yeah. i pretty much agree, but i think both of those two "if" statements (well, one "if" statement and one "provided" statement 
) are pretty big ones.... tbh i think it's really unlikely ginger lets us get away with this plan - all they really have to do is either stack infantry in ankyra/herring when they see us get rails, or a few in their internal cities when they see us go for milsci. they certainly have the units to spare to do do. we even have to give them a turn of warning at ankyra since we can't move up a worker and road the hill on the same turn (i'd have to pretend to build the windmill there for a few turns and hope they buy it, which, on the one hand could work, but on the other hand is the exact same device we used to hide combat workers from them last time..... at this exact city 
) so i think we should be on the lookout, and not do anything that would PRECLUDE seizing such an opportunity, but i'm also not holding my breath...
even if successful, there are some geostrategic reasons to be hesitant as well..... if i'm mjmd and i see an attack like that go off and ruin our main rival's ability to compete with us, i first throw a party in my thread and then annihilate superdeath. mjmd and ginger are running neck and neck in tech right now, so if we are attacking ginger in 12 turns to deny them tanks, well.... then india will be the only one who DOES have tanks, and we'd need superdeath to stand alone against that reality for longer than a (badly-weakened but still capable of fielding infantry and cannons on rails with defender's advantage) ginger holds up against us, or our land advantage vs mjmd would not really materialize. i am also not too confident we could actually conquer the rest of ginger after razing 6 core cities with commandos, infantry and cannons should be able to defend against rifles and cavs, um, pretty much indefinitely without breaking a sweat if they have comparable MFG, and they definitely will have that even with 6 fewer cities if we don't go to factories first
idk, i'll think about it but i'm not sure it's worth committing to stuff like delaying the levee (and library/market) in aksum. we'll see. i think it's more likely that we need to recover our gnp and mfg disadvantage before we can think seriously about offensive war (other than maybe vs naufragar, but that probably just gets us dogpiled unless the others are occupied). i've been underrporting this out of shame LOL but even with 7 turns of bio-fueled growth and spamming forges everywhere, our mfg is still only approaching.....HALF of what the leaders have. now that's still better than nauf and sd, and we can make up some of the difference by drafting off our food advantage, but being this slow to factories is BAD, folks, and it's going to get worse before it gets better too since i think ginger can kill us with tanks unless our next two researches are steel -> railroad (expensive and off the AL path). at that rate, by the time we have factories up and rolling the great powers will have nukes, which apparently come online only 3 techs after tanks....
now in theory we could still win if the others get to nukes, by watching and waiting while they nuke each other into the ground, and i do think we have one major advantage in an ultra-lategame situation in our commando factory that i do not believe the others have access to yet (mjmd certainly doesn't, i haven't been tracking ginger's GG usage closely (oops) but they probably don't either since they haven't warred much and we personally have killed 2 of their GGs that were used on units). if we don't get some magical window to pounce on and kill ginger despite them being an era ahead in tech and having twice our MFG, that's pretty much the other way for us to play this - wait for the ULTRA-ultra-lategame and hope for either an apocalyptic 1v1 between the leaders or an anti-india dogpile that we can either benefit from through direct participation or use to knife naufragar or ginger. unfortunately with mjmd having the two strongest corps on this map, the latter is looking more likely than the former, and i'm no longer so sure that having 10 more cities than them will translate to an advantage in yields given infinite time.
i um.... i guess we have to actually have infrastructure for a land advantage to turn into an advantage in categories that matter
perhaps i drafted too aggressively in the immediate post-rifling period, or have spent too many turns building wealth instead of real infra.... or maybe i should have disbanded 40 impis a long time ago (although they are serving a seemingly-important role now to block GG snipes from ginger with commandos, and will be great pillagers in a future war). one thing i am starting to regret a bit is bulbing scimeth, which saved us 3 turns on bio but will cost us... a LOT of time on the upcoming golden age, which we need to swap into environmentalism. we are probably 25 turns away from making that swap now, and we could be.... 8 turns away if we had an extra great scientist sitting around 
at least the delayed GA timing lines up with the delayed AL timing to allow us to funnel the hammers into factory building 
edit: i am also getting more and more afraid that the game will end soon due to lack of motivation from ginger, who has missed..... a LOT of these last few turns, with someone extending the timer on their behalf and now civac stepping up to play the last two i think we still have chances but they require the front-runners to stay relatively balanced and weaken each other while we catch up, and if ginger feels that the game is lost and wants to force concessions, they obviously will be able to do so. not that i consider conceding to mjmd while finishing third overall to be a bad outcome for us given the circumstances (silver medal!) but hopefully we'll get to see this to a conclusion as i think it's still pretty far from decided. if nothing else, i think endgame positions once nukes are unlocked and the main players reach sufficient size tend towards being theoretically drawish overall and we should stand a pretty good chance at sneaking into a share of that draw, a la the last RB game that went nuclear (was that PB66?).
plus it would be fun to play with nukes, even if we are mostly on the receiving end of them.... and yeah, it is VERY funny that, of my 4 games at RB (3 civ6 and now 1 civ4), 2 have ended before turn 100 and the other 2 have gone late-industrial at least
) are pretty big ones.... tbh i think it's really unlikely ginger lets us get away with this plan - all they really have to do is either stack infantry in ankyra/herring when they see us get rails, or a few in their internal cities when they see us go for milsci. they certainly have the units to spare to do do. we even have to give them a turn of warning at ankyra since we can't move up a worker and road the hill on the same turn (i'd have to pretend to build the windmill there for a few turns and hope they buy it, which, on the one hand could work, but on the other hand is the exact same device we used to hide combat workers from them last time..... at this exact city ) so i think we should be on the lookout, and not do anything that would PRECLUDE seizing such an opportunity, but i'm also not holding my breath...even if successful, there are some geostrategic reasons to be hesitant as well..... if i'm mjmd and i see an attack like that go off and ruin our main rival's ability to compete with us, i first throw a party in my thread and then annihilate superdeath. mjmd and ginger are running neck and neck in tech right now, so if we are attacking ginger in 12 turns to deny them tanks, well.... then india will be the only one who DOES have tanks, and we'd need superdeath to stand alone against that reality for longer than a (badly-weakened but still capable of fielding infantry and cannons on rails with defender's advantage) ginger holds up against us, or our land advantage vs mjmd would not really materialize. i am also not too confident we could actually conquer the rest of ginger after razing 6 core cities with commandos, infantry and cannons should be able to defend against rifles and cavs, um, pretty much indefinitely without breaking a sweat if they have comparable MFG, and they definitely will have that even with 6 fewer cities if we don't go to factories first
idk, i'll think about it but i'm not sure it's worth committing to stuff like delaying the levee (and library/market) in aksum. we'll see. i think it's more likely that we need to recover our gnp and mfg disadvantage before we can think seriously about offensive war (other than maybe vs naufragar, but that probably just gets us dogpiled unless the others are occupied). i've been underrporting this out of shame LOL but even with 7 turns of bio-fueled growth and spamming forges everywhere, our mfg is still only approaching.....HALF of what the leaders have. now that's still better than nauf and sd, and we can make up some of the difference by drafting off our food advantage, but being this slow to factories is BAD, folks, and it's going to get worse before it gets better too since i think ginger can kill us with tanks unless our next two researches are steel -> railroad (expensive and off the AL path). at that rate, by the time we have factories up and rolling the great powers will have nukes, which apparently come online only 3 techs after tanks....
now in theory we could still win if the others get to nukes, by watching and waiting while they nuke each other into the ground, and i do think we have one major advantage in an ultra-lategame situation in our commando factory that i do not believe the others have access to yet (mjmd certainly doesn't, i haven't been tracking ginger's GG usage closely (oops) but they probably don't either since they haven't warred much and we personally have killed 2 of their GGs that were used on units). if we don't get some magical window to pounce on and kill ginger despite them being an era ahead in tech and having twice our MFG, that's pretty much the other way for us to play this - wait for the ULTRA-ultra-lategame and hope for either an apocalyptic 1v1 between the leaders or an anti-india dogpile that we can either benefit from through direct participation or use to knife naufragar or ginger. unfortunately with mjmd having the two strongest corps on this map, the latter is looking more likely than the former, and i'm no longer so sure that having 10 more cities than them will translate to an advantage in yields given infinite time.
i um.... i guess we have to actually have infrastructure for a land advantage to turn into an advantage in categories that matter
perhaps i drafted too aggressively in the immediate post-rifling period, or have spent too many turns building wealth instead of real infra.... or maybe i should have disbanded 40 impis a long time ago (although they are serving a seemingly-important role now to block GG snipes from ginger with commandos, and will be great pillagers in a future war). one thing i am starting to regret a bit is bulbing scimeth, which saved us 3 turns on bio but will cost us... a LOT of time on the upcoming golden age, which we need to swap into environmentalism. we are probably 25 turns away from making that swap now, and we could be.... 8 turns away if we had an extra great scientist sitting around at least the delayed GA timing lines up with the delayed AL timing to allow us to funnel the hammers into factory building edit: i am also getting more and more afraid that the game will end soon due to lack of motivation from ginger, who has missed..... a LOT of these last few turns, with someone extending the timer on their behalf and now civac stepping up to play the last two
i think we still have chances but they require the front-runners to stay relatively balanced and weaken each other while we catch up, and if ginger feels that the game is lost and wants to force concessions, they obviously will be able to do so. not that i consider conceding to mjmd while finishing third overall to be a bad outcome for us given the circumstances (silver medal!) but hopefully we'll get to see this to a conclusion as i think it's still pretty far from decided. if nothing else, i think endgame positions once nukes are unlocked and the main players reach sufficient size tend towards being theoretically drawish overall and we should stand a pretty good chance at sneaking into a share of that draw, a la the last RB game that went nuclear (was that PB66?).plus it would be fun to play with nukes, even if we are mostly on the receiving end of them.... and yeah, it is VERY funny that, of my 4 games at RB (3 civ6 and now 1 civ4), 2 have ended before turn 100 and the other 2 have gone late-industrial at least
um..... uh oh!!
but that's illegal per game rules even if it weren't absurd from a strategic standpoint lol. and they did at least finish the one rail segment i saw them working on last turn (and hopefully will slowly make more like it over the next few turns while ginger gets tanks)
