[spoilers] Boudica stars as Lady Mongolia feat. wetbandit

[wetbandit]

Sleeping baby brief update:

See here:




Attacked and took ZuulZipper with loss of 4 cuirs.  Decided to raze it because crying baby

On closer inspection, stack of cuirs would have been able to hit the cat stack.



My thoughts at the time and remain that WLP has an HA stack somewhere.  I don't know where, but they have to be somewhere.  JR4 has a TON of CKNs on his border for WLP to have no credible defensive response.  Since WLP just got engineering, the HA stack could be just out of view. 

I'm going to really hate myself if there is no HA stack.

[wetbandit]

Kid duty is more taxing than anticipated.  That said, ipecac declaring and seriously attacking DS I think makes JR4/RefSteel the winner.  They just got rifling and are heading towards chemistry.  Once they get that, they can boat everyone with impunity.  I think I'm ready to concede to them.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Update required.

[wetbandit]

Update required.

How do people do it with two kids?  One is kicking my butt.

Weird game.  Superdeath attacks ipecac.  Am I missing something? JR4 is way out ahead and is not in any serious war.



I had moved my Eastern ipecac stack west 3 turns ago to take over WLP and to accomplish what Mongolian/Beatles strategists deem the Great Pivot West.  JR4 just finished chemistry and has galleons everywhere.  I'm convinced he's going to boat me or someone, probably ipecac.  So if he also attacks ipecac, I'm attacking him.

I don't think this is strictly "Attack the Leader," but he's the tech leader as far as I can tell and he is an actual threat against me.  I have somewhat limited exposure versus ipecac (except for boats), because he moved a ton into DS.  Which is now being vacated back towards superdeath.

I think the game situation and the resource situation definitely favors JR4.  Three of the relevant players are fighting each other, JR4 can (and should) turtle and tech to something silly like arty, which is what I think he's doing.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Thanks. Are you war/peace-ing ipecac a lot with cease fires? What are your plans after mercy killing WLP (if that is what you end up doing)? Path to victory? Path to eternal glory for lurkerdom?

I'm right there with you on the kids interfering with civving. I had to retire my civ in PB38 for a newborn and my only opportunity to play spot duty/sub is when I'm in the office at work.   The little ones are a handful, and priorities, etc.

Good luck with the wars and I wish you horrible luck with the peace. 

[wetbandit]

Thanks. Are you war/peace-ing ipecac a lot with cease fires? What are your plans after mercy killing WLP (if that is what you end up doing)? Path to victory? Path to eternal glory for lurkerdom?

I'm right there with you on the kids interfering with civving. I had to retire my civ in PB38 for a newborn and my only opportunity to play spot duty/sub is when I'm in the office at work.   The little ones are a handful, and priorities, etc.

Good luck with the wars and I wish you horrible luck with the peace. 

I feel bad for both yuri and WLP.  Yuri's last two cities were overextending my border with unfriendly-at-the-time ipecac who decided not to administer the coup de grace.  Neither did superdeath for that matter.  WLP had more agency in prolonging his demise by mercilessly whipping/drafting when he had the opportunity and concentrating all of his forces in his capital and now shrine city.  To wit:



It's going to be a mess and decidedly unfriendly.  I've only now accumulated this many cuirs here as the eastern force just made it here.  I almost wish I had 10 more cats instead of the cuirs.  I'm not even sure I win this.

Speaking of decidedly unfriendly, there's this:



JR4 also messaged me after his reload request to inform me of our turn split (which I have been observing ever since he declared war).  Thanks for that.  So he's obviously up to something if the rush for astro/chem didn't confirm it before.  Fortunately my own chemistry finished this turn.  It feels really awful (or do the kids say feelsbadman?) to delay rifling and sweet, sweet cavalry, but JR4 could boat a number of my cities with impunity which would effectively end my game.

So the plan assuming my ~60 cuirs can crack the city is to regroup while building an emergency frigate presence.  And if the cuirs survive, well they are in the west so the obvious targets are JR4 and superdeath.  I think boating some of JR4's cities, if possible, is a way to bring him back to the pack. 

Failing that cav everywhere which will die to someone's machine guns.  Glorious enough?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

[wetbandit]

At long last...



Success...



I probably threw away too many cats at the end, but the total cost was about 20 cats and 1 cuir.  Definitely worth it to me as all these cuirs are about to become cavs.  Oh yeah that shrine is pretty sweet too.

Next up, how to catch up to JR4.  I think my navy is already ahead of his thanks to PS hammers; but I doubt I could even win a land war.  CKNs are still scary, let alone the cannons he's about to get. 

I've also built wealth for ages and ages and have relatively little infra probably compared to other players who may have builder tendencies.  

Nothing that 120 cav can't solve, right?

To WLP:

GG WP.  I'm sorry that the mop up took so long and thanks for playing it out in style.

[wetbandit]

This game seems a bit more interesting than my dour thoughts previously.  But first, the long awaited 3-man GA for my 4th GA of the game.

PreDemos:



Post Demos (and revolt to US-Bureau-CS-FS-OR):



So that's nice.  If you ignore the nearly double MFG that RefSteel/JR4 have.  In perusing their land, it looks like they are fully committed to workshops and TeamStateProperty, so I imagine much of that 1355 MFG is wealth/research.  Or they can keep building troops since they also remain top power.  RefSteel/JR4 are in a GA and going through Nationalism, which pretty much everyone has.  Good segue: Let's talk about techs.



Why the hate on Education?  I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing that when JR4 finally gets unis/oxford, but if they have so many workshops, it might not matter outside of their cap.  I still think they are way ahead with land, CY, MFG, and raw power so strongly in their favor.  And they can now build some slow ironclads which would wreck my wooden navy and imbalance the naval arms race we've been having.

I guess I overestimated ipecac and underestimated DS, and possibly superdeath.  Superdeath has spent an absurd amount of EP on me and I am only now on track to get demos on him in 5 turns.  So I've been relatively in the dark on what he's doing, but he's also an anti-education person apparently.  Weird.

DS is apparently doing very well.  He was on the ropes it seemed versus ipecac until he got rifles during the war and superdeath jumped in.  DS also has a fairly decent astro navy it appears, I've spotted a few 6-mover frigates.  He's also boating some backline ipecac cities.  Which means I need to put some real defenses up everywhere instead of relying on my international status as the RefSteel/JR4 deterrent.

I guess ipecac made a run for the Statute of Liberty, and I guess he could have finished Democracy.  SoL is ridiculously good in this game.  Decision is between Steel and Constitution. Constitution after Steam Power to see if Democracy remains open.  Denying it may be key.  In any event, Constitution is needed for Corporation and the free TR has massive benefit with 30+ cities.  Plus I think heading straight to Assembly Line and skipping, gasp, the bottom half of the tech tree for a bit may be better to industrialize and get infantry.  But steel is steel.  Cannons are cannons.  Drydocks have some significant utility in this game.  So I'll probably be lame and draft JR4 for steel next.

There's a serious push around to build some infra as this game appears to be on the long track.  I had not built a whole lot of cash infra (markets/banks/grocers) in favor of wealth because of my belief the game wouldn't last long enough for the pay off.  Now it will and I'm behind.  Hopefully can get enough banks in key cities to offset this.

Ipecac is going down.  He has his army, but he's losing tertiary cities at a quick rate.  I am preparing to take our shared island and the island north of Mean Mr Mongke.  I don't know what JR4 is doing, but I would imagine either his border with ipecac or with DS would be ripe for probing (and my long-ass border with him too). 

I have no idea how I'm going to win.  I do have sistene and access to 5 religions.  I don't think making an all out culture play will pay off, but I am starting to get some of the alternate religions spread around.  I certainly don't think I could match JR4's hammers with a space race if it came down to it. 

Here's a picture of my capital.  It's great.  It makes me happy.  Those FP towns are 3-2-10 in a GS.  Don't think there's a better tile until levies make it 3-3-10.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Did you build monasteries with the off-brand religions? I think I see that you can still build temples and then cathedrals once they're unlocked. I don't remember what kills the monastery tech bonus (Scientific Method maybe?) or whether they would pay off if the tech expires soon but +10% each with that kind of commerce is a nice gain every turn.

Thanks for the detailed report.