[SPOILERS]Novice, Spacemanmf and Athlete4life10 are HUYANA CAPAC OF CHINA

[spacemanmf]

The big doubt in all of this (in my mind) is whether we can take that square culturally.

My crude maths a few pages ago showed that we might be 500 or so behind in culture, and that a culture bomb would get us a little over 400. Because into the 80% culture realm, the second culture bomb would get us a bit more. So maybe 850 or so in total.

That *should* be enough. I guess we've got to try it, right?

If it's not then we build culture in BS and SL until we do take it! Actually, maybe we should do that in BS next turn - I think any extra culture will go straight onto that square. Every little helps.

[NobleHelium]

If it works, it definitely gets major cool points.

[spacemanmf]

If it works, it definitely gets major cool points.

Ooh ooh, what can I spend those on?

Some further thoughts, although it's been slightly affected by Pegasus taking the reins back over again (good timing, hopefully!).

If Pegasus gets a whiff of our plan, he may retreat the HAs, which would be annoying.

He may choose to sever the road to Britannia, so we should move some combat workers in the vicinity.

The muskets are currently unpromoted - it would be nice it could stay that way.

[spacemanmf]

Gonna crack open the save.

Ok, TT has countered with Open Borders plus we give him sugar, clams and crabs for free... I will decline for now and not move anything in the save.

Pegasus now has 6 knights in that stack plus 1200 in gold. Damn iron. Maybe we should go for that city after all. We can have two cavs, a rifle, a mace and a musket in position to attack next turn. The cavalry, without any decent promotions, get roughly 30% win / 20% retreat odds on the heavily promoted musket. We can promote one to pinch, and one to pinch or flanking II. I don't think we should wait for the other cavalry - they are needed at home.

I guess the problem is that he upgrades as many as possible the turn before we attack.

And the muskets have been promoted. Boo.

[SevenSpirits]

So out of curiosity I looked into the "spread culture" espionage mission. It actually uses basically the same code as great works: you're doing a mini-great-work in someone else's city.

The magnitude of the great work is 5% of the total city culture (not the tile culture, just the city culture). In your save, the great work is for 34c.

Performing the mission will do two things, like a great work:
1) Add 34 culture to the city. (Which means that when you capture it, it will already be at the second culture level. Though it will still be in revolt of course!)
2) Do 20 rounds of tile-culture adding. The first 9 turns, zero tile culture will be added, as the city culture is only increasing by 1 each turn. Then the city will have 10 culture and pop its borders so to speak. For each of the next 11 turns, you'll get 20 culture in the city's first ring (and its own tile).

So the upshot is that this mission is worth 220 culture in the tile you care about. If your math from before is right (there's about a 500 culture deficit on the tile, and an artist will give 400 (which looks right to me) then this might be a much cheaper way to tip the scales than blowing the second artist, if you end up having the spy to spare. And also, good to know for future reference, perhaps.

[spacemanmf]

Excellent research work, SS. Cheers.

So this was The Turn Before The Big Turn (Probably).

Suspense is in order, however, so here is the scene from the ad hoc-TT battlefront. It looks like TT will take (and presumably raze) another ad hoc city (he has a few axes and mace or two in that stack).



And this is Ruff's newly acquired land, with large cities and no culture. Bah. Novice alluded to the relative ease in which he has taken these cities in a comment to Ruff.



Down south, I moved in with our caravels. We had 6 vs 6 triremes, with odds between 75% and 80%.

C1 vs C2 - flawless win!
C1 vs C1 - win but red-lined
C1 vs C1 - win

And then three more wins! Six out of six! Go me!



There's too much in Liberty, but only an archer in Goodison Park. Now we have nothing in those galleys (damn!) but Pegasus doesn't know that. They have been AWOL for long enough to fill up. Peg's galley must hide in Liberty otherwise we would take it out. Next we can move 2NW.



Here is the battle report screen. All green. Lovely.

[novice]

Six out of six! Go me!

Excellent. Don't spend all our luck in one place, though!

[spacemanmf]

In the NW, novice's carefully-placed worker arrangement roaded up to the border of Uruk, and I plonked the following units on the forested hill, with a cavalry left on the wheat, hiding two workers (and a rifle covering two workers on the plains forest).



Here is the (case for the) defence:



Right, I'm too lazy to do some fancy cutting and pasting, so here is the main battlefront in multiple shots.

1SW of Speed Limit. In range of HAs if we control the key square.



In Britannia.



1SW of Britannia.



In Speed Limit.



1SE of Speed Limit.



Plus we have two cavalry and two cats 2NE of Speed Limit (abandoned attempt at going north), a cavalry in Speed Limit, and the odd rifle desperately trying to get to the front in time.

Also, Pegasus has 6 knights to the west, plus 29 cats and a travelling musket.

[spacemanmf]

Excellent. Don't spend all our luck in one place, though!

Yeah, I did think about that. I expect you can do the next turn anyway... =)

Well, I'm off tomorrow so we can do it in by committee...

[spacemanmf]

And finally some advisor screens. Our mighty army.





Tech & cash situation.



F1 screen.





(I changed Speed Limit to a 5-turn cavalry in the end since we only got 10 or so culture from building culture.)

We can take a piccie of the power graph next turn. Needless to say it is going up and up. I think we might be on 1.6m power, vs 1.0m for Pegasus. MFG is quite even between us and Ruff, although he has newly captured cities and a golden age.

And that is all.