[SPOILERS] ljubljana embraces the dark side

[Jabah]

Could Pitatis move and pillage. I thought you need 4mp to do that (or to still have 3 mp left after moving) ?

[suboptimal]

As far as I know they can't.

[ljubljana]

...oooops. Oh well, now I know . Well, I totally wasted 180 faith then, but at least that means our Lavra will be safe next turn .

[ljubljana]

Episode 94: Watch Out for That Iceberg



The Nubian front's not looking too bad, probably because their army's still walking back from their Zulu domains. Archduke's also lost a bunch of ES points from a few turns ago, actually - I wonder if thrawn either captured or extorted a few cities from them in the peace deal as well?



Oh boy, Ioan moves the troops back again. Okay, I guess with thrawn not yet coming down in force, we can afford to...sigh, redeploy here for a few more turns and try to buy some time. I do re-offer them the RoP, not that I really expect that to be accepted, nor to change their minds if it is. Oh well, if they attack and thrawn does too, no harm done - we'll just concede, like we probably should have already . With any luck, an RoP can still buy us a little time if we keep the existing deploy, forcing them to promote only one unit at a time on the tile E of the Matterhorn. That won't buy us much time, to be sure, but maybe the knight we'll have over here in 4 turns will make them think twice.



We cash in Hypatia at Scythia, despite the usual advice to do this in a weaker city production-wise, since it actually has a pretty full build order coming up. That takes us to 58 bpt, with more to come next turn as RS finishes its library and Scythia grows. Hungary's got three turns left to growth, since a flood took out some of its farms, so we'll squeeze in a second HC here just for the fun of it. The Nan Madol trade route finishes, and I've tentatively assigned the next one to VA - not sure if I'll go through with that, though, since it's almost to size 4 anyways, and the new cities off in the east will need the growth curve boost more. I also start the temple in VA, foolishly, because I'm still laboring under the delusion that going for the Divine Right inspiration is a good idea . Scythia will start a horse (most likely, unless it can 2-turn another HC) next turn after the granary completes. The harvests there are up to 63 food each, with 195 needed in total for the size 8-10 growths, so in theory we could start chopping those out as soon as next turn, depending on how much overflow into size 8 we get.

Hmm, I wonder if we shouldn't just save our last settler's worth of faith to make another GMC cossack? It's actually a little hard to imagine a ninth city paying off quickly enough to be worth the expenditure, especially if Ioan's still locking us out of DoF Holding. The Maori site still makes sense for defense purposes, I think, since otherwise thrawn can ride down in through that chokepoint and fork Hungary/RS/GC.

[marcopolothefraud]

Ioan went to war with Persia, and now he seems to be considering war with you...why on Earth didn't he decide to war with Nubia? What a puzzling move.

[suboptimal]

I'd say read his thread but, well, even when he posts there's no "why I'm doing this" content.

[ljubljana]

I mean, they may either a) still be mad at us over RS or b) just want to attack to force a concession, either of which would be reasonable enough from a metagame perspective IMO, if not from one of maximizing odds to win the game. Wanting to discourage future neighbors in other games from aggressive-settling you is not an invalid goal for a war, and it's not like Nubia's likely to be stopped even if all four of us coordinate against them at this point.

[ljubljana]

So, here is a plan which I almost never like doing, but which could be appropriate in this circumstance. What if we go for Divine Right next after Mercenaries + CS and then...actually swap to Monarchy immediately and start the GMC? The big downside is that we'd have to drop one of the super-combo of Natural Philosophy, Monasticism, and Scripture, which would in practice certainly mean the latter, a big hit to both our faith income and production capacity. However, production capacity is actually not super relevant to the question of how many Cossacks we'll be able to field and how likely it is that we'll be able to field them...that's determined by faith, financial income, and raw beaker speed. Switching to Monarchy quickly gets us the Castles eureka, and, maybe more importantly, lets us avoid dropping Conscription or Professional Army - the former should make up for some of the Cossacks lost from the hit to our faith income, and the latter will buy us flexibility in case we need to splurge on upgrades to hold off thrawn instead. We could even run the + city defense strength policy too, come to think of it. The tradeoff is something like 15 gpt for 20ish faith and production per turn...normally that's not remotely worth it, but, purely from a mass-upgrading and faith-purchasing perspective, it actually might be here...

Okay, you know what, maybe settling Maori isn't even worth it at this point. It won't pay off in terms of marginal science rate, it certainly won't pay back the faith investment we'd need to make in it, and the strategic benefit we'd gain from the location is rather undercut by Utikuma Lake's total lack of protective cliffs (though at least being able to shoot at embarked units with archers and the city defenses would be worth something). If we somehow make it to MS, we'll win or lose this game based not on the defensive terrain our cities occupy but on the sheer number of cossacks we're able to scrape together, and not settling the Maori location is worth an extra half-cossack out of the GMC. Hmm...the argument of giving thrawn one more walled city to chew through before running over our core is a pretty decent one, though, so maybe I will end up settling this spot. I think a ninth city is pretty much out of the question though, unless we should somehow manage to conquer one .

...you know what's a little ridiculous, though? That IZ I have pinned at Scythia. In what universe could this game possibly go on for long enough that the extra production from an IZ here will even pay off the cost of the district, let alone make the difference in an all-out war against thrawn? This should sooo be a +4 CH...and I shall make it so! Actually, what I should really do is put Hungary's CH here, then add a +3 one at Scythia on the aqueduct tile or one east thereof - the main reason that wasn't the original plan was that I was scared that the district might complete during the Classical Era and curse us with 3 ES, which we're hardly at any risk of now . I suppose we could also add the second CH on the hill 3E of Scythia - that does not bring me joy, since I literally just mined that tile last turn, but it'd be worth another 2 bpt by boosting the Hungary campus, so, sigh, I guess it's probably the best option.

Oh yeah, I should remember next turn to start working some scientist specialists in the cities with Libraries up. That's completely ridiculous, but...each one's worth almost 4 bpt in Monasticism, and it's not like city growth in places like Hungary and RS matters more at this point than the be-all end-all goal of cossacks ASAP. Nothing else matters - it's cossacks or bust for us at this point, baby. Ride or die. We will ride...or we will most assuredly die .

Also, most of these builders should probably be mentally reallocated towards chops at this point. Three for the CS eureka, a few to speed the GMC if needed, and the rest for...emergencies. I'd hate to see VA get overrun in the next 8 turns and miss its precious temple . The beautiful thing about the distances involved, though, is that thrawn's army will probably take long enough to get here that this won't end up happening. I never thought I'd find myself saying this, but thank goodness for Civ6's wonky movement rules and extremely limited road system .

Oh, please, Ioan, please don't attack us. I'm having the time of my life right now. Pleeease? I'll give you skiing on the Matterhorn, a pre-paid vacation in Religious Settlement, anything you want! Just please leave us alone for long enough to take our shot!

[ljubljana]

Guys, can we take a break for a few days, I need to decide what to do and want to do it with a fresh head. Each turn takes me forever because I have about 60 units whose movement I need to always consider at least several moves ahead because of this nightmare of a terrain. I like the beginnings and the midgame of 4x but I never liked it once you get a large number of cities and units and the one unit per tile in civ6 makes this especially bad. I think I'll ask for a sub because I'm sure someone would enjoy this unusual position, but for me it's not fun anymore, the turns feel like a chore, and what was a great experience to begin with is quickly turning into a negative one. I don't even feel like starting with PBEM 20 right now.

Aw, this sucks, it really seems like I'm forcing thrawn to play out a probably-won game to the point that they become disillusioned with Civ6 as a game. That's not what I wanted to do here . I wish there were a way to still get to play out this interesting and, IMO, winnable situation without forcing thrawn to do something they're no longer enjoying...

Yeah, I think I might be the asshole here . I vagueposted in the organizing thread, but what do lurkers think? It seems to me like if I'm really the only one having fun, I should just concede even though I still think we have a chance to compete and take this to SP rather than force everyone else to keep spending time on something that they view as a chore.

Also, like...I think we'll have cossacks in about 20-25 turns (starting in 7, Monasticism will vault us up to well over 100 bpt), and I think surviving that long mostly intact is...not likely, but possible depending on a) how far away and bogged down by terrain thrawn's army still is and b) whether they get distracted by attacking someone else instead along the way. We'd then have probably 10 cossacks against thrawn's, what, maybe 10 courser-tier units and 50 assorted Pitatis and what have you, and would then need to either win that war with just those units or completely conquer Ioan and become actually competitive that way. Is is possible that all that comes together? I...guess? But it's hardly likely, and honestly there's a solid chance that I'm just deluding myself here and it'll never happen . It's probably not fair to make everyone else play out a foregone conclusion just so that I can be sure that that's what it is.

[williams482]

I'll put it this way, I'm not sure this game is winnable against an AI Nubia if they actually do declare war on you.