Hey, a new installment! I`ll make sure to read it later.
TURN 173
A big turn for us naturally. I logged in to the game. No offers by Joey or dtay... Then I unpaused the game and dtay offered a fish-for-fish. Nice. Joey offered fish-for-fish+Open Borders again. That was a very hard decision. In the end I decided that we`re better off with OB. (You sounded open to the idea a few turns back). Our science rate went up a fair bit, even after whipping out the Frigates (well, as Triremes of course).
Our Keshik Sentry went into Joey`s territory and found.. nothing scary. Also, I think Dark Savant is starting to suspect something after I asked for a pause yesterday. He`s now got an OW in Mist and another completed eot in Tulearean Forest (I just saw it before logging out). So we`re in for a fight here for sure. Still, we have an excellent chance of getting more territory now that DS is under severe pressure and we`re about to get Frigates while he won`t have them. As we have 6 Galleons (and a couple of Galleys) ready for transporting duty, 3 are going to Mist and the rest to Tulearean Forest. The Musket that just completed in Chubei will jump on a Galleon t174, joining the stage tile on the same turn.
As you can see, the Apostolic Palace did finish this turn! So, we`re up against Joey in an AP election. Kokejin immediately switched to.. Wealth. It`s because we were pretty desperate for another 30 gold or so in order to complete Chemistry. I decided to play it safe and we dis complete it eot! Also, dtay`s Golden Age came to an end on t174.
Speaking of dtay, we now have vision on most of his cities near us, including Gobwin Knob and Angle. No stacks were spotted. He`s just got a few Muskets running around.
Graphs and demos: As expected, our trade balance went down a bit. For the first time I think we`re giving more profitable routes to others than we get ourselves. Still, our biggest cities get 8 commerce routes now, so it`s not horrible.
Also, dtay completed Liberalism. We should keep an eye on which tech he takes..
EDIT: Borte is building a Knight, Toregene a Buddhist Monastery and Nambui a Trireme (Frigate). I didn`t take a screen of that side of our Empire this turn.
Yup, things are heating up quickly! Let's see how this goes....
(October 21st, 2017, 06:33)JR4 Wrote: Joey offered fish-for-fish+Open Borders again. That was a very hard decision. In the end I decided that we`re better off with OB. (You sounded open to the idea a few turns back). Our science rate went up a fair bit, even after whipping out the Frigates (well, as Triremes of course).
That's fine with me, and under the circumstances it may have gotten us Chemistry one turn sooner, which would obviously be a consideration. I should say that what GJ was probably asking/expecting you to do was to reject his OB + fish/fish offer and then re-offer just OB. I think he was saying, "I'm happy to confirm peaceful relations if we can also have open borders," but probably didn't want to broadcast the peacefulness part of the agreement to everyone else in the game.
Quote:Our Keshik Sentry went into Joey`s territory and found.. nothing scary. Also, I think Dark Savant is starting to suspect something after I asked for a pause yesterday. He`s now got an OW in Mist and another completed eot in Tulearean Forest (I just saw it before logging out).
Probably, yeah, but he was going to complete those units now or soon either way.
Quote:As we have 6 Galleons (and a couple of Galleys) ready for transporting duty, 3 are going to Mist and the rest to Tulearean Forest. The Musket that just completed in Chubei will jump on a Galleon t174, joining the stage tile on the same turn.
We may have to fight through multiple Oromos at each city here - which means we should not split our forces. Wherever we attack, we'll want all of our Frigates, preferaly two muskets, and as many Cats and Knights as we can bring to bear. Nine total units will not take Mist, and maybe not even Tularean Forest!
One problem we have is Mist: It's on a hill (which I'd say he appears fortunately to have forgotten when promoting that Oromo, but I'm honestly not convinced I'd ever promote one the way he did...) and it's easy for him to reinforce with Circumnav ships if Gav lets up (or if he decides to prioritize it over his mainland cities for whatever reason) and there's no tile on which he can't see our Frigates from which they can move in and bombard it on the same turn. This means we'll either have to telegraph our attack (more than we have already) or be ready to suicide a bunch of units (more than otherwise, I mean). One option is to just hit Tularean Forest first and just wait and see to what extent he stacks things up in Mist after that. Another is to just assume he already knows we're coming for him and declare war at the earliest opportunity to get a Frigate in to bomb his defenses, land a significant stack next to Mist, or both. A third is to just do the best we can to keep him guessing before launching what we hope will be a swift and decisive attack on Mist.
Quote:I decided to play it safe and we dis complete it eot!
Nicely done!
Quote:Also, dtay`s Golden Age came to an end on t174.
Cool. Just out of curiosity, what are his civics these days?
Well, that was a difficult turn to play. Lots and lots of decisions to be made. I`ll get back to that. Joey is now in his third Golden Age! He`s surely looking to pick up a big military tech in order to get more land. It`s a bit funny that the 2 fish-for-fish deals we`ve made with him have both been followed immediately by Golden Ages. Hopefully Joey won`t be too upset with us accepting the fish+OB deal. It`s just that we needed the commerce right away.. FYI, dtay is in Hereditary Rule, Caste, Mercantilism, Nationhood and Pacifism. He`s surely relying on the draft to keep him safe. Also, his units are streaming north. Maybe Carthage is in trouble. Guess what tech he took as the Liberalism freebie? Steel! He`s now got access to Cannons. I`m really glad that we have vision on his cities (and that fish deal).
Now to the war preparations. We have 5 Frigates and 2 Musketmen completing eot. A single Frigate is ready for action (it`s guarding the Galleons NW of Chabui). It`s hard to decide whether to strike both or just one of the cities but all in all Tulearean Forest is the easier target so we`re set up to attack it next turn. A Galleon loaded with Knights was moved into Vulcania to keep him guessing where we`ll strike. Annoyingly, the Frigates completing eot in Bayan Khutugh and Kokejin will be 9 tiles away from TF. Gah, we could wait for them to arrive but I`d rather strike asap. I think we`re going to declare war next turn and land a big force on the Deer tile, hopefully defeating the lone Longbow easily. Dark Savant has a Galleon in Mist so we should take care not to lose a city to a counterattack.
Our next GP will be born in 4 turns in Borte. It`ll likely be a GE (66%) or a GM (about 30 %). Nambui is making a lot of GP points right now and I think it`ll be next to get a GP after Borte.
Our Workers are starting to get bored. Any idea of what we should do with them in the coming turns?
Graphs and demos: With 7 units completing eot we`re going to be pretty close to being top power. No wonder our neighbors want to stay peaceful for the time being. Also, note that Gavagai took some losses in the last couple of turns. He actually lost the Chichen Itza city this turn. That`s not the best timing..
@RefSteel - thanks for the explanation of cascading. That's make sense, if one can manage the micro and the planning!
@JR4 - I was thinking that the AP would cease to boost Buddhist buildings if captured by a non-Buddhist civ, but on further reading, I don't think that's how it works (Buddhism is now the AP religion for ever, short of razing the city). So sadly, it doesn't give Joey a reason not to attack you. Oh well. Looks like you're handling that OK through diplo for the moment!
Good luck with grabbing some of the spoils as things continue to bubble over everywhere.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
(October 22nd, 2017, 09:24)shallow_thought Wrote: Good luck with grabbing some of the spoils as things continue to bubble over everywhere.
Oh, I think the world is about to be an even more dangerous one - dtay is surely going to do something with his Cannons. Joey might attempt an attack right after his Golden Age is over. Actually, we can`t be sure that his preferred target is not us. My prediction, however, is that a few players are going to attack Dark Savant over the coming turns. So far the veteran players have gone almost exclusively for the weakest target (with an exception for Gavagai`s attack on dtay). Hopefully, we`ll get at least one quality city out of the war with DS. The demos show us to have about half the land of the biggest Empire. Therefore it`s more than a bit hilarious that the Shrine makes us so competitive that we were able to beat both Krill and Gavagai to a crucial military tech (Chemistry)!
Oh, I almost forgot. Here are a few random screenshots from t174.
The Zulu Swords are on dtay`s Horse tile, they moved up from Angle.
Also, note that Muqa is making 200gpt at full tax. It will hire a Merchant in 2 turns when it grows to size 21. Can you remember how slow Nambui was in getting up to speed? It`s rapidly turning into a key city (not an exaggeration). It could need more infrastructure, let`s see if we can slip in a Bank and an Observatory. It`s been really hard to decide on Nambui`s builds lately. It needs a big garrison to dissuade an attack. Our collateral units are 2 turns away from it so it`s a potential danger.
(October 22nd, 2017, 08:12)JR4 Wrote: FYI, dtay is in Hereditary Rule, Caste, Mercantilism, Nationhood and Pacifism. He`s surely relying on the draft to keep him safe. Also, his units are streaming north. Maybe Carthage is in trouble. Guess what tech he took as the Liberalism freebie? Steel! He`s now got access to Cannons. I`m really glad that we have vision on his cities (and that fish deal).
Drydocks will help him too once he's built them, starts another golden age, and can get back into Vassalage (or Theocracy) for C2 Frigates and N1 Galleons, but yeah, this may be a prelude to storming Carthage. Defending against cannons isn't impossible (though it would be costly) with lower-tech units, but against Cannons, veteran Knights, Aggressive/Protective Muskets, and dtay's production base? That would be frightening.
Quote:We have 5 Frigates and 2 Musketmen completing eot. A single Frigate is ready for action (it`s guarding the Galleons NW of Chabui). It`s hard to decide whether to strike both or just one of the cities but all in all Tulearean Forest is the easier target so we`re set up to attack it next turn. A Galleon loaded with Knights was moved into Vulcania to keep him guessing where we`ll strike.
Okay, so it sounds like if we attacked next turn, we could bombard Tularean Forest with at most one Frigate (with ... 1 more positioned to arrive the following turn? Or maybe 2? And 2-3 more the turn after that if needed?) and could land with at most 4 cats, one musket, and 7 knights. If the forest is still guarded by (just) a single Longbow, a C2 Amphibious Knight should have odds on it right off the boat, though the odds wouldn't be spectacular, so we woud have to expect to be effectively down one knight (either to a bad die roll or to heavy damage). So if we sent everything T176, our knights would be up against city defenses of ... between 68 and 101%, depending on whether Sugabala is about to complete a frigate and when and if Gav manages to retake the Chichen Itza city. I don't know what's in that garrison at this point, so I don't know if that's sane or not. I guess we could take the forest right away and then use the cats to help bombard the defenses? (Maybe even with Barrage1 -> Accuracy? At the cost of Barrage2...) Unpromoted, the whole stack of 4 combined would reduce the defenses by 16% each turn, double that if they all have Accuracy, and at the cost of a turn. (I assume his units in the city are good enough that we'd want to suicide all our cats before sending our hitters in.) One good thing is that we can drop units off on the forest from adjacent to our mainland, so if we have units in position this turn, we could load them on the Galleons as soon as the current passengers move onto the forest. If we don't have units in position to do this, the only reason I can see to attack T175 would be if he still has just a longbow on the forest and we're afraid he'll replace it (or supplement it) with a W2 D2 C1 Oromo if we don't act now. (Plus we'll get a little extra bombardment in if we assume he's going to act as though we're about to hit that city either way.)
Quote:Our Workers are starting to get bored. Any idea of what we should do with them in the coming turns?
Sure. How bored are they?
- One or two bored workers: Board a boat on the western sea, head over to the incense tile 2N of a recent GJ city (it should ~never get that tile from Oghul Qaimish) and start a fort and a road there.
- Three or four bored workers: Also road and pre-chop (to one turn short of completion) our lumbermilled forest(s) in case of emergency.
- Several bored workers: Also put some turns into windmills (to one turn short of completion) on off-river mined hills in preparation for our next golden age.
- Lots of bored workers: Put a bunch of turns into Forts (to one turn short of completion) on workshops, watermills, windmills, farms, mines, and pastures that could allow Silly Canal Tricks so they could be completed in one worker turn, allowing boats to quickly travel and carry reinforcements between fronts if needed, and immediately replaced by a bunch more workers without losing anything. For bonus points, also complete some other tile improvement (e.g. farm gets most of a fort plus most of a workshop, windmill gets a road, most of a fort, and most of a mine) so just two workers could convert it to a fort for a canal and then back to Something Else Useful after the boats have gone by, all in the same turn. This is pretty pointless on most tiles, but there are a few (like the horses north of Oghul Qaimish and the workshop north of them and I can list a few others if you like) where it would be helpful if the circumstances are right. One place to start could be to build a useful improvement to one turn from completion on our two existing forts, then after we're sure we won't need the canal any more on a subsequent turn, get a whole bunch of workers to finish the tile improvement and build enough of the fort again that they could complete it the following turn if it's needed again.
(October 22nd, 2017, 09:24)shallow_thought Wrote: So sadly, it doesn't give Joey a reason not to attack you.
You could argue that since dtay is Hindu and some of his biggest rivals are Buddhist, he could boat and raze the AP if we were forced to defend from the south, but either way, GJ won't want to keep us alive just to preserve the AP. For now, he wants to keep the peace with us for the same reasons as before: He sees our military power and doesn't want to send his units into the grinder, he doesn't want too many of his troops too far from the fronts with Krill and his island neighbors, and he doesn't want dtay to capture the Buddhist Shrine and its 50+ base gpt. This situation is inherently unstable and won't last forever though, obviously.
Tech stuff: Steel is a good tech, but I'm not sure we need (or can afford) to chase dtay there right away. It's very expensive, and we'll never match his production, and one of the reasons cannons are scary is that they ignore collateral, so hitting his monster stack of Cannons and Stuff with cannons of our own (in much smaller numbers than his) won't be all that effective. That's true with cats as well, but once everything else is collateralled down, our Knights eat Cats for breakfast. With C2 Charge, they'll do pretty well against Cannons too, but we'd still expect to lose a lot more units that way. For more production of our own, it's tempting to go to Civil Service (enabling ~useless maces but also Bureaucracy, which would make Borte a monster while Theocracy let us keep the same number of XP on our units as presently) or Aesthetics - Literature, which would be cheap at this point in the game and allow the Epics for a key unit producer and better GP generation. (One of them should probably go in Nambui, but I haven't thought too much about these yet.)
Yes, I think the amount of Frigates is about right. We have one Frigate ready to bombard on t175 and another one from Nambui ready the turn after. The problem is that the other Frigates that complete next turn won`t be able to get down to Tulearean Forest before t177. I really should have seen it coming. The one Frigate we have completed in Sugabala this turn so it`s not finishing another right away. I`m thinking about landing on the forest Deer with our stack and then return the Galleons to the mainland to pick up more troops. Attacking a well-prepared opponent is not as easy as I`d like it to be.. We`re running into at least another Oromo Warrior over the next couple of turns. We probably should bombard for a turn and then reassess the situation.
Well, our Workers are pretty bored, (I`ll look at the suggestions when playing next turn). Our 2 Fort tiles are about to be turned into Workshops (the Workers have built the improvement for the last turns). We just need to make sure that enough Workers are in place to pre-build another Fort. The Frigate about to complete in Oljei Taikhu needs to get out before we build another improvement.
Civil Service next sounds good to me. Would it be a terrible idea to move the capital to Muqa? It would be absolutely insane with the Bureaucracy bonus.. Also, we should swap to Theocracy if we go out of Vassalage. We`re about to go to war after all! I still like going for Steel, but we might want to get a few cheaper techs first. The ktb is helping us out nicely there. We could go for Cuirassiers/Cavalry instead of the Steel line. Let`s reassess in a couple of turns.
