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

[Ceiliazul]

if you play first this turn, then playing first next turn is not a double move. my $.02, ymmv, dont be a jerk.

[Old Harry]

I just hope he settles Z this turn and doesn't give me the option to be/not be a jerk...

[Fintourist]

2. We bombard his walls to 15%, he sits tight, we bombard to 0% with two cats then attack with seven cats then attack with knights killing 15 longbows and losing 5 knights

This sounds a bit like we are forgetting that suttree has walls in Madrid. So cats do only - 4 %.

Dogs work better on ice. What's the history between the two countries?

If you mean ice hockey history instead of "real history": We have won Sweden twice in World Championship final ('95 & '11) and there are couple of other juicy wins. However, there are unfortunately way more painful losses including today and Olympic final in 2006 Today Sweden deserved its win, but from Finnish perspective the game was also winnable..


Back to the game: If you think that 50 gold cuir upgrade gives us a reasonable chance to lose 1 less unit then go for it. About upgrading: We should consider at some point simply mass-upgrading our obsolete stuff instead of wasting commerce for techs that don't bring us anything in this game anymore. The time for that is probably not yet as we are still dreaming of Steel/Astronomy/Rifling/etc.

[Old Harry]

This sounds a bit like we are forgetting that suttree has walls in Madrid. So cats do only - 4 %.

Should have mentioned that two or three of our cats have 5XP, so they could get accuracy, meaning 2*8 + 7*4 = 44 then 2*8 = 16.

Question is: can we afford to lose a bunch of catapults if Mack is going to attack again in 9 turns? Gaining Madrid and the other cities is pretty useful for us long-term, but I dunno how long-term we can think.

I watched most of the game but had no idea what was going on, so I'll take your word for it that Sweden deserved it...

[Fintourist]

Should have mentioned that two or three of our cats have 5XP, so they could get accuracy, meaning 2*8 + 7*4 = 44 then 2*8 = 16.

Excellent I just enjoy acting as a Captain Obvious and making sure that you don't forget something simple.

Question is: can we afford to lose a bunch of catapults if Mack is going to attack again in 9 turns? Gaining Madrid and the other cities is pretty useful for us long-term, but I dunno how long-term we can think.

Good question, as is can we afford to lose any units at all.. König is pumping replacement cats and I assume we are building some in other cities too. If we want to wipe out a theoretical mack stack consisting of rifles,grens,cannons,knights we indeed need a lot of cats. Full health janissaries are already annoying for cuirs and full health rifles will absolutely murder them --> we don't get a chance to flank cannons if we can't weaken top defenders.

[Qgqqqqq]

I think that moving before him to gain an advantage is against the spirit of the rule (because it can be seen as a part of the previous struggle).

[Old Harry]

Much as I wish I didn't I think I agree with you Q. I was just hoping for someone to tell me not to be so fussy...

[Old Harry]

Mackoti had a score increase, which might make the settling double-move question moot, so I logged in to check. To be greeted by this odd offer. I declined, then re-offered the same, but I'm not sure what it is that I've offered... I also (separately) asked him for clam, crab and fish, just to let him know I'm not happy about losing all of those to his boats.


Interestingly Mackoti declared on dtay and his frigates are heading for dtay's seafood... His privateer is in our waters though, interdicting a Moai tile, and threatening our repaired fishing nets next turn.


But the most important question? Where did that new city go? Well he placed it on the ruins of Barcelona. I hadn't even thought about that. I suppose a 3-food city tile is pretty good, but it just doesn't live up to having the 5-food tile does it? If I'm right it's also going to be forever before he takes the highlighted cow tile (unless he bombs one of the cities) which means both these cities are very vulnerable to us...


Anyway what do we do with our settler now? We have five possibilities that I can see.
1. On a hill this city gives Cannae and Gallipoli some cover but will never get second ring borders to make it safe from 2-movers
2. Will immediately claim back the tiles that we have cultural majority on (with the red circles) and could get the orange one back too. However it's on flat ground and Eridu is pretty hot on culture so it may not be that great a site. There is a decent chunk of commerce in those dyes though. My second favourite, although it precludes:
3. This hill takes back a lot more of our salient into Mack's interior, I think we could save this spot for later, when a road on the hill might allow us to settle and advance on Ur all in one turn (say, for instance we put a stack of 2 movers NW of Stalingrad, they could be razing Ur the next turn). If his privateer sticks around I want to do something like this sooner rather than later...
4. My favourite at the moment - it gives Quantrill cover, is on a hill and can share some workshops with Quantrill, the only food is the banana it also shares with Q though, so it's not perfect
5. If we take Madrid we could put a city on this island to use the clams

We need to decide which one pretty tonight - the settler is available next turn...

[Old Harry]

Turn 184

Mackoti offers a defensive pact. I don't really understand the mechanics of this so I turned it down - I assume it means if one of us is attacked the other declares too, but there is nothing stopping us attacking each other? He accepted gifting fish, clam and crab to us last turn. If Mack has decided that we're too difficult to deal with what should we do next? Eat Suttree and concentrate on economy? Just assume Mack will come back at us eventually anyway? Get ready for a pre-emptive strike on Barca and Stalingrad? Look towards Ichabod?


Over in WilliamLP-Ichabod land William has over 20 cats stationed ready for action. I don't think Ichabod is going to make a lot of progress here, but if he tries that could be good for us...


Next building in Agincourt: Customs house makes 5-7 commerce extra = 8-11 beakers/gold after multipliers, while Market/Grocer makes 11 extra gold at breakeven. I think the latter is going to be more useful until we have corporation, which won't be for at least fifteen turns. Any thoughts?


Next building in Jamestown - I think we want another Cuir this turn for the Suttree assault, then we can spend five turns building West Point to pump out 10xp units... In fact I think we need to switch to Org Rel for the next five turns to build universities and banks everywhere then we can switch back to building units everywhere under vassalage and slavery.

Finally, attacking Suttree - he's moved his stack over here as though he knows what is coming... Something I thought about this morning is that the cats might have XP and get barrage, so I tested every cat having it against our stack and it doesn't really help him . So do we just move everything in?


My biggest worry is that Mack will snipe Maximin and Toledo while we face the cat stack... Scouting worker doesn't find much to confirm or deny that theory. Seven cannons, a grenadier, a pike and two knights around here aren't a naval invasion force, but there could be units on the galleons.


With that in mind, and the movement of the cat stack, we could move our 2-mover stack to the stage tile this turn, then B1 next turn and take Maximin (four spears) the turn after. That doesn't help all that much because then we don't have an angle to hit Madrid.


I'm going to think about this for a little bit and hope Sut doesn't log in in the mean time. Feedback would be appreciated.

[BaII]

I know that a defensive pact is broken if you go and declare war on someone else, I have no idea how it would otherwise work.