[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[williams482]

Turn 199:

Kaiser has another proposal for us:



Another gold gift, this time 15g. He's got to be sending some kind of message. The question is, what? We have received, on consecutive turns:

- 4g in exchange for 4 Iron
- 60g
- 15g

I don't see a discernable pattern there, so it's not some kind of countdown. Those numbers don't appear to match up with the statistics of any civ, or the combat strength values of any relevant units (field canons have 60 range strength, I guess. Could that be relevant?). If it's an attempt to coordinate the blockade at Isaac, it's totally beyond me. Chevalier, any theories about what Kaiser might be trying to communicate?

Woden rejected our offer, as we intended him to. I'll try again with the Oil request, now asking for a paltry 10 in exchange for 40 iron. He of course continues to sit at his stockpile cap, and last time he added any he was pulling in 9 oil per turn. This should be a slam dunk, assuming he doesn't expect Canadian oil to be thrown back at him.

Kings and Bruins are one turn away from finishing their current builds, and Wild is two turns from finishing it's workshop (boosting Industrialization in the process). I swap civics research to Civil Engineering, due to complete next turn so we can start our little builder wave. It will take Kings three turns to complete it's builder on t203, with 12.7 saved overflow. It looks like the fastest we could start a factory would be t202, so we're losing about half a turn of production by cranking out the builder here. I still think that's a worthwhile tradeoff, with the alternative being dumping two turns of production into something else that we won't be able to finish until the coal plant is done.

I do a little behind-schedule tile micro at Blues and Stars, swapping of the 4f3g wines and a 2f1h1g reef to two more science specialists. The Stars Builder throws down a tundra lumber mill, which the city picks up, swapping a grass hill lumber mill back to Penguins. The Wild builder is going to be one turn behind schedule on it's attempt to reach the jungle banana hill where we plan to put our campus. With Kings already delaying it's factory build by one turn to fit in a builder, we can potentially afford to delay the Wild workshop one turn, allowing us to chop the jungle straight into the campus on t202, a decision we can put off until next turn when we know slightly more about our tech progress towards Industrialization. One alternative use for that chop would be ~80% of a builder, with Kings starting on an arena instead. Eyeballing the stupid numberless circular progress bar suggests we have a little less than 25% of the 930 beaker tech completed, which would be 232 beakers. We know we got a bunch of overflow off Square Rigging, so that seems about right, maybe a touch high. The boost will knock off 372 beakers, meaning we have another ~326 to go. Two turns of research will net us 267 beakers, so we'll be ~59 beakers short immediately after earning the boost at current production rates and would finish the tech the next turn, t202. If we delay the boost, we'll have to put a turn of research into something else to avoid wastage, and swap back post-boost to complete the tech on t203. That's the turn we plan to complete the builder in Kings, so that part lines up fine, and we can safely delay the Wild workshop by a turn in order to get a chop into the Wild campus (shaving three turns off the build time). A shrine seems the most reasonable thing to toss in the queue for a turn, that will knock off 1/3rd of the cost and we can finish it later. That swap will happen next turn.

I belatedly notice that I'd been working a flat grassland (eww) over a merchant specialist at Wild, and make that swap for an extra 2gpt.  I also shuffle an unimproved plains hill over from Bruins, dropping the marsh at Wild and picking up the 3h desert hill at Bruins in the process. That will keep us at 30h per turn in Wild even after the campus is placed.

In other news, Suboptimal has marched his two tanks into Egyptian territory: 



This is one of them, the other's whereabouts are unknown, but I have confirmed that it is not adjacent to Burke or Bortus. If this is an attempt to dodge our blockade, Suboptimal will be in for a mean surprise when he bumps into the firepower Kaiser has sitting around Isaac. An artillery army, two artillery-powered city strikes, and a field canon should be able to wipe out a healthy unpromoted tank in one round.

If this isn't an attempt to circumvent our blockade, I am at a loss as to what the true purpose is. Those two units will not be able to make meaningful progress against cities, and if they try to make pillaging raids into Kaiser's territory, Kaiser should be able to pick them off without too much trouble.

Also note the archeologist. If I had any idea where he was going, I'd block the tile. Unfortunately I don't know where any antiquity sites are located, and although I could make some pretty good guesses based on the locations of past barbarian battles and camps, there were a whole lot of those in our early turns. 

Woden shows no inclination to push forward near Alara Kitan, and Kaiser has pulled his forces back around the capital.

Our wandering warrior and homeward-bound galley find little of interest.

Scores:

[williams482]

Ah, damn. I meant to swap off B&C at Bruins one turn before completion, meaning this turn. That will get us a completely wasted 20 loyalty in Bruins next turn. Oh well.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Amusingly, I had actually loaded the save myself and was touring Canada while you played the save for real! It was good to stick my nose in, and Canada's soundtrack is the best part of the civ, without a doubt. I exited and saw this post.

Anyway, I have no idea in the world what Kaiser is trying to communicate. The numbers are so arbitrary that I can't make heads nor tails of it. It doesn't seem to be a countdown, if it's a gift to help us stay afloat or upgrade against England the amounts are totally baffling...is he trying to signal time until an important tech? Indicate a particular city via iron? Who can know these things?

Woden is probably equally confused by your trade offers, but at least there's a chance he'll notice. And if he upgrades his army literally this turn declining to offer us oil would make sense. He needs modern land units to make progress against either Brazil or Phoenicia and he's running out of time to do it - once England runs over us that'll probably seal things for suboptimal.

Speaking of, I am as confused by you are by the behavior of his tanks. 

Look, guys, I've said this many, many times in this thread, so please pass it along to the other players - the way to fight and win a war in Civ VI (or any multiplayer strategy game) is to mass your units. You don't win via clever tactics or fancy outflanking maneuvers - there are very, very few Hannibals in history. It's much, much easier to win by simply having more stuff than the other guy. If you build more stuff, that's one way. But also, once you've built it, you need to actually, y'know, keep it together. Units that aren't in the battle do no good for that battle. 

But for the entirety of this war, suboptimal has done exactly the opposite. He had masses of cavalry and muskets traipsing back and forth over Canadian lands while his frigates and then battleships nibbled at Geneva and then at a few outlying Egyptian cities. On the whole, for all of his investment in military, suboptimal has gotten Geneva for his returns and basically nothing else. Even though he has 4 times Egypt's military, even though Egypt was at war with us and with Phoenicia for significant chunks of time, England somehow never managed to mass enough units to capture even a single, solitary Egyptian city.

And the odyssey of those tanks is a good reason why. Two tanks can be an excellent vanguard at Ed Mercer or something. They hit hard and soak up a lot of damage. If you pile in with your battleships and your masses of cuirassiers, yes, Kaiser will kill lots - but he'll also lose lots (cf. Woden coming out on top of the slugfest in the north). Instead, though, he's using a pair of expensive, modern units...as glorified raiders? Two tanks can't pick off a Steel city, so it's not a flanking attack. Why aren't they with the main army? Why did suboptimal build a huge military, then lose focus and wander off into projects like Bolshoi and tons of archaeologists? Is he going to win the game with archaeologists or with more tanks? Maybe his plan all along was just to wait for us to fall into his lap and win from there - a sort of sleepwalk victory? Does he have a plan? Does anyone?

Woden made a similar mistake but I think he's going to recover from it. He did a good job massing his navy, and even built about the right size for a coastal support navy (but not for a serious campaign against England, which might matter in 25 turns), but either he mistakenly spread his army all along the arc from Fez to Rivendell OR he went in with only his initial units, didn't build followups, and stalled out when fresh Brazilian reinforcements ground down his initial spearhead. But the attack on Alara looked much better executed, so maybe he learned his lesson: throw all his military power at ONE city; build units and nothing but until that city is taken, and hten move on to the next. He has that vast industrial complex, he has more cities than Brazil, he has better science than Brazil, he should be able to hack through Ichabod if he has the grit to actually accept the losses and do it. 

Finally, that brings matters to Canada. Do we have any prospect of victory? Well, not really:

Religious: We didn't found a religion. :I 
Cultural: Against Eleanor and Pedro? C'mon.
Scientific: Way too far behind, and even the leaders will get nuked before they finish the spaceship.
Diplomacy: C'mon.
Score: lol 

So that leaves domination, or more realistically looking like such an unstoppable juggernaut of conquest that everyone else gives up. Is there some universe where that can happen?

Well, not really. We will never be able to challenge England at sea, so we must realistically accept the loss of Red Wings, Penguins, and Stars in the future. We also have a central position so even if we DID make inroads against some schmuck that we caught napping, the other schmucks that border us would pile into our rear and put an end to our dreams of glory pretty quick. BUT I don't say there's 0 chance at all - just a very, very, very, very, very slim one. Mostly because all our opponents have proven themselves to not exactly be tactical geniuses, so even though they SHOULD win there's no guarantee they WILL win.

Let's assume we can get to our tech targets before suboptimal invades, because if we can't we're screwed anyway. Let's further assume that suboptimal invades mostly by faffing about with his units instead of going hard and fast at Wild, because this is my fantasy and I can do what I want to. What would it take to put together an offensive force? After Steel, the tech tree plateaus in terms of defenses, apart from city defense strength. I think if we can somehow scrape together 3 artillery, an observation balloon, and a strong force to escort that (big if), then we could actually take cities. I'd want our rightful cities of Yerevan and Smiler, plus Charlie Burke and Bortus and John Larson, but the coastal ones are out. Hmm...Still, the English navy can't be everywhere. It can't bombard Egypt AND fight Phoenicia AND suppress our coast all at the same time. Plus, artillery with balloons can duel battleships and sub's shown himself to be risk-averse, so we might still have prospects. 

I think, longshot as it is, in the interest of having a goal and some sort of positive plan, our next step after the rush to oil and steel should be the assembling of some form of modern army capable not just of defending Canada but of offensive action. I recognize how unrealistic and in all likelihood imossible this goal is, but we might get a few lucky breaks - and as everyone knows, luck is the residue of design. Let's try and put ourselves in position to take advantage of any breaks that come our way.

[williams482]

I think your assesment of the strategic situation is on-point, as always, and I fully agree that any production not going into rapid-ROI infrastructure or high value boosts should be going into units. With that in mind, diverting one turn of production at Wild into a shrine is terribly silly, we should put those hammers into a bombard instead.

For defensive purposes, we do need to make sure we possess Steel tech, one Artillery, and one Infantry (or Tank, although that's not happening) before Suboptimal attacks us, to get our city defenses and ranged strikes as strong as possible. An Bombard -> Artillery upgrade is a mere 155g with Professional Army, Musket -> Infantry a steeper but still reasonable 195g, and Cuirassier -> Tank also 155g. Cavalry unfortunately do not upgrade again until Helicopter Gunships in the late modern era, so sadly those units will be virtually useless except for flanking bonuses, mass attacks against isolated invaders, and maybe some pillaging.

A Bombard costs 280h or 560 faith. We have 268 faith, we make 11 per turn, which will jump to 19 when we slot in Triangle Trade next turn, and 21 when Capitals finishes it's Holy Site. Most likely, that's enough faith to purchase one bombard (at Bruins, for the free promotion) so we'll want to squeeze in at least two more via production. Next turn is t200, nice round number, so I'll do an empire whiparound and figure out where the best places to get those units out without delaying valuable tech boosts. Unfortunately our margins are very tight, and siege units don't get a production card (why???) so building a viable attacking force might not be possible in the time we have left. We'll see.

[williams482]

Turn 200:

Civil Engineering completes:



This nets us one era score and a policy swap. Kaiser has another deal for us:



10g and 1 aluminum? Sure, I'll take it, but again, why?

Woden now has a proposal for us:



Well well well, an asset we actually care about surrendering. The primary reason to trade for oil is because doing so allows us to delay Refining a bit relative to Steel and/or Replaceable Parts, but still upgrade a unit when we complete those techs. 10 oil isn't enough that we can delay very long, and 300g is almost two upgrades worth all by itself. So while it's good to know we may have the option to do this later, I don't think I want to give up 300g for the privilege right now. I decline the offer.

This turn, Woden has seen his enormous gold reserves plummet to almost nothing, and we will presumably see a massive milpower spike next turn. His oil stockpile is at 88, and a Gradient Dust Storm just pillaged one of his wells:



Still, the fact that his stockpiles are that high after spending almost 5k on upgrades indicates he still has a net surplus in oil per turn. Very bad news for Kaiser.

Suboptimal has pulled his Isaac forces back, and upgraded some tanks:



He also pillaged an "enemy" mine with a tank on t199. The only pillaged mine I can find in Egyptian territory is a niter mine which was pillaged in Suboptimal's initial cavalry raid and never repaired. He also discovered Lake Retba, in Brazilian territory, on t199. He has tanks on pillaging raids in Brazil? What the hell? Perhaps related, he dropped 222 points of milpower this turn. As for his tank(s) in Egypt, I can't see either of them, but this can't bode well for the one we saw last turn:



Domestically, first step: check loyalty. Bruins is fully loyal and adding +11.4 per turn. Wild is at 79.7/100 and pulling in just +1.7 per turn, thanks to a brace of new Great Works somewhere just out of range of Bruins, probably the Mummy and Scroll at Compo. These were no doubt pilfered from our own lands by those filthy English pirates, and there's nothing we can do to stop them now. Fortunately the third artefact will not push Wild into the red again, and jungle + banana chops will keep it positive even if Suboptimal finds more ways to turn up the heat. Unfortunately, this still-precarious situation means I can't afford to remove any of the loyalty boosting cards currently in place. We are also at +6 amenities empire-wide, and Retainers garrisons are providing +9. No opportunity to free up a card there, so no Triangle Trade, Logistics, or Merchant Confederation just yet. If we hadn't traded Kaiser wines, though, I'd drop Retainers in a heartbeat and swap to Theology to add Triangle Trade. Hockey Rinks can't come soon enough. We plug in Public Works:



Kings and Bruins both start on builders, both due in 3 turns. Wild is 14h short on it's workshop and switches to a bombard for this turn only, Ostensibly due in 10. Blackhawks has completed it's amphitheater and starts an Archeology Museum, due in 10 after swapping a 2f3h mine to Stars and stealing a 2f4h lumber mill from Blues. This allows Penguins to pick up a 3f4h2g deer camp from Stars, and Blues then reclaims a 2f3h quarry from Penguins to keep all builds on schedule.

Civil Engineering landed us a new governor title. I use it on Amani's Affluence promotion (gain access to all luxuries controlled by the city state Amani is established in), and send her over to Bologna, which has a Cocoa resource we don't. I should have transferred Amani a while ago: her two extra envoys in Venice were worthless to us as long as we were unable to run Merchant Confederation, and those two envoys in Bologna (plus one natural envoy) would net us +2 beakers per university. Oops.

Lets talk era score. We have 109, we need 130 before t219 for normalcy. If we don't reach a normal era, we're dead. Again. Here's what's on the table for us:

- +4 from building a Hockey Rink
- +3 from completing a Military Academy (Bruins)
- +3 from a +4 IZ in Penguins
- +3 from a +3 Theater Square (Blues or Red Wings)
- +2 from burning coal for power
- +2 for first railroad connection between cities
- +2 for first mountain tunnel (+3 if we are first in the world)
- +1 for digging up an artefact
- +1 for tundra city (Oilers)
- +1 for desert city (Jets)
- +1 for pop 15 city (Blues)
- +1 for first corps
- +1 for first modern era tech
- +1 for first trading post in England
- +1 for first Oil unit
- +1 for first Coal unit (Ironclad)
- +1 per completed trade route

On here, we can safely assume we'll get a hockey rink, the +4 IZ, burn coal for power (see Kings planning below), settle a tundra city, form a corps, upgrade a coal unit, and complete at least one trade route (Penguins -> Blues). That's 13 more or less guaranteed, we need to find 8 more. Unfortunately the trade route interface is even more of a trash fire than the trade route pathing algorithm, so figuring out how many other routes will complete is a major pain. After digging through past reports, here's a breakdown of foreign routes:
- Red Wings -> Foggy Dewhurst: started t172, 19 tiles, completes t210 (yes!)
- Red Wings -> Compo: t176, 15 tiles, completes t206 (yes!)
- Red Wings -> Cleggy: t183, 24 tiles, completes t231 (nope!)

And the internal routes, checking from trader positions:
- Stars -> Blues: looks to complete t201 (yes!)
- Wild -> Blues: looks to complete t213 (yes!)
- Red Wings -> Blues: looks to complete t211 ot t213 (yes!)
- Bruins -> Blues: looks to complete either t205 or tt213 (yes!)

Okay, that's an extra +6 era score for completing trade routes, and +1 for a foreign trading post. That puts us at 129/130. What's our best route to adding one more point? Building a Military Engineer in Bruins, then having it build a railroad between two cities isn't too expensive, and that gets us a little extra value in improved transit speed. Given the beaker savings from not finishing modern techs until the era change, I think I like that better. A Military Engineer is a 6t build in Bruins, and it will take three more turns to actually place the railroads between Wild and Bruins. That means we need to start the Engineer on t209 or earlier to fit it in. 

All right, lets talk cities.

Blues:



Blues will finish it's settler next turn with exactly 0.5h of (wasted) overflow. The lost pop will come off that plains hill (transfer to Capitals), then we'll knock out a builder in 4t with 0h saved overflow. By that time Banking will have finished, so we will start on a Bank, which would take 13t at 24h per turn, but we will almost certainly steal back some production tiles from Capitals and Penguins to get it (and the Economics boost) done faster.

Kings:



The Margins are tight here, too tight. We need to get out a factory and a coal plant here. If we don't delay Industrialization at all, boost it next turn and complete it the turn after, then start the factory immediately in Kings at max production config without waiting to complete the builder, those two buildings will take a combined 20 turns, finishing on t222. The era will roll on t219, and suboptimal's first chance at a non-GA wardec will be t221. We really want this tech boosted before the era rolls, worth ~150 beakers, and we need it done turn of any war declaration at the absolute latest. We have three chops available, one of them relatively painless (plains hill 1E of the city center, net loss of 1h per turn once Steel is researched), the other two serious blows to the city's long term productive output (the two flat grass forests, will be 2f4h with Steel, once chopped worthless until Conservation replanting). With four more techs, a reasonable number for the time we expect to be chopping, a non-Magus forest will be worth 115h, 3.6 turns worth of pre-factory max-config production. If we can get Magus over here without risk to Wild, that becomes 172h, 5.4 turns of production. If we get Magus over here, we can do this with one chop. So, the timetable that will have to be:

t201: Wild builder reaches jungle
t202: Wild builder chops jungle
t203: Wild builder chops Banana. Kings completes builder. Liang and Magus swap places.

Well, that's nice and simple. One potential complication is that I'm not sure if the Praetorium policy works on non-established governors, but the extra pop at Wild should cover the difference for at least those five turns. Five turns after establishing (t208) the Factory will be at 160/330, and a chop then (with 40 total techs, +3 from present) will bring it to 326/330, completing the following turn (t209) with 25h overflow. The coal plant would then be on track to finish in 8 turns (t217) with 5h overflow, two turns ahead of the era roll. Just enough of a margin that I can play around with science specialists towards the end if a few extra beakers look to be significant.

Bruins:



This would be a pretty straightforward one if not for the need for era score. Get the builder out in three turns (t203) with minimal overflow, repair defenses for a turn with a bunch of overflow (t204), then start on a Bank. Once that completes, crank military until the end of days, or some other project takes precedence. With Industrialism complete and an extra two mines plus a lumber mill placed, this city will pull in 41 production per turn. Not bad. Unfortunately we probably need that railroad, so the bank will have to wait until we can get the engineer out unless we stumble into an unforeseen source of extra era score. 

Wild:



Wild will put one turn of production into this bombard, then switch back to the nearly completed workshop next turn and finish it with 14h overflow at the start of t202. The builder will then chop the banana jungle into the empty production queue, growing us to pop 10, and we'll place a 287h campus on that tile, which will be on track to complete with 10h overflow in 6 turns, t208. Placing the campus will not remove the banana, strangely, which we will still be able to chop on t203. Once the campus completes we'll make a call on continuing the bombard or adding a library, depending on what seems more urgent.

Blackhawks:



The Archeology Museum will complete on t210, boosting Natural History. In a perfect world we would then set to work on an archeologist, but we will not be able to complete Natural History until some time later so we'll presumably squeeze in a military unit instead.

Penguins:



We will complete the +4 IZ with 11h overflow next turn and start a shipyard, due in 10 turns (t211) but can likely be trimmed to t210 with tile micro. The builder currently outside Stars will use it's final charge to mine the pinned tundra hill on t204.

Red Wings:



Shipyard due on t208, at which point we'll decide on a full price +3 campus, or a discounted +3 Theater Square. Our need for beakers and desire to conserve era score both point towards the campus, but I have yet to make a firm decision. A Frigate or two for battleship upgrades would be a nice stretch goal if we can find a way to fit the policy card in without losing Wild.

Stars:



Chugging away on a campus, due t209. The extra housing should allow us to grow on t211, and the 7th population will be used as a scientist specialist. In tandem with other science improvements mentioned above (and accounting for the lost pop at Blues and the dropped specialists at Kings) that scientist should squeak us past 150 beakers per turn overall.

Capitals:



Easily the weakest city in our empire, a builder and some tile swaps should still get this city up over 20h per turn, enough to slowly grind out a military unit or two. The next district, if any, will definitely be a +3 campus 1NE of the holy site. A trader would also help, especially since I doubt we'll be able to continue these routes into England for too much longer.

Scores:

[williams482]

Turn 201:

The industrial zone completes at Penguins for 3 era score as expected, and we complete a trade route for another era point. However, that completed trade route is actually the Blues -> Red Wings route, and the Stars -> Blues route looks to take another 14 turns, completing t215. Still in line to get us era score, fortunately.

What to do with the newly freed-up trader? 3f4h from Blues is probably still the best yield we can get, although 1f 12g 1c from Howard or Auntie Wainwright is also tempting. I go with the hammers and sent the trader to Blues once again. Blues itself has completed the settler, as planned, and starts a builder. It is going to be much easier to efficiently finish a 122h builder on schedule than a 126h builder, and the timing on the Bruins builds don't actually matter that much, so I configure Blues for 24h per turn to finish the second builder in 4t and swap Bruins over to the Military Engineer for two turns, trading a grass mine to Capitals instead of the plains mine I said I would last turn. Wild swaps back to the Workshop, due next turn, and Penguins begins a Shipyard, due in 10.

Both Industrialization and Colonialism are a boost plus a bit from completion, so we swap to Banking and Nationalism.

Kaiser has another deal for us:



What's the translation here? Move your horse units in 15 turns? Kaiser does have a lot of military in the vicinity now, and might be considering an offensive:



It's also been a few turns since those walls were last attacked. Once Kaiser repairs them, I'll get completely out of his way.

Woden't upgrade-fueled milpower spike "only" amounts to a 268 point increase. Cuirassier -> tank is 16 points, musket -> infantry 15 points, so that's still a dozen modernized units. Not bad, and they are back to their 90 oil stockpile limit.

Another source of possible era score we could get is finding a natural wonder. I believe this is a "small" map (someone correct me if I should know otherwise!), which will have four natural wonders. We've found three, and there's a lot of unexplored space in Brazil that we could defog with a cavalry in the 18 turns remaining before the era rolls. That would be ideal, as long as we don't pull a useful unit too far out of position. The cavalry at Penguins is providing no benefit (+1 amenity instead of +0) and can reach fogged tiles in three turns, so I'm going for it. This means swapping Bruins back to the builder, and I micro the city to slow the worker down to being three turns out with no overflow, adding 8gpt and passing 2hpt to Wild in the process. That's enough delay that I can dump the repair defenses overflow into the Bank without finishing the builder first, allowing Blues to keep it's schedule with minimal lost production and some extra gold to compensate.

Scores:

[williams482]

Turn 202:

Wild completes the workshop, boosting Industrialism. We switch to that tech and should complete it next turn, just in time to start the factory in Kings. Wild is also facing a renewed onslaught of English culture, with 15 great works now providing loyalty maluses, dropping our overall loyalty to -2.3 per turn. Fortunately we have chops in hand, and 79f, 79h from our jungle bumps population to 10, loyalty to -1.2, and allows us to place a campus due in 6t. Wild needs another 43 food to hit pop 11, and another 114 to hit pop 12. It will add 1.1 food from natural growth next turn, then we'll chop the banana for 162f, putting us at pop 12 and positive loyalty once again. We also have another marsh we can chop for 165f with Magus or 110f without him. Our previous plan finishing the coal plant one turn early with some overflow does give us enough of a margin that we could have Magus hang around until t206 to boost that marsh chop if hitting pop 13 seems to be necessary for loyalty purposes.

How many more Great Works can Suboptimal throw at us? I count 5/5 in Smiler and 4/5 in Compo. Marina has a theater square which is currently fogged (I send a musket over to rectify that) but I assume it has 5/5 slots filled. That's 14, where is the 15th coming from? Suboptimal does not have any relics, so Pearl's Holy Site is not contributing to the cause. Howard and Foggy Dewhurst have theater square already which are out of range at Wild. Pearl has none, but could start to build one once it grows from pop 9 to pop 10, Barry has one under construction right now. I think Kaiser should definitely conquer that city, so I'll get out of his way. No shortage of units on this front:



Also, we get some troubling updates about the health of our planet:



So, that sea level change? We're fucked. Penguins (and it's Holy Site) are on 1st level flood tiles, and that city and district will be damaged when waters rise in 9 turns. It will be destroyed on the next sea level change, which likely won't be long after. There is absolutely nothing we can do about this, as we (and the rest of the world) are too backwards to research Computers, a late atomic era tech, to build flood barriers to protect our coastlines. Other than losing one of our best cities, we'll be in okay shape, with the only other damage of note being the loss of the deer tile 1SW of Oilers on 2nd level flooding, and the loss of the Stars campus and Red Wings EC with 3rd level flooding. Unfortunately all that is likely to come soon, with four fully industrialized nations who, rationally, are presumably unwilling to scale back CO2 production and give their opponents a relative advantage in actually winning the game. Sadly realistic, but very annoying. Especially from our position as the hopelessly backwards ones. This does make it vitally important that we speed up Penguins' shipyards, currently nine turns out, or we'll likely be forced to wait a bit to make repairs before we can boost Steam Power. Fortunately, stealing a quarry tile from Blues does the trick, with no effect on Blues' builder completion time.

Who else will suffer for this? Suboptimal will lose Compo and Nora Batty at the same time we lose Penguins, and some miscellaneous but largely low value tiles after that. Ironically, neither coastal spot we pinned for him is directly vulnerable to rising sea levels. Kaiser will lose the in-progress Ed Mercer encampment and rather pointless seeming +1 IZ at Isaac when second level floods arrive, but will be otherwise unaffected. Woden's coastal empire is somehow completely safe, except for an unimproved woods and rainforest outside Fez that will flood at 2nd and 3rd level respectively. And of course Ichabod hasn't a care in the world thanks to Woden's earlier efforts (how helpful of him!) although most tiles in that part of the world are immune anyway.

So, to review, despite providing zero CO2 to date, and having relatively few coastal cities, we will be the second most severely affected civilization by this impending and unstoppable disaster. That's what we get for not choosing, in the classical era, to plan around late game mechanics which have literally never been relevant in a PBEM before. Good grief.

Anyway, back to the rest of the game. Our homeward-bound galley encounters and English battleship, apparently just kinda hanging out in a totally useless location. Returning from a long-distance shelling of Brazil, perhaps? Or keeping an eye on us? Who can say.



Regarding Oilers:



Come on, man. The city state has stolen what would be a first ring tile thanks to an abrupt Phoenician envoy dump. The other solid tile in the city's radius is liable to sink before too long, and there's just not much else here worth a damn. At this point I think it might be wiser to just sit on the settler, and throw it down wherever/whenever is convenient to hook up an extra source of Oil. Or maybe we use it to replace Penguins! In either case, we swap out of Civil Engineering in three turns, as soon as all the builders are done. Chevalier, any thoughts on this one?

Oh, and now that I've moved my cavalry scouts, I realize that Venice's swollen borders have also blocked off the pass between Egypt and Brazil. There's another possible way though, but most likely the fogged tiles are also mountains. God damnit, Woden.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

The solution to Oilers is easy: we conquer Venice and give the tile back to its rightful owner.

oh, wait.

I guess wait for oil and then plant the settler if it's eligible? Or we drop it at, I guess, Jets, which is the only other "city site" in our area that we could occupy? Oilers, without those two tiles or oil, is entirely pointless. Russia could make it work, but not Canada.

Maybe suboptimal and Kaiser getting slightly flooded will tilt things Woden's way? I hope someone wins a decisive war soon (against anyone but us).

Also, if we manage to hold on to our cities until sub's get flooded, then I'm counting that as us being officially the last civ to lose a city, a minor triumph given the repeated kicks to the balls the game has given us.

[williams482]

Between Venice blocking off the pass to Brazil and Venice making Oilers nearly useless, that's two era points we'd hoped for that we likely won't be getting before the era rolls, and makes that railroad a necessity for a normal age. That means forget the bank at Bruins for the moment, we're putting production into the military engineer first. And if we're doing that, why bother researching Banking at all right now? Go after Astronomy to boost Colonialism, unlock our Hockey Rinks, and at least improve our culture output. Direct the rest of our research into getting slightly under 50% of Refining and Steel, then backfill the infantry techs once we have those two critical techs in a position to complete after the era roll. We'll look more vulnerable at era roll than ideal, but infantry kinda suck anyway (70 strength, I thought 80 for some reason) and we can chase tanks as hard as possible instead. That does mean prioritizing Natural History to get that archeologist out to boost Combustion (assuming Suboptimal hasn't plundered every last one of our priceless cultural history), possibly delaying Nationalism (and corps)? No, we can't do that, we need the era score from our first corps, plus, you know, the extra combat power.

Well, we'll figure out something.

[williams482]

Turn 203:

Industrialism completes:



We have three sources of coal, all in convenient, already-mined spots:



Always nice to score a break, even a minor one like this. In less pleasant news, Suboptimal has scored another great work, his third artefact at Compo. That means he's maxed out on existent theater squares, but with one in progress at Barry, the long-term stability of Wild rest entirely on Kaiser's ability to retake the city. In the meantime, however, we can slow things down a touch with a food chop, which shows exactly the food yield I predicted... but leaves us 5.8 food short of growing to pop 12. What the hell? My best guess is that this is the stupid amenity mechanic in action again. Wild was at 0 amenities before the chop, so growing from 10 to 11 put it in the negatives, which apparently applied a malus to the food overflow. Does that check out? We should have been 41.9 food shy of pop 11, and we chopped 162 into the city, overflowing 120. We needed 114 to grow to pop 12, so given that we wound up with 5.8 left over, we actually put in 108.1 food. 108.1 / 120 = 0.90, so we took a 10% malus to our food overflow. According to the city screen, these are the current modifiers to Wild's food:

- -15% for negative amenities
- -20% for "Other growth bonuses"
- 0.25 "housing multiplier"

What the hell? Sadly, whatever caused this seems likely to apply to Blues as well, meaning the pop chop plan there is probably going to wait up a bit if it ever happens at all.

Additionally, Wild is now losing 4.2 loyalty per turn because of unhappiness, and although hopefully that will return to just -1.2 next turn it will be enough to get us under the magical 75 loyalty threshold, for a 25% penalty on all yields. Awesome! Left to it's own devices, Wild will grow to pop 12 in 7 turns, which I could decrease to 5 by dropping the merchant specialist to work a flat grassland tile. Gross, but probably necessary to avoid a similar issue with the marsh chop, which is almost certainly going to be necessary. Magus, you're going to be sticking around a little longer.

Fortunately, the unexpected 2h per turn at Kings makes delaying that chop less of an inconvenience. We switch over to max production config (sadly dropping two scientists) and start a Factory, due in 10.

I goofed in blindly assuming wall repairs at Bruins would be a cheap one turn build. They actually need 30h, more than Bruins puts out in it's current max-yield configuration. Instead, I decide to finish the 122h builder next turn, and configure Blues to finish it's 126h builder on the following turn, trading the coal mine to Capitals for a sheep pasture so we can grow a little faster and waste less overflow. Those wall repairs just aren't urgent; we can slam them out in probably a single turn once Suboptimal denounces us. Instead I'll get out the Military Engineer for railroad era score starting next turn.

The Builder out of Kings heads towards Red Wings/Capitals. At Penguins, our builder unwittingly reveals a Sea Dog:

[well son of a gun, I thought I took a picture. It's next to that tundra hill with the mine pin that you can see in the t200 recap]

At this point, I'm very confident that I want to try to crank out some Frigates at Red Wings/Penguins/Stars, assuming I have enough amenities from other sources (including Hockey Rinks) to drop retainers without further risk to Wild. They will be useful for battleship upgrades, and perhaps also to smack little mosquitos like this guy. If Sub thinks he can turn a profit casually raiding our coasts with a couple of obsolete ships, we'll make him pay.

As discussed, we are delaying Banking a touch to get Astronomy out faster, currently due in 3t. That will boost Colonialisim, which we will finish the turn after. Thus, we get to save our Naval Tradition policy swap by sitting in Public Works for an extra two turns, which I think is worth it given the high wire act I'm planning to try swapping out retainers. If that turns out to be a dumb idea, I don't want to be stuck in it. Blues, unable to build it's bank, will instead knock out the monument we've been putting off since the ancient era.

Red Wings places a discounted 176h +3 Theater Square, to lock in the cost and discount before we unlock Water Parks and through everything through a loop. We just got two extra Envoys, giving us 4. I drop three into Bologna for an extra 6 beakers per turn.

Kaiser does seem to be pushing towards Barry, he has enough units in the pass north of Materhorn that I can't move a unit close enough to see them all. That projects to be a bloody battle, but with observation baloons and multiple artilery armies, Kaiser is well prepared for it. I've also spotted English archeologists in Kaiser's and Woden's territory, as well as our own, and I'm starting to wonder if Suboptimal really is trying for a cultural victory. That would be good for us, it won't end the game any time soon and if Kaiser can manage to take Barry, we should be able to hold all our of our (non-flodded) cities.

Scores: