[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Gotta be an aluminum plant, right?

Or uranium. o_o Does anyone have Uranium yet? I so rarely reach the modern age I forget where it is.

[williams482]

If that Brazilian city is there to claim uranium or aluminium, the resource is not in the first ring. I can't see either resource itself yet, but I can see the extra yields (+1 beaker for aluminium, +2h for uranium) if the tile is inside someone else's territory. Woden is the only civ to be accumulating uranium, at least as of t231 when I last checked the resource report, and Bortus recently claimed an additional not-yet-connected source in the third ring, which you can see a pin for in the screenshots above.

[williams482]

Turn 235:

Seven turns until the Punic/Brazilian alliance expires. Ichabod's milpower has shot up again, adding another 80 points (a single tank, presumably) to finally surpass our score. On the front, however, he appears to have pulled back:



The only Brazilian unit I can find is a three charge missionary, hardly a dangerous invader. Ichabod's religion has Work Ethic, Tithe, DoF, and Watts, so no direct military applications. I don't think he intends to attack me, but if this is a trick I won't be falling for it just yet. All units maintain defensive postures, as before.

Wild has completed it's library, and I assign a citizen there as a specialist. That bumps our research rate to 155.5 per turn, which may well be the highest we get all game thanks to the Stars campus going under next turn. With gold in such desperately short supply, I start a bank, due in 6.

Red Wings is a turn away from finishing a tank, while Blues, Kings, and Capitals are all one turn short of completing cavs. I swap all of them off those builds: Blues, Kings, and Red Wings to artillery, due in 5, 6, and 6 turns respectively, and Capitals to a granary, due in 4. Capitals' production capacity (20h) kinda sucks for this point in the game, so there isn't much of greater value that we could build instead. It's currently capped out a 5 housing, and lifting that ceiling may allow me to get a +2/+3 campus in here at pop 7. If we're alive whenever that completes, we'll be glad to have it.

Regarding unit builds, my goal is to have as much of our military condensed into armies as possible, to save money, limit resource costs, and maximize killing power per tile. We have three tank corps in play, and another nearing completion at Bruins which I think I can upgrade in queue to an army once Mobilization completes. That means we want three single tanks, and we have three under construction between Stars, Red Wings, and Blackhawks. We have four artillery corps, and three single artillery under construction at Blues, Red Wings, and Kings. We have five cavalry corps and two single cavalry in the field, with cavalry under construction at Blues, Kings, Blackhawks, and Penguins. We also have two corps each of muskets and field canons, all with multiple promotions, that could use additional members. All told, we should be looking to prioritize knocking out one more artillery and two more cavs (on top of the units already under construction), and reevaluate our military needs from there.

Magnus has established, and our Builder at Stars is in position to chop out that encampment, from the tundra tile near Venice which I was worried would be too dangerous by now. I did make a micro error here, putting one more turn of production in that I really wanted to: we're at 108/335 on the district, and about to chop in 189 raw hammers, which will become 245.7 with the +30% card. That puts us at 353.7/335, with almost 19h of wasted overflow. Ideally I would have swapped off production tiles a couple turns ago to pick up some extra food, gold, and culture instead of ultimately wasted hammers, but oh well. I think it's still worthwhile to chop out this district, so I do. Stars resumes it's tank, which should get up to 238/240 before I swap bock off for something else next turn.

Weather in Brazil is not the best right now:



Woden has tons of Uranium, nobody else has any:



Our spy has completed his 16 turn protection mission in Bruins. I assign him to Belem, the Brazilian city right next to Woden's industrial center, which also happens to have a commercial hub for potential funds siphoning. Not exactly sure what I'll have him do, but eyes on this area seems worthwhile for entertainment if nothing else.

Our wandering warrior is now just one turn from being able to relieve the cavalry guarding Avalanche.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Ichabod pulling his army back from the border is a good sign. I feel like he's tense about a Punic backstab? I'd love for both sub and Ichabod to have their hands full with Woden while we can just, y'know, chill as we have been.

My last remaining stretch goal for the game is for Suboptimal to lose a city before we do, because that would mean every power except Canada has lost a city to foreign aggression.

[williams482]

My fear is that Woden and Ichabod are just going to sign another DoF and plow through us together, then resolve the game between themselves later. Suboptimal will likely continue to do nothing, and Ichabod will presumably be forced to watch his back with every decision; it's Woden as the leader who will decide the shape of this game, and that is somewhat troubling for our interests.

Woden made some comments in the PBEM20 (I think?) tech thread about making a concerted effort to just not attack anyone in the earlier stages of this game because he wanted it to last into the later eras. He also has a definite preference for builderey behavior which he's demonstrated in prior games, especially PBEM15 when he seized a decisive advantage via conquest and pivoted to developing his empire towards a cultural victory, essentially daring Suboptimal and Pindicator to team up against him (which never really materialized). If Woden decides he wants to try for a non-concession victory, or thinks that wrecking someone with Giant Death Robots would be way cool, the most likely short term manifestation of that would be to secure DoFs with the other quasi-peer rivals and build, at which point we're just a snack to be divided between whichever of the real civs aren't forced to remain at peace with us.

Chevalier, do you think it makes sense to offer Woden a DoF? The benefit is that we lock Woden out of declaring on us for a while, meaning we would "only" have to fight off Ichabod, with every turn bringing us closer to AA Guns. This would also guarantee us leverage towards convincing Suboptimal to renew our cultural alliance when it expires in (I think) 21 turns. We also get a tidbit of information about Woden's short term plans, but that's not worth much because it just tells us if we're going to get destroyed by him or not. The drawback, on the other hand, is that it locks us out of allying with Ichabod against Woden. We probably don't want to do that, but keeping the possibility there gives Ichabod slightly more reason to be thinking about a decap strike against Woden than planning to befriend him and crush us.

I'm leaning towards no, but with no conviction.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I'd say no. We don't need to 'lock' Woden out of declaring on us, since if he wants to he'll just not take the DoF and murder us, it'd only take about 10 turns from start to finish and most of that is walking time. If he doesn't want to murder us, well, then all the DoF does is close down OUR options.

[williams482]

Turn 236:

3 meter coastal lowlands have now flooded:



This costs us 20 beakers, four culture, two gold, and four amenities from the Stars campus and Hockey Rink, Red Wings Entertainment Complex and arena, and adjacencies they provided to two harbors and a theater square. This pushes the ETA on Advanced Ballistics to 15 turns (including the one turn for Replaceable Parts). Ouch. On the bright side, this does save some maintenance, and combined with Reyna giving us and extra 3gpt each for the two English trade routes passing through Kings, we're all the way up to 20 gpt. With Levee En Masse in place, we might even be able to finish these units without completely tanking the economy.

Stars and Bruins swap off their one-turn-from-completion tanks, and start cavalry and wall repairs, respectively. Magnus moves to Oilers, in hopes that I can chop a campus using the forest deer before that tile is completely submerged in 7 turns. I should have done that last turn, which may cost me if this global warming stuff continues to accelerate. Oilers is on track to claim the +2 campus tile next turn, here's hoping it sticks to that. The builder who chopped the Stars encampment places a mine on that tile and evaporates. That leaves us with just two builder charges and one military engineer charge in play right now. A couple more builders would be nice, but that's a long ways out given our policy slot alignment. We'll probably try to get a wave of them once we have Fascism in play and can start chasing luxury items, like Conservation civic. Amani moves into Bruins from nowhere, adding some extra loyalty support just in case.

No change on the Brazilian front, except that Ichabod has sent a second missionary into our territory. This is fortunate, because his milpower has surged another 172 points and clearly exceeds ours, despite falling well short of his two real rivals. Woden has settled a new city, already hooking up one oil resource, and likely grabbing a second next turn:



Our Wandering Warrior finally resumes his post on the Avalanche tile, relieving a cavalry who rushes towards the front. That tile is one of just two remaining unclaimed tiles in Marina's 4th ring. Eventually it will be in English territory, at which point Suboptimal will have complete control over whether or not we can block him from settling there. Of course, he did nothing to settle the tile for the extended period when we couldn't afford to leaves a unit there, and still hasn't settled the Canadiens pin, so who knows if he'll take advantage.

Scores:

[williams482]

Turn 237:

Replaceable Parts completes:



As does Mobilization:



Research begins on Advanced Ballistics (13t) and Mass Media (12t). Incidentally, 13 turns is also the time until the next World Congress session, so any AA Guns we manage to build will be at full price. Bruins resumes work on a tank army, using the production invested in the tank corps as intended. We have a governor promotion, I decide to spend this on Reyna's Harbormaster promotion for doubled Commercial Hub and Harbor adjacencies in her city, this nets us an entire 4 gpt in Kings. No movement at all on the Brazilian front, but outside Bruins I see some troubling signs:



The units here could very well be simple garrisons for security purposes, guarding against the unlikely event of an English attack. However, I can't think of any reason to be building railroads through the Wild pass except in preparation for rapid hostile advances through it. Also of note, some more massive milpower spikes from both Woden and Ichabod this turn. Woden has almost 800 points on Suboptimal now, despite them being within 6 points just five turns ago. Turns out you can build military very fast right now if you're inclined to do so. The Punic/Brazilian alliance expires in 5 turns, our DoF with Woden has 12 turns left on it. I'm considering redeploying in this direction as a show of force, but lets be real, relative to the Phoenician military I have no force to show. Better to give Woden the impression that Brazil looks likely to attack us. I'll have plenty of time to shuffle units once diplomacy between those two is resolved.

Now for policy swaps. I realize I have an option here I didn't think I'd have a slot for: Military Research, which gives +2 beakers per renaissance wall, military academy, or seaport. For us that's worth 10 beakers per turn, well worth the policy card slot over Veterancy. Obviously we slot Levee En Masse for gold, and I opt to replace Wieselbanken with Machiavellianism to boost our one spy, and maybe get a second out faster. That leaves one military slot in question. With so many prebuilt cavs, Chivalry's usefulness is limited. Our push for AA guns will also unlock Machine Guns, which upgrade from field cannons. They are a frankly disappointing unit for that era, with only 75 ranged strength (Artillery, which predate them by an era, have 80), but they do at least have the two range and 75 base strength is definitely better than 60. Would I rather prebuild field cannons than Cavalry? Honestly probably not. Cavalry have one advantage in a hopelessly lopsided war like the one I expect to fight with Woden: they can be deployed to harass and annoy, and because I can't possibly win I'll settle for making Woden's conquest experience as un-fun as I possibly can within the context of this game. I think I'll try to get out two more field cannons to merge with the two existing corps, but the bulk of my obsolete unit spam in the next 12 turns will be cavs, so we stick with Chivalry. That leaves us with this government setup:



Unfortunately, those extra 10 beakers do not affect our expected completion time for Advanced Ballistics. 10 bpt over 12 turns is 120 beakers, so to shave a full turn off we need to find another 16 total beakers over that span. Wild can build a University in 5 turns, worth 4 bpt (2 if I put a specialist there). That will get us that extra turn. I don't mind dropping the bank because with these newly reduced unit costs, our economy is back to being in passable shape! After merging a single cav with a corps to form our first army, we're all the way up to 50 gold per turn. Not bad! I decide that's enough to merit completing some of these prebuilt units. Blues, Kings, and Capitals will complete their prebuilt cavs next turn, Stars and Red Wings will finish tanks. We want to be as spiky as possible as fast as possible, so we look as unappetizing as possible. Probably won't matter to Woden, but whatever.

Oilers places it's campus, but continues to invest it's 1h per turn into the Monument. We'll find out next turn if we even can chop flooded tiles. Unfortunately with only two builder charges available, and one of them certainly required for the Oil tile we will buy next turn, I'd only be able to chop out half the campus. Maybe I could justify another builder out of somewhere? Wild has Liang, and could build one in 3 turns. The university needs to complete 8 turns from now to shave that turn, which means we could fit in that builder. It would connect the oil resource, and spend the other three charges on probably another chop+mine into campus buildings at Oilers, then either a fishing boat or a plantation, or save the final charge for whatever other thing I might decide is a high priority. That's probably worth it. I'll wait until next turn just to make sure I really can chop this flooded deer tile, then start the builder in Wild.

Scores:

[williams482]

Turn 238:

Opening the turn, I watched the ETA on Advanced Ballistics drop from 13 turns to 11 as our science was processed. I guess we hit some kind of breakpoint that rounding wasn't handling correctly? Regardless, I'll take it. The only other item of note is Woden getting three industrial zones and an aqueduct pillaged by a flood:



Score one for the little guys, I guess, but Woden should have that fixed up very soon. Not sure if I'd view that is incentive or disincentive to try charging any army into that area were I in Ichabod's shoes. It would make me feel better about catching up in military in the next few turns, if my (Ichabod's) nation wasn't looking at a1317 point milpower deficit. Holy cow. I (not Ichabod) just hope that's going to be aimed at someone other than Canada.

We complete two tanks, three cavs, and an encampment this turn, as planned. This is definitely a hit to our gold income, now down to 31 per turn, but that should bump up as we merge some of these guys. Or will it? single Cavalry cost 5 - 2 = 3 gpt each, 9 gpt for a trio. Cavalry corps cost (5 * 1.5) -2 = 6, cavalry armies cost (5 * 2) - 2 = 8 gpt. So yes, that is cheaper. Merging units also makes our milpower score look weaker, however, and maintaining a facade of strength is important as we wait to see which of our much stronger rivals will try to eat us first. I will merge the two tanks into armies, increasing our city defense strength, saving some Oil, and boosting Combined Arms. The cavalry will mill about in our core and look maximally impressive to anyone who can't see them, until I deem an attack imminent and merge them.

Good news and bad news, of a very minor sort. The good news: I can chop on flooded tiles. The bad news: that tundra forest deer will be fully submerged (and unrecoverable) in 3 turns, as climate change continues to accelerate. Magnus establishes in 3 turns, so barring a rather shocking change to global CO2 levels, he will not be able to boost either chop. Ouch, because I could have put him in the city one turn faster if I'd been paying attention. This does at least mean I'll get something out of that tile, and will want to spend my two remaining builder charges doing it, so Wild starts another four charge builder due in 3. I feel like there is a non-zero chance that the time to flood will drop further, and I'm not going to be finishing any more techs any time soon, so I chop the forrest through Oilers' monument and dump the remaining 89 into the campus, now due in a mere 261 turns. I could speed that up if I worked a tile other than the 1f 6 culture Hockey Rink, but that 6 cpt is shaving a valuable turn off Mass Media and none of the other tiles are really all that great until I can get more improvements down anyway.

Stars and Penguins resume cavalry builds. Capitals goes back to it's granary, on track to finish next turn. Blues, Kings, and Red Wings resume artillery. I do purchase that Oil tile, now a painful 255g. If I waited probably 20 turns, Blues would claim it naturally, but that's too long and we'll need it before that. If we're not maxed out on oil unit armies when this World Congress resolution expires in 12 turns, that will be a significant error on my part. Incidentally, Capitals can build a tank in 12 turns. That's much more useful than a bloody granary and a prayer at landing a campus some day. I may have to shuffle tiles between here and Red Wings to make sure this unit is out before it's cost jumps back to normal, but that's manageable.

Troubling diplomatic news, Phoenicia and Brazil made a trade of some sort. I can't imagine that's a good sign for us.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

"The Shire"? Come on, Woden, Bywater was right there.

Anyway, yeah, the trade is either "hey our DoF is up in X turns, let's get ready to murder each other," or "hey our DoF is up in X turns, let's get ready to murder everyone else."