[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Miguelito]

this is just obscene


I would argue that MrCairo could have avoided this (the decapitation strike, maybe not the final result). He can't have missed the subs. And what he had to do was spread out units. If you need 2 nukes to kill stacks of 6 ships each it becomes a lot less cost effective.





Meanwhile I may be committing the same  mistake this turn:


Bunch of ships and units here. I am rushing the bomb shelters, but we're vulnerable during this turn.And screening wide enoug for subs is very difficult. Fingers crossed for our SDI to work! (Amica had their own completed this turn). And oh yeah I detected and killed that sub, sadly no missiles on it. Nav2 subs with nukes on them can strike a stack 13 tiles away, and they are invisible to air reconnaissance. (I realize that I just complained about Cairo falling prey to them)

Not that there were no areas of agreement left with Amica:



But in general, relations are rather unfriendly:


yeah, we did lose that forward fleet

But we could exact revenge:




I fear it won't matter too much, but at least the general is nice . Barbar10 still has some units left in it after this turn, but they have nowhere to go and should fall next. The question is if we should advance further. We may be able to raze some islands, at the same time at some point we will likely get ambushed and lose our fleet. Hm.

What is wrong with this image?


Not a misclick though, even though it feels pretty weird. But I really don't want any ports on that landmass.

I'm learning that in civ 4 you can't clear fallout without top technology.


That means that we can't rebuild the fort here, and have to put it on the banana instead . Maybe prebuild it to -1 and keep a worker around.

I'm not seeing anything serious from Amica here yet. Apparently they take Cairo seriously enough to focus there. I'll attempt something on the islands, but I'm not overly hopeful. Just one transport available. 

[RefSteel]

Thrilling turn reports; thanks for the updates! I'm glad Ramkhamhaeng was able to fix the map latitude error - and (now-belated) congratulations on the brilliant eleventh-hour conquest that made it a relevant question!

[Miguelito]

Yeah got myself nuked like a noob .
3 steps closer to GG probably

[Miguelito]

I'll beat myself up over this forever. Sometimes it seems like I'm just asking to suffer. I mean, I saw it coming, to the point that I rushed the bomb shelter.
And then I did not only leave an oversized garrison in the city, but also a bunch of ships, and loaded a nuke on top of one, completely needlessly
I fear the psychology is something along the lines of I don't want this to happen -> I will play optimistic -> I don't take basic cautions even though I'm aware of the threat.

We have reinforcements incoming, so until Amica brings the really big hammer we can still fight. But Amica conquered Cairo within 3 turns, so there is not really much reason to be hopeful. At least they have taken some losses (or just burnt through lots of nukes), the power ratio actually improved over the last few turns despite the massive losses.

But, look at this:


An ace for the history books! Actually I'm going to upgrade this one :D

We actually, surprisingly, even managed to finally take the island, despite them reinforcing once more. With the last unit available.


So that's nice. Or until it rains nukes again, at least.

Once more those lovely graphics:


It will most likely fail though, as Amica has one transport in range already. But it's the only way to make some use of them at least, so why not try. And I got to pillage the town 

With Amica's and now Cairo's deals gone, Mining is but a shadow of its former self:


Used to be 39 or 40.

We might plausibly lose the lead yet even:


But how does civac do that? This is how:


Well if they ally and civac stabs us it's game over, and quickly so. I still don't see him doing that though.
Ramping up research builds:

[Ginger()]

Congrats on the elim
How many nukes do you have stockpiled; can you give us a screenshot of your military advisor?

On a side note, how have you enjoyed this era of the game compared to others? It's so rare to see games go this long.

[Miguelito]

Congrats on the elim
How many nukes do you have stockpiled; can you give us a screenshot of your military advisor?

On a side note, how have you enjoyed this era of the game compared to others? It's so rare to see games go this long.

Thanks for the congrats, also to Ref; however I fear it's playing out as predicted, and I already feel bad for not letting Picc win.

After stupidly losing a nuke to Amica's, I am left with 2. That is also due to losing a bunch of Mining hammers,  which kept a few from completing, so next turn we'll have more (operational the turn after . I'll post an F5 next turn,  it looks fun. we have like 250 ships alone. Make sure to ask Amica the same for even sillier numbers

The modern age is very fun, yes. Domestically the interesting choice for me now is balancing win condition (including research builds) vs military, and some basic development in new cities like executives and granaries/forges (but is even that worthwhile anymore?). I probably should skew a lot harder towards the former,  because the longer it takes, the more time there is for Amica to  obliterate us, and it does not seem like we can stall them in the field.

Tactically of course air units and fast ships bring a lot more options and make tactics more diverse. On land it is a bit of a shame that all the fun niche WW2-age units - marines,  anti tank,  paras, MGs - don't have a modern follow up and it all gets reduced to mech inf, modern armour,  and (mobile) artillery (if we had the tech, but Amica is building some). A reasonable player who didn't sillily research Robotics would probably build just tanks and some artillery.  
Artillery is also niche I believe. It's pretty good for defense, as Picc has shown,  although I don't think I can justify the tech before all the spaceship techs.  But offensively you generally want to attack with tanks off boats,  and collateral with airforce and nukes. So my argument is that a modern army can end up being just tanks which feels stale. Oh well,  I haven't included gunships yet in the analysis,  they might change some things, admittedly.  
But the interesting part is on the seas anyways.
I have not quite wrapped my head around yet how to defend against Amica's nukes. How duo I defend against invisible ships that can eliminate entire stacks from 13 tiles away? the first measure to take is spreading out. That prevents a disaster like last turn, where 3 nukes took out about 30 units of ours. Had I have finished the bomb shelters already it would have cost them 6 nukes more likely,  making the hammer exchange more reasonable (but we can't really afford to trade hammers evenly). However spreading out also means that we are vulnerable to concentrated conventional attacks. Basically ports on the frontline can't be defended,  and I had acknowledged that already but taxing every coastal city in Picc's core. And I dismissed it in the Persi ask city to my huge detriment.
The next thing to do is keeping major forces 6 tiles off coast, ideally in a city with a shelter because ICBMs are still a thing - although the hammer investment against SDI is probably prohibitive,  averaging 6000 hammers per hit. But if the army is worth >10k hammers a shelter seems in order.   This approach is feasible as long as Amica has no inner sea access, which so far is true for all continents where we're involved. Sadly it wasn't an option for Cairo.
How do we defend against nukes on the sea though? Spreading out makes us vulnerable to Amica's (faster ) ships, but it seems to be the only option. I am pathetically screening for subs with forward destroyers, but they can't really reach them - remember, range 13 - and once Amica commits they can just pick them off. I am sending some attack subs,  but ultimately those are still vulnerable to destroyers, so they'll run into the same problem. Stealth destroyers would help actually ,  but I can't justify the tech. And of course in the end they are easily countered once Amica gets some of their own.

So yes,  modern age is pretty exciting. However I am clearly quite inadept at it.  I've always been prone to silly blunders,  and they get punished much harder in this setting.
What's more,  Amica (and Picc before, but we were able to just drown him in hammers) has shown a way better feeling for the dynamics of this age. They have gone from 47 to >190 cities within 30 turns. Of course they had a great target in the continent to their west, where you were advanced if you had cavalry, and also the perfect traits and wonder to capitalise from that late conquest. But if I had had a similar understanding we surely would have taken over at least Lazteuq and probably Charriu, and likely could still have stopped Picc, maybe forcing Amica to commit a little more. 
Instead during the last GA I first decided that war was infeasible and committed to a tech race against Picc, where I knew already that the odds were bad.
And then, with bad civics, I switched to pursuing war and found that it was actually doable.  But at that point I felt like I had to commit everything on Picc and could not set aside something for actually profitable conquest. And maybe I was wrong again. In any case,  Amica could use that timeframe to pick up more useful land. So it feels like I have been just reacting, and always a few steps late,  for a long time. Of course Amica's treachery,  forcing me to invest everything in order to enable their victory (and the faint chance of ours), while they even got richer from out is unforgotten. But two-hour doubt they also read the game (and myself) correctly there.
Finally at this point it seems like I lack the mental strength or commitment to play this game a the necessary level. I mostly bumble through the turns,  with a vague idea of what I want to do generally, and a few localized plans and ideas,  but there is a clear lack of attention to detail in the wider picture.  That leads to blunders like last turn,  but also, for example, I don't really have a clear idea of how to develop Picc's cities optimally - are execs and buildings really worth it at this point, or should I just build wealth? I am doing the former because it feels nice,  but it's very possibly suboptimal. I am even spreading Mining to cities without courthouses in order to get those up fast're, and of course that's really expensive.  

Meanwhile Amica is evidently playing with a detailed plan, as the impressive 3 turn Cairo conquest clearly shows.  They are playing turns on the order of 7 hours, although of course I don't know how much of that it's afk. My own turns were taking 2.5-3 hrs, and while that is a lot,  I have always been pretty inefficient in that regard. It's barely more than what I used to spend towards the end of PB54, with 40 cities and much simpler medieval tactics.

Hate to say it, but at this point Amica deserves to win (for their play, not the morals). Still going to try of course.

[Ginger()]

Will make sure to ask Amica for his mil advisor screen  
On single player Deity, which is the only time since childhood noob days that I've had games go this long, Gunships tend to be pretty useless except ironically as defenders against armor (but they get no def bonus   )

For developing Piccadilly's your new cities, I would frame it like a math problem in early game micro. How much longer do you expect to need (or hold) those cities to launch your spaceship (no legendary culture yet? tsk tsk  ). Then you just multiply those turns of gain against the initial investment. The problem is, and you nailed it on the head, spending the time to run the turn, then the time to make these reports () all takes a lot.

[Miguelito]

Here you go:


The number of 250 ships is outdated, sadly, because of last turn's stupidity. We also lost an uncomfortable amount of Mechinfs and some Modern Armours

I have finally come around to making an estimate for how long space will take. With a lot of, but not all-encompassing Research builds the techs should be done in 10 or maybe 9 turns, tp my own mild surprise. And I could probably get that down further by a turn or two, but then I will surely lag with production of spaceship parts, as I am just now starting on planning. Btw some of Picc's cities conserved their laboratories, and I am looking towards making spaceship parts in 3 of them - if Amica lets me that is, as they are preparing to open a new front there (before allowing me to establish full cultural control, good idea I guess).

[El Grillo]

Congratulations on the joint win and well played! The maneuvers against Picc were just in time, and the thorough reporting all along was greatly appreciated.

[Lewwyn]

Well played guys! It's been a long wild ride and I'm just amazed how it all played out. Really Congrats!