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

[MindyMcCready]

It's fair to say we should have more cats. You don't often get to play with knights vs someone who doesn't have construction or longbows yet though. So we probably don't have to lose many cats here since knights and LBs may get odds just by bombarding defenses.

Indeed it's going to be pretty awkward if Ichabod attacks in the next couple of turns. It would be quite an instance of Deus Ex Machina for Retep.

I've never been sold on the value of muskets over longbows at 80 hammers to 50. In a hill city, I'm guessing it's easier to take down 5 muskets than 8 longbows if all have CG2. (Muskets get better multipliers, vs inherent 50% bonus and first strike for the cheaper bows.) A stack of rifles and cats (let alone cannons) takes down either stack cost effectively though. But it does have to be a big stack.

I think that you're underestimating the lowly musket. Of course a hill city would be better to have 8 LBs over 5 muskets but you can draft muskets so practically speaking they're no more expensive than LBs. Also, take away the hills and add a splash of collateral and the LBs are just feeding the rifles XP while the muskets can still win battles.

Before we pass up on any juicy cities take these CG2 musket vs Rifle stats into account.

All scenarios include 25% fortify, rifle's odds:

Culture 40%
Draft Rifle vs CG2 LB 31.20%
Draft Rifle vs CG2 Musket 21.2%
C2 Rifle vs CG2 LB 66.0%
C2 Rifle vs CG2 Musket 30.7%

Hill + 40% culture
Draft Rifle vs CG2 LB 21.9%
Draft Rifle vs CG2 Musket 9.7%
C2 Rifle vs CG2 LB 30.6%
C2 Rifle vs CG2 Musket 24.6%

Hill w no culture
Draft Rifle vs CG2 LB 29.1%
Draft Rifle vs CG2 Musket 24.9%
C2 Rifle vs CG2 LB 63.8%
C2 Rifle vs CG2 Musket 35.0%

No hill, no culture:
Draft Rifle vs CG2 LB 66.3%
Draft Rifle vs CG2 Musket 32.4%
C2 Rifle vs CG2 LB 84.50%
C2 Rifle vs CG2 Musket 67.9%

It's a trade-off of course. Having a couple of extra cities to draft muskets from vs having less cities and getting to Rifling sooner. Given that we're spiritual, we gain more from Nationalism and drafting than other teams so I'd prefer more cities sooner.

[WilliamLP]

As far as tech goes, CoL is next since we get it in one turn. After that (all in base beaker values which are lower than the real game):

CS is 800, with 40% bonus. I think we're overdue to get this next. The farms spreading irrigation alone is something we're feeling the lack of. (Nationalism needs it too.)

Aesthetics + Lit is 300 + 200, at +20%. This is cheap enough that I want to slot it in for the HE build.

Gunpowder is 1200 at +20%. (It would be +40% with paper and education, but those are pricey).

Banking is 700 at +20%. Don't worry, I'm not actually considering this next. Even though it's a big win with the shrine and on the way to rifles. If we were up with the tech leaders we'd want it as a priority.

Compass + Optics is 400 + 600 at +20%. This is if we want to fight for the coast.

Philosophy + Nat is 800 + 1800 at +20%. Expensive!

Paper is 600 +20%. Useful only as a prereq.

Alphabet + Printing press is 300 + 1600. It's needed for rifles.

Education is 1800 +20% (needs paper). Honestly I might be surprised if we _ever_ get here!

There are also the alternatives to rifling: Military Tradition and Cuirs, or Chemistry and Military Science and grenadiers. They're cheaper than rifling but miss the nice economic techs on the way. (Banking, Printing Press, RP).

[MindyMcCready]

Civil Service for the farms and the spirtual civic switch ability. Oh right, and for the military super builds. :LOL:

Did you finish the new palace?

I'd probably pick up Literature next for the HE and NE. That double fish city (when we build it) would be a strong candidate.

We'll have to weigh our options for longer term but Cuirassiers + Nationalized muskets would probably be our best combo of offense/defense. Got to go. So I pretty much like the tech choice in the order that you listed them.

[WilliamLP]

Awkward chess in the north:




2 Carracks vs 3 C1 Galleys. The 3 moves are a problem, especially since the last one can take a carrack into the ocean where we can't counterattack. One play here was to join all 3 galleys somewhere like 2E of Magic Flute. That way if he wants to attack twice he'd have a chance to give _us_ a 2 for 1 trade if he loses one of the 75% results. I saw the probable outcome of that being a 2 for 1 for him though. He'd probably kill 2 galleys, leaving one of the victorious carracks 3E1S of Magic Flute, where the fresh galley couldn't attack. We'd have 1 more galley in the stack which could probably attack and kill one or the other.

So I attacked the Carrack in the south!

C1 Galley vs Carrack (10%): Lose - 0 hits!

Crap, worst case... the 0 hits was a 7% result. And now the position just sucks. There really wasn't anything do but attack again.

C1 Galley vs Carrack (10%): Lose - 2 hits. Better, but still in the lower half of the expected.

C1 Galley (94/100) vs Carrack (59%): Win. Phew.




So we lost 2 for 1, and have a 70% galley left. If he attacks and kills it we have a good chance for a 1 for 1 with the fresh galley out of Bathurst at least.

I'm not one to complain about the RNG, but I'm lying because yes I am one to complain about the RNG. I don't think we've gotten an upper 50% result against Commodore yet in a fight that mattered. (Note for instance we had well over 50% chance to take Bathurst a while back if the first combat hadn't been bad.)

Of course I call it superior tactical sense and average luck when the RNG goes well.




It is no great surprise that Retep had a bunch of spears to move into Suit Up. This is good! Since we have 11 axes and 10 longbows right there, many of which can take shock, those are just free experience once the longbows take out the defending archers.

Next turn we bombard defenses down. It will be interesting to see if he makes a stand. It's by far his best place to.

Obviously maces would be even more crushing here, but the reason he built so many spears is because he knew we rushed to guilds. Forcing so many spears is actually an indirect win for the knights, because spears are garbage in all other contexts.

He has 4 axes and 3 spears as fork defenders. There are 2 knights that can hit the horse city if he doesn't move a spear in. (It should be 3 - the single knight placed 2E1N of Suit Up is a mistake.) A C2 knight has 96% on the fully fortified archer.

So far this is all looking better than expected.

Civil Service comes in 4.




Big picture:




You can see where Bigwyn are eating Azza, and Dhal being swallowed from two sides by Plako and Bacchus.

Dhal is dead meat. You just have to look at his population.

I missed what happened at Forsaken. It looks like Bacchus captured it from Plako at some point.




I'm too lazy to figure out precisely which techs everyone has but from top:

Comm has Guilds and Banking now. He lacks Engineering, Gunpowder, Aesthetics. His tech rate is very high now with U of Sankore.

Plako has less than I would have thought. It's relative though. He has what we do, plus CS, Aesthetics / Lit, Alphabet, Paper.

Dtay has Nat and Gunpowder and has been drafting muskets for a few turns. He lacks Engineering and Feudalism.

Mackoti has the Economics merchant, Gunpowder, and everything up to RP which is probably his next tech. He lacks Philosophy.

Lewger are in the same place as Plako, but up Drama.

Scooter has Printing Press, but is down Banking and Economics vs Mackoti. I think they actually have Liberalism, Constitution and Democracy! (I don't see them in the "Can Research" field.)

Harry is not shown, he's near Plako and Lewger I think.

Overall... there's an interesting difference of approach between Scooter and Mackoti. Scooter has some endgame peacetime civics, and they will get Statue of Liberty. Mackoti will have rifles in a couple of turns, and will start owning the whole eastern continent. Dtay has a great Lib turbo-taj beeline, but he's lacking too much fundamental stuff right now to be given a chance to win, in my opinion.

Honestly, I'm not saying I could win in this field with Mackoti's position, but I don't see any chance that he can be beaten in this game. There is absolutely nothing to stop him rolling Suttree and Black Sword, and then the rest of the east. The fact that he's grown so big while also having the tech he does must be a remarkable Tour de Force of civ mechanics.

[Ceiliazul]

maybe recheck some of those techs...

[WilliamLP]

I don't really care about any of the leaders' techs that much, except maybe Commodore. But I don't see any obvious error in what I wrote (intentionally incomplete), which doesn't mean there isn't one!

[MindyMcCready]

That's quite a few units for Retep, more than I would have guessed at his power level, but he's carrying alot of low power units.

It looks like he's showing 201K of power. The 23 units that you showed amount to 95K.

Pop est of 9K; buildings estimate of 11K; tech estimate of 34K (you didn't post Retep tech assuming no IW, no math) means that he's got 52K left over - 8HA/16 archers/12 spears,.... so at at guess he's still defending copper city.

Those spears are VERY good news! CRII cats will have 70% chance on a C2 spear with 10% fortify. If he doesn't get more archers,axes or HA in there, it'll be very one-sided despite the serious number of units to wade through.

Another option could be to promote your Knights to shock to see if you can target the CG2 Archers. If the spear is C1 (or less) and has less than full fort, the archer has better odds of defense than the spear. Not sure if that'll mean that it actually defends though.

We might be able to limit our losses to primarily axes that way.
-3 shock Knights vs CGII archers (70%)
-Shock Axe vs Axe for even odds.
-CRII cats vs spears (70%)

So here comes a GG. I'd say that the best use for one right now is a 4-5 move galley to keep the island reinforced, combined with a fort 2W of Travatore. This could easily mean the difference between losing and keeping the island as Master Commodore is working hard to blockade us. Alternatively, a fort 1W of Travatore could drop off unit and get back into the fort making Master Commodore's blockade useless. However, the advantage of the fort 2W is that there are 3 tiles to block whereas the fort 1W there is only 1 tile.

Forcing Master Commodore to try to block 3 tiles means forcing the critically bad play of splitting the navy --> or give up the blockade.

[WilliamLP]

That's quite a few units for Retep, more than I would have guessed at his power level, but he's carrying alot of low power units.

It looks like he's showing 201K of power. The 23 units that you showed amount to 95K.

Pop est of 9K; buildings estimate of 11K; tech estimate of 34K (you didn't post Retep tech assuming no IW, no math) means that he's got 52K left over - 8HA/16 archers/12 spears,.... so at at guess he's still defending copper city.

I'm guessing he must have math by now, since we've seen a couple of score jumps, but no construction. His unit supply costs have basically equaled his commerce output for most of this game it seems.

Those spears are VERY good news! CRII cats will have 70% chance on a C2 spear with 10% fortify. If he doesn't get more archers,axes or HA in there, it'll be very one-sided despite the serious number of units to wade through.

Another option could be to promote your Knights to shock to see if you can target the CG2 Archers. If the spear is C1 (or less) and has less than full fort, the archer has better odds of defense than the spear. Not sure if that'll mean that it actually defends though.

We might be able to limit our losses to primarily axes that way.
-3 shock Knights vs CGII archers (70%)
-Shock Axe vs Axe for even odds.
-CRII cats vs spears (70%)

Yeah, we have a lot of tactical options and none of them look good for Retep. I think I want to babysit the knights because at 90 hammers they're worth nearly 2 longbows or cats each. They're also the unit with the most future since they get a surprisingly reasonable upgrade cost to Cuirs - I think it's only 50 gold a shot. So we may not want to take 70% fights with them even if it's mathematically the best.

I'm actually not sure how many of those 9 cats are 2-promo ones. I think we want to bombard to 0, and it seems nice to have a couple or few accuracy cats (-8% bombard). The conservative thing to do is bombard and pass to have all cats available next turn, which is probably what I want to do. I've learned the hard way before that bombarding with half of a cat stack and suiciding the other half in the same turn can be a terrible idea.

My first thought here was that longbows will preferentially attack the archers. I'm not sure if they still do if we give them cover, but if they do that seems like a great idea: kill or cripple the archers with longbows and then axes or cats will just stomp the spears. Or we may just suicide a couple of cats, and maybe the rest can fully attack out and redline everything and we win with whatever we want.

I won't rush-play the next turn, but post here first. Warfare is not in my Civ nature.

So here comes a GG. I'd say that the best use for one right now is a 4-5 move galley to keep the island reinforced, combined with a fort 2W of Travatore. This could easily mean the difference between losing and keeping the island as Master Commodore is working hard to blockade us. Alternatively, a fort 1W of Travatore could drop off unit and get back into the fort making Master Commodore's blockade useless. However, the advantage of the fort 2W is that there are 3 tiles to block whereas the fort 1W there is only 1 tile.

I think we may even be 1XP short of a GG now, with that boat win over Commodore. At least a couple will fall vs Retep it seems, ideally all on our side.

That's an interesting idea, to try and set up so that even if we lose control of the channel we can move units around, thanks! It's too bad we need a GG to get a 3 move galley. The fort 2W of Trovatore does seem like a good idea for sure.

The alternatives for the GG are both pretty valuable too: the standard M3 chariot, or +2 experience for every unit out of Turandot.

Speaking of which I'm sadly using Turandot as a GP farm right now, LOL! It's working 1 engineer, 1 merchant, 2 scientists, plus the free priest. This means we can get a Golden Age (at worst) in 8 turns. Given the value of that, I thought it was worth sacrificing some production for now.

[WilliamLP]

Commodore killed our galley, but took enough damage that the fresh galley had 86% odds with C1, which I took:




I actually could have taken Flanking for 70% odds, and then the galley could have gotten Navigation for 3 moves if victorious, but I really didn't want to lose the battle.

Note the general is in Manon.






Commodore unloaded! It's a mace and an elephant, and one of them, probably the mace, has a blue promotable glow. (Does the glow only show up for the top unit, or for any unit in the stack?)

I wonder why he unloaded there, instead of 1W of Trovatore? That would have been more annoying. Anyway, this isn't scary and longbows can deal with it. We could kill this right now if we were to run a knight into the elephant, but that's not very cost effective, so I'm thinking to wait a turn.

Situation #2:




There's lots of junk in suit up. The defenses are 0 with 4 cats left to attack. I think 3 of them have 1 promo, we don't have any 2 promo cats.

A shock knight would attack a spear at 72.8%, not very appealing. A cover longbow gets a horse archer defender, with 30%-ish odds on the C3 ones.

I think this requires suicide cats, and as such we probably need to wait a turn to have all available. And obviously I need to sim the living hell out of this before actually committing.

Could there be a Situation #3?




There it is!! I can't say it's much of a surprise. Surely there are bunches of knights behind this.

So how scary is this? I'm not sure, honestly. One thing that's conspicuous about the stack is there isn't enough to prevent our full host of knights from flanking the heck out of his catapults. Only 3 elephants and 2 spears are decent knight defenders, and we might be able to hit the elephants with longbows first.

Defenders in Boheme again:






So what now??

The chariot in Boheme is actually intended for tricks. We have the option to make it a great general, declare war, move it S-S-SE on the hill, promote Morale, then pillage and suicide! That should slow his attack down by a turn which actually might be the best use we can get out of him.

1. Get knights out of Retep's land right now. I don't know if we have enough power to kill the rest of Retep's junk with just our 1-movers. So maybe he gets a miraculous reprieve (which may even annoy him!)

2. Try and take Suit Up next turn, hope we have enough to finish the job and also get something back in time to not have an invasion to the east. Hold the line by whipping a bunch of cats, basically.

I will say that I'm not willing to sacrifice our eastern front for getting Retep's lands sooner.

Thoughts are appreciated!

[WilliamLP]

Now Bacchus, do you want a piece of this turn timer? Anyone else? Dhal or Scooter, maybe you guys want to send some boats over? Then come on!