[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

Looks like a great start to the inevitable Yuris conflict. Hopefully he doesn't have a reserve stack of Privateers at an inopportune location further east making their way to the front. If not, it should take him a few turns to rebuild, whereupon we can enact repairs/promotions and perhaps reinforce a tad. We do have a couple units that are within a couple turns of natural completion in that part of the world. and there's always emergency measures that could be taken (though hopefully this attack makes those less likely to be needed.) Sad to lose Yuris's Silk, but we were about to lose it anyway; maybe we can acquire some later (probably not sooner.)

Hard to believe Aren didn't have a Library yet! I'm sure the oil patch under the town on Outlook island will help with that during the GA, though I doubt we raze the town to build a derrick. I imagine we might replace the fort next to Hissar with one if it becomes relevant, or build one next to Ugarat if we think we can keep it secure.

Nice to see our ice island starting to grow to fulfill its potential! I'd expected to see more naval and fewer land units being built there, but perhaps we've more need of city defenders for the moment. Since we have a fish-fish with Cairo (we assume for ~10 turns, anyway) does that mean we're considering pressuring Yuris from his NE (our SW) as well? Or are all our local forces tied up on the SD front north of there?

Do we take a quick detour to Aesthetics-Literature to build Heroic Epic before continuing with Steel-Flight? You didn't mention what you wound up deciding to do with the GG.

[scooter]

Hard to believe Aren didn't have a Library yet!

Yeah this is a funny function of Aren having low production and always having something else to do. Early it prioritized Market > Library because of happy issues. Its natural production is near-0, so it's whip only. And right at the time most of the empire was pushing OR infra, it was pulled away to help supply all the Astro expansion, and right as that ended, I was growing back the whipped pop for a GA while handing away one of its foods. Definitely a city that kept getting pulled away for other things.

Do we take a quick detour to Aesthetics-Literature to build Heroic Epic before continuing with Steel-Flight? You didn't mention what you wound up deciding to do with the GG.

Nothing with the GG yet. Thought about a naval sprinkle this turn, but felt it was more important to kill some boats. Also, just not that concerned about Heroic Epic right now because I don't think the game is lasting long enough to pay for the detour.


Notably, Bing took his turn and whipped 16 pop from 20 cities, and then after turn roll whipped another 8. Unclear if he's aiming at his longtime enemy (Yuris) or joining the dogpile, but I would assume the latter even though it seems a bit silly given he still cannot build Galleons. But it does mean I need a couple more boats on his front, which fortunately I am already working towards.


The net effect here is I think I have to be done with the half-hearted whips and try to crush the uprising now. I am annoyed at the prospect of a huge multi-front tedious naval war that feels a bit ceremonial, but it is what it is.


As a practical issue, I am 12 days away from a Civless 1 week trip. The plan was for Tarkeel to sub, but I am not wild about having a sub during game-deciding dogpile war turns unless Tarkeel is excited about the prospect. So it looks like a one week pause is coming up.

[scooter]

Logged in to peek. Bing declared war on me. No signs of an attack in sight anywhere, and I happen to have a Privateer near his primary border with me, so I'll have a good look on my turn.

[Zed-F]

Feels a bit like a pair of 18-year old and 13-year old schoolyard punks picking a fight with a 25-year old martial artist, when a 7-year old kid cheers them on and threatens to throw a punch too.

I think we keep the big cities big and whip the fishing villages, if we need to whip. I don’t think we’re desperate enough to nuke our internal trade routes, since we rely heavily on those and a couple extra units from our top 4 or so cities are probably not going to be the difference-makers.

[scooter]

As I mentioned, the final war is on. And if the story of last turn was that I ran really well on RNG, it swung the other way here.






The sole "win" was a pyrrhic one in which my full strength promoted Frigate won a fight where Yuris had 20% odds but got redlined in the process. Then Yuris won a 40% fight pretty cleanly, then ran the table on 3 Frigate kills that were in the 65-70% neighborhood. To make matters worse, Superdeath got some tremendous luck on his side and killed a promoted coastal Frigate at the cost of a single Galleon which is a 10-15% result. And then to rub salt in the wounds.





Lost a 99.5% fight. Ok game, settle down. Worst of all, this was a Frigate with a promotion available, which I saved in hopes of using it to quick-heal if I was unlucky enough to take damage. Absolutely brutal. Naval combat gives and takes away. It'll be fine, just how it goes.





To make matters worse, I suddenly got a "brothers and sisters of the faith" anger. The city has Hinduism, but that is 1) my home-grown religion and 2) I'm in Free Religion. So as best I can tell, this is from Bing who owns the Confucian holy city? And the only combat I'd had with him all game was that Caravel? Did I literally pick up an unhappy face here due to this Caravel fight? Incredible. (I improved the situation in Pale by shuffling in an additional MP unit while also swapping a tile over to Unta and hiring an Engineer - no negative impact to Taj ETA.)





I decided to stop looking for "perfect" GG usage and simply take a good one. I sprinkled 20xp across 4 units.


1) Attached to the Crossbow which gives me a free Gren upgrade (done immediately) and another promotion

2) Additional Gren goes from 5xp -> 10xp

3) CG3 5xp Musket gets an additional promo at 10xp

4) Ship of the Line gets Nav1, which brings it up to 4 movement and allowed me to move it one tile further in order to block a possible Amphibious attack out of Nagoya


I also upgraded a couple random Grens in the empire - one or two. Just went for all-around usefulness here.





Another turn, another game of Galleon Logistics. In this case, I have 3 Grens completing an island (or two) away end of turn - Y'Ghatan, Hissar, and Capustan. With this config, I can get all 3 onto a Galleon on the "gal2" sign end of next turn, and that Galleon will have 4 movement ready to go as well. A Gren completing end of T182 in Y'Ghatan can attack Nagoya T184, theoretically. Anyway, I need to neutralize the forting threat ASAP - I have just way too many units/boats tied down. Getting some Grens over will block that off and allow me to start grouping my boats more aggressively.





Superdeath front is still quiet-ish other than the stray combat I mentioned. I have both front cities pretty stocked up and a couple more Frigates incoming to block off other avenues.





The completed build queues on the right side of the screen should tell you the story of this turn. We're in a dogpile, so let's go. Reinforcements coming everywhere. I played conservatively with my Frigates this turn as I simply cannot risk a Galleon shot. You can see he pulled the workers back, but there's nothing stopping him from simply sending them back in. My goal is to plant a couple Grens on the forest tile next to Nagoya to make this too costly. Once I do that, I no longer have to commit as much to defending my underbelly. I also can start loading Grens onto boats and threatening Nagoya itself. If he's too lax, he could see his navy burned inside of it, so he'll have to start committing more defenders. We'll see what kind of shape his Privateers are in next turn and if he presses forward or not. It's possible he has more than I thought.





Power graphs. I'm having trouble keeping graphs on people, and SD can probably see into a couple cities now which is a huge pain. But I'm doing what I can.


Most importantly, I have a large decision to make next turn. I have plenty of gold in the bank to turn tech back on. I can 2T Steel, or I can 3T Physics. My feeling has been Steel all along. But now I think I should do Physics. I think Airships would be more immediately useful. Drydocks are huge, but they take some turns to pay back. 2-3 Airships would make a world-changing difference on both fronts in terms of vision and the ability to pre-chip defending boats when attacking. Basically, I think it will help me make better decisions immediately while also improving my odds for some fights. As a result, I think I should go Physics first. Any strong feelings?

[scooter]

Oh, I offered Bing white peace because this "war" is decidedly phony, to an extent that I suspect someone asked him into it.


I offered Yuris Barcelona for peace. He'll reject that, but I'm hoping to at least make him think about what he's angling for here.

[Zed-F]

Where would we build Drydocks right now? Both Pale and Unta are busy with wonders and they are the most obvious candidates. I think we want to be closer to Kremlin completion before we can reasonably take time to fit these in to our more modest production centers. I agree with getting Physics first if getting Airships is more immediately useful than Cannons.

You argued before that Heroic Epic is too slow when we think we are at the end of the game. I don’t know that I agree entirely but I can see the logic for that is similar to Drydocks, which have a similar cost after the Marble modifier on the Epic is taken into account. If we can break someone off this dogpile or get Kremlin, these get a lot easier to fit in.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, this is the fun stuff we've been waiting for

Lost a 99.5% fight. Ok game, settle down.

Yeah... as always, the problem is that this doesn't get evened out - you don't compensate for 99.5% losses with 0.5% wins because you don't attempt the latter. Unlikely losses hurt more than unlikely successes help.

To make matters worse, I suddenly got a "brothers and sisters of the faith" anger.

That's wild. I always thought that was only from two civs with the same state religion fighting. No idea where that's coming from.

Heroic Epic works for producing boats, right? I'd think it would pay back plenty soon enough for that.

[scooter]

That's wild. I always thought that was only from two civs with the same state religion fighting. No idea where that's coming from.

Same. I did not think you could even get this with Free Religion.

You argued before that Heroic Epic is too slow when we think we are at the end of the game. I don’t know that I agree entirely but I can see the logic for that is similar to Drydocks, which have a similar cost after the Marble modifier on the Epic is taken into account. If we can break someone off this dogpile or get Kremlin, these get a lot easier to fit in.

Heroic Epic works for producing boats, right? I'd think it would pay back plenty soon enough for that.

So it's not just the hammer cost, but also the opportunity cost of spending 2 turns teching Aesthetics-Literature when I can also spend 2 turns teching Steel or 3 turns teching Physics. This is my current limitation.


But in addition, payback timing is in an especially weird place right now. The way I see it, for this dogpile to succeed, they need to prevent me from completing Taj and/or Kremlin. If I can hold the current borders that long, they can stick a fork in the game. Taj adds +8 to my GA timer, which is more than enough to get me to Destroyers even if I'm whipping half the GA. Kremlin turbocharges my whips which, together with my ~300F advantage - would not really be stoppable.


So if it won't pay for itself in the next 10T - including the cost of teching the stuff - I'm not sure it's a worthwhile diversion. Note I'm not even saying 10T payback for HE - I'm saying 10T from right now. I'm not even sure I'd have the thing built in 10T. It seems very Win More to me. The way I look at it, Taj/Kremlin are my nukes, and I just need to hold until then. If I can buy or force someone out, that helps, but in the meantime I'm squeezing as many units as I can.


Put another way: would I rather have a couple built Airships in the air in 5T or a halfway built Heroic Epic?

[Zed-F]

I agree that right now isn't the time to divert for Aesthetics-Literature. I think this can be deferred until later. If we get Taj / Kremlin and the others *still* want to keep playing the string out, ok, maybe then.

The thing is the techs are so cheap you can get them when you'd otherwise be saving gold for almost no cost -- but right now you have the gold to burn for Physics, so there's no need to save gold while researching cheap techs. But later on, if you'd whip in a Drydocks with Kremlin, you can just as easily whip in a Epic for about the same pop cost. This doesn't matter in the short term -- this consideration only matters if we have Physics/Steel and Taj and/or Kremlin, and requires we be spending time saving gold for a later target anyway to free up the research turns to get them on the way.