[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[WilliamLP]

There's no "just". He has to build or chop it and the spear means one less axe,

Fair enough. One whip later is all that we'll diverrt.

Plus he'll now need to defend border cities more than before. Plus we get an initial surprise attack (hopefully). Plus we can circle chariots around him and prevent him from making worker improvements, and have more scouting and map info.

What!?!?

If one mega-stack had been forking Turnadot & Barbiere we would absolutely have lost a city.

No way! It _was_ his mega stack - the six axes was basically all he could spare at the time to move that far away, not an ounce less. The two axes that were the decoy were built after the main stack was already in motion, I think we can assume.

Conversely, the fact that he's got an axe + 2 chariots around LaTraviata + 3 axes by Barbiere means that we can hit either of those stack in a 2:1 basis. But we couldn't 2:1 him if he put all of his units together. If he consolidates into equal units as we have, then he is free to walk around our lands and get into city-fork location and there's not much that we can do to stop him. Our only recourse is to whip down every city and have more absolute power than he has invading.

Giving him a choice is always better for him than forcing his hand. If assembling a mega stack was the better play, he could do it. We can only hit his mini-stacks if he lets us. He plays fast but he isn't stupid. I don't believe in reasoning based on assuming he'll make stupid plays. (I do believe in giving him more chances to make bad plays, but that's different! And hidden chariots give him many more chances to make bad plays.)

As quickly as he may play his turns, that fork attack on Barbiere/Turnadot + chariots by LaTraviata was well thought out. It forced us to attack across a river which is less than ideal even though it worked out magnificiently. He's also completely dedicated to war, although the 7 axes that he's lost may take the wind out of his sails soon.

7 axes + 1 worker + 2 chariots, but who's counting?

The expected ratio for us was trading 3 axes for 5 without the general, maybe 2 with. While not ideal, I'm happy to keep taking that kind of play.

I would love him to invest 100 hammers in a settler for a city on flat ground that 4 shock axes can reach in two turns!

Fair enough, but archers will defend against our Shock axes.

Okay then we get CR axes and chariots and 15 hammer units which beat archers handily. These tactics don't work so well deep in his borders where he has a road network, but in a new city that's closer to us than to him? Bring it on.

Also, I'm just thinking of how much easier he'd be to deal with right now if he didn't have chariots. Sorry, but I'm getting pretty sold on my own reasoning here.

[MindyMcCready]

So last point on Retep. He's got 2 decent cities + 1 very stinky city. He's probably mostly out of forests by now. If we can get just a couple more 2:1 battles on him the he's really going to fade away as a threat (he did whip 2X in the last 4 turns though).

Now, its debatable whether the way to achieve those 2:1 is to get the horse city up quick or to settle Carmen and allow him to think that he's a threat and run around with split stacks. Quite possible, he sees Carmen and consolidates his stack for a final all-in even odds battle on his terms. Of course, that wouldn't gain him anything,...but of course realizing that also won't stop him. He's definately in grudge match against us at this point.

Retep shouldn't be able to stop us settling Carmen,.... but we'd have to be careful.

Well most of my points were going to be "Ichabod's the greater risk" and "WilliamTell is the greater vunerablilty",...not sure what to say anymore now that Ichabod's heart might not be in the game.

Ok. I concede. Ichabods the lesser risk; WilliamTell can whip now (but should only do so for emergency reasons - we need stored hammers there). Let's really try to nail Retep in 2:1 especially after we plant our new horse city.

Maybe you want to offer Cheetah maps or something to see the progress?

[WilliamLP]

Maybe you want to offer Cheetah maps or something to see the progress?

Actually he traded maps again the turn he declared on Greece though I forgot to report it. I'll post the relevant changes with the next report, but it wasn't much.

But yeah, it's unfair to presume but that's what this thread is for! These Civ elitists, losing interest in a game when they don't think they can win. He's the second one in this game, Serdoa was the first. There was a post by Bigger in the organization thread singling me out as one of the players who might not know what they were going into and may not be reliable to stick to the game. I'm not going to lie, it pissed me off and still does a bit.

Oh, I actually think the threat from the east is actually a reason to get the horse city first. The reason is that Barbiere + Traviata is much easier to defend than Babiere + Traviata + Carmen. Without Carmen so soon, we could quickly mobilize a stack to go east, and there's only one tile we need to stand on to defend everything else. With Carmen, it's more complicated, and Retep can show up from any of three places to screw us over. I learned this the hard way once already!

(One thing that would refute this would be Cheetah deciding for some crazy reason to attack us from the east - it would be a bad move for him, but this game makes me presume nothing. )

New Carmen isn't actually going to contribute anything to the empire for a long time - it's a long term investment and its early life will be trying to whip a terrace without forests in first ring. The horse/fur city does contribute quickly - even though it's just resources at first, the +1 happy per city is a production advantage at Turandot for instance, maybe worth as much as 4 hammers per turn there.

[MindyMcCready]

Yeah, Serdoa,... PB8 showed what excellent players and good sports Pindicator and Scooter were (setting aside a minor unit naming meltdown :LOL. Honourable mention to SpaceTyrant and Azza. I was a little disappointed with some others. It just didn't seem to me that Plako's lead was completely insurmountable - he certainly had some islands that could be taken away from him. To be fair, toppling Plako would take a degree of cooperation that isn't practical in a prisonner's dilemna with everyone playing to win. But why play to win? When it's clear that you can't win, play for something else - like Retep is doing. :LOL:

It does puzzle me why the contenders feel that the non-contenders should continue to play to the best of their ability but they can throw the game at their choosing. That's just bad policy for a community.

I wouldn't worry about Bigger's comment. You were an unestablished name. Its not unfair for him to caution you; but you're free to demand recognition at the end of this game. Especially after having me as ded-lurker. :LOL:

[WilliamLP]

Double Buddhism spread! The odds are about 1/10 on any turn so it's not lucky to have it spread by now, just a fluke that they both got it at the same time.

Turandot got the 60% border pop so it sees all things.




- 2 spears and an axe guard Traviata. Unfortunately we can't really move another axe to the sheep to intercept the stack: the healthiest one is 4.3 / 5, and it think it's more valuable to spend the one turn getting to 100%.
- Everything else is healing.
- The settler next turn will move to "T81". With micro from 4 workers it can move to "T82" the turn after that, and then T83 we can settle and hook up the horses on the same turn, since they're on a river. This delays our original gold by a couple of turns but it gives the new city a lightning fast start - horses immediately and it will get two forests chopped for a terrace right afterwards.




Bacchus should take a long look at this!




Also, we just gave Retep a spike in GNP.






We're significantly ahead of Retep in everything that matters. And we have two cities that haven't really come into their own yet, but are about to.

Maybe we should just look at this continent as a 5-player game, and it's possible to be optimistic, lol.

New info from Cheetah's maps:




This border tension seems very real. Looking at the micro-map, it's hard to believe Ichabod thought he could extend this far this way, and simultaneously even farther the other way at the same time, with the weakest military rating on the continent.

[MindyMcCready]

Yeah, Ichabod's pretty funny with these plants. It's ok to do an aggressive plant and then build military like crazy,....but he still hasn't geared up.

Does look like we'll be safe from Ichabod aggression in the near term. I think that we can risk sending the one GI archer to the desert hill. Making him think twice about trying to settling there may save us the headache of redeploying for another city raze. 3T of fortify until we have odds on his C1s.

That far east Quecha will move 2E to the plain hill for visibility? I'd love to be BFF with Cheetah but,...

Little painful to watch all of our economic advantages go down the drain. Hopefully, we'll get some back once we take Retep's cities and secure a nice little corner of land for ourselves.

[MindyMcCready]

Is that 4 worker support necessary? The settler could travel to the north and be there only 1T later.

Normally, I don't care about the comm/micro to this degree, but in this case it gets us earlier catapults which means less time for Retep and Ichabod to match our tech.

EDIT:
Sorry, I re-read the post. Immediate horses + 2 forest chops into terrace do sound good. Not sure if that's better than a 1T delay + gold or not.

[WilliamLP]

Is that 4 worker support necessary? The settler could travel to the north and be there only 1T later.

I think it is. This way gets horses in the empire on T83, and immediately chopping the terrace makes the city a whole lot better, getting the cows and extra farms. I think we need more ability to actually produce units in the east.

And every turn earlier the border pop happens, the furs add +1 tile worth of productivity in Turandot and Barbiere since we're limited by the happy cap right now.

Also construction is going to take a long time, at least 15-20 turns. It's 560 beakers!

The east Quechua's reason for being right now is to prevent barb spawns, so it can't afford to move yet.

I'm wary to have as little as we do guarding the east, actually, but am fine with moving out an archer or two once WT has its terrace and border pop and produces an axe or two.

[WilliamLP]

Sorry, I re-read the post. Immediate horses + 2 forest chops into terrace do sound good. Not sure if that's better than a 1T delay + gold or not.

And even 4 chops into Terrace + Barracks there might not be so crazy!

[MindyMcCready]

Giving him a choice is always better for him than forcing his hand. If assembling a mega stack was the better play, he could do it. We can only hit his mini-stacks if he lets us. He plays fast but he isn't stupid. I don't believe in reasoning based on assuming he'll make stupid plays. (I do believe in giving him more chances to make bad plays, but that's different! And hidden chariots give him many more chances to make bad plays.)

I just want to clarify a few things in the event that Retep ends up reading this.

First, I said nothing of the sort that Retep is making stupid plays or that he stupid. In fact, I said:

As quickly as he may play his turns, that fork attack on Barbiere/Turnadot + chariots by LaTraviata was well thought out.

Next thing, is that I don't believe that I'm "reasoning based on assuming that he'll make stupid plays". He *is* splitting his stack right now. He is giving us opportunities. His 3 axes S-2W of Barbiere are vunerable to a worker-assisted attack. He lost 2 axes because they weren't in a stack. None of this is to say that he is stupid but rather, he's taking some reasoned chances to disrupt us.

Maybe I just haven't had my coffee yet, but it seems like you're putting words in my mouth.

Now about that mega-stack, not being able to hurt us,....

First, the fact that he walked those axes up behind us meant that we had a increased 'sense of war'. Had he not done that, we probably would have been less prepared, being tempted to build settlers/workers in the hope that he was taking that power in the direction of the less prepared Bacchus.

If he had instead waited and assembled all the units that we were seeing (8 axes + 3 chariots) things would have been pretty different. He could have, with only 3T notice, sat NNW of Barbiere at approximately the same turn as when the battle actually took place. Even with our heightened sense of war and a set of whips we had 8 axes + 2 spears + 1 archer to protect 3 cities. We could not have attacked out and we would not have been able to reinforce LaTraviata. At the minimum we would have lost that city. Depending on how less prepared we were and/or the positioning of our eastern army (I imagine that it would have been just as out-of-position had we felt more at ease) we could have easily lost either Barbiere or Turandot.

Now this scenario benefits from 20-20 hindsight and also isn't to say that you didn't make very strong plays, but I feel that it's fair to say that we/you won that battle because he split his stack. So, I also feel that it's questionable for you to make a move, that induces him to change his tactics and consolidate his stack without a very strong reason.

Now landing those horses and wiping out chuck(s) of his army before he can reposition may very well be that reason and certainly it suits my preference of happily letting Retep feel that he's disrupting our silver and threatening Barbiere while we reposition to wipe out chunks of his army that he can no longer replace so easily. So our objectives are aligned even if inadvertently: you want horse to force him to consolidate his stack to stop disrupting our resources; I conceded horses are good now in the hope that we can wipe out portions of his stack.