(November 21st, 2021, 03:08)Kaiser Wrote: I would be interested in your planned next strategic moves outside of redentor.
Did you manage to figure out why you perceive your economy as weaker than the other contenders?
Thanks for the discussion
Strategy: I fear it's going to be boring for those watching. It's hard to justify any military adventures, as they need to yield payback before Piccadilly is on AC, and that timeframe is ever shortening. There are very attractive openings to attack either Lazteuq or Charriu, but they would require us to build more units than necessary for bare defense, and the profit from them would have to be greater than just investing the hammers into research builds. I can see 2 hypothetical scenarios where we could go to war. One is vulturing in case a war breaks out between the two. The other would be if civac gets seriously entangled in an overseas war, so we suddenly have a sizeable and unoccupied defense army.
Miltary wise there is also the wildcard of nuclear weapons yet. I don't know how much this gets talked about elswhere, but Charriu left them in their original, ridiculously devastating power (differing from RtR), just tripling the cost. They are not banned like they would usually be in a BTS game. What uses do we have for them? It is possible that we could get a tech edge on civac and use them to conquer our continent - but that would commit so much effort that we lose the game meanwhile, and also I try to build good relations with civac (not sure yet how lasting my success is in that regard). Of course civac might beeline it as well (all his tech priorities have been military for a long time) and do the same to us. But he's playing increasingly short turns, and I don't quite believe that he would want to commit himself to total war in the modern era. But should we have a couple of retaliation nukes? Certainly. There is also the fantasy of just dropping nukes randomly on Piccadilly. Theoretically at least we should be able to produce more nukes than him, but we really have no way of actually taking territory from him, while him nuking us would be an invitation for civac, Lazteuq and Charriu. So again, we want retaliation capacity, but don't really have a profitable way of using nukes offensively - unless we somehow convince civac/Frozen/Ichabod of invading Picc and bomb the way open for them, but that's not going to happen.
I am dreading the prospect of opening a new turn in a month or so and having our major places nuked into oblivion. Will also need to spread out stacks.
But basically the strategy that makes the most sense to me is to max out our hammers, then build enough units to defend, economic infrastructure in strong to medium commerce cities, and after that as many research builds as we can afford. I'm not sure whether it will be enough, but it's the way I see. Internet can be a target, although I have no idea if we can be first (same for CR).
I also need to figure out a good tech path towards the space victory yet. I don't believe I've ever built a spaceship outside of RFC mod (which is a very different thing to BTS). Either Rusten tells me what to do, or I'd need to read up on Plemo's PB88 (but I think he did not provide a lot of detail), or older stuff like PB73. Or, probably just coast it. The most important part for me seems to be to get the expensive spaceship parts first, and one turn the remaining one(s) the turn you get the last tech.
The games I mentioned also indicate a big problem that we have here: The contenders for space are in my view Piccadilly, us, Frozen, Amicalola (if we don't cede the game to Picc already). Two of those are from civforum, and these guys have played and lurked many games all the way to AC (or so I think).
Frozen is falling off (and I am listing him here only because I expected him to fall off earlier, but he keeps surprising me), but Picc is in the best position right now, being first in GNP by a wide margin, second in MfG, and basically unassailable militarily. Probably has a GA coming up yet. Amica as I mentioned before seems to be on a military path and while they have done very well in research I still don't quite see how they'll remain competitive. I expect them to either go for a big clash with their continental neighbour Mr. Cairo, or into an overseas adventure into their western continent where they're still fighting with knights (Tarkeel has ahd cavalry for a while admittedly). Fun, but not game winning imo.
To answer your question regarding the economy: I think I understand the trend, although not quite the quantities. My explanation is roughly the same as before, although maybe I can explain it better. I'd need screenshots and currently I'm in the process of setting up my system anew, but I'll try to answer later.
Thank you, I am looking forward to your update and am following religiously :D
If you can find the time and motivation, a screenshot showing where the main competitors are would be great. I am sure I can stitch it together in different threads but it would be difficult to find and without access to the game it is sometimes difficult to follow the exact developments.
I will do those shots, but it may take a few days.
This turn the report is sad: Frozen and Piccadilly both have Radio. We are 3 turns away from it, and that is with research/wealth builds .
Faint hope:
This is Frozen's IW city. I'm too lazy for numbers but it can't produce all that much. He has one of each metal so Mining Corp is rather forgettable (edit: now I did, with OR it should be making around 150 hpt). I have not found an IW city of Picc's, so either I'm blind or he has none. So I'm still going in with all that we have. This turn we stay just a little short of finishing electricity, finish it next, and should be able to one turn Radio the turn after (or direct the research elsewhere in case it's failed already). We still have two forests in Angola fwiw.
....and now I remembered that Frozen got a GE last turn, damn. But maybe he doesn't even want CR all that much? I don't think he actually has a need to swap civics a lot. Just stays in the Town civics anyways. Well that's what I tell myself.
He fired the engineer right away. The consolation then is that this was never winnable, at least it deosn't go to Picc, and we can get Combustion next turn without having sunk beakers into Radio which would not be very useful for a while outside of the wonder.
Now, off to hopelessly rush for Internet .
Of course he did not even use it to change civics
So now we have to ask ourselves what civics we want to stay in for the remainder of the game:
This is the GA setting. Government, Labour and Economy will stay as is, that's a given. Labour may not be quite that clear, but we are still building new cottages (At a diminishing pace, admittedly), and basically if we need to start slaving we lose the game. And after all we have Mining to make up for it.
Maybe US should be reconsidered vs Representation? As our cities are growing without whip or draft we are running out of tiles and are starting to employ more specialists. Otoh we also have ever more towns, and without the whip the theoretical option of emergency rushing is nice (to be clear, I have not used it yet ever. Maybe I should consider it for granaries in new cities? - nah I went in game to see and it's just too expensive)
I think Theocracy is also a pretty clear choice. The bonus is quite significant. While we are still hoping to build a lot of buildings, the OR bonus is less relevant in the age of factories - although I think without it we will not be able to keep spreading the religion, duh.
The interesting part is Legal. FS is very tempting:
You see it's making over 100 base commerce already, and that naturally is in the cities with the best multipliers. Now with Nationalism our costs are 60 gold lower (count that as 100 with inflation), but that doesn't make up for it, and will do so ever less in the future.
But, will we need the emergency potential of drafting, and if we remain without it, will that up civac's aggression level? Also I mentioned that we are running out of tiles, and drafting of course is a sensible way to make use of that. Basically convert barely productive citizens into military, to allow for more research builds.
In the statistics you also see that couthouses are progressing well (we have captured a good number of granaries and very few courthouses). Industrialization is not going as fast as I'd wish. Amica just Kremlin whips his Org factories, while we have to go slower. We also had that one turn of military builds slowing things. But we're getting there. You'll also note the embarassing low number of multiplier buildings (16! libraries). I've decided to give hammers priority, but expect a lot to come in that way yet. Of course it would have been nice to get them all up 50 turns ago, but that's the story of this game.
Lovely sight:
Viola (HE city) is giving away as many hammer tiles as possible, and still losing OF hammers
Mechanics question (not least to see who is still reading, but I also really want to know):
If we built the well there, would that cut irrigation to the farms around Apanha Laranja, or can they get irrigated through civac's wheat farm in the north?
(November 22nd, 2021, 03:15)Kaiser Wrote: If you can find the time and motivation, a screenshot showing where the main competitors are would be great. I am sure I can stitch it together in different threads but it would be difficult to find and without access to the game it is sometimes difficult to follow the exact developments.
Here you go.
Our empire, and the pesky neighbour:
Note that you see over the N-S wrap, so you see the islands twice. In the NE you can see that civac annoyingly is placing his transports where they can hit our island. About time we get Combustion.
You also see that I still plan to build universities for a very late Oxford. There are still only two up, but once a city has a coal plant it isn't much of an issue. Still not going to happen before the GA ends.
Oxford will go into Corta Cana (capital). With the custom house it has significantly more commerce than Bonfim, which is down to 4c trade routes because all the harbour cities take priority. It was a mistake to place Wall Street and the Mining HQ there, although not too terrible.
The island is almost done improving. There is still a bunch of stuff to do for workers in Mjmd's and especially Ramk's former cores. But as you see, especially in Ramkland the cities are also just tiny. Fwiw we are founding the last one in 2 turns, maybe some fillers later if there is nothing better.
On our home continent I am considering changing some farms to workshops (especially should we remain in FS). But maybe we'll also get to a point where we will want to disband some workers again?
To the west, the beacon of peace and progress:
Ichabod appears to have accepted the loss of the island to civac. Judaism is the AP religion, and Picc has Wallstreeted the shrine. Frozen incredibly is still tech leader.
Further west, the gulags:
Mr. Cairo seems to have performed a pretty neat campaign against naufragar (I just saw the cities fall). But with Genghis he has a hard time keeping up in tech, and I would not count him among the contenders. He has AL (which is good, so he can put serious units in Amica's way at least on land), but neither Railroad nor Scientific Method.
I have talked about Amicalola on occasions, and I they are also reporting regularly. They're doing very well with regards to commerce, which is surprising considering that the southern half of that empire is just farms and watermils. With Kremlin and Biology farms their production potential might be greater than ours, and with Org the factories should be just 2 pop whips. Weirdly, despite ending the GA in Police State, there is still no power spike. But maybe that's just because factories and plants were still taking a little time?
And once more to the west, wilderness (looking westwards from Amica):
Superdeath got an early shrine but still somehow has the worst economy in the game. That should be due to his endless war with TBS/Donovan, who have fought the 3 front war with him and Commodore (and briefly Joshy) ever since we met them (around t90). Actually there was a moment of peace between sd and Dono but they're back at it now. Tarkeel has the most modern military on that continent with cavalry, which he used to get a bite out of Commodore. The illuminated cities far out in the west are Lazteuq's Persia where we have city visibility. Laz has cannons but no rifles. With Charriu in the south it's the reverse. Conquering either should be possible for us, but I have come to the conclusion that it isn't profitable.
(November 21st, 2021, 03:08)Kaiser Wrote: Did you manage to figure out why you perceive your economy as weaker than the other contenders?
First off, it's not mere perception. We used to be tech leaders into the middle ages and rennaissance and now are lagging behind the leaders by 3-4 major techs, which should equate to 10-15 turns. And I fear the gap is still widening.
So in the first place, you have seen our territories. One thing is that despite our great number of cities (soon to be 60), only 28 of them are at least size 10, and just 9 are over 12. And that is in the middle of the GA, after having dropped the whip some 20 turns ago, and limited drafting before the GA. It used to be much worse! I counted 16 > sz 12 cities in Picc's land, and that is with us having 33% more cities.
Frozen just has few terrain improvements other than towns, and very tall grown cities. I maintain that this approach may have disabled him from making a conquest, and I don't see how he'll actually win a space race (which also requires hammers, besides the techs), but of course he got impressive results with what he was working with.
Graphs may also help to understand better what has been going on:
I think I've tried this reasoning before: We (and civac) have been moderately to significantly ahead of Picc most of the time (but we also have more cities), but he has had competitive MfG and at times even outclassed us. You can say the same of Amica, although he is more whip-leaning. At the same time, you see the devastating arms race between civac and us. That has just not happened on the other continents (Cairo briefly came to our power level when he went to attack naufragar, but has not increased his power since). So whil most our hammers and pop went into units, including dozens of ships (and a bunch of drydocks), I have to assume that they could use theirs for economy buildings. And you have seen the deplorable number of those that we own. Add to this that for a lot of time we had to prioritize military techs. Starting with astronomy as a response to civac's bulb, which obsoleted our Colossus far earlier than we'd have liked, followed by chemistry->steel->rifling->steam power (ironclads)
To add insult to injury all those units cost maintenance as well.
A big question for me looking back is whether there ever was a chance for peace with civac, which I somehow bungled diplomatically, but I think there wasn't. I suppose in the late renaissance he saw his chance of winning the game in forcing a conquest of us, with the advantage that his Agg trait would give him, while he would not be competitive economically with Fin/Org leaders if he remained at a similar city count. At least that seems reasonable to me. As I've mentioned, he's appeared more friendly and disengaged lately, and the time for a profitable conquest may have run out already. Btw I am quite impressed that despite all the military civac has managed to maintain an economy that is broadly competitive (often better than ours, although I hope we're growing out of that), although he has always been lagging a few techs (or is he? he is up Combustion on us, but has no SM/Physics/Electricity, and just reached AL. But he has at least one GA due yet while we are
spent).
Also on the graphs you see Frozen stalling out.
A bit of hope:
So part of Frozen's and Picc's GNP advantage is culture and espionage. It doesn't seem like Picc is actually threatening a culture victory (he is on an excellent course to space). How does Frozen make all those EP, and what for? Did he just build a lot of security bureaus . Fwiw he has not bothered to get our graphs even
Thank you, this is greatly appreciated. Especially to better understand the geostrategical situation. Also, I just now realize Ichabod's naming scheme :D
Piccadilly's power graph is surprisingly low considering that he is sea-bordering top power. It is enough to dominate his own continent but do you expect Civac to antagonize/attack you over heading W?
Picc seems to be only at 58% of your MfG and everybody else is below 40%, this is really impressive, are there any "seasonal" effects (are research builds counted here or in GNP or in both) skewing it in your favour?
I would guess that there is probably a way to calculate piccadily's culture advantage based on your value and the graph (I am not sure if there is a category where you can look up top culture value).
I sadly have no clue about your question, but it seems easy to check in WB in case nobody else chimes in. I sadly have no CIV4 installed right now so I cannot test it for you.
If I understand you correctly, you think you are about 10-15 turns behind on tech completion on piccadilly to go for space victory. You also expect this gap to be widening.
How much would tech focussing + the Internet (do you still have an engineer at hand for it? Is it rushable?) help you in closing this gap?
Which techs are still necessary for you to get the spaceship going?
How much production is necessary to built the full spaceship (or at least launchable)?
Can you assume what your maximum tech delay can be in regard to piccadily to still be able to finish the ship before him?
Also, Blood (or nukes) for the Blood God, what is the most fun way for you to play things out from here?
@Edit: Do you still have overflow when doing research builds?
Im not 100% about the question but i think as long as you are not in war (and not even sure if in war it will change) You will get the irrigation from the wheat of civac.
Yesterday I typed up a report angering your questions but then my internet got cut. Will post tonight.
Right now, with two more GA turns left, the urging question is civics going forward.
Possible sets are US/Nat, US/Free Speech, Rep/Free Speech. Then Theocracy or Free Religion. Emancipation I duo not really see in question, and FM is a given.
It's all a question of how much we can go for economy without provoking civac. And no draft would also likely mean more military builds instead of Research.
The case for Rep is that without the draft we'll run out of tiles pretty soon and will have specialists in considerable numbers. Also Salons. Otoh US's town hammers have the advantage of helium able to convert into both military or research.
I have not checked yet how much FR would be worth for us. The happy faces are useless, but it has lower upkeep and the 10% beakers (sounds especially handy with rep, although ultimately that would be something like 30 or 50 bpt tops). 2 promo units are of course much better than 1, ifweever need to use them in earnest again.
(November 24th, 2021, 05:21)Kaiser Wrote: Thank you, this is greatly appreciated. Especially to better understand the geostrategical situation. Also, I just now realize Ichabod's naming scheme :D
Piccadilly's power graph is surprisingly low considering that he is sea-bordering top power. It is enough to dominate his own continent but do you expect Civac to antagonize/attack you over heading W?
You mean, if we were to sail past civac to harass Picc's coast? I don't see it tbh. Even if civac let us, Picc's most valuable cities are on the opposite end of the continent. He'll have air screens etc, so we can't hope to get a sneaky force past him, in order to raze the shrine city or some such (we also don't have a way to make commandos). I have been fantasizing about intervening in case Picc were to attack Ichabod or Frozen, but that would probably be so fast that we would have no time to react.
I read civac currently as lay back, not wanting to kingmake. Which, if true, would be good news mostly for us. But of course we still have to show respect.
(November 24th, 2021, 05:21)Kaiser Wrote: Picc seems to be only at 58% of your MfG and everybody else is below 40%, this is really impressive, are there any "seasonal" effects (are research builds counted here or in GNP or in both) skewing it in your favour?
Well the biggest seasonal effect is our current GA. Nobody else is running one. But the first place here will surely hold and likely increase, considering the vast amount of hammers from Mining Inc - which however also costs a ton of gold - and the fact that we have a lot of industrialization left to do yet.
Research builds I discovered count both towards MfG and GNP.
(November 24th, 2021, 05:21)Kaiser Wrote: I would guess that there is probably a way to calculate piccadily's culture advantage based on your value and the graph (I am not sure if there is a category where you can look up top culture value).
I figured you can extract it directly from the culture graph:
So yes, a good part, but by no means all of Picc's GNP advantage is culture (he makes about 800 more per turn than us - as long as we are in FS that is, otherwise it would be close to 1k). The explanation likely is Cre including the libraries, lots of temples/monasteries, maybe over 1000 years old, and he also has FS.
I was unsure if I could place sufficientl precise tangents, but the method seems to be surprisingly exact; at least I counted and our actual culture per turn is 334.
We could do the same with the espionage graph but it is peanuts.
(November 24th, 2021, 05:21)Kaiser Wrote: I sadly have no clue about your question, but it seems easy to check in WB in case nobody else chimes in. I sadly have no CIV4 installed right now so I cannot test it for you.
If I understand you correctly, you think you are about 10-15 turns behind on tech completion on piccadilly to go for space victory. You also expect this gap to be widening.
How much would tech focussing + the Internet (do you still have an engineer at hand for it? Is it rushable?) help you in closing this gap?
Which techs are still necessary for you to get the spaceship going?
How much production is necessary to built the full spaceship (or at least launchable)?
Can you assume what your maximum tech delay can be in regard to piccadily to still be able to finish the ship before him?
Also, Blood (or nukes) for the Blood God, what is the most fun way for you to play things out from here?
@Edit: Do you still have overflow when doing research builds?
The rest of those questions are pretty complex, and I have not thought them through yet. I think the gap is widening right now by virtue of them just having higher GNP, moreso outside the GA. I hope to close it soon; with lots of multiplier buildings coming up after industrialization and Mining Inc powered research builds on top.
Afaik you normally can't afford much tech delay, because with smart overflow management the fastest techer can set it up so that the last SS part gets built very quickly. But Frozen has so few cities that he might actually have trouble building all the different parts at the pace he gets the techs. That's not true for Picc though.
The Internet is a world project and thus cannot be rushed. It is also quite costly at 2000h, which I hope plays in our favour because we should have the best hammer city in the world. Its effect is that it gives you every tech that at least 2 others already have. So if we manage it it would help a whole lot to catch up. Frozen has researched Biology recentlly, which is not on the path to Computers.
I have mentioned before that I have to figure out a tech order for the spaceship yet, but I think rushing Computers first is correct either way. The alternatives would be Biology for more food which we don't really need (we're running out of tiles due to tight spacing), or Flight/Artillery/Fission for military, but that doesn't win us the game. And yes, my goal here is to at least try to win.
Thanks everybody who responded to the irrigation question, I'll check it in WB then, or just rebuild the farm in case it goes wrong.
From this last turn (212):
civac's ships, which I had seen in an annoying position ready to strike our island, are moving further east.... what is the goal here? Does he plan to take jungle island cities from Mjmd. Well why not....
Bonfim is making >1k gold this turn, while only running 90% gold. You also see the deplorable trade routes. Btw I have held back on industrializing here because this city has the most precacious health situation, with no fresh water, no harbour, and the floodplains. 1 turning executives instead for now, although it will also get the factory/plant eventually no doubt.
from this turn: I have evaluated Free Religion. Currently we are making 3461 bas commerce. We have 547 pop plus 60 city tiles (yes, average still below 10 ), so I'd estimate that we'll lose 450-500 base commerce. We're also growing of course, but let's say 3k base commerce for now. With break even at 50% (bit optimistic maybe) FR gives 150bpt (120 assuming 40% be). So, 1500 after ten turns. And on top we save, at the current rate, 40 gpt in civic upkeep.
How many turns are left until the space race is over? I guess maybe 30-40? (I have no idea actually, the guess is mostly based on civforum's PB 73/88 launching spaceships around t280, but those were played on deity. Otoh I think the empires there were also substantially larger, and possibly better managed than ours at least. -- ok, a little guesstimate. We have 16 required techs left, Picc 15 (he is up radio, and I don't know how much of his next tech). I'm assuming we'll catch Frozen eventually. I think those techs have an average cost of maybe 9k after the arrow bonus, so that's 135k left for Picc. In the GA we make about a 2.6k bpt break even. Assuming that he, outside a GA, is about on that level that would result in 50 turns until he can launch. But I think he also has a GA left in store / planning, and of course he'll grow (although he has less unrealized potential than us). But yeah, 30-40 turns doesn't seem to far off.
So, taking free religion could account for about half a tech. Not be-all-end-all but certainly tempting. But, having consistently weaker untis than civac (who already has the Agg advantage) also leaves me quite uneasy, even though I still think he really doesn't want to fight another war in this game.
Free Speech currently gives 124 base commerce, which gets multiplied because it appears in the best cities. A 75% average multiplier doesn't seem unreasonable, so about 220g/bpt, with a lot of villages yet to grow. In contrast, Nat currently saves 90 gpt, inflation included. It seems that FS is actually less powerful than FR, interesting. Now, NAt doesn't help us on the seas (apart from liberating capacities), while Theocracy very much does. But bombers could also change that calculus, in making ship promotions less relevant.
With Rep I'm on the fence, but tilting no. We currently employ 33 specialists, which may go down a bit after the GA, then go up with more Salons and cities growing with no tiles left. But the latter is less drastic / further away than I first though for the most part. US's currently 62 town hammers will all get bonified with +100% pretty soon and can be converted to beakers at that rate. They also help getting multiplier buildings in place in big commerce cities, although with 24 Mining Inc hammers they are not needed that much.
So, US/Nat/FR? The greedy route of US/FS/FR? Or one of the original plans of US/{Nat/FS}/Theo? One turn left to ponder.
(November 24th, 2021, 05:21)Kaiser Wrote: Thank you, this is greatly appreciated. Especially to better understand the geostrategical situation. Also, I just now realize Ichabod's naming scheme :D
Piccadilly's power graph is surprisingly low considering that he is sea-bordering top power. It is enough to dominate his own continent but do you expect Civac to antagonize/attack you over heading W?
You mean, if we were to sail past civac to harass Picc's coast? I don't see it tbh. Even if civac let us, Picc's most valuable cities are on the opposite end of the continent. He'll have air screens etc, so we can't hope to get a sneaky force past him, in order to raze the shrine city or some such (we also don't have a way to make commandos). I have been fantasizing about intervening in case Picc were to attack Ichabod or Frozen, but that would probably be so fast that we would have no time to react.
Thank you again for your detailed feedback.
I actually meant that Piccadilly seems to be gambling on Civac (Top Power) playing as laid back as you describe.
Sure, you have an eternal stalemate border with Civac, but he seems to be in a prime position to interfere with Piccadily who is running relatively low power for being perceived game leader. It is possible though that Civac does not perceive Piccadily as a game leader.
In any case, you seem to be Civacs biggest military threat so he might not feel at ease to slow down piccadilly or tries to balance you and piccadilly as he could be of the opinion that you are 2nd runner up and he would just exchange a low power game leader against his biggest threat becoming game leader.
@Culture difference
If you read your own thread closely you will find who handed Piccadily this much culture/turn
@GNP difference
You are guestimating Piccadily's research power, can you not check top GNP and deduct 1100 culture/turn and your own espionage value to get a close estimate to his current research power?
It is difficult to do just based on the graphs without access to the numbers but you should be able to get a good understanding, but maybe I am thinking to easy here and binary research makes this mor difficult than I anticipate.
@Civac strike force
Which benefit would Civac have taking some MJMD cities half around the world? Is taking cities in that direction in line with the "laid back" Civac assumption?
@Internet
2000h unrushable means that this could also be 2000h worth of research instead, is the Internet still worth it? (I really need to install CIV4 again so I can check some of these things myself).
@Great Engineer
Do you still have one around? What is you plan for it? Bulb into a tech or keep him for space elevator or another late game wonder?
@Civics
Just some thoughts from my side:
- I like having a plan for excess population to use, from that I agree that Nat sounds better than Rep as it is more flexible as it allows for keeping up power while pushing research builds (Rep would become better in case of a global or at least Civac de-militarization, but I think this to be very unlikely)
- FS would be very space race focussed and in my opinion only worth if you want to go full steam (meaning US/FS/FR) with the military risks you already mentioned. Do you need the culture anywhere against Civac?
- Theo vs FR is more difficult but it boils down to how you think the Civac game will roll out. Getting out of Theocracy for FR might either encourage Civac to work on attack plans on you or signal him that you might be less interested in conflict with him so he might consider bothering Piccadily instead. Keeping Theocracy will almost assuredly keep the arms race up setting you even further behind piccadily but also has likely less risk of being attacked
. 
.
. Fwiw he has not bothered to get our graphs even 
