[PB64] Lurking Randomly

[Miguelito]

Amica is performing below expectations in the war, be it due to motivation crisis, bad rolls (although: didn't they raze a knight defended city with a single HA recently?), or naufragar pulling off some genius tactics and then not reporting on it.
I expected them to throw back nauf fairly easily and only maybe lose a city in the south, but with this development Ginger is back, yes. Now, are cannons worth a turn of revolt into slavery, or will he continue to slowbuild? Not that he's done too awful with it. I also suspect that if Ginger continues to bash his head into Commodore it will not bring him much joy. Hope he finally goes east, there is so much up for the taking there (and notice sd's low tech power stagnating).
Btw nobody has Nationalism yet right?

[thestick]

Everyone has tech vis on me, so they have a whopping 14 turns to react, but what can they do?

Nowf and Amicalola are in an existential war, initiated by Nog. He's razed two cities so far and seems to be pressing hard despite the Persians' massive siege stack, while the Persians in turn have whipped to sub-Greek population despite the recent Hanging Gardens. This is baffling to me, but I think I figured it out: 
Nowfrogger doesn't realize that Ginger is a dozen turns from Steel
It's the only thing that makes sense. He thinks that a three-way FFA détente is actually just a two-horse race between himself and Amicalola. He's fooled by the Ginger city count and doesn't understand how fundamentally unstoppable cannons are going to be for the entire land-based world. It just doesn't matter that there's only nine cities when seven of them can pump out a cannon every other turn. Twenty cannons with that many knights can take *anything*. Actually, if Ginger is bold enough, he could probably safely conquer ME AND SUPERDEATH AT ONCE. And yet his current knight stack is powerful enough to ruin either one of us in Prisoner's Dillema-topia here. 

Ginger is about to win this game because Nhoafrquer is tunneled onto the efficiency of Amicalola's trade economy. Heaven help us all.

In the wider world, people are doing their thing.


I've gotten World Map trades with people, but I haven't cared enough to unfocus from the Amica war. Ginger has researched Gunpowder. As I've said about a million times, I'm not sure how to gauge his position. Knights are good. Muskets are good. Nine cities to his neighbors' twelve isn't. Regardless, Ginger is Not My Problem. Superdeath wants me to go to war with him. Weirdly, I'm not sure Superdeath has declared a unilateral war this entire game. That's very out of character. On the one hand, this is probably wise. On the other, one worries about the lack of initiative. Between Comm and Superdeath, I think Ginger can be contained, which leaves me to focus on Amicalola.

Yup, this is going to be ugly.

[Miguelito]

I can't fault nauf here, what else is he supposed to do? Certainly not attack Ginger whom he didn't even share a border with, that's just blatant kingmaking.
He had a temporary and waning advantage over Amica and pressed it, that seems good. However he needs an exit strategy from this war, because it surely isn't ending with a Sumerian victory parade through Amica's capital. And I'm not reading much in that way in is recent post, so that seems like a bad sign. There's definitely some tunnel vision going on where he overstates Amica's dominance if left alone. I suspect taking 100g for peace could have been sensible, especially if he was able to settle a city or two in the razed territories.
Alternatively he could turn the war cold on land and use astronomy and then privateers to blockade the island.

Also funny how both are swearing that the other one is winning all the low odds fights

[Mjmd]

I agree with all your reasons for taking peace and then actions he could follow up with.

[El Grillo]

I noticed that too

Surely seeing the Steel ETA will shake things up, right?

[Psillycyber]

I think Ginger's plan to go after SD rather than Commodore again makes sense. Cannons are strong and all, but they really shine on the offense. On defense, a knight+cannon stack could still get overwhelmed by mass obsolete siege+cheap hitters in huge volume+initiative. And we have already seen how resourceful Commodore is in pulling together an active defense if given a few turns.

But if Ginger goes after SD instead and mixes in a bunch of G2 muskets and travels on the hills up SD's west coast, attacking into Ginger's stack will be a much thornier problem for SD. Even when redlined, G2 muskets on hills are gonna be tough to take down. And all Ginger's stack needs to do is make it to SD's cities and get a chance to attack. On the attack, after the cannons have had their turn, it won't matter if Ginger has C2 knights or G2 muskets to attack with, all of SD's defenders are going down. Ginger's G2 muskets can also threaten to fork cities in the Thapsus/Hippo/Utica triangle, whereas Commodore's thin peninsula ensures that Commodore would be able to keep his counter-stack mostly consolidated for the counter-attack like before. Ginger's knights can also threaten to fork Utica and Carthage.

One other thing to consider: so far Nauf has balked at the idea of participating in a joint attack of Ginger (alongside SD and/or Commodore) under the excuse that Ginger doesn't border Nauf. On land, that's true. But Nauf is about to have astronomy and galleons, and the lack of a close land border with Ginger won't be an excuse anymore. It's not quite as close as the coasts are for SD/Amica or SD/Commodore (i.e., Nauf attacking Ginger would not have been possible with just galleys), but once Nauf gets galleons, he is going to start burning some goodwill among Commodore & SD if Nauf still won't take the Ginger threat seriously. In other words, getting galleons may be a mixed blessing because no longer will Nauf have a ready-made excuse for not doing anything about Ginger.

[pindicator]

I predict a new reason for not invading at that point, Psillycyber. My experience from playing as naufrager's neighbor is that he is very good at finding new justifications to go at the same old target.

[yuris125]

I'm surprised he doesn't pause and think a little longer why everyone else is worried about Ginger. He may not have research visibility, but he can see the "can research" section of Tech advisor, he posted a screenshot of it not long ago. He also comes to the conclusion that Ginger doesn't have a long-term advantage. Feels like it should be easy to figure out how this fact connects with Ginger having Steel as research option and everyone panicking. But maybe it only seems easy with global knowledge :shrug:

[Mjmd]

I mean he has explained and I think it holds water.

naufragar
I don't know why everyone (I mean Superdeath and Commodore) are so fixated on Ginger. He's not winning:

The current winner is obviously Amica. This is why I probably shouldn't have given him peace. Fellas, you know that Great People get progressively more expensive and Ginger can't keep chaining them, right? You all know that a 9 city empire doesn't outproduce an 18 city one, right?  

I think Ginger has a shot mind, BUT he has to prove it. And if he does and Nauf is in a good position? He can always easily stab him in the back; at least for the next little while. They will eventually clash because water distance between them is soo close, but Nauf is trying to focus on the opponent he sees as ahead (and maybe rightly so) and the one that poses the more immediate threat and opportunity for actual expansion for himself.

[Krill]

Ancient and classical trash versus cannons just gives cannons XP. You need about 4 times the units, and I mean 4 times in good units like knights, to take on a knight and cannon stack without Ren era units. On defence.

Attacking into a cannon and knight stack with muskets as your most advanced units is throwing the game.

And for all that I'm still not convinced Ginger can win against SD because I think he would be too cautious.