Lewwyn is on the List - SPOILER THREAD

[Lewwyn]

I guess I'd better do an actual update, since I made a decision.

For the last 10 turns I've been building up my army and moving it to Bob's border:



You can't see in the pic but I have 6 cats, 4 LBs and some other 1 movers under the little knight pop-up that can land next to Bob's city with the two workers there roading the plains. But the idea was always twofold. Either I attack Bob, or I attack Rusten.

Now Rusten has a chariot in my lands in Lucio. It's been there for... 15-20 turns, walking around watching me. I in turn have a warrior in his lands, watching him. Rusten has watched and followed all my knights as I moved them across. But last turn I moved my knights to the desert there (before they were with the cats) and I also moved some newly built knights over by SD's border. And I moved workers in place to Road next to Impale.

My thought was I could either hit Bob or Rusten in this position. Rusten had moved his units towards Serdoa the last 2 turns and if Rusten moved units back over to me I could go in on Bob's 9 pikes and 2 archers with 6 cats and all the knights and likely been just fine. But Rusten didn't so I attacked him this turn.



Impale was guarded by a spear and an archer. When I declared war the scout chariot teleported there. I won 3 victories with the knights with odds on all 3. I also got a 10XP unit here as my knights had 7xp and the spear battle gave me 3xp. HE here I come in Lucio.

I moved all my knights 6 full tiles into Rusten's land and I will be able to capture Gemwrap and raze his Holy city. That will eliminate most of the culture issue.

I'm not sure what the plan is exactly yet after that. I think I might blitz his cap and try to raze that too. Or capture the gold city south of this gemwrap city. Or pillage the roads and retreat with these holdings? Not sure. Rusten has the highest GNP and is in a golden age with police state and sac altars and lots of population. His army as I've seen it consists of axes and like 5 cats and a couple WE atm. What's interesting is Serdoa is on his border and the mids are on that border and Serdoa... heh might see an opportunity. So this could get interesting.



GNP is down because I'm not teching anything EOT, I've whipped a lot, and I've got a bunch of units in Rusten's culture.

Four more knights produced EOT so I have 32 knights now. I need more units and I think I need some more cats, Xbows and pikes since Rusten has engy and will likely have pikes and WEs on the whips.

If Serdoa attacks rusten I might continue to go at him. if not, I might try to peace and then turn on Bob? Not sure. If I leave Bob alone he'll sit there and tech I think. I haven't attacked SD because I want him to hold off NoGas as much as possible. I wish he hadn't lost his army at the start of the war. In any case, he can still be annoying, stymie NoGas.

I'll get some land, get some peace, get a second GA, gets some citadels.

[Lewwyn]

So I think Rusten is screwed. Like he's probably out of the game in not too long screwed.

Serdoa sent me copper for copper and I accepted. I think Serdoa is going to EAT. He has so many unit, his power is lower than mine but he has more units than me. I have quality not quantity. I'm just trying to do the best I can with that.



Turn opens and Rusten has 2 units in his Coc, and has abandoned Gemwrap. I realize I've REALLY caught Rusten with his pants down. He swapped into slavery last turn and probably didn't have any units started to whip. Also I assumed he had engy, but he whipped Coc from 10>8 for a spear, no pikes. No 3 move on a road... Very very nice. My decision to attack Rusten over Bob is paying huge dividends already. I've got an ally and 3 cities in the first 2 turns and my knight only army doesn't have to charge into pikes.


Now I've thought I would raze Coc and be a little conservative perhaps, but I go in on Coc and I lose 2 knights taking the city. The city has a forge and courthouse and I don't see and armies around. I also know that the bulk of his army was by Serdoa, and it was cats and axes and he doesn't have engy so he can't hit the city out of the fog from the east where his army was. So I keep the city.



I take Gemwrap with an archer and road the hill my units are on that is now in my territory.

Sentry chariot checks and finds a medium defended city and 3 fleeing units. I eat them and send the chariot into Coc:



His cap has a new GS a couple WE a cat and a spear and a couple warriors. Barely anything really. But its three tiles away.

I scout corrupted Soul:



A single archer. Aight Aight

This is when I start thinking. Hey man wouldn't it be nice to blitz these cities while he doesn't have pikes? And doesn't have a ton of units from whipping and before he gets 3 move along roads? What's the fastest way to do this? I do have that Great Artist...

SO now the question is the worthwhileness of an artist bomb in Coc. How effective and how far will it flip stuff. The GA gives 4000 culture. Now I know that Coc's culture was less than 872 which is what Solaris Temple is at. I am thinking that yeah 4k culture will be the #1 culture city in the game by double. And I think it will give me at the very least the first ring of Coc and the ability to hit Moljinr and Assassin from Coc with knights. The GArtist can get to Coc NEXT TURN and have 1/6th movement left to pop the bomb. So if I do it 20 knights can hit both those cities and possibly corrupted soul as well? These are all of Rusten's core cities.

So is it worth it? it will delay my 2nd GA by maybe 5t...



Zenyatta pops a GP in 13 turns, Rein pops a GP in 13t too now that I've swapped it over to specs. I will build a theatre and get one more spec to work and pop it before Zenyatta so that Zen can work 6 specs and get the second GP quickly after Rein gets the GP.

So again is using the artist for WAR worth it. I'm going to make the final call next turn but I think it might be worth it. It also gets Coc out of revolt and I can start whipping more units out of it.

If I take his cap next turn... Do I keep it?



GNP was #1 before EOT teching CoL with the capture gold. I think I go CS next and I head for Lib and I try to lib Nationalism.

Side note, someone has compass and is heading to optics. NoGas are probably thinking about astro to fuck me. I have to figure out what to do about that. Getting Astro would SUCK. Colossus is so good. Another point in favor of culture bombing and ending this war as quickly as possible?

Still tops in food but someone's really gaining. I need to check but that might be Bob.

Another point in favor of attacking Rusten: He loses lots of gold from my trade routes. Not attacking him and continuing to bolster his economy would have been bad. Taking Rusten out before he really hulked out with police state is pretty good. I'm not really scared of Bob because he's got pikes, a weak power and he spent all his gold upgrading units. Both tech and power wise he's not too much of a threat.

Really I guess this comes down to whether NoGas can conquer SD fast enough or if I can consolidate and get ahead faster. Also Serdoa is going to play a big spoiler role in this I bet. I wonder if I can get knights into SD's territory and smash into some of NoGas's units after they've been injured destroying SD's stack.

Anyway I'll make some interesting and important decisions regarding Coc and Rusten next turn.

[Miguelito]

[Lewwyn]

So yesterday when I was writing up my report I asked pindi about the great artist culture bombing but he wasn't sure. Usually I'd ask Noble to get a better sense of if it would work or not, but obviously can't do that. So I did some research last night that troubles me a bit.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/c...ts.257062/

There is something very screwy about how culture bombing works in BTS. It has been seriously nerfed from prior versions. I noticed something was wrong in a recent game and set up a test game using world builder to see what is happening.

When you use a great artist for a great work, you earn 4,000 city culture points. That is straightforward. What is odd is how the great work affects culture in the surrounding tiles. Since vanilla, you don't get 4,000 points, you get 20 "bomblets" applied to the tiles. Each bomblet is equal to a turn's worth of culture. This was potentially overpowering if done in a city with say 1,000 culture/turn (this could be set up temporarily using the culture slider and a bunch of artists). You would gain 20,000 culture points over a huge area and could flip a massive number of tiles with one great artist. Obviously, it needed fixing.

Whatever is worth doing is worth overdoing apparently. In BTS, what appears to happen is that you still get the 20 bomblets as before (why are they wedded to this silly mechanic?). The difference is that now your culture per turn is ignored. In other words, you get 20 turns worth of zero culture. Good luck flipping tiles with that. It isn't a complete waste as each turn you earn 20 points of tile culture per ring inside the outermost ring. So you now get 400 culture (20 x 20) applied by a great work in the next to outermost ring. That is still garbage, but it is something.

What all this means is that culture bombing is now worthless for tile flipping. It seems to be useful only for gaining uncontested territory, but who uses a great artist for that? The artist was already the weakest of the great people; why did Firaxis see a need to nerf it so badly?

So I know that normally when you pop the first ring of a city each turn you put 20 culture + the culture per turn output into that tile. SO that would mean if you have a monument you get 1 culture in the first ring for 10 turns, you pop borders and then you get 1 culture in the second ring per turn and 20+1 per turn in the first ring. Does this mean that the Artist bomb will put 20X20 culture into just the first ring? Or does this mean that I would get 20 culture into the first ring, pop borders and then get 20+20 in the first ring for the next 19 "turns" of the great work? IE: am I getting 400 culture in the first ring and that's it, or am I getting 20 + (20x19) = 780 in the first ring?

Because 400 won't overcome the culture and I'm not 100% sure 780 will either since I'm dealing with a holy city culture + Capital culture in the plains tile I want. Although it might be enough to take the tile SW allowing for Mjolinr capture, but that might not be worth it.

Can anybody confirm this?

[pindicator]

Actually that sounds very familiar. Long ago I was part of the Always Peace domination games on Civfanatics and that feels like it rings a bell from the research done for that game

[Lewwyn]

Actually that sounds very familiar. Long ago I was part of the Always Peace domination games on Civfanatics and that feels like it rings a bell from the research done for that game

So do you think its 400 or 780 in the first ring? If its 780 I might try it.

[pindicator]

You've got me looking at that old Culture Domination game. Here's the page where they go into detail on the artist bomb mechanics: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/r...25/page-17

For your 20x19 example, aren't you forgetting about the bonus culture that you get for inner rings? I mean, if your are putting out 2nd ring culture in a city isn't the 2nd ring tiles getting the city's stated cpt in each tile - but the 1st ring tiles are getting 20+cpt. And it continues with bonus going up for inner rings the farther out borders have popped. So you should be putting much more than that into the first ring - however, the same has been true for your opponents. This is why established cities are so hard to flip culturally.

I can't remember the exact numbers. Maybe a WB test?

[Lewwyn]

How much more culture is added to first ring after the second culture pop? Like after the first pop you are getting 20+, but then when it pops to 3rd ring what's bonus culture to the first ring per turn?

like
1x20
4X40
15x (40+?)

That would mean more culture but it also just means a huge amount of culture already soaked in the tiles over 100 turns. Yeah I think the Artist bomb is a no go. It's not going to flip any of the first ring tiles.


What is eating me alive is that if I had this research earlier I would have put 5-6 knights next to mjolin and taken it this turn instead of putting them in Coc. It means a turn delay and more time for rusten to whip and more time for him to get reinforcements and put my timing off for sure. I might have to send all knights at the cap now and wait for cats to hit Mjoinr.

[civac2]

It should be 2*21 + 18*41 = 1180 in the inner ring.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/p...cs.633767/

(the relevant information is a few posts below the OP)

[Lewwyn]

Well I didn't try it. The GA on;y gives 20 turns of culture and he's had ages to do it so I'm not going to waste the GP. Churn him into the GA instead.

Because I didn't set myself up for Mjolinr last turn I could take the city this turn, though I hope to take it next turn.



Rusten has knights and it looks like he's whipped every city last turn. Boo Hiss.

Serdoa attacked him last turn though. So huzzah huzzah hooray.

If Rustten is being split and Serdoa is closing in on the Mids city he may not be able to mount an effective defense versus me. I do not see his cats or his axes and I think they have turned around to go after Serdoa. So I've moved into positioin to attack Mjolnir and Corrupted soul. I predict both cities will dry whip knights if they can. I'm curious whether Rusten will attack out with his knihgts. I've promoted many knights to C2 which I don't like doing but I need to make sure I have the edge.

I think I should be able to take out those two cities leaving Rusten with his cap as his main focus of defense. It's very possible that rusten will abandon both cities and retreat all his units back to the capital so that he can counter and destroy my army when I advance on the capital. Him having knights makes it very likely that if I move in with my cats he will attack and flank kill them all. I may have to focus on killing every other city first. I also am thinking I need more pikes.

I'm not sure how it will play out but his capital IS annoying. I might just have to bite the bullet and try to go in. He should have 3-4 cats of his own.