Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

Singaboy, that looks like a great turn coming together. Two more Campus districts finishing, another trader completing, three more builders (hopefully) completing - great stuff. I'm glad that we could line up Naval Tradition to provide the second half of the double policy swap to make it happen. I really like the way things are shaping up at Seoul, that city should fall pretty easily to China's forces when we attack in a few turns. One other thing I'll suggest is that we should try to avoid standing next to Seoul's borders until the last minute if possible. TheArchduke is suzerain of Seoul and the city state will grant him vision. Better not to telegraph that we're about to attack until the right before it happens. Obviously there's only so much we can do here - we do need to get our units up next to his city - but where possible, let's try to stay out of his vision.

Cornflakes surviving another interturn is great news! One more to go buddy.



The bigger question is how to proceed forward in grand strategy terms for this game. It's clear that England/Nubia are very willing to sign a Declaration of Friendship with us, since they've asked us repeatedly for the deal. I think I have a decent sense of Chevalier and Woden's personalities, and they are probably looking at Germany's beaker rate right now and seeing them as enemy #1. Chevalier Mal Fet tends to obsess a little bit about the "empire" score in the world rankings, and the inflated numbers that Russia and Germany have (from their unique districts) make their team look scarier than they actually are. I think that we could definitely get a Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia and then focus on Russia/Germany.

I'm just wondering - is that really in our best interests? It seems like the obvious play in a 3 way game, sign a deal with one team and then work together with them against the other team. You never want to be on the wrong end of the 2 vs 1 in a three player game. The biggest problem for us comes in the form of the Declaration of Friendship that we signed with Russia/Germany, which we signed on Turn 104 and therefore lasts until Turn 135. We can't do anything to them until that date, and that means that our excellent military will be sitting around doing nothing, costing us money but not producing advantages for us. Since we have the best military, we want to be using it somewhere to accrue advantages for our team, and I don't like the idea of locking ourselves into peace for the next 20 turns with both teams. I don't think it's going to take us that long to finish off Japper, somewhere between 5 and 10 turns in the worst case scenario. Then what? I'm not sure.



If we do want to sign a Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia, we need to do it now. We've caught Russia/Germany in score and Rome's beaker rate is going to overtake Germany's beaker rate in the near future. I think our position is significantly better than Russia/Germany right now, with much more land to expand into, a bigger military, and more population/techs/civics. In fact, if you count Russian Lavras for 3 points instead of 6 points, and ditto for Germany's Hansas, their score drops down by 45 points. They are getting some serious score inflations from the 7 Lavras and 8 Hansas they completed. Anyway, my point is that we're going to look like the top dogs again pretty soon once we capture Seoul and the Kongo cities come out of the occupation penalty. We'll have to strike now if we want a deal with England/Nubia.

But again, I don't know that we do want a deal with them! I'm still finding the option of attacking and crippling them sometime in the Turn 125-130 range to be appealing. The key factor here is money; their team doesn't have much cash on hand right now, and I don't think England/Nubia can amass enough gold to upgrade their units and keep up with our modernizing. In other words, they might make it to field guns on the tech tree, but that might not be useful if they can't afford to upgrade their units. That said, this would be a hugely risky plan to adopt. All it would take is England/Nubia defending our attack, then Russia/Germany pushing in to attack us from the other side while our forces are committed, and that's probably the game right there. I'm also leery of the Great Generals and Great Admirals that England/Nubia have on hand. They've claimed every General and every Admiral in the game thus far, and attacking crossbows/field guns with the Great General bonus would be really painful.

Here's a really big picture question: how do we see this game ending? Obviously we're not going to race all the way to the end of the tech tree and some kind of formal victory condition. It's going to end when all of the teams concede to another team. How do we make that happen? This is as much breaking the will of the other teams to resist as it is actually taking over their cities. I keep thinking on this and coming to the conclusion that the easiest way to achieve this is to build an unstoppable navy and going on a razing spree. Raze the coastal cities of EVERYONE else in the game and they'll concede even if we can't reach their inland capitals. In this regard, naval warfare is very different from land warfare. On land, units are slowed by terrain and defenders can use forests, hills, etc. to make it tough to attack. We've seen over and over again how land warfare is slow and difficult to make progress. At sea though, there are no terrain obstacles and ships move very quickly, 4 or 5 or 6 tiles per turn. And if you can't stop an opponent's navy, there's almost nothing that you can do. Your coastal cities are going to be razed one after another while you sit there helplessly. Looking at PBEM4, as soon as one player had a decisively stronger navy than anyone else, the game was just over because oledavy was effectively invincible. This may not be an archipelago map, but I think it's similar enough to take note.

So I think the path to eventual victory is more likely than not to run through naval power. Obviously a ton hinges on whether or not we manage to build the Venetian Arsenal. If we can build that successfully, then I think the game opens up for us in a lot of interesting ways. We can use the VA to build a huge navy of frigates and look to hit Russia/Germany as soon as our Declaration of Friendship with them wears off on Turn 135. It would probably take that long to upgrade the frigates and move them over to their cities anyway. Note that this would not stop us from capturing/razing Nan Madol and Valetta on the way over to Russia/Germany either. Obviously we would need a Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia to do this so that our own cities wouldn't be vulnerable. After teching to frigates, we aren't all that far away from Steel and battleships, which make frigates look tame. Seriously, battleships never really appeared in PBEM4 (outside of the Brazilian Minas Gereas in limited numbers) but they are INSANE. 70 ranged strength and 3 tiles range on the bombardment? You can blast apart units on the shore without them being able to fight back, and cities fall almost immediately. The only defense is another navy of equal strength, and with Venetian Arsenal, no one would ever be able to match our production. Of course, navies are balanced somewhat be not being able to heal outside your territory. If only someone had a certain Great Person with a healing factor that would let naval units heal anywhere on the map, hmmm....

This is getting pretty long-winded so let me summarize. I think our ideal play is to continue waiting for the moment while we keep building the Venetian Arsenal. If we can land it, then we sign the Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia and go after Russia/Germany. In this case, we would put most of our gold towards frigate upgrades as opposed to cavalry upgrades; most of our fighting would be done at sea, not over the narrow chokepoint with Germany. If we don't land the Venetian Arsenal, then we focus on land power and go heavy on the cavalry upgrades and try to conquer more territory that way. We probably would not want to sign a Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia in this scenario so that we have a better target for our Chinese cavalry.

That's what I'm thinking right now. How do you see things Singaboy?

[Sullla]

One more thing ™: The obvious counterargument to all of the above would be take the Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia now to lock in peace with them, just assume that you're going to get the Venetian Arsenal, and start sending Woden/Chevalier countdown messages of how long the current DoF lasts with Germany/Russia:

20 gold + iron
19 gold + iron
18 gold + iron

And so on. They would get the message pretty quickly: alliance against Germany/Russia in X number of turns. Then we raze a whole bunch of German and Russian cities, and then turn and kill England/Nubia afterwards. The end. I find this to be pretty compelling as an option too.

[Singaboy]

Very interesting thoughts. I have similar questions etc. If we feel confident that we can net the Venetian Arsenal, then maybe it would be good to sign a DoF with England/Nubia now, go after the city states in question and start razing coastal Russian and Germany cities.

I think, whether we sign a DoF now or not, we would go after Germany and Russia unless we don't get Venetian Arsenal. If we plan to go for naval domination, we will need a more income. Maybe I should then focus on expanding Marco Polo for more gpt and use faith to get some missionaries and the occasional horseman. By the way, an Apostle costs 390 faith while a missionary is still a lot cheaper at 175 faith currently.

After thinking about my own situation, I am going to enable Maritime Industries next turn to restart production of naval units in the west. We will need a strong presence in the sea to prevent Germany from controlling the land connection there. With Maritime Industries, I can harvest stuff using the 100% bonus a while longer.

[Singaboy]

By the way, the Great Lighthouse with 290 hammers looks as if most of it could be chopped from a forest into a naval units instead of wasting builder charges. It would after all provide 4 faith, 3gpt and 1 movement for naval units. Likewise, the Colossus would add 4 faith and 3 gold.

[Sullla]

OK, I think we're both leaning towards accepting this Declaration of Friendship and setting up a naval attack on Russia/Germany. The timing lines up pretty well for us:

*5-10 turns to finish off Japper
*10 turns to move units into position
*Attack on Turn 135

We're also in a position where Russia/Germany appear to be the bigger threat to our team, and we can get the third place team to work with us against them. That's a great strategic situation for us. I also was thinking back to why we were avoiding a Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia in the first place: because we didn't want to let them capture all of the Kongo/Khmer cities. Clearly that's not happening, and a DoF doesn't stop us from razing their city states. So why not?

The turn came in and I think I'll offer the Declaration of Friendship unless you post otherwise. I'll give it an hour or two to let you have a chance to respond.

[Singaboy]

Sounds fine with me. I remember well why we didn't want a DoF some turns back. That reason is gone of course.

[Modo]

20 gold + iron
19 gold + iron
18 gold + iron

And so on. They would get the message pretty quickly: alliance against Germany/Russia in X number of turns.

So this game doesn't have out of game diplomacy enabled, huh?
I'm not disputing if it's allowed or not but if signs are still visible by every player you could use them...or rename cities that only they can see to convey the message.

[Brian Shanahan]

Hang on - Sullla is Mr Economy, while Singaboy is a former "Always War" expert, but you've got China carrying Rome economically and Rome doing all the fighting. Something, somewhere has gone slightly wrong...

I think we've just entered the Mirror Universe, shallow_thought. Everybody's wearing goatees.

[Sullla]

We have "AI Only" diplomacy Modo, not "no diplomacy". It allows for a limited version of communication, but not enough to know in exact detail what other teams are thinking. We've also had some spectacular misinterpretations of what one player was signaling in past Civ4 MP games, which means that this style of communicating is not without its risks. And I think Singaboy is going to get to see plenty of combat on his end before this game is through. Anyway, on with the turn:



Here was the initial screen when I opened up the savegame file. It turned out that I didn't even need to request a Declaration of Friendship, Chevalier Mal Fet had already sent one to me. This was before Singaboy had replied in our team thread, and I decided to ignore Chevalier's proposal for the moment until later in my turn. I did accept the 370 gold offer from Singaboy, which he had precisely calibrated, enough for me to upgrade my units with exactly 1 shiny gold piece left over afterwards. Perfectly done!

As for Japper, he retreated his units to the north. I'll have more to say about that in a minute, for now I just noted that there were no impediments to pushing north towards Kinchassa this turn.



This was a bit of a snag on my turn. I went ahead and checked in a Single Player game about whether battering rams get the embarked movement of normal units, and they do just like everything else. However, what I failed to realize is that I still haven't discovered any techs that grant extra movement to embarked units: my land units are still at the base 2 tiles/turn rate. Whoops. I don't know how I missed that. Square Rigging adds +1 movement to embarked units (for 3 total) and then the big tech is Steam Power, which adds +2 movement to embarked units (for 5 total). Square Rigging is close, but won't be discovered in time to help the battering ram.

Fortunately I can still reach Seoul for Turn 118, it just requires a move convoluted path over land. I moved to the iron tile this turn, and next turn I need to move to the western wheat, then I move to the plains hill tile on Turn 117. On Turn 118, the battering ram moves next to the city on the wheat tile to boost the caravel's attack, and then it can scamper away a tile to the east after the caravel attacks. Now I fully realize that this is going to make China's unit movement a bit of a nightmare and I really am sorry about that. I wanted to move from the plains hill north of Seoul into the water onto the caravel tile, but there's a freaking tiny cliff blocking that extra move, argh! Alternately, I could swing the battering ram out wide to the east, going to the eastern wheat and then the tile E-NE of Seoul if that's more convenient. Do you have a preference here Singaboy?

I think this is looking more like a 2 turn operation than a 1 turn success right now. Hopefully whatever unit is sitting in Seoul right now and giving it that 57 defensive strength rating will move out of the city center before we actually attack. But we have enough units here that the city is basically guranteed to fall. We have something like a caravel, two knights, two swords, a catapult, a horseman, and a Crouching Tiger. Some combination of that will definitely get the job done, in one turn or two turns.



With caravels now in hand, I'll be sending out units exploring to get a better sense of the map. This caravel near Nan Madol is going to go on a very long mission, north of England/Nubia and then down around the other side to scout for Russia/Germany cities in the western sea. The caravel at Seoul will similarly circle around the bottom of the map below the Kongo/Khmer continent to come out on the other side. Note that Chevalier Mal Fet is blocking the only sea tile that touches Nan Madol, which would prevent a naval capture from sea from taking place. He may very well be blocking all six tiles surrounding the city, which would make it impossible to capture Nan Madol at all without attacking England first. We'll see if that's the case, have to do some more scouting here later. Just be aware that he might already be blocking this city state from being captured.

With the last two galleys upgraded into caravels and the last legion turned into a musket, it was time to change governments and policies:



Farewell Monarchy, you were very useful while you lasted. Those Limes city walls chops were perfectly timed for several cities. I adopted Theocracy for the moment, and unlike China, I don't expect to spend very long in this government. Rome wants Merchant Republic instead, since the faith aspects of Monarchy aren't very useful to me. I went back to my normal policy setup of Natural Philosophy and Merchant Confederation, with the one new policy addition coming in the form of Colonization. I'll be running this for a little while to get out a trio of settlers, the last cities I expect to build in this game. I think there's still enough time remaining for new cities to be effective, especially since all of them will be at locations with lots of forests and resources to chop/harvest. I'm waiting now on Venetian Arsenal to finish (6 turns left), then I can complete a bunch of quadriremes which are nearly done, and then finish Exploration civic and adopt Merchant Republic. The only reason I didn't finish Exploration a long time ago is the fact that it obsoletes Maritime Industries, and I'm still building those quadriremes for Venetian Arsenal purposes.



The only combat on the Kongo front was shooting a single Ngao Mbemba for 13 damage, the injured unit on the western side of Japper's formation. All of the Kongo units retreated back towards Kinchassa, and I'm not sure if that was the best decision from a tactical perspective. I want to draw attention to the row of jungle hill tiles that I've marked in white. Those tiles are important terrain objectives, as a crossbow on those hills can shoot down over lower jungle tiles, while by the same token units on the hills can be hit because they are up "higher" than the surrounding ground. That's why my western 1 promotion crossbow was able to hit Japper's injured Ngao Mbemba this turn, because it was on a jungle hill tile. Anyway, Japper had some crossbows on these tiles previously and that was going to make it a bit tricky to advance forward and take them out. Not impossible, just a little tougher. Instead, he's given up these positions without a fight and I'll happily take advantage of them. Next turn I intend to make a general advance forward, pushing everything up one tile. Right now I can do that in total safety; there are no ranged units that can attack as I move forward. Time is rapidly running out for Kongo over here.

I also want to mention the position of my battering ram. It's moving northwest along the road and I plan to embark it outside Pisa, then hit Kinchassa itself from the sea with my caravel to take out the walls. That's an easier path to get a battering ram next to the city walls than trying to go over land. Also check out all those Nubian units off to the east. I think it's a good thing we signed a Declaration of Friendship to avoid the temptation on either side to strike first. Too bad Cornflakes didn't get that knight on 1 HP off in the corner; Woden will probably be able to retreat and heal it back up to full eventually.



Here's the bad news for the turn: Woden claimed the Great Scientist and also advanced into the Renaissance era. No Great Person for us. I still maintain it was worth the effort though, and if we had set up our planning a little better ahead of time (by holding China out of the Renaissance), we probably could have made this work. Oh well, it will take a little longer to get to The Enlightenment tech now, and no boost for me. The really weird thing is that Germany somehow went *DOWN* in Great Scientist points between turns. I'm not entirely sure how that happened; did he pass on a Great Scientist somehow? I think that's the only way that that can happen. Not really sure what happened here. Anyway, Darwin would be pretty nice for us. 500 beakers per adjacent natural wonder tile? Well, we have the 4-tile Pantanal right next to Napoli and that would be 2000 beakers from Darwin. I also have a district project worth 40 Great Scientist points in my back pocket now, ready to be deployed at will. I think it might be worthwhile to make a run at Darwin in a dozen turns or so. We could slingshot forward to Steel (battleships) or Combustion (tanks) much sooner than would otherwise be possible and potentially ruin someone's day. Worth thinking about for the future.

This was when I stopped for an hour to wait and see if Singaboy had a chance to respond in our thread. With his approval, I signed the Declaration of Friendship with Chevalier:



We're now signed on for peace until Turn 146 with them. Russia/Germany, you are officially our next target.



Back at home, Roma swapped over to a university at the annoyingly high build time of 9 turns. Sheesh, those things are expensive! Nine turns therefore until Printing finishes and the boost gets delivered over to China. (Venezia is supplying the other university for the boost.) Colonization policy allowed me to swap Milano and Ostia over to settlers, and Roma will produce a third settler after these two finish, with Roma paying for the most expensive settler since it has the highest production output. I also need to do a huge wave of builders after this current round of builds completes, following the settlers, universities, and quadriremes under production elsewhere. I probably want 6 or 7 builders in all to improve tiles and chop/harvest resources. I'll also be working to fix my income woes in the upcoming turns. Two Commercial districts will be chopped out next using quadrireme + Maritime Industries overflow, plus I'll be getting a trade route from Seoul, plus two more trade routes from Merchant Republic government. That's five more traders or 11 traders in total. I'd like to run most of those trade routes to Lisbon for the gold generation boost, as we're now at the stage of the game where gold is more important than food/production, and I can also swap into Triangular Trade when it becomes available for 4 gold per trade route. All of those things together are easily worth close to 100 gold/turn. Obviously I need to build the districts, capture Seoul, and then build the traders themselves, but my income absolutely should recover over time.

On the plus side, Humanism is only 3 turns away now. I'm also going to research Square Rigging to half completion under the assumption that a musket kill will boost it to finishing. With all of these Campus buildings finishing, I'm also putting out a lot of Great Scientist points; maybe I can still get the discount for The Enlightenment, just with Darwin instead of Emilie du Chatelet. I only need 214 more Scientist points and I'm making 12 points/turn right now, along with that already-completed district project in my back pocket. With the addition of Seoul (Campus + library) and some universities, that might very well be doable to still get The Enlightenment boost.

By the way, check out that beaker rate: 119/turn. I'm actually higher than TheArchduke for this turn, as he dropped down to 116 beakers/turn. He was upgrading units this turn and I think he dropped Natural Philosophy for Professional Army somewhere in his policy setup. Either that or he stopped running his own Campus district project. Look at this:



Caravel upgrades incoming from TheArchduke. I do wonder why he did these in full view of our team, however. It would have been smarter not to show us that he was turning galleys into caravels, right? He spent 600 gold on upgrades this turn, so expect to see his power jump up significantly next turn. Russia remains comically weak in power at 245 rating right now. They really should have done this the other way around; Russia is the only one who gets the Defender of the Faith bonus, so Russia should be the one with the large army. I guess EmperorK is waiting for cossacks? He's going to be waiting a long time if that's the case since Russia is still only making 45 beakers/turn.



I wanted to print out my overview numbers again for reference purposes. This is why I think we were smart to lock in peace with England/Nubia right now, this right here. If you were looking at these numbers (and take them with a slight grain of salt because I'm estimating for the other teams), which team would you think is the biggest threat to win the game? It would be our team, right? We have the most cities, the most population, the highest beaker rate and the most techs discovered, just shy of the highest culture rate and the most civics discovered, the most faith income, and the highest power rating. Germany/Russia really only have an advantage in gold/turn income and total districts finished, and their gold income will plunge as soon as they have to start supporting a military as large as the rest of us. England/Nubia has hopefully been swayed by that huge beaker/turn rate from Germany and all those "empire points" that TheArchduke and EmperorK are getting from Lavras and Hansas. If I'm reading the gamestate correctly, we are very much the team to beat, but we've now locked in peace for the next 30 turns with a neighbor, preventing our opponents from combining together against us. With luck, we can line up England/Nubia together with us against Russia/Germany before they realize that they should be teaming up against us. Maybe not, but at the very least we'll now avoid a 2 front war for the next 30 turns, and I think we can do a ton of damage to Russia/Germany in that intervening time.

If we do land the Venetian Arsenal on schedule in 6 turns, these other teams are in for a *LOT* of trouble.

[Singaboy]

The shocker