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

[WilliamLP]

Turn 165:




I get a GP next turn, 89% chance that it's not a duplicate engineer. (Also note the wonderful silver pop I got here a while ago. And the double culture theatre from a random event - eat your heart out Pindicator. Pavillions, shmavillions.)

The 11% wouldn't be _that_ bad. There's always something to use an extra engineer for: Oxford isn't terrible. Other than that I'm deliberating when and how to use the Golden Age.

Here are my forces:




The "Chinese Channel" sure does look purple, doesn't it? My army is heavy on knights and cats, which is a good thing.

Desires:

1. I want to attack Zanth as soon as possible with way more Cuirs than he's expecting.
2. Also, some defensive units would be nice.
3. I'm going to need MT and 1500-ish gold to upgrade all knights.
4. But also, I'd like to come out of this on an economic track, sooner or later. I've been running Vassalage way too long!
5. It would be nice to have the 3-man GA available to switch to Econ (and maybe Rep too) when I get there. Econ is arguable the largest tech inflection point in the whole game with this mod on this kind of map, with saturated IC trade routes.

Plans:

1. Hit the GA immediately, use the first few turns to build up gold. Revolt to Slavery early. In this era, up Cuirs vs knights, the third promotion isn't as important - Pinch is an important one as the second. So I definitely lose Vassalage. I might run Nationhood immediately to start the defensive drafting, and make use of a high happiness cap. I'm not a fan of drafted muskets in general - I like to have key defensive cities on hills where they aren't really better than longbows. But here, with a sprawling empire, high happiness cap, and slight tech advantage, they would be nice just to cover the defensive bases.

2. Hit the GA immediately, run Caste + Pacifism for at least 5 turns, try to get GPs for the 3 man GA. And exit with military civics. This means slavery isn't hit until at earliest 5 turns after the GA starts. But maybe I'm not ready for it until then anyway. It gives more time to prebuild knights to promote in the queue after the whip. This also would _look_ like a peaceful plan to Zanth. This might be too slow though - I'm feeling like every turn might matter here since Zanth is teching very quickly.

3. Save the GA until right before I'm ready to do the whip turn. This is probably a stronger GA but it isn't used to help with teching the rest of MT and accumulating upgrade gold, so would be slower than 1.

I'm not really sure, but probably I go with 1 just because it's simplest and fastest.

This definitely isn't going to be an elimination war. The realistic ideal is to take a few or even a couple front line of cities and shore up defense and that will weaken Zanth for later (mass Cav + Cannon + Airship push or something). Exact tactics are to be worked out over the next few turns. I'm even tempted to just try razing Absinthe (ancient NE stone-steal city... I forget what Darrell's original name was). On flat land it might be more valuable to have a no-mans land there, than to have a defensive liability swamped in culture.

Mouton can, and probably should, be hit out of the fog. It improves the defensive position since otherwise Trojan is very vulnerable.

So where would I inject a rolling siege force? Roading that hill W of the silver at Black Stallion wouldn't look very suspicious, right? Lol.

Are there any creative tactics I can use? I think I can rule out a surprise naval invasion force, just because his vision is so good. Playing for an Artist is possible, though the opportunity cost is very high.

At the end of this, perhaps the ideal is just to take Mouton and Boca Juniors, raze Absinthe, and _maybe_ try to take Pan Galactic. That's taking a marginal advantage and coming out a little more than marginally ahead, and tech up from there. What I know _not_ to do is what Ichabod tried in PB13 - get bloodthirsty and make the mistake of overextending into a culture quagmire. So the plan would be, basically, to figure out what the force needed is for a conservative goal, and then double or triple that and go for it.




GNP is highly buffed by wealth builds right now.




Zanth's GNP is disturbingly competitive... He seems to have played his fundamentals quite strong since taking over. It's a compliment that he's doing much better than my expectations... Maybe Gavagai is tutoring him here or something.







We have a significant lead over him in food and hammers, though not dominating by any means.

This game has two pretty clear tiers of 4 that have shaken out, with me and Pin in the second tier, though he's certainly angling to join the top.




You guys are going to see the brown line go up a bit in a few turns, I think... Also, Pin vs Cyneheard could be looking a _lot_ worse.

[WilliamLP]

I can play some turns as well.I am spoiled but i dont remeber a thing.

Oh please, where do I sign to make this happen!

[WilliamLP]

So, Horseland rides again after a long pause.

Dtay pulled off a sneak attack against Pindicator! Including a 45 point city lost. I'm sure that wasn't in Pin's war plans. This is interesting... For playing a local game, i.e. not playing to win against the world, it's great news. This since the biggest threat after HRE would be a Pin who cleanly owns his continent and is looking for something to do next. If things get bad enough for him (Dtay is no joke in this game) it's even fair to wonder if there are any situations where joining a dogpile makes sense.

Cyneheard is now Dreylin. I don't know if it makes much difference, but I think Dreylin will put in a dedicated defense, and maybe more now that Pin is split two ways with the game leader attacking his other side.

And Zanth... may have quit Civ as far as I can tell. He's totally AWOL in PB21. This may mean my new rival is Gavagai, which is very mixed news.

To the game, I spawned a scientist. And Molach made a move swinging in 7 Caravels to the west channel. I decided to run a GA and do the civic switch:




The draft in this game is 5 units per turn - a lot! It will help a lot to shove units out to calm Molach's ambitions of doing any damage on the mainland.

Also, Slavery is to round up a navy in a hurry.




I have 4 caravels, and another 6 complete next turn with the whip.

Molach situation:




Buck gives a large tactical advantage here since I can hop boats across the island and Molach has to go the long way. The advance force on X is a feint which is intended to force his boats back. Or if he doesn't move to reinforce Lagos I unload 2 cats and 6 knights on the hill to try and raze it.

I moved a bunch of knights into Flash for him to see, so he hopefully gives up on this.

[MindyMcCready]

Has your reporting turned sheepish?

[Commodore]

No, it's just tapired off...

[MindyMcCready]

No, it's just tapired off...

[Ceiliazul]

Top five in score now? Whats your path to victory?

[WilliamLP]

Sorry, I owe at least a little bit of reporting... I've just been in a phase where I'd rather be doing practically anything but playing Civ and I'm running the turns out of duty more than anything else.

Short version: A couple dumb tactical mistakes by me against Molach (I should have been assuming that every Carrack Molach had could have two knights in it - they basically did), and he hit back on the island with way more than I thought he could afford to invest, without getting destroyed by AT on the mainland. I knew that if he was going to grind units at me it would be heavy losses for both sides, and he went for it. He got Braganza back and razed Buck as well, which I didn't need to allow. I did a bad move where I unloaded about 6 knights and 2 cats which got eaten basically for free. But, to be fair he was using his Carracks quite well, keeping them out of sight and using the mobility and information advantage.




Molach was offering a bit of gold for peace after this war, and I counter offered him peace plus 1 gold, a signal I got from 2metra in PB13 that he basically won this. But long term I don't think he got anything for it. I settled again where Buck was. (And in the current turns I razed Braganza and just took out his Northeast city on the island - much more of a mismatch with Cuirs involved.)

All this was a setback for me, enough to tilt the balance away from hitting Zanth with a Cuir timing attack. (Incidentally, Zanth appears to have rage quit the site after getting rolled by Gawdzak in PB21.) Zanth/Gavagai were prepared well enough with siege and knights to threaten to hit back and make me take more losses than gains if I were to try something too committed. So I settled for just taking Mouton (MYKI's former city). I offered peace after that... This is Gavagai after all but I could reason there was some (pretty weak!) "moral" case that Mouton is rightfully mine since I did most of the work of taking out MYKI.

If I were really into this game there were tactical chances if I were positioned better, and thought about tactics more in advance, e.g.




I had Cuirs in a west force and an east force. (It could have been a larger force if I hadn't gotten some knights beaten down by Molach.) I had enough to raze Absinthe easily for more culture breathing room. But he had enough siege (tile 2W of Aachen) and knights to make me get the worse of it if I did. But if I had planned position better I could have razed Absinthe from the stone tile and had a couple sacrificial chariots ready to move clear the city ruins and road and prevent the siege from hitting the winning stack... The knights could hit but I'll defend with formation cuirs against knights over a river any time.

Since then, not a lot has happened honestly. I'm teching for catch up, getting Paper, PP, Education and Economics, and an Engineer will finish Oxford this turn. Then I'll hit up RP + Rifling. Gavagai is going more directly for Rifling but my econ is stronger so we should hit it at about the same time.

Gavagai is basically checked out of the game, it would seem. He's needing pauses and missed last turn.

Lurkers surely know that TBS made a really strong move and just rolled right over Dazedroyalty. So he's my new neighbor overseas to the east now!

For me, well basically I spent a key part of the game in military buildup with very little to show for it. I'd be better off if I'd just gone for pure econ after finishing MYKI. As it is, I don't think I'll be able to crack top 5 in this game. I think Dtay, TBS, Krovice, Fin/Harry are all of smarter than me, more knowledgeable about Civ, and far more invested in the game. Boldly's the score leader, he's up to Cossacks and doing some conquering with them, and maybe he's having a breakout game or something, I have no idea.

Lurkers surely also know that Dtay hit Pindicator's other side when he was at war with Ceil (now subbed). Even though he was only at rifles and cavs he managed to take some cities, but somehow Pin was able to turn back around and defend. This is pretty good for me, since the scenario I didn't want was the one where Pin was one of the top players who owned his continent and had nowhere to go but north.

With a caravel, I know the exact shape of Gavagai's land now... He doesn't have that much! The path to a better position would be a winning war there, but, the trouble is he's a good player (about the same as me or maybe a little better), and you just can't win a war in this game vs established culture against an aware opponent who isn't a scrub unless you have an overwhelming advantage. And he's at tech parity. If there are methods to win wars like that... well I certainly don't know what they are! It feels to me in this game like if you have a cultural buffer, all you have to do is have siege positioned to punish anything that tries to penetrate. And then someone simply can't attack and get the better of it. The first rule of large scale Civ war is that if you are the one who can hit with siege first, you win that fight.

I'll try to report a little more from here.

[WilliamLP]

Ah so this game... It's this weird half hour of my life every couple of days that I signed over a year ago and, honestly, I rather would do without as of a few months ago.

There are a lot of interesting stories going on in this game for sure, that the lurkers surely know much more about than me. For my little empire jockeying for 5th to 10th place (see what I did there?) I've been in a stalemate with Gavagai (3rd in the HRE succession game after Darrell and Zanth.) He's been building up and bee-lined rifling. I figured I could divert to Econ and Free Market and still get back to rifling in time to equal him, and then I'd have a larger econ advantage going forward. And this plan worked.

All along, this had been a cold war, but clearly a war, for the whole game, so I figured it was time to drop the pretense. And that means treat this game like a duel - i.e. relative standing vs the rest of the world is no longer a consideration, it's just purely zero sum, measuring cost vs damage inflicted. I was looking for small advantages, but things were really completely locked up over land, and he had spies running around, surely knowing where everything of mine was. I'm not sure he knew of my naval threat, so I moved in to raze his western island city (too swamped in culture to keep) and eventually a few cities on the coast. In my first move I managed to pin down his whole western navy with caravels to take it out next it. (It was about 3 galleys and 3 triremes, but still.)




You can see the three razed city sites. I lost some muskets and cuirs taking the north site but I figured the long term relative gain was worth it. He had a lot of infrastructure in most of the cities I razed. I should have taken Soda n Vodka this turn but last turn I attacked from the wrong galley.

On the east:




I just 4-moved a galleon and unloaded and razed Gavagai's eastern city. I imagine TBS should take Cerf in short order, towards his continental domination. (And by the way, if TBS pulls off a miracle and wins this game, then he and Mackoti are in a tier by themselves as the two best Civ players in my book.)

Now the thing about Civ, it's a game of consistency. You can play solidly for 20 turns straight, and then if you slip up and you have an attentive rival, that is what is going to define your game. And he got me:




I think I had 6 cats 2E of the "Dead Cats" square (mislabeled). This was just a stupid blunder, obviously, to leave any of them where they can be hit by Cavs. And he found it.




So I kindly gave him a 6 catapult donation! And I was too cocky about situation because I thought even the small amount of siege there would tip things in my favor if he tried something, but that requires catapults to be alive. The only good news is I have some highly promoted horse units:




So he has 26 horses, and 7 rifles and 7 cats bearing down on Toronado. Needless to say it's dead. I moved the 8 wounded victorious units 1S (maybe a mistake - I thought I had more than 1 tile left on them). I wasn't sure whether if I could move the 11 cats to the SE onto the "X" square and try to cover them with the rest of my mounted units in the area and also the wounded units. Getting hit by 19 cavs with cats underneath when my top defenders would be just 8 cuirs doesn't feel great, even if I have a counterattack.

So we'll see what happens here... obviously I'm going to be doing a ton of whipping. I chose to start this one dirty and it was a good move by Gavagai to find the best opening here. I try to remind myself that this is just a game with absolutely no other meaning or consequences.

(As a digression, it's one of the quirky things about the game, and arguably rather silly, that medieval siege is so effective up to even the age of rifles. And on the field! I wonder what would change if it were made that Cats didn't do siege damage to gunpowder units (including Cuirs + Cavs).)

[WilliamLP]

Gavagai's move was interesting. As expected, Toronado fell easily and sadly he didn't even need to sacrifice any cats for it. And as I was hoping he would, he went after my "exposed" victorious defensive stack.




But that left him exposed to the counter-counterattack.




So basically I took down 19 horse to his 11 this round. That's the real strength of Mongols, Keshiks be damned... It just turns out that easy access to Formation and C3 gives extremely favorable breakpoints in the kind of fights that occur in multi player games so I get to fight most horse vs horse battles at 75-80% if not more.




Toronado was my HE city (with West Point and a settled GG!). What kind of noob puts their HE city on the front lines anyway? Yeah, that was a bad call, since even at "peace" I've had to invest in culture fighting there throughout the game.

But... Gavagai is trying to keep it! I anticipated him either razing and regrouping his cavs, or else keeping it and moving them back into defensive positions and consolidating. Advancing _and_ holding the city just doesn't work. Over-committing on offense is just so easy in this game, don't I know it.

As it is, I can just take it back at leisure, since basically his whole western mounted force is now dead.

So, some of my lesson here is from two absolutely terrible moves I made: 1. Leaving such an obvious tactical opening for him, not even something tricky like an artist or other surprise culture transition. And 2. Going for Chemistry instead of running gold and modernizing my forces as soon as possible. I had absolutely no need for Chem, with no naval threat to speak of.

Neither of those things are as bad as him not razing Toronado while overextending though... I can't believe I actually get it back.