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

[MindyMcCready]

Whoa,...so that's what an economy looks like!

I'd make a concrete plan, but that peace bubble you mention really takes the value out of any move that we might make. We are also a little light to go taking a run at Suit Up while defending against Ichabod and no other move is worth it.
-I'm 90% sure that we could raze the horse city for free but to what end? Without the hill and without the culture and no walls Retep would be forced to retreat to his capital. But then what? There's no food in the immediate area except that wheat in Retep's culture. Settling past that is just asking for trouble and then there's the issue of the missing city and the dot-map destroying effect it'll probably have.

It would help us settle the double-fish city more safely, but we can probably already do that given the lumps Retep just took. Retep's now at the point of being able to protect his capital or one threatened city, but he can't simultaneously threaten our cities and protect his own.

Grudgingly, I have to agree to pass on war and give peace a chance. Sorry to make you type all that out,...i do like to see the Military advisor page though.

Ok, so back to defenses. Pikes aren't going to cut it since we'll need to hit whatever invading stack comes at us and CGII LB are fine for defense. So its really maces vs Knights. We may have time for only one unit type before Ichabod gets Knights.

Maces (70H) we can get sooner and start building our defenses
-Machinery & Civil Service
-Can upgrade axes in a bind, but expensive.
-Bureaucracy, the reason that you're building the palace.
-Chain irrigation.
-Civil Service, path to Nationalism.

-Knights (90H)
-Higher tech cost: Iron Working + Machinery + HBR + Guilds
-Upgrade option is limited to 4 chariots and is also expensive.
-Grocers that we probably don't want to build yet.
-REQUIRES IRON (& presumably Iron Working)
-Path to Gunpower & Banking.

Knights are great, but can we make it there in time? And both of our neighbours have elephants. I take the ivory cancellation and tech choices as pretty clear signals. Can we risk trying to beat him to Knights? Will we have time and production enough to crank out the necessary defenses?

Machinery's a given. However the pre-req's work, they're classifications rather than statements of 20%/40% off.
HBR (250b - 1 prereq) + Guilds (1000b-2 prereq) = 1050b (+ Iron Working 200b - 1 prereq?)
Civil Service (800b -3 prereq) = 480b

So this isn't really close. Pursuing Guilds is risky for the timing and its risky for resource requirements. So in living to live, Civil Service is clearly better in my mind. As for living to live tomorrow,...I think that we'll want Nationalism more than banking or Gunpowder given our Spiritual trait and decent happiness. Also, a more fair comparion would be maces + HA vs Knights only.

Back to more on defenses: we need more cats.

On our east-end that spot 2N-1E of William Tell is a bit of a weak spot. If Ichabod moves there, we'll be forced to attack out since a following move could see the roads cut. While LBs are great they'e not quite worth 2:1 unless hilled, especially against a stack consisting of cats. So while defending we're still in the situation where you largely need more defenders than attackers.

A stack of cats allows us to run less defenders than attackers. Composed of 30%+ cats we can decimate an incoming army with even or less than even numbers. I'm not sure of the positioning of the cats, but we'd need all 9 (or more) in the same spot if Ichabod hits us from the east.

LaBoheme is going to be very tough to defend once Ichabod lands Knights. From 1N of Withered Fields(?) he could attack LaBoheme without river crossing.

A C2 Knight hitting LaBoheme with 50% culture defense, defenders with full fort:
-26% odds on a CG2 LB
-63% odds on a C2 spear.
-23% odds on a C2 Mace.

Its only a little worse for the mace with shock Knights. C1 Shock Knight hitting LaBoheme with 50% culture, full fort defenders:
-22% odds on a CG2 LB
-63% odds on a C2 spear
-26% odds on a C2 Mace

Knights are great, but maces are much more of a sure thing. With cats + maces we can attack a slow moving stack and with LB & maces we can defend against a fast moving stack.

And, as always, we get to kill Retep sooner. :LOL:

So, I'm still voting for maces. Knights are too far away and/or too risky.

[WilliamLP]

Yeah, as you've probably noticed, my thinking deciding on builds has basically been to have the minimum viable defense force that can't be beaten, not to build something that can attack out, which would have been much more expensive. And spears are useful for much longer than axes are, despite being basically worthless for an attack.

Maces (70H) we can get sooner and start building our defenses
-Machinery & Civil Service
-Can upgrade axes in a bind, but expensive.
-Bureaucracy, the reason that you're building the palace.
-Chain irrigation.
-Civil Service, path to Nationalism.

The palace move also adds library + market bonuses to the free +8 palace commerce, and the extra culture in Barbiere isn't worthess either since we're actually gaining vs Suit Up on grabbing another ring of tiles. But yeah, CS is the reason to move it.

-Knights (90H)
-Higher tech cost: Iron Working + Machinery + HBR + Guilds
-Upgrade option is limited to 4 chariots and is also expensive.
-Grocers that we probably don't want to build yet.
-REQUIRES IRON (& presumably Iron Working)
-Path to Gunpower & Banking.

I'm pretty sure we could get iron without IW. Both Scooter and Harry have excess of it, and probably either one would like us to be more competitive vs Ichabod rather than less.

I don't take the axes to maces upgrade option very seriously. Gold is too precious in a NTT game and the ratio of hammers to gold for upgrades is very poor. (I think axe to mace is 160 gold, as 4x hammer difference + 20 gold).

Knights age far better than maces do into the era of gunpowder and beyond. They actually get a cost effective upgrade into Cuirassiers at 60 gold a pop (because the hammer difference is only 10). Also the more Civ I've played the more I agree with the vets on the value of two moves vs 1. (E.g. the ability to be anywhere on an 8-tile line in a single turn, or 12 tiles with engineering.) The difference in attacking in a future war vs Retep or Bacchus is far, far greater than 10 strength vs 8 strength, because the forking factor and the ability to start a war at either of two points 8 tiles apart change the game in a qualitative way.

I don't think there's much question that if we had both, knights would be the better use of hammers and whips. So the question is can we make it to knights and not die. If we don't need to have them to survive, to me it would be shame to whip out a lot of pop into maces. So that's the key question, and I think we actually can survive.

Machinery's a given. However the pre-req's work, they're classifications rather than statements of 20%/40% off.
HBR (250b - 1 prereq) + Guilds (1000b-2 prereq) = 1050b (+ Iron Working 200b - 1 prereq?)
Civil Service (800b -3 prereq) = 480b

I'll give the exact beaker values the next time I'm in game. They're higher than the base costs because of difficulty and map size multipliers.

But just nitpicks:
- Prereqs aren't a discount, but a bonus. So to research a 1000 beaker tech is 834 with 20% or 715 with 40%. Subtracting 20% or 40% underestimates it.
- I suppose we could get Civil Service before Code of Laws, but we'd lose a prereq doing that, and probably the only reason to do so is if we were pretty sure we'd die without it, since CoL saves a lot of its cost by providing the prereq bonus to CS.

The grocer is a really good building for Manon, which has very high commerce and is health-capped because it's on so many flood plains. But other than that, it's true we don't need many.

Earlier iron isn't a tragedy (again if we don't die) because it's nearly certain to increase hammers per turn somewhere.

Back to more on defenses: we need more cats.

I agree. And for being annoying to conquer, I think CG2 or G2 longbows are better investments than maces anyway. And the cats get used when either there's a chance to attack a stack, or else when we'll lose a defense otherwise, and they make him sit around and try to heal. (Though in a serious attack he'd probably bring a Medic 3 unit.)

On our east-end that spot 2N-1E of William Tell is a bit of a weak spot. If Ichabod moves there, we'll be forced to attack out since a following move could see the roads cut. While LBs are great they'e not quite worth 2:1 unless hilled, especially against a stack consisting of cats. So while defending we're still in the situation where you largely need more defenders than attackers.

Honestly I still find him marching west from Cheetah's lands to be both implausible and not very frightening since we see it coming for ages.

A C2 Knight hitting LaBoheme with 50% culture defense, defenders with full fort:
-26% odds on a CG2 LB

That's why they're good - if he has to lose at least 1 90 hammer unit for every 50 hammer unit he kills, or possibly more, he's not going to attack. And on the hill it's even better. So, we've already got a better defensive unit for a deterrence than maces, which are also cheaper than maces.

We can also whip a ton of LBs if we have to. 20 in a few turns isn't out of the question.

Again I can tell that between you and me, our senses are tuned extremely differently about how cost effective it is to make gains from warfare, vs someone who is ready for it.

Knights are great, but maces are much more of a sure thing. With cats + maces we can attack a slow moving stack and with LB & maces we can defend against a fast moving stack.

Making a fast moving stack impossible to field is the point of building way too many spears. Even though they don't win straight-up they're still extremely cost effective at 35 hammers if you catch a knight stack alone. So no attack is going to be able to move at speed two through our territory, except for direct threats.

Basically in summary: Ichabod's a really smart guy. He's not going to move in unless he thinks he can win decisively. Maces are better at attacking out than longbows are. But: they wouldn't actually get the chance to attack out. Their net effect would be that Ichabod would see them and just give up his moves forward. I think longbows would have the same effect (get him to stop moving up). But this might not be for the same reasons. Instead of giving up because we could attack out, he would give up because he'd see how much of a pain it would be to actually take a city, and get sick of eating the unit supply costs.

It's not in his interest to get bogged down slowly moving around our lands pillaging, but quite to the contrary.

So a successful defense isn't going to look like nice tactics and surprise moves, but it's going to look like either Ichabod attacking and immediately moving back, or just not doing it in the first place.

[WilliamLP]

Unfortunately, Krill's last mainland city got bulldozed last turn, and Ichabod got a general out of it. We can't see the power drop yet. But obviously we need to check for an approaching army to the east.




I voted for Commodore because why not?

In yet another mysterious Civ Mechanic, the AP seems to have created contacts between everyone who has Christianity in a city, including us! We have it in Don Giovanni, and actually I started a Christian temple there last turn - 40 hammers for culture, happiness, and +2 hammers per turn isn't a bad deal.

And there's always a bigger fish, right? Mackoti offered:




So there's the iron issue dealt with! He also offered wheat for free but we already have it so I tried to get one of his crabs. (That sounds wrong but whatever.) Obviously he'd like us to be strong and not get steamrolled like Cheetah did.




We now see everyone except Black Sword, Azza, Suttree, Dhalphir.

Only one war we didn't know about: Scooter is at war with Nakor.

We have open borders with Lewwyn now too, agreed on in game. 99 problems but foreign trade routes aren't one.

City counts:

Mackoti 21
Ichabod 20
Plako 17
Commodore 17
Harry 16
Dtay 15
Scooticator 15
Lewwyn 14
Nakor 12
Us 12
Bacchus 8
Retep 4
Krill 1

The island is bad news, maybe:




Commodore has a W2 axe patrolling! We're lucky he didn't pop out of the fog and kill the settler last turn.

The chariot that found him is C1 Shock, so on defense it's basically a pure coinflip, about 48% for the axe.

The risky thing to do here would be to move the settler W-SW, and then settle if we win the coin flip (or Commodore doesn't attack). And if we lose the coin flip, the settler could still get back in the boat. But that gets ruined by a barb in the fog. So I did the conservative thing and moved the settler to the boat, and went E-W picking up the axe.

I was hoping Commodore didn't have pre-astro access to this island, but apparently he does. I still think it's worth staking a claim here though - we have much closer supply centers.

[Ceiliazul]

commo has pre astro access to everything, lol.

good reports, keep em coming.

[MindyMcCready]

The island is bad news, maybe:

Commodore has a W2 axe patrolling!

:LOL:

I still think it's worth staking a claim here though - we have much closer supply centers.

:LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

[WilliamLP]

commo has pre astro access to everything, lol.

You know what I mean! I was hoping he'd have to take the snaky route over Scooter, Bacchus, Retep, etc. But it's more likely now that there's an island chain that goes back to him.

Anyway, we have the second half of the turn split vs that axe right now... Even though it still had movement left when we saw it, Commodore had already finished his turn apparently.

[MindyMcCready]

So our island city will be lucky #13. :LOL:

I'm just going to note that my preference would be to bring back that settler and concentrate on realizing our 24-city mainland empire.

That island is a strategic asset. Master Commodore has a history of aggressively pursuing strategic objectives which is how he earned his title. How much forgoing of rational sense did it take to archer-rush a nation with Impis? :LOL: Or to doggedly beat down Cyneheard in PB5? Those were strategic objectives and Master Commodore accomplished them by having intense focus and bending his economy to the objective.

If we're not willing to commit to the same degree (and even if we did at 12 to 17 cities we'd still be underdogging it) then I'd suggest that we cede the island. It would be no surprise to me at all if Master Commodore has suddenly switched the majority of his production to galleys, triemes, units & settlers upon seeing our chariot.

It might be fun to commit our entire economy and battle it out with a true veteran of warfare. Certainly it would make for some fun reading at the end. But:
-it will not be fun to fight someone dedicated to war while we're pursuing minimal military/maximum development.

[WilliamLP]

I'm just going to note that my preference would be to bring back that settler and concentrate on realizing our 24-city mainland empire.

For someone who wants to attack now, at all times, into a stack of 25-30 units behind culture, you are scared off easily by one axe!

If there was a city left on the mainland that paid for itself without needing its own dedicated garrison, I might be with you. But look at the minimap and the relative distances. This city on the island has 270 hammers worth of forests too! (Not including the deer.)

I'm kind of confused why you want to turn the other cheek on this.

[MindyMcCready]

Because i think spending the hammers on that island detracts from our chances of realizing the 24-city empire. They'll be no return on cities that are in a constant grinding warefare.

Also, because I doubt that you will be single minded enough to actually win the whole island - and I know that Commodore will be. The 3-cities each outcome is worse than zero cities. Making an aggressive strategic play to seize the whole island is somewhat against your nature or at least counter to what you've displayed in this game (and maybe PB11); but it's totally up Master Commodore's alley.

I certainly don't believe that I'm being scared off by one axe. I believe that Mr. WLP follows a minimum military/maximum development policy (and certainly that's been a good strategy for you in PB11) and that won't work out against a maximum military/minimum development Commodore while simultaneously facing an Ichabod who is 90% likely to hit us with Knights. Successful military campaigns display the focus of pushing hard to a technology and then pushing hard to produce the units to make it decisive. Ichabod clearly pushed hard to produce the units to beat Cheetah, now he's showing a hard push to the next technology. For me, it seems very clear what he's doing.

I also think that our odds are much better taking a shot at that island via naval warefare. Let someone else improve the island. If we succeeed in securing our 24 mainland cities, we'd have an excellent chance of taking those ciities via galleons. If we don't succeed in securing our mainland,...well we have no business on that island anyway.

Anyway, I'm a little hammered right now having just come from the office Christmas 'luchn'.

[WilliamLP]

Because i think spending the hammers on that island detracts from our chances of realizing the 24-city empire. They'll be no return on cities that are in a constant grinding warefare.

How could there not be return? There's 9 forests in the first city alone! There's hammer return and commerce return and it's nearly immediate.

Also, because I doubt that you will be single minded enough to actually win the whole island - and I know that Commodore will be. The 3-cities each outcome is worse than zero cities. Making an aggressive strategic play to seize the whole island is somewhat against your nature or at least counter to what you've displayed in this game (and maybe PB11); but it's totally up Master Commodore's alley.

First, 3 cities being worse than 0 cities makes no sense to me.

I'm selectively passive. We did raze two aggressive cities when it was cost effective and floated the largest military in this whole game for a lot of it though! When I see a lot of really nice land guarded by one axe, when it's right next to our core and 15 tiles away from a potential rival by sea, that's a good chance to go for it. I don't care about his reputation. If he can out-maneuver over distant naval logistics and dominate me tactically, while also being next to a really powerful rival of his own close to home, well show me.

I certainly don't believe that I'm being scared off by one axe. I believe that Mr. WLP follows a minimum military/maximum development policy (and certainly that's been a good strategy for you in PB11) and that won't work out against a maximum military/minimum development Commodore while simultaneously facing an Ichabod who is 90% likely to hit us with Knights. Successful military campaigns display the focus of pushing hard to a technology and then pushing hard to produce the units to make it decisive. Ichabod clearly pushed hard to produce the units to beat Cheetah, now he's showing a hard push to the next technology. For me, it seems very clear what he's doing.

Well, challenge accepted. The role in this game now is to be spoiler to Ichabod. And it isn't to take over Retep as quickly as possible, though it would be nice to do it eventually. If Ichabod knows how to take cities filled with longbows and spears and catapults, with knights only a few turns behind his, he can show me.