Sengoku Chevalier: Hiun no Kishi

[Japper007]

Mother of pearl, I forgot to swap off Machinery this turn. Oops. That's a bit of science and production lost, as my archers in queue will upgrade to crossbows. Bugger. At least I, uh, save some gold? Not worth it. 

Such an infuriating mechanic that. It should turn-block like an unmoved unit IMHO, just a pop-up like "are you sure you want to continue researching this unboosted tech/civic" would be such a QOL improvement. Though I imagine that'd get frustrating in the late game when you're probably not getting the boosts anymore.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Yeah, I gotta start pinning reminders to swap off of research. Play one turn in a hurry and you make screwups like this.

Ah, well. So it goes.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Hm, the Roman military has vanished, and Whosit took a hefty penalty to his military power. Actually, looks like the hit happened 3 turns ago, and he hasn't recovered yet. Krill seems to be smacking him around in the West. SPeaking of, his science is absurd - my only hope is that it'll taper off as he runs out of pop to grow? I still need to get all my campuses built so I have a lot of runway ahead. Anyway, I still need at least 6-7 Samurai or equivalents to feel secure, so we'll keep building military. Speaking of...



Hammered by the Machinery blunder. Went from 2 turns to finishing a trio of archers, with Mercenaries due in 3 turns, to 11 turns to finish my two crossbows. Ouch. Well, Samurai in 2 turns from Korutu and I can get more Samurai going as my Aqueducts finish next turn, triggering niter locations. 

Field cannon are an issue, to be sure, but Krill is doing yeoman's work keeping Whosit from devouring me or Korea. I feel like Rome lost the plot around the time he unaccountably failed to stomp over Korea 100 turns back.

[williams482]

Perhaps Whosit really is playing for second.

Your recovery has been phenomenal, and while you definitely aren't favored from here, if you get left alone for long enough while the other three beat each other up... who knows.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Perhaps Whosit really is playing for second.

Your recovery has been phenomenal, and while you definitely aren't favored from here, if you get left alone for long enough while the other three beat each other up... who knows.

Right now I'm leaning towards Krill as the probable winner. He seems to have been screwed with land area, judging by his city count and knowing a few of them are polar wastelands, but happily for him he's Yongle so that doesn't matter. Archduke has been blessed by geography (a ton of huge cities and monster amounts of faith), but my bet is his only idea for what to do with all of that is convert it into a massive pile of units and ram it straight at Krill. That might work but if I can see it from all the way over here you bet Krill can for sure see it, too, which makes it unlikely to fully succeed. It'll be my one window to try and claw into contention, though, so fingers crossed it happens. 

I need to focus on not getting eaten by Whosit first, of course. The good news there is he doesn't seem to be the kind of player to commit to an objective and focus on it. He builds wonders and districts when he should build units, and the result is he's baffled by a fairly weak and somnolent Korea, for example. He could have piles more units than me, instead he has 300 more power - ie, less than 10 more units, and he has 3 fronts to monitor, I only have one. 

I'm hoping the vanishing of his units means he's decided to reinforce his western front and I don't have to worry about invasion, and the musket/Terracotta Army just has me seeing ghosts, but no sense taking risks. I may lose from building Workshops and Campuses late, I will lose if I get devoured by Romans. So it goes.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I stagger on, zombie-like, an empire not actually alive but with instead a horrid imitation, a mockery of a living thing, an insult. We at last finish our two aqueducts and unlock Niter deposits:



One result in the entire known world. What joy.

It's way down in the south, near our next city, which is presently occupied by a barb man at arms. I failed to take a picture of the situation, but we have two horse and a samurai in the area to clear 'em out, then we'll settle and plant our niter mine. The aqueducts have also improved me to 6 and 5 adjacency, respectively, on the IZs! I'll get workshops out of there as SOON as I have a respectable military to fend off Whosit.

Speaking of, I was checking my engineer progress - haven't bothered to open the great person screen in a long time, due to being checked out of the game - and this si the funniest thing I've seen in a Civ game in my life:



Check out the Great General on the far left. 

Rome, Khmer, and China all have negative times to recruit Boadicea. That's because all three goobers passed on her, opting to let some other schmuck recruit her as clearly the most useless Classical Great General. Except...neither Korea nor I have built any encampments! So neither of US is recruiting her, either! And due to Civ VI's inspired design, once you pass on a great person, a)all future great people stop showing up until she's recruited, and b)no takesies-backies, you live with your choice, forever. Can't buy her with faith, nor with gold, you're just stuck. 

WHICH MEANS the geniuses in the other capitals have effectively locked all Great Generals out of the game, forever, until Korea or I gets around to building an encampment and recruiting Boadicea. So those 7 Encampments+Buildings Rome has created are doing dick-all for him except for a trickle of extra production and some XP boosts once his units start fighting. Holy cow did Whosit fumble the bag on this one - China & Khmer can build to victory, but Rome has contrived to not just shoot himself in the foot but to somehow blow his own foot clean off just before setting out on a marathon. He needs to conquer people and he's been attempting to do it without a Great General for 100 turns now. 

Slow clap, everyone. 

I do intend to build encampments at some point, except, now I'm not sure I want to. Even if I did, I'd probably pass on Boadicea, too, since no Great Generals serves me a hell of a lot more than it does Rome. 

I'll grab a missionary next turn and ensure all my cities have Defender of the Faith, but now Whosit has no shot to conquer me except via out-teching me. -knock on wood-

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

(No doubt lurkers have been aware of the GG situation for a while now and have just been waiting for me to cotton on. Well, I have! It's glorious. Can't wait to read the rants in other threads in a few months).

[williams482]

Oh my goodness, that's incredible.

Boudica isn't even bad? Barbs in this game get such stupidly strong units much earlier than they should, and the risk to the general of trying to creep up next to a gang of them is nil because generals are immortal and just teleport away if attacked. Plus the fact that Boudica would have been just as good as any other classical general at boosting legions and crossbows, which is where nearly all the actual value is.

I feel bad for Whosit if they didn't know this was how the mechanic worked, but if they did and were just expecting the next player to claim her and allow Rome to take Sun Tzu or Hannibal, who are marginally better in practice (or I guess the new one Trưng Trắc, whose retirement bonus is a substantial looking 25% reduction in war weariness for the rest of the game)... oops. Props to Archduke and Krill for recognizing the situation and exploiting it, assuming they did this on purpose.

[Jabah]

You might need to build an encampment, if only to be able to get military engineer(s) to build railroads ?
What would happen if you take Boudica, would all the other players be prompted to get multiple GGs within a few turns since they obviously must have reach several 100s of points waiting...

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It wouldn't be an issue, since I'd bypass Boadicea (or Boudica, as I see that's the spelling VI has gone with) anyway, it's more crippling to everyone else than to me not to have a General. So we need only worry about greenline building a Camp and stumbling into her. If she is taken, then yeah, a bunch would come off the table all at once as each power spends his accumulated points.

I probably won't build railraods. They cost 1 coal per tile to create, and I often find coal is precious to me - it's the only resource capable of building ironclads and battleships, two absolutely essential units for naval supremacy in the Industrial Age. If I AM to win, part of victory will probably be burning down Archduke's coast using battleships and capturing his capital with marines, so I need all the coal I can muster.