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

[MindyMcCready]

A lot hinges on how suicidal Retep is. Certainly the double forced peace suggests that he's not coke-addict suicidal but rather Klingon glory-in-battle suicidal. The fact that he's wandered into both of ours and Bacchus' lands means he's definately some type of suicidal.

Its difficult to say for sure because the times when he went deepest into our territory (Carmen raze, mobile stack past our north) Bacchus had almost no army and couldn't capitalize on the wide open 15K power across 3 cities. Now that Bacchus has an army things may have changed, and you're right that Retep may be displaying a little more self-preservation.

So given a Retep with a self-preservation motive and 20+ units, both us and Bacchus are very far from taking Suit up. If we went full war mode for 10T, I'm sure that we could take the city but at the risk of losing our shirts to Bacchus.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that that's not worth it. Getting that strategic land points would definately set us back but could very well be worth it long-term. If Bacchus levelled off and we went full war, we'd likely achieve our goals and maybe have enough left over to defend against Bacchus. If we're ever going to make such a move it would be while Ichabod is battering Cheetah senseless.

Sorry, I was a little hesitant to do this because you haven't shown any inclination to make such an aggressive move. I'll see if I can spend some time tonight to get a better feel for Retep's unit composition and what he could also produce over the same 10T ramp up. We'd have to hide our power build up of course and do what we could to lock Ichabod into peace immediately before hand.

Sure,...worth investigating.

[WilliamLP]

A lot hinges on how suicidal Retep is. Certainly the double forced peace suggests that he's not coke-addict suicidal but rather Klingon glory-in-battle suicidal.

Yeah, he may not be the Rob Ford of Civ.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that that's not worth it.

Yeah, if Bacchus weren't so close in the picture I'd be with you. Come in with, say, 15 axes, 10 spears, 15 cats. Suicide all 15 (and the final half may live and redline Retep's units) and everything else should die pretty easily. Retep will have construction eventually and it would be nice to hit before then. We'd lose a lot, at least like 500+ hammers worth, but then have a completely free pass and very nice land on one side of the empire.

But, either of us or Bacchus doing that would leave us wide open for a counter-attack. As soon as we saw this happening, we could march a big stack south-east, and start razing Bacchus' core cities.

Sorry, I was a little hesitant to do this because you haven't shown any inclination to make such an aggressive move. I'll see if I can spend some time tonight to get a better feel for Retep's unit composition and what he could also produce over the same 10T ramp up. We'd have to hide our power build up of course and do what we could to lock Ichabod into peace immediately before hand.

I think you can still assume I won't make an aggressive move soon! But again if the discussion hinges on Bacchus being close it would be good to know how close.

It also would be good to know if Retep can realistically get construction, like, ever. We know he doesn't have math yet, or we'd have seen the score jump. I still suspect his beakers per turn isn't much over the minimum of the 1 free one.

[WilliamLP]

Not much going on this turn. We got Monarchy but need one more turn to switch since the revolt to OR is still wearing off.

Hastily accepting the silver for gems trade with Ichabod has really screwed us up. 3 cities are unhappy right now. This isn't really acceptable so I'm trying to trade an extra silver from Old Harry for our second gold. If he accepts, I'll get the extra gold back from Scooter by declaring and re-offering still in this turn. It's pretty circuitous and dumb, but I'd rather annoy the superpower who is half a world away.

I moved before Bacchus this turn so we're guaranteed to get one more move before he can declare next turn.

Ichabod isn't screwing around:

[WilliamLP]

According to CivStats, Bacchus planted a new city, and Plako (!) razed a size 1 city of his. Plako isn't even close by land, so I think it might be contention over the sea on the islands SE of Bacchus.

[MindyMcCready]

No Ichabod isn't messing around. Not looking so good for Cheetah. Cheetah's got at least 5 cities, but Retep's power rises faster than his does. I guess he's crossing his fingers and hoping to vassalize.

It is a bit nerve wracking watching his power go up so much while we position our troops elsewhere. Should be the right call given that we're powerful enough to wreak Ichabod's games whereas Cheetah is not.

Very interesting about the Bacchus city raze. He's definately getting a little sandwiched and doesn't have the long-term potential that we seem to have.

As a side note to your question on whether I thought that Bacchus was close to taking Suit Up. Given a Retep with self-preservation, then NO Bacchus is not close to taking Suit up. He's was at 226K power. At a guess 50K of that is technology. I assumed that he has math and I noticed that he has Iron Working (note the tile 3W of Hoffman, but a duh, jungle moment). Add in 15K for pop and a 8K for buildings (2 barracks + 1 stable).

Spreading the units out evenly Bacchus with 1/2 the number for the recently HA he could have something like 4HA + 8 Axe + 8 spears + 7 Chariots + 7 Archers (started with 1 archer per city). So even if he concentrated all of his non-archer units that'd be 27 units with no cat going against 60% cutlure + hills he'd never take it.

BUT,... those 27 units are more than enough to crush Retep if he's caught in the field. From there, it'd be a cake walk into Suit up. Those 27 units are also an upper bound of what we could face in Hoffman,....which is a lot.

It's nice to hear that Plako killed off a city because that'll divert some power away from what we might have to face. Bacchus' lack of a second front makes him dangerous at his current power level.

BUT,...Bacchus is starting to have a second front. That city Redstone III is a nice blocker city. Worse, one more city to the NE of Redstone is going to kill off Bacchus' expansion plans. Strategically, controlling that area should be WAY more important to him that a revenge attack on Hoffman.

[WilliamLP]

BUT,...Bacchus is starting to have a second front. That city Redstone III is a nice blocker city. Worse, one more city to the NE of Redstone is going to kill off Bacchus' expansion plans. Strategically, controlling that area should be WAY more important to him that a revenge attack on Hoffman.

Another thing I forgot to report is that Scythian (the barb city to Bacchus's SW) was taken by blue down there. (I think it's Dhalphir? I should know better.) He does seem to be getting quite boxed in. Maybe there's a danger he turns into Retep 2.0 vs us, we'll see.

In my limited view, he didn't seem to commit nearly enough to expanding either south or north.

[WilliamLP]

This is the first turn Bacchus can potentially attack. I have 5 spears and an archer in Hoffman, and the hitter stack behind, to give him a chance to screw up and get a stack wiped if it moves next to Hoffmann.

The Ichabod border does need beefing up, and we're relying on the peaceful signs being real and the many reasons why attacking us probably isn't his best move.




The barb city was taken by Dhalphir. Bacchus really couldn't afford to let that happen. He might even be getting locked out of that jungle entirely.




We could get Feudalism in 11 (that's an upper bound - it would be faster in practice as cities and cottages grow). Or we could get CoL in 4 first. Calendar would be 5-6 turns.

Other nice-to-haves that are cheaper than Feudalism: Metal Casting (buffed workshops, forges), Iron (maybe a more productive tile or two and not that expensive), Aesthetics + Lit (Heroic Epic with marble), CS (after org, Bureaucracy bonus).

I'm not dead set on it but I'm leaning to Feudalism first. We're not sad to be building military units now - we can use all the spears we can build, and cats basically never go obsolete in a MP game. There aren't more than a couple of cities where I'd want to put 120 hammers into a courthouse immediately. Longbows make attacking us go from being a bad idea to a terrible one.

[MindyMcCready]

Military prep looks good around Hoffmann. Even Bacchus' full army shouldn't be able to crack that and more importantly it's enough deterrant that he should never bother trying. Bacchus should never take a swipe at us given his situation. It should be a no-brainer that Bacchus sends his army south, but,...there's a little bit of uncertainty about how rational his motivations are given his earlier runs at us.

Just to be clear Redstone III belongs to Dhalphir, right? And Dhalphir also took that barb city with the pigs 2S-7W of DoubleStar? Bacchus should never let that stand. The city that we razed from Bacchus was a staircase to nowhere for him and he should realize that. It exposed us to risk and got him very little except an entry point into disputed land between both us and Ichabod.

So what's next?

We have absolutely nothing to gain from a military showdown with Bacchus now that we've removed that city of his and protected our underbelly. If he sees that stack of cats and axes its going to scare the heck out of him and prevent him from taking action down south. I think that it's in our interest that he both takes the initiative *AND* is successful down south. I don't really want to box him in any more. Not until we can afford to expand that way and/or we have Longbows.

We can be reasonably confident that Bacchus cannot break Retep in the short run. If he built up for another 10T then he could do it, but he isn't ready right now. And quite honestly, Suit up is more important to us than to Bacchus. If he swings to Suit up that exposes contested land. If he takes out Redstone and/or keeps it, its a great choke for him and secures him uncontested land.


If we were to make forced peace with Bacchus, how many turns is that behind our mutual force peace with Retep? In other words 7T or whatever from now that Bacchus could DOW Retep, we could do the same and then wait for each other outside of Suit up and prevent that battle from happening.

So I guess what I'm getting at is that forced peace with Bacchus is probably a good thing right now as well as the most peaceful signals that we can send. I think that a DOW + one-sided peace deal is in order. Give him absolute certainty that he can engage to the south. From his farthest city, he's 10T away.




So other than convince Bacchus' that we're not a threat, what's our grand strategy? Some options:
1. Keep developing our main land.
2. Push to the islands.
3. Take out Suit Up.

It's arguable whether settling new cities on our NE mainland with Retep's 20 units stack is more or less risky than settling the islands. I'd personally lean against moving towards the islands because they're just too vulnerable to complete loss. If we weren't already getting ICTR then I'd be 100% behind settling 2 island cities but I don't think that there's any benefit given our ICTR with Fintourist/Old Harry is there?

This might come as a surprise to you,..., but I think that I favor military action. 10T of hidden build up; whip everything out. Ichabod will almost certainly have launched his war against Cheetah. Naturally, Bacchus should be sending his army down south especially if he feels safe from us. So I think that the timing, balance-of-power wise, is about as good as its ever going to get.

10T of build up and then hit Suitup + plant a couple of hill cities defended by Longbows. After that we just protect our significantly decresed borders, fill in our land and then when we're ready, make a push for naval dominance and control those islands.

We'd need 2 things first before seriously considering this.

From me: An estimate of the firepower needed to punch through Retep's estimated defenses. You've already asked for this but in a "can Bacchus get there" context.

From you: City-by-city screen shots so that I can understand if this is remotely viable given our economic and production situation.

We pretty much would have to decide on a course of action tomorrow to make this as effective as possible. OR,....maybe you know the answer already and can save us both some time? :LOL:

[MindyMcCready]

In my limited view, he didn't seem to commit nearly enough to expanding either south or north.

Hard to say. The veterans really stay away from jungle until all the other good stuff is taken. He's land is heavily seafood based so he probably needed galleys anyway to protect all his food. Having galleys on hand, I'd choose a decent island over the thick of the jungle.

If I had a decent army, which he didn't, I would have also tried to squeeze in a flood plain/corn city over the razed Stranger city. Maybe he was going for the iron, but why? And given all that jungle I'd be surprised if there isn't more iron to his south. He may also have another iron 2W of Forever Machine - althought the graphics not too clear.

[WilliamLP]

Hard to say. The veterans really stay away from jungle until all the other good stuff is taken.

Yeah, but I think my best move in PB11 was fully committing to the jungle immediately and grabbing basically all of it, relying on other players thinking as above. If not a viable way to win a game like this, I think I could be in a much better position right now in his shoes. (Aside from the fact that his second city was razed by Retep.) I think if Bacchus was going to ignore it, he needed to commit a lot more the other way.

Iron is eventually going to be critical in the age of knights but that's too far away to worry about.