[spoilers] FT's attempt at social distancing

[Fintourist]

Turns 114-116

We moved into superdeath territory with the idea of taking the Pyramids with 8 catapults and 26 hitters. However, I underestimated the force that SD would be able to compile together (bit less that 30 defenders). It seems that he pulled pretty much everything from his other cities and left them empty for his other neighbors, which was something I was hoping not to see. We thought there would be a real chance of him trying to stop his earlier enemy Ruff from gaining ground, but unfortunately that was not SD's decision..

I simmed the battle couple of times: 2 times we took the city in two turns losing around half of our stack in the process. 1 time we lost horribly and threw our stack away. Even the positive scenarios are a bit worrysome: Taking a big power dip in the south and leaving our northern border vulnerable to Cornflakes and Commodore is also a way to lose this game.. And losing the most of our stack Elkad-style without taking the city is for sure not a tempting thought.. This game pains me already enough as it is.

So we ended up burning SD's other border city and then retreated our stack..




If macro allows, we will be back in 5-10 turns with a stronger stack that allows us to take the fight with more favorable exchange ratio.. 

[Fintourist]

Turns 117-124
 
Superdeath attack vol.2

Alright, here we are again.   After our first visit we went back to building military and put together a stack that could deal with 40 defenders (15 cats and 35 hitters). 

Fortunately, SD and Ruff had a skirmish and superdeath lost somewhere between 5-8 units, which makes our life a lot more comfortable.. So now we are staring at 25 defenders, let’s see how many SD can still muster together as we are still bombarding, but it should be around 30 and that is something that we should be able to murder fairly easily.




Speaking of bombarding, we are suffering here from a weird bug (I think it’s a bug). When catapults bombard against city walls they should reduce the defenses by 4 % each bombard. Right? Well that works exactly so, when the defending city has 20 %, 40 % or 80 % culture. However, when the city has 60 % culture, the cats only reduce the defenses by 3.7% or something like that. In essence, our 15 cats don’t get the defenses down to zero in 1 turn and for some reason 6 % defensive bonus remains.. No clue what causes that, but this forced us to move in one turn early as some of our cats have to bombard twice if we want to get rid of all defensive bonuses. 

Anyways, unless something surprising happens, we are expecting to capture Wisconsin in 2 turns. Although, SD might still retreat his stack to his capital and accumulate more units there. Not sure if we like or dislike that scenario..

I’ll provide again a macro update after the attack, but let's put it this way: In this game anything can happen. You can see in the above screenshot that our workers are already building roads inside SD territory so that we have a highway to our northern front and can defend should CF or Commodore feel like back-stabbing us..

Meanwhile here’s a domestic update of sorts:



 
Our Burocap has reached a nice place as we built Academy this turn and resumed teching. Next up Machinery and Guilds.

[Charriu]

Speaking of bombarding, we are suffering here from a weird bug (I think it’s a bug). When catapults bombard against city walls they should reduce the defenses by 4 % each bombard. Right? Well that works exactly so, when the defending city has 20 %, 40 % or 80 % culture. However, when the city has 60 % culture, the cats only reduce the defenses by 3.7% or something like that. In essence, our 15 cats don’t get the defenses down to zero in 1 turn and for some reason 6 % defensive bonus remains.. No clue what causes that, but this forced us to move in one turn early as some of our cats have to bombard twice if we want to get rid of all defensive bonuses. 

That's interesting. I will investigate this.

[Fintourist]

That's interesting. I will investigate this.

Thanks! I was not even going to sim this, but OH started memorizing that the bombarding effect from catapults is not constant..

[Fintourist]

Turns 125-126

War declarations, 211 beakers into Philosophy   and SD attacked out with his axes:

One unit dead is a good result for us (~1.7 was expected). But more importantly, SD had gathered 30 units in Wisconsin and now we have to face just 22.

This means that our catapults will have a lot easier job.. Right?

Yeah..   This game just does not stop beating us. We started with 8 straight losses including all kinds of 0/1 hit misery. Four ~25 % battles and four 50/50 shots means that 3 withdrawals would have been the base case.. After losing another 73 % fight this catapulting phase left us with 9 dead catapults out of 15.

Actually we only used 14 before proceeding to a more successful clean-up phase:

No losses there. We started with a 86 % fight and ended up with a lot of 99 % battles.

Overall losing 10 units (9 cats, 1 HA) is somewhat close to an expected result if SD had just stayed in the city so can't really complain too much. 500 lost hammers also happens to equal the building cost of captured Pyramids that will help us pump more army with police state.

SD is now out of units and we are facing an interesting situation with Ruff:

Hey Ruff, wouldn't you agree that killing 30 units makes us deserving to get this? 

There are multiple factors impacting this potential Mexican standoff. Is Cairo's declaration on Ruff something real? Cornflakes' whipping spree should mean that Commodore has appeared on his border again, but we need more evidence, before we would feel comfortable with really exchanging blows with Ruff.. Capturing Iowa won't win us the game, but sending or army way out of position re our Northern front (or squandering it completely) would be a way to lose this game.. 

[Fintourist]

Btw, PBSpy is really confusing at the moment.

• Cornflakes finished the turn t125
  
• Commodore finished the turn t125
  
• Cornflakes logged back in and whipped 6 cities
  
• Cornflakes is playing the turn first t126
  

Maybe there is no conflict and those whips are something else, maybe an opportunistic attack on us while we are busy south? Because if there is a conflict, I think going back in and whipping cities is already grey area, but then playing the turn first on t126 feels a double-move. I guess at these army sizes, ability to whip one turn early is most likely not anymore a deciding factor, but still.. No need to make drama out of this, as I clearly don't have a clue what's going on..

EDIT: And now Ruff logged back in after he had finished the turn before Cairo and SD, and whipped a city? What is this? Is turn order not anymore a thing?

EDIT2: Ruff was before us and SD in the turn order, but how does it now work next turn that he went in and whipped a city?

[Fintourist]

Macro update "One turn early"

Why one turn early? Well, because it seems that this game is about to provide its next set of conflicts that will reshape the picture again. So let's quickly type our thoughts re where we stand before everything is outdated again.. 

Cornflakes

It's really not that long ago when this was Cornflakes' game to lose, but well. Here is how to lose the game in three steps: 

1. Not enough units --> Commodore attacks Ras' and Cornflakes is not in position to take his share of Carthaginian land. Status change: Winning --> Contender 
   
2. Not enough units --> Razing couple of Cornflakes' cities is the most attractive opportunity for Commodore to use his units. Status change: Contender --> Trailing
   
3. (Potentially) Not enough units --> Commodore comes in for the next round. Status change: Trailing --> Game over?
   

Yeah, my point is not to really criticize CF too much. This game has been really dynamic and unpredictable. However, the steps 1 and 2 are something that I really believe Cornflakes could look back and maybe regret. This map is just so tight and people are running with too big armies that you can't really afford to fall that much behind. And Cornflakes totally had the resources to progress in the game while building a respectable army at the same time..

The third point is quite speculative, but I wanted to write it before it becomes obsolete via actual intel.. We are not sure if there really will be a conflict, and even if there is, I can't blame Cornflakes too much. After Commodore razed his cities, leveraging CF's good economy in a sort of a farmer's gambit is not an unreasonable attempt to stay competitive.

Commodore

Commodore is running a pretty cool "no tech all military" game here. It's a game where you have to keep moving or you will fall on your face. So far Commodore has not. Taking the mega city from Migu, conquering Ras with surprising ease, razing couple of cities from CF, capturing another city from Migu (and somehow keeping it as well).. The list is getting impressively long.. 

So what next? Commodore's game leading army consists at least of HAs, Swords and now very likely a decent stack of Samurais. A very offensive composition that is hard to fight against without having catapults + a large number of hitters to throw at that stack. I'm not sure if anybody except us has that option available so Commodore might well have another successful war ahead of him.. 

If Commodore is successful here and goes all the way with this game, this will be a great example of how committing to your strategy 100 % nets you a win. If he does not, the post mortem question will be: Would it have been possible to prioritize the economy just a tiny bit more along the way..?

Ruff

Our soon-to-be-neighbor Ruff is still having a fairly quiet game after his early warfare with superdeath. Since the early days, Ruff has avoided fighting and has a respectable army, respectable economy and respectable everything. But that is still just too little if you want to play for the win. Of course in this game all the leading civs can still explode, but that's not really in Ruff's own hands..

There must have been opportunities to go for in this game. Attack Miguelito when he was busy with Commodore or Cairo? Or attack superdeath when he was focused on building wonders? Or go for some kind of an economic gambit, build wonders, produce great persons, etc?

Anyways, Ruff is still in the game. There is a very real opportunity that we will be consumed with CF and Commodore in the north and Ruff will still get an opportunity to improve his position at the expense of us or smaller civs.

Migu, Cairo & SD

All out of the race unfortunately. SD of course is reduced to 1 city and 0 units, but probably too much has to happen before Miguelito and Cairo could become competitive here either. Happy to discuss what happened or could have happened after the game unless lurkers have any specific questions / thoughts.

Us

After capturing SD's wonder city we have reached a point where our land deficit vs. Commodore has become more manageable. We still are behind in the long-term potential of our land, but we are pretty far ahead in tech/economy. That compensates quite a bit. Our tech position is pretty even with Cornflakes and his fertile jungle area compensates for his lower number of cities, but with captured Wisconsin and Pyramids we will start pulling ahead vs. Cornflakes at all fronts.

At the moment we are pushing for Guilds. As standard as it is, knights will be strong units in this game that should provide us with a capability to make some further militaristic moves. After Guilds, Banking is quite an attractive tech target for us. Combination of Mercantilism and Representation will be a big boost in our teching speed and together with our Burocap that is something that our opponents can't really match in the near-term.

Of course, the first priority will always be having a big enough army to defend and make opportunistic moves. This is where we probably get to enjoy our SPI trait to its fullest. Switching between Police State-Vassalage-Theocracy and more economic setup will be super useful eventually.

I don't think we have climbed back to the status where we can say that this is our game to lose now. Commodore still has more land cities plus the largest army standing. But we have enough compensating positives that we are definitely competitive again. At least until Commodore fights his next successful war and we are again playing catch-up..

***

Very well. This summary had to be written now as the next turn might already make the world look quite different. Feel free to shoot any questions or comment here or lurker thread before all the above becomes obsolete.. 

[superdeath]

Yeah... he double moved me ( not that it mattered but.. )



Anyway, GG

[Fintourist]

Yeah... he double moved me ( not that it mattered but.. )



Anyway, GG

GG SD, we had a nice peaceful border, but you know, those Mids were just too juicy.. Happy to hear your comments re anything that took place (now or later if spoilers are an issue)..

[superdeath]

I built those mids because my earlier plan/game plan had been voided. Ask whatever questions, and ill answer whatever doesnt actually give away spoiler info. ( i dont think any of it would, but its easier to just answer questions.. )