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

[Fintourist]

I imagined that Azza would put up a decent defence, but now I checked civstats and see that he also plays ~6 minutes per turn

I'd suggest observing Azza's score decreases for whips, more than Lewger's WW or the amount of time Azza takes to play.

Oh, I know that Azza is whipping. While that certainly is better than what was done in the previous war on that continent, whipping + 5 min turns does not meet my definition of "decent defense". Although that is probably already enough to ensure that Lewwyn is not going to get even close to similar gains as the two leaders got.

(I'd prefer to stay in Slavery due to the threat of mackoti intervening while we're at war with suttree, but that's just me.)

So are you back now Fintourist? You mentioned being at the university - I think that means in Finland? If so, welcome home! (Er, I guess that doesn't make much sense since I live on a different continent, but you know what I mean.)

Thanks! I'm back in Finland now and trying to catch up with everything (not only civ but life as well). I enjoyed reading your chat logs with OH, it's so great that you managed to remain unspoiled until now. Re slavery: I share your worry. Overall I think it would make more sense for mackoti to pile on suttree than attack us, and strictly domestically Caste is better than Slavery right now, but...

[Old Harry]

Turn 163 prologue

Do you know what Mackoti is? He's a plan ruiner.


We could take this city this turn since Suttree has retreated his stack of cats. But then Mack can take it off us on t166 before the city comes out of revolt. So here is a crazy plan:
T163
1 - we move our knights here
2 - we move two workers here (and chop, but that's not important)
T164
Mack takes Barcelona, we select engineering as our next tech and switch to free market
3 - our workers road this tile and our knights move to Konig
T165
We run whatever research we need to complete engineering.
4 - move our knight stack to here
T166
We're allowed to declare on Mack
Road the tile SW of Peterloo and hit Eridu with 20 knights.


One problem with this plan is that Suttree's cat stack may be on it's way to Hastings for one last hurrah. The good news is that it isn't. This makes me wonder if we should use our northern (defensive) stack to go for Madrid. We could spend two turns catting down the defenses, then use four knights and all our ancient junk to take the city.


Of course the other problem with the plan is that Mack will stuff Eridu full of Janissaries in the next three turns. We could offer Suttree peace to let him properly try to repel Mackoti... I'm totally torn, I'll need to think about this and come back to it. That means leaving the game paused and finishing the turn during my lunch break. Sorry everyone.

Demos and Power

[Old Harry]

T163 denoument

I think a slight tweak to the plan that I outlined (which was originally Fintourist's suggestion) is that we move our knight stack to the jungle hill that overlooks Barcelona on t164. We need to do some hardcore pillaging right now too, I'll just work out how to do that so that the knights aren't exposed to Suttree's spears.

I whipped a bunch of units since I wasn't sure if we'd be in vassalage at the end of next turn and.

I moved our stack of six catapults, axes etc, towards Konig - on t166 they can play zone defense around that city or they could move back up to Hastings if we'd rather. We'll also road a jungle hill that I think allows our sentry chariot to see over the jungles just north of Barcelona...

[TheHumanHydra]

Wow, this moved really quickly; I wish I had had time to think about it and comment before we had to play.

1. Just confirming, mack is actually at war with suttree?
2. It might have been better to offer peace to suttree, teleporting our units into our territory and allowing for a faster attack on mack.
3. I like the plan to hit mack instead.
4. We should consider ourselves effectively at war with mack from this moment; remember he can attack us from inside suttree's territory come turn 166.
5. I'm glad you decided to move the northern group of units south instead of into suttree's territory - we'll need them to either defend or pile on in mack's territory.
6. What did you do with the southern group of units?
7. I can't tell what jungle hill you mean overlooking Barcelona.
8. I'm glad you whipped units this turn; I ABSOLUTELY recommend we remain in Slavery considering we are about to attack, and quite possibly will come under attack by, the world's best civ-player; we'll need it.
9. If you stage on the rice tile instead of no. 4, you can hit, ugh, whatever that other northern city is called instead (it's not on a hill). Not saying you should; just an option.
10. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything.
...
11. suttree delenda est
12. mackoti delenda est

[Ceiliazul]

[Old Harry]

1. Correct. Suttree probably doesn't know yet.
2. I thought about that quite a lot, but we can't actually attack Mack until t166 anyway, so we don't need the extra movement.
3.
4. Yep, I'm just glad he's not got open borders with Suttree any more, we'll get much more warning of attacks this way.
5.
6. They are covering the pillaging knights for now. I forgot to check how much cash we got by the way but it was at least 100 gold
7. 3N 1W of the city tile
8. Most of the cities we could slave further just don't have the pop to whip in the immediate future, but the extra hammers we get from workshops will add up. We can actually whip two units in Peterloo next turn and let them complete over the next two turns.
9. Very nice idea...
10. Mack has engineering, so pikes and castles...
11.
12.

[Fintourist]

When you have bad cards it's better to just shuffle the deck again... and again.. and again.. I can't really decide whether I should be amused or simply depressed by this continuous struggle, where we just keep trying to evade the inevitable.. 163 turns of nightmare and still counting!

[TheHumanHydra]

2. Oh right, duh.
4. Just to clarify, I think we actually have less warning - I mean that that stack we see now can move directly into our territory at any point along our border with suttree come t166; he can remain at war with suttree and just move straight in.
6. Okay, awesome!
7. Ah, okay. It's a good idea, since it disguises our intentions somewhat - in that vein, though, why not the bare grassland hill 3NW of Barcelona (already roaded, closer?)
8. Very leery about no Slavery, but okay (whipping before switching obviously good).
9. If we go for that city, we should probably raze it. Not sure about Eridu. Also note it has the Shwedagon Paya, if that means anything.
10. @#*$&
11.
12.

[Old Harry]

Turn 164

What on earth do you think William is trying to say here?


We have Economics, Engineering is next, unless anyone wants to make any suggestions?

Suttree made peace with Mack in return for Barcelona. Right. What is the point of that? Happy to just let him win and get the game over with quicker Suttree? Anyway that means the 2-movers in Mack's stack could be in Ur by now, so hitting Eridu is going to be nigh on impossible. So do we try to take Barcelona instead?


AND THEY HAVE OPEN BORDERS AGAIN! This *&%$#&* is just gifting our front cites to Mackoti. I'm not happy about this.


You can see Suttree put all his units in Madrid. We're not taking the city any time soon, but his workers aren't in position to let him hit Hastings. Mackoti could have units on any of the fogged tiles though.


I'll wait a little while to calm down before I play. Any thoughts?

[TheHumanHydra]

Where is La Boheme? (Could you give a screenshot?) I'm guessing it refers to the player closest to that city (Ichabod?).

66 gold probably means t166. Horses and iron generally means knights. I don't know what 1 gpt means.

I'm guessing it's a warning the cities named are going to come under amphibious attack by knights from Ichabad (or mack, given the turn) on t166. So whip garrisons in those cities STAT. And please - do not switch out of Slavery till the situation is stabilized.