[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Turn 131 - Phoenicia

I have been doing nothing but play the turn for the last 2.5 hours and am SO TIRED so this is going to be kinda terse. Here's what we can see of TAD's navy before this turn:



I can't tell about the caravel in Akkad, but the other two down there both have just 5 movement, so no Dockyard boost and no admiral in range either. I pinned tiles indicating the furthest TAD can reach this turn with the visible ships - 6 movement caravels in the fog would not be able to reach any further, and I don't think there can be 7-movers down here for lack of another Great Admiral. I decided to take a risk and just throw all my frigates and caravels to the north to try to kill as many of the exposed TAD frigates as possible, not leaving any protection down here save for just not leaving any of my units on the pinned tiles.

I'm way too out of it to talk about tactics, but here is TAD's navy at the end of the turn:



I left quite a few wounded ships exposed or semi-exposed, and in my delirious state made a few really silly positioning errors, most notably that one frigate in the north who had to move OUTside of the caravel line to get its shot in . I definitely could have avoided that and it will probably die this turn, although luckily only the closer two TAD caravels are in range and not the healthy-ish Embolon one. TAD would probably have to hit with both of those and maybe with a frigate too to kill it, all of which would melt away immediately on the counterattack, so that's not a horrible exchange even if I wish I had done better. I also didn't have quite enough shots to stop TAD from pillaging my lighthouse at Linear B, which will be worth a nice gold infusion for him and which will take Linear B (and one of my TRs) offline for a few turns while I fix it. I moved up my quad for no real reason in the south (internally I thought "maybe it will give TAD a target other than one of my real ships in case he can reach me after all"), so it might die also lol.

But frankly, who cares about any of that. I got 2 caravels and 5 frigates, the latter of which should be more than half of TAD's total. Even if I get torn up on the counterattack and lose some ships I don't want to lose, I think this was a decent enough outcome.

Oh, and I also got the economic alliance with China for a big influx of gold. That should offset the imminent loss of one of my TRs for the time being. Do you happen to know how the game decides which TR gets cut when a lighthouse is pillaged, by the way? Hopefully, we will get lucky and it will be one of the food ones and not a precious 20 GPT one with China.

Domestically, I finished a caravel in Hieratic and started a quad - I'm hoping to get 4 or so of those by the time Guilds comes in to upgrade in Retinues. Linear B and Cuneiform will also make quads since they are near the front, the rest of the cities will stick to caravels for now. Do you think we're getting close to the point where lighthouses make sense as builds in the cities that don't yet have them? I imagine I'll want at least one more round of caravels first, but after that I might start thinking about that. Also, so that I can figure out how many quads it's worth making, do you a) have a sense of how many turns it will be until you get Guilds and b) know how much niter you expect to need between now and then?

edit: Next turn, I really need to watch for where TAD's frigates end up going. I didn't spot those two in the far west until the end of this turn, but I could have deduced where they were based on how infeasible it would have been for TAD to kill those western ships with just their caravels (plus I also probably got a notification about it that I missed, oops). It didn't matter that much this turn, but next turn it will be crucial, since TAD is running low enough on caravels that every frigate he fires with should be a sitting duck on the counterattack...as long as I can find them.

[Woden]

Turn 130-Vikings
My longboat survived a second frigate attack and was able to pillage the quarry. A caravel showed up near my northern longboat but still was able to pillage a mine to complete Cartography. Also pillaged a lighthouse at TAD's city. With the gold sent by you, I was able to upgrade 8 longboats and they will move out next turn. 

With the pillage of the quarry, Guilds will finish in 2 turns, right when I should be able to join in the fight. Capital finished its lighthouse and starts a caravel, due in 4 turns. Loki and Thor should be able to put them out in 7 turns. This means I should be able to get 4 out every 8 turns. Not sure if that is quick enough. Now that we got a huge chunk of gold from pillaging, I might have my next few trade routes help Loki and Thor with domestic routes. And if you feel safer now, feel free to finish some lighthouses in your newer cities.

[ljubljana]

I guess to some extent it depends on what our medium-term goals are going to look like beyond surviving this attack. If we are able to beat back TAD, do we want to take the fight to their cities at some point? That seems like our best bet for catching up to CMF as far as I can tell since we are locked into peace with everyone else, and will require us to still stick pretty strictly to military builds...not that lighthouses aren't military builds, they just have a somewhat longer payoff horizon.

Domestic TRs might soon be our best bet for increasing our rate of ship production though. Gold will only do so much for us once we run out of things to upgrade, a time which is fast approaching. Neither of us can build galley equivalents anymore, and our rate of upgrading frigates is limited by niter, not gold. I can imagine a future in which our gold just kind of starts piling up without any obvious military applications soon...in a future like that, domestic TRs will start to make the most sense militarily.

I think when Cuneiform hits size 10 (in 4 turns) I will throw down a discounted IZ to complete the 4f/5h TRs, though I may not complete it right away depending on the military situation. When the dark age comes, I might swap into both Isolationism and Twilight Valor at once, which seems like a good setup for both strong military production and population growth. I will probably ditch the upgrade cards when that time comes, and just do 1-turn civic swaps to them every so often to upgrade more frigates.

edit: If we do ever end up taking TAD cities (do I dare to dream of such a thing?), I think you should get all of them other than maybe WotW. I will never hold them with Dark Age loyalty, but in your GA you might be able to, so you should probably send a few of your ships along with whatever attack force I end up with to get last hits in such a circumstance. Do you have any Victor promotions yet? It might be worth it to take the first two if you anticipate attacking TAD cities during this war.

[Woden]

If we do ever end up taking TAD cities (do I dare to dream of such a thing?), I think you should get all of them other than maybe WotW. I will never hold them with Dark Age loyalty, but in your GA you might be able to, so you should probably send a few of your ships along with whatever attack force I end up with to get last hits in such a circumstance. Do you have any Victor promotions yet? It might be worth it to take the first two if you anticipate attacking TAD cities during this war.

Speaking of WotW, we need to hold off taking the city until I can pillage the cotton and mine. I do not have Victor yet and will take him when Guilds finishes. The plan will be to push on TAD. I don't think we end this war until we are dead or they are. Without significant gains against TAD/Kaiser, I don't think anyone of us can compete with CMF. I do have an archer heading to scout CMF out to take a look at his empire.

[ljubljana]

Mine is already pillaged unfortunately, by Kaiser right after I took the city... I will not retake WotW anytime soon though (not unless a time comes when there are no ships to target), so you should have time to get the cotton. Your caravels can also pillage coastal tiles, right? I wonder how much it will hurt TAD and Kaiser to have literally every coastal tile in their empire pillaged if they lose control of the seas...if your horde of caravels does that while my frigates work on cities (with you sending caravels there too to actually take the cities) I think that could be a formula for making gains. And I agree that this is a war to the death with TAD/Kaiser at this point, there's no other viable way for us to win, nor is there one for them either really. I just hope we can make gains against them before CMF completely obliterates sub and roland...

edit: I am not sure about the lighthouses... On the one hand, domestic TRs are the best way to keep my cities growing and to add what will soon be 7 hammers to every city. On the other hand, unless we have clear naval superiority over TAD, pausing for lighthouses will give him time to put a navy back together. Eventually I will need to do lighthouses to stand a chance against CMF's development (to say nothing of campuses, because my science rate is about to suuuuck), but maybe I should do at least one more round of ships first... On the other hand, though, not too many cities still need lighthouses, and the ones that do are not exactly major contributors to the war effort. IDK, my builder side wants to build them but I have learn to distrust that side of me pretty reflexively during wartime over the course of this game .

I guess we are probably going to want to get the lighthouses and traders before the war ends for the extra ship production from domestic TRs and the city growth to keep pace with CMF, right? If so, probably the sooner I finish them up and get them to start paying for themselves, the better, assuming that doing so doesn't endanger our ability to survive TAD's initial attack?

[ljubljana]

Another reason it's great for us that TAD retook WotW - if we do turn back TAD and go after their cities, this time it makes a ton of sense to liberate it, especially with it size-1 and pillaged into the ground. You should be the one to do that since you are the one with the enormous horde of melee ships and berserkers. You have a billion envoys saved up like everyone else and ready to pour into the city in case anyone tries to contest your suzereignty, right?

That reminds me, I messed up with the policy swap last turn...I should be in Charismatic Leader, but instead I am in the policy that gives bonus growth to Oracle Bones. Not only is that silly on its own merits, but Oracle Bones is in a food-neutral configuration while it builds its lighthouse anyways . Whoops. Speaking of envoys, if you liberate Akkad, perhaps I should liberate Mohenjo-Daro on the other side of TAD territory for its super-strong unique bonus. I would say you should take it too since you would have more cities than me at that point, but you will probably have trouble holding suzereignty over two different CS by yourself with CMF certain to try to take one away to slow us down.

edit: yeeeeah who am I kidding, it is extremely silly to take any of my cities off of ships, ships, ships until we are totally sure we have a critical mass of boats that TAD cannot effectively challenge. We will lose for sure if we do not kill TAD, whereas delaying any given lighthouse 10 turns to build a ship is a hazy and abstract setback to our chances. I think the right thing to do is to keep building a bunch of ships, except for in cities like Mitla that is too weak and Oracle Bones that is too far to effectively contribute (they are both on lighthouses though, natch). Geneva in particular hurts my builder soul down deep because its lighthouse is partially-built and is something like 4 turns away from completion (and it has a bunch of nice fish tiles to grow onto if it weren't housing-capped) but honestly we need boats now and fish tiles and traders can wait, even traders that will be worth 6 food and 7 hammers each. Abjad doesn't even have a Cothon, but again a Cothon is also not a boat and it still makes boats in roughly 7t each, one of which I would have to skip to get the Cothon up. Cuneiform's IZ will also be tempting in 4t, as it will be very cheap and worth a cool 7 hammers up-front, 3 from its adjacency and 4 from my 4 domestic TRs.

PS, here is my long-term plan for developing these cities should that ever be in the cards. There are actually only a tiny handful of useful tiles in my whole empire left to work, so the TR food is looking kinda worthless, right? Well, yes, but I need every city to hit size 7 for Cothon/IZ/Campus. I am hoping to get Isolationism TRs up in most of my cities, get the IZs in as the size-4 districts where they already have a decent adjacency bonus so they start to pay for themselves, then get campuses at size 7 (which should arrive fairly quickly) to alleviate the horrible science crunch. Then, I will make libraries and universities everywhere and turn all the useless extra population my cities grew into scientist specialists to start pushing towards the next generation of military tech.

But yeah, let me know if you have any thoughts on when, if ever, it is appropriate to pause ship builds for infrastructure in the middle of a hot war of mutual annihilation. I'm not contemplating a pause for any campuses or builders, obviously, or any but the Cuneiform IZ, but that and the lighthouses/traders could be high-impact builds. I am definitely pretty strongly in favor of at least one and probably two more rounds of ships first though unless TAD's navy gets itself annihilated or something. I will not half-ass my way to a win condition. I will not. Not this time.

[Woden]

I think it is a little early to consider switching off military builds but, in general, when you are losing fewer units than you are producing is when you can scale back the military builds. It is okay to have your newer cities, where it takes a while to build modern units, to develop a bit, since they offer little to the war effort but your bigger cities should keep it up for a bit.

You should also think about campuses in a few places since you will lose a bunch of your research in 10 or so turns.

As note, I am traveling for work today and leaving a bit later than I expected. I will get to my turn today but don't expect your turn until probably after 11:00 pm CDT.

Also, I think building a few quads is the right paly and I might even consider building a few after I get more caravels out. We will need them to take their cities and we can supplement low production with upgrades to Frigates.

[ljubljana]

Yeah, that sounds right to me. It is actually not the newer cities that are struggling to contribute to the ship builds but the older cities that don't have good production tiles. Abugida and Abjad are both over 10hpt and are making caravels every 7ish turns, which is not too bad, and Nsibidi will get there as soon as it grows onto its second lumbermill. The ones that are really lagging are Mitla, Oracle Bones, and Runic (although Runic is still bravely trying to make a caravel since it is right at the front).

Yeah, the campus thing is going to be a real mess. I am going to drop down to last in research when the age rolls over, I think...luckily I should have some time to catch up before CMF gets to ironclads and murders me. I am thinking the build order in places like Linear B when the time comes for buildery builds should be something like IZ - aqueduct (housing + IZ adjacency) - campus - library - university. It will take a while to start getting the science buildings up but these cities all have really good IZs (+10 or more after the doubling card) and pausing for them will pay back very quickly, plus the aqueduct will let us grow onto scientist specialists after the libraries go up for a rapid turnaround sometime in the t160-t170 range. Shipyards will be great for us too once they come online (which is pretty soon actually), though they are so pricey that I doubt they will be worth it before campuses and libraries (maybe before unis though). I will try to prioritize two shipyards and two workshops though to find Industrialization and Steam Power, which will be the two key techs in the Industrial Era for us.

I wonder when more settlers will be worth it? They are really pricey now and I think at most of my cities things like the IZ will pay back much more quickly than starting a new city from scratch. Maybe at Cuneiform, since it doesn't have pop room for a campus and so won't be distracted by science buildings? There is a nice forested island between us and TAD that could make for a nice pair of cities with a super-TR to Cuneiform, but I am not sure what infrastructure they will pay off more quickly than. Stuff like the shipyard or uni, sure, but maybe not the campus and IZ (for instance). Maybe that is actually an argument for allocating the eureka buildings like so: workshops at Linear A and Nsibidi (the likely eventual coal plant sites; Linear A and Linear B are close hammers-wise but the tiebreaker is that Linear B has no space for an Aerodrome), shipyards at Geneva and Hieratic (two of the stronger remaining cities, plus they have +10 and +8 Cothons, respectively), and then just have Cuneiform ignore both of those and pump settlers until there are no remaining spots in range of a Cuneiform TR.

Sounds good re: the turn. I will definitely still be up and ready to play when it does come around. No need to rush either - I'd definitely rather get the turn at 2 AM or whenever (or tomorrow) than have you feel like you don't have time to plan out the best moves.

Future me's checklist of buildery things to remember to do this turn:
- Swap the IZs at Demotic and Nsibidi, no point giving such a strong IZ to a spot that can't produce ships.
- Remember to NOT swap the IZs at Linear A and Linear B - if Linear A is the coal plant city, it needs the northern IZ, otherwise Runic will be out of range.
- Pin an aqueduct and IZ at Abjad, it's only +4 but it's still probably worth building.
- Move the Demotic/Hieratic/Abjad campuses to the eastern triangle, Cuneiform's will take forever to come online.
- Lock in the costs of a discounted campus at Hieratic (probably) and IZs at Cuneiform/Linear B when I can. There is a way to wring one more discount out of this by finishing a full-cost campus/IZ somewhere, which will discount the other, so I will probably lay down one more full-cost campus or IZ somewhere to prep for that.
- Try more lux deals while CMF and everyone else still thinks we're getting crushed. Most of my cities are stuck at +2 again and it could be a big boost to get that bumped back up to +3.

[ljubljana]

...is it me or have Kaiser and TAD been posting a ton in their spoiler thread today 

I wonder if we will open the save to their ships having retreated. If there really are only 3 frigates left in theater and no second wave on its way, I don't think there is much chance of them taking any more cities until they rebuild a bit, and TAD might recognize that and pull back unless he thinks he can do significant damage to my navy with the ships he has left here. If he does that, I am not sure what the best move is for me - maybe pull back the wounded ships to insta-heal in the Cothons while prepping Artemisia to scout for TAD's navy when we advance? The frigates could also start working on Writing on the Wall for you if there is a way to do so without leaving them exposed.

[Woden]

They probably didn't expect you to do the damage you did (good job, by the way). If he did retreat, I say retreat and heal your wounded ships but we probably should keep the pressure up. I am going to start sailing west-northwest towards the south side of WotW. My ships probably won't get far this turn as I want to keep them in a group, but I will move them as far as I can.