[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[MindyMcCready]

A lot of this vassalizing would be a lot more likely or plausible with diplo on! As it is it would have to involve a lot of trust and tension in both directions... And it's hard to see why Bacchus would think it's his best play to march across Retep's land and hit us to get cities that would be separated from his own. But who knows! If it happens you get a few points for foresight and it sounds kind of fun.

Heh, you've changed what you consider fun in MP.

Effective vassalizing wouldn't require diplo. All it would require is Bacchus to make peace (which he already has) and then begin gifting a luxary. Ivory would be nice for Retep and would send a pretty clear message from Bacchus that he's safe from attack on his south side. Bit risky for Bacchus, but so long as Retep's preference is to keep sending troops in our direction I'm sure that they could make it work without diplo, especially when combined with the OB unit visibility. As for Retep, what possible need does he have for risk-aversion? He's displayed none so far.

Admittedly, this strategy would be pure madness against a player who is interested in winning, but I think Bacchus is safe there.

As for 'why would Bacchus march across Retep's land', you sound unconvinced? The immediate answer is undermine us of course. Your non-machiavellian nature is showing again as you almost always seek to improve your own absolute position rather than cutting others down for a relative improvement.

Bacchus, in contrast to you, has already sent some chariots our way indicating his Schadenfreuden tendencies. And I'm pretty sure that that scout wasn't just defogging tiles. So we have a historical precedent based on Bacchus' own actions of wanting to harm us at no gain for himself. I could also point out that this same kind of attempts occured 3-4 times in PB9 alone off the top of my head.

So I guess that I'm saying that this is not some extreme low-odds play that I'm warning you of.

Also, the ability of them to coordinate an attack is very high. Retep, always on stand-by for 'hurt us' opportunities, simply sees Bacchus' troops marching through his land and reacts accordingly by hitting in an alternative location. The possibility that Bacchus mobilizes when he sees us throwdown with Ichabod (coming soon to a city near you!) means that, when it rains, it pours.

Random religions for the win. Someone got the world's second general.

Who needs monotheism! :LOL: If we were only at peace with a couple of civs we'd probably be spreading Buddism everywhere.

This wasn't a complicated turn. I'm going Poly -> Priesthood since poly a prereq we need anyway and we might as well get the bonus. Turandot probably shouldn't start a temple immediately, we need a bit more military at first.

A case could be made for saving up at 0% science until the library is finished but I'm not going to make it.

I'm already convinced about saving gold while waiting for that library. If you're not in a hurry to start the temple in Turnandot, why get the tech early? We're losing some chance of the 3% known tech bonus but for what advantage? Also, as much as I don't see construction as a burning priority with your current game plan, we could change our minds depending on whether Ichabod's power keeps rising and/or if he makes an aggressive city plant let alone Retep. So I would prefer to continue saving gold and see how things develop at least until we have an actual need to build a temple.

Ichabod didn't take the ceasefire.

Not surprised. The ceasefire serves no real purpose. Its worth offering as a gesture for future peace, but it does nothing to avert military requirements or allow safe settling of cities. Maybe we're being short-sighted in not pursuing construction. Recommend saving gold some more for flexibility.

[WilliamLP]

Heh, you've changed what you consider fun in MP.

Maybe! But defending against a bunch of units from Bacchus where production centers are distant - sure why not. Would taking land from us ever be easier for him than taking land from Retep himself? Who knows...

Ivory would be nice for Retep and would send a pretty clear message from Bacchus that he's safe from attack on his south side. Bit risky for Bacchus,

Gifting your only source of ivory to Khmer, who has nothing to lose, right on your borders, when in the early game you were choking, razing cities, and settling in their face, is risky? What?

Your non-machiavellian nature is showing again as you almost always seek to improve your own absolute position rather than cutting others down for a relative improvement.

I'm having a hard time being insulted by this, but I suppose that's the point.

Bacchus, in contrast to you, has already sent some chariots our way indicating his Schadenfreuden tendencies. And I'm pretty sure that that scout wasn't just defogging tiles. So we have a historical precedent based on Bacchus' own actions of wanting to harm us at no gain for himself. I could also point out that this same kind of attempts occured 3-4 times in PB9 alone off the top of my head.

The gain for himself: He gets pillage gold. He denies us (at the time his most powerful neighbour) horse for a long time if we're unprepared. He sets us back a long with with economy. This at no defensive risk (he had enforced peace) and minimal cost since he had built the units anyway. It's a very rational move! It's maybe just not a great way to make friends...

But yeah, it's good to keep an eye on potential threats and think about how the strategy of this will unfold - it could happen many ways. And it's never good to be simply dismissive for sure.

For what it's worth his scout is still sitting in that area. I think he wants to know if either us or Retep are settling in that area (just east of Suit-Up).

Who needs monotheism! :LOL: If we were only at peace with a couple of civs we'd probably be spreading Buddism everywhere.

Actually I don't think peace has anything to do with it - you don't need open borders to spread religion, just a potential trade connection. This is actually an incentive for sailing!

I'm already convinced about saving gold while waiting for that library. If you're not in a hurry to start the temple in Turnandot, why get the tech early?

I don't feel a "need it in 2 turns" hurry, but maybe a "need it in 5 turns" hurry. The prophet is going to take 34 turns to spawn so we're already looking at a pretty late shrine. Every turn we save on prophet is going to be worth 10+ gold eventually. 10 gold in 34 turns is worth a lot less than 10 gold now (e.g. as a percentage of total GNP) but it's still not tiny.

But yeah, I'm very unsure about tech. Construction is very good! Even just one catapult makes it very hard to attack with a stack of one-movers - collateral changes the odds very much. On the other hand Monarchy (without the anarchy downside) would be fantastic: with the necessity of a standing army anyway it's much free happiness, it's a relatively cheap tech with 2 prereqs we want anyway, and it has no downside.

Not surprised. The ceasefire serves no real purpose. Its worth offering as a gesture for future peace, but it does nothing to avert military requirements or allow safe settling of cities. Maybe we're being short-sighted in not pursuing construction. Recommend saving gold some more for flexibility.

Yeah it serves no real purpose but has no downside either. The minor upside is it starts to reset the "sustained peace" trade routes clock. So if he ever envisioned a long term peaceful relationship he might want to take it.

[MindyMcCready]

Regarding the effectivenss of our border: I don't think that it's an effective border at all. If we were facing an opponent of equal strenght it would be a terrible border in fact. Ideally, we'd have a single front fortress city with the majority of our troops fortified up that our opponent has to maneouvre around. More ideally still, that city would sit on a hill and have a flatland killing zone in front of it. Desert-hill by Ichabod being pretty ideal. 3N-4W of WilliamTell is also very strong as it controls the entire area. 2N-6W is even better and doesn't suck so bad economically but would be disasterous diplo-wise. Holding locations like these would allow us a high degree of safety while having half the troops in any particular border and then free up troops to respond to crisis elsewhere.

So we're very far from the ideal with a long, stretched border with virtually every city at risk of attack from one of our opponents.

Fork-defending is a necessary evil in a sub-optimal city setup and one that has the opportunity costs of MP-happiness post Monarchy and giving up the 25% fort bonus. So we're band-aiding our border rather than having a strong one in my mind.

Weaknesses:
1. The triple fork between Barbiere, Turandot, LaTraviata. If we're facing an equivalent army we cannot defend our cities. We will absolutely be forced into an attack and cross our fingers that we'll be able to overcome the defender advantage. Catapults will help alot with this. We can't protect that location very well once Retep gets HA and/or cats. Building a fort in that location will help especially as it eliminates flanking of the cats. Now that I'm thinking about it, if we see that Retep has HA, it'll be critical that we have a fort there.

2. Once Carmen is founded Retep has 3 locations to easily hit. Culture in Carmen will really help that. Our fork defend location is also vulnerable. Post-construction, when we can fork-defend from behind the river that'll be better.

3. Fork defense between WT and Carmen is also difficult pre-Construction. Too many rivers.

4. If we get daring and plant a city south of Carmen we'll be inviting attack from 3 different civs. I think that we'd need a fortress city on the desert hill to distract Ichabod before we could even think about that site.


If you want to be a PITA to Retep and keep an eye on Bacchus, that desert hill 4S-1W of Barbiere. It'll be a terrible liability once Retep gets construction but it would really keep Carmen safe and also help justify a south-of-Carmen plant in the meantime. It would allow us to control that tile 2S-2W of Barbiere. Who knows how many turns it'll take Retep to get construction especially if he does get HBR first? We'd have the borders popped by then and could turn 3 forests into city walls.

[MindyMcCready]

Bit risky for Bacchus,

Understatement of the year, I suppose. :LOL:

Your non-machiavellian nature is showing again as you almost always seek to improve your own absolute position rather than cutting others down for a relative improvement.

I'm having a hard time being insulted by this, but I suppose that's the point.

My guess was that you non-machiavellian types don't get insulted by being called non-machiavellain. :LOL:

For what it's worth his scout is still sitting in that area. I think he wants to know if either us or Retep are settling in that area

Still there eh? I'm not sure that I recommend it, but I'd like to kill that. Those are not innocent eyes in the area. He's looking for weaknesses and I don't think that should be costless for him. "If an eye offends,....".

Actually I don't think peace has anything to do with it - you don't need open borders to spread religion, just a potential trade connection. This is actually an incentive for sailing!

Hmmm ok. Peace not required. Exxxxcceeellent,...!

[WilliamLP]

New this turn:




The quechua spotted a chariot of Bacchus's on the "Chariot FROM" tile, and it moved (after I finished turn) to the "Chariot TO" tile. It's behaving like a chariot which would enjoy some tasty free XP, but the quechua will meet with a spear on the Carmen tile next turn.

Also, note the bit of Bacchus culture. It's not a new plant but must be a border pop, from SWW I think. This isn't alarming - it's very close to his capital after all.

The settler is in Barbiere now. This is near the last chance to decide on a different settlement location. I'm unsure myself - all spots have compromises. The original site does block the very nice plains hill site for him, as well as for us. Honestly I think I might be fine with an eventual border with Bacchus there as long as he isn't on that plain hill.

Other than that, silver is connected and Turandot will pump out 2-3 chariots. After that, another settler maybe? We do still have the highest power in the known universe, and I do feel glad to have 2 movers available to completely shut things down like Bacchus's "scouting".




Retep is building more military - surprising!

[MindyMcCready]

So Bacchus has completely blocked Retep off,.....wonder if that's going to make Retep turn his troops around. Or I wonder if it's made Retep do that already? When I said that they could make a defacto vassilization happen, it would require Bacchus to act respectfully. Should have known that that's not Bacchus.

Anyway, I guess I'm diving into wishful thinking that Retep would project his significant power at a more vulnerable, and now just as close, Bacchus.

Ok, I'm probably going to be beating a dead horse and all, but its the horse that concerns me. To me, you're overconfident that we can defend and I don't think that's the case. Your defense argument relied primarily on Retep's stack being vulnerable since we had near 80% odds on his top defender. If Retep gets HA before we get cats, that's not going to be the case.

Our best C2-Shock axe is going to have 21% odds on a Shock HA and only 50-50 odds on an unpromoted HA. So the military landscape will change and we're going back to the situation where we will lose a city if we have even numbers and we might lose a city even if we have a 50% numbers advantage. Attacking out once again sucks.

Recommendation: Fort that triple fork and fortify up 2 spears + 2 axes. Without fort and fortification Shock HA have an uncomfortably close 34% chance of victory and 13% chance of retreat so its going to be difficult to protect that location. With fort+fortify it gets a bit better at 63% for our Spear (21% for HA + 16% retreat), but that's still only one coin-flip of an advantage. More importantly, our non-existant cats are protected from flanking.

One thing that we should make sure is to keep our Chariots hidden. I think that that will/could have 2 effects.
1. First Retep will be more inclined to split his stack into fast movers and slow movers. That could really work to our advantage since both his fast movers and slow movers are vulnerable in that case.

2. If Retep's unaware that we have horse, he may be more inclined to pounce on Carmen again before we can get cultural control of that location. And Carmen's is going to be very vulnerable with no culture. If Retep shows up with 10 units, then we pretty much need 10 units defending Carmen alone.


So what am I proposing?

Well first I'm saying that Carmen is a very risky plant and that we'll probably lose it.

But of course there's the counter that not planting Carmen means that WT continues to be exposed. So how to fix that?

So, back to that crazy idea about that desert hill right off of Retep's border. Even with just the 9-tiles, or 7-tiles as the case is with Retep's culture, we will have effectively sealed off Retep's route to WilliamTell/Carmen. This is a huge advantage for our Eastern defense and buys us a significant amount of reaction time. We'll also get full visibility on that staging tile. He can see us, but we can see him. That'll help with the defense of Barbiere.

Next we block off Bacchus from further expansion. He could not settle south of Carmen in safety. More naturally, we'd be able to plant that grass hill 4S-1W of Carmen which would then give us a strong 2-city border with Bacchus.

Certainly, its an extremely dangerous play short-term and we're going to need to beef up a little to hold that location as well as protect the triple-fork, and we're either going to have to kill off Retep before he gets construction or, at a minimum, push culture in that location while holding a decent stack of defensive cats, but long-term I think that its a pretty effective play. Especially, since Retep's unlikely to have any culture buildings in his capital.

What do you think of planting there, building some military and then planting Carmen?

Last thing, if we provoke Retep into making another all-in play on our cities our chariots could come in handy for the counter-attack.

[MindyMcCready]

Oh, yeah,....kindof regretting not teching Construction. Retep's power recovered pretty quickly and we're still spreading our military out.

Mixed feeling about both Ichabod & Cheetah's power levelling off.

We'll need more power if we plant Carmen. We'll need more power if we poke Retep in the eye with that desert hill. The only city that doesn't need more power is that double seafood city but that may mean giving south of Carmen away to Bacchus. Some tough choices.

I guess my apprehensive preferred play would be to plant the desert hill while building military like crazy and/or going back to tech construction.

[WilliamLP]

I think the desert hill is both too much of an overextension (vs both Retep and Bacchus) and not a productive enough city. It would go with a "we're killing Retep's capital" plan but we've been through that. I'm really really far from thinking that this plant is a good idea.

Honestly the scenario where we settle Carmen, and Bacchus gets a city in there doesn't look that bad to me. Bacchus would indirectly defend Carmen against Retep or at least make it very awkward for him to send troops that way.

I think we can defend Carmen fine. We may have to hold with spears and get HBR ourselves. We'll have to mass military no matter what.

[MindyMcCready]

I think the desert hill is both too much of an overextension (vs both Retep and Bacchus) and not a productive enough city. It would go with a "we're killing Retep's capital" plan but we've been through that. I'm really really far from thinking that this plant is a good idea.

Honestly the scenario where we settle Carmen, and Bacchus gets a city in there doesn't look that bad to me. Bacchus would indirectly defend Carmen against Retep or at least make it very awkward for him to send troops that way.

I think we can defend Carmen fine. We may have to hold with spears and get HBR ourselves. We'll have to mass military no matter what.

Figured as much. Well that play certainly helps the odds that Retep will send his rising power towards Bacchus. Haven't seen any evidence that he'll do that, but that Bacchus city plant has got to be just as offensive as Barbiere.

Let's try to keep our eyes out for any opportunities for our new secret chariots. Especially a raze of that horse city if we see any HA.

[WilliamLP]

I haven't played the turn yet, and won't until quite a bit later tonight:




Retep's latest poke. He has a spear in there so he's wise to the possibility we could have horse somewhere, I think.

We have a spear on the silver, one on the fork tile between Barbiere and Traviata, and one on the fork tile between Barbiere and Carmen.

There are 6 (mostly highly promoted) axes in the general vicinity.

The workers have to run away, obviously. Two spears will hang out in Traviata. Honestly I don't see this attack working out very well for him, against a 20% culture city on a hill. The worst case he he slowly wanders up and around, pillaging the silver.

Check this out:




A barb city spawned - on a tile we have vision of! This is a weird bit of civ trivia - barb cities can actually sometimes appear on tiles where barb units could not. I actually like the city location!

I don't plan to abort New Carmen - we can settle it next turn.

The issue of Bacchus's chariot: I'll move the quechua NE. I think Bacchus knows the spear is there. We could either leave the spear where it is (trying to get him to show his and and declare into a trap where he'd lose the chariot). Or we could move the spear onto the Carmen tile to guard the quechua.

Also note the invading barbs to the NE - a spear and a warrior. They fortunately don't pose any real threat since we have a couple axes over there.