[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[scooter]

Oh, one more thing.





Superdeath won the race to this spot by 1T. I don't know why he was suddenly interested in it after ignoring it previously, but whatever. It's not bad for me honestly, as it's another nearly indefensible city, so if he decides to come at me in 5T, this city probably doesn't survive.

[Zed-F]

Looks good. Not much to say on our end since we are expecting to go into a consolidation phase — maybe we sniff out a Bing city or two we could take but otherwise it’s time to build up a more significant ground attack force so we have the option to go on a more serious campaign if we feel like it, and otherwise tech up relatively quietly while we continue to look for opportunities.

I wonder what Yuris will do? His Samurai are running out of window for aggression; people other than ourselves will be getting muskets soon.

[scooter]

One small amusing thing.





At 20h this city already has the third-highest base production in the entire empire. Technically second-highest right now due to the capital being on specialist duty. Water maps are something else. This is a little bit deceiving as a couple of my pure production cities are trying to eke out some growth right now and are not in their pure hammer configs as a result, but it's still kinda wild.

Looks good. Not much to say on our end since we are expecting to go into a consolidation phase — maybe we sniff out a Bing city or two we could take but otherwise it’s time to build up a more significant ground attack force so we have the option to go on a more serious campaign if we feel like it, and otherwise tech up relatively quietly while we continue to look for opportunities.

I wonder what Yuris will do? His Samurai are running out of window for aggression; people other than ourselves will be getting muskets soon.

I don't really know what Yuris can do. Related to the production issue, it's just really, really hard to mass enough units to invade on a water map. The number of units needed is higher because you also have to sink hammers into transport boats, but then you also have to sink hammers into boats to defend those transport boats. And then most players have built Walls too, so do you want to also build siege? 2-movers are so useless that nobody has teched HBR yet, so nobody is building pikes/spears, so Crossbows are popular, which hard counters the main unit he wants to use. I've been doing scavenging in part due to the game state, but also due to the fact that my #1 military in the game is nowhere near large enough for a full-scale invasion right now.


Now, I could whip myself silly and put together a pretty fearsome invasion force I guess, but the point is it does require serious commitment to doing so. (And in my situation it's not clear at all that this would even be a great idea.)

[Zed-F]

Most of the idea behind getting Kremlin is to make whipping big things easier so our many low-production cities can still build things. It’s not clear how many of those things should be military. Kremlin makes whipping banks and observatories just as plausible as whipping infantry and destroyers. It feels like it’s important to stay flexible and maintain a reasonable expeditionary military force, but I agree we might not want to put our entire focus there.

[scooter]

I can see from PBSpy that Cairo rejected my somewhat unreasonable first peace offer, then accepted my more reasonable second offer that cedes me Barcelona and 350g. FWIW, I do have enough gold/tech to get to Communism by the end of the Golden Age. Or Steel in like 3-4 turns.


More importantly, I've been trying to suss out why the other players have not conceded yet. Superdeath played a 2 minute turn yesterday, so he's checked out. Cairo played a 4 minute turn yesterday and accepted my peace offer within 30 seconds of logging in, so I think he's also checked out. His thread has not seen an update since July (!). Bing appears to be trying still based on login times and thread activity, but he's also extremely backwards.


That leaves Yuris, who has currently been logged in for over an hour. I think that's my answer. I'm having fun though, so it's not a complaint at all. But this game was concedable the turn I got Chemistry IMO.

Most of the idea behind getting Kremlin is to make whipping big things easier so our many low-production cities can still build things. It’s not clear how many of those things should be military. Kremlin makes whipping banks and observatories just as plausible as whipping infantry and destroyers. It feels like it’s important to stay flexible and maintain a reasonable expeditionary military force, but I agree we might not want to put our entire focus there.

Yeah. The truth is we have more than enough land to coast to space. There's no real need to take a risk on that would be a large-scale invasion. Simply making ourselves impossible to dogpile should be plenty enough to get over the finish line. Kremlin definitely would aid in that.

[Zed-F]

I imagine we’d rather end the GA in state property than free market, so Communism might be the right call there if that’s both accurate and possible. Certainly it would help our newer cities grow quickly.

[scooter]

I mentioned that Cairo accepted my peace deal, but shortly after I posted, Yuris declared on Cairo and captured Seville. Interesting. Suddenly, Barcelona is a little bit exposed. However, the peace deal with Cairo teleported my loaded Galleon towards Barcelona, which made it very easy to cover it.


NOTE: 5-move Galleon is in the city, so I need to be on the alert for this.





On one hand, wow, I think I've found the furthest away possible place from the capital with absolutely enormous distance costs. On the other hand, it's still instantly profitable.





Caravel has Sentry, so he's going to have decent vision. If I get even a whiff of trouble for him, I'm gonna want to kill that right away. I missed a picture of it, but I dropped off 2 Muskets and 1 Crossbow into Barcelona, and I moved 3 Frigates up to totally prevent any sort of funny business. Barcelona is pretty unimportant though in the grand scheme of things, so I'm not fretting too much. This looks more like Yuris had a chance to be opportunistic.





I am trying to improve border defenses across the board. I've added units to Hissar and Ubaryd, and I also repositioned a Frigate to this area whose job it will be to stare menacingly at Bing. He's got two Caravels snooping inside my borders, and I have come really close to simply declaring and killing them, then offering peace. But I think I'd rather make clear to him that he cannot really make gains. I plan to keep a gold buffer going forward for emergency upgrades - I have defensive units in every border city that could upgrade to a Gren right now, so keeping that as an anytime option will help.





I'm also ferrying units west towards my Superdeath border. I shuffled a Longbow in Trygalle up to Bastion to cover from Cairo. I also completed a Fort to make Skinny island easier to traverse pre-Incense city - which I'm almost ready to settle. The Galleon on the "172" sign has a pair of Muskets on board that I'm chaining via the fort Galleon next turn, which will keep heading west to improve the defenses on the SD border. They should arrive right before the treaty expires.


In addition, the selected Galley is transferring a Musket, which will combine with the Gren completing in Pale and come over the next turn. A lot of the offensive units I used to do all of this ended up on the Cairo front, so rather than ferry them back, I'm opting to replenish with fresh units behind them. This is all fairly expensive under Pacifism, but it's worth it, and I have the cash to spare.





Meanwhile I'm being slightly threatening/bluffish towards Yuris over here. He does have a Galleon and a decent number of units floating around here, so he has to consider whether my Galleons are full (they are not). They are intentionally positioned to only be threatening a boating of one city rather than a couple. As I said, Barcelona is technically disposable, but I want to send a message that if he does try to screw with me - likely with the hopes of bringing others in - it will be difficult.

I imagine we’d rather end the GA in state property than free market, so Communism might be the right call there if that’s both accurate and possible. Certainly it would help our newer cities grow quickly.

Well, also Communism would mean 3-man GA is ready whenever, assuming my GP RNG works out this time. Technically I could head straight onto another GA rather than ending. We'll see how the GP RNG lands.


Speaking of - I know this has been answered before, but I am hoping someone remembers. Nationalism obsoletes MoM here, but it does not do so retroactively, correct? Put another way, I need to START my last MoM Golden Age prior to Nationalism, not END it, correct? I'm sort of wondering about ending this GA on Communism, firing 3-man, and using said 3-man to build Kremlin and Taj to tack on another 8T, but also in order to deny Taj. That should propel me well into metal boats and beyond. Of course, Cairo is sitting on an Engineer and can tech Nationalism now, so this is probably a moot point. But I am curious.

[Cornflakes]

MoM only needs to be active when the GA is started. Obsoleting or losing it to capture/raze has no affect after the GA is started.

[Zed-F]

I agree with the sentiment that we want to make it clear to Yuris that screwing with us would not turn out well for him. He's one of the ones that could get Gunpowder soon and might be thinking that gives him some kind of license to make a Hail Mary attack on us. We border him to the west and to the east now, so it's not very difficult for each of us to find some kind of target.

It does seem like we need to hold off on any adventuring in Bing's northwest using our forces near Ice Island though -- those probably need to be positioned defensively until we can see what's going on with Yuris near Barcelona. Hopefully he's just intent on taking a bite out of Cairo.

[scooter]

Rare double turn day! However, this really just pulls tomorrow's turn forward into today. There's close to 0 chance of an actual turn tomorrow. But the turn was super interesting, so that's OK.





I noticed Yuris took another city on PBSpy, and it's this one. It's actually one I had not defogged yet. However, seeing his navy and defenders trapped in here while Cairo moves Galleons to presumably contest it, I realized there's an opportunity here to threaten a bit aggressively. So I did that.





I left the Crossbow in Barcelona, but I upgraded it to a Grenadier. Sort of pricey, but if I get a city raze here it'll more or less pay for itself. Also, I may well force Yuris to do some upgrading of his own. I also swapped Barcelona over to a Walls build and popped its borders end of turn with Caste Artists, so a CG1 Drill2 Gren with 20% defenses should hold against a fair bit if he happens to have a 5-move Galleon on one of just a couple fogged tiles. Anyway, here's my thinking on all the positioning. I'm going to talk as if we are at war, but it's worth noting we are not actually at war, and I am happy to stay at peace if nothing looks good next turn. I'm just trying to pressure him into a mistake and give myself some options, really.


1) I moved two Frigates up to cover the Privateers. These Frigates are in a spot where he's going to have to move around them with his Galleons. But he's in a really tight spot here. If he simply moves the Galleons empty back into Seville, I can possibly burn it with the Galleons inside, which he cannot risk. He could ferry units back into Seville, but then Cairo may be able to recapture. Or he might also fear I could burn Lazy Days, which leads me to the next thing.


2) The Galleon 1N of Seville is the boldest move, but it's a bluff hoping to induce some bad decisions. On paper it forks 4 cities. Seville, Toyama, Lazy Days, and the city 1S of the Peak that I haven't defogged. He may have to attack it. However, the Galleon is C1 with coastal defense, while all his Galleons are Navigation promoted, so he's going to lose at least one fight attacking it, and then the second Galleon would surely get cleaned up by one of my boats. So he's going to have to choose between 2-for-1'ing it OR simply trying to cover all 4 cities. The latter is probably his best option, but how many whips or upgrades will he have to do to accomplish this? Or maybe he sniffs out the bluff, which does look a little bluff-y admittedly.


3) While I'm waving all of these "look over here" signs, I have an actually loaded Galleon chilling up in the icy northern waters. I bet Bizen is practically empty, and it may become totally empty if he shuffles units down to cover Toyama. There are two muskets on board, so if this is a 0-1 unit situation, it'll be an easy raze. Importantly, it's also still in range of Seville, so I could still stick with that if he does something reckless like stuffing Galleons into it without enough defenders.


4) Worth noting it seems highly likely some of the Galleons in Lazy Days are still loaded. He cannot boat Barcelona from there, but he could land them next to it. I would invite this though as it would likely be a one-way trip, and I could reinforce Barcelona. Though sacrificing the city to wipe out his fleet would be worth it probably.


Civ4 naval tactics are a blast if you have tech superiority and miserable if you do not.





A small thing I did. It means boats from my core can get to these islands roughly 1T faster. It felt more important a couple turns ago.





Big dice roll here, though I guess not that big. A Merchant would mean we are guaranteed a 3-man GA as Unta has no Merchant GPP. A scientist and we're still pretty safe as the odds of that are ~1%. Another positive of a Merchant is that it leaves open the option of doing a 3-man without this Merchant and saving it for Sid's or something I guess.





And got it. Very nice. The one curveball in Unta would be that 7% Spy RNG. It would be OK because the Physics Scientist is a backup, but it would be very annoying. I think the odds will techincally be closer to 5%.





Swapped Ubaryd back into a huge growth config. This is because my main realization of the last 20T is the massive benefit of having a few huge cities for domestic trade routes - showing Pale as an example. Pale just hit size 18, and if it gets to 19, that'll be another +1c in a ton of cities. Same deal in Ubaryd - growing it a few sizes is worth several commerce in a ton of cities. I have two of these large cities in my core, but the cities too close to them don't get full value. Having a city in my eastern core be huge helps spread the wealth to western cities, and it's worth slowing down a couple cities growth in the area. Still really enjoying the trade route minigame.


Tomorrow is unlikely to have a turn, so I'll save the graphs for the morning.