their scouting axe, who teleported to this position



does flanking or c1 give better odds? game says we have 78% to win, 2% to retreat as of now... vodka says C1 is clearly better, with flanking our odds to win apparently will likely go DOWN which makes zero sense to me and might just be variance from the simulation-based nature of vodka..... but if we win with flanking we get an amazing reward of a very early sentry unit, so i'm willing to sacrifice some of our odds to go for that.

rolled the dice and... died embarrassingly at the 80% odds. not an auspicious start  we clean up with a second chariot but this one was unpromoted so no progress on making a sentry unit  they could snipe our chariot with a crossbow now, and i'm leaving it in the open to invite that as then the xbow will lose its fortification bonus and possibly take damage, which seems like a good ROI from an obsolete unit we made at the very start of the game



2-movers on the 2-mover tile, 1-movers on the 1-mover tile (you don't say...). left what i believe is just enough guys 1 tile behind to prevent a worker snipe, including the just-produced longbow. promoted 2 HA to C1 and 1 impi to shock in each ministack in case they decide to attack in. and decided to cover the bait chariot with a bait archer from tomokaze to increase the commitment required if they want to take said bait. now we end turn and PM GT, i guess



i just learned that apparently promoting fortified units costs them their fortify bonus... is that true? if so i guess i'd better pre-promote all our border city archers and eventually longbows instead of waiting until the last possible second as is usually optimal

i didn't respond to drey's 40-turn ginger proposal - what do you guys think about this? i could respond next turn but i think there are fair odds we won't be ready in time and idk if that precise a time commitment makes sense if we think that's the case. but ofc i DO want to get them thinking about gearing up for war with us on their side in a general sense, if at all possible

[aetryn]

I suspect that Dreylin is worried that 50 turns is too much to give Ginger to tech away in freedom and wants to go in faster. 40 turns is still a LONG way away, so I don't think that commits you to 40 turns on the dot, just a question if you think you'd be prepared to fight Ginger at that point.