[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[williams482]

You know, that's a damn good question.

I booted up this morning's save to look over Egypt's development. He currently has only four campuses completed (one obscured by FoW) with adjacencies of +5, +4, +3, and probably +3. He is running Natural Philosophy to double those values, and the three visible campuses have three libraries and two universities between them. The obscured campus is in his second city, and I speculate that it has both buildings as well. He scored Hypatia (fortunately Ichabod nabbed Newton) and he has 10 envoys in (at least) two science city states, so Libraries are base +5 beakers, Universities +6. Two of the three satellite campus cities are at pop 11, the third at pop 8, and his capital is almost certainly over pop 10 as well. I assume he's running Rationalism too, which gives him a combined 30 bpt from adjacencies, 35 from libraries, and 33 from Universities. Total visible population is 95, plus a reasonable minimum of 10 for the capital is an extra 52.5 bpt, totalling 150.5, almost dead on his 152 total.

Scarier still, he has +5, +3, and +2 campuses currently in progress, and room for three more with decent adjacencies. He's done an excellent job setting up a lot of very nice Industrial Zones, and he's running the doubling card for them for a truckload of production. I count only four Sphinxes, all on floodplains for +2 culture each, so most of his strong showing there must be coming from pop (31.5 cpt), monuments (12 visible plus probably two others, 28 cpt), and his religion's World Church belief (+1 culture for every four followers). He continues to backfill with a varied mix of new districts.

Lucky us Kaiser's tactical maneuvering was so clumsy, because his empire building has been anything but. I feel obligated to note again the terrain advantages he's had to work with relative to our little slice of hell, but he really has made the most of what he got. Very impressive indeed.

[williams482]

Oh hey, and just like that a new game update is out, including this rather dubious tweak:

Rationalism: Now requires a population of 15 and an adjacency bonus of 4.

That'll drag Kaiser back down a bit. Completely unfairly, of course.

[williams482]

Turn 159:

Completion of our Holy Site boosts Civil Engineering:



Penguins starts a university, currently due in 13.

As for casualties to our latest update, changes to Amenities and Rationalism dealt some damage to science rates around the world. Canada and Brazil are unharmed, but Suboptimal lost 6 beakers/5 clefs, Woden 8 beakers/4 clefs, and Kaiser a staggering 30 beakers/8 clefs. I feel kinda bad for him, to be honest, he had obviously planned on exploiting Rationalism to the best of his abilities, and got the rug yanked out from under him with these new and frankly unreasonable standards. The largest cities in the world (with the possible exception of some fogged capitals) are Isaac and Osgiliath at 12 pop each. I would have taken great joy in a volcanic eruption wrecking a bunch of his tiles, but this is just low.

Oh, and speaking of:



I'm no volcanologist, but what the hell kind of weak ass volcano is that? Show up, strut around for a bit, make some threatening gestures, then bail. Pathetic.

Egyptian troop deployments along the border are exactly as they used to be. At Bruins, the builder chops a jungle hill to complete renaissance walls. I decide that the odds of Kaiser having a unit available to sacrificially wreck a repaired encampment are pretty low, and start Bruins on the final turn of repairs. If I'm allowed to continue, I'll repair the Barracks and start on the Armory for a military engineer. Kaiser has completed wall repairs in Burke.

World Congress next turn! Who's pumped!

Scores: 

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I already thought even the 10 pop requirements were a little steep! 

maybe it's my playstyle - I basically never build farms, and rarely expand housing much beyond size 10. I just don't see the value of large cities, preferring to push out and expand across the map more quickly.

[williams482]

Turn 159 World Congress:

Oh boy, it's the moment we've all been waiting for... World Congress resolutions!!! 

And those resolutions are:



Well what do you know, these ones might actually matter!

I am certain that making siege units less powerful benefits me, so that is where all 60 of the favor I am permitted to allocate there will go. As for the other resolution, obviously all or nearly all units we build will be constructed with production, and maybe a handful of faith purchases. I see no circumstance where I would burn a bunch of gold on a straight up unit purchase in the next 30 turns, so if I just wanted to dump a vote into something that can't hurt me, it's that one. The real question, however, is if I benefit more or less than my opponents by making unit builds cheaper? I wasn't planning on spamming a bunch of units, but in truth churning out knights en masse is probably a good idea from where I stand. On the other hand, Kaiser is probably doing more unit builds than I am right now. Ultimately, this resolution can make Suboptimal's present milpower lead (and our present milpower deficit) substantially stronger or shakier by hurting other civ's abilities to catch up. I suppose as the laggart, cheaper units favors us the most. I also expect this option to be popular, so I may be able to refund some favor and score diplo victory points (lol). I'll go with that:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Knights aren't very effective against cavalry; however, cuirassiers & field cannon are relatively near. If our plan is to survive militarily, rather than crossing our fingers and hoping that Kaiser continues to be busier with more important projects, then building lots of knights to upgrade (along with our crossbows) in 16ish turns is probably our only even slightly realistic chance.

[williams482]

Knights aren't very effective against cavalry; however, cuirassiers & field cannon are relatively near. If our plan is to survive militarily, rather than crossing our fingers and hoping that Kaiser continues to be busier with more important projects, then building lots of knights to upgrade (along with our crossbows) in 16ish turns is probably our only even slightly realistic chance.

Agreed, I was thinking that as well when I was debating what policies to vote on. We have several builds finishing in the near future, and should be able to start on at least one knight next turn. With a policy swap coming up soon, we should be able to run the discount card for half price builds and kick out a decent number of them. 

The most obvious limiting factor is going to be iron, of course. We can start heavy chariots once we run out, but we don't want to finish any; upgrading knights built at +100% production is better value than upgrading chariots and gold is precious too: with Professional Army, knight -> cuirassier is a very reasonable 115g, but chariot -> cuirassier is a good bit steeper at 270g. Crossbow -> field cannon is 155g each. With new units taking incremental bites out of our income, we'll probably manage something like 600g in the next ~16 turns, enough along with the existing 347g to upgrade our three crossbows plus four knights. That's still not exactly a huge force and we have two of those knights already. We can probably afford another knight upgrade a few turns after, so we'll want five total, but more than that is likely not a huge help. 

What's the best unit to build instead? Coursers are very weak, but I suppose they make decent enough pillagers and suicide attackers, same as our horsemen have done when faced with muskets, and they use up much more easily replaced horse stockpiles. Crossbows are ranged, but they fold in a hurry when attacked by advanced units, and the terrain here isn't amazing for massing shots from fortified positions. I could also focus on sprinkling more infrastructure, finishing off the various markets and traders to add more gold so we can upgrade a few extra units, but we'll see what we actually have production for. 

With all that in mind, is spending hammers on an engineer for the Ballistics boost actually worthwhile? 195h on the armory (for +3h, ROI in 65t, not terrible but definitely not a good tradeoff on it's own right now) and 170h for the engineer could instead be two knights, almost three if the production boost resolution passes. Hmm. Decisions, decisions.

[williams482]

Turn 160:

The world congress did not go as I had expected:




Constructing units is now twice as expensive, courtesy of Kaiser. Why he chose to do that despite a considerable military deficit relative to the civ currently attacking him is beyond me, and I'm curious to read the explanation in his thread. Suboptimal, meanwhile, directed the full force of his political will towards nerfing ranged units, presumably with Kaiser's field canons in mind. This beats out Ichabod's equal vote towards strengthening heavy cavalry by some nonsense tiebreaker or other.

With these lovely changes forced upon us, constructing a knight would take 21 turns in Bruins, tied for our strongest production city. Just wonderful. I start the barracks repairs in Bruins, which will finish next turn. At this point I suspect we're better off trying to power through Printing and Military Science for cavalry, allowing us to upgrade units we already have instead of trying to churn out very expensive alternatives. We have two coursers and three horsemen, which would cost a combined 1035g to upgrade with professional army, more than we are going to have already. So our priority should not be building more units, but protecting the ones we have, and cranking out as much gold-generating infrastructure as possible. With that in mind, Blackhawks starts a Market, due in 7. Wild doesn't really have anything useful it can do towards that aim, so I place and begin a discounted +2 Holy Site, due in 10.

Nothing whatsoever has changed on the Egyptian border. Woden has seized Suzerain status of Venice from Ichabod, which doesn't affect us at all. Humanism is going to be a mandatory policy swap in 5 turns, with a 16 turn wait for Mercantilism (or The Enlightenment, if we feel so inclined) to follow. We are currently on track to earn our first Great Merchant in 43 turns, although new Markets going up in Kings and Blackhawks will drop that all the way down to 36 turns. Brazil will claim the very useful Adam Smith in 30 turns, and the next Merchant will no doubt be more expensive, In either case, we have zero hope of boosting either civic unless we decide to delay them substantially, holding back our overall civic progress in the process. Not a good idea.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

As I understand it, the WC first checks whether A or B won - so the 11 total votes for nerfing units beat the 7 total votes for buffing units. Then suboptimal won the nerf war because he had 6 votes for field cannon while we only mustered 4 for siege units.

[williams482]

Turn 161:

Bruins' encampment has been permitted to recover 20 HP and the Barracks has finished. Still no sign of movement on that front:



Relative to t159, Suboptimal has lost 63 milpower and Kaiser has gained 67. Suboptimal has spent about 300g and is pulling in 76 per turn, Kaiser has spent none in that time and currently pulls in 12 per. Woden is also crawling back up the rankings with a 136 milpower increase, Ichabod not far behind adding 97. According to the gossip screen, Suboptimal did pillage two fishing boats using Sea Dogs this turn.

Bruins returns to work on it's Armory, due in 7 if Kaiser doesn't destroy the encampment again. Wild switches from the Holy Site to a trader. Bruins does have 44h invested in a trader right now, but it would take two turns to complete and time is precious in that build queue.

Scores: