[PB64] naufragar's bingo parlor for assassins

[naufragar]

Oh god what have I done.

Removed my blissful ignorance.

The individual categories can be cross-referenced with other available date. Unit maintenance and unit supply are simple. For city maintenance you can toggle through your cities and add up the costs displayed there. For civics maintenance you can cross-reference the total civics maintenance number shown on the financial advisor with the mouseover of civic maintenance which shows the individual civics categories, as well as cross-referencing with the total shown on the civics screen.

Thanks for the method. It turns out that its the unit maintenance that's wrong. I've got 48 units. The tooltip tells me I've got free support for 18, so I've got to pay the gold cost for 30. There's a difficulty handicap, so my costs are reduced by 9. (More info on this formula can be found here.) Which means my total unit costs are 21, not 10 as the Unit Cost column says.

And now that I wrack my brain, I seem to remember people reporting a bug with Aggressive's unit cost reduction not appearing properly in this screen? Can't quite remember. It was just coincidence that the number was the same as an Org discount.

This has the side affect of proving (suggesting?) that inflation does in fact happen after the Org discount. Which is great news!

[Thoth]

Inflation is multiplicative so it doesn't make any difference if it's applied before or after the multiplicative inflation modifier.


ie: you have 100 gpt in civic maintenance and 10% inflation.

100 x 0.5 x 1.1 = 100 x 1.1 x 0.5

Your cost will be 55 gpt either way.

[naufragar]

Yes, you are right.

[Charriu]

Yes this version has a bug with the display of the unit maintenance. I worked on that for 3.0

[naufragar]

Yes this version has a bug with the display of the unit maintenance. I worked on that for 3.0

Ah yes! I remember now! Thank you very much for that!

I opened the turn up to this "offer" from Gavagai:



I suspect he is unhappy with me settling down by this deer:



He can go fuck himself. I'll war-peace him to see how committed he is to this. Frankly, after his idiotic assistance of Amica, I have no faith in him displaying any strategic sense. It may be that he truly wants to have made enemies of all four of his neighbors. Annoyingly, I have to wait until after he plays because I played after him last turn and I shouldn't double move him. (Despite him sending his diplo message after I played my turn because he logged in again. Annoying.)

Pseudo-edit: Notice again how that inner sea continues to screw me. That deer spot is 7 tiles from my capital but Gav can contest it because I have to walk around.

[naufragar]

Before the turn report, a bizarre bug report. I don't have auto-promote selected in my options, but my units have been autopromoting. I was suspicious when I saw that I had a City Raider catapult I had no memory of promoting. Now I've got a second, and not a single one of my units has promotions pending. I have no idea what's happening. I have toggled the option on and off in the hopes that that fixed whatever caused it. I'll let you know whenever I produce a barracks promoted unit if this has been resolved.

Anyway, on to the report.

An annoying quirk of our turn order rules:


Gav had played his turn before me. He then logged back in, saw my settler, and sent his ultimatum. I had to wait until he played to declare on him even though he was last in turn (and got the initiative in our border dispute). But by playing first and anticipating that I'd be pissed, he scrambled a defense towards Alexander III. Pity. If he hadn't, I could've burned the city with Cistercia's garrison. Now, Cistercia's garrison has to stay put. It's in some danger.

I have tried very hard to be Gavagai's ally. When he was antagonistic towards Amica, I straight up gave him a free luxury resource. I've given him a couple of lopsided luxury trades. And this is to say nothing of bending over backwards to fit his timing for the Amica war. The frankly insane hostility he's shown to me by throwing me under the bus in the war and then begrudging me a tundra deer city 7 tiles from my capital makes me think I have absolutely no way of predicting how he'll act, which means we can't be friends. I can't work with someone who seems to disregard what I see as their natural interest.

I've declared war and offered peace. If he accepts, so be it. I've got 10 turns in which to found my pathetic ice-ball tundra deer city. If he doesn't, well, then we fight. His power is higher than mine, but I don't think he's prepared to fight me right this moment. His peace treaty with Amica expires on turn 140, I believe. I don't think he has catapults yet, or if he does, he's just started making them. I believe the bulk of his 1-movers are about 4 turns away from my borders. And then once he crosses into my borders, his treaty with Amica expires. That can't be a comfortable feeling.

Amica for his part is one canny cat. He offered me fish-for-fish. I'm not sure how much I believe it, but I could see Amica being savvy enough to recognize that his +50% city count advantage means he can afford a long stretch of peace.

I responded with a fish-for-fish trade myself. I also eased off my espionage spending on him, although who knows if he'll notice. Amica could do nothing while Gav and I fight. He could swoop in and gobble up my northern cities while my stack is engaged down south. He could take back the two cities Gav took from him. It's uncertain and therefore frightening, but presumably my own worry is shared by Gav. On the other hand, the entire point of these last few turns has been that Gavagai's decision making process is totally alien to me, so who knows if I'm reading him correctly?

For the past 20 odd turns, I've been desperate for peace. Honest, I'm a peace-loving guy. These wars have essentially doomed my civ to irrelevance:


Which means I don't mind getting bloody in the ring.

[Mjmd]

Honest, I'm a peace-loving guy.

[naufragar]

I challenge anyone to look at this and tell me Gavagai isn't a lunatic:


My deer city is 7 tiles away from my capital and 15 tiles away from his. Gav leads the world in land area, with a 50% greater empire than the rival average. I've helped him as much as I've can throughout this game, to my detriment. And he's ready to go to war for this. The man is a lunatic.

Unfortunately for me, it's unlikely that his neighbors cause him trouble. Ginger is in a golden age and happy to keep making astounding amounts of money. Superdeath hasn't been playing in this game for 80 turns. Amica, to my horror, is giving Gav a free Ivory. Amica asked for Open Borders and I gave them to him. I immediately regretted this upon seeing the Ivory trade. It didn't do me any good since I've got enough trade and have city visibility on him, so it just lets Amica scout my now undefended north. This was a blunder. The only reason for it was to generate good will with Amica, but there's too much bad blood, I think.

I have no idea what Gav is going to do. He just revolted into Vassalage and Theocracy. I'm surprised at how well he's teched. He can start popping out some very highly promoted units. He's gotten enough beakers for Construction but I still have yet to see evidence of Catapults.


It's pretty clear that he wasn't ready to go to war at the instant he sent the ultimatum. So the question is, what does he do now? I feel no need to march out of my borders, and even his very large stack gets badly mauled by catapults and crossbows. The need to continually whip up an army has set us into last place, but I don't think Gav can straight up kill us. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.

[naufragar]

Who's ready for some counting!


Did you get all of that? Gav's got 20 Axes (all 2 or 3 promo'd), 3 spears, 2 swords, and 1 archer for a total of 26 units visible. He's likely got ~15 Horse Archers lurking just out of frame. I've got 9 Vultures, 4 Crossbowmen, 7 spears, and 1 Horse Archer for a total of 21 hitters visible, plus 7 catapults. The raw visible numbers look closer than the reality. Triple-promoted axes are super efficient, and as I mentioned, I suspect about 15 horse archers playing zone defense. Do we care? Nah. We're past caring.

In my last post, I mentioned that I didn't see a need to walk out of my borders. This was misguided. Because my land forms a crescent around that inner sea, I can't defend from two enemies at once. If I park in the middle, the travel time is too long. Amica offered a fish for fish, and while I don't really believe he'd ignore multiple free coastal cities to honor that trade, it's more of a friendly indicator than Gavagai's given. Gav, after all, promised war if I settled a tundra city 7 tiles from my cap (and 15 tiles from his...) and then when I tried to war-peace him, he preferred to stay at war. So, we've emptied our Amica-facing garrisons, to defend against Gav.

I've also emptied Cistercia. If Gav takes it, I won't be sad for too long. I need to get my stacks together, and it's going to crank out a couple units before it dies.

I still see no catapults, although I think Gav does have Construction. Honestly, trading hammer for hammer is the best outcome we can hope for. We're already completely vulnerable to Amica. The best I can do is similarly weaken Gav. The only bad outcome is if Gav takes cities off me and Amica doesn't. If neither take cities, great. If only Amica, then Gav's prospects are still hurt, which I'll count as a win.

I've offered Superdeath of the 75 Second Turns a couple luxuries if he declares on Gav. He won't. Ginger is going on vacation, and I doubt he planned a war to hand off to Civac. (Btw, it was Ginger not Gavagai who revolted to Theocracy & Vassalage. He'll get Knights soon. I doubt I can change the target away from Commodore, but if I can incentivize a Gav strike, that'd be nice.) Amica probably doesn't want a war either. His economy is still in rough shape. I can only hope that I've convinced him I've given up and am too war-ravaged to care about and that he has some desire to take back the cities he was forced to give away to Gavagai.

In sum, we're already dead, so anything we can do to bring down Gav with us raises our relative standing.

[naufragar]

I've got about 4 days of annoyingly hectic travel ahead, so reporting is going to be spartan.

Gav offered peace, presumably because he doesn't want his and Amica's peace treaty to expire while he's still at war with me. I accepted peace because, as previously mentioned, I am a lover of peace.

Gav might be in for a disappointment later though:


Amica echoed back my offer to fight Gav in 11 turns. He'd like to hit in the Northwest, while I hit in the Southeast. I thought I took a picture, but I guess I forgot, but Superdeath, too, said he's willing to attack Gav in 11 turns. Now, I can't get my hopes up about a dogpile because they're always chancy, silly things, but let's see what happens in 10ish turns.

Of course, helping Amicalola get bits of Gavagai is a monumentally stupid idea:


Amica's crop yield is massive and he is 1 turn away from courthouses. A courthouse is like +5 or +6 gpt in each of his cities. Multiply that by his gigantic 15 city empire and he'll be far and away the tech leader. With his population and tech advantage, he'll win. But Gavagai has already taken advantage of my desire to stop Amica, and I don't like being taken advantage of. I reject the notion that a player has immunity because it would throw the game to another. Screw that noise.