[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

Domestic stuff + one more interesting idea + "feedback to your decision":

He also offers Spices for dye - we already have spices so we could re-offer for cash (although he's not making money right now).

Sure, feel free to do it when he has money! Even a little is good for us.

We have graphs on all our neighbours now (TBSJ, Suttree, Ichabod, plako, dtay, Yurimack, Slowcheetah) but rather than try to get them for anyone else we're ploughing EPs into Suttree to try and catch up - our ratio is currently 106/236.

This is solid, but we could consider getting the graphs of our future neighbors, Vikings, too. Btw, we could trade maps with them as well. I want to see how big cities Nakor gave them..

we have gained our own source of gems!

Ha! Well, there is one thing that really goes our way in this game! We have much more happy than we need currently. We can really endure lots of WW, whip or drafting unhappiness. Aaand now we might almost be forced to build Library also in Jamestown.

We should close borders with plako and offer them back for more cash...

Not sure about this, I'll check in-game if plako needs us for his routes, but I guess he might not be willing to pay us anymore. And those OBs are also couple of commerce worth to us. And based on graphs he is not doing better than us so the need to form a trade embargo against him is not that high. Of course he has Dhalphir as an expansion direction and therefore his chances in this game are way better than ours. (Dhalphir's civ skills haven't convinced me yet, but he can't do worse than m_h and Nakor, right?)

Also Hastings will take the peak back in two turns time.

I forgot to comment earlier, but Hastings border pop also brought bananas inside our borders so I vote for the site B. There is no need to have bananas in the first ring of that filler city. B site can still work Dunkirk's bananas for fast growth and then work a bunch of workshops and be useful.

- Jamestown, both workers complete workshop, then both road rice, then both workshop or farm SW of the city before moving on to set up the new banana city.

I like this

- Light Brigade, A could farm or cottage the tile 2S of the city, H could mine the hill for Endor or head south to clear out some jungle for Banana city? What do we do with C in a couple of turns?

A: I cottaged
H: It could also help with farm chain to Agincourt's corn? Or have you already planned to get it finished t146 with some other workers?
C: Couple more cottages for LB ain't bad, let' see in couple of turns

Nuremburg, E could build a farm or help improve the silk or chop?

I went with plantation, that's still an ok (or almost ok) tile even if it's only 1 food. After that workers could start a new farm for N?

- Issy, T could keep working on the workshop or could come south to help out somewhere else?

I went with workshop, in effect it frees up one cottage for France, so we could actually work a pretty hammer-heavy configuration once we switch to caste. Other options would have been ok too..

We have a galley at cannae that I think we want to move to cover the fish, just in case Mack has any ideas about naval invasion next turn.

Done. Actually I moved the longbow from N a bit south so it can also reach Omdu if needed, but that was pretty much in vain..



And here is the more interesting idea:



As you know our enforced peace is running out at the end of the turn. I checked with our sentry chariot and there are still only 2 HAs and 1 Archer in Eridu.. So next turn we could:

1. Declare Mackoti
2. Move our sentry chariot onto that pigs hill

If mack has enough units in the neighborhood:
3. We offer peace for a nominal amout of gold or just white peace

If mack does not have enough units:
3. We combat-road the tile SW of Peterloo and try to raze or capture Eridu with 10+ units.

I think this is not a worse than any of our other crazy plans so we could consider it.. The biggest minus is that it might make it more difficult to have a peaceful GA that we have planned so even if we could capture Eridu it's not completely clear we should do it..

Given our crappy future expansion options, how is this for an outline plan:

We start the military build-up as if we're attacking Mack:
1. If he starts to respond in kind we abandon the process and go economic
2. If not we get a couple of spies down to his capital to see if the knight-attack plan is at all feasible and go full-steam ahead

I think this makes sense since the troop composition that is most suitable for attacking mack is also more or less the same that could work against dtay (suttree is a bit different but in the long run also weaker). So this is kind of an approach that gives us the most chances to use the opportunity if somebody is as asleep as m_h or Nakor.. Of course in the end the military push must be brutal and logistics planning exact if we want to succeed.

One more comment, in your mack-attack plan you talked about picking up Engineering. I obviously understand the benefits of the tech (especially the tactical importance of 3-move roads), but remember that as long as you are keeping up the economic back-door open staying on Economics-beeline track is attractive. Free GM would be awesome and along with Free Market that's something that we more than need after m_h and Nakor decided to break the game.

I'm not quite as down on our chances in this game as Fintourist is, since I never really thought we'd win (especially since Mack took over from Yuris). But I don't believe we're totally out of it - our traits will only get stronger as the game goes on and I'm really happy with how well we've competed so far. It's lucky I'm not the one going away for a month isn't it?

I'm happy that you have more character than me and you're not such a -baby. Despite my rants it really makes me sad that I won't be seeing our GA(s) and be around during such a deciding phase of the game. After all, there is still a lot of play left in this Pitboss before the winner is clear. Aaand we are not completely out of the race yet and at the very least we have a chance to still make this game and our showing memorable.