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

[WilliamLP]

Some points on Retep: I guess I want to know what you mean by 4 spears + 3 axes + 2 cats. Well I understand what that means, but is that all the units allocated to the Barbiere/LT front? Does that include the MP in the cities themselves? If so, I'd say that's a little bit light and you're tempting fate. Hoffman's our future and all, but we can't take a chance with Barbiere given Retep's city visibility.

I'm not interested in taking chances, but yeah I'm very interesting in defending with the minimum that's needed to be fine if Retep throws his whole stack at either LT or Barbiere.

I actually think 4 spears + 3 axe + 2 cats in Barbiere, plus a spear in LT for garrison holds either site. (With the good point you bring up of keeping the blocking forest.) There would be plenty of other units 2 turns away from Barbiere as well.

Whatever odds he has attacking into high defense cities plummet after he takes 2 top stack hits and 10 collateral hits from 2 cats.

2. We still only have 1T of notice in Barbiere which means no whips. T115 he had 5HA + 4 chariots visible that could be at Barbiere in 1-2T.

Yeah, I'm not very worried about his 2-mover stack alone. Seeing his staging tile right now makes it much less of a problem, and we'll see if he moves to dislodge the spear there.

-Those units you mentioned would make for a close battle at first glance. C1 spear with full fort has 56% chance of surviving a second HA. So we'd be on a coin-flip chance,....cats then defend against chariots,

I think if cats are ever city defenders, I failed at Civ. Not that I rule that out. I think 2 cat hits would weaken the kind of stack you're talking about drastically, enough that not much there could even think about doing much damage to a full strength spear in 50% culture.

I'm very interested if you want to sim it out specifically! But the sim has to include the turn we get to attack out with cats + maybe spears before he gets to attack the city.

nothing whipped would make it in time other than a Barbiere whip.

I plan to have a decent stack of units on the tile 1SW of Manon, which can defend Hoffmann while also being 2 moves away from Barbiere.

3. I wouldn't spend hammers on a cultural battle over a city that won't be there for too long. Whether it's us or Bacchus, that culture shouldn't be there 50T from now. Right? :LOL:

50 turns is a long time! Maybe someone will boat him from the west even. So yeah. Has it occurred to you yet who our neighbor might be if we ever want to settle the northwest island?

[MindyMcCready]

Did you see the 4 whips in one turn from Ichabod?

[WilliamLP]

Did you see the 4 whips in one turn from Ichabod?

Yes! It's not elephants yet but it could be 4 cats. And he hasn't gotten an economic tech lately (e.g. CoL) that would warrant infrastructure whips.

[MindyMcCready]

I'm not interested in taking chances, but yeah I'm very interesting in defending with the minimum that's needed to be fine if Retep throws his whole stack at either LT or Barbiere.

I actually think 4 spears + 3 axe + 2 cats in Barbiere, plus a spear in LT for garrison holds either site. (With the good point you bring up of keeping the blocking forest.) There would be plenty of other units 2 turns away from Barbiere as well.

Ok, so that extra spear helps. Hitting with the cats first will waste 2 cats but keep the city safe.

I'm guessing that some of the HA would suffer 15 Hit points of damage (~5.2). If 2x C1-5.2 HA hit 1 full fort we'd be looking at almost 75% survival so that should be ok.

We still only have 1T of notice in Barbiere which means no whips. T115 he had 5HA + 4 chariots visible that could be at Barbiere in 1-2T.

Yeah, I'm not very worried about his 2-mover stack alone. Seeing his staging tile right now makes it much less of a problem, and we'll see if he moves to dislodge the spear there.

Sorry, looking at an older map with out the spear's visibility.

I'm very interested if you want to sim it out specifically! But the sim has to include the turn we get to attack out with cats + maybe spears before he gets to attack the city.

No point doing that right now while his 2-mover stack is in Bacchus' land. Let's see what happens there but we should be thinking about offense as well as defense.

Has it occurred to you yet who our neighbor might be if we ever want to settle the northwest island?

Haven't thought about it at all. Too tied up in regional concerns to bother thinking about the larger game. Those islands are a pipe dream at this point I'd say.

[WilliamLP]

I'm guessing that some of the HA would suffer 15 Hit points of damage (~5.2). If 2x C1-5.2 HA hit 1 full fort we'd be looking at almost 75% survival so that should be ok.

2 cats would get the 2 top-of-stack hits (and may withdraw), and they also hit 5 collateral targets each, with the possibility of hitting the same unit with collateral multiple times. I don't completely understand the mechanic, but damage would be dealt 12 times. If they're for defensive suicide anyway they can get barrage, but I'm not sure if the difference is actually noticeable.

Haven't thought about it at all. Too tied up in regional concerns to bother thinking about the larger game. Those islands are a pipe dream at this point I'd say.

Are you sure? I don't have a great image of it right now but the minimap:




That stuff to the northwest might be a lot of land. And nobody else is anywhere near it. The cost of getting, a settler + galley + archer + worker over there isn't that high, considering it would kind of be a sub-civ with no contention. Overseas foreign routes with currency make cities there pay for themselves immediately or nearly so, perhaps. Retep might not even know we're doing it, and even if he did I can't see him building a significant navy.

[WilliamLP]

Pics of Cheetah's land to help us see if his strategic resources are at risk?

Have fun:




The short of it is that Cheetah's copper is extremely easy to disconnect.

The map also shows a lot better that the northwest island is pretty interesting.

[WilliamLP]

I'm thinking of asking Ichabod the peace question this turn, i.e. declaring and offering the treaty.

The downside would be that if he's attacking Cheetah, he can commit more than otherwise. Also even if he has no intent to fight, he might keep war on (and we need to postpone some infrastructure builds to keep up with army). But if he accepts peace it's a win. Thoughts on this?

[MindyMcCready]

Wow, very interesting. Those islands sure look tasty. Of course, it's making me want to take Suit up all the more to take pressure off that front so we can commit the resources to take those islands.

I sure hope that Cheetah with his 5 cities can put up a decent fight against Ichabod. And I sure hope that it's Cheetah that Ichabod is putting those whips towards. :LOL:

We may look out of the game right now, but it's not impossible that we get back in with a bunch of cities that pay for themselves. West of Suit up gives us dominance over those islands and that's no small thing. We really have as much undisputed land as anyone. In contrast, Ichabod is bringing himself into conflit with 2-3 other powers. So that's very encouraging. We may yet rise, while nobody's paying much attention towards us.

Ichabod could do a lot to prevent our rise - and probably should. But Cheetah's front is just terrible to defend against - which makes it near certain that that's where he heads. That 'Deserted Prophet' city just completely wrecked Cheetah's game. We need something like that against Bacchus - 3S1W of Suit up isn't as good but it's a contender.

[Ceiliazul]

thanks for the wide shot, William, very nice.

[MindyMcCready]

I'm thinking of asking Ichabod the peace question this turn, i.e. declaring and offering the treaty.

The downside would be that if he's attacking Cheetah, he can commit more than otherwise. Also even if he has no intent to fight, he might keep war on (and we need to postpone some infrastructure builds to keep up with army). But if he accepts peace it's a win. Thoughts on this?

I think that the biggest consideration is maintaining the balance of power. Every turn that Cheetah stays alive is a turn that we also stay alive.

Ichabod is too close to being a contender to risk conflict with a near-equivalent power. We lose little by dedicating ourselves to his destruction, but he loses much. I think that that'll prevent him coming after us.

Related to this is the indefensible setup of Cheetah's cities relative to Deserted Prophet. This makes Cheetah very low hanging fruit even without their massive power difference, this point further keeps us safe even if we behave in a somewhat deliqent manner towards him (like with the wines city plant).

Next, Ichabod has expanded to that big island. This is very, very good for us. He's bringing himself into conflit with Nakor(?). The payouts very big for him there but will require a lot of resources. He needs to concentrate on that area right now or else risk Nakor getting a more significant pressence on that island that may be harder to remove the more time goes on. I would see this as a pretty immediate priority whereas Cheetah's going nowhere.

So I would bank on those 3 points to undermine him a little more. Giving Cheetah some extra time and or taking a little pressure off could make a very large difference in his ability to hold out. And we really don't want Ichabod to get those 5/7/8/9 cities/city sites becasue that will absolutely free up a border for him and allow him to fully concentrate on us.

I could be wrong and Ichabod intends war with us - and he could do this strictly to undermine us since he can see the land that we have available to us if we can just kill off Retep. But what little I know about Ichabod makes me think that he'll pursue absolute profit/profit relative to the world over profit relative to us.


If I'm wrong and Ichabod intends war with us:
-Well the early DOW forces him to reveal his hand in a less prepared state. This is the biggest opportunity cost of not DOW.

If he does not intend war:
-I'd be really surprised if he engaged in an unwanted war. Again he's a contender while we have only hope/potential of being a contender. By no means guaranteed that we can pull ourselves out of this deficit position. Virtually no matter what we do, he'll be better off beating up Cheetah and hitting us with a 10-city advantage.

Ichabod could very likely try to force us into the same committment - and I'd go so far as to say that we probably shouldn't take forced peace. The only time that we should consider doing so is if we get a like benefit out of it which means taking out Retep and/or securing some of that good land between Retep and Bacchus. Under that scenario we wouldn't be losing ground to Ichabod, in a relative sense. Or at least not as much ground.

A win-win vs Ichabod could keep us in a game. A neutral-win for us-Ichabod will mean that we're definately abandoning both hope and potential of being a contender. It's won't take Ichabod long to land that island; Cheetah would be very vulnerable to Ichabod's full might. That means that we'd be the next ones to face Ichabod's full might +8 cities and on two separate fronts.

Slow Ichabod down while backfilling our lands and own islands. I've been worrying that we've been misreading Ichabod's intent towards Cheetah based on the singular fact that Cheetah's weaker than us. But after taking some time to look at the map info, I'm feeling a lot better that he won't come after us. In a determined sense anyway,...he could still take opportunistic stabs at our East if we're under-defended.

If Ichabod DOWs us,....stay at war,....build up troops and give forced peace only when we're ready to take out Retep.