[PB56] Lazteuq's Cool Facts about Space

[superdeath]

I think you just ended up with bad neighbor lottery. 2 Sharks..

[Lazteuq]

Turn 127

I think you just ended up with bad neighbor lottery. 2 Sharks..

Sure, that's definitely true, but it's not a very satisfying explanation. A lot of this was outside my control, but I know I did make real mistakes early on. Well, I'll write more of a post-mortem once this is actually over.


My objectives are now:

1. Hold Nicaea and Angora for as long as possible
   
2. Hold Triebzond(the island city), even if the mainland falls. This should let me keep applying war weariness on Noble for a long time.
   

Also, I can threaten Impulse (ex-Nicomedia), so I can force Noble to keep a lot of units on defense. If he's not paying enough attention, I might even capture it temporarily.

I wonder if Noble will regret this invasion or not. The only easy gains are two cities, and one of them is kinda crap. Although I must admit, he definitely removed the cataphract threat.

As I intended, Gira took Antioch and Iconium, and he should get Adrianople next turn as well. Maybe he'll even fight Noble after that?
I'll try making peace with Gira next turn. Then I'll offer open borders too and effectively become Gira's vassal state I guess.

Sorry lurkers, I'm too lazy to label the units at this point. Surely Noble is reporting this war, right?

Maybe there are Astro islands...?

Space Fact 51: After Sputnik launched, people thought they could see it flying with their naked eyes. What they were actually seeing was the core stage of the rocket. The Sputnik satellite itself was much fainter.

[Lazteuq]

I realize some people may think I'm being unsportsmanlike by effectively gifting those cities to Gira. They might be right. I don't feel very good about it myself, especially since Gira certainly hasn't earned any goodwill from me this game.

What's the alternative, though? Equally spread longbows among all my cities? If I did that, I'm pretty sure I would just lose every mainland city more quickly.

I think if I was in Noble's position, I would be pretty frustrated. But also, I wonder if Noble would have done the same in my position? I definitely want to ask him once this is over.

[superdeath]

Its fine to defend one section over another. especially in what looks like a fight to the death (imo)

[Zed-F]

Opinions vary on what’s reasonable, depending on circumstances. Are you king-making? Could you put up a good fight against both if you don’t focus on defending against the more annoying one? Could you maybe recruit an ally?

In your case here, I wouldn’t sweat it. Better to defend something effectively than to fail to defend anything by being spread too thin.

[Lazteuq]

Thanks for your thoughts, guys. I think I'll stop worrying so much and just cause trouble where I can.

I had a stack of longbows and spears 1SW of Nicaea in position to hit Impulse, but Gira unexpectedly attacked and destroyed the stack! That wasn't very nice. Gira should have been able to realize it wasn't aimed at Turfan. Well, I guess Gira just wants blood.
Nothing interesting has happened since then.

I'm thinking about sending a stack toward Counterspell to see if I can threaten it, or at least scare Noble a little. Doing that would probably cause me to lose Nicaea though. I think that's his Great Lighthouse city, so I'd love to raze it. I might just send one unit and see how many defenders are nearby.

I offered Gira a peace+war with Noble deal, and another straight peace deal. It should be pretty obvious by now that I want to cooperate and I'm not feeling spiteful.
I would expect Gira to do something... Either make peace and fight Noble using my roads for tactical advantage, or kill me already!

Now my situation really looks like Charriu near the end of PB52.

Space Fact 52: In the 1980s, long before the International Space Station was built, the US had plans for "Space Station Freedom", which would have been similar, but less international. It was expensive, and was delayed until after the Soviet Union fell, and eventually it became the ISS.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 133

Noble has a trap ready for Gira. He has plenty of units waiting to strike as soon as Gira takes Nicaea. Gira is oblivious, because he doesn't have vision on those tiles near Explore. If Gira had just one Sentry keshik or chariot in the stack, things would be different... Gira and Noble don't have open borders anymore.

I spent a long time logged in today, because I was seriously considering sending all the units in Nicaea toward Counterspell (Great Lighthouse City). I realized a few problems though:
First, Noble has enough horse archers nearby that he would be able to hit the longbows, crippling or killing all of them. He might lose something like 400 hammers of units, but in the end, I wouldn't have really threatened him much.
Second, I figured Gira doesn't really deserve my help anyway.
Third, it would have caused a super awkward situation: Noble and Gira haven't been observing a very consistent turn split, so it all comes down to who logs in first:
If I Gira logged in first, he would of course take the vacant city with no losses, and probably able to hold it against Noble's trap. That would be good for helping slow Noble down.
HOWEVER, If Noble logged in first, he would take Nicaea easily, and Gira would be even more disadvantaged.
So I considered sending PMs to Gira and Noble, telling them that Gira should play first because he played first last turn. I figured this was a really weird thing to do and Noble wouldn't like it once he realized what happened. I really don't want to cause a situation like that, so I chose the boring option and left all the units in the city.

I don't think I can exert any more influence on this game. There are no useful techs within reach. In vanilla BtS, I might try for an Astro bulb, but galleons also need paper, so I won't ever get there. Maybe Noble will take my island city soon and I can be completely eliminated.

Space Fact 53: The Sun produces enough interference to make radio communication very difficult in its direction. For example, when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the sun, there is a few-week period when NASA avoids sending any signals because they may be garbled.

P.S. Hey lurkers, can you bug Noble to post more so we all have reading material when this is over?

[Lazteuq]

Turn 134
Gira captured and razed Nicaea. He lost 350 hammers of keshiks and catapults in the process. Now Gira has a very vulnerable stack of wounded units with no defense bonuses. I know Noble has at least 10 horse archers in range, meaning he should be able to annihilate Gira's wounded stack easily. So what has Gira gained from this attack? It's not like Nicaea posed a threat to him. As I see it, Nicaea was actually helpful, creating a buffer zone.

In other news, Civac has a stack of 14 ballistaphants, 12 catapults, and another 10 or so other units sitting near ISawItFirst. They are positioned nearer to the Cairo border right now, but could theoretically go seriously hurt Gira as well. I wonder what he's planning.

Noble got the Colossus, and he's in a golden age. His GNP is incredible. I hope Amicalola is planning to do something 'spicy' real soon. This feels like PB51 though, where the leader is so strong that it's probably too late.

Space Fact 54: If you are interested in simulating spacecraft operations and orbital mechanics, the industry-standard software called STK has a free version, with excellent documentation. (No, I don't work for them. I do use the program a lot though)

[superdeath]

Noble got the Colossus, and he's in a golden age. His GNP is incredible. I hope Amicalola is planning to do something 'spicy' real soon. This feels like PB51 though, where the leader is so strong that it's probably too late.

IMO, that situation was more.. people need to break off and take that person down a notch NOW, instead of getting into a long drawn out war with ... idk, Rome.

[Lazteuq]

Ha, well why don't you talk to Gira then? It's not my fault this time around. At least Noble doesn't have East Indiamen.

It's Turn 136. Gira finally accepted peace and open borders with me, but hasn't moved anything into my territory.

Noble has pikes, so Gira's Keshiks aren't looking too good. I think Amicalola is also relying heavily on elephants and horse archers.
I finally got research visibility on Noble, and he is 2 turns from Guilds. So even if my single-minded guilds beeline path had gone perfectly according to plan, he would have narrowly beaten me to Guilds, even with making the detour to Engineering.


I see Noble's borders in the sea between him and Civac. So there are islands! But not actually astro islands?
I managed to kill one of Noble's triremes, but only after he pillaged a net. I'm definitely noticing the disadvantages of playing first in turn order.


Space Fact 55: Solid fueled rockets normally can't be turned off once the fuel starts burning. However, the US Minuteman ICBM gets around this limitation by using valves to release the pressure from the nozzle, suddenly cutting off the thrust. As far as I know, this technique is only used on weapons, not on civilian rockets, but I'm not sure.