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

[WilliamLP]

In the long run we're all dead!

Haha, yeah. But in real life at least I wouldn't want to build a summer home on an island next to Commodore.

[Ceiliazul]

commodore's a nice guy when he's not emperoring an imaginary army... also, I wish I had ANY island vacation home. the closest I come is standing on the base of a lightpole when the walmart parking lot floods.

[WilliamLP]

Disputed island:




Commodore might have whipped something in Bathurst since it's been working the fish a while and showing size 1, but I'm not following that closely. He has a CG1 Crossbow and a shock LB in it.

Depending on what he does, we have an option to invade with 3 LBs (one of them can get cover), 2 axes and a chariot. The chariot could sacrifice itself and cut off the W2 mace from defending the city by jumping on the beaver if he leaves it where it is. Defending Magic Flute gets a little dicey but we do have a LB and a cat that can get to the city next turn by boat. It would have been better if that were 2 LBs.

All is still totally quiet in the southeast. Ichabod did not do a mass whip into horse archers and chariots to upgrade in the queue to knights. So if he's planning a timing attack, it's not the most intense one possible.

The thing that still mystifies me is, if he's planning to attack, why is he still letting us see his research?






Note we've fallen behind average in food because of much whip, many longbows. Note also we're #2 in power despite not looking like it in the graph. Our unshown spike last turn must have been enough to pass scooter.




After the current round of bows, nearly all cities will switch to knights I think, and build a round or two of those.

And well, after our first knights, our relevance in this game is going to take an extremely rapid and direct spiral downward. So I do intend to do something with them, don't worry, lol.

[Ceiliazul]

And well, after our first knights, our relevance in this game is going to take an extremely rapid and direct spiral downward. So I do intend to do something with them, don't worry, lol.

why is that? even if you can't win, you can still be relevant. who IS going to win? who is going to be attacked soon? who might make a power grab you could benefit from? of the leaders, which ones would properly reward an ally?

[WilliamLP]

why is that? even if you can't win, you can still be relevant. who IS going to win? who is going to be attacked soon? who might make a power grab you could benefit from? of the leaders, which ones would properly reward an ally?

Point taken. I'm sure we can find something interesting to play for. What I was trying to say is that very soon will be as hot the iron will ever be.

The dream, though unlikely, is still if Ichabod grinds into Fintourist and Harry, and we're free to roll through Retep into Bacchus and suddenly emerge with a ton of land.

From where I sit, Mackoti seems to have an extremely dominant position, even ignoring that he might be the best Civ player anywhere. I'm expecting him to swallow Suttree literally any day now. Plako could make it interesting, depending on how tenacious Dhalphir is. Dtay as well, if he could take out Jowy. Scooter is a little too sandwiched, when half of the bread is Commodore.

I probably shouldn't even comment on these things since lurkers have a much better view anyway!

[WilliamLP]

It looks like this game may actually get moving again.




Comm whipped walls in Bathurst. I simmed the invade with 3 longbows + 2 axes vs the 2 bows in the city, and it doesn't win. I think this means that Bathurst is here to stay for the long run. Taking on longbows behind walls means we'd need an overwhelming numeric advantage. We could try blitzing with knights but of the places we need knights this isn't the priority.

Other than that, everything is as usual. No action on Ichabod's front. He's show Theology now, which must mean he wants to ramp to war even further. But I think it also means he won't be attacking for a while, since Theology needs a ton of military builds to be worth its cost. (I wonder if there's any other reason he could be going for Theology? Clearing the prophet bulb does no good because Divine Right is next anyway if you have Monarchy.)

We get guilds next turn. I'm deeply disturbed to have no plans for a golden age. It's just that any plan for another GP doesn't get there for 30-40 turns now that our counter is at 300. And hammers and units are pretty critical.

For the next tech I have a mind to pick up calendar (finally) since the extra happy would be pretty nice without having to worry about trades. CoL doesn't seem as pressing since I don't know that we can build courthouses or leave slavery for any length of time right now. (Again, it's pretty sad not to be using Spiritual very much, but we're kind of locked into making extremely short term plays right now rather than long or even medium term investments.)








Switching to some knight builds.

[MindyMcCready]

Those are some good points. We've been ignoring the larger game for a long-time now as our local problems were much larger and more pressing.

BFF should probably now be Scooter and Mackoti.

As for Ichabod, I doubt that he's coming for us. Our power and tech is just too close for him to take a chance on. He just doesn't have enough over us to beat the defensive advantage anymore and he should be able to see that we're prepared for him. Can he see our graphs? A misunderstanding of how prepared we are would be the only way that I could see him invading at this point.

The island is a far safer bet for him so I'm guessing that's where he'll be sending his units. We're close to the point where a forced 10T peace could really benefit us. So I'd say that we could start warning up to Ichabod again since I'm pretty sure that we've deterred his attack.

Yeah, even if he could put together our worst case scenario into a single stack, he'd still be worried that we could put the near equivalent into a defensive or offensive stack of our own. I'll try to run the power numbers today as a double check, but I'm pretty sure that we're safe for awhile. At least until we see that mass upgrade + whips. :LOL:

And well, after our first knights, our relevance in this game is going to take an extremely rapid and direct spiral downward. So I do intend to do something with them, don't worry, lol.

On that note (Suit up- full fortify):
C2 Knight vs CG2 Archer with Culture: 76%
C2 Knight vs CG2 Archer no culture: 90%
C2 Knight vs Spear with culture: 36%
C2 Knight vs C2 Spear no culture: 69%

C2 LB vs CG2 Archer with culture: 23.3%
C2 LB vs CG2 Archer no culture: 31%
C2 LB vs CG2 Archer no culture 88hp: 50.6%
C2 LB vs CG2 Archer no culture 76hp: 81.7%

These cats attack seem to be a little off (low side), so a guide but not absolute:
CRII Cat vs CGII Archer with culture: 3.6%
CRII Cat vs CGII Archer no culture: 17.8%
CRII Cat vs CGII Archer no culture 88hp: 23%
CRII Cat vs CGII Archer no culture 76hp: 42%

Assuming BarrageII collateral damage:
CRII Cat vs CGII Archer no culture 85hp: 35.8%
CRII Cat vs CGII Archer no culture 70hp: 59.7%


As far as I understand each splash of collateral will do 12hp damage to an archer and 15 hp with barrage II.
-Knights could still die to spears if culture is still there.
-Given how close Suit up is we should still strip defenses, attack with cats & LBs while sending our Knights to the more weakly defended cities.
-Looks like the initial 2 or 3 cats should probably take BarrageII, followed by CR.
-A C2 Axe could defend effectively against CR cats but everything else would just get beat up, HA included.

[WilliamLP]

BFF should probably now be Scooter and Mackoti.

Yeah, Mackoti is already giving us iron for free. And I guess we're kind of fortunate not to border any of the top 5 players in this game. (Mackoti, Scooticator, Dtay, Plako, Harry). All of them are natural friends since anyone they hurt on the way to us helps us, and vice versa. Scooter is maybe the exception - we could see them on our west coast with 6+ move galleons eventually.

As for Ichabod, I doubt that he's coming for us. Our power and tech is just too close for him to take a chance on. He just doesn't have enough over us to beat the defensive advantage anymore and he should be able to see that we're prepared for him. Can he see our graphs? A misunderstanding of how prepared we are would be the only way that I could see him invading at this point.

I'll check the numbers next time but it would be insanity-wolf if he weren't checking our power graph. Whatever happens he seems pot-commited to attacking something now, with the clear #1 power in the world, plus knights and soon theocracy. But yeah, to attack us not only does he need to get through 30+ longbows and 23 spears that can move to one chokepoint, but he has a lot of defensive considerations against some of the more powerful players in this game.

We do know from the tech thread that Ichabod is in a turn split with Dtay. They have some interaction on the islands, and maybe are in contention to take Cheetah's last city. My hunch is also that he may be (yet again?) losing interest in this game.

We can talk about military tactics eventually, but for now it's just going to be nearly all knight builds, all the time.

[WilliamLP]

The slow fast cat is dead. I'm getting slightly jealous of everyone who gets to read the lurker thread in these games.

We got guilds. We can actually get calendar in 2 turns - after this beeline our tech rate for backfill is pretty decent, at least.

Nothing is new on Commodore's island. We'd need a lot to take him out, more than 2 for 1 vs what he has to defend, with sure losses, suicide cats at the very least. The good news is that the same is true for him.

Map of Retep's lands for reference:




Note he has just finished mining the silver in the north tip, but he hasn't roaded to it yet. Peace is expired. So if he roads this turn, we could actually steal this worker. There are 3 lbs in Rigoletto right now and I think we have the defensive bases covered, since the power difference is now enormous.

That would be tipping him off to go into full emergency whip mode again, if that matters.

Given that I think he still sees our closest cities (at least) I don't see many potential staging tiles where he couldn't see our units.




Note both Harry and us are shooting up to match Ichabod. If Ichabod took much of a power hit from finishing off Cheetah, it doesn't really show in the demos. (And it wouldn't be on this graph yet.)

The full distribution of our military is too much work to report, but I've got a lot of stuff (axes and most cats) a couple of turns west of Boheme where it could participate in attack or defense against Retep eventually. And of course there's a mass of spears and lbs there building up fortify bonus.




I did some whips, and I'm running 5 turns in Serfdom! (To try to make use of Spiritual a little bit.)

What it gets:
- It actually saves 6 gpt in civic upkeep vs slavery.
- Workers +75% is pretty useful right now. With guilds we can really use some workshops and finishing off some watermills. Also, 2-turn chops on the island.
- Watermills +1 hammer. This makes plains river watermills into 1/4/1 tiles which is quite good right now. I think we have about 5 of these being worked, with more on the way.

We can't whip anything for five turns, but that should be good to get a round of knights out then.

[MindyMcCready]

Nothing is new on Commodore's island. We'd need a lot to take him out, more than 2 for 1 vs what he has to defend, with sure losses, suicide cats at the very least. The good news is that the same is true for him.

Only half agree with this. He has walls, we don't.

W-R-L Attacker perspective
C2 Knight vs CGII LB (no fort): 65%-0%-35%
C2 Knight vs CGII LB (Fort): 58%-0-42%
C2 Knight vs CGII LB (20% culture, no fort): 59%-0-41%
C2 Knight vs CGII LB(20% culture, fort): 28%-0-72%
C2 Knight vs CGII LB (walls, fort): 22%-0-78%

So a couple of Knights could walk though our unfortified defenders and that's with the CG2 promotion which I'm not sure if you've taken. We need to get walls in there and fortify up for this to be a costly battle for him. Unlike Ichabod who we can deter, we probably need to be able to win battles vs Master Commodore. His past games he took battles that most others would walk away from. Give him a 30-35% chance of taking a city and he'll attack.

Now that we've removed the forest he can hit us with zero warning, although we will have 1T to see any Knights in Bathhurst. I don't remember the turn order to know if we'd get a chance to whip or not.

Also, keep in mind that LBs are also somewhat vulnerable even in a a forest.
C2 Knight vs C2 LB in forest: 65%-0-35%

Map of Retep's lands for reference:

Not sure I like where he's put that city. Would you be inclinded to raze or keep?

Note he has just finished mining the silver in the north tip, but he hasn't roaded to it yet. Peace is expired. So if he roads this turn, we could actually steal this worker. There are 3 lbs in Rigoletto right now and I think we have the defensive bases covered, since the power difference is now enormous.

That would be tipping him off to go into full emergency whip mode again, if that matters.

It doesn't so much matter that he goes into whip mode, but it matters more that he keeps sending his unit over to Bacchus.

I'd hold off on the worker steal.

Also, won't we poach that tile soon? Religion + Terrace vs religion only?

Given that I think he still sees our closest cities (at least) I don't see many potential staging tiles where he couldn't see our units.

We can't sneak up on him, but we should keep our units in that one hidden tile so that he keeps fighting Bacchus (he's still at war right?).

I did some whips, and I'm running 5 turns in Serfdom! (To try to make use of Spiritual a little bit.)

What it gets:
- It actually saves 6 gpt in civic upkeep vs slavery.
- Workers +75% is pretty useful right now. With guilds we can really use some workshops and finishing off some watermills. Also, 2-turn chops on the island.
- Watermills +1 hammer. This makes plains river watermills into 1/4/1 tiles which is quite good right now. I think we have about 5 of these being worked, with more on the way.

We can't whip anything for five turns, but that should be good to get a round of knights out then.

Lots of micro work, but that kind of shifting is well worth it. We have enough power that we shouldn't need emergency whips. Looks good.