[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

Haha, yeah a little bit of Deja vu, perhaps! The situation is a little different this time though. Like there aren't two other wars going on at the same time and I can get Optics in one turn instead of being woefully behind the rest of the world.




Someone finally built Paya for some deferred fail gold. Pindicator is tearing Cyneheard up. And I got an Engineer. It's a pretty good pickup, though there's not much I can use him for except a golden age. I have another GP coming in 2 turns, about 88% chance that it's not a duplicate, and a third contingency GP a few turns after.

So what's going on with Molach?




So, he means business! I obviously underestimated both his resources and resolve. He's bringing 9 cats and 7 carracks, 2 galleys, with a bunch of junk he would have just loaded from Lagos. He also just got Engineering. I didn't know that going into this, so having no siege on this island might be a problem. My nearest cats are a couple of turns out of position. I'm not sure if it matters.

A shock knight had 66% odds on the top mace in the forest... I took a swing at it... but missed. The mace defended at 6.4/8 giving Molach a General. This is a great result for him - if it had won flawless I would have taken another shot, and if it were nearly dead I could kill a spear with a musket basically for free. So it top defends with odds against a musket but a spear defends vs a shock know. As it is, a spear is about 75% to kill right now, so at 35 hammers I would want better hammer ratio than that to attack at 3-1 odds.

He can promote now to pikes. It's an expensive upgrade but if he means business he'll do it.

I misplayed here: after losing with the knight, I moved the galleys SW to unload 5 knights thinking I'd follow up but I didn't. So I should have had the knights walk off the boats and moved them SE to pick up 7 more knights that could attack next turn.

It should be interesting! I have 2 G2 muskets and 3 longbows in Braganza and it's going to be a little expensive for him to take them out. If Braganza can't hold he probably won't be able to take Buck since I'll be able to get some siege there in time. This war is way more than I want right now, needless to say. It may be all he's playing for right now though.

[WilliamLP]

Molach's move:




He has 3 knights, a wounded mace, 9 cats, and a bunch of junk. The most concerning move for me would have been to loop his carracks up over the north to fork the main continent but fortunately he didn't do this, which buys plenty of time to defend.

The weakest part of my game is probably statistical warfare. But, well, I'll have a mace (promote the axe) 2 muskets, and 3 longbows in Braganza. He can certainly take that out with a number of suicide cats but then I'll have like 15 knights to attack what's left, so I think I'm fine here, and will have some time to get caravels, and can probably go to slavery or even Nat if I need to.

[Ceiliazul]

Statistical warfare? What does tjat mean exactly?

[WilliamLP]

I'm just being kind of geeky. Probabilistic warfare is with small numbers where you can do sims and calculate outcomes and think of it a little like a chess game, if he moves there I move here, etc. This occurs in the early game and I think I'm pretty good at it. Statistical, as I think of it, is where the numbers get too big for this, and it's about which large mixed army composition to field and how to use it. And where to position larger masses of units. The better players have a feel for this.

[Ceiliazul]

I've always thought you had a good grasp of that, dating back to pb13 an ient war. (I was ded on pb11 so didnt follow you. Id be interested in your conclusions on judging "enough" with statistics.

Your instinct for geopolitics and timing is a bit weaker

[WilliamLP]

When the battles get big enough (15-20 units or more) chance plays less of a role and the best players here seem to have a feel for which big stacks will beat otheres and what will be needed to successfully defend. Individual units don't matter as much. I have a lot to learn in this area. I think the newbie mistake number one (that I've made a couple of times) is to underestimate the first strike with siege - it's probably worse for you than you think at first.

Maybe I'm even doing that here, haha.




Turn 164

As I said before I _really_ underestimated what Molach would be willing to bring to this party. I mean, Zanth's city of Nuremburg has just a single Longbow in it - and he hasn't been going after that.

What I should be doing is running sims to see how much he has to lose to take out my force in Braganza. It's 2 muskets (G2 and G1), 3 lbs (mix of CG1 and 2) and a mace. I know he could take it if he throws all 9 cats at it, but then I have 15 knights that can follow up and take out what he has left. He does lack hitters that have any kind of force, so my feeling is that I get a pretty good hammer exchange if he goes for this.

I considered advancing to the forest NE of Braganza for +50% defense, but didn't like it much because the LBs lose their bonus and then I either have to commit knights to that tile to take heavy collateral, or else allow him to hit the stack and then the knights wouldn't be able to hit back. Like I said I didn't sim or analyze carefully any of this. I'll learn from the result, perhaps.

I know Molach is a passive player (takes one to know one lol).

Optics is in. I upgraded the C2 trireme to a caravel and I'm building a few more. Now begins the run to MT... I lied when I said I was getting a GP this turn: it's actually EOT 165 since I screwed up my GPP micro.

What to do with a GA is another question... I probably want to spawn another 3 GPs for the next one, to use eventually to switch to later game civics. Other than that I think I'm just going balls-to-the-wall war builds from here for a while, after some current infrastructure builds are done.

With Geopolitics... yeah I'm passive and conservative. I really think a lot of players here (comparable in basic mechanics to me) would have gotten in early war with Darrell / Zanth here and been worse off for it. Though, I'm not sure at all that declaring on him 10 turns ago during the tail end of the war with MYKI wouldn't have been the right move.

Also... what, there's a world beyond this continent? Actually... I'm kind of concerned just how badly things are going for Cyneheard, and that when Pindicator wins that war, he might have to move to intercontinental warfare to advance his position, and I'm probably his most logical eventual target.

[Ceiliazul]

Can we get an empire shot? How has your decision to steer clear of the Chinese Channel panned out so far and in the future?

[WilliamLP]

Here's the big map of the empire:




Molach isn't going to try and take back Braganza vs the defenses in there - he loaded up his knights to move them somewhere else, so what he has left on the island is purely defensive.

In the short term, Mouton was a great pickup for Zanth. He's capturing a lot of tiles since he got a head start building culture but eventually I think I can overpower him on the ivory.

I don't have the FP yet - it probably will go in No Name, or it could go in Bela, which, if Zanth is paying close attention (zooming and looking at building graphics) would signal that I want to optimize its placement assuming that I'm going to eventually take over his whole empire.

The Chinese Channel, well, when conceding it to Pin I didn't know that he'd be wrapped up in ancient warfare with Barry Lyndon, maybe the weakest player in the game. But what have I lost, really? 1 fish tile south of Fury. Yes, +4 food is a fantastic tile, but there are a lot of benefits to not contesting this channel, as discussed ad nauseum 100 turns ago. And the whales were lost basically as a foregone conclusion.

In the future, I'm not sure it matters that much. Boats move at the same speed through your own culture vs the enemy, you know? It's not like over land where roads can make a huge mobility difference. Pin is (correctly) reading me as a pansy who doesn't pose a threat to try and raze any of his coastal cities for gold, but he might not have this luxury post-Astronomy. Pin's coast is very, very forkable to galleons.

But, Pin is going to destroy Cyneheard very soon, unfortunately. So what happens after that is very much a concern.

[MindyMcCready]

It's a tough question to answer as to the exact payoffs of your strategy. On the one hand you took the majority of MYKI's land and are marginally ahead of Zanth. Had you pushed harder towards Zanth like I wanted you could A.) be farther ahead of Zanth than you are now or B.) gotten into a war and been behind (possibly far behind) relative to your current position. Same applies to Pindicator. It's difficult to say even now and certainly was at the time what the best strategy would be.

Questions:
1. Stone Island?
2. Does having a remaining city on the island make Molach fight harder? Any regrets there?
3. Have the plans for Zanth changed or are you still on track?

[WilliamLP]

It's a tough question to answer as to the exact payoffs of your strategy. On the one hand you took the majority of MYKI's land and are marginally ahead of Zanth. Had you pushed harder towards Zanth like I wanted you could A.) be farther ahead of Zanth than you are now or B.) gotten into a war and been behind (possibly far behind) relative to your current position. Same applies to Pindicator. It's difficult to say even now and certainly was at the time what the best strategy would be.

Yeah, I agree with all that. This game is an interesting stage because I had a plan that worked, but there are also a number of other players who had plans that worked (and some dead ones too, heh), so it's a matter of whose working plans have been most efficient. And there are so many ripple effects from small decisions that it's hard to estimate the results of replaying history differently.

In this specific situation, what went really well was optimizing an economy to get Guilds extremely quickly - on the way there there were even a couple of blips in the graph where GNP was number 1 in the world. And MYKI was beelining Guilds and Engineering himself - so a few turns in that plan may have made a huge impact. And also, focusing on getting the empire pointed toward the east and having enough resources there to bully MYKI into getting a favorable position in that border was pretty important. I'm not sure that could have been done if I also needed to focus on pumping culture against Pin or putting more defenses in coastal cities.

Questions:
1. Stone Island?
2. Does having a remaining city on the island make Molach fight harder? Any regrets there?
3. Have the plans for Zanth changed or are you still on track?

I'm still planning to get loads of Cuirs as soon as possible here. The tradeoff of that is delaying for a long time having a modern snowball economy that can keep up with the big boys (econ, pp, education, oxford, rep, etc.) I think I started researching it (revealing my hand) a couple of turns too early though. It doesn't as much good without the saved gold to upgrade existing knights immediately.

But I think the lead on Zanth here is more than marginal. A lot of the advantages aren't reflected in score yet: land, hammer output, army count, upgrades, barracks and gers, potential econ in peacetime civics.

I don't think I really care much about the SW stone island right now, with (finally) another source of stone online. It could really be argued for as an outpost to the SW though. The island AT controls is also another potential target, as its defenses are paper thin right now.

With Molach, my fear would have been a spite war or a new goal to change his game plan to be entirely focused on payback. His way to do that was to immediately threaten to fork the mainland and cut off the west channel with his Carracks. Now, he's shown that he's not going to go for Braganza by moving his knights away. And it's only going to get harder and harder now as it gets more fortified muskets and some culture soon when it comes out of resistance. So I don't think I need to devote any mounted units to the island, even. Though, some cats would be nice to have there, I'm working on that.

I still think there could be quite a bit of tension between Molach and Zanth right now - they did war earlier in the game. And that's to my benefit - Zanth is also staring at those 9 cats and 6 carracks and knights which are very close to him as well.