[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

hey guys, i'm realizing i screwed up a little and should have swapped Kirishima to monument last turn... now if they chop into the monument and we swap to it and whip i think we now both finish on the same turn. does anyone know what happens in the case of an exact tie in culture? i am realizing that for as long as they are ahead of us in culture, we will not control any of the tiles 2 away from our city which would be a disaster. meanwhile their copper city will get a tile that can hit us with 2-movers even if they are behind :| albeit at the river crossing penalty

edit: however, no matter how quickly they make their monument, they can't expand borders before our enforced peace ends.... so if we DO choose to try to raze their city still, we can move troops right up next to it on the first turn of a war. in theory if we don't have access to impi at that point (or more accurately, if we don't feel we can compromise our growth curve by going for them), we could just ("just") use archers on offense to try to crack the spear they are likely to build.

while i think i have abandoned the "bet game on killing gingac" version of the plan, i am still pretty close on attacking their city, especially if they obnoxiously settle on that copper. if someone would like to talk me into it, i'm all ears :D

[Tarkeel]

i also like that civac is peaceably chilling w me in commodore's PB76 thread while i literally slaver over their civilization in this thread lol

Civac in general is pretty chill, and most of us here are pretty good at not taking agression between games. While it isn't a wargame, war is a large part of the game, and agression that can be understood is much easier to stommach than what appears to be wanton acts of destruction.

Janissaries aren't nothing but Muskets have a fairly short shelf life anyway so...

Janissaries pretty much slaughter anything that comes before them in the tech-tree, but you need that tech advantage so they are something like a "win-more-button".

btw, even though we're warpeaced i'm still vaguely trying to abide by our earlier turnsplit by playing after ginger while the situation is still tense enough that war could erupt again in 10t. do yall think that's correct or is it over the line into clock games? in addition to possibly being correct from a rules standpoint it's also pretty clearly in our strategic interest to do so, which is why i ask...

I'd focus on rule #1: Play your turn as early as possible.

Anyways, let's try a bluff. I decide that we have not made our displeasure at Gingac for their apparent plan to drop a city 4 tiles from us sufficiently clear:

Settling 4 tiles away is very close to the best possible border, which is 4 tiles inbetween: both cities get two rings, and no possibility of planting a close city inbetween.

hey guys, i'm realizing i screwed up a little and should have swapped Kirishima to monument last turn... now if they chop into the monument and we swap to it and whip i think we now both finish on the same turn. does anyone know what happens in the case of an exact tie in culture? i am realizing that for as long as they are ahead of us in culture, we will not control any of the tiles 2 away from our city which would be a disaster. meanwhile their copper city will get a tile that can hit us with 2-movers even if they are behind :| albeit at the river crossing penalty

IIRC exact ties goes to whomever got culture there first, which in this case would be randomized by the game (turn order processing is randomized each turn in a simultaneous pitboss). I wouldn't call it a disaster but more a fact of life in Civ4, and also an opportunity to show peaceful intentions. There are no resources inbetween, so both sides could forego roads in the area to show they have no need for fast movement. That combined with open borders and mutual scouting could lead to lasting peace. (Yes, I am a peacenik builder at heart)

[ljubljana]

you need that tech advantage so they are something like a "win-more-button".

Ooh, but these guys seem highly likely to get that tech advantage with all their gigantic early cities.... ok, maybe I'm starting to get it now. Scary combo for sure

I'd focus on rule #1: Play your turn as early as possible.

Noted - will shift my policy to that.

Settling 4 tiles away is very close to the best possible border, which is 4 tiles inbetween: both cities get two rings, and no possibility of planting a close city inbetween.

Oh, you think so? Ok, maybe I'm interpreting this as pinkdottier than it is by the standards of the Civ4 meta here, and being a bit too cavalier about (and having too much fun) antagonizing our neighbors. After all, realistically they don't have much choice here - if they don't settle on the copper, their worker has to spend 6 turns hooking it up, and then they don't have time to chop a spear to save this city... and backpedaling to found elsewhere with a settler this committed represents a tempo loss that is probably tantamount to a game loss. As much as my current mood is persuadable towards attacking, I am also open to the argument that we should be a little nicer to them and try to cool things down after this... Hopefully once they get our graphs and can see that instead of spamming impi we're actually researching the nice defensive Archery tech (with its characteristic 6k power jump) they will be able to not freak out enough to stop us barreling towards inevitable conflict, if that is what the Council favors

though admittedly I am deriving entirely too great an amount of perverse joy from screenshots like this one



that I might not be able to easily give up (and on this current turn they did indeed again open log in -> log out -> sleep on it in possible response to our buttheadedness)

You know how Commodore's oppo analysis always rates people things like

Bing/Civac (Cheery/Competent) as Victoria (Imp/Fin) of Babylon (Agriculture/Wheel, Bowman, Garden)

I kinda have a tendency in these games to overcorrect for mistakes made in exactly my previously game... and in my previous game (Civ6 PEM22), I was (Skittish/Predictable) to the point that CMF was able to manipulate my psychology to get me to tunnel-vision on a religious race that turned out to be irrelevant to the game outcome. So, in the unhingedness both of my behavior in game and of my posts in this thread, I am a little bit trying to lean into my Erratic side instead in the hopes that that will lead to more useful behaviors out of my neighbors, such as ceding border regions that could be contested - even thrawn upthread recommended that we specifically not pinkdot superdeath because of this, which struck me as very successful PR on SD's part  Similarly, TheArchduke in Civ6 PBEMs was able to constantly wring suboptimal plays out of opponents by cultivating a prickly reputation as someone who would go out of their way to kill pinkdots specifically in the interest of metagame health. But maybe that's not the correct approach for me to go for, either generally or specifically for Civ4.... I can see how it would also lead to things like militarized borders and arms races that prevent trust and cooperation and elicit dogpiles just to remove an element of game variance. Idk... I may not be going anywhere concrete with this meander, but I'm interested as always to hear people's thoughts on how to approach this whole "AI Diplomacy" thing

[Tarkeel]

Regarding pink-dots, do you know where their capital is?

[ljubljana]

Not precisely, but we can see their second city and it looks roughly symmetric to (albeit a bit north of) our Mitakeumi. By symmetry with the distance to GT, we can expect it's probably a few tiles east of there with roughly a 19-tile distance between our capitals... if that's the case, the line of tiles 1W of the capital is equidistant from the capitals, and by claiming it and taking Kirishima's hill + forest with CHM they are over it, but I guess not egregiously so.

edit: UH.... that is, unless I've been putting too much faith in this "symmetry with GT" argument and the city my scout is next to, with expanded borders that i missed during the turn because green on green (CHM though) is in fact not their second city but THE CAPITAL in which case copper city is closer to their capital than Kirishima is to ours and we are being just incredibly obnoxious right now lol SORRY FUTURE GINGAC

[williams482]

We'll know if that's their capital in two turns, when it either will or won't pop borders again.

Do they know where our capital is?

[aetryn]

The copper city maybe isn't pleasant for us if they contest cultural borders a bit, but it's not the worst location in the world and I don't think it would have been necessary to take it out to have any kind of demilitarized border. What happens now that you've demanded it is less clear. I don't think Ginger tilts over it, but we probably do start with a diplomatic malus over it. As much as we don't need foreign trade (because of PRO), defogging a coastal route to Ginger's capital (assuming it's on a river, as ours is) and research Sailing would allow us to start signalling for peaceful intentions. I don't know if it's worth it. But I'm not sure the status quo works well - if Ginger feels threatened right now and goes into military production mode we may have no choice but to match and then we're kind of stuck.

And yeah, dangerous to make assumptions about where the midline is until you find it. If anything, our third city will look very aggressive to them, given that it's right up to the midline.

I'd love to defuse tensions if we can, but short of a delaying more important tech for Sailing so we can signal, I don't really know what our options are. Maybe send a diplomatic treaty offering to exchange the two border cities? That might communicate that we're actually okay with them where they are? But it's really hard to decipher confusing AI diplo messages, so they may not get the point.

[ljubljana]

They definitely do know where our capital is.... we have only 3 cities and they've defogged at least some of all three of their territory.

Yeah, demanding the city was pretty dumb, I regret doing it sorry for sabotaging us a little there lol. though if they do something other than settle on the copper next turn i do reserve the right to unregret it lol

I think the best thing we can do to signal less aggro intentions is to visibly build mostly useless-on-attack archers in the border city, chop all the forests into econ stuff, and maybe offer OB once we hit Writing (uh, that's the tech for OB right...?) . could try warpeacing again when the first one runs out if we reeeeally want to commit to de-escalation, which despite the aggressive connotations of declaring a war is the only way we can PROMISE them not to attack in 10 turns

only problem with offering to exchange the border cities is uh..... our border city is better so if they have a backup copper somewhere palatable they might just take the deal......

[aetryn]

They definitely do know where our capital is.... we have only 3 cities and they've defogged at least some of all three of their territory.

Yeah, demanding the city was pretty dumb, I regret doing it sorry for sabotaging us a little there lol. though if they do something other than settle on the copper next turn i do reserve the right to unregret it lol

I think the best thing we can do to signal less aggro intentions is to visibly build mostly useless-on-attack archers in the border city, chop all the forests into econ stuff, and maybe offer OB once we hit Writing (uh, that's the tech for OB right...?) . could try warpeacing again when the first one runs out if we reeeeally want to commit to de-escalation, which despite the aggressive connotations of declaring a war is the only way we can PROMISE them not to attack in 10 turns

Well, I don't know if anyone's ever given you a primer on AI diplomacy and signalling, but once we have a trade connection, we can offer food-resource for food-resource, which usually means "Let's agree not to be aggressive toward each other for at least another 10 turns". However, building roads on the border to get us that trade connection will likely get interpreted negatively - best to leave those areas unroaded to have a nicer border. That's why I had mentioned Sailing. Though, actually, since we're on the same river and their borders will touch ours, I'm not actually sure whether we need Sailing to trade? Something to test. If we can swap resources, offer Wheat for Wheat or whatever they have an an option.

[ljubljana]

uhhhh not really in civ6 the conventions are sufficiently poorly established to make ai diplo pretty useless, and trying to interpret it sometimes worse than useless. i have learned that demanding all my cities means they're mad for some reason...?

aw i feel pretty bad now, they logged in last night and quit in presumed disgust, and now GT's @ing them in the tech thread for slow playing. and ginger (along w amica and superdeath) is one of my civ4 crushes too, i just have been trying to not let it influence my play... BESTIE IM SORRY i'm too impulsive for my own good