[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

<3333 thank yall for putting up w my mood swings lmao. best dedlurkers ever <3

@aetryn yeah, i think we should have taken their deal as-offered, it's not just the 200 gold they would have paid but also some 30 gpt in unit support over now almost 10 turns (although we did burn a town and a bunch of mines and such to compensate and should eventually get capture gold). i definitely undersstimated how much work we had ahead of us to actually take the city... though potentially i also underestimated how valuable a spot it is, if it does have a settled GG for us then all is forgiven

i am not so sure we can back out now though.... i think nauf shifted the vast majority of their army to the west to go rein in superdeath. so not only are they probably really out of position to take it, but if i were them and generously offered to not race us for the capital only for us to make them turn around and go get it anyways, i'd be pretty pissed off. not to mention if we don't take the city our units won't reslly be freed up anyways as we'll still need to contain the GT stack

@williams i forgot to highlight this but i did get the iron hill road this turn; the other hill does look doable with a guerilla 2 longbow off a boat. it'd be slow though, probably too slow to stop them from whipping the rest of their pop into iron units. maybe not though, i'll look into it

as for ginger strategy, yeah, you're correct as usual thank you for talking me down. losing our border cities would be a major setback (especially since two of the three are our #1 and #3 strongest cities!) but not an irrecoverable one and, yeah, one that should be much more punishable if we can mass-whip muskets instead of longbows and pikes... i guess we can see how hard they go in on cuirassiers at the end of their GA. hopefully it doesn't come to this but i think a formation pike behind kirishima's soon-to-be 85% cultural defenses will still beat a c2 + shock cuir one on one. i don't think we can keep the city if we are just flipping to slavery as they invade but we can either influct losses or make them stop to bombard.... if we then mass-whip cats and muskets maybe we can hold at the capital/kotozakura and try to rebuild from what will still be a 20-city production base (admittedly 20 much crappier cities but what can you do). and if we see any suspicious troop movements of course we could pull the trigger early

i'm still unsure about which of us i think ginger SHOULD be attacking, btw. we represent easier gains but probably a harder conquest, they have to think that eventually we can build up a cat/musket pile and slam into them in conjunction with returning troops from aksum. especially if every pike they have to chew through in the meantime does some damage to their cuir stack, which will not be easily replaceable if they whip into it heavily. maybe it's better for them to beat drey's army head-on while we're distracyed and then wheel around and dare us to intervene once they are 6 cities deep into bablylon and have crushed their standing forces.... not that i'm too sure whst we would do in THAT situation either

[ljubljana]

turn 155 - zululand

the may basho started this week in the world of sumo.... of our four ozeki cities, takakeisho, kirishima, hoshoryu, and kotozakura, one is not like the others.... three of the four performed varying degrees of well last tournament and their ranks are safe. but ONE of them had a miserable 5-10 record last tournament, is clearly injured, and is fighting for his life with 8 wins required to maintain his rank. and um. i invite you all to guess, given our current in-game situation, which of the four ozeki that is most likely to be.... it will not take multiple guesses

he even lost his first match too.... but all of the ozeki did that. and the yokozuna. and both sekiwake, and one komosubi, and the other komusubi HAD TO win because their first opponent was the yokozuna..... so in the omens department we're clearly in "this is fine" mode

anyways all of which is to say that i have just an hour for this turn, if that, so no time for unnecessary exposition  thankfully all we're doing this turn is dropping another cat off and moving some workers around. no serious thinking involved, right? right? i mean when have i ever been wrong about something like that



so rereading through the blog, we received drey's offer of war with ginger in 15t on turn 149, and they got our acceptance t150. so TECHnically we COULD echo this offer, tech to muskets, and still come to drey's aid if they are attacked without breaking a diplo commitment. and to be honest, i thought the aksum siege would be 5t faster than it will be when i accepted drey's proposal and think it's highly unlikely we'll be ready for war with ginger in 10t anyways. but that depends on if we read cow/cow as indicating a) we will not attack you in the next 10 turns, which is true or b) we will not even PLAN during those turns for a potential war with you afterwards, which we already are doing....

admittedly i am viewing our war plans now as contingent upon drey actually BEING attacked, and thus as essentially defensive in nature - if ginger does not want to invade someone i am perfectly content to sit around developing in the medium to long term and see which of us has more cities lol. but while it seems like a strong move for us in this game to accept, all-but-guaranteeing that ginger's doomstack heads south, i am not sure if that's over the line into scummy and untrustworthy diplo on our part.

thus as usual, i will play the first half of the turn now while remanding this question to you, beloved dedlurkers, for discussion  i know i said i could do this turn in an hour but obviously that was just flatly a lie lol and i will find a way to not actually hit end turn until yall have had a chance to contribute, esp with GT needing an extension anyways

[ljubljana]

you will also notice something.... interesting  in that diplo screen.... only superdeath, greenline, and GT available for a "stop trading with" request? yup, EVERYone else has cancelled deals w them, including open borders, and including drey who is evidently braver than i'll ever be. and it turns out that, contrary to my preconceptions, there IS a way to know whether this happened organically or if someone organized it



mjmd has this malus as well, so apparently word is getting around....

ok, we need, by my count, roughly 900 gold to finish gunpowder, with 452 in the bank as of now and 180 due to come in this turn. so if we DO want to beg someone for a loan, 300 gold is roughly what we should be asking for. only naufragar and superdeath have the liquidity to give us one, but at least we have friendly relations with one of them.... i am not sure if we want to ask though as it's only the right move if we don't extend the ginger NAP, of course

btw guys, ginger is not just signaling so us about where their stack is going to move, they are MOVING IT NOW





those are the piles 1NW of caesarea, and in caesarea, respectively. so i'm seeing 12 knights, 7 janissaries, 5 maces, and THIRTY-TWO cats, counting the little 3-unit ministack 1NE of our unit. and that does indeed represent all the units from attaleia, which were previously on zone-defense and provide-some-uncertainty-about-who-their-target-might-be-duty.

of course, naturally they could just as easily turn around and slam into us still if we don't give them a NAP extension, but.... is it too early to say

Fear the chicken pizza!

there is also this tidbit from the event log, from after we played last turn



so it's to be drafted janissaries, but, unless they pop a second golden age when taj runs out, apparently NOT slaving their whole economy into cuirassiers, which represented much of the immediate threat to our border cities. with 32 cats they could do it, of course, but if those go south and all they have for us are draftees and natural production, it should be grotesquely inefficient for them to make progress

anyways, let's look at the actual doing-stuff part of the turn, where things are silly as hell:



this is our third-highest hammer city, after abi and the capital. not third-highest in hammer potential..... third-highest in hammers, right now  it is tied with mitakeumi which is size 10, and kotozakura which is size 7 but very hammer-optimized by our standards



last tranche of cats heading on over.... 

gt is at 77 gold now and losing 10/turn btw, so striking them out is uh.... sorta feasible.... sorta.... i guess...

if we want to wait a few MORE turns, i am conniving to sync up a few builds in the east with a few transferred troops for a final-final-final wave of real attackers, the lack of which is seemingly what's causing our sims to crash against the pikeman rocks. 3 longbow transfers and an archer, plus lb builds in atamifuji (2t), daieisho (1t), hoshoryu (3t), hokutofuji (3t), and perhaps lalibela can produce something on time too? should be enough to finally conclusively put this siege to bed. not that i want to wait that long of COURSE but you know, makes sense to at least give ourselves the option

i am even doing something i told myself we probably weren't going to do and starting a 5-turn knight in the capital..... these things seem pretty inefficient for us generally in these circumstances, but at least it could make it to either the west or the east in time to do something relevant.... 



weak evidence that ginger does NOT have engineering yet: it looks like that's a draftee 2SE of ankyra, so it moved 2 tiles last turn presumably, and the stack 1NW of caesarea seems to be 4 tiles from its previous position in attaleia, which is again divisible by 2...

well, turn is passed, with the decision on what to do about ginger's fish/fish offer still unmade.... which means that, for the purposes of this interturn, i have NOT resent it. definitely a big enough decision that i think the Dedlurker Advisory Council should get a chance to weigh in if they would like to. could also see what ginger does i guess, eg, if they shift guys around or send us diplo interpretable as a threat to go after us instead if we don't stay out for 10 turns....

[aetryn]

you will also notice something.... interesting  in that diplo screen.... only superdeath, greenline, and GT available for a "stop trading with" request? yup, EVERYone else has cancelled deals w them, including open borders, and including drey who is evidently braver than i'll ever be. and it turns out that, contrary to my preconceptions, there IS a way to know whether this happened organically or if someone organized it



mjmd has this malus as well, so apparently word is getting around....

ok, we need, by my count, roughly 900 gold to finish gunpowder, with 452 in the bank as of now and 180 due to come in this turn. so if we DO want to beg someone for a loan, 300 gold is roughly what we should be asking for. only naufragar and superdeath have the liquidity to give us one, but at least we have friendly relations with one of them.... i am not sure if we want to ask though as it's only the right move if we don't extend the ginger NAP, of course

btw guys, ginger is not just signaling so us about where their stack is going to move, they are MOVING IT NOW





those are the piles 1NW of caesarea, and in caesarea, respectively. so i'm seeing 12 knights, 7 janissaries, 5 maces, and THIRTY-TWO cats, counting the little 3-unit ministack 1NE of our unit. and that does indeed represent all the units from attaleia, which were previously on zone-defense and provide-some-uncertainty-about-who-their-target-might-be-duty.

of course, naturally they could just as easily turn around and slam into us still if we don't give them a NAP extension, but.... is it too early to say

Fear the chicken pizza!

there is also this tidbit from the event log, from after we played last turn



so it's to be drafted janissaries, but, unless they pop a second golden age when taj runs out, apparently NOT slaving their whole economy into cuirassiers, which represented much of the immediate threat to our border cities. with 32 cats they could do it, of course, but if those go south and all they have for us are draftees and natural production, it should be grotesquely inefficient for them to make progress

anyways, let's look at the actual doing-stuff part of the turn, where things are silly as hell:



this is our third-highest hammer city, after abi and the capital. not third-highest in hammer potential..... third-highest in hammers, right now  it is tied with mitakeumi which is size 10, and kotozakura which is size 7 but very hammer-optimized by our standards



last tranche of cats heading on over.... 

gt is at 77 gold now and losing 10/turn btw, so striking them out is uh.... sorta feasible.... sorta.... i guess...

if we want to wait a few MORE turns, i am conniving to sync up a few builds in the east with a few transferred troops for a final-final-final wave of real attackers, the lack of which is seemingly what's causing our sims to crash against the pikeman rocks. 3 longbow transfers and an archer, plus lb builds in atamifuji (2t), daieisho (1t), hoshoryu (3t), hokutofuji (3t), and perhaps lalibela can produce something on time too? should be enough to finally conclusively put this siege to bed. not that i want to wait that long of COURSE but you know, makes sense to at least give ourselves the option

i am even doing something i told myself we probably weren't going to do and starting a 5-turn knight in the capital..... these things seem pretty inefficient for us generally in these circumstances, but at least it could make it to either the west or the east in time to do something relevant.... 



weak evidence that ginger does NOT have engineering yet: it looks like that's a draftee 2SE of ankyra, so it moved 2 tiles last turn presumably, and the stack 1NW of caesarea seems to be 4 tiles from its previous position in attaleia, which is again divisible by 2...

well, turn is passed, with the decision on what to do about ginger's fish/fish offer still unmade.... which means that, for the purposes of this interturn, i have NOT resent it. definitely a big enough decision that i think the Dedlurker Advisory Council should get a chance to weigh in if they would like to. could also see what ginger does i guess, eg, if they shift guys around or send us diplo interpretable as a threat to go after us instead if we don't stay out for 10 turns....

I would probably not do fish for fish at this point. Ginger doesn't need a free hand for 10 turns to go fight Dreylin; even if we aren't necessarily in a position to join for a bit, it keeps him a bit more honest. It's POSSIBLE he changes his target, but I wouldn't bet on it. I wouldn't be surprised if he had diplomatic feelers out to Greenline and may have already planned a combined war.

This will be tricky to judge. We need to finish GT and shift forces back east before war with Ginger. But we really can't afford to let Ginger take Dreylin's territory as it fixes his one problem - lack of cities, and then he'll be unstoppable.

[ljubljana]

yeahhh i think that's probably correct but not 100% sure... idk how honest it can really keep them if they know our whole army is still at aksum (and they do, they have a scout in lalibela). on the other hand i think if we don't respond, there's a fair chance they would ask drey for a fish trade as a backup plan - the most important thing for them now should be to avoid a 2v1, not the specific choice of target.... i normally would agree to not give them a free hand but given that we really CAN'T meaningfully intervene in 10t, they KNOW we can't, and a change of target would be disastrous, i think either could be the correct move from a "chances to win" perspective. but obviously we would have to attack very soon after the NAP ends (or to rephrase: as soon as we can be in position which is like 10t from now) to prevent them from running over drey

i guess i also have the following ethics question, if you are ok being asked such things: is it scummy of us as players if we fish trade ginger and then attack like, ONE turn after it lapses? and were planning to attack them on or around that date even before we signed the fish trade? that is when we told dreylin we would help...

[aetryn]

yeahhh i think that's probably correct but not 100% sure... idk how honest it can really keep them if they know our whole army is still at aksum (and they do, they have a scout in lalibela). on the other hand i think if we don't respond, there's a fair chance they would ask drey for a fish trade as a backup plan - the most important thing for them now should be to avoid a 2v1, not the specific choice of target....

i guess i also have the following ethics question, if you are ok being asked such things: is it scummy of us as players if we fish trade ginger and then attack like, ONE turn after it lapses? and were planning to attack them on or around that date even before we signed the fish trade? that is when we told dreylin we would help...

Depends who you ask!  The 10t thing isn't set in stone. I probably wouldn't but I prefer to be thought of as a nice friendly person. Also why I am probably not well suited to heavy war games.

Though ironically I do fine when the war is baked into the game. Give me a board game where the sides are at war by design and I'm fine. I just don't like declaring war too much.

[ljubljana]

hmm.... tbh i don't like declaring either, and am probably on the skittish side by nature, but i'm trying to play this game from a headspace of "what would CMF do" to practice my strategic vision and thus bellicosity lol

two more things worth mentioning:

greenline cowed us 3 turns ago, so if ging DOES spontaneously change targets they can't join.... HOPEfully they know better than to help ging in the first place too but they haven't made many moves yet so i am a little nervous they join vs drey

we are going to be in a way better position to fight in 10t and not just because of the obvious "we will have our army in the right place" reason lmao. i am soft-planning to head to nationalism after gunpowder, and.... if we wait we can make the next great person in (8GPP, one turn ahead) atamifuji instead of (12 GPP) mitakeumi. doesn't sound like much but it shaves like 5 turns off the swap to nationhood (and theocracy). and that second GA could actually only be like 13 turns away. IF and only if we will definitely not have to defend mitakeumi in that time

[ljubljana]

well, i've been brooding on this all night and i think we'd better accept.... reading through old ginger threads, i see a lot of talk about how "the first 10t of fish/fish is sacred" to them but also a lot of talk about treaties expiring and the like, which suggests that the modal outcome is they view this as a 10t NAP but nothing more binding than that. and it's hard to overstate our inability to meaningfully intervene in the next 10 turns.... our military in the area is ~15 longbows, and... that's it..... and we're still unsure of if we have enough to kill GT and are actively diverting newly produced forces over there...

i think our number one priority right now is to make sure that mega ginger stack with the 32 cats goes south so dreylin's standing army and garrisons can be what grinds it down, not ours, so that once we do have the numbers and position to intervene, we will still be able to win after doing so. i think the benefits of not accepting when we are NOT in position to actually attack in the next 10t are too speculative to justify not taking the chance to lock in their initial target...

logged in real quick to commit to this, at 6 am in an airport seconds before final boarding call lol, as every turn counts and i want this on the books before GT rolls the turn. so 155-165 is our timeframe

sorry if this is the game-losing (or game-throwing? :weed move guys! drey has been whipping heavily and i do not think they will collapse in the next 10t... i think it's more likely that ginger makes inroads as drey concedes border cities to whip cats for defense-in-depth. i mean hell, at 1-2 tiles per turn it will take more than 10t just to walk from one end of drey's empire to the other even if they had NO units..... and once the initial wave is safely 5 whipped-down cities deep into drey and we have reclaimed 30 units from GT's capital, THEN we can swoop in and try to turn the tide.

ofc, the major risk is that maybe we don't have time to execute on this and there wil be some kind of major confrontation between drey's standing forces and ginger's in the next 10 turns that drey loses badly such that we can no longer 2v1 them at full strength. but if that's in the cards, nothing we do now can alter its odds much i think, other than maybe if we told drey we won't intervene and thus cause them to lose the desire to actively resist.... really, it's not like the threat of us promoting 10 longbows to guerilla 2 and going for ankyra is going to make them leave more than, like, two mre janissaries behind than they would have otherwise. nor do i expect the threat of a "massive" wave of knights from us who just got the tech and are still in serfdom to do so......

in the meantime, with 10 free turns we can shift all our unit builds in the core from actively-obsoleting longbows and pikes to cats and then muskets as gunpowder comes in. we can make a defender pile in mitakeumi and thus do the 400-point great person there instead of the slower atamifuji option, which gets us a golden age in, i believe, 13 turns. and on the tech front we should get to nationhood at around the same time to solve our serfdom problem (the problem being that it isn't slavery lol), and then we can go for the commando rush for the decisive military edge we will need to make progress in the upcoming era

[ljubljana]

156

ok. THIS time i REALLY have just an hour for the turn.... i can play it right now in JFK, or i can very likely ask for an extension... surely we can manage....? i mean im practically a self-restraint icon



anyone know if ginger is getting foreign TRs w superdeath currently? they have had borders closed on them by everyone but us, greenline, and GT, so they shouldn't be able to reach SD logically..... but as we've seen, trade can travel via the roads of a civ you're at war with, so i'm not at all confident that the same doesn't apply vis border closures and trade routes. if they DO NOT have trade w superdeath, we should close borders w them to shut off their international trade routes completely. but if they DO, via our roads or some other such thing, there's nothing we can do....



FINALLY this axe has presented itself to get run down by chariots. can we do damage THIS time? i brought two just in case we don't lmao

(it was fine, shock chariot wins at 91% odds..... it almost died though! 0.2/4 health remaining and now it can't help attack the capital [but the point is that it freed up a longbow who CAN help])



atamifuji going to make a great person JUST as the food box hits zero (next turn we swap off the ivory which we are working to finish the lb). definitely planned lol



yeah.... sooo lalibela is building what is intended to be an amphibious pike..... ok don't @ me, ok, a mace takes an extra turn, a crossbow/longbow would have to disembark or attack at the penalty, and it is much more likely that we pull the trigger on attacking in 5 turns than in 6.... plus if we attack BEFORE then (as i still hope we will be able to do lol) the pike is a better unit just to have around... or, if not a better unit, one that we are more short of relative to where we should be lol

i THINK that according to the sims, t160 is the correct attack timing.... we will have all 16 cats in position then as well as a stray longbow/archer pair. but if the situation changes and we want to wait more, we can add 2ish more units for each extra turn of delay. including, yes, this dumbass pikeman, who if we do decide to land it before attacking, will probably end up taking city raider....



ep-wise, drey and greenline keep trickling spending to deny us their graphs :| we are racing towards city vis on ging though, in the hopes that either they will be spending all their points on drey OR that they will feel compelled enough to spend on us that it will actually help drey. i feel that city vis was extremely powerful in the GT war and regret not going for it sooner, a mistake i don't intend to make here

btw, i scouted greenline's border w drey and see no signs of a buildup so far.... and when we have had graphs on them their milpower has been WAY down, almost in mjmd territory.... but we'll get another peek next turn i guess



"hey, that's not a unit!" well... if are really 13 turns from a golden age and are heading for nationalism, that means we will most likely want to swap to pacifism for the GA duration. which means we need some GP-capable cities that are actually jewish lol (not the other religions because ALL of their holy cities either are currently or might imminently be owned by top-tier contenders ginger or superdeath. and also this is the one monastery we actually bothered to build so far lol). and i suppose we must keep making missionaries even after that for theocracy.... although conveniently lalibela and aksum, both fated to be among our top military producers, are jewish already.... ok admittedly we did that ourselves with lalibela BUT STILL



just to check, this city is NOT going to starve this interturn, right? it actually has to go to -1 food in the food box, not just to 0? that's what the interface says and i trust it but obviously it would be A Problem if this trust is not well-founded lol

ok byeee

[xist10]

Ginger and Sd are getting traderoutes to another. Only war blocks a connection, not open borders. Trade routes requiers oben borders with the goal of the traderoute.
If you and dreylin are at war with Ginger, Ginger will get no traderoute to SD - or some else before Astro.
But SD still gets the Traderoute to Ginger.
When one SD or Ginger has a valide trade connection to the other, they can exchange Ressources.
So if you and Dreylin are at war with Ginger and (for example) Nauf and Greenline are at war with SD, you are blocking Gingers trade routes and Nauf/Greenline are blocking SD traderoutes.
This means, SD and Greenline should not be able to exchange ressources.

Shrinking should need -1 food. Reason: If you grow without a granary (and without overflow), the city will have 0 food.