[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[williams482]

If we can kill the relined musket will come down to if it gets the healing bonus on it's next heal. In single player, healing for all players happens at the beginning of the first player's turn (the human player). That's... really stupid. I just tested in a hotseat game, and it appears to work the same. That means that if Kaiser moves his superhealer adjacent to the redlined musket and keeps it healing, it will recover 35 HP instead of just 5 and will be functionally unkillable. I can only hope Kaiser is unaware of this, and moves the healer somewhere else, in which case we are golden.

Fortunately, the other musket doesn't have Tortoise yet, and remains a softer target. Three ranged strikes plus a knight attack can reliably bring that unit from full health to dead in one round, even on defensive terrain. In the event of egregiously bad die rolls on the early attacks, I can add some extra damage with a suicide horse. Thus, my primary objective is to hold off on targeting that unit until I can bring all four attacks to bear, and then smack it hard enough for a one turn kill.

As for reinforcements, there's what you see in the screenshot, a sword advancing from Blackhawks who should reach Kings in 2-3 turns, and a heavy chariot hanging out by the Plaza waiting for a chance to metamorphosize into a useful unit. That plus the warrior on barb buster duty is the entirety of our army. We'll get a crossbow out of Blackhawks on t117, and a second out of Blues on t118, much too late to be relevant to this battle.

It's going to be really interesting reading Kaiser's thread when this is all said and done. He can't possibly be happy about his situation, but he continues to do essentially the same thing he's been doing for the past 30-odd turns. Is he worried that we have more unseen units near Blues? Does he think our loyalty pressure will be too much for him to keep the city? Did he consider Bruins an inappropriate forward settle that he has tunnel vision on reclaiming? From where I sit, it's baffling.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

oh, side note, I believe the game tries to maintain a constant level of barbarians, wherever it's free to spawn them. Since most of the rest of the map is probably colonized, but we have vast stretches of useless tundra, we're probably drawing all of the spawns.

[williams482]

Turn 112:

So, where's the medic? Well, good news and bad news there:



Good news, the Tortoise musket did not get the healing boost on this turn. Bad news, it withdrew to a spot where neither the city nor the crossbow can shoot it this turn (why I can shoot from flat ground over a hill onto another hill, but not from flat ground over a jungle hill to another hill, is beyond me), and no melee attackers can reach it. Also, Kaiser has yet another musket. His Niter reserves are at 18, where I'd expect, so where did this one come from? Maybe he really did get three when he upgraded his first batch on t103, but decided only two would be needed to take Bruins? He has accrued a grand total of 62 niter since he got his first source on t94. Looking at the turns again, he must have expended 30 and traded for another 6 on t103, expended another 10 on t104, and a final 10 on t107. That's four upgraded muskets in two turns plus annother three turns later, the makings of an excellent timing attack. And yet, they come at us piecemeal. This is fundamentally the same error Kathlete, et all made in their attack against Speaker/Sullla in PB2 about a decade ago, but on a much smaller scale and without the complexity of having multiple teams to coordinate. I hope it continues to work out just as poorly. 

As expected, Suboptimal has taken Yerevan, renaming it Pearl. The lighthouse was never completed, but England still scores a fully operational RND as well as the Holy Site. Loyalty is currently slightly negative even with a governor, but pop growth will patch that over long before we can settle Red Wings and Capitals for extra pressure. If we were any other civ, and if our best units were not currently needed to defend Bruins, this would absolutely have been an opportunity to snatch a damaged city off a rival. Of course, if we were any other civ Yerevan would be a long established part of our empire by now. 



Barbarians are dummies, as usual, attacking out of the camp with the spear while simultaneously marching the scout in reach of the warrior:



With the sword from Blackhawks now in Blues and ready to chase off a potentially suicidal scout, I decide to go after the camp here. The warrior attacks for 35, taking 28 and earning a promotion. Chevalier is right, barbs are going to keep spawning here, because we likely have some of the only open spaces on the map in our backlines. If we can spare a unit or two to keep the scouts from checking out our cities, we can exploit this as an extra source of gold. 

Penguins has grown to pop 5, reducing our culture income by 0.2 clefs because of amenities. The amenity reassignment mechanics are also incredibly dumb, prioritizing keeping Kings at zero (which, since the latest patch, is the same as -1) while allowing both Penguins and the hugely important Blues to fall to a penalty inducing -2. This continues the Civ VI staple of using clumsy, inefficient algorithms to control things, and giving the player no choice but to deal with it. 

The "Repair Outer Defenses" project becomes available three turns after the most recent attack on the City Center or Encampment of a city, so finishing that encampment actually cost us pretty dearly by delaying that. If we suffer no more attacks on the walls, that project will be available and begun immediately after the monument completes. As for cost and effects, the wiki page says:

Walls gain HP equal to the Production invested into the project (on Standard speed) each turn the project runs. Once completed, it fully restores the HP of the city's (and Encampment's) Outer Defenses.

So with 50 HP to heal, 12h per turn, and 7h overflow from the monument, that's a 4 turn build that will (hopefully) apply incremental progress even if we can't finish it before the next attack. We'll just have to hope that occupying a destroyed encampment doesn't also block repairs for ridiculous reason. 

All right, with all that infrastructure laid out, back to the battlefield. How much experience does the Tortoise musket have? It promoted at exactly 15, like all units, and needs 45 to promote again. It's been hit with five ranged strikes for a combined 10 EXP, so it's currently at 25/45, quite safe to keep chipping away at if I get the opportunity. My primary objective here is to stall Kaiser, not necessarily to kill his units, so I think the best approach to do that while still threatening him is to move my knight to the jungle hill that musket just abandoned. I move the Volley crossbow to the knight's previous spot, where it can fire on any unit within Bruins' cultural borders next turn but should be safe from any immediate counterattacks. The healthy pike and sword advance towards Bruins, ready to be meatshields for ranged strikers if necessary. Injured units all take the turn to heal. That leaves the battlefield like so:



Is it worth it to shoot at the musket currently occupying our encampment? That makes it less likely that the unit will try to advance next turn, but all Kaiser has to do is fortify and any damage I deal will be magically swept away. I'd much rather he try to attack the fortified horse, taking ~28 damage and allowing me to kill that unit in return. An advance onto the wheat tile would be similarly fatal. Thus, the crossbow and city strike stand down. 

Suboptimal recruited Boudica last turn, a classical General who boosts nothing with a prayer at cracking Medieval Walls. The next guy has two mashed-together AE letters in his name and grants +2 loyalty per turn in a city. Brazil now has six engineer points per turn. Phoenicia has five merchant points. Egypt has nine scientist points, and has just earned a Great Prophet. Woden founded a religion: 



Ichabod enhanced his religion for one new belief, adding DotF. I imagine Kaiser will be thinking about crusade here, given his apparent single minded desire to conquer Bruins. I'll check up on that next turn, and be on the lookout for any missionaries. If he also takes the "religious units ignore rough terrain" belief, that could be very hard to stop. Fortunately, that belief (Missionary Zeal) and Crusade are both classed as "Enhancer" beliefs, so I think he'll need two apostles to get both of them. He could buy one right now, but the second would take some time. 

Scores: 

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Hard to tell who of Woden and Ichabod is doing better, once you discount Ichabod's large wonder score. I have to wonder (heh) if that was the best use of his Work Ethic production. More settlers into that area near where we have Ducks/Devils, more military units to actually drive on Egypt, or even local states like Venice? It feels like Ichabod earned a large advantage but hasn't used it.

Woden has a substantial empire lead, but he also has a UD. I don't know how many Cothons he has, so it's tough to estimate his total city and population count. Suboptimal is trailing and needs time to turtle to catch up. If I were England, I would have dogpiled us around the time we committed everything to Bruins. Wild is an easy pickup and gives me a nice border - maybe Sub is just consolidating Yerevan and he'll do that next. Then I'd hold the land border with Egypt, even using it as a friendly buffer, and try to win at sea, raiding Brazil and Phoenician coasts. But I think that will take too long, so whoever emerges on top from a confrontation between Phoenicia and Brazil is my current pick as the favorite.

As for Canada...Iunno. I have no plan for us. I don't see any brilliant options, still.

[williams482]

Reloading the save to check our rival's district counts, Woden has five Cothons placed at his satellite, cities, and almost certainly a sixth at his capital given his 11 Admiral points. Suboptimal has six at his satellites, including Pearl, and with 19 Admiral points before capturing Pearl, must also have a seventh at his capital.

Thus, the "real" empire scores are:
Woden - 195
Ichabod - 174
Suboptimal - 167

Woden having by far the largest army and the largest cash reserve, in addition to the edge in empire score, makes him the clear favorite at this time. There's a real chance we would attack Ichabod, and Ichabod would ask us to enter the war so he can get the +5 from the military alliance. We should probably start thinking about what our answer to that would be.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

oh, yeah, I hadn't been paying attention to the ribbon at the top apart from Kaiser's military strength and gold.

Woden has a huge army and a huge treasury. He's definitely planning a timing attack. Best guess is Frigates to cracks to cities in this era - Muskets and Knights are current, I don't think (?) Cuirassiers are a game changer, he can't have reached infantry with those techs, and he's got a lot of Harbors. I wonder if Ichabod has a lot of coastal cities? Kaiser and ourselves are entirely Inland, but we're clearly the two interior civs on a 2-2-1 Pangaea at this point, so Phoenicia, England, and Brazil probably have temperate seas.

I'd oblige Ichabod. Anything to slow down Woden gives us our .0001% chance of victory, and it keeps his support against Kaiser. Woden will win anyway if he eats Ichabod, so no worries about him attacking us next, and if we hvae Phoenician coastal raiders down at Penguins, well, it's not like we ever really had a chance anyway. The only real danger is Woden helping Kaiser out with gold or resources, since we probably won't see a Punic Expeditionary Force coming at Blackhawks.

[williams482]

I'm guessing Woden goes for Cuirassiers/Field Cannons. The big impediment for him (which I haven't been reporting very well) is that his resource stockpiles have never increased, so he's sitting on 50 of each resource type. A mass frigate upgrade would be limited to five units plus a trickle afterwards, and against a culturally charged Brazil, their window before Minas Gerais show up could be pretty narrow. Currasiers can't do much against walled cities, but they are fast and have 64 strength, better than anything else until infantry, and field cannons attacking walls at 60 - 17 = 43 strength can do enough chip damage to batter down a musket defended city with time and numbers on their side. Woden could also use that force to pillage his way to a second wave of upgrades as well as accelerating his research pace, if his superior army can kill enough Brazilian units to give him a relatively free run of the place. And if he can do that, a couple of bombards should be able to speed up knocking down the walls of the actual cities.

Still, this is a really awkward era for timing attacks, given the dearth of effective modern city attackers. Frigates are excellent units, but their ranged strength is still just 55, same as a bombard and less than a walled city with a musket inside. Pushing another era down the tree to Infantry and Artillery offers plenty of wall cracking punch, but that is reliant on having a considerable oil surplus because those units eat up one oil per turn each, and obviously in Woden's case, he needs to strike while the iron is hot and his Cothons are still providing science.

So, we'll see. I'm very curious how this ultimately plays out.

[williams482]

Turn 113:

Kaiser advances, and attacks my pike:



In the process of doing so, he places a lightly damaged musket on flat ground where my city and both crossbows can hit it. Why my crossbow and city can shoot over the hill at this incense tile on the other side of a hill, but not the hill that Tortoise musket was occupying, is again not clear to me. Perhaps the city walls count as one "point" of elevation, equivalent to a hill? That could explain it, but to the best of my knowledge is not documented anywhere. 

Also, repair outer defenses is available in Bruins. It costs all of 10h (!?!?!?!?) and can be completed in a single turn, presumably with overflow. That's obviously far more important than the monument. 

The garrison crossbow, Volley crossbow, and city attack at 55, 50, and 45 strength respectively. The musket has roughly 90 HP. Those three ranged strikes in sequence will average a total of 87 damage, so we may need to fit in a melee attack. Fortunately we have a lightly damaged and expendable horse on hand to finish the job if necessary, and provide flanking bonuses against the pike on the edge of Kaiser's formation. I begin the attack, first the Garrison crossbow for 25 (almost minimum, ouch), the Volley crossbow for 28 (average), and the city for 30 (almost max, evened out). The musket survives at an invisibly small hitpoint total, so I withdraw the crippled pike and bring up the unpromoted 79HP horse, who knocks off the muskets final two HP and takes 43 damage in return. That leaves us with an exposed pikeman at the edge of Kaiser's formation:



My sword, 85HP pike, and 86HP horse close to maximize flanking bonuses. I regret not taking Caprisan on this particular horse for the +5 bonus against anti-cav. Pike + sword will come very close to killing this unit, but I'll need to use the horse as well to ensure a kill. I would prefer that the sword get the kill, it has Tortoise and with the innate bonus against pikes, it will be the toughest unit for Kaiser to kill in return while occupying that vulnerable tile. The horse attacking between the pike and the sword would take about 38 damage, killable with a lucky roll from an MCH but safely able to survive a single archer shot. Any ranged counterattack units would be at least partially exposed to attacks from the sword and the partially rejuvenated horse out of Kings, so I'm willing to take that risk. The pike strikes for 31, taking 24 and earning a promotion. The horse deals 20 and takes 31, a lucky roll for return damage, and enough to protect him from all but the luckiest unpromoted MCH strike. The sword cleans up the final 46 HP, taking 16: 



Kaiser has withdrawn the ram and advanced the healer to the same tile, now occupied by an MCH. The Tortoise musket is fortified to heal. His repositioning is a little odd, and suggests to me that he is probably setting up to bombard the knight a few times with MCHs before killing it with the two muskets on t115 at the earliest. Those two MCHs will average about 20 damage between them to our unpromoted and fortified knight, who will heal back 15 per turn. We will also be able to kill the unpromoted musket in one turn if it moves to the flat wheat tile. Good luck with that. 

Another possibility (I would say an unlikely one) given the somewhat circuitous route is that Kaiser will finally try to bypass Bruins and go after Wild. That would shake up our set defenses, but our units are faster than his through the rough terrain back there, and Wild is no easy target itself. I could reposition the crossbows to the forest/jungle hills between Bruins and Wild to take shots at any units that try to come through the pass, and reposition about as quickly as Kaiser can move his own units back towards Bruins. 

Kaiser's milpower increased by 45 this turn. The musket healing is worth about 16 on it's own, the damage taken by the doomed pike and musket about -8. None of his stockpiles decreased, so that ~37 is probably an MCH, a cat, or a sword. I believe that's his second sword. Kaiser is up to 22 Niter, and will need 310g to upgrade both units with both discount cards in place. his current gpt is 35, so that's only five turns out. Hopefully enough time to kill of his current wave. 

Down in the frozen south, our warrior mops up the barb camp for 50g and 3 era score. Next turn he'll promote, then go hunting for the scout. I reposition the chariot and send the sword on a slight detour to allow both of them to whack at said scout if it appears through the mountain pass near Blues. 

The acquisition of Pearl bumps England to 21 Admiral points. Brazil has just generated their first. Brazil is also generating six engineer points, everyone else currently on four. 

Scores:

[williams482]

On the topic of Woden's plans, his milpower bumps the past few turns have been +2, +25, +28, +48, 0, +25. Quads are 25 strength. that +2 must be healing, so the 28 could easily be a quad + healing, and the 48 two quads + some barb damage (or the most obvious explanation, a knight). I can't imagine he's building archers, spears, or heavy chariots, the other 25 or 28 strength options, so I think the frigate rush theory has legs.

[williams482]

In the process of doing so, he places a lightly damaged musket on flat ground where my city and both crossbows can hit it. Why my crossbow and city can shoot over the hill at this incense tile on the other side of a hill, but not the hill that Tortoise musket was occupying, is again not clear to me. Perhaps the city walls count as one "point" of elevation, equivalent to a hill? That could explain it, but to the best of my knowledge is not documented anywhere. 

City centres and encampments provide elevation - https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources...los.27654/

When I tested flood damage, walls cost 1 per 10 hp - almost free, but you have to ensure no attacks for 3 turns.

Oh hey, it is documented! Not by, like, the game, but at least someone figured it out. Good find.