[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[RefSteel]

Well, culture recession after a conquest is always unpredictable (at least to me, I am sure Ref would know)

Oh dear heavens no. I know it's still extremely buggy, but I have no idea how the bugs actually work or what triggers them. I think tiles that are not in cultural range of any still-enemy-held city that inexplicably still have that enemy's culture on them after a city conquest get reset (not necessarily to the right status, but at least to either neutral or the right status) on the interturn, but I'm not even completely sure of that. Tiles that have no business being in neutral territory but are functionally neutral nevertheless also eventually reset, but not necessarily on the interturn, not necessarily all at once, and not necessarily with any relation to the time when the city that formerly controlled them comes out of resistance as far as I can tell. Sometimes other city captures seem to affect it? I'm not sure. It's a mess.

Finally, a bug report. I can't build the space elevator anywhere.

I assume this is a problem with the way the map was set up: Minimum and maximum latitude are established in the worldbuilder file. On a toroidal map like this they should probably have been set so that all cities count as equatorial, but it must have been set so that none do instead. I think Ramk can fix it using his server-side magic. I don't know if anyone else has tried to build it and run into the same problem yet....

And on the GNP deal stuff, I definitely agree that it was a tough decision - it's just that ultimately what was decided was the only possible call lurkers could make: Anything else would be interfering arbitrarily in the game.

[Miguelito]

I have a monopoly on Robotics, so I should be the only one who has run into the space elevator issue. I'm good to PM Ramk then? Thanks for the suggestion.

[Hitru]

Yeah, feel free to pm Ramk, I think he is the only one who can fix that.

[Miguelito]

turn 246 - calm before the storm (?) - 2 left

A rather uneventful turn, but probably the longest I've played (as in, ever for a civ turn), because next turn the preparation must hold up, or it's bust....

To my immense surprise, Piccadilly had not nuked us. Oh how I am regretting not to have set up a 1 turn of SDI last turn. 100 hammers were missing. The crucial point was when I built a bomb shelters in Angola (IW city), for evidently little overflow. Maybe that was silly; Picc was always going to use the nuke to salvage his chances of winning and not just punish us, and if Amica had done something I sure as hell would have given Picc peace.

Because this turn I really can't figure out a reason for Picc not to use his ICBM in Stony Lake:




The units covering the workshop were all destroyed. He's left with a skirmisher at half health, and no galleons in range - or maybe one if he spends 2 GGs on a possibly loaded galleon that is 7 moves away. But I dropped 5 paras. Well actually with lucky kills by the nuke he may achieve it . But it seems far fetched.

Picc had used his units to kill some of our stray MechInfs, some of which had stayed to defend the wounded city attackers:


Bad trade for us, should have avoided that probably

This I had not seen before:


So the bomber gets away unharmed, but the SAM has still spent its shot for the turn? Nice. I'd think I have thrown planes at SAMs at least 2 dozen times already and it had not happened before.

At the end of the turn we are positioned as such:


Ships are concentrated on the "X"s. Picc was the first in this game to use this pattern, in order to limit the damage from nukes with their blast radius. But I guess it's common knowledge among the vets? Our currently 6 nukes are spread out among all but the southernmost of these fleets , so hopefully we lose no more than 1 if Piccadilly strikes (the one 2N of Silent has 2). The southern fleet includes 2 carriers and the transports, so at first sight they should be the most attractive for a nuking. I guess the planes would die (which sucks because we want to draw SAM fire before bombers), but the ground units should largely survive and get healed by the medic chariot (assuming he survives). And their health doesnt matter much anyways, we need them to take cities mostly. The cruisers are also carrying a total of 31 guided missiles.

There are bomb shelters in Djenne and Kumbi Saleh now, and by my tests that may require up to 4 nukes. Bombing may help, but we just don't have very many bombers in range. It occurred to me too late to use Amica's islands in the west as airfields, and I could bring only 3 bombers there. Then we have 4 for each of Djenne and Kumbi Saleh from Bilma and Subi a Serra. Guided missiles can help as well to pick up survivors, but we have none in range of Djenne, unless.... 

So, we should have comfortably enough for the capital, but I want complete elimination next turn. Not just because it's cool and to end the troll deal with Amica (Picc's GNP is at -980 ). But also Amica has 16 transports in one ofthe islands, and if I can't take out their ports they can just unload and hit us from Picc's railroads. And to take out the ports I first need Picc's culture gone. So that may be a deciding factor on whether to let Picc win or not.


Charriu had asked for mutual fish-horse (because being a downright sweetheart he is sending me all of his iron - in exchange for Construction resources that is, which then eat into the first ring of our former Mjmd cities... ). My repsonse:


Sent the same to Lazteuq.



I mentoined that Amica had got Advanced Flight. We should be able to 1 turn it next turn with a bunch of wealth builds. I first queued a lot of wealth for this turn, bringing the GNP back up to 8.5k, but we want Amica to agree to our very reasonable demands and not start the war this turn already, so I did not want to look too threatening.

Demos. 


I fear the rival best MfG is Amica now that civac's GA is over. Now include the food differential (even considering his superior number of cities), and remember that they convert food to hammers at like 1->4.5. Is defensive advantage enough to make up for that? 
Still no. 1 in population though . Which is a bad sign however, because it is a symptom of us just having no use for excess population. 5 additional Mech Infs per turn sure would come in handy. However giving up Free Speech we might have fallen behind techonologically much faster. Or we would have hadto make up for it with wealth builds. Say 400-500 of the 1000 hammers that 5 MechInfs are worth get converted to wealth, then we probably come out on top. Add to that the civic maintenance for FS. However the culture bonus has not been completely insignificant either.



t 247 preview: Picc may have outplayed me. Or maybe not, we'll see. It now depends on how the nukes do

[superdeath]

"waits for the mega post"

[Piccadilly]

"joins the waiting crowd"

Congratulation on that finishing blow! I am looking forward to reading your point of view and the new race that has now begun.

[Ramkhamhaeng]

Finally, a bug report. I can't build the space elevator anywhere.

I assume this is a problem with the way the map was set up:  Minimum and maximum latitude are established in the worldbuilder file. 

Yeah, the latitude range in the Worldbuilder file was set on [45°,45°], not [-45°,45°].
I don't know if the elevator ban was intentional or just a typo by the map creator.

I changed the latitude range on [-20°, 20°] and assume that Miguelito can build the elevator now.

[Hitru]

What a race to finish here. Amazing game to lurk! Thanks for keeping thread updated

[Miguelito]

Finally, a bug report. I can't build the space elevator anywhere.

I assume this is a problem with the way the map was set up: Minimum and maximum latitude are established in the worldbuilder file.

Yeah, the latitude range in the Worldbuilder file was set on [45°,45°], not [-45°,45°].
I don't know if the elevator ban was intentional or just a typo by the map creator.

I changed the latitude range on [-20°, 20°] and assume that Miguelito can build the elevator now.

Thank you very much for the quick fix! I ran some numbers, and if I build the elevator before all the spaceship tiles it is a saving of 500-1000 base hammers. More importantly, it becomes easier to build the last few parts as fast as possible. I hope I can match Piccadilly's move and 1 turn the last one(s) on the turn we research Ecology. Might be tough though.

"joins the waiting crowd"
Congratulation on that finishing blow! I am looking forward to reading your point of view and the new race that has now begun.

As I said already in the tech thread, it was by a pretty thin margin in the end. You outplayed me elegantly in the defense several times, including this last turn, and ultimately it was just a little too much of our brute force that made the difference. Great showing! If you read the last few pages here, I was also really considering in offering peace to you in order to not let Amica the Traitorous win. In the end I didn't feel like I've had enough of this game yet, and after seeing how you managed to stall an attack with limited forces I decided to make the attempt.


To the report!

So last turn I was waiting for Picc's ICBM drop, having failed to 1-turn SDI.
He picked a smarter target than any that I had thought of:


Once again, I had fallen into the trap of thinking what he would do to damage us, instead of what would best help his chances to get to the win condition. Nuking the city achieved the following:

• took out a nuke on the cruiser in the city
  
• eliminated workers around the city. I had kept them around because I hoped to build a city and canal which would enable me to hit Djenne with guided missiles. Instead they were now missing to rebuild the fort
  
• which he also took out, thus cutting out the two missile cruisers around the island with their 3 nukes from hitting the capital.
  

I believe he also used one or two GG-enabled commandos to take out a nuked garrison on the hill W and some workers on the cow (?) and deleted them afterwards. Stupid me had been planning for a commando strike for some weeks already, but it didn't occur to me to prepare for commandos of his . I had 4workers further east, and 2 on the boat. That was exactly one too few to build the fort!
Meaning we had now just 2 nukes and no guided missiles in range of Djenne. As mentioned before, Djenne had a bomb shelter. In my tests, to reliably clear out healthy defenders from a bomb shelter city you'd need 4. Now we had 7 bombers and 10 fighters in range, but would that be enough to damage the defenders so that 2 nukes would suffice? Moreover there were a bunch of MGs who would not even take collateral damage from bombers, and could also intercept a number of planes. Well, we had to try:



And now I would claim to have done a somewhat creative play. First, having used the planes flying from Amica's island I finally did what I had been waiting to do all along:


Mining hammers went down from 39 (or 40?) per city to 26 . At least I suppose it's good for GDP at least? (not actually, converting Mining hammers via wealth is cost effective). But anyways, if the game was to continue past this turn there could be no peace with Amica.
Next step:




It had to burn. We have next to no temples anyways, at least. The Security Bureau and Jail are curious.
Now I am enabled to do this:


I wanted to avoid having coastal cities on this subcontinent, in order to prevent Amica from getting ports, but here it was necessary. The city will just remain on size 1 forever and autoraze eventually. Now what it does for us is this:


The missile cruiser had just enough movement to get there (although I could have founded 1E as well for the same effect), bringing Djenne into the 5 tile range needed for the nuke blast radius to hit it. Combat settler ftw! (I should have it 1W though to spare the workers. They survived to be captured anyways, undeservedly).


After that I launch another nuke from the inner sea:


The result was 4 units barely surviving:


I had screwed up on t 245 already by walking back on my plan to move two missile cruisers west so they could hit Djenne, because having achieved the canal we could nuke that way. However that would have enabled us to also hit with guided missiles, which would have been really useful here to eliminate those last few defenders. Now I had to use the last remaining nuke:


And the city was open. You already saw the GG I had stored on a ship, enabling us to walk in:





Actually before that, I went for the garrison of Kumbi Saleh. As always the bombers went first:


We had just 4 in range, and tbh I had expected a worse result. We had no nuke left in the inner sea, so the guided missiles would have to do. And they did, although it was terribly expensive. I had tested in WB, and found that culture defense did matter, but even considering that the damage our missiles did was still worse in game. Maybe it was the promotions, or fortify bonus? Well they damaged the garrison enough so that the commando tank could take out the last defender.


But we were running short on missiles, not least because:


4 of them had not been loaded onto the ships last turn

It was enough for this MG though:


However not for the explorer underneath, and notice as well that the airship renders us unable to take the city via a paradrop anyways. And we don't have a transport in range. I was prepared for this (not for the lack of missiles though). Had to take a little gamble:


Which we won, phew.


A true hero. Should I upgrade him to a gunship next turn? Can gunships ride on railways?

I was out of missiles to hit Takrur though, the little 1pop city that Picc had planted on turn 245. I could have razed it on turn 246, but would have lost some 8 units on the counterattack (and it was in range of the nuke, so I could not cover the attackers with the big stack), so I hadn't. It had just 3 defenders, but I had no planes left nor guided missiles. So I had to go for the maximum cost option:


Not once, but twice . Those nukes had been on the ship E of the island, and Takrur was the only target they could hit from there. Had I put 2 on the western ship instead (which would strike Djenne from the north), I would have had a spare nuke for Kumbi Saleh and everything would have been so much cheaper. To repeat, I spent 2 nukes at 750h each in order to destroy a garrison of 3 units. Was it worth it? At least it cut off the damned 1500 gpt payment to Amica by enabling us to eliminate Picc this turn, and removing the culture enabled us to maneuver freely. The commando tank could have taken its 3rd city for this turn, but instead I went for the flashy option:



With Piccadilly's culture gone I could then take out Amica's last foothold on this continent:


I fear I will not be able to do much about the islands however but to defend the skies.

I then farmed Picc's remaining units for XP, including 3 battleships with destroyers (he had positioned them so the missile cruisers would be out of range). The only loss was a silly half dead bomber that got itself intercepted by a destroyer. Then, to my greatest satisfaction I could take the city that had proven the hardest nut to crack:


And that was that.
The final devastation:


Also curiously there are still 3 tiles of Mali culture even though they're eliminated .

So we used all 5 available nukes, and all available missiles. With a bit better planning we could have achieved the same with just 3 nukes and would probably have a couple of missiles left. Maybe I'm smarter next time.

[Miguelito]

t247 part 2:

Meanwhile, Amica had not been lazy either. First off, they had understood my demands and played ball:


Of course that helped my motivation to keep this game alive. In total I think I received 2000-2500 gold from them (basically all I could ask for, once I started asking). They got 7*1500 = 10.5k from Piccadilly; I believe 3 turns of these were partly imaginary. Of course that does not include the ~15k I spent on rushing nukes (not always in the most sensible way), nor the severe losses that we took while Amica was laughing.

But Amica had also rushed some nukes meanwhile :


Look at rival average power. Compare that number to last turn. Multiply the difference by 9 and the difference is >6.8 million . That's a bit less than half our total power. Mind that this is at the start of the turn, before I did anything around Piccadilly, and that Amica's power actually increased. Cairo had had a quite respectable power graph:


However he had been playing his trademark ultra fast turns (of course that's his call to make, won't blame him if he isn't enjoying the game as much), and presumably had been stacking everything in 2 or 3 locations, were they were easy pickings for Amica. They hit two sites on the coasts, and the northern border were they went to conquer cities immediately. (on another note, I sure hope that civac's plan is round 3 with Ichabod, because else... ). We also have nuke subs confirmed:


I have been screening with destroyers for a while already, now I'm extra paranoid. Mind that in CtH airships can't spot them, so they have a pretty high chance to stay undiscovered, and we need to maintain a destroyer screen in front of our fleets. In fact I convinced myself that it made sense to even queue a few attack submarines. I also built a few missile submarines a while ago, which are on their way to the combat zones.

F4 is lovely:


civac is the only player that has not been at war with them in the last 15 turns (Ichabod and Dulland because of their Defensive Pact with Piccadilly).

Now, what is Amica's objective with attacking Cairo?

• Possibly the opportunity to hit huge stacks with a few nukes was very enticing. They can now probably conquer him within < 10 turns.
  
• However the big cities will take at least ten more turns to get online, meaning they will be of limited use against our space attempt.
  
• Did they fear a backstabbing while engaged against us? Seems unlikely. Cairo may have had means to be spiky in a conventional arms war, but it seems far fetched that he could have become dangerous on the offense.
  
• It helps an attack on us from our west, but that was already feasible from what they had.
  

So I am not quite sure what this is about, and curious to read their reasoning after the game. Note that they keep adding military on full steam. Considering these demos (eot):


Where they are coming pretty close to us on our supposedly strong metric of MfG, they could also convert most of that to commerce via wealth, while whipping units to pressur us to not do the same. But apparently they want to outright crush us before we get to AC. Again, I am not sure how much spending ressources on Cairo helps them with that.

Meanwhile, on the Persian front they are in retreat for the moment, actually:




There is a huge number of transports moving south.
I probably should have resisted the temptation. They have three healthy battleships in range yet. Note that we have 4 SAMs in the city, so bombers at least shouldn't face some problems.

I went for another, possibly risky, naval battle:




(Just the top three kills). I *think* there are no ships of theirs in range apart from the two in Botonay Bay. That lack of reinforcements concerns me, actually. What are they waiting for? SDI I would hope, but maybe they have some nefarious plan that I am not seeing yet.

We took one island:


We lost a 80% fight at Barbar9 in the lower right corner of the image, and since we had just enough units on the transports to not allow for losses could not take it. We also had not enough for Barbar6. I hope we can take these next turn. It should work unless something unforeseen happens, but that happens all the time.

Domestically we're also having unexpected problems:


Ugh. Ok, that can happen from time to time, it's not too bad, right?


Ouch . They even charge the gold cost anyways.

Ok, this was a pretty intense turn report. In fact I had to break it up in to as I learned that there's a limit on images perp post . I hope I find space to write about broader strategy next time. Basically it boils down to whether to tech full steam to space on wealth builds, prioritize military at the cost of having to defend for longer, or where to go in between those two.