[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Okay, sounds good to me. I don't know that we should totally rule out declaring on them if we think we can get in a really strong first strike against CMF's navy by doing so, but agreed that it would take the promise of a really significant win navally (something like wiping out 10+ frigates on the first turn) to be worth triggering the Australia buff. Even that I am only saying because Australia is something like 1/3 or 1/4 the size of Russia and will be fielding mostly outdated units without a GA buff.

We may also want to keep in mind that when CMF does attack, it will probably be at one of our city-state captures so marco can liberate it and gain the +100% hammers anyways. Since we have so many of those and they are so exposed, I am not really sure it is actually realistic to try to keep them from activating it... It is worth mentioning though because it might mean we should raze or liberate the former Mohenjo-Daro instead of keeping it, since we can't really defend both that spot and our other CSs halfway across the world at the same time. Probably razing it is the better option since CMF can easily snipe and hold the spot if we liberate it.

edit: I just remembered Ichabod and I are thrawn's two dedlurkers in his PBEM21 thread. Awkward...

edit2: I finally think I have a deadline for moving Pingala out of sad-sack Demotic. He has been there for so long so that I could avoid wasting money on tile buys (which I hate doing to a degree that is honestly a little irrational), and in 6 turns we will hopefully pick up the IZ tile for Nsibidi there. If we do, I can then move Pingala...and if we don't, I have to buy the tile so Nsibidi can get started on that anyways, so we will still be able to move him. I think he is going to my second-biggest city (which will probably be Geneva by that point!) and not Cuneiform, though, because Magnus in the capital tops out at 20 food/turn via trade routes and that still seems better than the 4ish bpt/cpt we'd lose with Pingala in the next-largest city.

[ljubljana]

Turn 145 - Phoenicia

No time for a full report, but...



Figures. Yeah we gotta ban this to the bottom circle of banlist hell with Nan Madol. It might be one thing when someone like PBEM18 Canada does it and it's fun underdog scrappiness, but here when we have the runaway favorite to win blockading cities during peacetime to lock in that advantage it is a lot less cute. Obviously nothing personal against CMF, who is just using what's in the rules, but we have to do something about this in future games. We could be using it ourselves to block him in China (I have a few caravels that could turn around and a sword that is already heading there to search for natural wonders for ES), but I'm against that just out of sheer distaste for the tactic. If we have to reduce this to a blockade-off to see who gets to win this game instead of an actual climactic clash of fleets, I'm not sure I want to win that way...

Anyways, we have to go for Fort Miln now just to buy the ground troops we need to walk into the capital once the walls are bombed out. God forbid we advance our ships next turn to find another benighted Russian caravel parked in the harbor there sticking its tongue out at us. I have no idea what we will do in that case...I guess just reduce the walls at as many of these cities as we can while we wait for your ground troops to slooowly crawl their way over here. By the way, if Kaiser's caravel permits it, you may want to run your westernmost ships as far up the side of the peninsula as they can go next turn so they can shield my frigates, one of which is in range to hit the city from the west next turn.



At least Kaiser left a frigate exposed up north, and I was able to kill it without danger of losing a ship (the Elizabeth Bonaventure finally has Reinforced Hull now to shrug off city fire). I also got a frigate promoted by killing TAD's slinger. We have to decide on a target up here soon...what do you think? The capital makes some sense, but its defensive strength might be so strong that it can chew through my six frigates before we get a chance to reduce the walls. Perhaps Big Brother is a better idea, but it is out of the way and would give TAD time to rebuild a frigate at the capital, which would be a nightmare. I will have a wave of reinforcements upgraded in 2 turns, but it will take time for them to reach our target...less time if we go for the capital though, so maybe it wins the tiebreaker for that reason.

I think we should offer CMF/marco one more DoF extension on t147. It sucks, but we don't have time for any delays here on our current timetable and the blockades are forcing our hand. We need something like ten turns of transit time to get our ships back to our core in order to engage them, which means we only have 12 or so more turns in which to fully conquer TAD and Kaiser before our ships have to turn around, which is just not enough time. If we don't get an extension, I think we have to let Kaiser live with whatever he has left and turn around once our 12 turns are up...if CMF swings his fleet in China around and hits our core as soon as he is able to while our ships are over here, we will lose this game before we even get to engage him. That also means we must kill TAD (eg burn down the former Mohenjo-Daro) in the next 12 turns to get the era score, and also because there is no way he would ever peace out at this point.

[Woden]

Figures. Yeah we gotta ban this to the bottom circle of banlist hell with Nan Madol. It might be one thing when someone like PBEM18 Canada does it and it's fun underdog scrappiness, but here when we have the runaway favorite to win blockading cities during peacetime to lock in that advantage it is a lot less cute. Obviously nothing personal against CMF, who is just using what's in the rules, but we have to do something about this in future games. We could be using it ourselves to block him in China (I have a few caravels that could turn around and a sword that is already heading there to search for natural wonders for ES), but I'm against that just out of sheer distaste for the tactic. If we have to reduce this to a blockade-off to see who gets to win this game instead of an actual climatic clash of fleets, I'm not sure I want to win that way...

No, no! No, "nothing personal against CMF". Fuck him! He knows this is poor sportsmanship! He has been around long enough to remember the previous discussions on banning this type of behavior. We all agreed that a ban would be too hard to enforce and had a gentleman's agreement not to do this shit! He knows better! Luckily he is dropping out soon and maybe Ichabod will think differently on this tactic.

As for the next target, I think TAD's capital is the best option. If I don't get to pillage the harbor, I can make up some of the gold with a trade route right away, not all of it but some and it will give your capital more food and production. Once the capital falls, we can take Fort Lakton from the back side and then work our way west. I have a berserker heading towards Open Government to pillage the IZ. I will buy another one at Official Visit to go pillage at Fort Lakton. He can't block me on land with his ships. We will want to take Fort Lakton before it revolts, since it would give CMF an opportunity to capture it since he plays between us. 

No DoF extensions. Our ships will be by Australia if they attack and I am going to build new ships soon and will have a decent fleet by our core. You should do the same.

Edit: One more bitchy thing to say. This behavior is on the same level as putting a bunch of resource costing units in production (e.g. knights), using up all your resources, then faith buying the older, cheaper unit (e.g. heavy chariots) of the same class if you have the GMC. Then canceling the newer units during the same turn, getting all your resources back and upgrading them while running the discount cards. No explicit rule against it and technically not an exploit of a bug, just poor play and against the spirit of the game.

[ljubljana]

hahahaha ok i have to admit i have been sitting around stewing about this ever since i played the turn and that made me feel way better

thanks for being my teammate <3

[ljubljana]

Real response: Good point about Fort Lakton, although hopefully he can't take it in one turn with just a caravel and a galley. But we definitely shouldn't risk it. I think we have enough time before it flips that I can send down frigates to bomb the walls out after I deal with TAD's capital, plus I can send two over from the group at Kaiser's capital at the same time. I don't like sending frigates in by the ones and twos to bomb out defenses since they take a lot of fire that way, but that's also an option from the west if we don't think we'll get through Open Government quickly enough.

Do I dare to hope that there won't be a caravel or embarked warrior or something waiting for us at Fort Miln next turn? Not really, but if there is one I think I should still start bombing out the defenses just so my southern fleet is doing something to contribute. Then I can keep a frigate around to prevent it from healing while you send a berserker over. Another option is that I can use this time to go raze TAD's former city-state in the far west (which we have to do eventually for the kill credit ES if nothing else) and then come back to bomb out cities I can't actually take...but there might be 4 Russian caravels there too and if so I'd be way out of position. What do you think?

I am going to switch back over to full-time ships soon, as soon as I'm done with the lighthouses + traders and the three +6 IZs I'm still waiting on. That will only give about 10 turns of ship production before we get attacked though, which will probably not be enough if it's all we will have defending our core. If you want I can step on the accelerant and delay the rest of the traders and IZs (and Geneva's beautiful shipyard ) to make ships immediately, which will be a significant setback but not as much of one as losing our cities (as a wise Norwegian once said ). I am a little worried that if we only have newly produced units at home, CMF will walk all over us with the full force of his fleet, and then our ships in Japan will start burning down crappy new Australian cities while CMF burns down our core - not a good trade for us.

[ljubljana]

Your example about faith-buying heavy chariots is making me think, though...maybe I am not free from sin here. I have been carefully managing my niter for the last 30 turns so that I can keep building quads in my core long past their expiration date and upgrading them with the cards in place rather than hand-build frigates, and that tactic is the only reason I was remotely able to hold off TAD. But it seems like it might be in a similar spirit to what you described. Maybe that's also worth having a discussion about...

[Woden]

Your example about faith-buying heavy chariots is making me think, though...maybe I am not free from sin here. I have been carefully managing my niter for the last 30 turns so that I can keep building quads in my core long past their expiration date and upgrading them with the cards in place rather than hand-build frigates, and that tactic is the only reason I was remotely able to hold off TAD. But it seems like it might be in a similar spirit to what you described. Maybe that's also worth having a discussion about...

While in the same vein, shipping resources to your teammate is not as bad and part of a team game. We still need the excess room to store the resources. My example can be done alone and if you resources are full and if you don't actually put any production into the more advanced unit, you get all your resources back when you cancel the unit. 

My example is more of a gray area. One could consider it an exploit of how the resources are allocated and deem it illegal. But, from another point of view, it just be using the systems they provided for maximum gain. Me, personally, thinks it is an exploit of a poorly implemented system. My point is, do we have to have someone do something like this before we ban it or is there a level of sportsmanship not to abuse the systems in this game in ways they were not intended? And to CMF's actions, we have had discussions on such plays.

[ljubljana]

Yeah, I agree that the quad thing is probably not as bad since there haven't been discussions on it or anything. It definitely could be done alone, though - shipping resources to you just makes it more convenient. If I were playing by myself, all I would have to do is stay in Retinues at all times and always keep my niter supply below 20 by making sure to have enough of a backlog of quads such that I always have one to upgrade on the same turn I go over 10 niter. If I did go over 20 niter, I could just hard-build one frigate to go back under and then start making quads again.

I kind of was assuming that all the other players have been making their frigates this way as well, which is why it didn't occur to me to think of it in terms of a possible exploit. TAD in particular has had a million quads running around too for most of the war, which I don't think he could even have built if he wasn't doing essentially the same thing. The advantage it provides is simply huge in a close naval war like ours, though, not because of production (though that's important too) but because of niter. Our frigate production has been niter-limited through this whole war to the point where we would literally have half as many frigates if we had never upgraded a quad just because all my frigates have been Retinues upgrades and we have been using niter at exactly the rate that it has been coming in.

I'm not trying to go into some kind of self-shaming spiral here...but now that the subject has come up, I do think it's worth having discussions about it post-game or having a lurker weigh in (should one be so inclined). I am quite confident that there is literally no reason to ever make a frigate in any other way if this is allowed, and if TAD and Kaiser have been hard-building all their frigates after the initial wave of upgrades when Square Rigging came in as part of a principled stand against this sort of thing I will feel pretty lousy after all this is over...

[Woden]

As an aside, Official Visit has 2 niters, one hooked up. I don't see another source in TAD's lands. Give me a couple of turns and I will pillage the one niter I see in Kaiser's land. I suspect there is another somewhere but they are really short on niter right now.

[ljubljana]

Just to be clear about this, I am going to put a frigate 2W of Fort Miln next turn to start bombing out its defenses, as well as on the two spots we can reach it from on the east side of the peninsula - please make sure to leave those tiles open for me. Also, I just realized that my horse is actually in the area since it was heading down to MPF to look for natural wonders - if it is closer than your nearest berserkers (and assuming your caravels are blocked), maybe I should move it up and try to take the city with it? Since Kaiser is in a Dark Age and there is only his capital in range for loyalty pressure, I might be able to hold it.