[PB63 Spoilers] Ginger and Lazteuq find a way to peace

[Ginger()]

Here’s a general strategy question for lurkers, how often do you worry about feeding other players’ shrines? Is it worth the beaker investment to get a religion and deny the income? (In this particular case I don't think I’m generating a prophet without Angkor Wat)

[Miguelito]

Best case you feed it then conquer it.
Second best it's somebody who won't be a threat.
I am generally quite wary of taking costs myself in order to deny gains to an opponent in an FFA setup, at least before the end game. Both end up losing.

[Ginger()]

   
Repeat business is best business 

   
Too little too late I'm afraid...


   
 well played. Being first in the timer there's nothing I can do about that. That is a lot of Chariots, and I specifically scouted his lands for them before he booted me out. That was either a hidden stack somewhere or he produced them all in the last couple turns and was able to mobilize them because 2 movers.


   
Now since I'm nothing if not a pragmatist, I decided to give peace a chance. Virconium will unfortunately be a good city for him, but better than losing 1 or 2 of mine, regardless how expensive I can make it. I'm about 2 turns behind on unit logistics for this war, and second on the timer, and I lose two cities, even if it takes most of Mjmd's army, giving him cheap peace is better than taking expensive losses myself, it's an FFA not a duel. Settlers are cheap but the granaries and the libraries, yuck.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
In the event Mjmd refuses, I have enough gold to hit construction and have set up Praet whips in all of my cities, and we make the land bleed. That would be the last diplomacy I send to or accept from him. Still no power spike from Bing despite his offer. (What is going on inside his head?).

[Ginger()]

The (First?) Sumerian War, Postmortem (Midmortem?)

So Mjmd has razed two cities and now threatens Cumae, forcing a warrior-spear upgrade out of me for 80 gold. 
Then sends back my peace offer for Virconium, there's two plausible explanations for this: 
A) he feels slighted by our previous diplo and wants to take the opportunity to rub it in. 
B) he genuinely means it and is an idiot. He's just played his presumably strongest card (Any stronger cards and I'm dead, and I never peace out on unfavorable terms if I'm not favored to win. Woe unto those who try to extort dead men), leverage for city gift border readjustment is gone now, because peace doesn't give me that much. Hypothetically if I just had to resettle the cities it would probably be worth it, but between the pillaging he's likely to do, the breaking of my diplo with Bing and Cairo, and the risk of him settling the land, there's zero reason to give peace now.

So, do I respond with similarly insulting messages, or do I just keep silent? I'll keep silent, it'll be easier to get a read on him if the message comes in without my perturbation.

Now, on to the postmortem; before playing my turn or discussing the future ahead, I wanted to analyze the 3 biggest causes of the failure.
#1. Failing to reconsider the value of Virconium after Hanging Gardens fell.
That city was planned around starting at 2 population with a quick granary. It's complete garbage without that 8 turn kickstart, and while I was fine provoking a response with a somewhat valuable city, at that point it was a waste of 100 hammers and ~6gpt. 
#2 Timing 
After he saw my settler move up, if he didn't already have a shadow army in build queues, he definitely prepared units for whips in all cities, one turn production advantage, besides as I said, I planned for war after the Police State build up.
#3. Unit Logistics. Mjmd does not have a higher power than me, and despite razing two strong, developed cities, I still have more crop yield. The switch to Police State was timed with the intent of assembling an army to possibly use in a war if the power spike was not mirrored. The strategic decision to gear towards war was wrong (for other reasons I'll get to), but the cause of the defeat was tactical. He simply got the units there a bit faster, and had just enough coupled with the next thing...
#4 Turn Timer
I had a lot of choicier words before I calmed down, so I'll simply say that frankly I cannot understand how you guys play wars with turnsplits and no ability to have final say of your cities before production. As messy as real time multiplayer movements are, it's fair, everyone is on equal footing with double-moving or getting double-moved. It's pretty bad when you have to deal with interference between your turn and your production rolling, it's disgusting when one player has a monopoly on it. I mean the numbers speak for themselves; I have lost 5 units in this war so far to Mjmd's units. I have "lost" 3 to having hammer tile's stepped on or being unable to produce in a city before the attack (and at least 2 units delayed because of losing luxuries before adjusting production). Now, I don't know about you guys, but I consider a free 60% damage multiplier to be pretty unplayable. That's hopefully the last time I'll complain about this, but note to self, play slower if border tensions flare, and if it's a small game, I'll ask for sequential processing and see if I get any takers.
#5 GNP
This is the big strategic reason why the war was a bad idea. On paper my demos looked fine and competitive, but the truth is that I am shit broke without Representation. Despite impressive CY and competitive GNP, I simply could not whip like Mjmd could and preserve a respectable income. I'm still short Construction and Metal Casting, and will need HBR by the time he gets Machinery. I got suckered in on the use of SPI to crank out an army immediately after IW, but didn't fully appreciate the impact of freezing my tech for 5 turns or longer. And my tech could really explode about 10 turns after Caste if I generated 2 merchants, but I left that behind too. 


So what now?
I think it's clear that this is grinding classical era doom war. I will make an Academy out of the Scientist (can't bring myself to settle it, yuck), won't be needing GA or MoM for at least another 30 turns. The first strike Mjmd has landed is pretty devastating, so I need to reinforce and prepare to hit back. I think I can probably survive a duel with Mjmd but it will be super grinding and I fear he'll limp to next gen military faster with all of his Ziggurats. However, until then I will learn how to click that funny orange arrow button, and there is a certain peace and clarity of mind in that, no need for speculation over fancy tech plans or what Cornflakes or Superdeath are doing with their sandboxes. Bing does have construction but still no power spike, so we'll see. But this is where the prospect of victory lies, in foreign intervention. I've turned it over and over in my head, but I don't think he's backstabbing me and joining Mjmd, the only question remains is he biding his time to watch us bleed or is he just a bit slow on the draw. At this point I've just 
resigned myself to Bing doing whatever he will. I'll send all the supportive messages I can and accept any requests etc; and the rest, inshallah.

Will do a report of the current turn in the morning, going to sleep on the problem to ease the tilt and see if I get any inspiration.

[civac2]

This is sort of an initiation rite. Having your sand castle kicked in. Although, you do play direct IP multiplayer so you would know. I suspect these slow games produce more engagement and thus more pain.

So Mjmd has razed two cities and now threatens Cumae, forcing a warrior-spear upgrade out of me for 80 gold. 
Then sends back my peace offer for Virconium, there's two plausible explanations for this: 
A) he feels slighted by our previous diplo and wants to take the opportunity to rub it in. 
B) he genuinely means it and is an idiot. He's just played his presumably strongest card (Any stronger cards and I'm dead, and I never peace out on unfavorable terms if I'm not favored to win.

Yeah, make him bleed.

It has been proposed to let the attacked log in and change around city builds and whip. No one has ever pursued this outside of specific games as far as I'm aware.

[Ginger()]

   
Here we can see the devastation wrought by being first puller in the turn split. Unable to whip to reinforce or fix hammer tiles, had I, I would've lost one city at the best result for Mjmd and cleaned the chariot stack. (Did I say I wouldn't bitch about this? I lied.)

   
Here is a plan to put an Axe spear pair in a forest to maintain vision on Renzo, more advance warning is necessary with this cursed timer situation.

   
Here is the relaxation of GNP being no longer a consideration.

Oh and Bing declared on Mjmd and whipped a bunch, but his power graph is so low I don't really have high hopes. I need to get a scout to that front.

[Amicalola]

So would you accept peace in the near term, or are you wanting to stay at war for a while?

Edit: And yeah, I would (very hypocritically) say to try not to take it too hard. Happens to all of us.

[Ginger()]

Well the question of peace is interesting. If Mjmd wanted some kind of coexistence, I offered him a great city spot (its on a river and can share Renzo's food surplus) but he instead decided that his best interest was to raze my two cities. Now the tactical situation is bad for me and might point to peace, but the strategic circumstances forbid it. My advantage was: a growth curve, high pop, and the possibility of MoM/PHI golden age chaining into an early renaissance. Was. Those advantages no longer exist, with the latter being postponed to likely irrelevance, at least as far as this conflict is concerned.
So we have the following situation, and Mjmd has
A) classical infrastructure in all cities
B) low expenses for faster teching of next gen units
C) A proven desire to inflict damage on my civ as opposed to direct personal gains

A turn 10 peace would help my absolute position (remembering it's an FFA, not a duel), but would certainly hurt my relative position, and remembering point C, that is the key that matters. So white peace is also out of the question, and it follows that I need some gain from this war. Given the severity of the setback, I think it's fine to stake my overall wincon on that and act accordingly (ie, to the bitter end). I would accept a ceasefire, but that would be for the sole purpose of swapping out of this cursed timer position. 

It's not that I'm optimistic for the war and predict I'll score some stunning upset, it's that I will lose the game if a player with the thus-far stated intentions of Mjmd continues to exist directly to my north. In short, I need a reparation that can patch the damage, or I need to extract a similar pound of flesh, otherwise my position is a losing one. And given that Mjmd perceives himself victorious, we all know it's going to end up being the latter.

On a side note, wtf is Mjmd doing with so much unsettled land between him and bottom-power Superdeath? Seriously, am I the more profitable investment then unclaimed grassland next to someone with both other places to settle and the weakest military?  

[Ginger()]

Did you know you can 2pop cold-whip Catapults with Police State? Income is at neg 8, fun times. Cornflakes has Machinery.

[civac2]

In vanilla you can't due to a bug. Charriu fixed it iirc.