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

[Fintourist]

Trading news:

It seems Ichabod does not like us. He canceled our silver to ivory deal and is now trading the same stuff with WilliamLP. This did not cause unhappiness anywhere, because our incense to sugar deal went through with plako.

I suggest that we cancel open borders with ichabod next turn. We are currently gifting him probably 15 commerce per turn assuming he does not have many OB deals with civs that we haven't met. I see no reason to support him if he is behaving unfriendly.. I think our other OB deals are enough for filling our own trade routes, but I can still calculate before we do this.

I was blocking someone so I did not manage to see what Ichabod's movements were this turn or whether we could trade ivory from someone else. IIRC dtay has an extra source so we could offer sugar-to-ivory deal for him and connect our 3rd source of sugar near Cannae.

[Old Harry]

Could Ichabod's behaviour be the prelude to an attack? He's building a road rather than chopping that jungle which would allow 2-movers to hit Nuremburg out of the fog. How about a spear next in Issy and an axe in France before the forge? If we close borders with Ichabod what happens to our trade routes with Bacchus and WilliamLP? Do they go around the north of Slowcheetah instead?


It's tempting to change the setup of Nuremburg to pop borders at the end of this turn, but that would be a double move, so we can do it next turn instead if we're still feeling paranoid. Another bowman at least is needed in the city and perhaps LP should ignore the barb axe and come back to Nuremberg - Rowain will get 97% odds on defense against the axe...

m_h whipped Nibru this turn so we think we'll see another archer next turn. Our attack force could probably have been placed with the backup force SW of Koniggratz since the borders of that city are going to pop this turn, but we're not totally certain that the staging tile will be ours next turn so we've spent about 3 gold extra in supply costs. That's nothing to the 80 gold to upgrade the warrior in Cannae though.


Other thoughts:
- How about offering TBSJ a silver-ivory trade?
- Bacchus declared on plako. I hope it's nothing trivial.

[TheHumanHydra]

What are the units on the tile 1SW of Koniggratz?

Re: Ichabod - FML.

[Fintourist]

Turn 123 - Snacks

The most important things first. As expected that m_h galley seems empty (no attacks) and he has now 2 archers and 1 warrior in Nibru:



The tile NE of Nibru did not change hands despite the fact that it says "83 % Lost". Well our stack should be enough to take the city anyways. It will be annoying to lose those fishing nets at Cannae so let's try to buy the peace from m_h after we have taken Nibru. 20 gold?

We also got a bunch of trading offers. First from WilliamLP:



Declined. Because our gold-to-gold deal with dtay he can't see that we actually have gold..

We also met Pindicooter:



Declined. They are fellow contenders. Let's see if they are willing to pay 5-8 gpt for OBs?



I accepted this.



And I also took the freedom to accept this! I'm on board with using our 3rd source of ivory for offering silver-to-ivory deal to TBSJ.

Ichabod situation:

I'm not too worried about that road. If he were really going to attack us in the near future, why would he want to warn us beforehand by cancelling our deals? Maybe he is afraid of us building elephants? Well anyway, putting the 2nd bow immediately into Nuremberg and soon adding a spear there is a healthy idea.

Btw, the barb axe turned away! This means that our worker can start farming the rice and LP could for example stay on the silk tile where it can reach both City N & O. Or it could come to support Nuremberg.

About OBs. I'm pretty sure that cancelling the deal with Ichabod does not harm our routes with WilliamLP & Bacchus. Having a war with him would block the road, but I'm pretty sure that we there would be an alternative road anyways through east or through slow's coast.

@Hydra:

I was again blocking someone so I logged off before I managed to check our exact stack composition. There are 5 axes, 2 spears & 2 bows NE of Nibru IIRC and something like 4 axes, 4 bows and a spear SW of Königgratz.

[Old Harry]

Turn 123

The world is a particularly unpleasent looking spaghetti.


We do a bit of diplo


and


We didn't get that tile, but we'll be taking the city after Mackoti plays. The backup stack is selected THH.


We'll probably allow m_h's scout to live as a gesture of good will...


Power


Demos

We'll finish off the turn after YM play.

[Old Harry]

Turn 123 main course

Yurimack settled a new city this turn, but no movement from him on mostly_harmless, so I think we're going to be good to take Nibru this turn. Our first Cover axe will get about 20% odds, the second will get about 30%. Assuming we get a couple of hits each time the odds flip to 80%, if we only get one hit it'll be 50%... In my 6 sims the best case was we lost one axe, the worst case we lost three and have a spear take the city.

C1 cover shock axe vs CG1 archer 22% WIN - 10XP HEROIC EPIC!
C1 cover shock axe Viqsi vs CG1 archer 28% LOST - but got two hits in. our first casualty of the game...
C2 shock Brickastley II vs injured CG1 archer 92% WIN - took one hit
C1 shock axe vs warrior >99% WIN - but no buildings survived.

So now we can offer peace to both players. Fingers crossed. We wanted to give m_h silver to help with his whipping, but it didn't allow it so we offered our map and 25 gold instead.

The rest of the turn was boring...

[Old Harry]

Here is the aftermath of the battle. It's a shame that Valourous Viqsi died, she's the first casualty of our game. Most impressive of an excellent set of results was the unknown axe who won at 22% to unlock the heroic epic for us. We need a true warrior name for this one, something to strike fear into the hearts of our opponents, who better than Molach?


Mackoti took our peace deal, which I'm relieved about and Fintourist expected. Meanwhile Ichabod declared on dtay - probably just to get the work boat though his culture, but we can hope that there is something going on can't we?


I managed to convince Fintourist that we shouldn't close borders with Ichabod for taking our ivory away. We'll give him one more chance and then we'll close borders with him.


Here is a run-through of all our cities for future reference, spoilered for dullness. It might be best for you not to look at their garrisons too closely THH...

[TheHumanHydra]

AHHHHHH that was worse than any horror film.

Also first casualty - I hadn't realized that. Impressive - not even to barbs?

[Fintourist]

Turn 124 - first impressions!

I was greeted with this:



I took the freedom and countered this (now they also had some gpt):



M_h did not accept peace but did not pillage our fishing nets either Maybe he wants a better offer? But he did not counter anything by himself..

AHHHHHH that was worse than any horror film.

No worries Hydra, Harry is teasing you. Our defensive forces are pretty much zone defense forces and we are still in top 3 in military..

Also first casualty - I hadn't realized that. Impressive - not even to barbs?

Yeah, Bowmen and AGG help, but RNG has been kind to us so far.


I performed the obvious worker micro and did some tile assignments, but there is still much to do. We need to decide how to react at culture war against suttree.. I also left our research at 50 % HBR so that no one gets scared of our highly wealth boosted +130 gpt.. (meaning that we need to select new builds in many cities, forge builds are about to start..)

[Old Harry]

Turn 124

I'm confronted by this when I log in.


At first sight it's a no-brainer to say no, but I mentioned the money to Fintourist and his eyes lit up. We're going to accept, even though TBSJ likely have forges everywhere and have ten cities, so we're giving 3 happy for one + 5gpt, but we hope this disposes TBSJ to be our friend and focus on dtay. The only question is what this will do to the offer we made to Ichabod last night - Ivory for Dye - will that just disappear or will it become an ivory demand? If the latter can someone let him know that wasn't our intention? Need an avatar FT?


Dhalphir accepted open borders. His land seems a bit lacking in roads right now, and stacking three non-fast workers to chop jungle wastes two worker turns, so I think he's still got a bit to learn about tight micro.


Just had a quick poke around with the sentry chariot to see what we can see here, we should probably run it up to check on Suttree instead.




Madrid popped it's borders a couple of turns ago. Last turn our culture on the peak was 73%, this turn its 65%. I think Suttree has 4 culture per turn from library, monument and religion, but that doesn't fit perfectly with the 73% figure - I think it should have been 77%. Anyway if I'm right we lose the peak around t127. Hastings can run artists this turn though. 2 will keep the peak until t130, 3 is t131, 4 is t132. We can get religion in there with our next missionary for a bit more time but then we need a library or a monastery if we're going to keep it long-term. We get temples half-price too...


We suspect that m_h has checked out - he didn't accept peace or move the galley or scout and took about five minutes over the turn. We'll offer a slightly improved deal for peace.


Finally where should we put our army?


Power - we finally got graphs on Ichabod this turn. They are a little worrying. But hopefully pointed at Slowcheetah.


I think plako could be our next target, while keeping ahead of Suttree - what do you think?


Demos

We still need to move our armies and boats and decide how many artists to run in Hastings.