[Spoilers] The games they are a changin' - Ichabod Civ 6 PBEM 3 as England

[pindicator]

By the way, I wanted to send a warning to Suboptimal saying his units are too close to my borders, meaning he should move that warrior away. But I just couldn't find the option to do it. No idea how Kaiser sent us that warning before... I wonder if he gets more options, considering he's first in turn order? Or am I missing something behind the quirky UI?

I'm not terribly familiar with the diplo options either, but they'd have to be under the diplo screen somewhere. I can tinker with it in single player tonight, but I'm pretty sure there's a way to do it. Probably the same place you'd declare friendship

[Ichabod]

Pretty interesting stuff happening in the game.



Kaiser is going for the more optimistic settling, which I think is a good sign for me. But it turns out that Kaiser is not the one who has the most power to decide what will happen in this war.



There's also a Suboptimal archer south of Kykio, that I've seen while moving. This is a whole lot of military and it definetely means something. But what does it mean? Here's what we have of facts:

*Suboptimal has a DoF with both Kaiser and Rowain (and he hasn't met Bacchus). I don't know when they were signed, but I'm positive they won't be ending anytime soon.

*Suboptimal doesn't have that many techs, so he kind of rushed to Iron Working.

*Suboptimal's army is strong enough that I can't capture Kikyo with a light army, because he'll just kill my units and take the city for himself (I wouldn't say this last one is a fact, but I think it's a pretty agreeable statement).

*Suboptimal is playing Arabia and he profits from GPROs being born, as one of his abilities is tied to it.

What does Suboptimal want with this? He invested a lot in this army, gold for upgrades, the maintenance costs, the hammers... Considering he has DoFs with both his neighbours, why does he want such a big army? 

I can see 2 options. 

1. He thinks I'm the biggest threat to win the game and he sees denying me of Kaiser's land as a key strategic goal to avoid my lead from increasing. The counterpoint here is that, while he can keep me in check by doing this, he's not getting his own position further, compared to Bacchus and Rowain. 

2. He seeks to further his position with his army, meaning conquering City State lands. He has very nice targets near him, Jerusalem and another religious CS, both of which have Holy Sites and Shrines already up (this ties very well with his religious needs). Unfortunately for him, the closest CS to his lands, Jerusalem, already has walls up.

I don't think anyone wants to play Knight in Shining Armor, so a full option 1 is probably very unlikely. I think it's a bit of a combination of both, really. Suboptimal probably knows he invested a lot in an army and he needs to make such army bear fruit to slingshot his position.

I thought a lot about it and decided:

1. I can't attack Kikyo with Suboptimal's army breathing on my neck. If I go with the single horseman plan, my army will be completely destroyed by his. But if I wait to get a more powerful army, Kaiser will finish DotF, he'll get more units, and his army, coupled with Suboptimal's, will crush mine anyway.

2. I offered Suboptimal a DoF. I think we both stand to gain here. I will be free to keep my kaiser war and Suboptimal gets 30 turns of free development (with DoFs all around), where he can gun to Mamluks, while he conquers City States. I think it's a deal that can favour both of us.

I moved my units as such:




If Suboptimal accepts the deal, I'll go with the horseman plan and try and finish Kaiser. If he doesn't accept, I'll retreat and let Kaiser be, offering peace (which I don't think he'll accept, but alas). I'll focus my armies in capturing City States, Yerevan and Stockholm mainly.

There are two disastrous options that can happen, but I think both are unlikely:

1. Suboptimal accepts the deal and parks his units next to Kikyo, making an attack impossible. I'd say that's kind of going "full number 1", like I mentioned above. You are wasting a lot of resources just to negate gains from an opponent, while having other opponents. Perhaps I'm at a position where stopping me at all costs is the best way to proceed, but I think that's a bit exhaggerated. Anyway, Suboptimal plays before Kaiser and I don't think they have Open Borsers, so in this scenario, I'd likely be able to move my units next to Kaiser's Capital before Suboptimal can block all the way.

2. Suboptimal feels threatened by my unit moves near his warrior and sees my DoF as a sort of ultimatum. He proceeds to declare war and kills my archer on the marsh tile. In this case, I'll lose a unit, which is always bad, but at least it'll be pretty clear where suboptimal stands. Again, this one would also be a bit of "full number 1" and I don't think it makes sense to reveal your hand like this. The threat of his units near Kikyo is enough to deter me and, if it's not enough and I ended up attacking the city, he could cause way more damage when that happened (coupled with getting Kikyo for himself, most likely).

What I think will happen? I think Suboptimal will deny my request and stay put. I think he'll plan to reoffer the deal after the GPRO is born on Kaiser's city (in about 5 turns). What do I do in this case? It's a tough question. I think giving Kaiser 5 more turns will make my attack way more costly, because he'd be able to get at least one more archer and DotF, that is, if he doesn't manage to get swords too. I think the best path is to just retreat and give up on Kaiser for now, trying to get peace to make Masters of War a decent city and going for the CS conquests. I'll have to overcome that feeling of "what could have been" and the sunken costs, but it is what it is. In that case, I'll obviously not accept Suboptimal's DoF and I might actually do the same thing to him near Jerusalem, if timings work right for me.

Interesting times ahead, nonetheless.

The only other thing to notice in this past turn is that I may end up losing the trader for a stupid barb scout...



Seriously, to hell with barb scouts. They are incredibly hard to kill due to the 3 moves and they come out of nowhere all the time. I'm not sure exactly when the trader moves (beginning of turn, end of turn...), but I'm expecting to see it pillaged by that stupid unit before my archer can cover it (if covering it is at all possible; I don't know, considering I don't know when the unit moves).

So, yeah, the good parts of the game and the bad parts...

[Cornflakes]

I'm pretty sure traders move at the end of the turn. If you put a unit on the tile the trader is currently on, it will move out of the cover and get plundered. You have to anticipate the movement of the trader and place a unit such that the trader moves into safety of the unit

[pindicator]

I think we're safe from the barb scout. It takes a point of movement to pillage a trade route, and I don't see the barbarian getting there before our archer can cover.

Speaking of Geneva, we are finishing Mysticism soon? That would get us to 3 envoys and give us an additional 2 science. I'm guessing you are holding it for a policy change?

Regarding Suboptimal, it may be that his peace with Kaiser is due to be up soon. But I'm pretty sure I saw they signed the friendship treaty under "Rumors within the last 10 turns", meaning that the earliest the declaration would be up would be turn 72.

My bet is he is trying to stake his territory. He isn't so much trying to play world's police to stop us as he is trying to make sure that he is the one capturing Kaiser's cities when their friendship expires in ~15t. With that in mind, I don't expect him to accept our offer and I expect him to keep his troops where he can advance on us if we try to take Kaiser out.

How many horsemen can we chop out if we really pushed for it? I'm really tempted to just chop a bunch out and then declare on Suboptimal before he can see what's coming. There's a lot of flat terrain in the area too.

But your plan to keep the stalemate and tie down his troops may just be better. I worry we may not be ready to pounce when he attacks.

If we can take Kikyo and complete that encampment it would be a thorn in Suboptimal's side that would make holding on to Dalwhinnie very difficult. So I really want to take it!

[pindicator]

Peeked at the save, and saw suboptimal is offering us 5g for 5g. Does that mean his friendship is up in 5 turns and he's signalling us to back off - that he'd be willing to sign friendship at that point? If so, could we have enough horsemen ready to pounce on suboptimal by then? OR - Japan is 4 turns away from their prophet. Is suboptimal so tied to getting a "free" great prophet that he is telling us to wait until after Japan gets their religion? Either way, why would you telegraph either of those to your opponent? I guess I don't understand what Suboptimal is thinking right now.

As much as I would want to take more cities now, It doesn't seem to be worth the investment if we have to fight both suboptimal and Kaiser. I think you're right that we should mop up city-states in the area. We can get our empire stronger without so much commitment, and if we can tie units down in a 3-way standoff in the area while we do so, all the better.

What do you think about starting an Encampment at Desolation Row? We could put it either on top of the hill 2N of the city, or on the tile we're about to buy and chop into a horseman at the city now. Both have decent defensive merits to them. I would like to get at least 1 encampment going in our empire for many reasons: Great General Points, easier building of Iron units, Military Training inspiration, and it's a good defensive gateway between our "core" and the rest of the players. Only issue is that districts cost 131h now, almost as much as a settler, and without any boosting available. But what else are we going to build if we're not going to just throw military at the suboptimal problem?

[Ichabod]

Played two more turns and it seems I was wrong about Suboptimal. On the bright side, we figured out what to do about it.



On turn 61, Suboptimal moved his units in a way that I didn't feel threatened to keep my attack going. So, I chopped the horseman and positioned my units in a way that I could try and take Kaiser's archer on the following turn.

I sent a 4gpt for 4gpt offer to Suboptimal, signaling I'd wait for the GPro to be born in 4t. If he accepted that and a subsequent DoF, I'd likely just take Kaiser Capital without waiting for it, as I don't care about AI Diplo shananigns. No promise would have been made, so not my problem.

I also got a new option in my Diplo with Suboptimal, the "discuss" option. There, I could complain about spies and another thing, I don't remember what. But I don't think I had the option to complain about settling and units. Anyway, what makes the discuss option be avaiable is a mistery. I also realized that the Diplo window said Kaiser's DoFs with Rowain and Suboptimal were gone, by I thought that was just a UI mistake.



Turn 62 started with an ominous Inspiration, Defensive Tactics. Luckily, Suboptimal didn't declare war on me, but rather on Kaiser. So, the DoF was indeed over... The one who declared war on me was Stockholm, which Kaiser allied with. Pretty nice, a new Inspiration for free.



This was the situation near Kaiser's land. Notice that Kaiser finished the Encampment last turn, but Suboptimal is occupying it. In this scenario, I couldn't attack the archer there, because I got a battle against the Encampment. I'm really not sure what Suboptimal can do against that, if he can move a unit in there or out of there. Kaiser archer is probably alive, so he must be 1E of the builder.

Anyway, I thought about what to do and realized something. Suboptimal best unit are his swordsmen, but he can't replace them. He has only 1 iron and no encampments, so, as far as I know, he's blocked from building new warriors and he can't build swords. So, apart from his current units, he can't build anything threatening. He'd have to get a second Iron source or an Encampment, both of which will take time. Meanwhile, I can get 1t horsemen from a single chop and horses are far more mobile to reach the front.

Also, I have quite a lot of warriors fit to fight and they pack a reasonable punch considering Oligarvhy and flanking/support bonuses, which Subotimal lacks. He actually, also lacks warriors.

Finally, Kaiser's terrain near Suboptimal is way worse than near me, there's a river, there are woods, there's a finished Encampment (even though I'm not sure how that works, when Suboptimal occupies it). And I have the initiative...

You can see where this is going, right? I declared on Suboptimal. The movements were as follows:

1. I moved the horseman to 1NW of the injured sword and the selected archer 1NE, before declaring war.
2. I killed Suboptimal's warrior with the promoted archer and the warrior to finish it off, because I wanted the horseman to get a flanking bonus against the sword.
3. I attack the sword with the horse (first, because I don't want it to occupy the tile) and both archers.

Results:



I think I was unlucky with the rolls against the sword, it should have been a kill. Well, I was lucky against Kaiser, so it happens.

If my knowledge of the rules are correct, there's not a whole lot Suboptimal can do next turn. There's only 2 units that can attack my horseman, the archer inside the Camp and the almost dead sword. As far as I know, the healthy sword will lose both move points due to Kaiser's warrior ZoC, so he can't reach the horse. The southern archer is blocked by the river. They can pile up on my warrior, but the warrior is no sluch with Oligarchy and support bonuses.

There are two big questions:

1. Can Suboptimal move the Sword inside the Camp to save it? I don't think he can and if he can, the only way to do it is by changing places with the archer (the moving units at the same time option), which means the archer is toast.
2. What will Kaiser/Adrien do? Stay put and try to hold the defense? Or will he choose a side to intervene? I'm obviosly biased, but I think I am the player who should get Kikyo, as I fought Kaiser's army fair and square.

Next turn will be really interesting. I expect to see another archer upgrade from Suboptimal and I wouldn't be surprised if he retreats his units. Though I think he'll lose the sword no matter what he does, so he'll try and get revenge kills. Hopefully, he won't succeed and get his army in bad positioning in the process. Meanwhile, Kaiser can only attack Suboptimal's units with his archer. If he chooses to chop a warrior (he probably can't chop anything better, considering he just finished a build), he can cause some trouble in my backlines, but I can't see him taking units out.



I'm going full military right now, so the builder which finishes in Watchtower will be used to chop 2 horsemen. There's a perfect flat land path from Watchtower to Kikyo, so I can reinforce there pretty quickly, using cities as bridges to cross rivers.

I'm surrounding Suboptimal's scout, and Geneva will help with it (edit: no, as you can just peace out enemy city states...). The main thing here is to avoid him from pillaging my Campus or my Caravan.

Human players can always surprise us, but I don't see a way for Suboptimal to cause me lasting damage. If there's something I'm not seeing and he manages to kill my horseman, I can probably revenge kill a unit or two, and I end up winning in that exchange, as he can't build any worthy melee units to replace his losses. I guess he can build spears, but they will take a while to be uilt, a while to reach the front and they are easy targets for archers and warriors.

Perhaps I could have waited a bit to make a more decisive attack, but I was worried he was going to take the city next turn. And I had a very high chance of taking a sword out (at least that's what my gut said), so I went for it.

Luckily, the other side of the world is also at war, Rowain vs. Bacchus. Gandhi showing his teeth. So there's really no chance of a runaway peaceful Civ dominating the game, it seems.

[pindicator]

You realize you just made every lurker's day, right? Especially the ded-lurker!

[Ichabod]

By the way, I started the Camp on Desolation Row, on the tile we chopped the horseman. I didn't want to waste the mine we can build on that hill. But I switched the build to another horseman, as I think it's more important, for now.

[Mardoc]

You realize you just made every lurker's day, right?  Especially the ded-lurker!

Not only do we get a three-way war...it's a well-documented, clearly illustrated war!  

[Ichabod]

It's certainly very satisfying to play a convoluted mess of a war like this one and I like to get the interest of the lurkers going (we can't be left behind by the guys on PBEM2/PBEM4), but I really think that was the right move, if we are to win the game. My (certainly limited) knowledge of the game leads me to believe that Suboptimal's military situation isn't sustainable in the long run, so I get more profit from a zero-sum attrition war. Meanwhile, if Suboptimal conquered Kikyo, he would also get Kaiser's new city (which is crazy good, by the way) basically for free. Then, he'd be the game leader, with very close/plentiful city states to further his development (and he'd get the coveted second iron as well).


You know what I'd do in a Civ 6 mod? I would get rid of the 50% military production card and just give all those bonuses for free. Military is the best thing about the game, so it should be very easy to build one.

Also, I'd keep the way unit maintenance works, but it would start at classical units (the horseman/sword line). Archers, warriors, spears, heavy chariots and slingers would be free.