[SPOILERS] Yossarian blames Caledorn

[YossarianLives]

So, even though it accomplishes absolutely nothing, I want to take a moment to bitch about the recent pace of the game. I know, I know, I just recently posted about how the slowdown was convenient for me, but this is just getting ridiculous. Asterix's last post in the tech thread was particularly infuriating. We have only played four turns since December 16, and I have a feeling that several teams (Asterix, Dinos and EggHeads specifically) will continue delaying the turn to play clock games and make sure they're always last to end turn. Oh well...

I've continued to ponder existentially about our position during this little hiatus, and I am very torn about how to proceed (if ever we do). The northern teams all have major economic advantages over us. We've been making up some ground recently, but that has come at the expense of our army. Now that Rome is most likely on the verge of attack, we need to decide the best course of action. If we continue to focus on our economy and expanding, we might still have a shot at winning the game, but we're also opening ourselves up to getting swept by praetorians. Even if they don't send their praets against us, Rome could tear through dinos with praets while razing several of our border cities with all the chariots they've stocked up, ultimately crippling all three of us. If we switch focus and start to build up our army everywhere, we can pretty much guarantee that we'll hold off Rome (assuming our allies do their part), but it would make it really tough for us to ever catch up economically with the north.

I've chatted a little with Caledorn about all of this, and gone back and forth in my own mind, but I think that we need to keep ignoring our army and playing for the win. If that ends up inviting a Roman attack, we can switch focus at that point and do everything possible to punish Rome for it, and help our allies.

Switching topics, I want to give some random updates. With the settlement of Rainy Xmas, our 14th city, we now have the most cities of anyone in this game! Several teams have 13 cities. India (Care Bears) have had 13 cities for ages, Byzantium (EggHeads) hit 13 around the same time as us, Ottomans (Asterix) and Native Americans (SuttOxy) also have 13.



Asterix stole a classical tech and 3 ancient techs last turn. Next time I am in-game, I'll try to figure out who she stole from.






Those are some pictures I took that kind of demonstrate why Zulu (BowAivo) is doing poorly, and why I really want to resolve our issues with Rome to the east so we can focus on attacking them and expanding west. You can see that they're not working their food tiles. They hit their happy cap at size 5 and are now just stagnating by avoiding working their good tiles. I think this is indicative of poor civ play, and will hopefully transfer over to their warring skills.

[Old Harry]

Tell me about turn pace, 13 just got going again and immediately needs a reload

So what kind of army would you use to take advantage of BowAvio? Horse Archers will make your power look nice and could deter Rome, then the moment you think/know Rome have gone somewhere else they might be able to sweep through BowAvio, if they haven't built too many Impis. Otherwise I guess keep building Axes!

What is your border like? It looks like Bullawayo would be easy to take, but could you sneak around the south while attacking Bullawayo to get a shot at their more developed core?

[Cheater Hater]

(Note: Forgive me if I'm repeating questions; it's been a while since things have happened, and even longer since I've looked critically at this game.)

We're in a defensive pact against Rome with two other teams, correct? Which teams could Rome conceivably attack, and which would they want to (ignoring the pact)? How does Rome's power compare to the alliance's power combined? How quickly could our allies defend us, and how much would we send to an ally if they got attacked?

Is Asterix running a full espionage economy with just courthouses and the slider, or did she get a spy (from the Great Wall?)? How else could she steal 4 (or even 3) techs in one turn?

[YossarianLives]

Hi Old Harry and Cheater Hater! It’s really nice to see your input here. I definitely welcome all questions so don’t feel bad about repeating

Let’s start by looking west at BowAivo.



I drew in the current borders. We should be able to hold onto the peak and two forests east of Bulawayo, but we should keep in mind they might try to take them back. I was initially thinking that horse archers would be the way to go, until I remembered that BowAivo will have impis to counter them. Maybe I’m overestimating their value, but I feel that impi’s will defend against HA’s too well, since they can move around to cover any Zulu city so quickly. That will take away any mobility advantage we would have as attackers using HA’s. Plus, the lay of the land makes it hard for us to surprise them with an attack at their core. All those forests and hills to our southeast will make it harder to take advantage of the 2-movers, and their well-placed axe will let them scout out any attack from that direction very early. So, right now I’m thinking a brute force approach with axes and catapults will work best. The next question then becomes, do we have time to squeeze in Monarchy before starting Construction? I want Monarchy for the free revolt into HR, and the extra happy + trade value from the two wines we have in our borders. If we were to skip Monarchy, we could probably get Construction + Archery + HBR all before our NAP with BowAivo expires on T140.

Now on to the west and Cheater Hater’s questions.

That's a composite picture from T117 that shows Rome's borders with our Defensive Pact buddies, EggHeads and the Dinosaurs. All three of us border Rome, so an attack could conceivably come against any one of us. But, Rome can hit Dinos and keep their cities much more easily than they could against either us or EggHeads, so we are assuming that is where they will send their praets. The only true commitment any of us has made is to DOW Rome if Rome DOWs any of the three of us, so technically we could sit back and do nothing after the DOW and still be within the letter of the agreement. However, I have strongly implied that if Rome DOWs the Dinos, then we will raze Arretium. Additionally, I have told EggHeads that I expect them to raze Antium at the least, and hopefully also take out Rome’s iron city. If just that gets accomplished, I am hopeful that Dinos can do enough damage to Rome’s main stack that they will not be a threat to us for the rest of the game. Neither of us is in position to actually send troops to Dino’s land and help them directly.






If Rome attacks us, we are very screwed. If they attack our northern city of Runaway Civs, I am hopeful that EggHeads could swoop in from the north with their army and hit Rome’s stack before they can get any further. If Rome attacks our southern cities of Rainy Xmas or Serdoa’s Chariot, we’ll get a lot more warning to pile in defenders, but then neither of our allies will be able to send troops to attack Rome’s army directly. The best they can do is distract Rome by attacking their border cities. That damages Rome, but doesn’t help us a whole lot…

A quick side note about the pact: as far as I am concerned, it has no time limit, and is triggered anytime Rome declares on any of the three teams for the rest of the game. But, I feel that both EggHeads and Asterix have mentioned T130 as an expiration date. I am confident that EggHeads would not abandon us even post T130, but it might be helpful if Asterix has passed that date along to Rome as a “safe” time to attack the Dinos, as that would give us a lot more time to prepare an actual army.

Speaking of Asterix, she got a GSpy from TGW awhile ago, and was also the first team to CoL (and the only team so far to Alpha), and also Maga had told me that she is proficient at running EE’s, so all those things together have been implying that the tech steal was coming for some time. I just haven’t paid close enough attention to realize who it went against. I can probably ask Teddy, as he seems to be keeping close track of these C&D type of things, and hasn’t hesitated to share his info with us in the past.

[Cheater Hater]

How does Asterix know so much about the pact without being part of it--she was the intermediary between Rome and us because she was supposedly the only one Rome was talking too, right? Do Dinos have any idea about an expiration date?

So based on the picture, Rome is surrounded by members of the defensive pact, and is just building a large military? How much of an actual army would we be able to get in 10 turns, especially considering your "running full econ and praying" plan possibly being the only plan to try an win the game? Heck, if we think that, would it even be worth renewing the pact at T130? How well is Rome doing economically--they appear to be near the top of the scoreboard, but they surely had to give up something to build up an army of Praets? How well would they be doing if they devour Eggheads or Dinos, and how does that compare to us eating BowAivo? How much army would we need to fight BowAivo, and how much would we need to defend against Rome?

I think the main reason I came back to this game in a meaningful way is just good timing--I just stepped away from Bacchus and started global-lurking PB13 (not that I was involved much with that at all in the last few months), and then you posted asking about strategy (as opposed to diplo or micro--is diplo still happening and we're not seeing it, or has it stopped for the most part?), and then Old Harry came back too

[YossarianLives]

First, I never answered your question about the alliance's power compared to Rome's.






We have the smallest power by a decent margin, at 191k soldiers compared to Rome's 488k. The second graph is from EggHeads (TeddyKGB), and it shows their power is about equal to India's, and about half of Rome's, so I'd say they probably have about 250k soldiers. Neither of us has ever seen Dino's graph, but I feel like I remember someone telling me that they have a really large soldier count. This was probably someone who didn't have Rome's graphs, maybe Asterix or Suttree. I'd guess they're somewhere between EggHeads and Rome, maybe around 300k-350k. So total we have maybe 750k power between the three of us, compared with Rome's 488k.

I assumed DMOC told Asterix about the expiration date, but in chat yesterday he denied it. I went back and checked my chat logs, and I actually can't find any evidence of Asterix actually knowing the expiration, so now I think I just made that up. Also, despite my ambivalence, I was able to confirm that the pact is definitely set to expire on T130.

As far as how much of an army could we get if Rome attacks us, I'd say we have 10 cities that are capable of 2-pop whipping a unit and overflowing into a second unit, so we could get a fairly sizable army quickly. The problem is getting the units to border area. If Rome attacks someone else, we'll just keep trickling out units so it doesn't hurt our economy.

Rome is not near the top of the scoreboard. They're playing as "GG" and they're in a 3-way tie for last place with BowAivo and classical_hero. They'll never be able to catch up in this game, even if they do devour Dinos. The geography and production advantage of EggHeads means that they'll never be able to devour that team. They could cause them major damage, though.

To be honest, I have no idea how much army it would take to realistically defend against Rome or devour BowAivo. I am hoping that I can whip out a large army of axes and catapults and take BowAivo by surprise. They have tech parity with us and defender's advantage, so if they play optimally, they could probably repel us. I'm counting on a lack of war skills on their part to give us the victory. Pretty flimsy reasoning, but hey, they are in last place.

I'm really glad you came back to this game, I hope you decide to stick around. I will be taking a backseat pretty soon and handing the reigns over to Caledorn, and I know he would appreciate it too.

[Cheater Hater]

It's weird that I'm having so much trouble keeping track of our competitors--some of it's probably that we're referring to some teams by team name and some by civ and that I can't keep track of the correlation, and some of it's likely that there were 4 possible colors that could have matched Rome (the 3 purples, as well as that dark green that's TeddyKGB on the scoreboard (which I mistook for Rome while not knowing any better )

So basically Rome is trying to play kingmaker by over-committing on military? How is their GNP--how much conquest could they reasonably support (without stopping research completely and/or losing their military to strike)?

How good is BowAivo's land? How are they so far behind the leaders, but at tech parity? What is the next military tech we could get to push BowAivo in our favor (and when could we get it/would we get it assuming the econ plan)?

[YossarianLives]

Yeah. I've been all over the place with how I've been referring to the other teams. Would it help if I start using their log in names, so you can just refer to the scores in the screenshots to know who I'm talking about? Rome becomes GG, EggHeads become Teddy/DMOC, India becomes Yuufo, etc.

GG's (Rome's) economy can't support anything right now. They've been running breakeven research and they're some 100+ turns away from currency. The only reason they're a threat is that praets have such a long shelf life.

BowAivo land is ok, nothing special. The reason they're running at tech parity is because our tech has been so horrendous. We overexpanded into so-so city locations and had to build some army to flash at GG. Meanwhile, they're sitting on 8 cities working lots of financial river cottages with no army. We're both way behind the leaders in tech though. Construction is probably the only military tech we'll pick up before the NAP expires. If we get monarchy first, Construction should arrive on t130, giving us ten turns to whip out cats beforewe can attack. we could also go for HAs, but I think I'd rather focus on more economic techs after construction.

[NobleHelium]

If you post a big global map and label where everyone (and their combo) is, that would help a lot. I can't pay attention to this game because I can't care for the diplo and I don't know anyone, but I always appreciate a good map.

[Cheater Hater]

Yeah, a map with teams and players, along with their current standing, would really help a lot--the main problem is not having a frame of reference, between not knowing the players and not really following the game.

I didn't realize we were in such a bad position tech-wise. So in order to have a chance to win this game, we need to catch up in tech while not getting attacked by Rome? How can we do that?