[Spoilers] Boldly Going Nowhere and Mr. Cairo go to Florida. Hilarity Ensues.

[Mr. Cairo]

I'm around to reload quickly unless there's an objection. Seems like a soft reload to me, but I'm sure they've been given for less.

Yeah, I get that, it would seriously mess up my game though, I had plans for the Great Scientist, I had plans for the units I moved to cover the GS in my panic. I dunno, I seem to recall reloads given out for this kind of stuff before, misclicks I mean. It's not as though I just made a mistake.

[Mr. Cairo]

Ok, so DZ has more than I thought (kinda makes me wonder where the huge difference in our power comes from), and we're going to lose a city this turn. But we should be able to take it back next turn (if he doesn't burn it), and take another city off of him with the main thrust.

So here's DZ's attack:

I really should have more units defending this city, this is absolutely a mistake on my part. No reason not to put more Longbows and Xbows in here if I'm planning to attack DZ. But I do have my own little stack of WEs, Cats, and some recently built Knights to hit back. I expect DZ to burn this city, more from metagaming perspectives than tactical or strategic ones in this game, but I should still be able to kill some of his attacking units, and those CR Maces are pretty valuable.


The bigger fight is down here:

He hit my stack with three Cats last turn, did a little damage, and has assembled all these Knights to try and do some damage. Now mine are almost all C2 and his aren't (unless he's hiding the promos? Is that a thing? I sure hope not), so I should have odds on most of those attacks. Some will win though, and cause flanking damage. Hopefully not enough to kill those Cats and Trebs and I can take the city the following turn. Maybe. Maybe I'll have to bombard for a turn, and rely on my GG medic to heal my units enough to survive whatever he has left of his Knights. Also, note that I made peace with wetbandit. I asked for OB, and if he accepts I can move units onto that tile through his territory, including some Pikes and WEs to defend against his surviving Knights while I bombard.

I did a very rough sim and found that even with the 100% defenses the collateral does enough to give my City Raider Maces good odds. And I have a horde of Phalanxes to use to soften them up further before committing my surviving Knights.

Well, it would have been boring if it were easy that's a lie.

Honestly warfare is where I lack experience the most (and could really have used advice some from my team-mate around now) so I'm treating this as a learning experience. I do think I should have waited though. Kept up the phony war with Cornflakes and hoped that DZ left himself even more open at some point. Or waiting till I had Muskets at least.

At this point things could go really bad if he gets good dice rolls or it turns out all those Knights can get to C2. He is in Vassalage so they should all take C1 at least, unless they're all upgraded HAs from earlier, which seems unlikely. At the very least they're a bunch of 50/50 dice rolls. I don't want to log in next turn to see half my knights dead, a bunch of C2 Knights in that city.

I did some sims looking at the collateral, and even in the worse case scenario, where all those Knights can take C2, and 8 out of the 15 won their battles (including the first one against the Pike) my collateral survived and wasn't too badly damaged. The medium case where they can all take C1 only saw 4-5 win. And the best case where none of those Knights can promo did even better, each instance of flanking only deals a tiny amount of damage, and the number of units flanked varies wildly.

Overall, after doing those sims I feel a lot better, but it could still go poorly.

[Mr. Cairo]

I just had a horrible thought, I might lose cultural control over the tile 1E of the city DZ just took (according to civstats). That city is pretty far away from my nearest city, and how cultural control works in this game I have no idea what's going to happen. It looks like none of his cities are putting culture in that tile so I should be in the clear. And he took the city 8 minutes ago and hasn't razed it so hopefully he is keeping it and I can take it back.

[Mr. Cairo]

I was right with my first horrible thought. I did lose that tile:

So I'm going to have to wait until I have a larger force in a few turns before retaking it.

Also, DZ didn't attack with his Knights and I couldn't see them anywhere. He may be sending them to that front since he's having more success there, so I might have to go on the defensive there. I've been sending all my reinforcements that-away, so I'm not completely wide open.

So with that, I decided to attack and take that city, which in retrospect was a mistake. I lost my 5 Cats and my first 2 Trebs, then got good odds on the remaining Trebs, still lost one, of course. After that, lost the Sword trying to hurt the Xbow, didn't do enough and lost the first Mace. The next 2 won. But then it was the Pikes, and I ended up losing 4 ~60% odds battle in a row with my Knights, which was very annoying. After that it was just the Phalanxes killing the rest. Taking the city didn't open the path I wanted so I wasn't able to put three Pikes in the city, just one, but with the OB with wetbandit, I was able to move a force of Longbows, Pikes, and WEs onto the stack outside the city. If his Knights are around, they'll be able to retake it, with at least one loss, but there aren't (I hope) a bunch more Pikes and Longbows ready to reoccupy it.



In retrospect I should have just bombarded, moved those Pikes and Longbows onto that stack. The Pikes would have meant his Knights were't a serious threat to it anymore, and I would have been able to take the city with less losses and actually garrison it with some decent units.

If he does take it back and manages to put some more Pikes/Longbows in it, it'll still be a little easier to take, no fortify bonus, no castle (he might dry-whip walls in it if he has Stone, but since the cultural defenses will be 60% anyway he might want to dry-whip a Pike or LB) so my surviving Trebs will be able to knock the defenses down by a semi-decent amount and then my Phalanxes can act as Cats, hurting the top defenders enough that my Knights/Maces can finish them off. And then I can garrison it with the Longbows and Pikes.

Also, is it possible to know which civ a spy came from when one is caught? I thought it said as much in the event log, but it just says that one was caught outside one of my cities.

[Mr. Cairo]

Man, City Raider 3 Maces are really tough to deal with

[Mr. Cairo]

I pulled out of Zeijing, and DZ reacted mostly the way I wanted him to. He sent me a peace offer, and didn't kill any of my units that he could have. But he also didn't completely evacuate Al-Alabama and I had to use my Cats and then ended up losing two Knights to quite low odds. But I did that and then offered peace. Hopefully he'll take it. Wetbandit is going for Rifling and Cornflakes has given up all he's taken from him so I may end up having to give up the two cities of his I have. We'll see. I sent a fish-fish offer, but who knows. We may end up right back where we started. Not a successful endeavor at all. I should have waited on DZ until wetbandit was actually finished, but I did not expect Cornflakes to give up so quickly and easily once the dogpile was over, nor for wetbandit to still have such an amazing economy.

[Mr. Cairo]

And we're back where we started, only JR4 has managed to climb into favourite position by not getting involved in the war(s).

In retrospect it was a mistake to go after DZ so quickly. I should have waited until wetbandit was actually defeated, I severely overestimated Cornflakes' willingness and/or ability to finish off wetbandit on his own.

Anyway, we have peace with our southern neighbors for the time being, so lets get onto some other stuff, and try and salvage something.


The plan is to tech. And tech fast.

Here's the current plan, with Divine Right thrown in there at some point probably (for Spiral Minaret).

The demos:



Power Graph  



And the cities:

Obviously they're mostly building research, but that's just for this turn, to get Education over and done with. Universities are going to be on the way, but not quite yet. The cap needs a Grocer to stop starving from unhealthiness, before getting the Temple.


Next Great Person on the way. Hopefully not a Scientist as I already have one, but if it is I'll use it for an Academy. Probably, it'll depend on what they can bulb. Eventually I'll want to do this again for a third one, but before that it'll finish the Knight, and then build the UoS, as I do now plan to grab the religious trio of wonders. We need some sort of edge.





Can't do much, not enough hammers. Will probably be building research/wealth for the foreseeable future.


Engaging in a losing culture war with JR4 here, lost 2 northern tiles from its BFC recently, which I am trying to get back, but there's no more religious buildings and I don't want to waste its hammers building culture. But with lots of Towns it's a good place for Grocer+Market


Trying to grow this city a bit now that we have peace.


Want the Theatre to try and steal some coastal tiles from JR4 to better utilise the Moai.


Just needs to recover its lost infrastructure


Will slowly build Hindu Missionaries until the end of time, I only have one city of my own left to convert, after that I'll start going elsewhere, probably SD at first.


This city is turning out great. After what's queued, probably a University.


And the future site of the AP.

[Mr. Cairo]

Now that the action appears to have died down I'll give a little update, no screenshots.

SD has effectively replaced Cornflakes on the contender lists, but has stopped his conquests while Cornflakes is just turtling with his armies in his core territory. Wetbandit took a city off of Cornflakes and then made peace, and his main army is now situated equidistant between me, Cornflakes and SD. He's got Rifles before anyone else, although we are getting close. Replaceable Parts in 2 turns, Rifling ~10-11 after that? Perhaps shorter with a GA, but I'm not decided on that yet.

We have a Great Scientist and a Great Engineer, and I'm going for a Great Artist in 4 turns (but still might get a lower odds Scientist or Engineer). Assuming I get the Artist, I want to hold on to them in order to swap to better civics, which I had been thinking would be Representation, to go with Mercantilism. But that combined would be worth a maximum of 66 beakers (if a scientist was recruited in every city).
Free speech on the other hand would be worth 126 commerce/turn from our 42 Towns (and that number will go up as the last few Villages grow). Combine that with Universal Suffrage for 42+ hammers and I think we have a winner.
That requires Economics and getting Democracy (which will be Divine Right->Nationalism->Constitution->Democracy). Which is a lot of techs. The fastest way is to get part of the way there then fire the Golden Age with the aim of getting the last of the required techs the turn before it ends so we can swap civics then. That means teching to Rifling the slow way. I'll probably speed it up with mass Research + Wealth builds, but still. Free Speech also has the bonus of +100% Culture, which is good for a Culture Victory.

In other domestic news, we built the AP and UoS, so the cities are rotating between unit builds and Hindu Shrines/Temples. I've also built 4 Universities, and 2 more are on the way, so Oxford is within sight.

I think my plan is going to be saving at 0% science for a few turns after RP finishes, while building a few more Monasteries+Temples, and partly building some units as well to have on standby. Then turning on tech and setting every city to build Research, to try and get to Rifling as fast as possible. Then head towards Economics and Democracy as outlines above.

[Mr. Cairo]

Turned on science for Rifling. ETA: 5 turns:


I also have a bunch of Muskets almost finished in a half-dozen cities so I'll get out the first few Rifles pretty quickly. SD just started a Golden Age, so he'll probably get caught up a bit in tech and start to put his conquered cities to use.

Since JR4 is unlikely to be a target for attack, I offered a defensive pact to him, that'll also secure the border with wetbandit, since he can't really fight a two-front war there. DZ remains the most likely target. Or, with some boats, Superdeath, who can be hit from the inland sea that we share. He has a lot of Knights, Cats, and Musketeers though, which make it hard to launch an invasion. But, Rifles and Cavs are very good.

Here's the current army:


And as you can see, I did get the Great Artist I wanted, so I hae a Golden Age in my pocket. The plan from the last post is still in effect.

[Mr. Cairo]

JR4 accepted the defensive pact, and I'm glad, because wetbandit is busy upgrading all his Knights to Cavs, which is scary. He also signed a defensive pact with Superdeath (I think it was offered by SD). So I'm still leaning towards wetbandit being defensibly minded at the moment. He also lacks enough Rifles to successfully invade me, Cavs die to massed Catapults a lot easier than Rifles on hills with Drill 2 do.

DZ is looking vulnerable, although I suppose neither me nor wetbandit want to be the one to declare war on DZ first, thus ending our respective defensive pacts. I also wouldn't be surprised now to see Cornflakes and DZ sign a DP once one of them gets Mil Tradition.

JR4 is still saving cash instead of teching to Rifling. I guess his expenses are a lot worse than mine. Losing less than 200 gold/turn with no wealth builds is pretty nice, mainly thanks to the Hindu Shrine, which just finished a Bank and is producing 78 gold/turn.