[PB61 - Spoiler] bell's uncreatively named spoiler thread

[Mjmd]

*n.b.: I should have left the Longbows on defense in Hall of Skulls here. Oh well.

I haven't been very involved very much recently, but Bellarch did reach out about the stay or leave decision. Bellarch was already leaning towards leaving and especially without collateral to soak I don't like A) getting hit by collateral and then B) getting hit by better units so I also recommended leaving.

It then occurred to me about 10 minutes later that I should have put a giant "BUT" keep the longbows. Sadly by time I pinged that it was too late. For any greens still reading, longbows on hills are great. Just leaving like 2-3 leaves your opponent in situation where they don't really want to use siege, but even cav don't get the best odds. In this case even if all the cav won they would be too injured and Bellarch could force a retreat, so 2-3 longbows basically would trade for AT LEAST 3 cav (Van would have likely deleted rather than give exp). Its a minor thing in the grand scheme of this game, but thought it worth throwing out there.


And ya even 3v1 that production is just going to be too much even doing lib rifling sadly. Even with 3rd GA in 7 turns.

[Tarkeel]

For any greens still reading, longbows on hills are great.

Quoted for truth, but I wanted to expand on this. The main reason that longbows are such great defenders is that mounted units can't take the "cover" promotion against them. If you can mix in a few pikes (melee/shock) and muskets (gunpowder/pinch) you can further dilute the value of anti-class promotions on the opposition.

[bellarch]

So last time I posted, I thought we were doing okay. Then the next turn went badly, and from there I thought it was only a matter of time until the end of the game. But things have actually started to look up again! Let me explain.

So last time, I had decided to let Van raze Hall of Skulls. This was a sound strategic decision from my perspective -- but what I didn't anticipate is that by abandoning Hall of Skulls, I left Bing's stack within range of Van's once my culture receded. The result was Bing's stack being utterly destroyed and Van beginning his invasion of Bing's territory:




(This turn was what prompted Bing's suggestion to concede in the tech thread, in case anyone is wondering!) 

I didn't realize that this was going to be the result of pulling back, but even with hindsight I can't imagine I'd do anything much different. Bing had a huge stack, yes, but it was outdated, and the units I would have thrown away holding Van's stack at Hall of Skulls will be much more useful doing different things. I suppose I could have left the axes there to die, but even then I think I'd rather have those as bodies elsewhere. 

So anyway, I figured at this point that the game was essentially lost -- but I wanted to play a little to make sure of that. I held my units in place for a few turns while Van kept his stacks in place, healing. The only real change I made here was refounding Satus and Green Stretch on the border:




Meanwhile, I got Rifling, so I started whipping Riflemen at every possible city. I left the big research cities and GP generators alone, but the rest have been whipping off 2/3 pop to build rifles, and every major city is building Riflemen. I probably should rebuild a catapult force too, but I needed Riflemen immediately. At this point, I thought Van was just going to roll over Bing and I was going to have to hold the west against his cavalry, where I had no troops in place. As Van started moving units west, I then moved my Catapults and Knights west in order to potentially hit a stack of cavalry or something. And indeed, Van rolled over Bing's eastern cities with no resistance:




However, a funny thing happened. We got to Turn 187 and I actually was able to have units in reach of Bing's territory. Van had just taken Bing's capital, but one of his stacks of Cavalry was injured, and it was within range of our Knights. Then, we had a stack of catapults and riflemen and a few other things that could reinforce Bing's city and territory, and then reach Van's other main attack stack on the next turn. 




Our knights have honestly not been very useful since Van got cavalry, so I decided trading them here for the opportunity to attack was worth it. And indeed, we cleaned up with very few losses! Van's stack went down, and Mouse Utopia was recaptured. Now, I deliberated on what to do with the city, but I ended up razing it. I think this was wrong, but I was still operating under the assumption that I would not be able to stop Van from taking over Bing, and the city still had most of its population, two settled GGs, and one settled GS. It was a good city, but it would be very bad if Van had it. This is honestly fine, IMO; Bing still isn't going to end up doing much of anything in this game unless something major changes, and the city would have been crushed by his culture if I took, so there isn't too much difference between liberating the city and letting him refound it in the grand scheme of things. It was maybe not the best plan with hindsight, but I think it makes sense from the perspective of managing risk.

Anyway, Van still had an attack stack in place, so to no surprise this stack of knights ended up dying. This is fine; I will happily take what is approximately a 1:1 trade in units given how useless those knights have been since Van got Rifling. I considered just deleting them, but I figured it was best to let Van kill them and hurt his own units. And indeed he did. On the next turn, I sent in the stack of catapults, and then the troops I sent to defend Bing cleaned up. The situation ended up looking like this when all was said and done:




Van's armies in the west are essentially dead, and we have a stack of stuff ready to move on the captured cities in a few turns. I think Van still has one more stack of cavalry, but we have defenses built up in Satus and Green Stretch, and they're big enough that I'm not worried about an attack quite yet. 

My next goal is stabilizing Joshy in the east. Joshy's lost several cities -- GemCity, CornCity, and RiceCity (the one on our border) have been razed, BananaCity has been captured, and there's a big battle shaping up at DyeCity:




I have units watching the city, so we'll see how this shakes out. I'm cautiously optimistic that Joshy will be able to hold, but I'm not sure about that. In any case, we're going to be sending our future Riflemen east for the next few turns to shore up Joshy's defenses. But we're actually in a good enough position that I think Van isn't completely favored here anymore! We have a chance, even if its slim, and I'm excited to see how things play out from here.

The current thing that I'm paying attention to is the tech situation. Van is up Music, Economics, Nationalism, Military Tradition, Chemistry, and Steel on us, while we're up Liberalism, Compass, and Optics on him. However, we also have a Golden Age waiting in the wings -- we've birthed a Merchant and a Prophet from Thalassina and Ater, we have a different GP guaranteed out of Nok in four turns, and that will be enough that we should be able to push ahead a bit on the tech tree. I'll then see what I want to do next -- I'm assuming I want to try to push to Steel and then Assembly Line, though that's quite a few techs away. Going Nationalism -> Military Tradition for Cavalry is also an option. We could also try to get the Spy and Scientist at Communism and Physics, but I'm skeptical that we're actually going to be able to get in a good position to launch a fourth Golden Age even with free Great People. In any case, we have enough gold right now to fund 100% research for our entire Golden Age, and we'll then be running around 60% on the slider beyond that. We're still behind Van on GNP, but I think I should be able to make up some of the gap by maybe building a few Universities, as well as Libraries in the eastern cities where I was too busy whipping Rifles over the last few turns. I think I'll then swap into Free Speech and Theocracy after that, which should help the economy out further; perhaps I'll also get Representation or State Property as well depending on how Golden Age research goes. Current demographics look like this:




This still isn't where I'd like to be, but it's much better than I expected as of a few turns ago based on the demographics then. (Mostly looking at the soldiers here -- the production/GNP/food is also concerning, but that's not the main concern right now!) Hopefully things start trending up a bit from here. But I'll have to see, I suppose. I'm not very confident in my chances, but this situation is a lot better than I thought it was ten turns ago, and I'm interested to see if I can claw back a foothold in this game from here.

[Mjmd]

Ya sometimes liberating for the uber culture pushback and movement advantage is well worth it. Probably depends on troops in area ect.

Van being up steel is bad. If you have enough to tech the entire length of GA plus some I would just start teching. After that I would say maybe astronomy? Make him cancel the colossus at the very least. Mind you with his production, that might turn out poorly.

I'm sure Bing and Joshy probably aren't having as much fun, but here is the conversation I had with Bellarch recently. 

[bellarch]

Oops. Mjmd messaged me saying "no T200 report?!?!?!!", to which I said "wait it's T200?!?!?!!" What can I say; I've been pretty busy IRL. I'll try to put up something more extensive sometime tomorrow, but here's the quick and dirty version:

- Not much has happened, honestly. Biggest news is that I threw away a small stack of rifles due to a stupid positioning error last turn, but it's by no means my entire force. I'm mad about it because it was dumb and very avoidable, but honestly I was never going to do this war 100% error-free.

- Van and I are in a positioning war. I'm gathering stacks of Rifles/Cannons in Bing's capital and one of Joshy's cities; Van is gathering stacks of Cavs/Rifles/Cannons/Grenadiers around those cities. Neither of us has an advantage where we feel comfortable attacking right now. I'm also building two mini-fleets to harass his coastal cities.

- I launched the 3rd Golden Age -- which sounds impressive except I've just swapped to Free Speech/Theocracy and started building units like mad. We did catch up to Van most of the way in tech; we got Steam Power three turns after he did? And he's still up Economics and Military Science on me, but those matter less. I'm also up Astronomy on him, which matters because of naval warfare. My goal is probably to go Railroad -> Assembly Line unless Van starts obviously gunning for Assembly Line. We would really benefit from railroads to ship units to Joshy and Bing's territories.

- Joshy asked for a 700g loan -- hopefully he gets post-medieval units soon? Maybe Cuirassiers?

Demographics screen:




We were actually very briefly ahead in GNP after launching the Golden Age and switching to Free Speech, except then Van built Sankore and the Spiral Minaret. At least the power rating looks relatively respectable now?

[Charriu]

Just wondering if everything is ok for you since this is the second time I had to add time for you without any extension request from your side?

[bellarch]

Just wondering if everything is ok for you since this is the second time I had to add time for you without any extension request from your side?

Hi, sorry, I have just had a really busy few days recently. If I had been smarter I would have just asked for more time on these last few turns. (I honestly meant to play last night, as I thought I had time, and then I fell completely asleep instead of playing, sorry!)

It think it is actually time to wrap this game up, based on the events of last turn, but I'll play the turn now and then start PMing people unless something has massively changed.

[civac2]

The lurkers usually ask around for concessions if that is relevant.

[bellarch]

So I just mentioned it was probably time to concede. Why? Well, let's take a look at what happened since I last posted a real update.

- I started a Golden Age. And it genuinely did something! . . . at first. For a brief, shining moment, I climbed above Van in GNP (through Golden Age bonuses and adopting Free Speech). 




- Using the increased Golden Age GNP, I teched Chemistry, Steel, Astronomy, Steam Power, and Railroad (finishing 2 turn after the GA), in order. I also made a 700g gift to Joshy which I think he was going to use to get to Military Tradition -- something that still had not happened by the end of the GA, I think. Maybe he was just using it to upgrade units??? This put me around tech parity with Van. I was still somewhat behind (missing Military Science, Music/Nationalism/Military Tradition, Economics, Constitution) but I had most of the relevant military technology, and I was ahead with Astronomy.

- I used the increased production to build up a bunch of rifles and cannons, which I used to defend Joshy and Bing. Because I had sizeable stacks of troops in both their territories, I was able to end Van's incursions for a few turns. We spent most of this Golden Age in a sort of cold war, both of us waiting for the other to make a move. Neither of us could attack safely, as the other's cannons could destroy the other. I did make an extremely boneheaded mistake where I lost a bunch of rifles in Bing's territory, but I don't think this changed the outcome. And, realistically speaking, it's impractical to say "well, I could have won if I played perfectly;" (almost?) no one does that! Here are the final armies in Bing's and Van's territories:







They're not huge, but they seemed to be doing their jobs. I was also building up fleets to strike at Van -- several rifles and cannons on galleons and frigates -- that were ready to launch as of last turn. Unfortunately, I seem to have not taken pictures of those, though I thought I had some.

- Van responded to my sudden increase in threat level by building the University of Sankore and the Spiral Minaret. That easily put him above me in GNP, meaning that I couldn't hope to match him. I could have responded by building more observatories and universities -- I only built them in my two biggest science cities -- but I really needed all the extra military production. You can easily see huge disadvantage I was at in terms of production by looking at any demos screen, but here's what it looks like post-monk economy Wonders.




- Then, right as my Golden Age was ending, Van launched his own Golden Age. It quickly became apparent that I could not match Van's Golden Age commerce, never mind his production. 




- My only hope was to launch my fleets and hope I could raze a few of Van's biggest cities before he got to respond. But that wasn't going to happen. For one thing, Van was in a Golden Age and had teched Railroad -- putting him in reach of Combustion, which along with Astronomy would allow him to build a navy that mine could not contest. For another, and more important thing, Van finally moved a 50+ stack of Cavalry into my territory, along with a Great General to promote one to Commando. My units were out of position -- my entire army was either on ships or defending Joshy and Bing -- and I did not have the units to respond. (This picture is taken one turn after Van's stack moved into my territory. The Commando Cav razed Wolof, my second-best science city and Holy City. The stack is threatening Foramen, my Heroic Epic city and second-best production city. The best of each were taken from Jack.)




- Theoretically, I could have stopped Van's invasion in a more perfect world -- I could have had more units on the border and protecting my core -- but I was already stretched too thin. I needed those fleets to have an option to strike at Van; I needed the defense stacks to prevent Van from just completely eating Bing and Joshy instead. The end result is that, as one should have guessed from looking at the demos, Van just had too much production. I did try to move my stacks inward, but my stack in Bing's territory got beaten up by another attack stack from Van:




So this game is basically done. I'll write another post in a bit as a sort of post-mortem, looking over what I think I did well and what I could have done better over the course of this game, but I don't think there's any remotely realistic reason to hold out anymore. Honestly, the game was almost over when Van built the monk Wonders and I couldn't match his production and GNP in a Golden Age; I just wanted to see if the naval strikes would do anything. I've PMed Bing and Joshy asking if they have objections to conceding, and I suspect this will be wrapped up later today.

[civac2]

So to ask directly again. You concede to vanrober?