[PB 64] Ginger plays as Charlemagne, famed man of letters

[Ginger()]

Looks like Superdeath gave Commodore a cash injection to help him to Engineering. It could've happened piecemeal if Commodore sent requests all around to Amica and Naufragar, but only SD had enough previous cash reserves ~600 now ~300 to help Comm hit ~450 gold from ~150, and one deal was likelier to happen than three. 
I'm not entirely sure why my meta heat this game is so high, must be the score. I'm a little annoyed, because while my precious pile of world (and National!) wonders have been keeping me afloat, I'm almost completely gassed in terms of growth. I have grown onto every land tile in my empire expect 5 plains that are functionally useless before Communism and far too late to cottage. I've also burned my second golden age while Naufragar, Amicalola, and Superdeath still have it available. Whatever, salt salt salt
Currently a 3.5 horse race between me, Amica, and Naufragar. Giving Superdeath the half point if he can beat Gav. Amica and Nauf are kind of locked in against each other, and I can play Astronomy as a trump card against Naufragar, but if Nauf can stall out Amica, keeping them content while he plugs away merrily with Darius, it's GG. I can't compete with that. Amicalola's no cottages, no water/windmills can't compete with that. Amica desperately needs to be in Serfdom, but then has no way to produce without Machinery tech. icky icky situation for them. Thankfully, for the moment, Naufragar's production sucks. But he just unlocked Heroic Epic at Literature so I expect that to change quickly.

The news from the Commodore front is interesting. I think he underestimated how &*$!ing usless collateral is against stacks this large and mixed. Either that or he thinks 10 catapults is an acceptable price to stall a turn. In short, I killed 10 cats and lost one Knight.
500 vs 90 hammers. 
   
He did however choose to make a stand at the chokepoint city, which I believe was a correct move. It forces me to deal with his longbows, which I would otherwise walk around. Next turn I will see if I can storm the city. 
It's really hard to read the stack list on the left of the screen, is there any way to expand it? I'd be particularly curious to learn what each of the health levels of his defenders are. 


   
So I'm rereading the text of the quest, and it looks like since the city was destroyed by another country, the Quest doesn't function anymore? Otherwise why is it here, does anyone have an answer to that? This is pretty important, I'd like to get an answer if possible. If I settle with that horse resource (the quest target) in my borders, will it spawn the units?

[Charriu]

I'm going to bed now, but could take a look at the inner workings of that quest in about 8 hours

[DaveV]

It's really hard to read the stack list on the left of the screen, is there any way to expand it? I'd be particularly curious to learn what each of the health levels of his defenders are. 

If you press <Ctrl> I, it will move some of the units out from under the UI at the top of the screen. I don't think there's any way to see into the grouped units; i.e., it tells you the average strength of the 8 longbows, but I don't know of any way to see the individual strengths of those 8 longbows.

[Ginger()]

YOU DONE GOOFED COMM
He left 4 LB in the city, retreated the rest of his stack. This allowed me to efficiently kill the strong defenders with collateral. I lost 4 cats and 1 sword, but took the city.

   
WE'RE IN BOYS

Thanks Dave for the tip

Now that I look at it, I had no chance to crack that stack inside the city without CR Trebuchets to whittle down the LBs, the Longbows would've been protected from Collateral by the size of the stack, and I wouldn't have had enough Knights to just go ahead and slam. In essence, I would've had to fight LB head-on

Now if he avoids a pitched battle on flat land and turtles up in his capital, I will probably run into the same problem, again, but I'm free to ravage the rest of his empire. 

Also, next turn we will upgrade our regular medic to a super medic, courtesy of IMP. Yeah, and Commodore's bullshit luck continues at sea. Username +50% modifier, what can I do

Odeons are completing and new luxury trade with Naufragar, furs for 5gpt, allows me to trickle in some of the military police Horse Archers. I complete about 2 knights a turn across the empire which isn't enough to resupply losses, but I might be just enough to break Commodore now

I've decided to advance into Commodore's land, since he seems to want very much to expend resources and stall for time (Engineering in two), so I'll do the opposite of that. Also delaying next turn would make more sense as I have the supermedic on the way. 

Thank you Charriu, that's a great help 

[Charriu]

About the greed quest. First of all you can totally ignore the city part of the quest. It only tells you a city close to the resource so that you can find the resource more easily.

The relevant code can be found in CvRandomEventInterface.py and there expireGreed1. This python code is called every turn to check if the quest should be expired and has multiple checks.

1. As long as you are the owner of the horse resource tile or nobody controls it the quest won't expire. The first part should be obvious to prevent the quest expiring on the turn you control it and for example the time is up. The second part is interesting. If I understand it you can prevent the quest expiring by the following checks as long as the plot is uncontrolled. But I don't have the full C++ code at hand right now, so that would need further investigation.

2. The quest expires if the time limit (in your case 100 turns since start of the quest) is up.

3. The quest expires if anybody other then you or Gavagai controls the horse resource tile.

The city as I said is only for orientation.


Now this isn't all of the answer as you also wanted to know when exactly the quest is called complete. This is also in in CvRandomEventInterface.py but this time canTriggerGreedDone. Here there are two checks. First you need to control the horse resource tile, obviously. Second this getGreedUnit needs to be anything else then -1. This is another python method just after the current method. It determines which unit is used for the quest bonus, but crucially it also checks if you can train any land based unit that requires the resource (in this case horse). If you can't train a horse unit, the quest won't complete. By the way the game chooses the unit with the highest AI_unitValue, which in most cases means the most modern unit. I think this would be knights in your case.

[Charriu]

Oh and if that wasn't clear so far. The quest does not require you to go to war with Gavagai even though it talks about declaring war. It only wants you to control the tile in any way.

[Ginger()]

Awesome, okay, thanks.
let's hope this very cheeky new settle doesn't piss off the neighbors too badly (I'm fine if they "adjust" it, I just hope I don't create longer-term enemity)
Albeit SD gifting gold to Comm probably qualifies as enemity and I'm possibly a bit too concerned about politeness scruples in a no-diplo game

[Ginger()]

This was a reasonably interesting turn
   
First off we finish yet another quest, and as amusing as it would be to get yet another free specialist in the capital, the top option is better, Flanking 1 on all Knights is a 10% discount on all my future offensive losses, and I will be using Knights as my main unit for the rest of the game. 

   
Secondly, Commodore did exactly what I wanted him to and retreated and moved his stack into the capital. I use G2s to cut the road on the hill and move my stack forward to fork. 
This is what my strategy will be going forward: I must pen-up Commodore's massive but out-dated stack inside his capital and cut out the rest of his cities, while slowly adding enough units to my main stack to break his defenses. This is going to be very, very slow, but I can do slow. Courtesy of MFG economy, I can maintain this level of production indefinitely. Unfortunately so can Commodore, at least from his capital, with infinite whips. But following his last invasion, it was clear that he was unwilling to forgive and forget. Not that I blame him at all, it's a perfectly understandable position to take, since I did trash his difficult start further, but it does force my hand that I have to go west rather than east. Superdeath is giving Commodore stone, which... grrr.

In short, this isn't an efficient war, it isn't a clean one, but it's the best I can do given my relative position to Commodore and the inevitability of conflict (well, I started it  ).
I keep rolling 20% on engineers in the capital, with 98 GPP per turn, given a little luck, maybe in 20 turns I'll get trebuchets. Enough CR2 Trebs will chew through anything and I can keep pumping units forever. Again my relative position to the rest of the field continues to erode, Naufragar is all but caught up in tech and is making >160gpt, but that's just what the map dealt me, hilly brown land, cramped in between two civs with chokable, defensible borders. I do what I can. I probably would play random map again, it hasn't been the worst experience. My capital was the best out of all of them that I've seen, but the limit on expansion and stupid stupid early war with Gavagai was really rough. God that was unbelievably, hilariously wasteful.

   
Speaking of our old buddy Gavagai, incase SD isn't scouting with a sentry Numid, here's Gavagai's stack. Both players have roughly 40 units fielded, with SD having a ~10/10/10/10 split of Cats, Numids, WE, Melee. While Gav is running equivalent catapults, significantly more melee, and a few Xbows and HA

[Ginger()]

Decisions Decisions...
   
First a couple facts:
Castles will be up the turn after next, I get next turn to bombard and then efficacy is cut by half.
1 Knight, 3 swords, and a Catapult are out of movement points in the main stack and would be left behind if I move it.
The road needs to be cut to protect my mini stack out west. 
Commodore has thus far been unwilling to attack out at the main stack and has been stalling for time for Engineering, which he has now.
I have 3 Knights coming up from the south who can end next turn on the tile I'm currently on. 
Until I accumulate enough units to storm his capital (will take nigh forever) I need to split him in half and deny him the population and ability to whip. 

So I have 4 options:
1) Stay in place 
2) Move to the hill south of his Capital
3) Move next to his capital on flat
4) Move west to Ahongas nearby

All of these have some benefits and some disadvantages. 1, 2, and 4 all require me to sacrifice a horse archer to cut his road. 

1 keeps the stack together, heals for a turn, but also loses a turn of bombard/pressure, and we're back to the same problem of waiting for stragglers next turn anyways.
2 puts the smattering of archery units and several Phalanxes on defensive terrain, while still getting to bombard for a turn, and consolidates with the Guerrilla road-cutting crew, but doesn't split him in half
3 saves a horse archer and protects the stragglers, but also puts my stack in danger of getting smacked by him as it's yet another turn without healing. (HOWEVER, Commodore has been very passive and content to turtle and draw this out, the same play I would make, so he might not attack, but maybe his recent accumulations shift the balance, need to sim). 
4 has the advantage that I will be able to take Ahongas, and eliminate some of the cursed longbows he's fielding, and by cutting the road I can prevent a full counter and protect the stragglers, but I'm also leaving behind the Guerrilla crew in the hills (if I'm not adjacent to it, he can safely trade with his G3s).

4 better accomplishes my strategic goals of cutting into his city count and opens a path for my ships after I take the city, but it dangerously weakens my stack. 3 is probably the best compromise if he gets bad odds attacking me, and I will sim accordingly to try and find out.

One last advantage of 4 is that while I disconnect with my Guerrilla team, I can reconnect with the small detachment far out west taking Seonaidh. 

if you have any input Civac that would be most welcome. (Also, should I make Catapults or Knights at the Heroic Epic? I think I need cats more if I plan to take his city to the west, but Knights/cats both work for holding a siege of his capital. Additional consideration is that the HE is the only place I get triple promo mounted.)

[Mjmd]

The most obvious solution is obviously to roll a d4. Commodore would fully approve.