Dtay's Little Red Book

[dtay]

At what point should we skip Whosit? The 4-way split Krovice mentioned is obvious us, whosit, and CH.

It's actually pretty interesting from a geopolitics meets mechanics point of view. The speed at which Whosit collapsed combined with his particular positioning right between the other three has basically made his road network a no-man's land until his cities come out of revolt. That means all of Krovice/CH/and I have 4-6 space range-of-attacks, and plenty of incentive to get an alpha strike off against undefended stacks/recently taken cities. This is forcing all of us to adhere to a turn split, since any of us could want to declare war on the other in any given turn if the opportunity arose.

Though actually CH and Krovice are unlikely to go to war given the positioning, so a more intelligent design could put those two in the same turn slot and downgrade this to a 3 way turnsplit. But anyway, that ship is sailed.

On the original question, I'm not going to post in the tech thread just to avoid more spoilers than necessary, but Whosit is regularly taking up the middle ~32 hours of the timer, leaving few on either end for CH and then me->krovice. Should we all just skip him this turn to get him at the end? Lurker input? I'm the one directly after Whosit nowadays in the turn order (krovice was in front of my at the beginning but has been behind since they declared war on Whosit), so i'd have the make the first move in that regard.

[Commodore]

Maybe PM Whosit/Gawdzak to see if Whosit minds the help.

[dtay]

I pm'd Whosit earlier today if he minded me jumping over him in turn order. This is a good time to do it, since I have no forces near Whosit's remaining stuff and no intention of attacking him now since he's sequestered behind Krovice. I can't see how this would possibly harm him, so I'm going to wait until the ~22 hour mark and then implement this unilaterally (4 way turn split, ~12 hour blocks per person, then some leeway time).

If some lurker thinks this is objectionable just let me know and I'll wait for an actual reply, but I really feel like our war is only nominal at this point, there's a whole separate civ between me and him. The only way this could affect whosit would be if he's about to attack a city of mine out of the fog, which is impossible given the tiles I have view of, or if I'm about to attack him, which I'm not. The only difference is I nominally have less information when I make my move than if I waited (except I doubt Whosit is going to do anything except log in and hit end turn).

Either way, when I play this turn there will be an actual report with pictures!

[dtay]

Went before Whosit, pm'd him again to clarify, things should run more smoothly from now on. Also asked for peace, since why not. Maybe would encourage him to send the stack at Krovice or Whosit.

And, the big news of the day.

We have moar war

For truly, the Ethiopians came to the Nordic lands not as conquerors, nay, but as liberators. To show the nordic people the freedom and prosperity that they can have under the the Ethiopian King Belichick. But would it be just to stop there? There languish yet more of the nordic people under the tyrannical thumbs of the Zulu, slaving away beneath the lash of the whip. Should they not also be shown true liberation? Are we not all one jewish faith, and therefore deserving of one united nation? Yea I say. Let the Crusade for Reunion begin!

Results of war turn 1:



I expect to take 3 cities next turn, the two visible and that third one up wherever. From how CH's troops are oriented it looks like he was redeploying them south to take Whosit's last city, since he had basically only catapults down there last I checked. They should be around here ->



Hopefully the catapults stayed down there, which will give me a ~2-3 turn window to take cities before Whosit's collateral arrives and I have to proceed more cautiously. Because besides hitting me with a stack of 'pults, there's really nothing he has that can get through knights efficiently.



Zooming out a bit... this is the overall world I know



Notice the hilariously mutually indefensible border with Krovice. That is probably going to blow up in someone's face later in the game. But Krovice has meaningfully kept pace with me power wise and now has engineering for pikes, so further conquests don't really lie in that direction in the near term. I don't THINK they'll attack me while I'm in CH's land, they could probably take 1-2 cities before knights turned around and I upgraded troops, but I believe they'll realize right now war is mutually unproductive.

Though while I'm reading Krovice, what WOULD someone do in their situation? I'm outteching and outpowering them, but a direct attack would probably just drag us both down. But they don't have another neighbor by land. Overseas adventures? No idea how plausible that is given the neighbor, but conceivable. Tech / expand to the tundra in peace? Maybe. They have a ton of land right now and could add more, so they have economically productive things to do for a good bit, here's to hoping they choose to do that.

Graph of power



Random other non-war observations:
Those cities I settled on the Pin continent have turned out nicely



Judaism still the largest faith, Hinduism reasonably close



Which may make this tempting down the line



If this is an island like I think it is, also liable to grab sometime if I retain tech/power advantage



Food - out of date, I hit #1 last turn and dropped to 2 this turn



MFG charts - other guys near me are also in golden ages, way outproducing the land neighbors right now



OH - apparently building courthouses



Still can't get a city in the top5 ughhh

[dtay]

I should give a tip of my hat to commodore and the "Protracted Land War Against a Competent Opponent is Never a Good Idea." post in the pb13 thread for substantially influencing my thinking over the last 15 turns. Notably away from war against Krovice. That would be the perfect example of a land war against a competent, equal-ish tech neighbor. Them whipping their rather large empire into units (pikes now, elephants earlier) sounds like a giant slog and probably would just let OH and BGN pass me by.

Anyway, point being, that was a great post (actually posts, the follow ups were actually longer and more in depth) by commodore and I don't think i'd mentioned it before anywhere.

[Ceiliazul]

Well done hopping whosit. That will keep the turn pace bearable.

How much of CH are you after on this sitting?

[Commodore]

Cheers Dtay! Looks like you've been internalizing the lessons well.

Before you get hurt, I added the dogpile caveat for a reason. I've never considered you incompetent.

[dtay]

Well done hopping whosit. That will keep the turn pace bearable.

How much of CH are you after on this sitting?

As much as is profitable. I could certainly see a Whosit situation happening where as I advance I corner an obscene amount of troops in the last city such that it isn't worth it, but I'm going after as much as I can get. One constraint is I'm trying to keep some number of my knights within 2 turn range of the Whosit core both to defend against possible Krovice attack or a CH end around.

Cheers Dtay! Looks like you've been internalizing the lessons well.

Before you get hurt, I added the dogpile caveat for a reason. I've never considered you incompetent. wink

Ha, well you certainly seem to attack me a lot So close to actually seeing what bombers can do in MP, so close.

[dtay]

Forgot to give these, actual demos:



I appear to have taken #1 spot in food since when I actually played the turn, and lost #1 in GNP. Or I misremembered

I'm trying to guess at how far back CH's territory goes. If he started equidistant from Whosit as I, not that much further than I can see. The edge of where I scouted was also pretty early, back when CH had 2-3 cities I believe, so I imagine the furthest tiles are tiles in his cap/2nd-city city radius.

The south is something I'll have to dance around. Down there lurk both Whosit's remaining stack (which I hope marches at CH or Krovice, or if it stands pat that Krovice burns troops taking Plano from it) and CH's catapult stack + the troops I saw up north earlier, which so far I haven't really seen unless they scattered to the wind. H2H my knight stack would kill his pretty easily if I got the first shot, and his mine if he gets it. Luckily, even in CH's territory the two stacks have near-equal mobility (2 tiles, cept CH can go over roaded hills). And in neutral territory, which I can create reasonably often by razing or taking cities, I have far far higher mobility at 6 tiles.

I'm keeping my own catapults kind of behind the blitzkrieg line. They need to be in striking range of Krovice sending a stack into Whosit-land, yet also able to be called up if Ch manages a city-defense stack I want them against.

[dtay]

All right, war turn report.

First move was to go see what was guarding this city... apparently named Regatha. Just an archer, so the sole Knight is enough



Next, raze <forgot name> and take Zendikar. I also sent a knight one space further to kill an ax on this hill and also see what i spot



Sent another "scout" knight, now we're talking. I can now fork what appear to be two core cities and a 3rd peripheral, probably taking all 3 next turn



Sentry knight goes to examine the direction where I (turns out correctly) CH's army was



Shot before the main army moves



We disperse, sending most of the troops to the SW



If the CH's cat stack get's within striking distance of Zendikar, I should be able to clear all the culture by taking Theros and then murder the stack with all my knights. As long as I get the first strike a fight between our armies is super one sided. I've probably lost the sentry knight and other knight to it's north.

My empire is going to look hilarious once this conquest is done, all strung out.



Demos



Some graphs



Looking at who is potentially contesting me for Economics. Vaguely thinking about if getting one of Taj or Liberalism is possible in addition to Econ. Depends where some of the people who COULD be preparing runs break, and particularly on Old Tourist and BGN