Suboptimal wounds a Galley but doesn't kill it.
Hopefully this means I can wean myself off of military builds. Illmatic's production is high enough that it'll waste a few hammers when building Galleys; to resolve this, I'm alternating between a Galley and something else every other turn.
East Australia:
I really hope I can block Kaiser's settler for as long as possible. MBDTF is producing a builder to (hopefully) harvest its fish and quickly grow to 7 pop, though I should probably get it a Granary as well.
The tile purchase will cost 105 gold, but I asked CMF for 130 gold because I'm worried that I might start losing money again. Flower Boy is creating a Harbor, Illmatic can create a Harbor pretty quickly, and I can chop the rice and woods at College Dropout to get a (relatively) quick Harbor...but all of these efforts may take a while.
I have bought a Missionary at the Blueprint and I will send it south soon.
So far sub has been happy to sit and plug away at the targets we offer him without making any aggressive push or re-evaluating his plan. Alternating galley builds with others miiight work but it makes me nervous. We could survive the loss of Rodeo, however, and I think that is increasingly becoming about the worst-case scenario. My main worry, though, if the city falls, is that one or two jongs stay back to hold off Russia and TCD's ships and the remaining 4 push on Ilmatic. If that happens, I don't think we could stop them.
Could we survive that?
I think we could. Ilmatic can't be razed as a capital, and in 9 turns we'll be deploying our first frigates. With the amount of galley support they'll have, plus more follow on frigates - it looks like you'll get there at basically the same time I do, since I'll pass on the boost - we can retake the city for certain. That would be a grave setback, obviously, but if we can get peace with the other two teams, then we're more or less free to focus entirely on Indonesia - sink their current jong fleet and there will never be another one as formidable to replace it. Sub just doesn't have enough shipyards to replace losses, so this is more or less what he's got.
So, conclusions: Focus on holding Rodeo to prevent any danger to Ilmatic. We need to keep him there for 9 more turns (~18-27 more galleys). I foolishly didn't calculate the +5 strength for escorting units into the jong calculus, which gives promoted jongs 67 ranged strength, the equivalent of a jong fleet. 67 against our 34 strength galleys is very close to one-shotting, which is the critical threshold. As long as he needs two shots, all the extra damage is "wasted" more or less on a dead unit, and we can limit his total shots to keep him from using all his jongs to cause unsustainable losses. But it will be tight.
Second: The little solution is almost certainly the way to go. Russia's first 5 frigates will combine with my galleys and Australia's to try and ambush sub at Rodeo. I have some thoughts, but in general: keep two galleys between our frigates and the nearest jong as we move into range. That prevents an Indonesian first strike (he needs to spot, then attack the frigates right away). Then, on my turn, try and sink at least 2, possibly as many as 3 jongs. Two is more realistic given that he's defending at 57 vs. 55, so we can expect each frigate to do about 27ish damage. That'll knock the wind out of his sails.
Third: Australia needs at least 20 niter to start a frigate in MBDTF, at least. We should compare numbers of productive cities and other possible builds on how to allocate the remaining ~30 niter we'll have after we spend all of Russia's, but our goal should be to maximize the total number of frigates in the fewest number of turns.
Then, my vision for how to proceed:
1)Sink Indonesian fleet.
2)Secure peace or other security on both flanks.
3)Drive north and reclaim Shikishima at least. Don't commit to an invasion of the main island.
4)Seize Brussels and Call Me Al before Sub can build a new fleet.
5)Reduce Sakhalin from the sea and with the GMC, and limit Indonesia and China to just their starting island.
From there we can develop the conquered territory and pivot against either the Central Powers or the raiders as needed. We don't get into a protracted ground war on the Indonesian mainland, we don't go for total elimination, that's a waste of time. Over half of all sub's cities are overseas and require a navy for him to hold, but he built his empire in such a way that he can't maintain his navy after this initial power spike. So we'll take the overseas and leave him to wither on the vine with China.
I open the save to a pile of notifications even as the latest galley appears in Suvurov:
Let's see...2 galleys sunk, as expected. Lots of developing amenities problems - well, I'm adding 4 amenities this turn, that should help...and TWO diplomatic offers, verrrrry interestink.
One is from Marco:
As expected. We offer him gold. That said, Marco, we can pretty easily improve Australia's gold generation I think. We can't make you rich, not yet, but we can at least pretty easily make Australia solvent. Here's some possibilities:
Not Good COULD be moved north one tile. This doesn't make a great city at BUILDING anything but it'll be a pretty solid fishing village. It can work two crabs and, ultimately, two fish for 8 gold and a bevy of food, place a pretty solid harbor, and share some tiles with The Blueprint (two lumber mills, potentially) plus a mine. It's not horrible as a filler and it alone would solve Australia's basic financial issues and get you a trickle of income. It would slowly churn out other things and be a net contributor, I think. If The Blueprint has nothing else to do another settler for this spot is a worthwhile investment.
There are also 4 tiles to the north - I wouldn't chop the fish unless you plan to place a harbor right away. I don't think that the fish harvest alone would get there, though. Instead, plantation the sugar at Aquemini, plop down some fishing boats, and throw down two silver mines at LET. That gets you another +9 gold and some decent food and production as well across the three cities. Together the two efforts would yield a combined +17 gold, which is more than Norway and Indonesia each make - and you blow their production and research out of the water. Coupled with the holy sites in the east coming online and the final settlement of our two continental spots, I think Australia would be a solid competitor with any other civ on the map (except, perhaps, Russia ).
The other offer is from Japan. Kaisers offers us 30 more turns of friendship, ending turn 136:
After some thought, marco, I accept. This is a perfect salve for us. We now have 10 turns' guaranteed peace with the raiders, ending turn 116, and 20 more for the Central Powers. That's 30 turns for you to develop those two desert cities in peace, with the only worries being jongs making their way over there - a golden opportunity to get the super-holy sites down and then, er, up and running. Once the north oasis is making +18 hammers/turn and the southern is making +14, coupled with MBDTF, there'll be no real threat at all from Japan. Combined, the two of us could and WILL easily outproduce every other team on the map!
The other consideration is that this gives us about 20 turns, more or less, to operate against Indonesia. That's a long time in naval warfare - enough that we can conceivably mousetrap the Indonesian fleet by turn 120 and then have 15 turns to sail and capture Shikishima, Brussels, and Call Me Al - tight, but doable for sure. Then we can peace out sub (or ignore him, he'll be no threat) and be able to direct all our attention to either the east or the west...yes. This is good.
The thaw in relations also grants a small moneymaking opportunity:
Kaiser has some trapped ships. He needs open borders to get through. Also there's a barb camp, which my quad could have cleared SUPER EASILY but alas, that was the price for Fuji. I will offer him open borders in return for some gold. I throw in my spare sugar and up the price:
We'll see if he negotiates or takes the offer. I won't take less for the sugar, since I could trade it to ljub for some mercury, but I'll let his ships out for 2 gpt or so. 60 extra gold, hey, half a tile purchase. 150 extra gold is a whole extra upgrade for me, nearly.
On with the turn. On the other side of Russia Mikasa Bay is heavy with traffic as my army surges onto the foreign island to seize land for settlement and the raiders explore the neighborhood:
One spot west of the writer is a great inland city spot. There's even tundra for a lavra! (Ushakov would take the barb-scout-rice for its lavra spot, good for I think +4/+8?). My next two faith purchased settlers will go here for sure - the one being bought in 3 turns and then the one like 4 turns after that.
At the Battle of Matilda, sub happily floats in place and plugs away at the targets we trail in front of his face:
Like a bull before a cape. How long before he catches on to what we're doing? This turn? The next? What will he do then? I really have no idea if he'll charge on more aggressively, even at risk to a ship, or if he'll pull back and re-evaluate. Probably the worst thing he could do, from our perspective, is to pull back to Shikishima nad really dig in, where he'll be a nightmare to dig out of those narrow straits.
Dmitrii Donskoi* is founded and places a +7/14 lavra right away:
I forgot that +1 food comes from the marsh, so the city immediately loses a food. But with the 3 food center, the granary, and the two seafood tiles I might juuuust be able to eek out existence to size 4, at which point I can get a harbor down. This city would also be a FANTASTIC location for St. Basil's, enough to warrant taking it off ships for the 20 or 30 turns it'd take to build, which would grant me a huge influx of food, culture, and production over the whole damned island.
This takes us to 12 cities and 45 population. Our two missing cities would make it 50. Our nearest competitor I believe is ljubjlana, who has 33 pop across his 10 cities.** The only other competitor I'll be able to get an exact pop count on is suboptimal in 3 turns when I can get at the deal scene and look at all his cities, since I can see Call Me Al's city center:
Yes, he IS building a library at his capital, his only decent shipyard, while engaged in the midst of a desperate naval war the outcome of which will determine the fate of his game. There's no helping some people.
I also wonder why my capital is so much larger than his. He's at size 6, while I'm at 9, approaching 10. I have been a bit fanatical about food this game, because production is coming from the lavras. Did I also get a food-rich start? I actually have huge amounts around my cap. Not too much production, but I don't need on-map production. I think Work Ethic may have broken the start balance of this game.
Minor points before we wrap up with our strategic overview. Marco, Donskoi will need the missionary's tender attention but Fuji (the former Yerevan) should be okay:
It's converting in 7 turns, at which point it will have 256 pressure. So...how much pressure to convert each citizen? 120? Let's work this out since Roland RUDELY stole Religious Colonization from me (actually, I had to take Defender of the Faith...no regrets).
Quote:Each city maintains a tally of the cumulative pressure exerted on it by each Religion throughout the game, either through active effects such as religious unit intervention or passive pressure from nearby cities and/or Trade Route. Each city also maintains an atheist/pantheon pressure.
Quote:Citizens of Specific Religion (or Atheists) = Population * Specific Pressure / [ Sum of all Religious and Atheist Pressures]
The actual number of citizens is rounded to the nearest integer.
When a city grows +50 Religious Pressure is added to its majority Religion, if there is no majority Religion then +50 is added to the atheist/pantheon pressure. Since atheist/pantheon pressure is never eliminated and has no external influence it is always a multiple of 50. When a city shrinks, due to starvation, creation of a settler or having been conquered all pressures remain constant.
The Majority Religion of each city may change constantly: the city will almost certainly start as an 'atheist' city (that is, no Religion will have any Followers there), then it will acquire a Majority Religion, then it might convert to another Religion, go back to the first one, become 'atheist' again... Unlike military conquest, these changes won't have any lasting effect on either the city or its population, besides possibly the Tier 3 Religious building which may get constructed at some point in its Holy Site and remain there once and for all, regardless of further conversions
Okay, so Yerevan was founded at 50 Atheism. It grew to size 3 without converting, so it is at 150 Atheism. I have added 176 pressure, so the amount of Atheists = 3 * 150/[150+176) = 1.38 = 1. Similarly, 1 citizen follows Fine Weather, High Waves (1.69 = 1)...? No, that's not right. Hm. I can't make heads nor tales of it because per THIS it feels like the city should have converted once I passed 150 pressure, at which point there was 156 FWHW pressure to only 150 Atheist pressure. Instead it won't convert for another 10 turns.
Anyway, it'll convert on turn 113 and finish its lavra soon after. Don't know when exactly since I need to get loyalty up. I might need to swap off the fish, too, to avoid growth.
Overseas, Woden, ljubljana, and Roland ahve all finished a civic in the next column:
My bet is Serfdom, given how easy it is to inspire compared to the other two. Marco, I will pass along both the Feudalism and Civil Service inspirations to you ASAP. I'll hit CS in about 12 turns at Borodino, and we both want that civic as a priority since it will grant us a military alliance and +5 CS. It's a huge military necessity and China is a serious threat to get Indonesia there first, unless they haven't recognized how important that civic is. Worth delaying feudalism? Hell yes it is. Feudalism does nothing for me, really.
Tech-wise, no one will be more than 7 turns ahead of us to Frigates:
Woden shows his lagging science, still without a second-column tech. Kaiser might get Square Rigging soon but he's no threat to us. Our goal of rushing to Frigates I think has been more or less achieved at this point.
After that, we'll need to locate Cartography (coming in next turn as Navarin finishes the harbor), and beeline that, then probably swing over to grab Universities and kick our science into its final form. Then we need to evaluate next steps.
Let's see...Archduke has fully 8 RNDs or some combination thereof plus lighthouses (7 RNDs, two lighthouses, etc):
I think ljubljana and Woden voting for more great admiral points was a pretty bad blunder. It enhances the ability of Archduke's most potent (only, really) asset, his RNDs. With twice as many points per district he already had an advantage - now you doubled it. Furthermore, us and the raiders rely on quantity, not quality, to win - they have production bonuses to melee ships and Cothon-built ships, we have Work Ethic and Australia's bonus. We don't need Great Admirals. But Archduke DOES, and now he has enough for every possible front. They would have been better served to vote to restrict them. Oh well.
Overview of the east. The increasingly sprawling Russian Empire is hard to contain in even two screenshots now:
One-turn production dump at SV to sync up build times with the campus chop. Note the discrepancy between the displayed growth time at Donskoi and the actual growth - a not uncommon issue on all these overviews this turn. My only assumption si the four amenities (pearls, turtles x2, and diamonds) I hooked up this round played a role.
Overview of the west:
Overview of Matilda:
*
If I had known about this news story I would have named one of my silver mining cities after the Donskoi. Oh well. Fun story!
**
Ljubljana's science and culture dropped by 5 each this turn. This indicates to me a Pingala move, suggesting his capital had 5 population. It might be only 4, due to the +15% to yields Ping grants, but that just improves my relative advantage!
(April 16th, 2021, 03:02)civac2 Wrote: How many cities do you have? How many have the other teams?
From CMF's Score Tracker:
Russia-12 cities
Australia-8 cities
Phoenicia-10 cities
Norway-6 cities
England-8 cities
Japan-5 cities
Indonesia-10 cities
China-7 cities
Nothing too eventful, except that a well-timed Marsh chop at Illmatic will bring the city to 7 pop soon, which means I can create that juicy +5 harbor. Also, I'm thinking of using my Aquemini missionary to scout Japan.
Quick micro question: What's your thinking in settling 0 on that tile and not 1 tile east, between the rice and the oasis?
On the eastern site, you get the first ring rice farm, plus the oasis, and the silver desert hill, and in the second you have that 3/1 forest tile. It pushes the fish to the third ring but you pick up crabs instead, which are a bit better lategame due to the usefulness of gold.
On the western hill site, you'll never get a mine down to work the silver, and the rice is now second ring and the 3/1 forest out in the third. It also kind of wastes the Holy Site placement at Aquemini, since it could have been placed one tile northwest to get an extra +2(+4) adjacency. You bring the fish to the second ring and otherwise get a bunch more useless desert, which doesn't seem like a good tradeoff to me. But I might be missing something, I'm pretty crude at placing cities myself (generally going for minimum distance, dense plants with 2-3 good tiles in the first two rings).
Well, you'll still get it, just third-ring, so the tile would need to be purchased, most likely.
My thinking is build monument -> save gold and move Magnus for chopping tiles -> buy needed tiles (HS, chops) -> place -> chopx2 ->HS done, build literally everything.
The main limiter on how quickly the city can be setup is the amount of gold needed to buy 3 tiles, which needs to come after our frigate upgrades since those are more urgent. But once the gold is in 2 chops will instantly finish the HS with Magnus and the +18 production will more than compensate the loss of the forests. Then you can place a Harbor at 4 to enable gold and growth, and grow as quick as you can to size 7 and should be able to afford the campus tile, which will be +12 science, right as you need it.
Oh shit! Less than 15 turns until we have Ocean navigation (and my...11 fishing boats will be worth an extra 22 gpt). Ironically, the only team that doesn't know where Cartography is located is the Indonesia team, because sub's only got the one harbor up at the conquered state of Brussels. So he doesn't know how close we are to full ocean maneuverability.
Now, I wish I could delay the attack against his jongs long enough to ambush him from the open sea...but that's another 6 or so turns for Marco to hold. THat's a big ask. But Marco, it might be worth it if we can mousetrap him with 5 frigates and all the galleys I can muster on the same turn. I think IF we can hold out, we do, if it looks like Rodeo is in danger, then we implement Little Solution. Sound good?
If our gamble pays off, we more or less win the war right there - Sub can only produce 2 jongs every 10 turns or so, between his capital slowly building one and a faith purchase. I can build twice that many frigates, more if we combine niter. I DO think combining niter is the right play, given Australia's finances - each Frigate will cost a hefty amount in maintenance and I don't think Aussie coffers can support them quite yet. Anyway, once his initial fleet is down, I can take my critical mass and roll straight for Shikishima, bypass Sakhilin, and go straight for Al, only backtracking to the lesser states once Al is busy revolting to Free City-dom.
Kaiser came negotiating - he gave away the spare luxury he had, and instead offers reciprocal open borders. I have no interest nor ability to explore Japanese territory, so I offer him his quad in return for cash considerations:
60g isn't so much, eh, bud?
At Matilda, two Aussie galleys are sunk and one Russian galley redlined:
Marco, I think defending on the far side of the chokes is the right call. We want as many flanking and support bonuses as we can get to buff our strength, and we want to deny those to sub. It's vital that we keep our galleys as much on the "two shot to kill" threshold as possible. We'll still lose some to one-shots, probably, but every time sub fails that's another attack he wastes, and frigates tick one turn closer. Frigates on the field in 7 turns, possibly 6 depending on my campus and pop growths, and freely mobile Frigates about 6 turns after that.
At Knyaz, the wave of builders makes themselves felt, increasing city production nearly 50%:
Harbor build time is already down from 11 turns to only 8. As soon as I can find a breathing space, I'd love to get the harbor+lighthouse out (traders can be built inland). But who knows when that will be more important than yet one more frigate?
I need 3 more quads to have my target number of 5, and it looks like all 3 might come from the west. Navarin can 2-turn a quad:
29 hammers per turn, effectively 58 in Maritime Industries, so 3-turn quads are the rule. I'll get two out of here in the 5 turns I have, then start a lighthouse. That'll take 4/5 turns depending on overflow and pop growth. Then Frigates for the foreseeable.
In the meantime, my great writer shenanigans with sub continue. I've been dancing him around outside Shikishima, trying to taunt sub and draw off some units from the front. He's diverted a full galley and sword to chase me out:
The sword isn't so valuable, though I do waste as much of its time as I can, but keeping the galley away from the front is great. I think I got about as much military value out of this guy as possible. Also note sub building a super obnoxious campus at Vladimir:
Really? Why? If he finishes, it'll lock me out of that nice industrial zone until size 7, which will be ages. I hope I can liberate teh city before he finishes, the jerk.
Over at Donskoi, we chop the Lavra down to 8 turns:
The city ahs no conversion date since only Fuji is close enough to provide pressure, so no pressure come in for 6 more turns. A missionary should do the job pretty easily here. I'll plant a mine next turn and get the build time down, as well, so it'll have the lavra up and running before Marco's missionary arrives.
Let's see...I take a flier and dump my two envoys into Antananarivo:
Roland has Apadana and great culture, so ultimately fighting over envoys is futile, but he might be napping or not have any handy at the moment! I try and scurry Amani in real quick just in case. If he takes it back next turn, then I'll try and save until I have a bunch banked and then go all at once. I can keep an eye on Valetta and see what Roland's up to there, or Marco and I can tag team him - one goes for Valetta, the other for Antana.
Major news abroad is 3 new cities for the raiders, including these twin Norwegian cities in the south:
Overview of Matilda. I have 9 galleys in range, 6 in distant reserve:
Overview of the east:
Mercenaries is inspired next round and Sissoi will be chopping its campus, Sevastopol's campus is in, and Oslyabya will place its harbor, though I'll finish the monument first. I see no way to lower Fuji's build time short of a chop, which I think would not be worth it with the city unconverted. I'll wait out the 15 turns.
The west:
Four ships queued. The GMC is in, and IA has nothing to build for 6 turns (walls and a shrine only options), so I start a pre-Feudalism builder that I'll leave 1 turn from completion. The two builders at Suvurov will drop a mine and a farm next round, leaving Suvurov working only one unimproved hill but inspiring Feudalism.
Research is swapped off Mercenaries, leaving it one turn short of completion, to enable our policy swap on the Square Rigging turn for upgrades. In the meantime we research Civil Service up to the boost, then Feudalism. My goal is to finish Feudalism -> Builder wave -> Finish Civil Service to swap back out of Serfdom. Marco, be sure not to overrun any boosts in your own research, we can maximize our culture through this part of the tree.
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). 
Our nearest competitor I believe is ljubjlana, who has 33 pop across his 10 cities.** The only other competitor I'll be able to get an exact pop count on is suboptimal in 3 turns when I can get at the deal scene and look at all his cities, since I can see Call Me Al's city center:
There's no helping some people. 
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