[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

ok, you're right. thanks for voice of reasoning me

i am still not sure i believe being pissed off it likely to factor into ginger's decision making at all (i mean, we haven't done them any real harm, even if we do kill one unit...) but ok, maybe forcing them to settle on copper and make chariots in the first place will be perceived as harm. ok i'll chill, 1W of the scout gives them a chance to escape back east without contacting GT, while also indicating that it will die if they keep going forward...

[ljubljana]

a harrowing turn 56 - zululand



mjmd of stonehenge



chill



warrior was in range of chariots so we have to abandon our sentry net for now.... which is concerning! but i don't think maintaining it is worth throwing away a unit

should be exactly enough hammers to not waste any via the "can't overflow more than the cost of the unit" rule, right? not that i really planned that this time

we have to decide on overflowing into a fast double-whipped settler at kirishima for copper or into finishing a second archer and then whipping eg the granary, which is not something i envy future me for having to think about... it is a major delay on copper to overflow into another archer but maybe we don't have a choice D:

[aetryn]

We need copper connected very soon. The person we've threatened has chariots, and while they may not be able to kill our cities with archers in them, getting pillaged to the ground is almost as bad. We definitely need spears for defense, and absolutely before we make any more threatening moves at all. If we don't whip the settler where else do we get it from and what's the timeline on that?

[ljubljana]

well, we can stop them from pillaging with our own chariots as long as they don't bring more.... we have one in range and a second that is already started that we could whip in kirishima, which would come out promoted; if we throw everything in range at ginger's 2 chariots as they try to pillage we shouldddd win (95% odds per vodka). but yeah i agree

if we don't whip a settler in kirishima at all, the next settler will be chopped out in takakeisho after this worker. kirishima whip hooks up copper t62, sending takakeisho's settler south would be in the t69 range. i'll have to sim out what happens if we send takakeisho's settler north, that could be the best option too.

sorry my overaggression got us into this mess ehehehhehe

edit: also we will FINALLY have graphs on ginger this turn which could inform our decision. before we play i'll take a close look at them and try to calculate if there are more chariots in the back. our current force of chariot + archer + warrior is sufficient if nothing else comes (though if ginger does send their stuff at us we'd probably whip the chariot in production) but i think if anything else appears it may stop being sufficient

[ljubljana]

Turn 57 - Zululand



Ginger's scout did not take the hint, and just walked under our chariot. According to the score interface, their milpower is exactly equal to ours.... let's look at the graphs:



ok, how to interpret this? they would have started with 4k from wheel tech, and currently have 3 warriors and 2 chariots that we have seen, at at least 6 pop in the capital, 2 in the third city, and likely 3 or 4 in the other two cities. so from left to right, i'm interpreting these changes as follows:

- 1k capital grows to size 2
- 2k mining/hunting/AH tech
- 3k 4 total pop + warrior 1
- 2k mining/hunting/AH tech
- 1k 6 total pop (very fast but i think the hump up ahead will reveals why... i think they already have a granary in the capital at this point and are growing like crazy)
- 8k bronze working
- 3k 8 total pop (6 at the capital and 2 at the second city!) + second warrior
- minus 2k, triple-whipped settler at the capital, down to 5 total pop
- 2k the last of mining/hunting/AH tech
- 1k capital regrowth to size 4 = 6 total pop
- 2k third warrior
- 1k back up to 8 total pop
- 1k up to 10 total pop
- 4k the first chariot
- 1k second settler whip, taking them from, i guess, 11 total pop to 8 total pop
- 3k pop regrowth + i think this must be a fourth warrior that is somewhere on the map
and finally
- 8k pop = 2 more 4k units, one of which is the chariot we can see and the other of which we CAN'T see. so likely there is a third "real" unit out there somewhere that is either on its way toward us, or, like our other chariot, is off on their frontiers deterring an unseen second neighbor. if 3 chariots step onto the hill between Kirishima and Ankyra next turn.... we don't quite lose the city, but we do have to whip a chariot to save it, and we could end up losing the city over 2 turns with bad luck. based on that, i want a second archer.... but is there a way to do that without setting the settler too far back? taking a look now, but i'm thinking about chopping a forest OUTside the city radius to make up for it...this is a waste of hammers in the long term of course but it could still be worth it to speed up the critical copper hookup.

i also still REALLY want to kill their scout to block contact with GT... but i know the consensus is very against this with no spears and only one archer in kirishima (though if i do overflow into a second archer the city should be safe for the time being). please humor me by letting me just tiresomely state the case as i see it one more time lol

- From what I can tell, most players in these games are conquered as a result of a 2v1 versus their neighbors. This pretty much can't happen to us if Ginger and GT are not in contact, as I think the only way for one to even know we are at war with someone else would be to watch for power graph sharkfins, by which point it will probably be too late to impact the outcome.
- Ginger seems to have no units anywhere near this western scout - the next most western unit we've seen is in Ankyra. If that's true, killing the scout now would delay contact by at least as long as it would take to march a scout or work boat from border to border, which, by my count, is roughly 16 turns. 16 turns from now, we will likely have cities in both the south and on the coast north of Hoshoryu. We would need sailing tech to build a galley to stop a work boat, both of which are significant investments, but we may want to pursue Sailing anyways in this timeframe anyways to open lux trades with GT.
- If Ginger believes they have the units available to profitably take and hold Kirishima, they will do so, and if they don't, they won't - whether or not we kill the scout will not enrage them sufficiently to cause them to attack when it wouldn't be profitable. Likewise, killing the scout shouldn't change their assessment of our military threat level enough to cause a buildup, since they already can see our power graph and know we have a chariot at their scout's position.

ok, well, i wrote this all out as much to try to convince myself as to convince you guys, and the more i think about the need for early sailing and a 50 hammer galley to permanently seal off contact, the more i'm questioning our premises here. if spending that investment is all it takes to stave off a 2v1 in 100 turns, it'll be worth it, but i guess we can also stave off a 2v1 in the traditional sense by just being strong and/or being the 2v1 initiators rather than the recipients.

if you guys are more convinced than i am, let me know in the next hour and i'll kill the scout. otherwise, i guess i'm down to tamely let it go...

[ljubljana]

turn 64 copper hookup if we overflow into an archer and then chop outside the city radius to speed the whip, turn 62 if we overflow into settler. i THINK what i want to do is.... overflow into settler at Kirishima as planned, but chop the chariot in Takakeisho to completion so it can reach the city center in 2t if ginger attacks. it's just a 1t delay on the worker out of the capital and we will need the unit anyways to escort our eventual settlers to the south. but let me take a shower and think about it

[ljubljana]

another thing we need to talk about



GT's city in this area is apparently 1S of the wheat, with the pig NOT in range. that leaves theoretical room for a SUPER aggressive settle from us in the border region that claims the pig in some way. it would not be too hard to reach out there, just chop into a settler at hoshoryu and whip at size 2. obviously holding it in the face of what would be a second pissed-off neighbor is another question but.... one wonders if this is the sort of thing we took AGG/PRO zulu in order to justify considering?

[aetryn]

Re: 2-on-1s

The chance of a negotiated 2-on-1 against us at this phase of the game is tiny. Unless someone is focused on rushing, they're not interested in war right now. It's pretty unlikely that both our neighbors would be playing a rush strategy, and we've not really seen any evidence of anything more than normal military builds from either. If GT is not planning on rushing, why would he agree to attack us with Ginger? Why not just settle all the land we can't build settlers for because we're too busy building troops to defend against Ginger instead?

The chance of a spontaneous 2-on-1 against us if we tilt Ginger into war mode, both of us get bogged down, and GT gets to catapults long before we're close to them is higher in my opinion. GT doesn't need contact to tell we're at war - the turn splits will tell him that.
 
And of course, if he can tell we're in a war, he might well prioritize scouting us and our neighbor to see if we look juicy. Are we planning to also declare on his scouts to keep GT and Ginger from contact? Even if a war doesn't break out but we just have tensions rise and we have to keep our east pretty seriously garrisoned, GT is eventually going to scout this way. Are we going to kill his scouts too? Again, that seems like a good way to stumble into a 2-on-1 against us.

I just don't think denying contact is a reasonable goal in one of these games. GT and Ginger probably have scouting units out SOMEWHERE, they may run into each other in the middle of nowhere. This is not the era I worry about our enemies getting ideas about partitioning our lands via agreed attacks - that's later on when free land fills up. And it's just not at all likely they won't have contact with everyone by the time we hit the Medieval era. What IS potentially reasonable is denying knowledge of our developed lands via denying OB, and possibly denying knowledge of our land. I could see a marginally better case for killing Ginger's scout before it located our lands - if you had met it just east of our cities and we weren't right on each other's borders or something - then you're denying him any strategic ability to attack you until he finds you. But at this point he knows where we are, he knows we don't yet have copper yet, he knows the basic shape of our lands. Yeah, it costs him to not get contact with GT until later, but it doesn't cost him enough for us to risk a war. MAYBE if we hadn't already been pretty aggressive, we'd have diplomatic room to kill a scout. Maybe. Some players might still well tilt over that. But we've already basically made a hyper-aggressive threat when we demanded a city that's probably his natural copper settle and within his borders. If we don't want a war, we need to walk on eggshells for a while. If we DO want a war, don't waste time/the element of surprise on a scout kill, build up troops and go kill his cities.

Also, if this map is as it seems to be with all the players in a ring around a big desert, it may not be a great map for 2 on 1 diplomacy attacks at all. Those seem most likely in triangle situations, where you really want to discourage A from attacking you so you try to get them to join you in attacking mutual neighbor B. This gets you both the avoidance of an attack from A as well as a possibility at spoils in B. In a ring map, GT isn't really at risk from Ginger, he's at risk from his own far neighbor so he doesn't get the secondary benefit of Ginger's troops not being used against him. Now, if that neighbor is tied up in a war and so is Ginger's, then a 2-on-1 against us becomes more likely, but it otherwise doesn't carry the safety of taking 2 of your neighbors out of play at once.

[aetryn]

another thing we need to talk about



GT's city in this area is apparently 1S of the wheat, with the pig NOT in range. that leaves theoretical room for a SUPER aggressive settle from us in the border region that claims the pig in some way. it would not be too hard to reach out there, just chop into a settler at hoshoryu and whip at size 2. obviously holding it in the face of what would be a second pissed-off neighbor is another question but.... one wonders if this is the sort of thing we took AGG/PRO zulu in order to justify considering?

Too big a bluff for me. If we had copper and Impis hovering around, maybe. Maybe see if it's still available in another 20 turns... you know, if we don't end up with a war in the east.

[ljubljana]

ok, i have to go and don't have time to fully reply now but thank you so much! you and williams have gone a long way towards cooling me off over these last few turns

i also have some good news, if you like schadenfreude:



it might not have been a 50/50, but SOMEone had a very near miss on hinduism...

buddhism fell this turn as well. if we had gone for it instead of pottery as i was contemplating, we actually would have had it by one turn. but, you know, still not the best percentage play so i'm not too upset about missing out

Mjmd also spawned the universe's earliest great prophet this turn (!!)