[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[Lewwyn]

I thought that was supposed to be my line

:neenernee


Man, We STILL haven't seen the save. Ellimist has it now but he got it as he was going to bed which means another 24 hours...

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 163.

This picture pretty much sums it up:



Ellimist's new caravel had 76.2% chance to win and he lost. I decided to delete both caravels since they were at less than 20% health and at least one would be killed by another fresh caravel. In retrospect it might have been better to keep them for one more turn and take a death, in order to defog the last city on their home island...but that city isn't crucial like Canopus is, so it's not a big deal really. And he might have had another caravel waiting.

Kuro threw his only catapult into the stack without attacking out, which if he doesn't attack out next turn will be totally useless. Either way though attacking next turn will be much worse than attacking this turn, since we have two crossbows in the stack now. He does have another two catapults that I see now, so maybe he's waiting for the collateral from that to attack. You can see the units we have in our stack - 11 knights, 2 maces, 2 crossbows, 1 longbow, 3 catapults, 7 landsknecht and 1 trebuchet. We have two maces and one additional trebuchet to the northeast of the big stack, as you see there. Next turn we will bombard again, and then most likely the turn after that we'll be good to go in. The units you see will be the ones available for the first turn of attacking, with the addition of one knight that will be able to reach. Kuro has 4 pikemen, 12 macemen, 2 crossbowmen, 1 longbowman, 16 spearmen and 2 catapults in the city right now. That makes 26 nonsiege units attacking versus 35 defending. And yes, he's got that GG there as well.

We got a free Judaism spread in our new city which is that filler spot north of Nitrogen.

We finished five galleons this turn - three in the northeast which will head to Ellimist, one at Argon which will go harass Kuro, and one in the center which will be for the backlines attack. We might want to negotiate for Aradia instead of razing Rose, assuming we're in a position to do so. In two turns we'll land, which will likely coincide with our first wave of attacks at Aradia. So we'll see what happens there. WW will probably go up.



We're probably going to build the Globe in Argon and keep its farms (which I was originally going to remove, at least most of them) and use it as a whip center. I think we'll build the last required theatre in Fluorine next, it could use the happiness anyway. I don't really know why I built a temple there instead of the theatre first - I was expecting to build a cathedral in the capital before the Globe I guess.

Argon is currently building a settler for another border city you see there, since it'd be a pity to let that land go to waste. Plus maybe we'll steal some more tiles. This was originally going to be the last theatre, but seeing as Fluorine needs one anyway this one can wait. We still need to do the settler to avoid growing into unhappiness for now though.



We are still culture warring on the Ellimist border. That reminds me actually, Fluorine should also do two Confucian missionaries so we can build two more monasteries here. Maybe we'll build two universities also. The fourth ring border pop is actually not that far away - we can probably get it in about 25 turns with those two additional buildings. We could also build culture after teching Music...hmmm. I opted not to take a 50% shot at the Ellimist caravel this turn (he swapped into Pacifism and no longer gets a promotion) since if we lose he gets to sit on our fish for a few turns until a galleon arrives. Scaring him off would be fine, if he does sit on our fish then we get odds and will attack next turn.



Ellimist teched something that wasn't Constitution. I would guess Paper, possibly en route to Economics, or just Education. Next turn we turn tech on, most likely to get Alphabet but we could switch to Banking if we're feeling insecure.

[NobleHelium]

ZOMG, a chat log!

me: i predicted that you wouldn't concede
Ellimist: oh?
me: yeah that's what i posted like five days ago
Ellimist: I don't see it as conceding, really, just admission of the way things are
I mean
I'm doing everything I can to continue challenging you
I expect to be in golden age for the next 36 turns
me: well what do you mean then
Ellimist: well
I can't see a scenario playing out where you don't win
even if your vassal turned against you, it would work to your benefit
me: well you're saying you're not conceding but you're saying we win no matter what lol
Ellimist: well
I guess
I mean
I wouldn't mind playing out another hundred turns or whatever
if it didn't take so darn long to get the turns
but it'll be 2014 or so by the time we finish
me: maybe
Ellimist: anyway, if you want to play it all the way out
I won't take that from you
me: i'm saying that
if you're actually conceding
i don't think we'd object to that
Ellimist: sure, you acn call it whatever you want
you come in first, we come in second
the others can argue about their places but I think that part is undisputed
me: you seem to be awfully ambivalent about conceding if you're actually willing to, lol
Ellimist: when I sent my workers across your border
and saw your knights
me: oh interesting
Ellimist: before you declared
I knew I was going to lose some cities
me: i was wondering if you had done that

And another!

me: ellimist talked to me last night
he was like
"ok i admit taht you are first place"
so i was like
"so you concede then"
and he was like
"sure call it what you want"
is it just me or is he trying to concede without actually conceding
Gaspar: Yes
That's exactly what that sounds like

[NobleHelium]

NIC I SEE YOU READING OUR THREAD!!!111

[Lewwyn]

So do we win?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

So do we win?

You can do anything if you believe in yourself~!

[Lewwyn]

While the state of the game is up in the air, we are still playing turns. Here are the last 3 which have been surprisingly hot war!

[SIZE="5"]Turn 164:[/SIZE]

Signs of life from Ellimist! He has finally moved that huge stack of his. Where you ask? Into his new city of course!





Good job by him. That's something we can't do much about at the moment. Worse, when the borders pop his culture will over take the tiles since he has all that previous culture from Arcturus before it was Calcium. We're going to lose Calcium. DRY WHIP IT TO THE GROUND!

I didn't take any other shots since this was the most important thing.


[SIZE="5"]Turn 165:[/SIZE]

Ellimist popped his border right away!



Time to run away. And dry whip again. HIDE! Hope Ellimist takes the bait.

Kuro battle:



This is pretty much us stalling at this point. Noble landed a knight to see about our attack on Rose behind Kuro's front lines and discovered about 8 units in Rose including a cat chariot, pikes and 6ish? spears? Unbelievable. So we're approaching Kuro about peace for his city so we can give it to Jkaen and fulfill our war obligations. Otherwise we're just going to have to tech up for new era units to take him down. Stalemate!

Demos:



The Forbidden Palace finished this turn and is boosting our GNP. Everything is pretty pwnage. Crop is wild.


[SIZE="5"]Turn 166:[/SIZE]

Ellimist takes the bait hard:



A time to kill!

Logs:




My RNG FINALLY came through. A lot of those early Pike wins are 60-70% wins. It's weird. He put a lot of units in the city but he didn't put those 6 knights or about 6 pikes or 2 LBS into the city. Possibly he had them in support because he thought I might attack north while he was south.

In any case, we lost 8 cats and 4 knights. He lost 12 Pikes, 4 LB, 1 Xbow, 5 Cats. The only units left are under 2 power as you can see here:



Demos:



GNP has again improved with PP.

We'll see if this game ends or not. But I am glad we got to have this skirmish. I'm curious to see if Ellimist will attempt to counterattack. I have 3 full heallth C2 knights in the stack so any of his C1 knights or C2 knights will be fighting even odds. I suspect the missing cats and pikes are in the north and he will not get a shot to retaliate on our wounded stack.

[Lewwyn]

So here's T167. After which Noble will update the next 2 is it? Hint: by the end we only have 1 war.

So after we massacred a good portion of his army:



He refilled the city, I retreated to heal and build more cats. We will come back in a few turns and kill more units. Noble will update with the cat count.



Here you can see we've begun moving our stack further into Kuro's territory. There are 9 knights on ships north of Maryam. We'll just move our stack that way, land and crush that instead. In any case we'll make Kuro crazy. We plan to offer Kuro peace for his city after this. *wink, wink*

Kuro wanted us to attack him to see how he'd do, but honestly why would we do that when we can force him to cede the city for peace and end the war without losing units or adding WW?

Demos:



Saving gold FTW.

All yours noble.

[NobleHelium]

Well for turn 168, Ellimist peeked out with two caravels and I killed them with galleons at about 70% odds.



I also forgot to promote the covering galleon. Not much going on otherwise. I pointed out that Kuro was doing absolutely nothing every turn except upgrading a spearman to a pikeman, and that if the war continued he'd basically not be teching for 20 turns or more. We scouted Rose, Maryam (as you saw) as well as Leijon in the south, and he basically has eight units in every city for HR happiness probably because he did lots of 1-pop whips for spears, or 2-pops for pikemen. He actually has more power than Ellimist right now. Anyway Kuro agreed to peace at this point (he gives up Aradia and the old Karkat location and we gift him any and all extra luxuries that he's missing, plus we sign a ~30t NAP). So we stayed put with our stack in the south, and the ships moved east in preparation for finally taking that barbarian city.



We researched Banking this turn to dissuade Ellimist from going for Economics, plus Helium gets to start on a bank sooner.



Turn 169 was another setup turn. We've been building catapults in all nearby cities, and have a total of eight now. We'll stage all of the one-movers and some of the knights 1S of Nitrogen next turn. The new filler city (Cobalt) is really good for getting an extra whip counter and production queue for cheap units.



We'll have 22 knights, 4 maces, 4 longbows, 2 pikes and 8 cats available. Ellimist has 8 knights, 7 pikes, 4 cats in Arcturus. Betelgeuse has 3 longbows, 1 knight, 2 pikes and 1 cat. I'm not sure why he's defending Arcturus when it can be catted from within our territory. We'll still have the crucial tile for at least another eight turns or so. Arcturus does threaten the center island a bit, but he can only build galleys and we have a galleon in the area. He'd have to build several galleys and drop the troops off immediately on the island. I hope to take Betelgeuse with knights as well after retaking Arcturus.



We refounded Fomalhaut as Nickel. Ellimist swapped civics, including to Mercantilism. I'm a bit surprised he gave up Pacifism but he must have wanted OR with Slavery for infrastructure. I wonder how much Pacifism was costing him in upkeep actually - we have a lot more power than he does but his pikemen are less power per unit. Plus we have a lot more population to inflate the power as well as give free units.

We signed peace with Kuro as you can see. We're probably going to end the game soon but it seemed silly to end it right after a peace deal. I wanted the city to pass through our hands to make sure everything went off correctly, we'll be gifting it to Jkaen immediately. And the settler there is going to refound Karkat and gift it to Jkaen as well. I talked to him and told him that he needs to divert some units to defend the location, and he took my recommendation that the city should be replanted 1E of its original location.



Ellimist is clearly going for Rifling. Also he founded Rigel a couple turns ago in the jungle between him and Kuro. That's finally almost filled up now.