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

[MindyMcCready]

So what are you going to do with those Knights?

You've alluded to doing 'something' with them but you haven't said exactly what your intentions are. I sense some evasion. :LOL:

I promise not to bug you about Retep, you can attack him when you're good and ready. I'm curious if you have intentions or if you're taking a wait-for-opportunities approach.

[WilliamLP]

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

Yeah, but that's easy to fix, even on short notice. 50 hammers (plus discount for OR) isn't that much. Unfortunately stone is really hard to come by in this game, while marble is everywhere. I checked the map and of the players who have it, nobody has an extra. I was considering even chopping Moai in Magic Flute if we could borrow the stone for it somehow. But just chopping knights isn't terrible.

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.

Good to know. The rational actor hypothesis may not be the best one with him.

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.

We play second so we do.

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

I think the horse city would be a really easy choice to raze because it would be so far superior 1E, where it gains the plains hill site, the dry wheat tile, and the horse tile itself.

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.

I think I'm leaning this way anyway, but him and Bacchus have been at peace for a while now, for what that's worth. Still I might like only attacking at the point when the war could be decisive.

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

I think we're gaining on it, and horse city has only +1 culture. I'm putting a barracks there as well, partly for this reason.

Lots of micro work, but that kind of shifting is well worth it.

Amount of micro work is relative, isn't it? I don't know if I'd ever put as much into it as Seven or Noble / Serdoa, but doing the 20% that gets 80% of the results seems reasonable.

[WilliamLP]

So what are you going to do with those Knights?

You've alluded to doing 'something' with them but you haven't said exactly what your intentions are. I sense some evasion. :LOL:

Haha, no guile here, actually! I think the move is to attack Retep at the point when we can be pretty sure we can finish the job quickly, and when we can also be pretty sure we can defend against Ichabod.

I'm not sure whether the better idea is just rush right at Suit Up first, or try to fork it and go around and hit his other cities first. E.g. knights on the tile 2N of suit up could be a serious problem for him if he can't get a ton of spears in time, forking two cities and also having the option to move W to to attack Angkor. They're hard to beat with spears if there are a few C1 Shock knights on the top of the stack. (It's about 20% for a C1 spear vs a C1Shock knight.)

I'm also not sure what is necessary to consider to be decisive force (i.e. win quickly and surely with a very favourable hammer ratio). I think, say, 10-15 knights plus a slow stack of 10 bows, 10 cats, and some remaining ancient junk (axes + spears) would be enough.

[MindyMcCready]

My sense is that forking is not useful here. Forking is effective when your opponent wants to keep all his cities. I don't think that that's Retep and I suspect that he'll just abandon all cities and run into his capital for a last stand. Also the cities that we could fork, horse city and Angkor Thorm aren't great cities and maybe should be razed and I think that Retep will value them similarly. That'll make for an extremely low profit war,...but we need the land.

If I'm right and he makes a stand at his capital (why not with hills + culture?) then he may effectively abandon his copper city to Bacchus. That city is a pretty big prize with the copper + 2 clams but also may allow us to plant additional cities to its east if we have a settler in place.

The battle for Suit up should be extremely one-sided if we bring enough cats to the battle. We'd want to be able to strip the defenses in one-turn or alternatively hit it with collateral in the first turn. As much as we're not going to surprise Retep we may still be able to hit him before he gets full fortify especially if there are hostilities around his copper city before hand.

The next possibility is that, once culture defenses are stripped, Retep sees the futility of defending against overwhelming odds and abandons Suit up. Where would he retreat to? I'd think that he'd retreat to Yasodharapura. Hills, culture, copper, fairly safe food source from the clams. That city is far easier to defend than his other two low-culture, flat-land cities. He may also bank on the possibility that Bacchus and us get in a stand-off over that city with first-mover losing which could keep him alive for much longer (not sure if that's a plus to him).

In either of these (likely, in my mind) scenarios, his other 2 cities should be easy pickings to our Knights.

Curious about Bacchus' power techs; Feudalism yet? When the time comes will he have any decent defenses if he takes copper city first? Depending on how things play out, we should consider hitting Bacchus if we can get some easy city razes to give us the space to make our future conquests profitable. If Bacchus' army is positioned down south we might be able to get some easy wins there. Alternatively, if he expends enough of his army taking copper city, then we could try to hit him lower first - he's vulnerable to forking or even triple forking and his power is pretty low right now.

If we're going on the war path, it might be time to consider Alphabet for the spies. Not sure how bad we need the calendar happy, but a well positioned spy or two could really help inform what we do with our military. That type of knowledge could really determine our success rate in the coming conflict.

[WilliamLP]

My sense is that forking is not useful here. Forking is effective when your opponent wants to keep all his cities.

It seems to me that, if we want to take the horse city first, the most effective way to do it is to come in from the NE between it and Suit up, and then Retep would basically be forced to abandon it. I think that's better than, say, coming from the north and just hitting the horse city. That's what I mean by forking, I guess.

The battle for Suit up should be extremely one-sided if we bring enough cats to the battle. We'd want to be able to strip the defenses in one-turn or alternatively hit it with collateral in the first turn. As much as we're not going to surprise Retep we may still be able to hit him before he gets full fortify especially if there are hostilities around his copper city before hand.

Is full fortify a big deal? If we're talking about archers, they're already getting +120% just for being protective archers in a city on a hill, not including culture bonus. Another 25% doesn't seem like that much (or a few extra turns at +5%), but sometimes break points matter I guess.

I'd like to know more quantitatively what "enough cats" is, but the best way to learn might be to go in with 10 and see what happens haha.

The next possibility is that, once culture defenses are stripped, Retep sees the futility of defending against overwhelming odds and abandons Suit up. Where would he retreat to? I'd think that he'd retreat to Yasodharapura. Hills, culture, copper, fairly safe food source from the clams. That city is far easier to defend than his other two low-culture, flat-land cities. He may also bank on the possibility that Bacchus and us get in a stand-off over that city with first-mover losing which could keep him alive for much longer (not sure if that's a plus to him).

If he abandons Suit Up that's probably the best case since he can't do any better to make a stand anyway. I'd be totally fine letting him run a 1-city challenge for a while, while building up the land between us and Yasod.

Curious about Bacchus' power techs; Feudalism yet?

I don't know at all. I haven't been doing C&D basically at all other than watching Icahbod's research. I still doubt Retep has Construction yet, but I'm not absolutely sure anymore. I'm pretty sure Bacchus can't have enough research to have Guilds or Engineering yet though.

If we're going on the war path, it might be time to consider Alphabet for the spies. Not sure how bad we need the calendar happy, but a well positioned spy or two could really help inform what we do with our military. That type of knowledge could really determine our success rate in the coming conflict.

To be clear, these are RBMod spies which only see the tile they are standing on. You'd want to run them around in Ichabod's land, presumably?

Calendar is only a 2-turn tech, and the happiness plus the extra commerce from the tiles seems pretty important to me right now, plus good to grab it when we're in serfdom for faster improvements. A couple of cities need multiple units for HR happiness right now, and we'd want the happiness for a war, and also it would be nice to have more flexibility in trades. (E.g. more spare happiness, that we're trading for calendar resources right now, to potentially trade for stone or something like that.)

[WilliamLP]

Dropbox is having issues this weekend, so I can't upload screenshots.

News:

Commodore unloaded two units of War Elephants, "Krilliphants" and "Mindybanes", from Bathurst. So it seems like attacking with knights over there isn't a great option now, if we were going to attack anyway. (As opposed to just spamming longbows.)

Lewwyn took a city from Azza, who shows the CivStats signature of someone caught with pants down. (Sudden bunch of whips, then loses a city, then a bunch more whips.)

Dtay built Taj. He's taking advantage of being literally left alone in a corner of the world quite well.

I "accidentally" left our war elephant in view of a hill tile in Ichabod's culture. Maybe he'll think we have a bunch of them. I should maybe show him a knight too.

For the world tech situation, I haven't been doing much C&D, but notably: 5 contacts have paper: Commodore, Scooter, Dtay, Mackoti, Plako. Everyone is up CoL and CS on us. Notably, Commodore lacks Guilds, Aesthetics, and Calendar. Scooter, Mackoti, and Plako have guilds. Scooter has Engineering, Mackoti has Banking.

The interesting takeaways are that Commodore isn't a world tech powerhouse (though he's up on us in total beakers). And he knows we have Guilds since the vision from Paper works both ways.

[WilliamLP]

Mackoti started another Golden Age! He's already the clear leader, and didn't have to sacrifice tech rate to do it, e.g. he has banking. Have fun with that, eastern friends!

Plako declared on Dhalphir (who we have had basically zero interaction with despite him being a neighbor of Bacchus). And Dhal whipped 12 times! With Azza and Dhal locked in wars, we've got a pretty solid lock on 10th place in this game.

Calendar is done. We get silk immediately since we settled Barbiere on it. This is good for +2 happiness with a market. Spice is easily hooked too. I'm going for Iron next because it's a 1-turn tech, it could improve production somewhere, and it would also be good to not be dependent on Mackoti for continuing our knight builds.




This incarnation of RBMod gives cheap grocers to Expansive. (Also cheap Aqueducts, oddly...) They can wait in most cities, but in the shrine capital, nearly +15gpt at breakeven for 61 base hammers is such a no-brain deal that I'm delaying a knight for it.




Commodore is trying to be annoying here. Fortunately it's not difficult to cover the tactical bases while workers chop. He's going to have to be careful about his elephants to not give us a favorable trade. Eventually dislodging the W2 mace SSW of Magic Flute might be a challenge, and we might have to build a shock crossbow to do it semi-efficiently.






Our fortified Ichabod defense force is highlighted: 17lbs, 9 spears, 1 elephant.

Retep is guarding an entry forest with 4 axes and 3 spears. They are quite out of position there! So much so that it's tempting to invade this very turn to the hill NE of Horsetown. (I don't know if that's what Hariharalaya really means.)

The counter-argument is that the city still sucks anyway, and it will just start the process of him turning all his population into archers and stuffing them into Suit Up. The perfect attack would hit him there decisively before he has time to do much of that.

Engineering would be really really nice here. Since Retep probably has city visibility on us the staging tiles would be much nicer with 3 moves.

Graphs on Commodore:




He's ahead of us in GNP, behind the big kids, reflecting the scores. Note our GNP peaks and troughs are ahead of Ichabod's right now.






I don't like how much we've sacrificed here, but, existential threats... And if we could eat and hold Retep's land for a while things it could pay off eventually. In theory.




It's pretty shocking how low Commodore is here! And he has Scooticator right on his border with knights and engineering. And Scooter's two southern neighbours (Lewwyn and Azza) are fighting. I'm going to go ahead and say that Commodore can't afford to devote more to our NW island than would befit a side project. (Of course, I wouldn't rule it out either!)

[flugauto]

Could you show your Financial Advisor, please.

[WilliamLP]

Sure:




At 100% science we lose 172 gold. Income will get a decent boost next turn with a grocer in the shrine city.




That's at 0%.

[WilliamLP]

And now TheBlackSword has eaten a city from Suttree. I'd be rather surprised if Mackoti doesn't want a piece of that from the other side.