[PB59 Amicalola] The Vespertine Hour(s)

[Amicalola]

Thanks Hitru, appreciate the answer. I'll play the rest of my turn now.

Edit: Nevermind, I decided not to declare. I don't want to cause unnecessary controversy, and I really regret my petty turnsplit stuff from earlier games; let this be a lesson to play my turns in one session, in future. I do appreciate your answer, Hitru, thank you.

[Amicalola]

T233 Part Two
Targets Acquired:


I've spent the last two turns pumping EP into Piccadilly, with this result. I tried to send Miguelito diplo suggesting he attack Tiraqha, Little Bighorn and Goblin in the next 4 turns. We exchanged "war with Piccadilly in 4 turns" last turn, so it's possible that he can do it. I'm advancing with some transports ahead of schedule, which is why I wanted to sink that privateer. I suppose I could double-move Piccadilly if he's slow, to avoid his vision, but that feels really cheesy and I don't plan to. So he will presumably see this stack this turn; I am banking on the 2% chance he thinks they're headed for Mr. Cairo instead.   

You can also see Piccadilly moving his Palace to Gao, which is a smart move. Much harder for me to raze an inland city than a coastal one. You can also see that he's building Modern Armour in some spots.

It looks like Piccadilly plans to finish in 4 turns. There are a couple cities with 5 to go, but they all have forests to chop. I only realised that because one of his cities had hammers from a chop this turn; I love city investigation.

I also whacked an Mjmd settler that was possibly about to steal a rice. A little cheeky there, Mjmd.  



Specific plans to come next turn when I have slept. I definitely made a lot of mistakes this turn from tiredness, will try to avoid that in future. Which includes forgetting to take a picture of my fleet.

[Amicalola]

T234 - Mission Impossible

We're sending whatever I could muster early enough, attempting to raze Piccadilly's spaceship parts before they're completed. Here's the fleet:


The selected units move one tile further, to threaten Wadan. The plan is do fork Wadan, Kano and Awdaghost next turn, and hopefully take all three. Then, I can rebase 12 bombers to the islands (4 per city), and we will fork Taghaza and Walata on T236, the turn their spaceship parts are completed. In theory, three of the transports will also fork Timbuktu, in case there's a spaceship part there too. 

The good news is that Piccadilly moved his stack, and it only needed two turns to get back to the threatened cities. So Picc seeing my own transports a turn earlier than hoped will have made little difference.


The bad news is that Piccadilly moved his stack, and it only needed two turns to get back to the threatened cities. That's a lot of very high strength defenders.   

Piccadilly had a few Machine Guns in Awdaghost that were loaded onto a transport. I don't want those Machine Guns to land, but I also don't want to trigger the defensive pacts that Piccadilly has with his continent-mates this turn. The consequences amount to -2 happiness in every city, and 40 fewer trade routes. I ended up not attacking, because I don't want to trigger the defensive pact just to kill 4 units; it's not worth it. In addition, I would technically be double-moving Frozen and Ichabod (late game turnspits are The Worst). Counting the number of units Piccadilly has on defense, this plan is pretty implausible all around, really (I suppose the name is accurate  ).. But, at worst, it will establish a foothold upon the islands, and that's valuable in itself. Besides, I have to at least try; maybe I'm enough of a distraction to help Miguelito. 

As a side note, I'm really disappointed that Miguelito hasn't built the Manhattan Project yet, because nukes would make this so much easier. I haven't even started it, because every turn I keep expecting him to finish it; I wonder if he's doing the same thing?

[RefSteel]

I had three cities set to 1-turn settlers last turn, but only one of them completed it. The other two both(!) had their settlers on 99/100 hammers, but I am certain that they had 1 turn on the settler last turn. All three cities grew a size on the inter-turn, as that was why I picked them for settler-builds. The 99/100 thing in 2/3 cities seems too specific to be a coincidence, so am I missing something? A feature? A bug? No idea, except that it's very sad.

I hate this bug so much ... but this is the way it works:

First, the game calculates food produced by the city, and applies any growth that results.  If you're building a Worker or Settler, the city produces no more than +0 net food, but following a whip (or following a turn when Avoid Growth was on) if Avoid Growth is off, a city can grow thanks to a full food box even while producing no net food, and will do so.  The new pop unit doesn't produce anything on the turn it appears, but the food production has already been calculated, so when growing normally, it (in effect) doesn't eat any food.

Then the game calculates hammers produced by the city, ignoring food.  But what if you're building a Settler or Worker?  Well, for those units, if you're food-positive, you add the food the city produces too, calculating it again as:  Total food produced by the city minus twice the city's population.  ...  ...  With the newly-grown population point included.

So the number of food-hammers the city actually produces will fall 2 food-hammers short of what the city screen claims it will produce, potentially resulting in a to-be-finished unit failing to complete.  You can avoid this bug by using Avoid Growth, but of course then the city doesn't grow.

[Amicalola]

I had three cities set to 1-turn settlers last turn, but only one of them completed it. The other two both(!) had their settlers on 99/100 hammers, but I am certain that they had 1 turn on the settler last turn. All three cities grew a size on the inter-turn, as that was why I picked them for settler-builds. The 99/100 thing in 2/3 cities seems too specific to be a coincidence, so am I missing something? A feature? A bug? No idea, except that it's very sad.

I hate this bug so much ... but this is the way it works:

First, the game calculates food produced by the city, and applies any growth that results.  If you're building a Worker or Settler, the city produces no more than +0 net food, but following a whip (or following a turn when Avoid Growth was on) if Avoid Growth is off, a city can grow thanks to a full food box even while producing no net food, and will do so.  The new pop unit doesn't produce anything on the turn it appears, but the food production has already been calculated, so when growing normally, it (in effect) doesn't eat any food.

Then the game calculates hammers produced by the city, ignoring food.  But what if you're building a Settler or Worker?  Well, for those units, if you're food-positive, you add the food the city produces too, calculating it again as:  Total food produced by the city minus twice the city's population.  ...  ...  With the newly-grown population point included.

So the number of food-hammers the city actually produces will fall 2 food-hammers short of what the city screen claims it will produce, potentially resulting in a to-be-finished unit failing to complete.  You can avoid this bug by using Avoid Growth, but of course then the city doesn't grow.

Thanks Refsteel, your explanations are always amazingly helpful. And in this case, amazingly frustrating.  Grumble Grumble. I suppose it won't be the difference though. 

Big report coming when I play my turn later, but for now:

I'm going to need an extension this turn please, I'm travelling today and unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to play my turn on time.

Hopefully this is just an innocent trip...

[Amicalola]

T235 - War. Again.
Surprise! I'm at war with Lazteuq this turn too. He actually declared, I suppose because my positioning wasn't very subtle. So I went in and captured the islands in-between us. This was kind of a weird turn for combat rolls, with Lazteuq winning a bunch of low odds fights, and me doing the same. But overall, the odds probably worked out around average for both of us. 


Bombers have been based on basically all islands, so we'll be able to pound the crap out of any coastal units Lazteuq leaves garrisoning. That said, I'm not really sure what to do here; Lazteuq can retake any city I capture due to the way airdropping seems to work (infinite in most cities, but only 1 per turn in resistance cities), unless I land a tonne of MGs in there. I don't really have a good way to land tonnes of MGs in them. So it's complicated and tricky, and I really haven't planned enough for this. That's a trend at this point in the game - there's just too much to think about every turn. 

My reasoning behind this war is that these troops won't arrive in time to help against Piccadilly anyway. If we lose, it won't be because of the Lazteuq war. And if we win, I'll be very glad I started this invasion (I suspect it will take MUCH longer than the Western Continent invasions did) ahead of time. I sent fish/fish and copper/copper with Charriu. We will see what comes of that.


Against Piccadilly, I also declared and took the islands. 


I don't think there's a chance in hell that I can raze a spaceship city next turn, but establishing the island footholds might help if I continue the invasion. I'm sending a significantly larger force, but it's another 3 turns away (much too late). It really hurts that I could have sent the larger force, for the most part, 3 turns ago and been fine. I was just too laser-focused on the Western Invasion to put enough thought into it.   I suppose it's no help dwelling on it now though. 

Demos were hurt by the defensive pacts triggering, but not as badly as I expected. Before:


After:


Ouch. Happiness is becoming a huge issue, and I keep wanting to build markets/theatres/temples. But then I realise how much more I want a bomber/tank/marine/MG. It's a really vicious cycle. I sent peace to Ichabod and Frozen, and I'm really hopeful that they'll take it. I do genuinely have no interest in fighting them, even if this Piccadilly attack is successful. 

Unlike your favourite dictator, it seems Miguelito actually has a strong enough initial-invasion force. 


But it's a turn too late to raze any spaceship producing parts. I guess my diplo either didn't get through, or Miguelito couldn't arrive in time regardless. So I suspect it's probably Game Over and a Piccadilly win, but we'll need to see what happens; maybe Mig can pull off something crazy. 

I am feeling some reporting fatigue as well as game fatigue. I'm not really sure how to describe it. I'll definitely keep reporting the interesting things, but I might have to scale down from the DZ/SD war level of reporting, because that was a bit too much.

[Amicalola]

T236 
Lazteuq offers peace, for 75 gpt. In my exhausted state, I'm tempted to take it. It's one less thing to think about during the marathons that these turns are becoming. But there's no path to victory that involves me leaving Lazteuq alone, I think, so I don't accept it. It does make me consider the alternative possibility of claiming land on the eastern continent, but I suspect Frozen/Ichabod/Piccadilly will be much tougher customers than Lazteuq.

I am very grumpy that I lost my open borders with Frozen and Ichabod, while Miguelito kept his by declaring a turn later. He probably planned that. At least I got peace treaties. 


Civac sent this deal.


I'm not sure why he wants copper and iron, but I guess I'm not complaining. 

I thought I spied a huge opportunity when Piccadilly only had 17 units in Taghaza, to my 19 attacking units. Surely, with enough bombers, that could work, right? 


We did not have enough bombers.  


I only had 8 instead of 12 in range (Lazteuq deemed a higher priority due to Piccadilly being able to defend easily - or so I thought), and I will always wonder if 4 more bombers would have been the difference in making a raze viable. Depressingly, I actually suspect that the answer is yes, although there is always the possibility that more bombers would have made Piccadilly defend better regardless.

You can also see Piccadilly moving the capital to Gao, which means I will have to face most, if not all, defenders. I'm not optimistic.

[RefSteel]

Thanks Refsteel, your explanations are always amazingly helpful. And in this case, amazingly frustrating.

Thank you - and I concur with the frustration with this bug! Also, I realized a couple of the things I mentioned here were slightly incomplete: I mentioned whipping with a nearly-full box and turning Avoid Growth off the turn after having it on, but as you probably inferred, the foodhammer growth bug can happen any time you're building a Settler or Worker with a full food box, which as you've seen can happen when running a corp that provides enough food to doubly fill the food box in one turn! Also, note the short-version teleport rules I posted up-thread are not complete. For instance, if your units are on a landmass on which you have no cities, the tile score ignores the nearest-city distance completely; boats have their own related but different and complicated rules; and when I said you can "never" teleport to a shrouded (never-explored) tile, I was excluding the case where you jump multiple times in a row (e.g. declaring war can lead to two jumps as happened to your axe, and border popping can sometimes lead to a long series of jumps since it happens one tile at a time) - because in those cases, a tile that was shrouded before teleportation began can be defogged by one jump and thereby become a valid destination for a later jump, causing the unit to seem to jump onto a tile that was unexplored before the teleportation happened.

I am feeling some reporting fatigue as well as game fatigue. I'm not really sure how to describe it. I'll definitely keep reporting the interesting things, but I might have to scale down from the DZ/SD war level of reporting, because that was a bit too much.

I can definitely understand this; thank you very much for keeping up the reporting while and to the extent you could and can!

[pindicator]

So, any tips for managing 100+ city empires?

[Amicalola]

Thanks for the specifics Refsteel, I'd inferred the foodbox stuff but the teleportation is all very new to me. I'll try to keep reporting as best I can.

So, any tips for managing 100+ city empires?

Hmm. Don't?

More specifically, I dunno. I've just been doing a big ol' run-through of my cities each turn, which is something I don't normally do (just intersperse micro with other stuff for the turn), but is definitely necessary here. Maybe the best tip I have is to start letting go of the little things; I'm still tile swapping for optimal growth/build times/etc. It might be pretty pointless to be doing that now. On the other hand, I'd welcome tips from others!


It is fun and novel having such a big empire. City management is normally my favourite aspect of civ, and that includes this game. And then the general ridiculousness of Cereal Mills adds even more novelty to everything; it's spread pretty thoroughly through SD and Tarkeel's territory now, so about half the continent. So I think most of the stress comes from the 'winning pressure' of the game, and it just bleeds onto the city management portion as well. But I'll try to talk more about Empire Management in my next few reports, make it more fun again.

The other big thing I'm doing is trying to spread Cereal Mills as fast as possible, and figure out how many buildings the Cereal'd Western Continent cities need before they can start whipping units. The givens are Granary, Courthouse, Forge, Factory, Coal Plant, Barracks. But then I wonder 'what about Banks? Libraries? Airports?' So far I've been skipping those three, but I'm wondering if a mass-whip of them in, say, 10 turns, would give some necessary economic oomph. Or if it would be a total waste of resources that could just be tanks instead.

In other news:

Hi Amicalola,

I popped a destroyer of yours and found a message inside. It says we are at war. The relevant war order looks to be Lazteuq->Charriu->Amicalola I think.

Bye Charriu

Apparently no one wants to be friends with a megalomaniac dictator.


I dunno, maybe it's a classic "Amicalola Morale Death-Spiral" (can it be that if it's self-aware?), but from a perspective of winning this looks pretty doomed. I don't think we have much chance of stopping Piccadilly, and I don't think I have a good chance of beating Miguelito even if we do. I needed at least one or two people on-side, but right now it feels a bit like "Amicalola against the world." Which I suppose isn't totally unexpected when my victory involves owning half the map, and I won't complain too much about it. But my prediction about being spread too thinly certainly seems to be coming true. So yeah, not feeling good about the whole 'winning' thing.

I think I'll try to just focus on the war with Lazteuq/Charriu as a fun challenge in logistics and warfare (not at all convinced I can actually keep territory against both of them; my supply lines are shit, tech isn't that superior, and half my forces are on the other side of the world). It could actually be quite a fun war, in a vacuum.

By the way, here's a question: if my opponent stations 2+ fighters in a city, is there anything I can do about that? Like is there any way to neutralise enemy fighters? Or are my bombers basically useless in that area?