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

[WilliamLP]

As soon as you move your units out of the invisible spot he'll proably back off again.

Yeah, and it's hard to play Civ chess more than a move or two in advance, but I'm keeping an eye out for tactics where we could cut off his retreat somehow. E.g. spears plus 2 workers on the cow tile 2N of Traviata could cut off a lot of tiles.

Obviously, I have absolutely no regrets about having Construction here... And I had no idea that in this game I'd value the river crossing feature as much.

Slightly longer term, we need to consider if we can get away with not building walls first in either of Boheme or Don G. This attack by Retep is far from the worst case: we know that his two-movers are basically out of commission for several turns (even if we can't attack them). Giving us vision of all his mounted force, while it is a few moves away from a threat, is ideal for us. And thus he can't really assemble a combined attack including axes and spears for a while either, freeing more catapults to defend the east. We're going to have a critical mass of catapults pretty soon, like 4-5. A stack of that size means they can all attack, and the last few don't even die but they just withdraw doing collateral and leave the enemy stack as sure kills and free experience.

When the peace with Ichabod runs out, I'm considering declaring a phony war and immediately offering 10 turns of peace again. He'd lose his favourable trades if he doesn't take it, and it would also force him to reveal his intent. Thoughts on this?

Also of note is that his research shows Masonry which probably means he's heading for Construction next himself.

[MindyMcCready]

Yeah, and it's hard to play Civ chess more than a move or two in advance, but I'm keeping an eye out for tactics where we could cut off his retreat somehow. E.g. spears plus 2 workers on the cow tile 2N of Traviata could cut off a lot of tiles.

Great, end our assault on a hill or forest would be great of course.

Obviously, I have absolutely no regrets about having Construction here... And I had no idea that in this game I'd value the river crossing feature as much.

Slightly longer term, we need to consider if we can get away with not building walls first in either of Boheme or Don G. This attack by Retep is far from the worst case: we know that his two-movers are basically out of commission for several turns (even if we can't attack them). Giving us vision of all his mounted force, while it is a few moves away from a threat, is ideal for us. And thus he can't really assemble a combined attack including axes and spears for a while either, freeing more catapults to defend the east. We're going to have a critical mass of catapults pretty soon, like 4-5. A stack of that size means they can all attack, and the last few don't even die but they just withdraw doing collateral and leave the enemy stack as sure kills and free experience.

When the peace with Ichabod runs out, I'm considering declaring a phony war and immediately offering 10 turns of peace again. He'd lose his favourable trades if he doesn't take it, and it would also force him to reveal his intent. Thoughts on this?

Also of note is that his research shows Masonry which probably means he's heading for Construction next himself.

I think that we need to take a chance on our 2 Ichabod plants - especially the hill city. Granary for culture plus whips is probably our best play. If we can make it to Size 3 then 1H into walls should make it whippable. If we can't make it to size 3,...well then we probably should be abandoning the city anyway and just chalk up the 100H lost settler.

Since we've got 2 cities so close, we can't defend both of them from forking so our defense should be centred around attacking out with the cats - which you're building or have built already. When/if we see that Ichabod gets construction we may have to revisit our thinking. It may well be a near tragedy, but we'll have to be open-minded about HBR if we feel we're being truly threatened.

Short version:
-Build granaries.
-Build cats; lots of them.
-Declare war and re-offer.
-Save gold.

[MindyMcCready]

Oh, yes,....would a tribute to Ichabod be too humiliating? He demanded sheep right? Can't remember if you freely offered that or not. Would be much cheaper than a throwdown.

We can posture aggressively towards him of course. Mad dog stance with nothing to lose might make him think twice.

Or we can pseudo-vassalize to him and hope that he has other objectives worth pursing.

Not sure that I have a recommendation as of right now,...this wouldn't be such a problem if Cheetah's power looked a little more like Retep's. What the holy heck happened over there?

All in all, I'm not sure that you should be so eager to trade units with Retep. Its somewhat counter to your strategy of out-growing him. I'd love to eliminate him as a threat, but our defensive advantage is bigger than its ever been. He's never going to get cats when he's sitting at strike levels of GNP while running his horses through our lands (although we did underestimate how quickly he made it to HBR). By all means, trade units if it means that we're going to take his cities....but you seem to be leaning towards a no profit throwdown which I thought was more my thing than yours. :LOL: Avoiding a two-sided power drop is more in your interest than it is in Retep's.

Chase him off, watch our cultural advantage grow. Let him sit with his whip unhappy and strike levels of GNP. Wait patiently for a decisive battle. That's probably the smarter, more profitable play.

We could also strategize around a 10T peace deal with Ichabod and take advantage of his 12K or 15K power at home to really rid us of the Retep problem.

Food for thought anyway.

[WilliamLP]

Retep made the unsurprising move NE-SE. I'll be extremely surprised if he doesn't just turn back. He'll either see the 5 spears from city visibility or at best with the first unit he moves.




Bacchus has an axe and spear in Stranger. Don G and Boheme are going to (try to) build terraces first. But I'm putting 20 hammers into walls in Boheme so it's possible to whip.

We have 2 turns to move before Ichabod can declare. The immediate forces will be 5 axes + 2 archers + 2 catapults (a third arriving a couple turns later) + 4 chariots that will be fairly centralized.

The forest chop outside the culture to the east is example of us needing fewer hammers there, right now.




Everyone's ramping up. Retep also did 2 whips last turn not shown yet.

[WilliamLP]

So Pindicooter got circumnavigation, by being Viking and by being the world's map brokers. Nice play! They offered the map trade after. And it's clear why they didn't want to trade us maps earlier. There's a ton going on in this map, too much to process. I'll try to give a brief overview in another post, but honestly, the rest of the world doesn't really affect us, and also the lurkers have much better knowledge of the world than we do anyway.




Two problems here:

Retep moved back with all of his 2-movers, strongly suggesting he's acting on city vision. My first reaction is to road the cow and move 5 spears there but I'm going to think for a while about it. We can't trap him (he has NW-NW). He might want to move SW-SW anyway, and would we want to attack across the river? I'm not sure. Another option is to move all spears into Traviata, move 2 workers onto the silver tile (to road next turn) and cut him off that way.

He also showed his axe stack. All 5 axes are unpromoted. If only we had a catapult on the fork tile, they have 63% odds to retreat on the top axe and it would make this a mop-up. We could attack out. Our C2-Shock axe has 90% odds, then we have another C1-Shock axe, and a couple of C1s, and one with 0xp. So we can get a favourable trade in terms of hammers, but is that the best we can do?

Retep is consistently playing last of 18. I'm not sure if he's doing it to see our builds... If so it's a good play but way too cheesy for my liking. But, thus he knows we just built a cat in Barbiere.

From Scooter's maps:




Ok, what kind of stuff is Retep smoking here? That bit of land to the west of him is quite valuable (ivory and food). And is that a hut graphic?! Is it really possible he hasn't even explored that? I know he's playing 2-5 minute turns, but even if his only goal is to troll, he could be a lot more effective at it if he settled that land and turned it into military output. Or he could have tried living with peace, while hooking up ivory and going for Ballistaphants, and trying to serve up cold revenge later.

I know this guy is a better player than this, so did he just completely check out of the game at turn 30 or what?

[WilliamLP]

Scooticator offered:




That's an easy instant-accept. Note they've got calendar, iron, and currency by now, to give an idea of how far behind we're falling!




With Retep, I made all conservative plays. In the north, what I wanted to do was move both workers onto the silver, so we could cut him off if he moves SW-SW to merge his stacks. But then he could move NE-SE again, and we'd start the race to the east again, with the spears lagging and the combat workers out of position. If playing the turn again I would have thought harder about interrupting the chop, and having 4 workers devoted to this, because keeping the stacks separated would be pretty nice.

In the south, 20 sims of our 5 axes vs his:

5 wins: 4/20. (Actual chance is 16.7%)
4 wins: 9/20
3 wins: 4/20
2 wins: 3/20

I feared being on the lower 10-20% of this, and him having axes healthy enough to counter-attack. So I held off. We're getting a stack of cats built up steadily.

I expect him to move his SW-SW with his 2-movers, and NW with his axes, to merge them. This is perfectly fine: Traviata is a fortress.

We are 15 XP to the next general, for what it's worth.

I wish there were a stat for it, but I'm willing to bet that out of necessity we have the most extensive defensive road network in the world!

[WilliamLP]

For lurker amusement, here's my take on the world. Even though, for all intents and purposes, anyone not on our continent is playing in a different PB game! By the time intercontinental play matters we may out of the running except for trying to turtle as long as possible in the face of increasingly modern units.




Commodore has a Canada theme, no doubt because of his geographic position. He's got some decent land to grow into including a nice chunk to the east without contention. His capital is fantastic, as is Quebec. I expect him to do very well in this game. And I know Scooter to his south is his good friend from PB8. Heh, many months later I'm going to love reading their reaction when they first learned that Commodore was their neighbour again.




Scooticator is the "America" in this game, with some kind of sports theme? They have played the land grab very well, while teching well with tons of resources.

Worthy of note is that despite being our first intercontinental contact, they are nowhere near us. So I doubt they'd care about pillaging our seafood or even returning to that coastal spot at all. Also of note is that there may be a lot of undisputed island land to our northwest.




Nakor has a cool Robert Jordan / Wheel of Time theme. Unfortunately for him his start is quite terrible in the middle of the jungle. And compare his capital to Commodore's or Ichabod's (3-hammer start!) or ours.




Lewwyn is running a heavily pork-based counter C&D empire. (All cities are capitalization variants of "BaCoN".) Unfortunately the land to his west is very poor. And he's going to have a hard time naming his 33rd city.




Azza is going for Dr. Who companions perhaps. And what's this? A PB game where he isn't totally screwed over yet?




The mysterious score leader Dtay is up here keeping his map close to his chest. He'll probably bump into Ichabod and / or Cheetah if he hasn't yet.




Jowwy has another really nice capital and we can see how he could build Oracle so quickly.




Suttree is not doing so well. I wonder why? It doesn't seem like his land is that bad, particularly the fp / river area to his west.




This is Yuri + Mackotti's land. It appears they've gone for a ruthlessly aggressive land grab against Sutt, probably with some warring, and have succeeded. And they have a ton of land to back-fill. Some people have called Mackotti the best Civ player on the planet, though I'm not sure if he's the one playing the turns. Once they claim all that stuff to their west, they could be a world superpower.

As big as this game is, there still has to be at least one major continent out there! Likely it's south of us. Plako, Old Harry, mh, and Dhalphir are unaccounted for.

[WilliamLP]

Also, Retep is waiting to play the very last yet again. He's doing this to view our builds? I think this is seriously cheesy, if so. But it's been too many times in a row to be a coincidence. It delays the game and I am tempted to call him out on it in the IT thread. But I don't think much good could come of it.

[WilliamLP]

I logged in to this:






What's he thinking, Colonel?

Mindy would freak out if I actually accepted this, and I didn't. I was a little tempted though. Maybe if he didn't have to worry about us for a while he'd go bug Bacchus. But I don't think we have much to gain from peace.




Ichabod left a worker in range of a chariot, where we could have declared and killed it. I didn't. I also offered corn for corn as a signal that we want peace, about as close to a NAP as you can get in AI diplo I guess. He's getting two trades from us that benefit him and not us too, so I think all signs say that we may actually have a peaceful border here for now.

The worst case (that I believe we needed to prepare for) hasn't happened. So it looks like we can actually focusing on growing and recovering economy for a while!




Retep is simply retreating. Note we aren't even that far from being able to rush Retep's capital with 6 axes and 2 cats that can get there before his 2-mover stack. But I'm not thinking about that until our econ has grown quite a lot. We can get some presence and road network west of La Traviata now though.

ToA is due in 2. If, for some reason, someone else is building it too, the fail gold would be a great prize. I.e. we could get currency in 6 turns or so. I'm still thinking about Alphabet, since we have a known overseas contact with a lot of cities.

[MindyMcCready]

I logged in to this:



Mindy would freak out if I actually accepted this, and I didn't.

I honestly don't know what to think of this. Each and every time I thought that Retep might make a more rational decision and turn towards a vulnerable Bacchus he hasn't. That last war with Bacchus was pretty clearly a diversion to get us to drop our guard. He's displayed blinders-on, antagonistic behaviour towards us all game and I see nothing to indicate that he's going to change.

So then why does Retep want peace now? I'd guess that the answer is that he's realized that he can't catch us by surprise and he knows that he can't punch through our defenses so he needs,...catapults.

To be sure, further war isn't a benefit to us. But, I see Retep getting a little more out of peace in terms of his all-important city raze objective.

I was a little tempted though. Maybe if he didn't have to worry about us for a while he'd go bug Bacchus. But I don't think we have much to gain from peace.

I understand the temptation and I'm even suffering a little war weariness myself but war's going to be more problem once he gets cats. 1T of notice to defend Barbiere is going to be our future problem. He'd likely attack with speed, collateralling the city and with his 20 unit stack that would tie up a lot of our troops. And our fork defense strategy wouldn't cut it. We'd need to attack into that stack on the first turn of DOW. We'd never get that opportunity since Retep with city visibility will simply sit and wait until our units are pulled eastward.

So I think all signs say that we may actually have a peaceful border here for now.

The worst case (that I believe we needed to prepare for) hasn't happened. So it looks like we can actually focusing on growing and recovering economy for a while!

I'm willing to give peace a chance.

Retep is simply retreating. Note we aren't even that far from being able to rush Retep's capital with 6 axes and 2 cats that can get there before his 2-mover stack.

I'd still say that we should take that opportunity if we get it. This would be a profitable exchange relative to the spear-HA exchange. Our advantage in his constant aggression is that we know that he leaves his cities virtually empty. We should be actively looking for opportunities to out maneouvre him and end this threat, especially now that we can see that he has valuable land to his West.

Maybe the peace offer was because he saw that he has some decent land. :LOL: As you said, he'd be more effective at trying to kill us if he just planted some military pump cities. I'm not sure that we should let him. Or rather, if we plan on letting him spend a bunch of hammers building cities it should be tied to a plan of releiving him of those cities and ending his perpetual threat.