[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

truuue although as mad as I am now, I’m not really expecting that to carry over to subsequent games (other than never ever being naive enough to offer a deal like that one again, natch)

honestly the odds are pretty badly against us here due to the financial situation and the other huge mistake I made this game, missing out on Oligarchic Legacy. Maybe we can still make some noise though if I steal enough gold from Woden to upgrade a bunch of Embolon caravels. I think we’ll need to pull off some kind of tactical coup to actually win here, but that’s not impossible.

[civac2]

You should not carry over your anger into another game. Even for this game, it would be better to consider the situation dispassionately (if your goal is to win rather than exact revenge). It's not easy though. As someone wrote in a forgotten Pitboss these long games lead to attachment and thus to pain.

[ljubljana]

yeah no I’ll be normal and dispassionate again in the morning although my dispassionate analysis is very likely to still indicate that I have to come after TAD now to avoid setting a bad precedent for how easy I am to bully. it’s also not like we can attack roland at this point with a manifestly hostile England to our west, whereas we can at least concentrate our ships against England without seriously fearing an intervention from the other teams.

[Woden]

A couple of thoughts:
1. Chop out the Intelligence Agency at your capital. And chop out a spy. You need him ASAP to send to TAD. It will hurt long term production but so will losing all your cities.
2. Have your more productive cities build Quads and have your less productive cities build Briemes. You are going to want reinforcements and you can use some new Briemes as meat shields early in the war. They are cheap.
3. Figure out how many caravels you can upgrade when Cartography finishes. Everybody is all about Frigates but the way you defend against Frigates is Caravels. They are evenly matched when Frigates attack them but dominate when attacking Frigates. You are going to want 2 caravels for every frigate you can get.
4. We need to finish Civil Service ASAP. I think it is even more important than Exploration right now. I am 6 turns from finishing it the hard way and may just work through it to finish it. I am not 100% if we could get a military alliance with each other and should probably test it. If we can, we need to. I will also know where Reformed Church is in a couple of turns. We need that one too for War of Religion.
5. When TAD declares or when your DoF ends, we will call a city state emergency on TAD for Geneva Hattusa (?). If it passes, we will get a 3 CS boost.
6. Expect at least 10 frigates, probably more. I checked a few turns ago and Kaiser had little niter and TAD had 81, with room to at least 105 (that is how much iron he had). I expect him to have enough niter for at least 15 frigates by T125.
7. Since he has 2 fleets, make sure you don't get sandwiched in. If he does, he will eat right through you.

[Woden]

A couple of other thoughts:
1. Might be good to see if China or Indonesia have decent gold for trade routes. I would send your next few available ones for gold, as I think that will be our limiting factor.
2. Quickly tested out alliances and we can get a military alliance together.
3. The Intelligence Agency gives you a spy when completed, so chop it out. I looked and you have a few forested hills that you can chop at your capital for minimal production loss.
4. Do you know where Education is located? It would be good to for me to buy a few universities and find out where Printing is located for the extra diplomatic visibility.

Edit: I see this is the start of a new page, I have other thoughts on the previous post.

[ljubljana]

Education is visible to me, so it's pretty close by. It might be after Stirrups? I'll go check when I get the save.

I'll immediately switch to Civil Service if we can get an MA, yeah. We should both be able to finish it before war breaks out, and it's possible TAD and Kaiser will neglect to do the same. That might cause a slight issue with policy swap timing (I really need 4 turns of Limes to get all my walls up, not just 2 or 3) but I think we'll be okay since it's exactly 6 turns until you complete it.

Okay, you're right about caravels, especially since we have a ton of Embolon biremes that can be upgraded. I'll chill with the Frigate production and try to get all 8 or so of those upgraded before war breaks out.

Hesitant to chop out the IA, not because it will hurt long-term production but because it costs two builder charges (one for the chop and one for the subsequent mine) that would otherwise go towards mines and lumbermills and I can't really afford to waste time on more builders right now. Here's what I can do though - Cuneiform is currently working three seafood tiles for growth. If I switch them all onto mines/lumbermills (which I can do by pushing Linear A's citizens back into the currently-vacant mercury mines), I can get 11 more hammers per turn for a similar speedup. How does the listening post mission work mechanically? From the time I complete the spy, how long is it likely to be before the listening post boost is active?

China and Indonesia don't have very good gold TRs IIRC...but I could send some more to TAD for the time being and then reassign them when he tries to come kill us. The trader unit gets teleported back to the origin city when this occurs, right? I guess I should send exactly one to China to counteract their trading post, though. I do badly need to use some to bootstrap my new cities, especially Abjad, but as you have sagely observed, it will hurt more to have TAD burn Linear A or Geneva than it will to not do that for 30 turns .

[Woden]

I disagree that chopping out the Intelligence Agency is not worth 2 builder charges. This is not an SP game where you can conduct war half-ass, you need to throw everything to it and make sacrifices. You will be at war against a great strategist who is currently doing everything in his power to get an advantage against you. I think he thinks his advantage will be a massive attack with Frigates driven with multiple Admirals. We need to do everything in our power to counter that and a spy will help.

As for spies, once it is built, it will take 5 to 6 turns to travel to one of TAD's cities before you can run a listen post mission. The sooner you can get it out, the sooner you will get the added diplomatic visibility. The listen post mission raises your diplomatic visibility by 1 level (2 with a master spy) while the mission is running. For each level of diplomatic viability you have that your opponent doesn't, you gain a +3 CS for intel on troop movements. The only way to counter it is for TAD to run a spy mission, have a trading post, finish Printing, or get the GM that gives you +1 visibility on everybody.

In PBEM18, Ichabod is still a live because he was able to abuse this mechanic with great skill against me. Lessons learned.

[ljubljana]

Okay, I'll just do both to get the IA out ASAP. The builder on the crab now should still have two charges and be able to do that. Also I'm so dumb, the chop doesn't even reduce the IZ adjacency at Cuneiform because the bonus I will lose for not having two lumbermills next to it I will gain back by adding the second mine. Definitely worth it if the only long-term loss is one hammer per turn (not that it wouldn't be worth it in either case, but that makes me feel better ). That should get us the IA in 6 or 7 turns, so we might be able to have the listening post up as soon as the war starts.

[Woden]

Let's say everything goes our way with the spy and military alliance. That will give your promoted caravels a CS of 76 (55 base, +5 GA, +5 MA, +3 DV, and +7 promotion) versus a unpromoted frigate with a GA with a defensive CS of 50 (plus whatever flanking). You are approaching 1-shot territory. Hit first with a frigate of your own, then kill it with a caravel easily without taking much damage. Then he attacks you, it is still 60 vs 76 (plus whatever flanking). You will get half of the normal damage in return. Rinse and repeat.

Best way to get revenge against TAD is going to beat him on the battlefield in this game.

[ljubljana]

Sadly, I am pretty confident TAD will have an MA up as well, and will retire Rajendra Chola (blah) for another +3. Still, it's the best chance we have. My biggest worry is that TAD will find a way to field Embolon caravels of their own instead of going all-out with frigates. Worst-case, those would have 55 +5 GA +5 MA +3 RC +4 OL +7 promotion = 79 CS, with no real counter until I can get to Twilight Valor. I can't believe I didn't listen to you about getting Oligarchic Legacy, I sure won't ever make that mistake again . If we win this war, the promotion advantage we gained from the last war will be what makes that possible.

Why in the world didn't TAD just take the dang DoF? 76-strength caravels would eat suboptimal's navy alive, and TAD could easily do the same to CMF. I don't think there's any universe in which stabbing us is the right move for TAD unless they're just all-in on revenge mode at this point... I definitely still think we should give them another opportunity to do so once they can see the milpower spike from our caravel mass-upgrade. The other way to get revenge against TAD would be to actually win this game .

One positive about having gifted WotW to TAD, by the way - we're almost certainly going to make more gold from pillaging its Dockyard when the war breaks out than the city will make for TAD in the meantime .

What happens to my traders on routes to TAD cities if war breaks out? I hope the answer is that they get teleported to the source cities so TAD can't pillage them. If it's not, though, TAD has more exposed traders than I do so it might not be so bad.