[SPOILERS] PBEM 8 - Shoot the Moon's Thread

[Shoot the Moon]

Square Leg is right. I probably should have whipped in my other cities at least each a unit and I didn't so I think you had a fine war anyway

Yeah, agreed. I'm not really complaining about how much you whipped, it was just odd to see seven pop whipped in one turn. Not sure how far you are into my thread, but any thoughts (although I understand spoilers could be an issue with saying anything).

In regards to the culture: it had corrected itself by the time I got the save back. I was under the impression that almost everything was calculated after I hit end turn, but I guess that was something that is dealt with at the end of the whole turn (?).

[Shoot the Moon]

Last turn I completed rifling and am starting to get them out to protect against any cavalry Inca could send at me. I am now going after astro (Inca annoyingly research astro, and I don't really want all my coastal cities choked with frigates, so I need to follow suite unfortunately). After that I will probably go steam power --> railroad, simply because it is taking a long time to get units to the front currently.

Ok, now that Warriorknight's golden age has *finally* ended and all of my cities are out of revolt, it seems like a good time to post some demog screenshots. This screenshot is from right when I inherited the save (demogs changed slightly during the turn as I drafted three rifles, which obviously increased power, while decreasing gnp, food, and production as citizens were taken off of tiles). Also keep in mind that WK is running all cash while I am at 50% research. That being said, I am also paying 13 and 16 gpt maintenance in two of my new cities. Once I get the forbidden palace completed, my gnp should see a nice jump, so right now my gnp shows a bit lower than the reality of it.



Now that there are only three opponents, I can now definitively know what Maya's demogs are, as I know two of the three's (rival best and worst) and the average. From the graphs, I know that Inca is rival best and Native Americans rival worst in all these categories, so here are Maya's demogs:
GNP: 334
MFG: 163
Crop yield: 257
Soldier: 744,000
Land Area: 126,000

Also worth noting, I have a lot more room to grow than does WK, as I have three cities at three pop or below (two recently founded and the Constantinople which was whipped back to size 1). Now that those three have granaries with full food boxes, they should start growing nicely (Byz's capital in particular has a lot of nice towns to grow into; the other two are more production focused). The other two Byz cities I capture are at 7 and 8 pop, and also have a fair amount of room to grow (5-10 pop each most likely).

I forgot to take the screenshots this turn, but next turn I'll try to take screenshots of all my new cities (I've been holding off until the cities were all out of revolt and had their borders expanded).

[Shoot the Moon]

Ok, here are some screenshots of my new cities. I'll start off with the view from the map, and then go into the individual cities.

[Shoot the Moon]

So, Warriorknight triggered another golden age a couple of turns ago but I seem to have missed it in the log. He sure is getting good use out of the Mausoleum! I still have a higher production than him even while he is in a golden age, but he does threaten to extend his tech lead even further.

I also want to get another island city. That would bump up the second trade route in every one of my cities from 1c to 2c, good for 12 base commerce in addition to whatever that city produces. The most likely target is Maya's maoi city, which is currently protected by only a musket, archer, and holkan. Once I get astro in, I can hit the city with galleons with no notice.

[Shoot the Moon]

So I unfortunately had another GS born at the end of last turn. That gives me two sitting around, so I used one for an academy.

Not much else to report for now. Doing some prep for a naval assault on a Mayan city (with three galleons and rifles and cannons in the galleons) but that is still a couple turns away at this point. Maya also has a large number of tiremes choking my new Byz cities with the ridiculous blockade feature, so I am getting some frigates out and will return the favor.

[Shoot the Moon]

And then there were three. I think I saw one unit of Ad Hoc's the entire game. Considering I killed it, I think that makes it 1:0 for me, no? :neenernee

I will try sometime today or tomorrow to post a summary of what's been going on. The long story short is that I captured a Mayan island city, will capture a second one next turn, and moved a stack against a third (this time mainland) city. I'll try to get some screenshots up though.

[Shoot the Moon]

First off, I am making this update for a couple of turns, so make sure to look at the turn numbers for all the screenshots (the most recent turn I played was t151 for your reference).

First off, I dropped off a stack of 5 Rifles, 3 cannons, and my GG medic knight to attack Maya's island city. Maya attacked out with two cats, a cur, and a musket. I won all the battles (slightly lucky there, although Maya's best odds on any of those fights were 50% as I remember). Here is what my stack looked like after that and what was left in Maya's city:





Anyway, I first attacked with my cannons and then the rifles. I lost one unit, can't remember which. This was in the city:



I kept the city. The next turn I healed up my injured units (keeping two rifles in the city, although with frigates I completely control the seas, so I have no risk of Maya taking it back). The inured units, once healed, went into galleons to be dropped off on the iron here:



I did that this turn (appear to have forgotten to take a screenshot of it), but dropped off 9 units again, but this time without my gg medic knight, which I instead sent to the west to join this stack:



The city has in it a lbow, pike, and xbow, with another stack of units labelled 2N. There is also another stack of that includes 7 cats 2NW of Cumin. In essence, I expect to get hit with a fair number of catapults, but unless Maya has a large stack of curs in the fog I expect to simply heal and then take the city.

I will also in two or three turns have another stack of 8 or so rifles and some cannons moving in to hit cumin from the NE. I had originally been planing to use that stack to raze an Incan coastal city (using navigation 1 galleons to move from a spot that Inca cannot see) but decided that it would be more beneficial to make this attack on Maya stronger. I wish those units were in position instead of on an island city, but oh well.

Aside from those stacks, the majority of my army is in Constantinople, as it can be hit in 1t by Inca. I have something around 5 rifles, 5-10 cannons, 5 or so muskets and 5-10 knights in there. All coastal cities also have a decent garrison (at least two rifles and various muskets/older units).

In other news, I completed both the Spiral Marinet and my Oxford which is a nice boost to my research capabilities. I'll post a demogs screenshot next turn. I finished research on Railroad at the end of the turn, so I will also start to railroad everything and also build some machine guns to defend vulnerable/important cities.

[Shoot the Moon]

As I'm sure you all can tell by Rego's nice post in the email thread:

Sorry for the delay on passing along the save, it was hard to get a hold of it since it was so red and slippery

If we weren't playing with CTON, I'd definitely post this in the email thread though: "Want to trade back my units for your cities?" :neenernee Yeah, captured that other Mayan island city last turn (two turns after dropping them off, as I was one rifle short on the first turn )

I lost that stack on the mainland I moved into his land. He brought in a stack with 11 catapults. I attacked with knights to flank them, but just ran out of knights/got a couple bad rolls so I couldn't quite flank enough times to kill any. The real pain in losing that stack was that I lost my super medic (stupidly moved him onto the tile -- that was a dumb mistake). Other than that, I lost only units that are close to being outdated (I can already make machine guns and can draft more rifles when needed and knights have been outdated for a while). Anyway, Maya has nothing that can come close to touching my Frigates, so I'm simply blockading every one of his coastal cities in revenge, hehe.

I got a great engineer born on the interturn out of my HE city. The irony is that the stupid overflow bug (where you lose all hammers that overflow more than the cost of what you are producing) has meant that I've been running a lot of specialists in the city to avoid lost hammers -- and that got me a great person. My next one will be born 2t from now (3t later) in my capital which is my National Epic/Wonder city. If that GP is an artist or priest, I will trigger a GA with the GE, that and a GS I have saved. If my capital spawns a merchant I will save the merchant for sid's sushi and the engineer for statue of liberty, both of which I would then immediately tech to.

I'm also excited because over the next couple of turns I have a large amount of cities finishing up their levees, which will only further boost my #1 rating in manufacturing.

[Shoot the Moon]

So, when I got the turn, this was what was in Sun Ra God:



Well, I had previously gotten 4 galleons worth of rifles in position to move here:



After bombarding with two frigates, I attacked. I wound up losing two rifles (slightly lucky there, of the six sims I ran, that only happened once. That being said, I also never came close to not capturing the city, and losing one or two more rifles isn't a huge deal). Anyway, here is what was in the city:



I razed it. Here are the new demogs after that nice city raze:



For comparison, Inca's previous demogs (I went back and reloaded the start of the turn having forgot to check before I kindly razed their city):

GNP 1158 (so only a 33 decrease, rather small)
MFG: 290 (so an 11% decrease, quite significant)
Crop Yield: 410 (so a 7.5% decrease, although crop yield is a more important statistic as it refers to growth potential).

I'd say a trade of two rifles for that city's garrison (which included threee frigates and two tiremes in the city for some reason If those had been 1SE, I couldn't have attacked) was a pretty decent deal. Next turn I'll send the rifles/galleons back to my island city to heal up/switch out some rifles. I'll then probably look to repeat the trick on a Maya island city to the West (will be scouting it out next turn to see if that is a possibility or not). I don't expect it to work on Inca again until at least Marines, as Inca now has railroads and can thus get out machine guns in vulnerable cities.

At the end of my turn, I had another GP born in my capital...as another GS I'll probably burn him on a bulb (into physics) as it would take 40 turns for an academy in Calcutta to get out the same number of beakers, which just is too long at this stage in the game for something to pay back. So for now, my tech path will be Biology, Physics, and then ????. I am considering going after democracy for SoL, but am also considering combustion to really own the seas or artillery to potentially go after Maya. In part it will depend on where Inca goes next, which I will see next turn. If it is combustion, I'll probably be forced to follow suit (and perhaps ditto with artillery).

Also, I don't think I mentioned it last turn, but losing monasteries with Sci Meth really hurt me. I lost 100 beakers at 100% research, 30 or so gold/turn, and hammers. Quite annoying.

[Shoot the Moon]

So warrior knight decided to research combustion. Looks like I will have to follow suit after I finish of biology. Poor Maya, I already have every single seafood of his blockaded and then once combustion comes into play on the seas between myself and Inca, I will just move all of my frigates there over to the Mayan seas. Blockade, what a broken feature (I *almost* feel bad about using it actually. Almost.)

What I really need to make sure of though is that whenever Mayan lands start falling (and considering Maya is only now researching printing press they will fall eventually) that I get my fair share of them. If Inca captures the majority of Mayan lands that would be game over.