[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Sub has at least three more decent city-sites in his backlines from what I can see. Driving me nuts that he hasn't settled those, especially since we've settled four tundra cities and are STILL dead last in city count.

Can you include a screenshot of the Egyptian coast and Geneva area? I'd like to speculate about Sub's naval campaign.

[williams482]

Ask and you shall receive: 





Suboptimal has also set to work on Terracotta Army. Kaiser continues to make progress on Ruhr Valley, but I see no other wonders in his territory.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Wowsers, look at those city strengths! If knights and muskets are all sub is bringing to the table, then he's not going to make progress. We can assume Ed Mercer has at least 71 strength, Isaac is working on medieval walls (and Alara already has them), so Sub will really struggle.

Now, in theory he could still take the coastal cities if he built enough frigates - I hope the bulk of his strength is frigates, in fact. Then he can shell down the walls and health slowly but surely and then walk even a scout in - he should be able to slug it out with field cannons if he has the ships for it. Sea dogs are also a worthwhile investment since the coast is eminently pillageable (I really appreciate pillaging now - not only is it still a great boost to you, but burning out a campus or two if you can get to it, like that university at Ed Mercer, can seriously wound an empire's science ability, and sub really needs to do that to stay relevant here). In fact, between the patch and potential looting, it looks like Kaiser's science has dropped from 152 a few turns ago all the way down to 110 now.

But no one has any real advantage. Woden and Kaiser are equal in science and empire score. Woden, Ichabod, and Kaiser are all balanced militarily. Sub has a huge military but is going to bleed hard against those tough Egyptian cities. It feels like this is mostly a product of everyone else's mismanagement (man in last place glass house throws huge stones). Honestly, unless Kaiser just now achieved those city strengths, sub should have gone for the easier prey - ie, Canada. He has three times our military score and has the loyalty pressure which would make it difficult for Kaiser to exploit. Kaiser, as I've said, woudl have probably won already if he'd had a better campaign 90 turns ago. And I cannot imagine how Woden took so many Brazilian cities but then stalled out. He must have not been maintaining his military builds, or he scattered his forces in penny-packets all along the Brazilian frontier instead of massing them to go for one city at a time. Actually, that makes sense - the Phoenican navy (Cothons!) burned out the Brazilian coast, but Woden didn't build enough land forces to make progress on the interior and Ichabod is using work ethic to keep up. Woden probably needs bombards and even balloons to finish the job, much like Kaiser against us.

[williams482]

I'm just going to pretend Suboptimal fled in fear of our obvious goliath-stopping prowess and chose to go after an easier target.

More seriously, this game probably looks very different if the Rationalism change dropped in last month's patch instead of this one. Kaiser looked to be closest thing to a runaway around, with very defensible land but a mediocre military who would obviously be first to key next generation military techs that make taking cities practical again. Suboptimal attacking him instead of trying inevitably going halfsies on our rather uninspiring land seems to make some sense, especially with the pillage benefits as you note.

With the way things stand now, Suboptimal's best play is presumably to keep pillaging, avoid any really costly battles, and keep building infrastructure and filling out the backline spots our explorer has been meandering through. He seems oblivious to the fact that settling Avalanche would almost certainly get him Wild too, and flipping Wild would give him a damn good shot at a peaceful conquest of Bruins, which would leave us an easy target to be overrun the usual way. Why he hasn't tried to take advantage of this is baffling: he picked Eleanor on purpose, presumably, and expressed interest in a "peaceful conquest" Succession Game that never happened at about the same time. Does he know something we don't? Or does he just not realize how precarious our loyalty situation is?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

If I know sub, it's because he never really considered it. He got fixated on some project (or more likely half a dozen all around his empire) and is busily keeping all those plates spinning, without ever pausing to take a step back and consider the wider situation. So he's thinking about his capital finishing THIS project, so he can land THAT Great Admiral, while his expansion finishes THIS wonder - lots of very finely executed micros that never quite fit into a coherent whole.

Kaiser can probably survive the English attack, barring the pillaging which is probably the best play remaining for Eleanor, unless Woden piles in - which I doubt he will. Woden isn't very opportunistic and also seems stuck now in a Brazilian quagmire. I just wish we were literally anyone other than Canada, there'd be opportunities here for us if we could, for example, eat Venice and maybe roll into the Brazilian's rear.

[williams482]

Turn 162:

The Egyptian front remains unchanged, and our repaired encampment continues to heal unimpeded:



Kings begins work on a market, due in 5. There's also a half-finished monument in there I'll need to knock out after. Builders throw down a quarry at Wild and a fishing boat at Stars. No visible changes from the English/Egyptian war, nor in the gossip screen (which seems highly random in what it reports or doesn't, why tell us about pillaged fishing boats but not the much more significant pillaged campus?). Little to do here but wait and hope.

Scores: 

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Our first Phoenician borders! Looks like you've passed by the bloodlands along the Brazilian coast - spotted at least two razed cities along the way.

What each player should do to win:

Kaiser: Stop faffing about, use his superior science and production to build an army of bombards/cuirassiers, and feckin steamroll Canada already, starting with Blues and then spreading out from there.

Suboptimal: Pillage out Kaiser, finish settling his backline cities, and use his frigates to pick off coastal cities while trying to get a tech capable of cracking inland cities. Keep building military units, too, so he doesn't lose his edge.

Woden: Concentrate his army in one place, get a generation ahead of Brazil, and outmuscle Ichabod at his capital (same as Kaiser, really). Then stab Kaiser while he's busy with sub and ourselves.

Brazil: I dunno, culture? Religion? Kind of just tropical Canada at this point.

Canada: ...anyone have any bright ideas?

[williams482]

Turn 163:

Hello Canada, long time no see. Woden has completed Forbidden City, which must be a first for one of our games. We earn another envoy, giving us six in reserve because we have nowhere particularly useful to put them. Our encampment continues to heal unimpeded, a very encouraging sign. Kaiser has shuffled his troops a bit, withdrawing the Bortus screen a bit and pulling his siege tower back completely. That might signal a change of plans, or merely recognition that it serves no value whatsoever in a Canadian campaign.



The builder outside Wild spends it's final charge on a plains hill mine, boosting the adjacency of our industrial zone to +3 and cutting a turn off the trader currently in progress. Other builders meander about, nothing much to speak of there. Our explorers uncover the Phoenician city of Fez, our first Phoenician city center and further proof that Woden hasn't bothered to rename his conquests.

Scores:

[williams482]

Turn 164:

Kaiser completed Ruhr Valley, granting him an even greater production edge. On the front, things return to normalcy:



Unclear why those units stepped back last turn, or why he pulled the bombard out for so long, but it's back, and only a matter of time until it levels the encampment again. We need four turns to complete the armory, and another eight for the military engineer, so things are going to be tight. It may be worth it to run the trader soon to finish in Wild from Bruins to shave a turn off that. Boosting Ballistics would be a very big deal given our precarious military situation and poor research rate. Ideally we'd send the trader to Stars or Capitals to get them rolling faster, but the military advantages must come first. I can also move the Musket from Bruins into the encampment, which is perfectly safe for now (with 300 fortification HP and 80-soon-to-be-100 district HP) and should reduce the effectiveness of Kaiser's initial bombardment considerably. With the musket, the unpromoted Bombard's first shot will average 11 damage, without it 17. That damage will gradually creep upward as the walls are reduced and the injury penalty to the district increases, but it will be some time before one of Kaiser's own units could smash through and kill anything.

Red Wings completes it's monument and begins on a harbor, due in 10. Builders shuffle about, but don't build anything just yet. We'll have a policy swap coming up next turn, in which we'll drop Serfdom and Limes for something or other. It occurs to me that with Merchant Confederation our standard diplomatic policy choice, we're wasting 6 GPT by sitting on our envoys instead of dumping them in a city state. We could take Suzerainty of Venice from Woden, or come one envoy short of matching Kaiser in either Geneva or Bologna. Suzerainty of Venice is itself worth 1 GPT for the luxury at Venice, the only foreign city we currently have a trade route too, although I rather doubt Woden will allow us to keep dominion over that city state. I suppose there's a risk that Kaiser comes a-knocking, but Venice is about to finish renaissance walls, and Kaiser capturing the city could give us a window to take it for ourselves with the Cavalry we should have in about 15 turns. I say to hell with it, and put in those envoys:



This also gives us access to Venice's coal, granting us three pur turn despite our civilization's complete ignorance of what coal is or how we can use it. It reveals to us a single tile, and the knowledge that Venice's military consists of a two charge builder and a single musketman. Boy, wouldn't it be grand if we could have captured this city for ourselves some time around t70?

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

If we could have taken Yerevan, Venice, and Antananarivo (we had the military to take Antananarivo back on turn 50 due to all our barbarian friends), we might have made a game of this.

Still, it's been a useful exercise in how terrible, awful, no-good very-bad Canada is.