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

[WilliamLP]

I'm feeling now like I screwed up and am going to get even more spanked in this game.




2metra got 14 Rifles and 12 Knights to this party, plus another 10 knights to the south in range of Block of Wood.

That's too much for me to deal with. One option is to raze Shower in Red to free up culture around Elegant People. But then I lose Cavs razing it, and I lose the victorious ones as well to rifles.

So I think all I can do is admit not razing Elegant People was a mistake. I made a tactical withdrawal into it and honestly I'm considering just backing out of here completely, offering peace for these two cities back. I question if he would take it though.

If I had a secure front on the other side of the empire I could probably hold Block of Wood but I'm not sure the forces necessary are worth it.

The other front:




Greece's 76+ unit stack is pretty scary here. The real problem is that Plako can attack in 4 turns, and I need a lot of units over there to make that not a good idea for him.

Really, what I wasn't banking on here was facing Greece's entire army. I thought Harry and Fintourist were talking business, but apparently 2metraninja can afford to move essentially everything away from that coast.

The first question is what kind of flanking damage can 23 cavs do against 40 cats? The answer is not nearly enough. In BtS it may be different but with nerfed RBMod flanking, they don't even kill one. I think it would take about near equal numbers of cavs to cats to start fully killing them with flanking. And, because of the mechanics of the game, wounding cats isn't worth much at all... they still do full collateral even at 1/100 HP.

Is it pretty dumb to try and defend two cities that can be forked by a massive siege stack? In this situation, I now think it might be. Again it would be different if all I cared about was a zero sum game with Greece. Then, grinding down both sides with slight gains could easily be the correct thing to do.

So, what I'm learning (or maybe trading one set of misconceptions for another... ):

- Attacking effectively into piles of units to make permanent gains is really hard.
- Numbers are basically everything, even when units are an era apart. A 15 strength vs 10 strength battle sounds like a lot but the game works in ratios so it's the same math as, say, strength 3 vs strength 2. And would I feel good about attacking into 20 warriors with 10 archers? Uh, probably not.
- Because numbers are everything, having multiple cities without cultural buffers that can be attacked on the same front is a huge problem. Splitting a garrison into 2 means you just get mauled on one side or the other. With the cultural buffers, you are the one who gets to attack first, so all you need is a numerical advantage within the total of all your units that can get there.

Knowing what I know now in this position, all 4 of those captures would have been razes to free more room for my own cities, and then I'd just quickly get the hell out of there.

Another issue is that it's possible to analyze this stuff for hours and sometimes that prospect feels a lot more fun than other times.

So I need to decide on my move here.

1. Offer peace for the two eastern cities back. Maybe 2mn lets me keep Withered Fields and Hannya Plain for a while?
2. Offer peace for the two eastern cities, plus Hannya Plain. That way at least there's only one city without cultural buffer.
3. Offer peace for all four cities back. Screw it, I messed up.
4. Try to hold Withered Fields and Hannya plain. This means I need a ton of stuff to stay around and, if not defend the cities from full attack, make it so that losses will be drastic in a counterattack if he takes one or the other.
5. Try to hold Block of Wood too, rawr.

4 and 5 means I get slaughtered by Plako the turn or two after he can attack, probably. Pick my poison? Forced peace with 2metra, if he'd take it on any condition, might be enough of a deterrent, at least for a little while.

I guess I'm thinking 1 right now, and see how he reacts.

I'm not going to lie, a factor is that a lot of the time I'd rather not spend multiple hours every day trying to find small winning currents in a massive losing tide.

On the other hand, for future games it's good to learn some of these things somewhere where it ultimately doesn't matter to the result anyway.

[WilliamLP]

So, I have no desire to go fishing for tactics inside enemy culture where I'm outnumbered by inferior units.

I offered this:




I have no idea how he'll perceive it. I could see him being anywhere from relieved to insulted. I'm showing I'm willing to deal though. I'd definitely take peace for giving Elegant People and Block of Wood back and keeping the two much more valuable front cities.

The prospect of the two front war with a world superpower on one side and Fintourist and Harry's war becoming phony on the other is so bad that I'd be quite tempted to give 3 cities back for peace.

Everything is in defensive positions basically.

Meanwhile,




Dtay is back after my fishing boats again. Visible is my stack, of junk ships folded out of newspaper, that could deal with this but it would have to catch him by surprise, which is hard when he outmoves me.

I offered open borders back to Dtay. I'm sure he gets some GPT out of trade with me. If he takes it and pillages anyway, I intend to declare war to cancel. And probably try and sneak a spy on a caravel into one of his cities just to do something spiteful and annoying.

Obviously, it would be kind of hilarious if this were a different Privateer belonging to someone else. I love the mechanic but the main problem with it in PB is that it requires lots of inter-turn logins to deduce who it is.

[WilliamLP]

Not much going on this turn. 2metra didn't want any part of peace for Elegant People back and I don't blame him. This war effort is really all he has to play for right now and he doesn't have the same sentimental investment in the sandcastle that Ichabod did.




I have more interest in not losing too many units right now, than I do in extending out to this coast that is probably going to get attacked by Dtay with infantry soon. So I just vacated Elegant People. I had the chance to sacrifice a half dozen Cavalry last turn to raze Shower in Red and open up it's culture, and so having turned it down then I see little reason to play do-si-do right now.

There are also only 5 rifles in Block of Wood, with various numbers of CG promotions. 2metra can take it back but he'll take a bad hammer trade doing it because I can pretty easily wipe out the victorious wounded stuff.

The southern front is boring. He did nothing, I'm turtling up.

A bunch of rifles and my siege stack are heading Plako's way in case he's planning a hammer attack. I don't see anything too suspicious with the airship but he's laying down a rail net for either offense or defense.

[Ituralde]

Obviously, it would be kind of hilarious if this were a different Privateer belonging to someone else. I love the mechanic but the main problem with it in PB is that it requires lots of inter-turn logins to deduce who it is.

But isn't the mechanic of the Privateer supposed to be that you don't know who it belongs to? At least that's how I always understood its barbarian nature. So Pitboss is actually the only format where it works without problems.

Either way I'm looking forward to what is happening and I have no clue who that Privateer belongs to.

[WilliamLP]

You're not supposed to know who a privateer belongs to, but you can just log in at various times during the turn and see when it actually moves, and see who has played on CivStats between logins, and deduce by elimination.

It is possible to conclusively tell who they belong to in PBEM?

[Ituralde]

Having never played a PBEM stuck a wrench in my thought process here, I thought every player got the next save with the moves from the previous player, so it would be easy to see which players save led to the Privateer being moved.

Obviously PBEMs don't work that way, so nothing to see here, move along!

[pindicator]

I think it would be tougher to determine in a pbem. You pay the same order every turn so everybody has moved units ayer the last time you loaded the game. In a pitboss you can log in whenever and deduce that way

[WilliamLP]

So as expected I'm getting spanked. I basically vacated the east except for 5 rifles in a city. I thought with CG promations they could take down attackers at even exchange but I was wrong.

2mentra rifle vs rifle battles:
LOSE at 25%
LOSE at 30%
LOSE at 30%
WIN at 54%
WIN at 68%
WIN at 68%
WIN at 78%
WIN at 100%

That's not a particularly lucky or unlucky result and he went 5 for 3, and was able to put enough stuff in there to discourage me from trying to counterattack. Well played.

So yeah, I went into this fight seeing no garrison on the borders, expecting that Fintourist was posing an existential threat on the other side, but that turns out to be all paper so I'm basically boned here against a guy committed to attacking with all his resources and absolutely no other purpose in the game, when I'm also going to get rammed in the rear at the same time by another guy who's ahead of me on every metric.




Plako is just railroading up to the food resource to connect it, I think. Hah, yeah right. He's coming at me. Combat railroads are kind of terrifying.

I switched the Ring cities back to culture, though it will be too little if he dedicates the size 14 Demolished Man to it and gets the second border pop. This whole front line is instant toast though for 1 turn I can at least put Rifles in Gotterdamerung on the hill and make him take a loss if he wants to instantly raze it with Cavs and then try to combat-railroad through to the next spot.

Steel is up next turn and then I'll try and upgrade and finish as many cannons as I can.

Who gets the first move in 2 turns on the war declaration turn will come down to who has a less fulfilling social life. I like my chances.




Some guy seems to like Organized industrial infrastructure. Plako is becoming the third superpower.

2metra has to put his econ in the toilet to remain alive. I know that feeling.

Mack finished Artillery. So in addition to artillery themselves (not weak sauce) he's one tech away from a window of sea dominance. He's all taking out Azza's cities, which isn't the target I expected. It's also bad news because it means he's a little diverted from Plako, for as much of Mack's might as taking out Azza's islands must take.

Man I would be so happy if this game were conceded and I didn't have to fight the losing grind vs Plako, but I would strongly bet against it now.

[WilliamLP]

Lol, I have a feeling Plako is going to be camping the shit out of the beginning of this next turn roll. If I can play first it means he can't declare on me the turn after without double moving.

It could come down to mouse and browser refresh spam wars right after 2metraninja plays his turn today.

I don't feel bad about it because unlike end-of-turn camping, beginning-of-turn camping makes the game awesome for everyone else because it helps the thing move along.

[wetbandit]

Who gets the first move in 2 turns on the war declaration turn will come down to who has a less fulfilling social life. I like my chances.

Strong play for back-to-back QotM.