[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

Turn 196-197

For Gavagai's next move, he razed Bella in the east, with a force of 23 Cavs, while on the ancient contested stone border, advancing a stack next to Black Stallion, which had 13 rifles, 4 muskets, 2 landsknecht, 1 WE, and 17 cats, plus a Cav and Cuir for good measure.




I'm playing the game theory of this skirmish pretty terribly, I think. My reasoning was I hat 11 cats that could hit him back if he did this, but I didn't have enough hitters in that available to make it worth following through.

I wonder what the general correct play is, in situation where you know you are going to lose a city, for what to leave behind? Nothing is one answer, just cut losses. 1 rifle is another answer, since it's probably going to cost at least something to take it out. Any more than that though, and it seems like I don't appreciate how cost-effective it is to take that force out with ancient siege + cavs, like Gavagai did here. It was definitely a mistake to leave muskets in there - they would have been far more valuable as raw materials to promote to rifles. (110 gold is a decent deal, to get a rifle out of a unit that is essentially junk by now).

Well, maybe I learn slowly!

But, I think Gavagai underestimated how much tactical resource I had in the west. I figured out if I went all in I could probably beat his mid stack, and yeah:




So 4 cats with Barrage II, and 2 with Barrage I was enough to weaken his force enough to make it one sided, even on a hill with cav vs rifle battles. It's always such fun to beat down final Cavs and Rifles with axes.

The margins on this battle weren't nearly as high as they look in the log! It was right on the razor's edge of having enough to kill the healthy units to get down to the soft stuff. And I heavily relied on 2 GG experience spreads: first on 7 units to get level-ups, and second to give 5XP to 4 units to get level healing to swing the odds.

So this is pretty crushing: you don't move in 17 cats expecting to lose them. Flanking kills were happening, though at this size of a fight, it's probably better to micro to avoid it to better spread experience in the last mop-up fights!

The musket GG loss hurt a bit, it was a caculated risk at 90% and it was a potential unit to get morale for later sneak boat tactics or other places where he wouldn't expect an additional move to be possible.

Screenshot with the battle mostly over:




I also razed the junk arctic city of his.

His next move:




The 23 Cavs and 7 Rifles in Absinthe, plus the forces in Toronado, I believe are the bulk of what he has left. If he had kept his Cavs centralized, he could have crushed my forces that took out his stack here and swung the whole war. (And I would probably have had to retreat and lose Black Stallion instead of this.) So, maybe my play to leave defenders in a lost cause in Bella wasn't so bad in retrospect, since it forced him to split his commitment if he wanted to raze it. I'm not sure!

Even here, he's not far from having enough Cavs to just run at Black Stallion and start wiping out the highly wounded units easily. But with one extra turn to shove units in and cash-upgrade rifles, I think if he tries it he'll just lose everything. And my units are about to receive a couple turns of Medic 3 healing in there.

So I think I've got this now! Splitting his forces and allowing me to wipe his siege stack was a major strategic mistake. But, that's what you get for being a committed attacker in this game: a major tactical information advantage and the onus is on you to make perfect plays or else you will just be crushed, even by a lesser force. And when he's playing 15 minute turns he's just simply not going to be able to calculate everything or make consistently great decisions. I think if you gave this force to Mack or TBS on the opening turn when I blundered, my whole empire would be on the downswing.

Gavagai has 13 cities now, and 3 of them are irrelevant because they're over the water and I own the coast. And 1 is Toronado, which I'll take back in a few turns after I heal up. I expect him to abandon it by then because if he doesn't he'll just lose units practically for free. Obviously I wouldn't complain.

So yeah, my strategy in this war was to make him think he had routed me and then flank him hard with mounted units after he committed with too much confident. Just like the real Mongols! Well either that or I just messed up, didn't build enough defenders, and barely had enough to defend anyway because he made mistakes and doesn't care much about this game.

Also I was kind of worried that TBS was going to suddenly land an invading force, and split the difference and take this whole continent from two war torn remnants of empires. But it looks like his war with Dtay is real! He's being hit pretty seriously from the south with a significant navy and airships.

[WilliamLP]

Well, if anyone doesn't believe Civ IV is a defender's game vs someone with basic knowledge of mechanics:




TBS is really into this game, even in the second half of the turn order, logging in immediately after the turn roll to accept peace from Dtay and declare on Gavagai. Because of his alterness he'll make out with Gavagai's arctic northeast island which is fine by me.

He also has Assembly Line in the "can research" column. So yeah, he's apparently being doing a brilliant job combining growth, conquest and research all at once.

For the long term releationship with him, well, I'm not going to win this game. I can win the continent, though, and be a pain in the ass to attack, it's what I do. I'm not afraid to dotmap an economically inferior coast just for late game defense, trust me, just look at my south side. With TBS, this is a case where I don't have to be impossible to attack, I just have to be more difficult than his other options.

Gavagai is basically completely neutralized now.

I'm also interested to note in the big picture of this game that the ancient prisoner's dilemma play with Pin has worked out great. We have a completely demilitarized sea border (i.e. cities guarded by 1 archer or 1 chok or even completely empty sometimes). And this a really positive factor for both of us. I'm hoping for a similar setup with TBS here... right now he's being a little trusting and I could shake his game just a little bit by razing a couple coastal cities of his if I really wanted to here. But if he can read my personality at all (and he's extremely brilliant at this sort of thing) he'll know he can have a purely peaceful border if he wants it.

When I turn tech back on, I think I go Constitution -> Corp before Steel here. This, because it's a faster long term road to get the econ tech earlier. I'm not sure what kind of techs I'll need to actually finish off Gavagai now. Cannons and either Machine Guns or Infantry would probably be enough. I think Org probably wants to go Assembly Line first.

[WilliamLP]

From a couple of turns ago, Gavagai did another little poke at Mouton in the far east with a small army of Cav + Cats. I was semi-prepared for it with some units in the fog, and I don't think he expected me to be.

The defensive counter-attack results:

6 Suicide Cats: Lose
Rifleman vs Cav: (70%) Lose
Rifleman vs Cav: (67%) Win
Rifleman vs Cav: (83%) Win
Rifleman vs Cav: (83%) Lose
Rifleman vs Cav: (70%) Lose
Rifleman vs Cav: (72%) Win
Pike vs Cav: (57%) Lose
Rifleman vs Cav: (88%) Win
Pike vs Cav: (57%) Lose
Pike vs Cav: (51%) Win
Cuir vs Cav: (59%) Win

I got a little lower than expected value there, but nothing to go to Vegas with. And he had nothing to do with this but just repeat so I got some free cat kills the next turn.

He realized I could have units in position to re-take Toronado so he wisely got his Cavs and Cats out of there.




So it was just 12 rifles on flat land with no culture defense. (Anyone know if it counts as "in my culture" for war weariness if I attack a city with my culture in revolt? I'd think it should, right?) Anyway, I had enough over here for a decisive result.




And... really?






Speaking of war weariness, Gavagai has to be feeling some, since almost all the fighting has been in my culture and he's been taking some pretty significant losses.




With geopolitics, things look pretty stable and peaceful on the sea border with TBS. I really don't want to encourage a huge naval buildup with him. (And I gifted him sheep a few turns ago as a signal.) But of course, he's cunning, so if he's going to attack he'd make it look like he wasn't.

Dtay just ripped Pin a new one. Pindicator has been playing the economic gambit it seems, still lacking rifling. And he just lost something like 5 cities in one turn, ouch. I was actually in position to intervene and sink 3 of Dtay's galleys, if I really wanted to. But I have nothing much to gain from that... an alliance with a player getting steamrolled isn't the best thing ever. What I'm not going to consider is being opportunistic and swiping coastal cities off of Pin right now, though it might be possible. Even though it might be the best move in the game for me right now.

So now, things might get a little boring for me again. Things are at a stalemate with Gavagai again for the next few turns. I don't think I'd try invading him for real until a few techs down the road, certainly Steel, maybe even Railroad. The plan all along has been to bleed him down and hamstring his further development and I think that has happened.

So, I think I can get away with Corp first here... I'm quite a bit behind the leaders in tech now, running wealth and upgrades for so many turns. And TBS, I believe now has Assembly Line.

[WilliamLP]

So, the news in my empire of declining relevance:




Pindicator is now in a three-way dogpile, with Harry and Dreylin (Cyneheard's successor) jumping in. He's being made into a pincushion, so to speak. I'm not sure what he expected with avoiding rifling and having such low power this late. With 10 minute turns I suspect he just wants to be done with this game.

Above is of course the wicked play by Harry to make a surprise penetration attack with two commando cavs! What I great trick, I should have that in my repertoire, but it takes a lot of planning and Military Science of course. I'd need cavs with 26 XP and that have avoided any promotions other than the Combat line. But if I'd been working on that since the age of knights, I could have had some going back to the war against MYKI, with combat selection and using XP sprinkling from GGs appropriately. The trouble is that upgraded units go back down to 10XP.

There is a really thin line between predator and prey in this game and I am right on the edge I think. Fortunately I'm much more thorny than Pindicator, and I do know that a sufficient number of Cavs and Cannons can cost effectively beat anything in the game if you get to make the first attack.

The funny part here is that I actually might be able to control some of those ancient sea resources I conceded in the BC years.

I definitely need some naval presence in this channel now. But not to overdo it, eventually I'm going to lose the seas hard when TBS and Dtay get Artillery ages before me, which isn't ridiculously far off.

We're long past the part of Civ IV where I know what I'm doing. I don't have any experience in these ages other than either turtling up and being passive against humans, or wiping out a backward CPU.

But I feel like Gavagai is enough behind now, that I should eventually be able to win the continent, without dying. So the question is what's the best way to crack a nut with a hammer here. What's for sure: I need to have Steel, and I need to make some kind of attack before he gets Steel. He lacks Education and Free Market (and Optics) so he's at quite an inherent research disadvantage now. He needs to get through Chemistry and Steel. So I'm not sure if I have time to advance another military tech first or not, especially since I'm getting Corporation and Steel next. Perhaps not, since Steam plus either Assembly Line or Railroad would be a lot of beakers. The fancier play of Physics and pings with airships is perhaps even less realistic.

I think what the strike has to look like is what Gavagai was almost able to do, but didn't tactically play correctly. I.e. just make a hammer attack, and not split forces. So go in with a force of Rifles and a bit of siege (infantry or MGs would be better). And accept that they're going to die at a great loss, but then have a large force of Cav backing it up to clean up in a counter-counterattack. (And have enough total power that _these_ can't be cleaned up in a counter-counter-counterattack. )

It's kind of delicate, as a look at Gavagai's power graph will show. The one advantage an attacker seems to have is to choose the first invasion point, and it would be to an advantage to choose the more surprising one. But all the cavs he has left can get anwhere in two turns anyway.

Aside from that, I'm still looking for cheap tactics. These would include:

1. Suddenly attacking and raising a coastal city from galleons + frigates in the fog. He only has two of these left though, and one of them I have two Frigates blasting down, so it isn't much of a surprise...
2. I have one available point where G2 rifles could hit a city 2-moving over a hill. Apparently with Engineering, G2 units can move road->hill->move, but road->road->hill stops the turn.
3. Unload -> promote morale, move. I actually have 2GG cavs that could do this which have an unused promotion. But one of them is my Medic 3 unit.
4. Culture expansion. There's a chance I pop an artist in a few turns, but it would be nice to save for a 3-man golden age as well. (For factories and infantry drafts, say.)
5. Commando moves... ah, if only.

[WilliamLP]

Not that my last post was supposed to be exhaustive, but I guess I missed Mobility Cavs as an option. I've never really used the Flanking line - losing the power bonuses seems too much at first glance, but maybe I should consider it more in some situations. For example, it could be used to softening up top defenders when the first attacks are going to lose anyway, saving more units with retreats.

I'm also asking myself if Military Science gives me any goodies which I can use here. I think Grens are an viable option as an alternative to Rifles, but a better active defender unit than an offensive one, because they lose to everything in the era if you move into culture and they have to be defenders. And Ships of the Line, well I think they would be good if you're with the tech leaders, but if not you're just going to fall behind when their oil units come online, and that's a lot to invest for something with such a short useful life. I think backward civs tend to suffer more on the sea than anywhere else.

Dtay made peace with Pindicator, so I think this actually lowers the threat level a little. Dtay has a lot of navy and airships, and I was worrying about having to deal with that right on the south coast. Old Harry doesn't have sea control this far north yet other than a couple of scouting frigates, but his team has got a lot farther south. I don't think they're going to want to move on another continent soon though, there's a lot of play left on Pindicator's, though Pindicator himself might even be the next one eliminated at this rate. Things hopefully will be pretty tense between the superpowers in the area now, with some delicate power triangles.

Plotting what my eventual attack vector should be:




Some of the signs are out of date and bogus, but Gavagai's unit counts are accurate. I see about 38 cavs, 28 rifles, 12 cats. That's not a trivial force to absorb, to be sure. He played a 2.5 minute turn, so I think his plan here is to queue up units and pass, and we won't see a lot of defensive creativity.

Possible attacks:

1. Drop a stack of Cavs + Rifles onto 1. This has to aborb 7 cats + 18 hitters, which means the stack has to be quite massive. Pan Galactic will have no defense because I can bomb it with frigates. I know Gavagai's stack is there 1N2W of Boca Juniors. But he may not know I know - you have to either sim it or be a code wizard to know that a sentry unit 1NE of Toronado can see it over 3N2E over the two hills. If that's obvious to you I don't know what to say. The hill 2N1E of Toronado is 48% vs 51% culture right now, and I might be able to swing it over and slap down his stack being first in the turn order, if he doesn't notice it's about to swing. He's pushing it with 2 cities plus a bonus 10 per turn for Pan Galactic. I'm pushing it with just one city (Toronado) but with a bonus 20 per turn. (Another not-so-obvious game mechanic: that he gets to keep his culture around his ruined island in range of Pan Galactic, when, if he had never owned it his culture wouldn't be able to get there because it's another land mass. This is actually annoying because it means his sea vision is very good and a surprise attack with Galleons is impossible.)

2. Not much different than 1, but it threatens Boca Juniors and could take 7 cats and 16 hitters.

3. This has the nice feature that in his current formation it can't be hit by cats (except a stray one that may be in transit), and forks two cities from a hill. It can be hit by 26 cavs and 3 rifles and can't retreat well if he moves to threaten it. So the tactics would have to be reasoned pretty carefully: it's the kind of move that could lead to a decisive armageddon battle that swings things one or the other, after more than 1 round of attacking and counter-attacking. I definitely don't want to lose any of those, the way Gavagai did. (There's also hitting Boca Juniors directly with G2 rifles and/or mobility cavs, but I don't think that's viable or cost effective without obviously telegraphing it.)

4. The bull in the china shop solution, just get enough cavs and barrel on in to Absinthe immediately. This might be 40-50 of them. This is where flanking II is an option to give them 60% retreat rate (wow). With his current formation, enough of them get to kill his 4 cats in there for free, and it would then be possible to cover against a cav counter-attack with rifles. Hmm...

5. Any of a number of spots to threaten Aachen. I have culture on the hashed tile and can convert it with a combat settler near the ruins of Bela, but I don't think that accomplishes much. The only positive point here is that he doesn't have siege positioned. Needing to attack into rifles on a 60% hill when he has a turn to set up units for it isn't great. And he has 28 cavs and 4 rifles to hit immediately.

Then there are sea insertion points. But to the west nothing will be a surprise, and to the east this has the problem of raising TBS's eyebrows. He's not showing an aggressive border right now though, but I don't want to create unnecessary tension.

Gavagai has 9 cities, and I only see 6, so there are three in the fog. It's just a flat out mistake that I don't have a spy in there, I'll try to fix that soon. I have a suicide archer on a Galley that will jump out onto a hill on the east coast to have a look. If he has an undefended 1-tile-off-coast city I can raze with a Morale promotion I'm going to consider it for sure.

[WilliamLP]

Playing for small things:




A GG is on a sentry cav, because I was using it to sprinkle XP and it's nice to attach it to a unit that can get a free upgrade so I put it on a sentry chariot.




And promote Morale:




169 gold plus another blow to Gavagai's tech rate by razing. He's down to 8 cities now. Sadly the GG had to be deleted. We'll see if he reacts to prevent me from razing Crystall, with 8 rifles in boats.

There's a real chance that TBS will try to get a settling party over here. (Dropping down a bunch of infantry + machine guns or something.) At this point, I guess I just have to be content with "winning" the duel over here. As happens in duels where you can't win decisively in a few turns, you fall hopelessly behind the rest of the world extremely quickly.




The leaders are getting the pops from GA's and factories, while I've been stagnant for 40+ turns here. But the relative delta with Gavagai has opened up.




A similar story is here. BGN has the kinetic energy and just went into a GA, but Harry / Fintourist just took over about 10 cities in two turns and are poised to eat up Dreylin and quickly own what used to be Pindicator's continent. Can they get the cities there to be productive and net positive value before the game is over? We'll see. I see one that is 10 turns just to come out of resistance, which right now feels like an eternity.




I still like looking at that power graph, though it's not so much creative strategy and tactics but just taking advantage of poorly thought out play. The good news here is that my power neighbors, especially TBS aren't going all in with units yet. Harry / Fintourist of course have a ton of power but also have a _lot_ to worry about as the favorite to win the game with a truly epic sized empire with competitors on all sides. I feel really good that an oversea campaign into a prickly guy with a critical mass of cavs + cannons isn't what he wants right now.

This game is the most extreme example of what Ceil said somewhere, that if you're not actively defeating weaker opponents and absorbing them, you're just falling behind.

I know that elsewhere Krill has said this game is a farce for not having torroidal wrap. And he probably has a point, if we're talking about competitive balance, since being on the poles is a massive benefit in this game. But I'm really not sure anyone should have gone into this game expecting good competitive balance either. But what's really interesting is that if you look at the leaders and the people who have been eliminated early, there are some surprises (especially BGN, no slight on him) but the general pattern is at least fairly close to what you'd expect just based on pre-game player skill rankings.

[WilliamLP]

Well, another one bites the dust for HRE. My plan to force gameplay so tedious that all my adversaries quit is working. You don't wrestle with a pig and choose the mud as your battlefield.

The bad news is that a semi-engaged Dreylin is much stronger than a completely checked out Gavagai. But I really would prefer not to lose the first half of the turn. Lurker advice?

I made this move last turn:




Eight rifles unloaded (with city defense promotions because they were all I had, left over from guard duty, and I'm a noob). He has 2 rifles and an archer in Crystall. I can't hold cities yet, but I just want to raze the city, and taking a loss is fine. I just want to keep cutting his tech rate and supply centers little by little, a drawn out zero-sum duel.

I can't just make this move right now, can I? Since Gavagai just passed the turn without logging in? It doesn't feel sporting.

But... I really don't want to lose the first half of the turn. The reason is that there's a hill that will change culture in a couple of turns and I'm hoping he won't notice it's about to change, and then when it does on the first half of the turn I'm first to move and can destroy one of his stacks.

Someone really engaged to the game would notice, someone playing 2 minute turns may not.

The bad news is that HRE still has 45 Cavs that I see, though none of them can attack the rifles shown. But that's a lot of damage that can be done and my guess is that an invasion force has to be twice as big as the number of defenders that can attack in 2 or so turns for the attack to be a good idea (that doesn't get immediate returns). And it will be quite a while before I have that. MGs and Infantry help, but neither one is that much better against mass cavs than Rifles already are. I think mass cavs plus siege that can attack first still beat anything at equal cost.

[Ceiliazul]

I think at this point, for two non-leader civs locked in a death struggle that has really been decoded already... one missed tirn is no big deal. Pass on hitting his stack if you want to, thats sporting of you... but gavagai appears from your reports to be already broken.

Are you at war with dreylin too? I guess I missed something.

[WilliamLP]

Ah, Dreylin is volunteering to be the new Gawdzak, I think, playing two civs at once since it's looking like Cyneheard's ex empire only has a few turns to live. I don't think there's any risk of conflict of interest because Egypt to the southwest is completely harmless to me without a significant navy, which he doesn't have.

And let's be real, the drama in deciding the winner of this game has nothing left in this part of the world, unless I decide to devote it to kingmaking, which I have no interest in at all.

Edit: also, thanks for the input.

[WilliamLP]

So Dreylin has taken over, and what has changed?




This is the city I could have cheap-shotted and razed at the cost of 3-4 rifles last turn. 8 rifles, badly promoted, vs 4 with 44% culture, what are the chances? I scratched my head over this for a long time, but didn't go for it. I didn't sim it to get the true odds. (Man, once I even knew how to open the python console and set a city manually to 44% culture, I'd have to relearn that. ) I know the odds aren't near 100% though... the chances of 0 damage combats in this game are never that low when you are attacking with lower power. I just loaded up back into the galleons. I did accomplish making him upgrade an archer, which isn't a great use of gold.

Dreylin put a turn of full research into Astro rather than steel. He does have Chemistry now but I still like this: with 2 ports there's absolutely no way he could produce any navy that can scratch me. And steel is what really puts a barrier up: what you need to invade into a possible cannon bombard is much more than the same for cats, obviously.

I scratched my head over the whole situation for about an hour. HRE has 47 cavs which is more than me (42 last turn). I have more supporting stuff, e.g. Rifles and Cats which could now be cannons. And I have a navy and he doesn't. I would love to see what one of the war masters here (Mack, Plako, Krill, etc) would say about whether it's possible to crack this particular nut and how.

Next turn:




The hill 2N1E of Toronado will flip next turn. This is something a really inattentive player running 2 minute turns or a noob could miss, but I don't think Dreylin is either. Still, I give him a chance to make a mistake. I put 29 cavs into Toronado and have 15 rifles in galleons ready to hit Pan Galactic. The noob mistake would be letting me just crush his stack 1N2W of Boca Juniors. Hmm 15 rifles just moved away from Toronado and it's completely filled with Cavalry. This isn't suspicious at all, right?

If I get a chance to attack 15 rifles from water into 5, I'm going to do it. I'm not sure if I could take a shot at keeping the city if that happened. Much more likely, if he donates a stack for free. Boca Juniors has 4th ring, so not many tiles would change hands, though the sea would open right up.

Note also, my spy found Dragon's Fury, his capital, for the first time. I do have another GG unit with a promotion available for morale, to try another sneak raze if he has only one weak unit in there, but this is my M3 unit so it's rather valuable.

Steam Power is next, and then it's a choice between Assembly Line vs Railroad. Probably Assembly Line wins because Infantry are slightly better defenders vs Cavs than MGs are and more importantly, I can mass upgrade a bunch of them. Drafting is an option too but I might rather save the pop for that when I get the 3-man GA, which should be 18-20 turns or so. I could speed that up either taking a full turn to revolt to Caste, or else running more GP in my NE city and risking a duplicate Engineer or Scientist.

I haven't really been studying the rival techs in this game but... man, does HaK have a wacky build going on. He made it to Steam Power, skipping Aesthetics and HBR. What? You really want to play without HE and NE, two of the most dramatic and cost effective boosts to your empire that exist in this whole game?