[SPOILERS] Cornflakes and Q Eat 'Em for Breakfast!

[Cornflakes]

Sim indicates that a knight dash will cost us about 1:1 in losses with knights vs CG3 LB's. Oddly enough the C3 promotion didn't make much difference in the results compared to the C2 In either case I averaged 1:1 losses.

This means that with 20 knights we can safely hope to wipe out the city ... 10 to die against his 10 defenders, 10 to clean up.

With a slow-move stack we can soften the defenses with catapults and then move in with maces. With 3 catapults we lose about 10 maces, with 5 catapults we lose about 6 maces. Another option is to attack with knights first after softening with the catapults, but the losses are roughly the same and knights are more useful going forward so might as well burn through them.

[Qgqqqqq]

He's gonna keep reinforcing though, and we don't have that many knights.
Did you account for him catting the slow movers?

[Qgqqqqq]

Actually, HA could probably clean up.

[Cornflakes]

The world is now completely at peace. Jowy has 6 cities remaining.

I didn't really spend an hour in game, ALT+tabbed out and forgot to close ... just poked around, grabbed a few shots, moved the triremes which triggered the workers to do whatever you had them queued up to do. Otherwise I haven't changed anything yet. Here are a couple shots ...




Here's the 2metra due north. I don't think we should reinforce Google as long as 2metra doesn't have units out west. I also don't think it's worth capturing that city now. The last thing we want to do is signal that relations are decaying. That's part of the reason I want our knights defending the east so that we can have them stashed further back in/near Doughnut so we don't display large troop buildup there either.

Let's just keep both 2metra borders as minimalist as possible with 1 or 2 of our sentry HA's patrolling the area keeping an eye on things.




Here's Commodore's west. He's building up troops on both fronts. Not alarmingly, but noticeably compared to when I left he had a single archer in Rapture and just Musket/Mace in C. Cove.




Porcupine looks good. Growing up onto all land tiles eventually. I think it should take back the mine from the capital once the Bank is finished. I don't think we should work coast with new citizens. Put them strait to work on WS's or mines. It'll slow down each future pop by a turn each, but the trade off is 7hpt (on units). Since we are keeping the pop and not whipping them the +7hpt outweighs the advantage of getting the next pop a bit earlier.




Here's Grand Slam. After Doughnut finishes its bank we definitely want to swap both those shared mines over the Grand Slam to speed up the bank here. As soon as the bank is finished I think we give all the hammer tiles away to Porcupine and Doughnut and sit on just commerce here. Our other options are ... Observatory? University? Without Slavery those will take an eternity.

I don't have a shot of Doughnut, but after the Bank I'd like to build Caravels. Swap the mines to Grand Slam as soon as the Bank is complete in Doughnut, but then bring the mines back to Doughnut after Grand Slam finishes its Bank.




Paradigm: maybe another worker here instead of a knight? We've outgrown all the useful tiles, so it won't hurt to stop growth for a few turns. I say draft the coast away now since it's cheaper to draft before we grow (less food for this pop) and it also starts the counter ticking a turn earlier. Then we can put a turn into the knight so that we grow and the pump our a worker or two so that we can improve a couple more tiles to grow onto later.

[Cornflakes]

Ok, here's the hot AT front. I think we have to raze this city while we have the opportunity. The maces aren't doing us any good sitting there and expiring. They are also costing us a fortune in upkeep. AT doesn't have any other city within 6 tiles of us, so I've drawn in my estimation of the borders for both our nations (assuming 4th ring at both MASH and Blimp, which I think is correct). This leaves us with a very secure border in this direction and does not allow AT to replant SWAT. We have to take this shot.

Here's how
We have a spy in position already. We need 2 more turns of EP to get research visibility on TT. The spy needs to sit stationary for 5 turns without getting caught for -50% espionage cost. We need 230 EP against AT for the Support City Revolt spy mission at -50%, which means we need about 100-130 more than we currently have invested. We'll get 3 turns after swapping off TT for +60, and we can swap our free merchants to scientists for those turns to make up the difference ... A spy specialist get +5EP with Nationhood civic, versus +3 with merchants through the slider if we were to run 10% for those turns.

Now for units: We already have the slow movers mostly in place. The 2 maces near Paradigm should not go to Google, but should rather be re-directed south to join up with our stack. We'll have time to get 4 drafted muskets from Pork Chop, plus one from Paradigm. These muskets should move into Blimp, and we should empty it of all other units as the muskets arrive so that we don't get a big build up here. As each musket arrives we send another mace east to our main stack. The knights will continue building up around Doughnut (or the rice filler) and we should have at least 5 available. They should be in a position to move into Blimp on the turn our stack moves into AT's territory. This will prevent any possible 2-mover funny business from AT and leave them in position to still hit SWAT for cleanup if needed.

In all we'll have roughly:
– 5 Catapults (including the one just finishing in Paradigm)
– 15 maces
– 5 muskets
– 5-8 knights

25 hitters should be PLENTY. This should wipe out up to 14 LB/CB/Pike with ease and he currently has 8. I think we can get another Catapult out of Blimp after the Courthouse there. I'd say swap the merchant specialist to engineer in this particular city (that also speed us Courthouse by a turn, saving us about 4 gold).

[Cornflakes]

NOTE: it currently is not safe to move our slow-mover stack away from the AT front up to attack 2metra of Commodore. Without SWAT we'll have a big enough cushion to safely direct our surviving slow movers east. It would take a strong argument to convince me not to attack (as in a large AT stack arriving).

His collateral won't be too devastating against us because he doesn't have units to attack out and capitalize on the collateral. Our wounded units can be reserved for cleanup duty.

[Cornflakes]

May I request permission to take over military/scouting unit movements immediately? I'll still let you handle cities/workers until you turn it over to me or until I have time to thoroughly go through the empire (which won't be for another 2-3 days).

[Qgqqqqq]

Permission granted.
Keep the knights back that turn, and try to keep units away from the border to only appear out of nowhere the turn before. This means garrison for cities(feigning MP) defence against boating etc.
Try to move the impito metras north.
Blimps micro is sorted, it only needs a couple of turns with the engineer.
Doughnut wants a lighthouse to grow, and I think we'll open up the forts with Commodore asap, as we don't want our most valuable city being so vulnerable.
Okay going through worker groups (spoiled for boring):

Okay firstly lets start in the north:

Here we have 4 workers. The chopping one is basically assigned here for the next ~20 turns, and the sequence for that is chop->1t of roading->chop->tundra mine.
The other three are just temporary fixtures, and will build another workshop on the grassland for the city to get infra up (forge->courthouse). After that they'll come down and farm/workshop Kayak (Kayak is focussing on production for the granary and then growth. This is the only city for most of these tiles so should grow for them all).

Those workers seen there are a stack for improving the Kayak-Google-Bah... area, which means rushing around trying to keep up with demands. There's no paticular rush to get the infra in Bah... up so it should focus on growth.

These workers are for the Ruck-Beginnerman-Bactrian area, and should mostly focus in keeping them up to date on decent improvements. Chopping is wanted, but isn't urgent, and try to focus on improvements Ruck and Beginnerman can share. Send a worker up to get Bactrian connected before it pops borders - maybe pause a farm build to move?

The workers in the Umbrage-Who am I?-Apocalypse region just need to focus on keeping up with these cities needs - consider pulling some of these down into Paradigm region, as its missing some hammers.

The micro for Reciprocate hinges around working hammer tiles - as we don't have any forests we need to start laying down workshops asap. Worker should go down to Paradigm if Reciprcote offers a breather. No more farms here as its got plenty of lakes.

As mentioned earlier, we have a bunch of conflicting interest here. There's Paris, which really needs to pick up some workshops for its granary, Commodore security which wants 112 worker turns over there, and theres the workshops for porcupine. I propose we steal GS workshop if nessecary, and have the northern workers pave Porcupine while the lone one clears to the south. We're also building one in both Volcano and Sheep, and I think the Sheep one should road the fort tile and the Volcano one join the main stack.

Finally, I'm not going to have much time for this in the next 1-2 weeks, as I have exams coming.

[Cornflakes]

Okay going through worker groups (spoiled for boring):

Finally, I'm not going to have much time for this in the next 1-2 weeks, as I have exams coming.

Thanks! My next two weeks should be fine. Around June 15-20th +/- I'm taking a trip but I expect to have internet unless I run into unforeseen firewall issues at the place I'm staying.

[Cornflakes]

May I draft Jobs? (EDIT: drafting off a grassland hill)




Also, interior Azzaland has a happy cap of at least +7 without MP and is immune to barbarians or rival civ attack, so I'm moving the HA's and Impi there southwards, where they'll stage Apocalypse for the SWAT invasion.

I checked knight counts and I think we'll actually have 8 in time.