[SPOILERS] yuris125 on a Pitboss77 boat

[Zed-F]

The other thing was at that point we'd been technically at peace with Yuris for a long time, and were kind of hesitant to actually take the first shot, especially if it wouldn't really be a crippling blow. While we were posturing kind of aggressively we kinda preferred if Yuris would initiate so we could avoid starting the inevitable dogpile if it wouldn't be on good terms for us.

[yuris125]

Ok it's taking me WAY longer than usual to get to threads because this game ended right over the Christmas break. So, trying to catch up now.

I know the feeling! Barely started on your thread myself, hopefully will get through it over the weekend when I'm back home

If I knew Satsuma was going to become my holy city, I would've settled it on that hill - would've been much better for food. But alas, no way to predict that

This is some foreshadowing as I came quite close to burning it a few times. It felt like my white whale the entire late stage of the game as it was valuable and on flatland and crucial tactically, so I was constantly angling for it. Was not meant to be as you pretty much always had it covered. On that one failed attack I had, my sims had me killing it around 40% of the time, but a flawless loss early in that fight swung it immediately. (Then I took one or two attacks too many out of tilt.)

I did notice a flawless win for me in the log, so had to assume the outcome was better for me than your sim suggested. Your attempted attack also made me realise just how closely I had to guard the city, because the shrine income was a huge part of my economy. Happy I didn't give you another opening

The marble city should be secured - admittedly, for now it looks like a city AI crammed into an open space it managed to find

Did you ever consider ignoring the Aesthetics-Lit-Music detour - which also probably would have avoided this Bing conflict from this city - and just going straight to Samurai? I was somewhat nervous at one point you were gonna beeline them and have them online super early, and it seemed like you had other priorities. But maybe it was too hard to actually build/transport them early. Reading a little further, it seems like this delayed you to CS, then when you would have slotted that in, you had to react to me getting Astro early. Or maybe your plan was always Astro first?

With hindsight, I would've given it more thought. I did intend to go for Astro first, and going straight for samurai would've meant accepting that I would be late to it. If I managed to make some gains, but then found myself behind on getting to Astro, that would've been too much of an opening to give to others. I probably would've had to tech Theology as well, as I needed both Vassalage and Theocracy for amphibious samurai. And for the same reason I wouldn't be able to use the big benefit of CS that is Bureaucracy. And, as you say, transporting them on 2-capacity, 3-mover (at best) ships felt like it would be a huge issue

That said, I did forget that Astro itself didn't unlock galleons, I also needed Paper. I also didn't consider how much of a pain crossbows were for samurai. So with hindsight, now that I know how small samurai window of opporutnity was, I think I had to plan to attack with them off galleys

As for the Aesthetics branch, I think the value of Parthenon / GLib / epics is just too high for an Ind leader. It's hard to put a number on it, but I doubt it slowed me down much, if at all. I also don't think the conflict with Bing cost me much - I deliberately didn't invest anything in the city apart from the initial settler and the defenders. Arguably I gave it too many defenders - but at the time I viewed Bing as a likely target, so forcing him to dedicate more units to capturing this low value city seemed beneficial, even if it ultimately meant extra losses for me

Scooter is now threatening Bizen and Hakodate (I keep playing as if I was at war with Scooter, even if technically we aren't)




Bizen is an interesting case, it's a city which has everything it needs in the first ring, and I didn't bother with culture there, assuming it would get Buddhism sooner or later. It still didn't, and now is under threat with no cultural defences. It does have a longbow, but I didn't think it was enough

Funny thing about this. I actually had that Galleon in the fog by Bizen right before this and had the ability to boat it from the fog. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think I had like 60-70% chance to raze? I was on the fence about it, and Tarkeel talked me out of taking the shot. But I've always wondered if the attack would have worked or not.

I expect it would've worked. Later on I had a galleon with some extra units behind the island, ready to reinforce whatever city needed it. But at that point I definitely wasn't ready for an attack from the fog. That said, none of these cities were particularly important, so I definitely can see the argument to not attack even if there was an opportunity to raze

[scooter]

I don't understand Scooter assembling ships west of Nagoya. Are they there just for defence? Can't figure out how they can be used offensively

In general I was attempting to block your fort paths, or at least force them to be costly. I was very aware of the preforted desert tile and needed to assume that anytime you had Galleons within 5-6 tiles of my cities, I needed to be ready for it. I could see you had lots of 5-move boats, but I was concerned a GG or two could increase them to 6 moves at any time, so that was the main concern. By the time you posted this (around when I got Physics) I had completely stopped any attempts at offense and decided to play exclusively defense.

In Silver Lake, Scooter upgraded crossbow defenders to grens




I actually thought it could have been a mistake, since upgrade ruins fortification bonus, and grens didn't seem that much better than crossbows against samurai. But the numbers didn't back me up. Guess grens fight better than crossbows when not at full health?

2x base Strength goes a long ways. I was concerned about losing the fortify bonus too actually and did test this. That said.

Anyway, the numbers showed over 80% chance of taking the city, so I went ahead

I was aware you had Galleons for this and probably had enough XP for Amphibious, and my admittedly guess-heavy test showed more like 10% chance. And I thought I was being pessimistic with my guesses! I've long wondered if I screwed something up with the test or something. But my estimates were that I would kill around 9-10 Samurai. So killing only half of that surprised me. Your promos must have been even better than I thought. Either that or I did something silly in vodka. Losing the Frigates and Airships in the city was pretty huge.

[yuris125]

I was aware you had Galleons for this and probably had enough XP for Amphibious, and my admittedly guess-heavy test showed more like 10% chance. And I thought I was being pessimistic with my guesses! I've long wondered if I screwed something up with the test or something. But my estimates were that I would kill around 9-10 Samurai. So killing only half of that surprised me. Your promos must have been even better than I thought. Either that or I did something silly in vodka. Losing the Frigates and Airships in the city was pretty huge.

Apparently I still had a Vodka tab with most of the setup for this battle intact. I didn't have anything special in terms of promos, 5 combat 3 samurai in the siege stack outside the city, and 9 samurai on boats, all combat 2, but only 6 with enough XP for another promo (amphibious)

It's hard to set up properly, with some attacks being amphibious and some not, and without full knowledge of fortification bonuses. I don't remember how exactly I set it up, but this is what I'm getting trying to recreate it now

[scooter]

with some attacks being amphibious and some not

This is probably where I messed up as getting this part correct was a little tricky. I bet I had Attackers Water checked but neglected to give your land units Amphibious to remove their penalties. Either that or this was just the wrong method of doing that and your way of simply unchecking Attackers Water was maybe better. Simming out mixed amphibious/land with unknown quantities on boats is such a nightmare. Your assumptions don't have to miss by much for your results to miss by a lot.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Interesting that the forward settle behind one of my towns actually had a use in itself (Marble) other than just setting up forks on multiple of my cities.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I'm going to back out of the war against SD. He just did another big round whips, and while most of them were not on our border, he added a longbow in Spiro. He does have at least one crossbow in every city, two in most, even not right on the border




Can I make gains? Probably, anything can be done with a big enough investment. But it wouldn't be easy pickings

I said last turn that I wouldn't mind Scooter being stuck in a prolonged war - well, he could well be thinking the same about me, that could be the thinking behind him pointing me in SD's direction. But more likely, it's just the case of SD reading the situation and getting enough units to make war against him untenable

Scooter still has a peace treaty with SD, so I couldn't include his war declaration in the diplo - these were the messages I sent, hopefully conveying the message that me declaring war on SD is no longer beneficial, and I will not be joining the war







Now, look, I built a samurai or 15. Where shall I put them?

I'm actually going to wait and see. If I'm not attacking SD and think Scooter's advantage in naval tech is too much, the choice is between Bing and Cairo. While Cairo has weaker military, I do have decent value trade routes with him, so would prefer it to be Bing. I did have a clam for clam exchange with Bing on T158, so unless I want to do the dishonorable thing, I have to wait a few turns. Which also means that I can see how Scooter's attack is going, if Scooter does go ahead with the plan of attacking SD on T166. If SD weakens the defences on our border, I would still have the option to jump in

Yeah... attack literally ANYONE other than the guy who needed to be coalitioned yesterday.

[Zed-F]

Yuris did not yet have any ships to protect his galleons at this point, so attacking Scooter would have just got his navy sunk. Attacking someone weak to build yourself up to compete with the leader is pretty standard fare.

To be honest, though, the game was already over by this point. It didn’t really matter what motions everyone else went through once Scooter already had all the Astro land.

[scooter]

Yeah... attack literally ANYONE other than the guy who needed to be coalitioned yesterday.

Yuris did not yet have any ships to protect his galleons at this point, so attacking Scooter would have just got his navy sunk. Attacking someone weak to build yourself up to compete with the leader is pretty standard fare.

To be honest, though, the game was already over by this point. It didn’t really matter what motions everyone else went through once Scooter already had all the Astro land.

Yeah I saw this sentiment in SD's thread too once or twice, but like Zed-F is saying here, how? Once I got Caravels/Galleons, it was impossible for anyone to invade me until they had Galleons of their own. And once they did, I had Frigates. So then you've gotta tech to Chemistry. And then once anyone got there, I had Airships which meant I could get odds easily. It's just really, really hard to navally invade someone who has a tech edge.

[yuris125]

Yeah that's pretty much where I am. It's hard to figure out at which point we could've done things differently and stopped you. I didn't really deviate from the Astro bulb path (apart from the Aesthetics branch, but without Parthenon / GLib / Epics I wouldn't have the great people), and I was still far behind your Astro research. There was no way to gain land from you post-Astro (as the game showed, even a full dogpile wasn't enough). SD kept bombarding me with diplo that I should go attack you, but I didn't see a realistic way to do it

Whether I could've done it in the galley era is questionable, and as I said, with hindsight I would've put more thought into it