[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[aetryn]

I take Nauf's iron for iron as "I fully support the war you are about to go be in engaged in" - kind of an even stronger fish for fish. I base this in part because of any sane player in this game would want us to take Ginger down a notch.

I don't know what Ginger's asking for, but I wouldn't give him anything.

For Dreylin, I'd try to indicate when you think you'd be ready so he can plan. Anything to help with his morale will help him make a good stand.

[ljubljana]

yeah, i think that's probably right. it makes me nervous to receive anything other than exactly fish/fish in response to NAP offers but i may just be a nervous person  who apparently takes out that nervousness by attacking all their neighbors

Turn 163 - Zululand

first order of business is to try to extend the greenline NAP (i will show them our shiny knight to that end), last order of business is to come up with SOME kind of good-faith estimate for when we can reasonably help out drey



so dreylin is PISSED, as well they should be.... those are our standing lux deals, and it looks like they are trying the extortive route this time, cancelling them and re-offering conditionally on us stopping trade with ginger  IM SORRY i really shoudl have offered them SOMEthing last turn instead of waiting to consult the lurkers.... well anyways i don't want to accept as-is, because, while i do want to cancel the wines/ivory deal soon (must wait until the end of the NAP i think, preferred timing is in 5t when our natural source comes online for plausible deniability purposes), i think i don't want to cancel open borders with ginger quite yet as that will up their paranoia level for sure. i'll figure out what to do later...

as for the greenline NAP



uh oh. it is as we feared.... greenline IS daft enough to throw this thing to ginger by facilitating their conquest..... their milpower, which i spent a turn of EP on regaining visibility on this turn, is still pretty tiny though so one hopes they will find little to gain from this... ok, maybe we hold off on extending the NAP until we think we're close to ready to go in against ginger. what a mess. it seems really unlikely that greenline is going to be able to gain much with such low milpower and ginger as their ally..... but that's what we NEED to happen for this to not be a disaster. i guess if ginger "only" gets up to 22 cities from this and greenline takes the other 8, we will still have some play from the resulting position, but probably not if the split is like 12-4 in ginger's favor which seems more likely. odds of us being too late to help drey meaningfully definitely just shot up



ginger omegastack heading straight for the hindu holy city..... they're pushing 100 units on just this tile. with greenline entering the war i think we are approaching fait accompli territory.... still seems like the game's just as over if we DON'T try to slow the demise of drey but the situation's starting to look very bleak indeed and we may not have a winning move here



this is about the soonest i think we could be ready, but also relies on ginger not adding too much to the border garrisons as it would only take a few janissaries to make them pretty impenetrable to the likes of a longbow stack lol. i will be looking for openings obviously and will attack sooner if a good vector appears but i'm not really expecting that to happen.... at t170 we'll have 3 turns of GA production on the books and a round of muskets/cats produced from the core which will, i hope, be enough to make SOMEthing happen.... and it is also the most likely turn for when we can adopt theo/nat. of course i'd prefer to have a few actual draftees out before DoWing but even this seems to be pushing it as far as odds-to-save-dreylin are concerned.

i asked for our luxes back too although no big deal if they refuse, as only one city (wakamotoharu) went unhappy as a result and we fixed it with MP

ugh. feeling discombobulated, not going to spend 3 hours on the turn as per usual.... i'm seeing a really good chance ginger takes a 12/4 split of drey with greenline and then everyone just concedes. i think i'd still want to fight on (or perhaps builder on) from that position but it would be what, us and 20-city greenline against a monster 25-city ginger? and that's IF greenline doesn't decide to help ginger and nauf partition US next instead? idk man.... maybe our odds would be better from there than joining a 2v2 where we look to be on the weaker side but i'm not too sure and also no one would ever listen to a thing i say in any future game if we pulled that kind of cowardly bullshit lmao

i gotta reformulate and come up with a better plan of attack here.... the "units we found at the bottom of a well" strategy worked against GT but the luck factors that broke our way were colossal and i also think GT could have cleared us at a few points with a few well-placed cats... also conceivable that we benefitted from GT spite against naufragar. i don't see us having the same kind of success against ginger's border cities, undefended as they may appear right now, unless we bring a real stack with real units in it.... we would just invade, drop 30 lb + horse next to ankyra, and then on their turn ginger slides in 2 draftees and 2 naturally-produced cuirs and then we can't take the city, or maybe we can but at the cost of like 20 of our 30 units....

ginger also has engi now and is likely building castles in their border cities with us, which would take 25 accuracy cat shots to zero out. that is.... not a number of cats that we have available right now  (we are back up to, uh, 4 catapults as of this turn lol) well, is it worth attacking even if we can't threaten cities just to keep our commitments with drey, pillage border hills, cut their trade, and force them to commit units on defense? maybe but that's pretty pathetic lmao



blah. i know i've been saying for what feels like half the game now that greenline HAS TO make a move soon to retain some chance to win.... but surely THIS isn't what the move should be, right? doesn't greenline need ginger to fail just as badly as the rest of us do to have a chance? i don't get it and honestly am kinda uncharacteristically annoyed at them lol. well, maybe i'm not the only one who is upset about this.... we don't have a live NAP with them as of this turn, so let me see if mjmd would be receptive to piling in. we know they are likely not too far from cannons, also need to make a move in the near future, and should know just as well as we do by what margin the current situation hurts the odds of "the field" vis a vis ginger



3v2, anyone? with no real prospect of external allies for the 2 with nauf in what might be a long-term NAP with us and gavagai dying?

actually we could even sweeten the pot by offering "convert to judaism" and 26 gold per turn.... the idea being that we will found taoism next turn, which is public knowledge, and the offer is that if they attack greenline we will spread their (just-shrined) religion around for theocracy instead of our newly-founded one. not sure if they'd interpret that in the way we would be intending, but it is very funny which i think makes it worth considering. and if mjmd is willing to use the commerce to help us then going jewish is probably the right move anyways

[aetryn]

I don't think MJMD can realistically fight Ginger. I also think he's tied down with Superdeath for the foreseable future, so he's not going to be interested in Greenline.

I don't see much choice - we go in to stop Ginger as soon as we can reasonably help, and hope that Dreylin doesn't implode before that. If he does, it's only a matter of time before Ginger just totally blows us all out of the water, though it's up to you if you want to concede or fight it out.

[ljubljana]

mjmd is not actually at /war/ with superdeath... they just have a bunch of knights hanging around threateningly in gav's territory. if the threat of ginger killing drey is game-ending (as i agree it is) and the likelihood of dreylin imploding without really damaging ginger's stack is high (as i believe it is), perhaps it's not delusional to think that the play for them is to go in against greenline to prop up dreylin... i do not think superdeath killing gav is of the same threat level as ginger killing drey, and mjmd does have more to gain (namely greenline's core lol) from turning east, so i think it makes some strategic sense for them to switch tacks. if they can get greenline on the defensive and us and drey then get to 2v1 ginger, i think we have a chance. otherwise, well.... you all can decide for yourselves

well, if the game is lost now, greenline can't get all the blame... if i had sold aksum to nauf without scrounging for more cash, we would have 15 more cats and could be in position to drop 20 longbows on ankyra right now. and in retrospect i was greedy with the internal castle builds and those should have been lbs/cats/knights as well. not.... that i think longbow or even knight mass is really going to be the deciding factor against 50 janissaries and cuirs lol

as far as conceding if ginger gets almost all of drey.... i am bad at conceding it's possible we could have a window depending on how ginger's teching is post-(double) golden age - it might be pretty bad for a while now that they are paying hundreds of gold in non-AGG unit support. maybe we can get cuirs and grens around the same time they hit rifles/grencannons and then could make something happen with our remaining military assets over them (which i see as basically: more efficient draftees [2 pinch tokumuskets beat 1 rifle or 2 jans], easier commando access [sort of - we both need 4 settled GGs but we have 3 already and maybe they can't get all 4 just from killing one person], and that's it lol). we would need greenline to switch sides but like..... if it's switch sides or concede the game, surely they would switch, right??? ...right?

i would maybe concede at that point if everyone else does but i'm also of the opinion that if greenline enables that to happen then they will owe it to us to fight on our side to try to contain the monster they have created

[ljubljana]

re mjmd, if i'm misreading the strategic picture and they are otherwise content to let ginger/greenline beat dreylin, we do have more to bribe them with than my kinda goofy judaism idea.... i forget if this is legal but i might be willing to trade them the incense city for a greenline DoW. maybe. we do REALLY need the incense to draft with but...maybe.

also, i assume we can't ask greenline to "make peace with dreylin" like you can in single-player, but is there any diplo convention for conveying that they should do that? i would like to send them some kind of imperious expression of rage if possible i guess maybe a demand for "stop trading with ginger, also, give me all your cities" would suffice lol. that would be cathartic, but almost certainly counterproductive of course...

note also that, at the risk of being typecast as someone who can be bullied into this kind of thing, if there WERE a way to make such a trade, at this point it might be worth bribing greenline with a mature border city (so, ura) to peace out with dreylin and declare on mjmd instead. i don't think i would actually go THAT far though mostly for future-games reasons, there is no way i want people thinking that when i get pissed off at you i will give you cities to get you to correct the perceived error lol. on the other hand, being perceived as someone who might give cities to your other neighbor to unleash them upon you.... THAT i might be ok with

[williams482]

Why aren't you canceling deals with Ginger?

Obviously you want to slow them down, they're going to win. Ginger must know that you are either 1) utterly clueless about the strategic situation, or 2) going to attack them if you get any chance at all to do so.

Just cancel the deals, make your doomed ally happy, and hope good things happen.

EDIT: and no, of course you're not trading a city to make a rival act in line with the larger strategic situation. I'm pretty sure you can ask Greenline to make peace with Dreylin, but only after 10 turns.

[ljubljana]

Turn 164 - Zululand

double turn now? when i'm at my most out of it (tbf i always say that)? oh well, pick yourself up. bring it onnnn nerds

LOL:



lesser, but still significant, lol:



drey did not renew our resource deal, which i guess is not too shocking given the incandescence of their rage in response to our late intervention... i thought waiting one turn to respond to their diplo was ok, i was WRONG.....

also, all their cities look a lot smaller than before






well, we got taoism... is that good? depends where it was founded i guess?



interesting. pluses: the culture actually does something, contesting an important border hill with meleti. actually it's a /really/ important hill - if we take it over, not only does it remove ginger's vis on the city center, but it opens up a potential guerilla attack on meleti. takayasu will get a border expansion in 15 turns - obviously we'd prefer sooner but it's not too late to matter. another plus: this city's cottage count is high enough that if we do shrine it someday, wall street/oxford could go here instead of kirishima. like we're going to do THAT lol. another plus: on the border where we need taoism the most, assuming we do make the switch over to using it as our theology religion.

minuses: mostly just the lack of the hammers we would need to spread this around if we do use it for theology. that's PROBABLY not the play though with 3 jewish cities, one monastery, and two missionaries on the board vs just the one taoist city and missionary. but i could decide to do it if we don't want to give mjmd the help....

speaking of whom



we have identified a reason not to give mjmd the help  is it good enough though, i don't know, our situation is real desperate and not only is the 220 hammers by which taoism is behind a significant margin, but the tempo is very significant too so we can get every city jewish by around the same time as drafting comes online. plus, despite the indication from sistine that they may have neither need nor intention of acquiring more territory, our win chances seem to depend significantly on mjmd teching cannons and slamming into greenline's side.... which is a thing that maximizing their shrine income would facilitate... in the jewish plan, the missionary next to takakeisho will spread there and we will slam out another monastery while the taoist heads west to our new filler city to save a chopped castle (= preserve a chopped cat).... except no, incorrect, we'll have converted to judaism long-term before the city would hit 10 culture under that plan

well, at least whatever extra missionaries we have laying around can serve as 40-hammer scouts. i did say we need more scouts....



aksum's out of resistance... uh.... pretty cool city, right? of course it WILL be pretty cool should we live long enough.... in the interest of saving worker turns i am roading the pig and pasturing the cow first (so... now, on this turn) and will get the pig next turn, then aksum can get into the business of adding useful tiles as quickly as it can work them. oh, and another reason to stick to judaism: aksum needs it for ITS border pop if we don't want to invest in a (somewhat) wasteful castle there....



boats in the NE moving live as i write this, and this city is toast..... i don't know if dreylin is privy to the secret fact about ginger's army - those cuirs LOOK as though they only have combat 2, but i think they all have a secret THIRD promotion saved that they can take at their leisure, probably into pinch in this case. so this nicely-sized stack of muskets and etc may not get any kills.... or at most like 1-2 cat kills.... i'm, uh, starting to see why retreating into the interior is considered the only viable defense in such circumstances....



they did lose a few guys, i guess, but looks like mostly cats and not nearly enough to make the hammer exchange favorable. so THIS is how war is supposed to be done in this game! yup, if dreylin's plan is to sit in their cities with 12-unit ministacks and get collateralled to death, we are beyond fucked



for the second time this game: oh hi there newly-teched nauf unit

and then.... the first sign in a long time that maybe we are simply fucked (as opposed to beyond fucked):



ginger adopts vassalage. which, as i learned about three days ago, is not nationhood.... and i think their golden age is about to end too.... so if we throw a pile of guerilla whatevers and obsolete 2-movers at ankyrameleti we will NOT face draftees, just whatever newly produced guys they happen to make on the attack turn. ok then... is THAT an angle? or might it be in a few turns?



committing to judaism. god am i ever tempted by spreading our self-founded religion but i think we have to give mjmd the money, for entirely tempo reasons.... timetable is looking really tight and even though we are not very invested in judaism (as i said, 3 cities + 2 missionaries + one monastery), i think we can afford neither to wait the extra turns nor to produce any units in the meantime without the theocracy promotion

however! i am hereby using my once-a-turn "hey aetryn and williams do you agree with this" ask if you guys think taoism is the better play to avoid funding mjmd's sistine-fueled culture win, please say so - i commit in advance to changing tack on this (spreading taoism in the capital, starting taoist monasteries next turn) if yall believe it to be correct. (after all, a small part of me is still looking for an excuse to do so...)

[ljubljana]

Why aren't you canceling deals with Ginger?

well, the logic was because a) not sure if it would be viewed post-game as a violation of our outstanding (for one more turn) NAP and b) because well, signs suggest (them asking ME to cancel with drey) that they actually MIGHT think we are "utterly clueless about the strategic situation". not that we should rely on that, but you know, better to play to your outs, and at this point one of our outs is that ginger thinks we're so strategically blind and incompetent that they neglect their border in some way

i was hoping to.... not KEEP trading them ivory for wines, but to cancel the deal on the turn (4t from now) when gondar's borders expand to claim our domestic wines source, for plausible deniability reasons. and/or, you know, cancel the deal by declaring war. i also kinda had it in my head that it would be better to let them draft themselves out and THEN cancel the deal so they will actually incur unhappiness in their cities as a result.

but if you don't think that makes sense, let me know and i will go ahead and cancel them next turn  well, or try to use them as a bargaining chip to get superdeath to cancel THEIR lux shipments to them

[ljubljana]

Turn 165 - Zululand

diplo gets its own post again in case yall have thoughts while i'm turning the rest of the turn

SD sent us a request to stop trading with gavagai in exchange for their gems, with dreylin having cut us off just beautifully timed, as i was already planning to send gold + stop trading w gav on our side for gems + stop trading w ginger on theirs, which now looks like a counteroffer... and then upon going in to propose that, i discover that SD already stopped trading with ginger as of this turn! hmm. well, clearly that's in response to them taking drey's holy city, so i think if we cancel our wines/ivory deal this turn, we will probably get bucketed with SD in ginger's mind as having done so ALSO in response to that, which seems likely to show our intentions, if we haven't already.... it's only 3 more turns until we get our domestic wines source (assuming i correctly get the workers in place to improve it on the same turn it comes into our borders) so i still think it's worth waiting.... sorry future the rest of the world when you read this! if ginger does start massing troops on the border anyways i'm definitely down to eat crow on this

anyways, SD IS still trading lux to greenline who i am now upset with, and if dreylin won't give us their lux we are going to need to secure another source of them.... unfortunately both drey's luxes are pretty close to the border anyways, with the dyes in particular right there are trout/perch and unlikely to stay in their control for long:



so SD gets the following offer



SD's extra dye is going to greenline, and our extra gold to gav, so seems fitting  we are also sending silks to gav but they got THREE different players to ship them silks for free when SD declared, so not too upset about denying them that....

actually hmmm. before i click send on that..... here is our chance to use the ongoing ginger deal as a bargaining chip. so SD views cancelling deals with someone as worth a lux, huh? and they are the only non-drey source of both the gems AND dyes that we will need to draft off of? maybe we can package a full solution to this problem in one big omnibus offer



anyways, the choice here is significant enough that i wanna think on it for a minute... on with the turn, will come back to this

mjmd offers cow for fish.... lol, what? actually this is pretty clever, it LOOKS like your standard NAP but actually they don't have fish! so if we accept we're giving them a free resource. and then the following



damn. seems like you're right, aetryn, and help is not coming.... supporting us theoretically against ginger while attacking superdeath is not enough.... is it not obvious enough to the other players that drey and i are insufficient to beat ginger and greenline? surely they acknowledge that if ginger wins against drey the game is over.... and mjmd hitting superdeath definitely materially increases the odds of that....

well, maybe what i'm underestimating is the threat level SD poses - could be that a 32-city SD is viewed as equally calamitous to a 25-city ginger. mjmd does not know what we know, which is that nauf is (apparently) planning an intervention with grens and maybe cannons. maybe when and if that materializes they will be more receptive....

when and if

nicely timed! so could THAT change mjmd's mind? i am down to give them the free fish they want i think, but i'm also going to try the loony judaism offer. packaged all together that would look like this



(plus the usual rider of cities so they don't accept)

finally here is the closest i could come up with to a nudge in diplo that greenline's current position MIGHT not be in their long-term strategic interest....



doubt it will work, but worth a try, right?

didn't actually send any of these offers, lmk what yall think. or i will send some subset of them at the end of the turn, whichever comes first

[ljubljana]

domestics: we still have them



new city meisei gets a pair of chops to get up to speed.... unsure if i'm ok with using the others before borders expand or not. either way build order is granary -> ikhanda -> units, of course



ginger border, where i'm basically trying to be as discombobulating as possible with our deploy lol. but the net effect is to pile the longbows as high as we can in kirishima, and in particular the UNpromoted longbows.... the hope is that this looks like a reasonable defensive measure, but actually it can be the tip of the spear - we can promote them all to guerilla 2 at a moment's notice, road 1E of the city, and drop them next to ankyra, in conjunction with moving up a bunch of 2-movers. if our timing is good and they don't reinforce with gunpowder beforehand, i think that could take the city. we are not quiiite in position for the full-strength version of such a thing yet as we are still moving up just-healed 2-movers from the west (to say nothing of just-healed longbows even further back...) but in 2 turns we'll at least have all the horse archers and impis up here and i think could have a go at it