[NO PLAYERS] WW err CIV6 Game 4

[Alhambram]

@Archduke, I would personally rather you didn't. Giving Singaboy a secure front right now seems like an unwise idea. 

In fact, looking at the military standings this turn (cough, Vikings, cough), is everyone around Singaboy ready for a Great-General powered Horseman/Swordsman attack? 

Speaking from personal experience over many painful turns in PBEM2, GG led attacks are nothing to mess around with, and I would rather the presumptive game leader not get free cities.

I have a few tricks up my sleave don't you worry...

Agreed on Singaboy being an immense danger btw.

Well, I wonder what Japper can pull out high hat? Seeing his last pic, he is building campus and settler (ok, I don't know what other cities are building, but at least he isn't full military building now).
Japper actually needs swordsman, horseman, crossbowman and walls right now to stop Singaboy's invasion with GG among forces.

Singaboy shall declare war at turn 88 and possibly already take Midgard at turn 89 with GG boosted strength and movement.
It is too late to start walls for Midgard unless Japper have a builder ready to chop it.

Japper shall finish horseback riding at turn 87, he already got one resource hooked up. But you need two since Japper lack encampment (only Woden and Singaboy do have them right now).
Where is second horse resource? well at Midgard there is one which still need to be improved by builder. I fear for Japper that Singaboy shall take Midgard before Japper manage to connect second horse resource or is he about to do it with possible new builder (but he need to hurry up!). Even with horses hooked up, it takes time to build horsemen.

What about swordsmen? Japper do have one iron hooked up, but he is still 2 turns away from iron working tech required for swordsmen. Best what Japper can do right now is instead finishing horseback riding, finish iron working first allowing him upgrade his sole warrior into swordsman and his city's defenses shall raise. His only iron resource however is also next Midgard and it is gone if Singaboy capture it. There is other iron present on island but yet hooked up. Worst case scenario for Japper is when he research horseback riding first and Singaboy captures Midgard while Japper has yet to build horsemen and upgarde warrior into swordsman. In that case it bodes not well for his remaining cities which have defense of 20 instead 30.

And Japper just got eureka for machinery required for crossbowman but he still need finish engineering first to able to research machinery. Meanwhile Singaboy is set to finish machinery at turn 90 and use crossbowman boosted by GG to continue his campaign against Japper.

Well, Japper might have some tricks upon his sleeve and I am interested to see what it is. But just at this moment I just can't see how he shall survive this invasion.

Maybe oledavy can do something with his galley, don't forget that he got +5 strength bonus due being Japan.

[shallow_thought]

with the third archer upgrade we unlock the boost to machinery:

That should make our skeleton military somewhat more imposing internationally, being last in military is very stressfull I expect to open the save to a war every turn now...

Well he's not oblivious ... he's just not doing anything meaningful about it. Scanning through his pictures it's quite possible that he doesn't have a unit south of Utgard - which is ~9t away from the South coast where Singaboy is going to attack, and it doesn't seem like he's building any.

Yes, "oblivious" was too harsh. But his relaxed attitude baffles me. I'm still not familiar enough with the game mechanics - could a big pile of gold (and maybe a resource trade?) from oledavy dig him out of  hole here? Gold can only upgrade in Civ VI IIRC, not simply buy units? Does Japper have the techs to defend if he can upgrade his existing units?

Not that he's explicitly planned to force oledavy to help him, but that seems to be on the cards right now.

FAKE EDIT: I think Alhambram's post answered some of this between my drafting and posting. Unless Japper focuses on getting the tech and resources for swords right now, there's nothing anyone can do to help him

[Dreylin]

His biggest problem is that he only has one each of Iron and Horses hooked up, which means he can't build any without an Encampment ... which he doesn't have. Oh, and those Strat resources are both at Midgard!

I'm somewhat fuzzy on the Warrior-Sword upgrade conditions with Iron (maybe you can upgrade with just one but unless you have a second or an Encampment it can't heal?). His best bet (once Midgard falls) will probably be to go for Machinery & his own Crossbows, but they are expensive to produce and I don't see the MFG in his many tiny cities to build a big force.

I'm not sure that oledavy sending him cash will help much, since neither seem to have a big treasury or high gpt.

But oledavy's Galley is going to cause an interesting twist.

[suboptimal]

I'm somewhat fuzzy on the Warrior-Sword upgrade conditions with Iron (maybe you can upgrade with just one but unless you have a second or an Encampment it can't heal?). His best bet (once Midgard falls) will probably be to go for Machinery & his own Crossbows, but they are expensive to produce and I don't see the MFG in his many tiny cities to build a big force.

Having one strategic resource lets you upgrade to units that require it and they can heal.  He can't build any until he has an Encampment or two copies.  If he loses his only copy, the units can't heal.  His issue is that upgrading won't help him - it cost 80 gold to upgrade a warrior to a swordsman and he can only afford one right now.   He's right to expect war.  He doesn't realize what he's in for.

[Alhambram]

If you go over to the diplo thread, you can see that I am trying to get under oledavy's skin a little. From reading his PBEM2 thread, he is very chicken little (the sky is falling). Just a good time to irritate him a little, especially since we don't have another turn this afternoon.

Well, mission accomplished I guess....

That aside I want to say that oledavy's science per turn of 58 at turn 85 is really impressive. In PBEM 2 Woden was leading with 31.3 science per turn at turn 85 (now in PBEM 4 Woden is doing slightly better with 35.3 per turn).
But look at this, oledavy is making almost twice SPT compared with previous best and current second SPT! For this I take my hat off for oledavy. (In SP I rarely get his high SPT per turn at turn 85, well expect when playing Australia with its broken ability, roughly 90 SPT at turn 85 I guess ) 

However diplomatic wise it is a disastrous thing, everyone can see his SPT and therefore has little interest in helping him and rather start alliance against him instead doing something about Singaboy. Singaboy is more short term threat that can evolve into long term threat, while oledavy is clearly long term threat.

There is one question that might interesting to do a discussion: when is a player running away or more dangerous to win PBEM?: Is that player who got huge SPT (oledavy) or when that player got huge empire score (Singaboy)?

[Dreylin]

Diplo is definitely throwing an interesting twist in the game here, but Japper's view of the battlefield is still limited (is he not wondering where the GG is?) and overly optimistic. Looks like Midgaard will fall, but the progress after that may not be good.

Also that Warrior purchase means he won't have upgrade cash for quite a while...

[Dreylin]

at oledavy's move on Woden ... maybe riling him up in the Tech thread just backfired?

Also interesting that Singaboy is confident enough to remain in Classical Republic for this attack.

[Commodore]

Woden did it 100% right, there, Oledavy's (understandable) complaints aside. Singaboy needs to be dealt with or he'll win, but Oledavy seems ridiculously far ahead of the rest. The only way the others win is if they force Singaboy and Oledavy to burn heavy resources on a zero-sum war. Norway is a great opportunity for just that...

[Ituralde]

Woden did it 100% right, there, Oledavy's (understandable) complaints aside. Singaboy needs to be dealt with or he'll win, but Oledavy seems ridiculously far ahead of the rest. The only way the others win is if they force Singaboy and Oledavy to burn heavy resources on a zero-sum war. Norway is a great opportunity for just that...

Yery true. Japan and Germany duking it out on Norwegian soil really looks like the ideal solution for Brazil and England.

[Ichabod]

Due to the defensive terrain near Asgard, I think Japper can hold Singaboy with the current 3 archers he has, plus the City Walls. But I'm not sure about it, it'll be nice to see how things play out.

Anyway, Japper needs to focus on the Asgard defense. I'm hoping (for his sake) that he withdraws the promoted archer as soon as possible (I'm not even sure if he can do that, considering Singa has boats in the water), otherwise that unit is toast. And he can't afford to lose units right now, as Asgard is his only city able to produce things in timely manner, and the city will be tied buildings walls for some time (depends on timing, but I think building another unit before the walls could be a good move, as it would give time for him to position it). 

He should consider building spears (especially if he's not running the 50% melee card). Also, I'm not sure, but I think he hasn't finished IW yet. That one turn he needs to finish might end up coming back to bite him, if he's not careful.