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

[WilliamLP]

Fairly quiet turn in the logs...




Or not! It's kind of reassuring when the thing that was obviously going to happen actually happens, and here it is. Hopefully Cheetah can hold out for a while and maybe get some favourable coin flips.

Mackoti has managed to scoop up basically the entire southeast corner of the world! Suttree might be his next target as he never got off to a good start and was weakened early.




Mackoti basically owns all this now including the peninsula to the west.




Our contigency army against Ichabod is shown here, it's the stack, plus 3 spears and an archer in each of La Boheme and Don G. It's good at least that some of this will be available to go west and defend for when Bacchus could potentially attack 6 turns from now.

I'm not even going to argue that it wouldn't be kind of fun and interesting to move in on Ichabod right now. I'm not going to do it though.




We'll settle this city from Retep next turn, unless you have serious objections. We have 2 more moves before Retep could declare.

Barbiere needs enough to hold against any horse attack, though fortunately as long as he doesn't dislodge our south spear he doesn't have an attack from the fog.

In "normal" circumstances this plant would basically be a declaration of war, no doubt about it. If Retep still cares about making things as difficult as possible he might be able to make things interesting with a timing attack before we can whip longbows, but I'm not sure he does care and I think we'll be able to hold anyway.

[WilliamLP]

I settled Rigoletto. This is Giuseppe Verdi's tragic masterpiece known for, among other things, perhaps the most recognizable opera melody ever. (Or, another less serious take on it.)




We'll see if that's enough junk to keep Retep from trying to attack. More spears are on the way to Barbiere.

We got a new set of graphs on HarryTourist. This is a conscious and deliberate bad play - I just really like seeing the graphs. Scooter and Harry are two sets that could be 60 EP toward preventing city visibility from Retep.

Retep got an ancient tech (6 points). I wonder what it was? It's not Math which is 12 points, but it might be Masonry on the way to Construction eventually. I still think he's ages away from that.

Cheetah's copper is still connected. We'll see for how long.




Our GNP is deceptively low here - we haven't shown the upper tooth of 100% research yet. We're still behind Ichabod and way behind Scooter, but substantially ahead of Bacchus. And we have happy cap room for eons even without markets.

Cheetah is toast. I don't think he can be near catapults.








This is interesting! Harry is very far from running a farmer's gambit. There may actually be military tension between him and Ichabod.






Scooter is the only one who has built a courthouse, and only very recently.

[MindyMcCready]

We got a new set of graphs on HarryTourist. This is a conscious and deliberate bad play - I just really like seeing the graphs.

I have the same weakness! Yeah, Cheetah definately is toast. Regrettably it was the right call to give Ichabod the green light - a choice of one really.

[GreyWolf]

Just popping in to say that I am greatly enjoying your reports and discussion. Keep it up!

[WilliamLP]

Just popping in to say that I am greatly enjoying your reports and discussion. Keep it up!

Great, it's good to know someone's reading some of this! Unfortunately our role in this game may get less and less interesting as the turns go on. If I weren't playing I'd probably be flocking to Scooter's thread.

[WilliamLP]

So the game is back online, which means relaxing evenings are over.

Fintourist cancelled open borders on us, and offered Dyes + Open borders for 60 gold. 60 gold is a lot! Have I mentioned lately that the RBMod positioning of Open Borders is just a dumb change from the core game that improves nothing I can see and just adds dumb unintended consequences? Well this is one, that one of the advanced teams gets to bully one of the less advanced ones (us) and we probably have to just bend over and take it, letting them get more ahead of us, or else lose a massive chunk toward economic parity.

I canceled our Marble for Banana deal to them, and offered that for open borders. Maybe they have a use for marble and losing it would be a hell of a lot better than 60 gold right now.

Things are going to get messy with Retep and tactics again:




Retep showed his 10 horse archer stack. At least 1 has shock, and it's not clear how many more could promote it but probably not too many.

The difficulty is that he can go to X (threatening Rigoletto) or Y (threatening Barbiere) or Z (threatening Hoffmann in 2 turns). Or he could hit our defending stack directly (5 spear 6 axe 5 cats). But I don't think he has enough to kill cats with flanking.

I think we're fine if he moves to Y, with potentially 6 spears, 1 axe, 2 chariots to defend Barbiere. If he moves to Z, I think we have enough junk to save Hoffmann, but at this exact moment the defense is pretty thin if Ichabod strikes in force at the same time. There's not that much to be done though.

Also if he moves to Hoffmann there's a good chance we can raze his horse city, at least. That city just got its border pop, ironically from our random Buddhism spread.




GNP was looking pretty bright, but losing OB for a few turns may suck. I'm pretty sure he'll offer a better deal though since OB is a benefit to him, even if only for the trade route to our capital.

[MindyMcCready]

Just popping in to say kill something. :LOL:

But first,....

Not sure what you dislike so much about the OB at Alphabet? Many techs allow for the compounding benefit; not sure why this one is different? Alphabet in a no tech trading game could be skipped for a very long time. No espionage and it could be skipped until printing press. I love how China's a live example of how long you can skip Alphabet. :LOL: Setting cultural preferences aside, both OB and alphabet should be researched techs before the late game.

If you don't like the price, offer something less. 3 gpt to indicate that we're willing to negotiate but that 6 gpt is too high. Fintourist probably thinks that that's not a terrible deal for a happy + a split of our economic benefit. Was that 60 gold or 6 gpt?

I'd guess that our benefit is pretty high 11 cities x 2 trade routes per city. So we're getting probably 22 cpt. So at a guess he's taking less than 1/3 of our total benefit and throwing in the dyes. I'm sure that he's looking at that as recovery for his troubles of researching Alphabet. We can also play the noob card indicating outrage (which I think you did already) based on our misunderstanding (assuming that the 22 cpt is close and that I'm not actually a total noob :LOL: ) Rationally, if he's a contender and we're not, then he should still accept a positive trade outcome, as you said, even if it's a smaller one. Toss in the likelihood that he's interested in having a counter to Ichabod then he'll probably grant us a favorable deal. On our end, we should recognize it as that.

As for Retep,....well so long as we keep expanding our border he continues to be relatively effective in threatening us. THe result is that we've got a crap-ton of units but we don't feel very safe on any of our borders. This effect is going to get worse as we expand to the islands. More territory to spread out our military. Despite our decent military size, we'll be vulnerable to a determined attack on any of our borders. It's also going to get worse when Ichabod finishes swallowing Cheetah because now he can attack from 2 different spots.

Of course I think that it's time to kill Retep off. It's always 'that time'. :LOL: At this point I wouldn't even care if we had to trade cities with him just to get the job done. Maybe Rigueletta's that trade?

Unfortunately, Rigueletta isn't a great place to bait him with his hill-top visibility. We could think about baiting him with our one blind spot on the triple-fork or 2E of Hoffman or maybe even hiding out on the deer tile NWW of Rigueletta but I suspect that he simply won't take the bait for PB11 reasons. Bludegoning him to death is our only real option and that's done best at Suit up with its forests and hill tops.

Another strategy though is that we force a limited battle at his horse city. From your FORK tile with the stack move SW and then have a chariot cut the roads. Unlike Suit up this city is no fortress. With 20% culture and size2 he probably couldn't get walls in in time. If we got 1T to strip defenses, building walls wouldn't benefit him at all since it would multiply times zero.

Retep, if he's self-preserving would almost certainly retreat and we raze and then develop Rigueletta in relative safety. If Retep is suicidal, then he makes a stand in a 0% defense bonus city. At a glance we've enough spears + hills to handle his HA if we concentrate. We hammer him and then move onto Suit UP.

It's also interesting to think about how Bacchus would respond to our DOW of Retep. That'll probably upset his movement to the south if he's heading in that direction. The most likely outcome I see is:
-we move on Horse city
-Bacchus wants in on the spoils and moves towards copper city.
-Retep abandons Horse city.
-Retep defends Copper city (so long as we make no further moves towards his capital). Raze horse city being the only objective.

So I think that we'd have a good chance of either killing a retep city and/or manipulating Bacchus into a battle with Retep, hopefully an expensive one. Shouldn't cost us too much, maybe nothing and lets us develop our new city in security.

Hey, whatever happened to my Avatar? Am I still around?

I'll pop in again when I feel the need for you to kill something. :LOL:

[WilliamLP]

Not sure what you dislike so much about the OB at Alphabet?

It's the opposite of the known tech bonus: it's a mechanic where someone technologically rich can get richer by actually hurting research for the less well off, as HarryTourist is doing to us. This is the wrong direction. They are doing the right thing by leveraging the heck out of it.

For someone stuck in an early war (i.e. us) relative to BtS it puts us further behind the world at a crucial stage, i.e. right now.

Alphabet is a luxury tech, and not something we could have gone for since without currency we'd be further behind. Under BtS we'd have plenty of people to get open borders with.

Maybe I'd be humming a different tune in his position though?

If you don't like the price, offer something less. 3 gpt to indicate that we're willing to negotiate but that 6 gpt is too high. Fintourist probably thinks that that's not a terrible deal for a happy + a split of our economic benefit. Was that 60 gold or 6 gpt?

It was a flat 60 gold, which I guess is even worse because they could declare war to close borders though I don't think they would.

I'd guess that our benefit is pretty high 11 cities x 2 trade routes per city. So we're getting probably 22 cpt. So at a guess he's taking less than 1/3 of our total benefit and throwing in the dyes. I'm sure that he's looking at that as recovery for his troubles of researching Alphabet. We can also play the noob card indicating outrage (which I think you did already) based on our misunderstanding (assuming that the 22 cpt is close and that I'm not actually a total noob :LOL: ) Rationally, if he's a contender and we're not, then he should still accept a positive trade outcome, as you said, even if it's a smaller one. Toss in the likelihood that he's interested in having a counter to Ichabod then he'll probably grant us a favorable deal. On our end, we should recognize it as that.

Yeah the benefit is high and I have my buttons where I get irrational. I think it's even higher than 2 commerce per city because a lot of routes are overseas and worth more than 2. The benefit is large to him too (obviously not as large), even for free: we have some large cities getting larger, including capitals which get a unique multiplier. So on 60 gold I'm inclined to think "screw you" even though I'm not being very rational perhaps. It's time to get a boat scout out for more contacts, I guess.

If they knew we wouldn't accept any payment deal, they clearly would want to have open borders for free with us. So if that message can be conveyed, they might act out rationally from their point of view - they have a much better position to be among the game leaders after all so maybe they should have a lesser tolerance for irrational moves. TLDR: I'm willing to wait a turn or two for them to come down in price.

As for Retep,....well so long as we keep expanding our border he continues to be relatively effective in threatening us. THe result is that we've got a crap-ton of units but we don't feel very safe on any of our borders. This effect is going to get worse as we expand to the islands. More territory to spread out our military. Despite our decent military size, we'll be vulnerable to a determined attack on any of our borders. It's also going to get worse when Ichabod finishes swallowing Cheetah because now he can attack from 2 different spots.

I don't think Retep will get to the seas anytime soon. And at least the land border to him is as large as it's going to be, and we'll have longbows which will make everything a lot simpler.

But as we've flogged the horse many times, I still don't think we could kill Retep in the next 20 turns, even committing economic suicide. So no argument about benefit beats this. To a very good approximation, "hammer" attacks are basically impossible in Civ 4 anywhere near tech parity.

Given that I strongly think an attack is impossible, there isn't really much else to be done than what we're doing - grabbing land from him as aggressively as we can sustain.

I think any bait or trick is probably out of the question. He's a very smart guy and he knows we are smart too - I don't think there are winning odds to get him fall for any simple trick where we make it look like we made a mistake but it's all according to plan. So we're left with the hammer... and to a very good approximation those just don't work in Civ against a competent defender. (Though if low cost, yeah absolutely it's great to give him every chance to make a mistake.)

I still think the fastest way to feasibly kill him at reasonable cost would be to whip crossbows, not that it's what I want to do. I don't fear horse archers on defense at all - as long as a stack can take the offensive charge they're sitting ducks for catapults combined with any attacker, having no defensive bonus.

Another strategy though is that we force a limited battle at his horse city. From your FORK tile with the stack move SW and then have a chariot cut the roads. Unlike Suit up this city is no fortress. With 20% culture and size2 he probably couldn't get walls in in time. If we got 1T to strip defenses, building walls wouldn't benefit him at all since it would multiply times zero.

Yeah, cutting some roads would be a really good idea here. Particularly the wheat road and the road on "y". It might even be worth saccing chariots to do so, I'm not sure.

And I'd absolutely be willing to lose Rigoletto if we could take down 3-5 horse archers with it: settlers are a very renewable resource for us.

It's also interesting to think about how Bacchus would respond to our DOW of Retep. That'll probably upset his movement to the south if he's heading in that direction. The most likely outcome I see is:
-we move on Horse city
-Bacchus wants in on the spoils and moves towards copper city.
-Retep abandons Horse city.
-Retep defends Copper city (so long as we make no further moves towards his capital). Raze horse city being the only objective.

So I think that we'd have a good chance of either killing a retep city and/or manipulating Bacchus into a battle with Retep, hopefully an expensive one. Shouldn't cost us too much, maybe nothing and lets us develop our new city in security.

We also have to worry about Bacchus responding by moving a mega-stack toward Hoffmann and Manon. That might be what I'd try to do, especially given our oh-so-friendly history.

The next turn will be interesting. A really good case for us would be if Ichabod moves his horses south out of position, where we could consider immediately moving the big stack NW-SW to attack his horse city. Presumably some of his 1-movers would have to be out of position then.

Hey, whatever happened to my Avatar? Am I still around?

Yes! I'm pretty sure that hit girl axe (C2 Shock) is with the big stack right now.

I'll pop in again when I feel the need for you to kill something. :LOL:

Sure, any time. At least some lurkers seem to enjoy these discussions!

[Mardoc]

Sure, any time. At least some lurkers seem to enjoy these discussions!

We'll also always advocate MOAR KILLING!

Regarding 'opposite of known-tech bonus' - tons of things are opposite of it . For example: ALL WONDERS. Liberalism. Religions. Really I think the game has a mixture of win-more tools and catch-up tools, not any consistent approach.

[WilliamLP]

Regarding 'opposite of known-tech bonus' - tons of things are opposite of it . For example: ALL WONDERS. Liberalism. Religions. Really I think the game has a mixture of win-more tools and catch-up tools, not any consistent approach.

Not quite! Those things are win-more, but Alphabet in RBMod is a way to win more by actually hurting the little guy, making them pay for the same benefit that you're getting paid for, not just surpassing them.

Not that this is bad, but it's not broken in BtS to have it at writing so everyone gets in on it, so why "fix" it to this? Open borders are still a valuable and salable commodity.