Turn Tracking Thread

[Sullla]

Turn 145 - 700AD

Another quiet turn. We continue to make preparations for war, due now in 5 more turns.

We lost about a full day's worth of playtime yesterday back of Caledorn's latest hosting issues. The game was finally reloaded today, and it was possible to log into the game again. (It was Paused when I logged in; I unpaused it. With 35 hours on the clock, there was no reason to keep it Paused any longer.) This is what we saw before the reload:



The Germans double-moved a chariot across the turn timer window, moving 7 tiles into our territory. Their unit gained visibility on all of the white dot units, roughly half of our total attack force. Fortunately we had split up our main attack force last turn into three different chunks, this looked a lot less antagonistic. I asked everyone where to move in response, and we came up with this:



I moved the group of units southeast of the rice SE-SE to sit two tiles north of the capital, and the stack on that tile down into the capital itself. This will move them out of the sight range of the German chariot, and I'm hoping that their unit will be pulled down toward the capital to track their movement. We'll also move the stack two north of the capital down into the capital next turn. That should suggest to them that we're not moving these units towards their borders. (We can have all these units in the capital at the start of Turn 147 and still make it to the designated invasion tile on time.) My hope is that the German chariot heads off to the east after it sees our units moving south. Hopefully.

The other third of our main stack has moved to the tile south of Frozen Jungle. The hope is that this will remain out of sight of the German chariot. We'll see, it depends on where they choose to go with that unit. If we can buy even another 2-3 turns of surprise with the Germans, it will be worth it. They haven't been doing much of anything to increase their power rating, and time is rapidly running out for them to do that.

Two city management notes here. First, Brick By Brick is running Wealth this turn because it has 20 production overflow from the last build + chop, and we want to put that into a knight. We'll build a horse archer next turn, which will get auto-upgraded into a knight. (Plus, we need about one turn's worth of Wealth build somewhere to get Guilds next turn, and this lines up nicely.) We were trying to do the same thing at Horse Feathers, with the idea of building two catapults and stacking up production overflow to get a knight (from horse archer auto-upgrade) at the end of turn 146. However, someone changed the catapult build in this city to a war elephant at the end of last turn, which has now messed up that overflow chain. Please do not change builds or tile assignments when logging into the game. Now I'm going to have to build a war chariot this turn to stack up the necessary overflow into a knight, and we're going to end up with war chariot + elephant instead of two catapults. The cats would have been more useful.



Here is the actual German border region. They have founded two new cities in the last two turns, the visible one (on the spot where we were planning to put a city ourselves) and another unrevealed city in the west. I will try to get vision over there with a chariot before we invade. We are going to have to raze Wolfratshausen and the other German city so that we can refound our own city on the tile south of the spices. The new city will almost certainly autoraze when we capture it anyway. We hope to be able to capture Wipperfuerth intact and save ourselves a settler there.

On our own side of the border, I have been methodically clearing out the jungle on all tiles south of the peaks. See that horizontal row of tiles north of Ditchdigger / Frozen Jungle / Tree Huggers? That will all be de-jungled by the time the war starts, forcing any invasion of these cities to walk onto flat ground to attack. I have NOT cleared out the jungle on the horizontal row north of that, because those jungle tiles block all vision from the German culture. We're going to road the tile two north of Frozen Jungle, and that will be it. Everything else left as jungle for the moment to continue to block their vision.

Note finally that Frozen Jungle hit size 6 for the first time this turn and was drafted for another mace.



Here's the east. There's not too much going on over here this turn; we finished a forest chop at The Covenant which completed its library. Time to whip a forge there soonish. I'm quietly putting down a road here and there near the German border at Simple Life for movement purposes later on. We shouldn't need that, but you never know.



This is the south of our territory, starting to develop nicely. A forest chop finished the lighthouse at Catherine; the final plains forest will get chopped there next for a work boat and overflow into a theatre. Workers are in the process of roading down to that new city at the southeast deer/crabs pairing. We have two missionaries finishing next turn, one going to French Riviera (our only city at the moment without religion) and one going to the new city in the tundra. French Riviera is planned to grow another turn or two, then swap to settler and triple whip it for a location down in the polar islands to claim silver.



Here's a view of the polar region in the extreme south. Settler founds the deer/crab city next turn, and it will eventually be a pretty strong fishing village. Slow starter though. I would suggest we put our next city directly on the western silver, the one next to the two lake tiles. It's absolutely awful, but we are going to need the happiness from the silver when we hit war weariness from the German war. And strategically, that location actually does control the entrance to our southern territory by sea, making it not completely wasted. We'll plant for the crabs/marble over further to the east a little later. Great Lighthouse makes all of these locations fairly viable.



Quick picture of the religious situation. As I said, French Riviera is the only city without religion, and we've got two missionaries about to finish for this spot and the new crabs/deer spot. Any suggested names for the new city to be founded next turn?

Overview:

We have a huge amount of overflow from Feudalism tech, and that will allow us to research Guilds at the end of next turn (eot 146). We did get a major assist from Apolyton and CFC, who both finished Feudalism/Guilds right as we turned on 100% research into both techs. That meant another 6% bonus beakers into both techs, which is fairly noticeable when you're researching 3000 beakers (roughly 180 free beakers). Both CFC and Apolyton literally got Guilds this turn - as I said, the timing was outstanding for us.

UniversCiv also discovered Alphabet tech this turn, allowing us to see all of their technologies. They are up Alphabet on us, and are missing Polytheism, Aesthetics/Lit/Drama, Horseback Riding, Construction, Feudalism, Machinery, Philosophy, Nationalism, and Liberalism. Somewhat surprisingly, they do have Education tech, which they have beelined by ignoring everything on the Aesthetics line and pretty much every military tech. Based on their tech choices, they do not appear likely to declare war on anyone right now.



Demos look strong at the moment. CivFr is finally out of their Golden Age, which means that two teams are running a lot of production right now. I'm pretty happy with our GNP at 100% rate here; Apolyton is the team with that 900 number, from their Oxford/Academy capital combination. We continue to creep out to an ever-higher military lead, and the #2 team in Power is WPC. Good stuff.

We have bar graphs with CFC, CivFr, Germans, WPC, and Spanish. We probably will not be getting graphs on UniversCiv, Apolyton, or CivPlayers any time soon. I'm spending EP on UniversCiv at the moment as they are the only ones we have any kind of chance of getting the graphs with. We also have yet another passively aggressive message from CFC to deal with, so feel free to go have your say in the diplo thread.

There's basically nothing else to do on this turn, but let me know if I've missed something so that we can end turn.

[Sullla]

Turn 146 - 720AD

We don't have all that much to do in terms of city micro this turn. However, we have some work ahead of us in the larger strategic and geopolitical context of this game. Prepare for more diplomacy.



The real news from this turn (or technically the very end of last turn) comes from CivFanatics. Their team was clearly holding the turn until they were the last ones to play, which is why I logged into the game and ended our turn, at which time they quadruple revolted into Police State / Nationhood / Slavery / Organized Religion. They then proceeded to whip and draft away 17 population (3 single pop hits, probably maceman drafts, and 7 double pop whips). They then immediately whipped another 7 population away this turn: two double and one triple whip. Obviously these whips are going into knights, and indeed we can even see one knight in the CFC border city near Starfall. The result has been a huge jump upwards in CFC power, along with a drastic fall of their economy. (CFC's economy is strongly tied to working Representation scientists and relying on their Bureacademy size 17 capital.) The writing is therefore on the wall: CFC plans to go to war soon.

I posted the zoomed out map above to show their prospects for war. They are locked into peace with our team by virtue of that Turn 175 NAP we prudently signed much earlier. CFC doesn't share much of a border with WPC or UniversCiv, and is separated from them by a jungle belt. They could be the targets, but are somewhat unlikely. The overwhelmingly most likely subject for an attack is the Spanish, a weak team to the east with whom CFC already has a prior history of fighting. Left alone, the Spanish will almost certainly crumble immediately. The question for us is how to play this situation.

We've had a suggestion to trade our ivory to the Spanish in exchange for their dyes. This would allow them to train war elephants, the one unit that would do a decent job of countering CFC's knights. Of course, we would no longer be able to train elephants ourselves, but we're building knights anyway. The other major downside is that CFC would surely notice our ivory trade and become an enemy down the road... but we may already be in that situation anyways. In any case, it's something we need to discuss, and I'll bring it up in the diplo thread after posting this.

Here are the main diplo objectives I'd like us to work on:

* Contact WPC again, ask them if they have a NAP with CFC, tell them we want our teams to declare in the second half of the timer (after Germans) on Turn 150.

* Contact UniversCiv, poke them about the CFC massive knight fest, ask them if they have an NAP with CivFanatics. Give them a warning of some kind.

* Contact the Spanish, ask about their NAP situation with CFC, ask if they have Horseback Riding tech (we know that they have Construction), offer the proposed ivory for dyes trade.

That's a lot of stuff to do, so we should get moving. Please put any diplo debate and discussion over in that thread for sake of clarity.



There were also three Great People births at the start of this turn. One was a Great Scientist for WPC (not important). One was a Great Engineer in the fog, which could steal a wonder later on. I have no idea what team produced that Engineer; Apolyton, maybe? The last Great Person was a Scientist birthed in the German capital... and which has already been used on an Academy at the start of this turn. What a nice present! Thanks, you guys, we didn't know that you cared.

If the German war goes well, Webringen could potentially be the best place to put Oxford University down the road, since it has that Academy. Probably not, but maybe.



Here is our core of cities again. I did forget to swap Horse Feathers over to a war chariot at the end of last turn, and we ended up building a catapult instead. This means that we can't overflow into and finish a knight at the end of this turn turn, which means that the best course of action is to finish a catapult this turn (eot 146) and then we can finish a 1t knight next turn (eot 147). I apologize for the goofup, but it's not too bad since we did need some extra catapults. Brick By Brick is on a horse archer build which will auto upgrade to a knight.

Gourmet Menu and Mansa's Muse are finally about to finish their economic builds; we will probably go for a university in the former and a grocer (shrine city) in the latter. We are also about ready to begin the second round of drafting across our cities, since we began on Turn 137 and it's now Turn 146. I'm keep an eye on this and we will definitely draft the full five units next turn. Here's a city that we can draft this turn:



Focal Point is about to grow onto an unimproved tile (there are workers about to farm the plains tile southwest of the city, but it won't be done in time for next turn) and has a lot of happiness to spare. We can draft the city this turn, then draft it again in 3-4 turns when the first draft penalty wears off. Focal Point is just building 3t catapults endlessly at the moment. Wanted to get approval before drafting, but this one does seem pretty straightforward.



On the northern border, we continue to clear out jungle tiles and road important locations. For example, two workers roaded the tile three east of Wasserburg this turn. There's also a worker roading the jungle hill north of the gems, and a worker roading the tile southwest of their rice near Wipperfuerth. The Germans also have a whole bunch of workers improving tiles along the border, so hopefully this looks fairly innocuous.

In micro notes here, we can draft Ditchdigger again a second time next turn, and we'll be able to double draft Frozen Jungle as well either next turn (T147) or the turn after that (T148). I plan to start a settler in Ditchdigger and triple whip it after it regrows back to size 6 following the draft. That should be roughly T149 or T150, right on time to plant the replacement city for Wolfratshausen. I also intend to send a war chariot to scout out that one missing German city at the end of T147 and the beginning of T148. I'd feel bad about double-moving them across the turn timer to scout, except that they did exactly the same to us with their own scouting chariot. Fair's fair.



The east is fairly quiet as usual, although a number of these cities are getting close to more whips and drafts. Tree Huggers will be very well set up to 3 pop whip its market next turn; I will post a picture next turn and we can discuss it. Simple Life and Cutting Edge will be whipping their respective forges in the next few turns, both are at the happy cap currently. We'll also be getting draftees out of most of these cities in the next couple of turns as well. (I plan to keep a few maces in Simple Life for safety's sake just in case the Germans would move an army down from Wismar. I actually hope that they do that, as it would be easy to kill them in our borders.)

Eastern Dealers also finally has enough happiness to grow to size 11, although we will then immediately draft away that pop point next turn, as the initial draft penalty will wear off. Heh. Poor city! Off screen, Starfall double whipped another catapult with the overflow going into Globe Theatre. It finishes the wonder in just five more turns. We actually have 5 whip penalties stacked up there, which won't matter in a couple more turns.



And the south, where we founded Winter Wasteland as our 20th city this turn. The workers are building a road over there, a missionary is en route, and a work boat is under construction in Catherine for the crabs. In the immediate future, poor WW has the choice of working the 2/0 deer, the 1/1 tundra forest, or the 1/0/3 coastal tile. I picked the deer as the best of terrible options, let me know if you guys prefer the coastal tile instead.

Let It Snow will finish its lighthouse at the end of this turn, and is quietly becoming a pretty decent city. The two workers are going to farm the tile south of the wheat (we need it to hit +6 food surplus) and then cottage the remaining grassland tiles. We'll never get much above size 10 here, but it's a great location to pull in some extra commerce and draft regularly. I hope that Catherine can fulfill a similar function eventually, despite being weaker. French Riviera is going to start a settler and then triple whip it for one of the silver spots in the extreme polar south. We're going to need that silver for happiness...

Overview:

We can finish Guilds research at 50% science, and that seems like the best course for this turn. We cannot finish at 40% science, and I see no reason to run at an odd percentage like 70% (our best sustainable rate this turn). The next tech to research is Engineering; this is not really debatable, as we need the bonus road movement to conduct a successful war. Units take way too long to reach the front lines otherwise. After that, we can discuss between Gunpowder, Banking, and Alphabet/Printing Press.

I have not moved any of our military units yet; I'm waiting for the Apolyton and German chariots to move first and see where they go.



Demos reflect the large lead in Food that we opened up again after CFC's whipping spree. It also shows their dramatic increase in Power; they are up about 80k Power from last turn. I'm a bit surprised that they didn't draft more, given the amazing conversion rate on drafting (as little as 15 food for 70 shield maces). So far, they have mostly whipped out knights, which is obviously a solid play in its own right. Just somewhat surprised that if they were going for Nationhood that they didn't use it more. Our GNP at max science was 660 for the curious. We are definitely not first in research power (that is Apolyton), but not too far behind. In the long run, Apolyton cannot compete with our vast edge in pop and land unless they acquire more territory themselves.

Speaking of Power, here's the bar graphs for this turn:



CFC's whips and drafts will not show up until next turn, of course. I think there are two main points of interest here. First, the German team's power has been completely flat. They don't seem to have any idea whatsoever that we are going to attack them - they have not reacted at all to our huge surge in power. Perhaps they think that we are about to fight CFC? It would be a logical assumption based on how our teams have been acting. Secondly, note that the Spanish have also been flat in Power rating as well, and that's a real problem. They are the lowest on this graph. We need to get in touch with them immediately, so let's get on that and try to get them ivory for their elephants. That needs to happen before the end of this current turn.

Let's get over to the diplo thread and get to work.

[Sullla]

Turn 147 - 740AD

We're getting very close to the invasion date now, and tactical moves are starting to come into play. I've got some ideas on that, let me run them by everyone.



I moved the scouting chariot in search of the German army, and found them in the center of their territory. This main force has 7 axes, 4 chariots, 4 catapults, and 1 spear. Like most inexperienced MP teams, they have failed to build enough spears and will be extremely easy prey for knights. The Germans are shifting their forces south, but I still think that this group is just not that scary. If we can't defeat an army full of axes and chariots with maces and knights, I'll resign my position in shame.

I would crop out the margins of that screenshot and send it over to WPC. Let them know that the main German army has moved south and away from their border. If their team can somehow capture the German cities that they asked for, I'm actually OK with giving them over to WPC. We shall see, they appear to be pretty confident. I still plan to move this particular chariot over to WPC to shadow their army next turn, that info will be highly useful to us.



Now let's start talking tactics. Here is the northwest front, where the Germans have placed a second axe (Woodsman II) inside their border city of Wolfratshausen. We currently have a mace, a war elephant, and a war chariot assigned to this area. We will be drafting Ditchdigger and Brick this turn, and we'll get a knight out of Brick as well in time to fight, which means the total force for this area will be 3 maces, 1 knight, 1 elephant, and 1 chariot. That feels like enough to me - do we want to shift any more units over here? This is the last turn to do so. Let me know if you want another mace over here. My thought was that we had about what we need with the upcoming drafts.

I plan to double-move the war chariot at the end of this current turn and the beginning of the next turn (T147/148) to get visibility on the missing German city to the north. We can then move the chariot back into staging position on T149, ready to go on T150. And that is not the last turn roll shenanigans I have planned here...



Here is the stack posted to the south of Frozen Jungle. We've got 5 maces, 3 elephants, and 3 catapults hanging out together. The Germans have never directly seen these units; Apolyton has though, and I wonder if they communicated them to the Germans (?) Hard to say. We'll keep these guys out of view of the German chariot, in any case.

This is where we get reinforcements for the Ditchdigger front, if you guys want to shift another unit or two over there. (Again, don't think that will likely be necessary.) I plan to move these units a tile southwest this turn, where they will be out of vision of pretty much everything. Then we move them at the very end of T148 and the very beginning of T149 onto the staging tile indicated, where they'll be able to hit Wasserburg and move on Worms at the start of the conflict. It's a scumbag move for sure, but there's nothing in the rules preventing it, and it will help keep these units hidden until it's too late to do anything about them.



This is the main stack sitting in the capital right now, where we do something very similar. Here we have 9 maces, 4 cats, and an elephant and some war chariots (more coming up from the south). I plan to keep them in place right now, and at the very end of the turn move them along the white arrows, to the tile two north of the capital. At the start of T148, the German chariot sees them and says, "hey, they moved north. I'm going to stay here and watch where they move." Then we scumbag the Germans again by double moving at the end of T149 and the beginning of T149 along the yellow path. This links us up with the western group and we're ready to go on the staging tile as planned. The German chariot will have no idea where we've gone, and if it's still sitting on the unroaded plains hill tile, it cannot get vision on our stack on T149. If it moves N-NW-NW, for example, that tile does not grant vision on the stack. Of course they could see it on T150, but by then it's too late to matter. Basically, we play some games with the clock and see if we can fool them for a turn or two. Even one turn of stalling could help us out a lot.



Minor city micro note: We have a perfect 3 pop whip of Tree Huggers this turn. I'm assuming that we will take this. Let me know if this is not OK.



This is the northeastern front, where the Germans have moved a Sentry chariot up to the border. I'm assuming that they will try to spot anything incoming from this direction... which is fine because we don't really have anything attacking this way. I actually hope that they pull their army over here, where they have a terrible road network, in the thought that they might be able to capture something from us. That's unlikely, but possible.

Anyway, we have one axe in Simple Life and one mace in The Covenant, and that's basically it. (I wanted to swap their positions, but that would make both cities unhappy from lack of military police. We can do it once we have Engineering and the extra road movement.) It looks like we're pretty wide open here. However, that's where the fun of Nationhood civic comes in. The first round of drafting is over, and the second round is underway. We will draft Forbidden Fruit and Eastern Dealers this turn (both having been drafted exactly 10t ago), and then we'll draft Simple Life next turn (ditto). Cutting Edge also has another draft incoming any turn now. I plan to move these maces up to Simple Life and hold position there, just in case any attack would be incoming. I also plan to move the two maces southeast of Tree Huggers into Cutting Edge, where they will play defense for the moment. That gives us 7 maces available for this region, and if we see that the Germans are not attacking or desperately defending elsewhere, then of course we'll shift most of these units over to the main attack group. In the meantime though, better safe than sorry, and the ~20 maces we have with the main group should be plenty for the initial attack.



Another micro note: we're planning to whip Cutting Edge's forge this turn. It has almost no overflow at all, which I believe we agreed was optimal for forge whips. We'll also be drafting as soon as it hits size 6 again, probably in one or two more turns.



Down in the south, I have French Riviera on a settler, which we can triple whip to completion next turn. The idea is to go grab one of the silver locations:



As I said previously, the first settler should go directly on top of the westernmost silver resource. Although we do want to plant at the crabs/marble spot in the east, that has silver in the third ring, and it will take a long time to get going. I'm pretty sure that we're going to need the extra silver happiness during the German war, and that means planting immediately on top of a silver resource. It's a really crummy city, yeah, but we do have Great Lighthouse, and it's worthwhile for a critical resource.

Since every single silver has been carefully placed to avoid having a food bonus in range, I will eat my hat if one shows up on the few unrevealed tiles down here.

Overview:

Engineering tech should take us 6 turns in total, after running 3t of 100% gold and then 3t of 100% science. I looked to see if we could squeeze it out in 5t with some odd slider math, and that does not seem possible. Six turns it is. Our currently science rate is fairly average, largely due to our massive size and army costs. Of course, every other stat in the Demos looks like this:



I'll take an average-ish GNP in exchange for kicking some ass at everything else. One thing we've seen in these games is that you can always improve your economy over time. Land >>> high midgame GNP. That was one of the major lessons I tried to learn from the Pitboss #6 game, where oledavy's team outperformed my team in the post-Communism era for precisely that reason.



I showed the Power graph last turn, here's the GNP version of the same chart. This is noteworthy for the decimation of CFC's science rate when they swapped into Police State from Representation. It also shows a big spike upwards on the German graphs earlier when they were researching; they have turned research back on again and gotten a similar spike, very likely for Monarchy tech. (They do not have that tech yet; they are not in Hereditary Rule and they do not have their wines connected.) We have to hope that it takes them a while longer to reach Feudalism tech. If it takes them 10t, then we're in pretty good shape. If it takes them 5t, then we're in for some trouble. We definitely must attack on Turn 150, we can't wait any longer. Just keep your fingers crossed for a delayed Feudalism and delayed longbows.

Fire away with thoughts and questions.

[Sullla]

Turn 148 - 760AD

All attention is now focused on the German war as we count down the last few turns.



This picture is technically from the previous turn; we were the last to play, and I snuck a chariot up here to get city visibility. Our hope is to raze Wolfratshausen on the first turn of the war, and then hit this city with knights on the second turn. We'll see what the Germans do, but they probably think that this city is fairly safe. It will not have time to expand borders before we send in the attack.

This chariot moved again immediately at the start of T148, and is sitting inside Wolfratshausen. With luck, they won't spot the chariot at all. Either way, it will move back onto the staging tile north of Ditchdigger on T149, ready to move and attack on T150.



Our other exploring chariot spotted the main German army, which has already moved at the start of this current turn. It was two east of Webringen last turn, and moved SW-SW onto the current tile. Note that there are a few more stragglers located on the same tile as our war chariot; this army group has a total of 10 axes, 6 cats, 4 chariots, and 2 spears. It's a lot of units, although all of them fairly outdated.

My best guess is that these units are moving into Wasserburg. They can get in there on Turn 150, but won't have a chance to fortify and stack up the extra defensive bonus. I am actually hoping that they try to use this army at Wasserburg; we'd have a huge battle and clean up their field force right away. Then we could fork cities with knights to our heart's content. If the Germans are smart, they will give up Wasserburg (which is indefensible) and stall for time with this group of units.

I've only used one movement point on this chariot; I'll use the remaining 3 this turn and 4 next turn to scoot this unit into WPC territory. I think we come up one tile short, but the war declaration will teleport our chariot into WPC borders. Feel free to crop this picture and pass it on to WPC. We've completely drawn out the German field army, which means that the invasion route is totally open for them. (Lucky bastards.)



Staging area, northwest front. The units inside Ditchdigger will move one tile north next turn (T149), ready to move out on T150. This current highlighted stack will move NE-NE at the end of this turn (east of Frozen Jungle) and be ready to move onto the staging tile on T149. From there we can threaten Wasserburg or Worms, depending on how the Germans defend.

The worker two tiles north of Frozen Jungle will finish the road on the jungle this turn; I'm going to do that at the end of turn and move again at the start of T149. If we're lucky, the new road will slip the notice of the German team. There is a Woodsman II axe located 3 south of Wipperfuerth. Keep the fingers crossed that they'll leave the city totally defenseless, and we can walk in and auto-raze the sucker. (It's not worth the risk of waiting for the city to hit size 2. We can always get another settler out for that same spot, and our goal is to eliminate the Germans as fast as possible.)



Staging area, main northern front. We moved the main stack from inside the capital to two tiles north of the capital last turn. The plan is to double-move along the turn timer window in scumbag fashion onto the marked T149 staging tile. From there, we can move on Wasserburg or Worms as mentioned above.

I do not favor changing the staging tile that we picked out earlier, as it is still the only spot on the border where the Germans do not have visibility from culture. We have a decent chance to slip past the German chariot sitting on the hill north of our capital (south of the big stack here) by doing the sneaky double move, and I'm also not convinced that the other teams are sharing info the way that some people think. Apolyton's chariot has actually moved out of our territory and into German lands, while CFC's chariot is just moving around scouting out cities that they didn't reveal earlier. Meanwhile, a separate German chariot is moving around in our northeast. I think the Germans are expecting an attack, but they don't know where it's coming yet. We may as well keep our units out of their vision until the past possible moment. Besides, that T149 tile is a useful spot tactically anyway.

By my current estimate, the main stack should have 18 maces, 3 knights, 4 elephants, 3 war chariots, and 8 catapults.



Staging area, northeast front. This area is reasonably quiet and shouldn't see too much action. If for some reason the Germans are foolish enough to try and invade our territory, we will clean up their stack with ease and give them a horrible maiming of Statue of Zeus war weariness. I almost hope that they'll try. Anyway, there are two maces and an axe in Cutting Edge, and four maces and a war chariot in the Simple Life area. That should be plenty to push back against anything short of the main German army, and if that comes over here, we'll simply move our own army over to cover, and then decimate them. The German force is all one-movers, they have little pressure to fork or threaten our own cities. (Well, they have a few chariots, but that is zero threat to maces behind city defenses.) The workers are clearing out the last of the jungle tiles here just in case there would be a fight of some kind.

The cities to be drafted this turn are Gourmet Menu, Tree Huggers, Seven Tribes, Simple Life, and Frozen Jungle. They mostly all drafted 10 turns ago and have had their unhappiness penalty go away. I already drafted FJ in game (drafting off an unimproved grassland, not much to discuss there) and I drafted Tree Huggers to make the discussion of this knight whip simpler:



Here's the city post draft. We can whip the knight for 3 pop, but I would prefer to wait one turn and whip it for 2 pop next turn instead, to minimize the economic impact (we did already draft for 1 pop, remember). That would get the knight out on T150, still in time to be part of the invasion. It's the same deal at Seven Tribes and Forbidden Fruit, where if we wait a turn or two then we can 2 pop whip instead of 3 pop whip those knights. How does that sound? Or do we have to get the knights out this turn?



I'm just going to post the picture of Eastern Dealers and let everyone fight things out in the comments section, since no one ever likes my management of this city. We finished the forge at the end of last turn, and I drafted the city for a mace; I still defend the draft as being too good of a food : shields conversion not to make use of it when it's penalty-free. We need exactly 18 food to grow to size 11, so I would run the configuration seen here and then hire two Scientists after growing. I would also probably go courthouse before market here, since I think we're not going full-blown specialists until we construct both buildings, and the courthouse is cheaper and most useful economically at the moment (with city maintenance of 15 gold/turn). I personally don't think we're in a rush to get another Great Person out of this city right this moment. But go ahead and suggest away, this city's management has been a firestorm the whole game.

I'm bringing workers down to remove the jungle and farm the last two grassland tiles. We had to clear out the jungle in the north first in case the Germans would actually invade.



In the south, the plan is to triple whip French Riviera for its settler this turn, and head for the silvers location on the polar islands. (Note that we are also drafting Gourmet Menu and Seven Tribes this turn, I haven't actually popped them yet.) That leads us to this picture:



Directly on the western silver still looks like the best spot. The war chariot is poking around for any seafood down there, but don't get your hopes up.

Overview:

We will run 0% science this turn and go for 100% next turn or the turn after. That's not enough to get Engineering tech, but if we get some city capture gold, it might take us through. End of turn 151 is the optimistic projection, end of turn 152 looks more likely.

This is also the 1000th screenshot that I've uploaded to Dropbox for the Intersite game.



Demos are basically the same as usual. When we go over to 100% science, our GNP shoots up to just under 700, into 3rd place. It's the expenses that are killing our science rate, tons of cities and tons of units. Our beaker capacity is quite high.

The Germans discovered Monarchy tech this turn; we'll see if they use their Spiritual trait to pop into Hereditary Rule. They are surely going for Feudalism next, but that tech is effectively about triple the cost of Monarchy. They burned through 210 gold last turn and have 350 left remaining in the bank. Hopefully they are still a bit short of getting Feudalism, but it's hard to tell. I've been watching to see if anyone gifted them gold (the one thing that would allow them to race to the tech), and so far, that has not happened, thank goodness. If we could get even 5 more turns before they reach longbows, we should be pretty deep into their core and in the process of taking down their cities. Speed is going to be crucial in this war.

That's all for now, obviously we'll be the last to end our turn again this time, etc.

[Sullla]

Turn 149 - 780AD

War is about to be declared next turn. Our final preparations are under way.



First of all, here's our scouting war chariot about to enter WPC territory next turn. He confirmed that their eastern border is absolutely wide open; there's like one axe in each city and nothing more. Please email this over to WPC before the end of this turn; I'll post something in the diplo thread to that effect. I also offered a World Map exchange with WPC in-game, no reason for them not to have the most current info on where German stuff is located. With so much of the German army down by us, I actually think WPC will have a lot of success, and I realize that's a total reversal of what I was writing just last week. Needless to say, I was not expecting the Germans to send the house after us and leave their north/east borders completely open to attack...

Also, I do get a kick out of the name of that German axe on the hill.



We'll start by looking at the northwest frontier again, where our prospects look very strong at the moment. The Germans have prepared for the fighting by getting 3 units in the Wolfratshausen area: an axe and spear inside the city, and they rather interestingly chose to put their Woodsman II axe in the jungle to the east. Umm, ok? This should not pose much of a threat. I was more worried that they would whip walls here, as that would at least give our maces bad odds, but this makes us all but a shoo-in to take this city next turn. (The Woodsman axe outside the city... I do not get this one.)

We have a jumble of units ready to move onto the staging tile one north of Ditchdigger at the end of this turn. (Note that we're basically playing in turn order already; outside of my egregious scumbaggery of double-moving the main stack at the start of this turn, we've been playing and moving our units after the Germans for the last few turns.) The Germans do not have vision on the tile north of Ditchdigger, so hopefully this will come as a bit of a surprise. Our assorted units tally up to 4 maces, 1 elephant, 1 knight, and 2 war chariots. The hope is to use the one-movers to attack and raze Wolfratshausen, saving the three mounted units to do this:



Note that the city behind Wolfrat, the city of Wombat, is brand new and does not have cultural borders expanded. We can therefore move into the spices forest next to Wombat once the initial city's borders are down, and presumably can raze a second city on T151. I would be shocked if there is more than an axe or a quechua in there, and since we'll be playing AFTER the Germans on the turn of the initial war declaration, they won't have much of a chance to reinforce. If all goes according to plan, we'll raze these two cities on the first two turns of the war, and then immediately plant our own replacement city on the tile north of Wolfrat. Note the settler build in Ditchdigger, which we will 3 pop whip this turn.

You may also have noticed that the size 1 city of Wipperfuerth was reinforced with 3 axes this turn. That means we won't be capturing it with the Woodsman II axe, or at least not right away. I'll probably keep the Woody axe in the area just in case they all move away, and we have that avenue of attack open up. The good news is that we've drawn away 3 axes from the main stack to this strategically unimportant location. They are out of the immediate battle in the center front.



Here is that main front in picture form. We double-moved the Germans across the turn timer, and left their scouting chariot completely in the dark. It has already moved two tiles north, to the grassland hill pictured at the south of this image, and they have zero vision on the main "T149" stack. I tallied up the units on the left side of the screen for the curious, and this doesn't count any knights we whip or maces we draft this turn either.

The plan for next turn is fairly simple. We will wait until the Germans play their turn and end it. Do not move anything next turn - we have to wait until after they play to act. When we're up, we will declare war and immediately move our Sentry chariot onto the jungle hill tile north of the gems. This will reveal everything in the area (we'll even be able to see into Worms because it's on a hill!) and dictate where we move the main army. If we're really lucky, the Germans won't realize we can hit Wasserburg and the knights/war chariots can take it immediately. That's unlikely, but it is possible since they lack vision on the main stack. (The only unit they can see is the catapult northwest of Tree Huggers.)

More likely, they will pour all their units into Wasserburg. If they do that, I suggest that we move all our stuff NE-NE and prepare for a large battle. Yes, I know it's on flatground, but that's part of the idea. We want to draw them into a big battle in the field where we have the superior units. They'll get cleaned up if they try to fight us outside the city, and we want to destroy their field army ASAP, before they can tech to Feudalism. Speed is the overwhelming goal in this war. Push the action as much as possible without getting careless. Anyway, we'll see what they do and respond accordingly. It's a minor miracle that we were able to get into this position without them seeing the exact location of our main stack.



Here is the northeast on a more zoomed out view with the units labeled. Unlike the other fronts, I have not moved these units yet. That German chariot is what concerns me, or more specifically where it could teleport to when we declare war. We're fine if it goes next to Simple Life, since there's maces inside. The Covenant is also fine; we will almost certainly whip it for a knight this turn, and we can draft it at no penalty next turn. If we get a teleport down to the CFC area, it's a little more tricky. Starfall is fine, as it will finish Globe Theatre in 2t and can draft maces to defend itself. I'm slightly worried about Eastern Dealers, where we have only an axe on defense (not great against chariot attack!) and no units coming anytime soon.

My suggestion is that we move one mace down to Eastern Dealers just to be safe, and continue moving everything else towards Simple Life / Cutting Edge. One more mace up there probably won't make the difference, and we don't want to lose a city to some silly teleporting chariot. Sound OK?

One other thought: I would like to cancel Open Borders with the Germans at the very end of THIS TURN (T149). This will teleport the German chariot away, and make it impossible for it to re-enter our borders unless the Germans themselves declare war (somewhat unlikely!) It will also make it impossible for the Germans to scout out our main stack. We'll be hitting Wasserburg from the fog with them completely blind as to where our units are located, and ditto for our units on the northwest frontier. They get no chance to scout our units at the start of T150, and once we take the second half of the timer with our war declaration, they have no chance to react before we're at the gates of their cities. Isn't that a much better way to do things than the proposed "Let's be polite and email the Germans to tell them we're about to attack"?



Now we get to the stuff not directly related to the war. Here is our south, with lots of new cities still growing up to speed and a settler en route down to the silver. It can hop on the galley T151, unload T152, and plant the city on T153. I checked with our chariot, and no, there is no seafood down in the ice as expected.

The cities to be drafted this turn are Adventure One, Mansa's Muse, Focal Point, and Cutting Edge. All of them had a previous draft wear off this turn, making them easy targets to hit. I haven't done any in-game as yet, but will do so tomorrow.



Now for knight whips. Tree Huggers is the most obvious case; the knight is a 2 pop whip, and the unit will be right there on the front lines ready to take action next turn. Done deal unless someone has a gigantic objection.

The Covenant doesn't necessarily have to be whipped, but I would still do so anyway. This city has no production at all, nor a forge, and we may as well take the 3 pop whip right now. Thoughts on this one?



Here's the knight whip that's most debatable, at Gourmet Menu. It's still a whip for 3 pop, not 2 pop, but this city also has terrible production and overflow isn't the worst thing to get here. The city is about to grow to the next size, and the previous whip penalty is almost out, making this the right turn to whip. So we do want to crack the whip here... right?

The other knight whip cities (Seven Tribes, Forbidden Fruit, Frozen Jungle) look better to have their whips come out in a turn or two. I suggest holding off just a touch longer.

Overview:

Although we don't have enough gold in the bank to finish Engineering tech, I suggest we might as well turn on research anyway this turn. We may be getting a fair amount of pillage gold, and we would dearly love to finish Engineering sooner rather than later. So why not, right? Two turns of max science will get us about 90% of the way to the tech, although we're about 100 gold short of being able to run that. Let me know what you think about this one too.



Demos are about the same as usual. CFC has racked up a very impressive Power rating of their own to go along with ours. Our GNP looks awful here at min science, but it does go up to 640 when we run 100%, which means that things are not quite as bad as they might seem.

So we've been investing in military for the last 15 turns now, and we've got a pretty darn good army for this stage of the game. That is the main reason why our Demos don't look as good as they did a little while ago. The moment of decision is now at hand: we must convert that military investment into territory and population. The outcome of the war will probably determine the outcome of our game. Wish us luck.

[Sullla]

Turn 150 - 800AD

The German war has begun. So far, so good.



We chatted a bit with WPC at the start of the turn, and they gave us some suggestions on where to move our war chariot. If anyone was paranoid and worried that WPC was secretly planning to attack us, that did not come true. They've also declared on the Germans and are fighting away. Their main army was apparently two tiles north of the cow, and it moved southwest onto the forested hill tile this turn. This motely assorted stack is moving in behind the main army; we should see their primary group next turn. Kjn found out from Demos tracking that WPC killed two German units and lost two of their own units this turn in some light skirmishing. We'll have better vision over here next turn.



We started out the turn by declaring war. No mistakes here, I used the infamous Alt-click to initial hostilities. Our first target was the German city on our border, renamed to Fort Alamo. The Germans whipped walls between turns, which was an odd choice considering that they only had two units inside. Walls generally don't do much without more units defending. Anyway, the tactics here were pretty simple. Send in maces and save our two-movers for use later in the turn:

Battle of Fort Alamo

Mace vs axe (22%) LOSE
Mace vs spear (91%) WIN
Mace vs axe (99%) WIN, RAZE CITY

The battle went exactly as expected and we razed the city. With the city down, we moved up our knight and two war chariots to be in a position to hit Wombatshausen next turn. The Germans should not be able to log into the game, according to this mod's rules, so they can't even get an emergency whip in place for that city. We expect it to have a single axe or quechua on defense, hopefully it will go down quickly next turn.



To finish up this turn, we moved up our remaining maces and elephant onto the razed tile, along with our replacement settler. He'll plant on the tile north of the ruins next turn, in a stronger and more culturally defensible location. Note that there is a Woodsman II axe just kind of hanging out to the east. If it doesn't retreat next turn, we will probably kill it with a war chariot (the 100% bonus on attack exactly cancels out the 100% bonus to defense).

That was the extent of the action for this turn. Over on the main front, we first had to decide if we wanted to attack the German city of Wasserburg. If we had Engineering tech, this would have been extremely easy to do, and we could have taken the city this turn and reinforced it with the main stack. Unfortunately, we don't have Engineering tech for the road bonus, which means we have to be a bit more patient. We do not have enough mounted units to have good odds of taking the city, and even if we did capture it, the Germans could easily take it back on their turn. Therefore there's no point in attacking it this turn.



Instead, we moved the Sentry chariot forward to scout, revealing the lightly guarded inside of Worms. (This is our next target, Wasserburg must fall first.) There is one tile where we could not get vision, the boxed tile above located two east of Worms. Our best guess is that the main German army is probably on this tile, ready to move to Worms or Wasserburg as needed.

Here's where we moved:



The main stack moved two tiles northeast, up next to Wasserburg. It's on flat ground, but what could the Germans hit our stack with? The only one movers in range are two axes and a spear, and their only two movers are chariots, which are more than welcome to come charging in against our force of war elephants. There's essentially no chance that the Germans try to attack our army, at least not this turn.

We expect that the Germans will likely move their big force into Wasserburg between turns and try to defend the city. That's perfectly fine with us; we will be able to bomb out nearly all of the defenses next turn, and then start killing units with our stack. I counted, and we have 28 units that can attack the city next turn. Here's a closer image:



The German turn player might need a new pair of pants when they log in and see that. We've actually kept most of these units hidden to this point in time, they don't know what they're up against. Anyway, so we expect them to move in their army next turn, then we'll take the defenses down to ~10% with our catapults and start killing units. The German army is heavy on axes, catapults, and chariots, all of which will lose to our maces. The cats and chariots don't get any defensive bonuses at all. I hope that they try to defend this city, because there will be a massive bloodbath if they do, and most of it will not be our guys.

If they choose not to defend Wasserburg, then great! We'll take the city and start moving on Worms. We can throw down roads and have the main stack on the tile northeast of the pigs next turn. There doesn't appear to be a whole lot that they can do, aside from stall for time to get longbows, and even that won't really save their team, only delay the inevitable. We shall see what they do.



Here's our northeastern front, which turned out to be completely quiet. The units stationed over here have been moving towards Wasserburg, as the Germans don't seem to have any intention of invading us.

In our city builds, we whipped knights in Forbidden Fruit and Frozen Jungle this turn, both as planned on previous turns. We also drafted Starfall; it will finish Globe Theatre in 2t. There is still time to discuss whether we want to build a barracks in the capital, or if we should swap that over to a university. I think it's mostly a question of whether we believe we'll need that +2 happiness from Nationhood civic. We also debated university vs grocer vs knight in Gourmet Menu; we're on grocer for the moment. Please let me know your thoughts on this, if you guys would prefer a change in any of these cities.



Settler gets picked up for the silver city next turn, founds the city T152. If we have a huge battle outside Wasserburg next turn, the silver happiness will arrive just in time to counter the arrival of war weariness. No, there are no seafood resources down there.

Overview:

We decided to run 40% research this turn, because it would allow us to finish Engineering tech at 100% research next turn. We're hoping to be able to pick up some pillage and city capture gold to speed that along, in a pinch we might also run a few Wealth builds. We'll see. Engineering hopefully to be done eot 151.



GNP predictably went into the toilet when we moved 30 units into German territory. There isn't much to be done about that. We still have outstanding research capacity, it's only brought down by high costs. Not too much to say about everything else here.

This turn was Livestreamed on a new account that I set up for our purposes. You can find it at http://www.twitch.tv/rbciv/ and the specific recording for this game is located here: http://www.twitch.tv/rbciv/b/414270159 Thanks to everyone who came out and played through the turn today.

[Sullla]

Turn 151 - 820AD

How many units does it cost to take two German cities? Fewer than you might think.



We'll start on the northwest frontier, where this was the scene upon logging into the game. The Germans had a spear and an axe inside their little size 1 city, with no border expansion and no walls. They also still had a Woodsman II axe hanging out in the jungle being an annoyance. This battle was pretty straightforward: use the knight to take out the spear, then use the chariots to take out the axe. (Spears do not really counter knights; the difference in base strength is too large.) Fortunately the battles went as expected:

Battle of Wombatshausen

C1/Shock Knight vs Spear 90% WIN
C1 War Chariot vs Axe 96% WIN
RAZE CITY

We only received 10 gold from razing this city, as it was brand new and not worth much of anything. Better than nothing, I suppose. We had one chariot remaining that we didn't need to use against Wombatshausen, and we elected to save the one with 5 XP for use against the German Woodsman II axe. It was piling up fortify bonus for each turn it sat there, no time like the present to attack:



We did win at 78% odds, thank goodness. Scratch their last unit in the area.

We founded our replacement city on the tile south of the spices, as planned. Mano y Mano will be a pretty good city if we can protect it against CivPlayers, lots of river tiles and resources. Looks like a commerce city to me, with maybe a few watermills and workshops for production.



Here is the front after moving everything in the area. We have a mace and an elephant inside the city itself, and maces on the forest tiles to the east and north of the city. We'll try to push them both forward another tile to the northeast next turn, to control the forest and grassland hill in the area. Depends on what the Germans do on their end of the turn timer, of course. I have no idea if these units will be able to push on to Weil der Stadt in the future; we are going to have to heal for the next turn or two, and then go from there.

We have our likely candidate for road pillaging in this area: the Apolyton chariot visible in the picture. I would send them an email telling them to knock it off, if they don't want to find themselves our next target.



Here's the main front next to the city of Wasserburg. The Germans did something unusual: they made no attempt to reinforce the city, but also didn't retreat these units either. In fact, we've been spotting lots of little garrisons of 2, 3, or 4 units all across their territory, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense tactically. If they don't try to make a stand somewhere, we'll keep picking off their little garrisons one by one.

We valued speed over getting high odds with our individual units. What I mean is that we could speed up our push on the next city (Worms) if we chose not to use our catapults here to bombard defenses, and instead simply took down those four units with normal attacks, through the walls and hill defenses. Because there was 1 spear and 3 axes inside the city, we could get the coveted war chariot vs axe matchup by clearing the top spear defender. We decided to sacrifice a war elephant to remove that spear, then send in the war chariots. Luck was on our side here:

Battle of Wasserburg

C1/Shock Elephant vs Spear 30% LOSE
C1 War Chariot vs Spear 80% WIN
C1 War Chariot vs Axe 68% WIN
War Chariot vs Axe 71% WIN
C1/Shock Knight vs Axe 89% WIN
CAPTURE CITY

Odds went according to form in every battle, but we were pretty fortunate to get a couple wins in that 70% range. Doesn't always happen, believe me. These battles highlighted just how awesome the war chariot is as a unique unit. Even 150 turns into the game, our war chariots were actually getting the best odds to attack Wasserburg (better than our knights!) because of the way in which they murder axes. They are probably better than non-Aggressive Praetorians in all honesty, at least against humans, because everyone builds axes in huge numbers and war chariots are absolutely dirt cheap.

Because of the age of Wasserburg, we picked up 102 capture gold in the process - nice! Engineering tech here we come. We elected to keep the city, and it will become a pretty nice production city down the road, very similar to Cutting Edge. My tradition is to rename captured cities when they come out of resistance, so feel free to suggest names for Wasserburg now.

Here's a picture after moving units in the area:



All of our units are pretty much impervious against a German counterattack. We can see all of the one-movers in possible range, and there's only one chariot anywhere in range. We have two maces inside Wasserburg, and plenty more reinforcements moving up to the front lines to pile inside if needed. There's another mace on the forested hill for vision, more maces guarding the tile we attacked from this turn (SW of Wasserburg), and the main stack moving on Worms:

These units are all on the pigs tile; this is why we pushed against Wasserburg so aggressively, to get these cats up to the next city faster. We also have quite a few knights moving up and adding to this stack, as all of the knight whips we've carried out begin to reach the front lines. I have drawn in the defenders as well, everything else you can see is single units. The Germans are pretty screwed here, to be honest. If they make a stand at Worms, we'll use our cats and slaughter their units. If they keep a paltry number of units in place again, we'll do the same thing as at Wasserburg and keep moving forward. War elephants are a pain, but they get no defensive bonuses. Not nearly as bad as longbows, that's for sure. These guys are going to run out of core cities pretty soon.



WPC was in-game at the same time that we were playing the turn, and we had a bit of a conversation. (Read from bottom to top.) Here's an illustration of their theatre of war:



The good news is that the Germans have a lot of their military up here on this border. 7 axes and 6 cats is a sizable chunk of their army. I guess they are trying to defend all fronts at once (?) WPC says they have about 40 units of their own moving in this turn. Hopefully these two hit each other with much bloodshed on all sides.

WPC wants us to move our chariot a tile southwest, onto their stack. But, uh, we don't really want to do that, as our chariot will almost certainly get attacked and killed. (Germans will attack with their Combat I axes, which will have odds on our chariot.) I think we should move around to the north, and join their main stack instead. I said we would "discuss" it with the team when they asked in game. Thoughts?



OK, finishing up here. I took this picture to show the total lack of action to our northeast. The Germans are not attacking, we moved up the units here, and we have minimal defenses (but can always draft/whip, of course). We whipped the forge in Simple Life as it was at the happy cap. Our other whip this turn was a 2 pop knight whip in Seven Tribes:



Off screen, we will finish Globe Theatre in Starfall at end of turn. Can you say "more drafting"? I knew you could.

Overview:

We were just shy of enough gold to finish Engineering tech, so we ran a Wealth build in Focal Point for this turn. This is a good time to discuss the next tech. I would suggest one of three paths:

Alphabet/Printing Press: This is the best economic option, and we have a LOT of villages/towns to benefit. It does nothing to help us fight our war.

Gunpowder: Allows us to draft muskets instead of maces, would be nice to have before our next drafting round begins in about 7 turns. This is the strongest military option.

Banking: Very cheap, allows us to build a bank next in our Shrine city. This is almost certainly the weakest choice but I'll throw it out there.

Let me know what you prefer. We can also put the overflow in Forbidden Fruit into a missionary over the market, as mentioned before. Also a worthwhile discussion point.



GNP continues to be laughable at 100% science, almost entirely due to our huge military costs. We actually have very good research capacity, we just are paying out vast sums of gold each turn. That can and will be solved over time, so there's no reason to worry much. Our Food and Land continue to increase, while our Power rating is second to none.

Overall, an extremely successful turn as we killed 7 units and lost 1 unit. We have two cities down, and Worms is on target to fall on T153, which will then open up the German core to multiple avenues of attack. The Germans are doing a mediocre job of defending, nothing too special thus far. Even the ivory gift is not the end of the world. Everything is pretty much on schedule thus far.

Livestream recording of the game: http://www.twitch.tv/rbciv/b/415734988

[Sullla]

Turn 152 - 840AD

A quiet turn. There was not a single round of combat on this turn. The next turn will probably be the decisive turn of the war, however.



This was the situation in the northwest when we logged into the game. The German war elephant pillaged a desert road tile, which wasn't particularly threatening. We didn't have too much to do here, we moved the injured units into Mano y Mano to heal (promoting one war chariot to Medic) and moved up our maces:



There are maces on the tiles both north and east of the peak, to prevent any further forward movement by the German war elephant. We get defensive bonuses on both tiles, and have strong odds (75% and 95%) to win if we get attacked. We also have our own war elephant on the tile north of the city. There's a pair of workers on that tile, and another pair on the tile east of the city. We will road them next turn, and be in a position to kill the German war elephant if it does anything other than retreat. I expect that it will move northeast next turn back into their territory.

Mano y Mano is in no danger, and we have a decent chance of being able to push further north or east from here in upcoming turns.



In the center, we scouted out as shown with the Sentry war chariot, revealing almost nothing in the way of German units. There's 1 war elephant, 3 axes, and 2 spears inside Worms at present. They will get another war elephant at the start of next turn from their triple whip, but the garrison doesn't look to be anything all that bad. If there's some big stack sitting two tiles north of the city that moves in to defend, that's also OK: we'll have a giant battle and clear out all of the defenders. In either case, we look to be in a good position to take Worms next turn.



We mostly moved up the big stack next to Worms, and that was the main tactical move for the turn. These are the units next to Worms that can attack next turn, along with 3 more knights a tile further back. In total, it's 7 knights, 3 elephants, 18 maces, 10 cats, and 4 war chariots. I feel pretty confident that we will be able to capture Worms with those units, especially given the lack of German units we've seen thus far.

I made one tactical mistake this turn: I should have split off 2 maces and put them on the jungle tile two south of Worms, which would have allowed us to put 2 workers on that tile, and have it roaded next turn. This would have allowed the three knights a turn behind the rest of the army to push forward against the German capital next turn. Let me show you our dream move for next turn:



At the start of next turn, we move the Sentry chariot a tile northwest, onto the tile west of Worms. That will grant us vision on all of the tiles with the little pink dots, including inside Webringen and Weil der Stadt. If we are lucky, the Germans will not be expecting a fast push on their capital; should we see an empty garrison or one unit inside Webringen, we'll save all of our knights and not have them attack Worms, instead moving on the white arrows to be in position to fork Webringen/Weil.

If I had split off two maces correctly, then we could have had 7 knights and 4 war chariots available for this move. Instead, it will be 4 knights and 4 war chariots. (Half of the war chariots are injured too. I went ahead and moved them up anyway, because they can still clear redlined defenders, and even the small chance of that happening is more useful than having them sit back and heal.) I hope those 3 knights are not enough to make the difference. Getting the capital would be enormous:

I posted that before, showing the cultural borders held by each city in this region. If we can steal a march on the capital and take it with two-movers, it will open everything up, and the rest of the cities will quickly fall like dominos. That's my hope for this campaign, that the Germans will pack everything into Worms and then we'll leapfrog right past the city with our fast movers to snipe down the capital. We have not used our knights aggressively yet, and they may feel that having war elephants makes them safe. And because we play after the Germans, they can't see our mounted stack incoming and do an emergency whip; they wouldn't be able to see it until the start of the next turn, and hopefully by then it would be too late.

Well, it may all be a pipe dream and our Sentry chariot could spot a half-dozen units back there protecting the capital. But it's useful to have a plan in place in case they don't. Cross your fingers that it all works...



At the insisting of the team, we pillaged this village three teams and picked up 42 gold in the process, since we were going to bulldoze over it anyway. It was a good decision, since these maces couldn't have reached the front lines anyway in time to fight in the battle for Worms.

CFC is pillaging tiles in neutral territory with their chariot, and we're contacting them by email to tell them to knock it off. It sucks that we're so hated by seemingly everyone in this game. I hate full diplo games.



There's an impending bloodbath on the WPC front, as the Germans and WPC both have big armies full of outdated units about to smash into one another. My best reading of this situation is that WPC will win and take the city of Warendorf, but not without suffering horrendous casualties in the process. They are going to take a pounding when they move onto the cows tile this turn. We are perfectly content to see all kinds of slaughter up here, as it would both kill off much of the German army, while allowing us to achieve most of the spoils of this war.

We have to wait for WPC to move these units before we can end our turn. I don't know with 100% certainty which tile their stack is going onto (I assume the cows), and we're not leaving our chariot out to die until it can be covered by their huge army.



Elsewhere, we finished Globe Theatre in Starfall this turn and drafted the city for another mace, as we will be doing most every turn here for the future. I have the city set to building walls, as we definitely want to have walls + castle here by the time that Turn 175 rolls around. With stone, both are easy to build, and even though CFC will have Gunpowder units by T175, they probably won't have Steel for cannons. That means using catapults to take down the cultural defenses, which takes forever at 2% per shot per catapult against a castle. (We will also need a spy to defend against an enemy spy inciting a city revolt.) Anyway, for now we can certainly slowbuild walls at 2 production/turn while drafting away.

The only other pop action of the turn was a draft at The Covenant, which had no draft unhappiness at all. It will grow back next turn. We'll be throttling back a little bit on the drafting and whipping right now to help our economy recover.

Overview:

I'm glad that we were able to pillage an extra 40 gold this turn, since we sure aren't making much at 0% science. This is effectively the nadir for our economy, with so many units in enemy territory and before we manage to capture enemy cities and flip them around for our own use. Trust me, it will get much better over the next 10-20 turns.

We are researching Alphabet en route to Printing Press to help our poor economy. (PP is worth a LOT, given our very large number of villages and towns. PP becomes much more valuable on larger maps.) With city capture gold from Worms, we should be able to run 100% science next turn (or close to it) and knock out Alphabet.



Our GNP is utter crap this turn, with the combination of 0% science and massive unit costs. Here's the culprit:



We're paying 91 gold/turn just for units, then huge amounts more for cities, civics, and inflation. Distance maintenance is almost 100 gold/turn on its own. Again though, we'll be able to solve this through whipping out some courthouses in our far-flung cities (now that we don't need to whip more knights), by taking over fully mature villages and towns in the German core, and eventually by swapping into State Property civic. You can always recover your economy, while land is priceless.

Recording of the turn below, although there wasn't too much to see. Next turn is going to be the big one, for both us and WPC. http://www.twitch.tv/rbciv/b/417328081

[Sullla]

Turn 153 - 860AD

We pushed through Worms this turn without too much trouble, and our offensive rolls on towards the German capital.

This was what we saw when we opened up the game. The Germans discovered Feudalism last turn (note the emergency longbow whipped in Worms at the 3 pop swapping penalty) and used their Spiritual trait to revolt into Vassalage this turn. They did a lot of whipping and have some combination of longbows and war elephants popping out of their cities next turn.

The key info was how the Germans chose to defend this area. We were thinking that they would make a stand at Worms, and that might leave them open to being attacked by two movers at their capital. Instead, they actually pulled units OUT of Worms and retreated them back to the capital, with elephants and spears all over the place up there. There were only three units inside the city of Worms: 1 longbow, 1 axe, and 1 spear. This made the decision pretty easy, to skip using the catapults and simply brute force our way through Worms at low odds.



That's 0.79% odds in the mace vs longbow battle there. Still, the maces are basically disposable for us. They do not scale very well as the game goes on, far worse than knights or catapults. We have oodles of these guys sitting around, time to put them to use.

Battle of Worms
Mace vs G1 longbow 0.8% LOSE
Mace vs G1 longbow 17% LOSE
Mace vs G1 longbow 54% WIN
Mace vs axe 28% LOSE
Mace vs spear 80% WIN
Mace vs axe 97% WIN
CAPTURE WORMS

The battle went about as expected, could have been better, could have been worse. We received just over 100 in capture gold from the city, and were unlucky in having no buildings survive. Rats. Overall, I was pretty happy with this result. We kept our knights alive and the offensive kept rolling forward.

Here's a couple pictures of the area after the battle was over.

The main stack moved up into the city of Worms itself, securing it against any potential counterattack. We have 5 knights, 3 elephants, 13 maces, 10 cats, and 4 war chariots on that tile. The poor catapults have yet to see any combat, amusingly enough. There are two injured maces south of the city (and a full strength knight to cover them just in case) which will move into Worms next turn. Further south are 8 maces and 1 cat which will join the main stack next turn, and a further 2 maces and 1 cat a turn behind them, which will help garrison Worms next turn.

Our knights are in position to take Helm S Klamm next turn:

The knights are actually completely safe against attack on that hill tile; no German one-movers can hit them from anywhere, and they will obviously win against German chariots, if they should be hiding somewhere. Helm is size 1 (although it will not auto raze because it's grown previously to size 2) and cannot whip any extra defenders, nor are there any units in position to defend. It will fall next turn, and we will have large odds to win without losing a knight in the process. The knights can then easily rejoin the main stack.

The offensives next turn are drawn in yellow. Aside from the attack at Helm, we'll move the main stack a tile northwest (barring us seeing something at the start of turn, of course). This allows the two movers to fork Weil der Stadt along with the capital and force them to keep at least a token presence in there, while also moving a tile closer to the capital. The Germans don't have enough roads in that area, moving northwest actually takes away a valuable road from them. That's the basic plan for next turn.

The white boxes are all tiles with worker pairs on them. We'll road them all and continue to push reinforcements towards the front. Engineering tech is literally worth its weight in gold moving these units around. This is what allows the stack west of the pigs to join the main stack next turn: NW-NE-NW tiptoeing around the German culture. Good stuff. (If the Germans want to attack our Woody II axe in the jungle with their C1 axe in Helm, they are welcome to take the shot.)



Northwest front was quiet this turn. We roaded the tiles east and north of Mano y Mano this turn. Next turn, we can opt to road the iron tile in the desert and push forward our 3 maces + 1 war elephant if we want. There are also 2 war chariots + 1 knight healing inside the city of Mano. We'll see how this area looks next turn and decide.



We planted another city this turn, the offshore island city directly on top of the silver: Splendid Isolation (or as much of it will fit). This is a piece of crap city, but perhaps not as crappy as you might think:



Trade route bonanza! Let's give a big thanks to the Great Lighthouse for all of those 3 commerce trade routes. We're going to get another settler for the much better crabs/marble location off to the east in a few more turns, which is also a very strategic location south of CFC. Probably won't be founded for about 10 more turns, but we're working towards it.

Overview:

We set the research to 60%, the lowest rate where we can finish Alphabet this turn. There doesn't seem to be any real reason to wait and run 100% next turn, since Alphabet has a lot of benefits (lets us see techs of other teams, build Research, build spies, etc.) We will probably build up gold for some time afterwards in preparation for a Printing Press run. We actually have a Great Person coming out of the National Epic city in 7 turns, and it's about 50% odds for a Great Scientist. If we would get one, we probably use it for Printing Press and then research the remaining beakers. (We'll definitely get another Great Person out of that city before discovering Communism.) In any case, building up gold for a little while seems likely.

Let me know if there are any other suggestions for city builds. We can't end our turn until WPC decides what to do with their stack, and we can move our war chariot up there. We offered another map trade with them in-game, and requested again that they stay around Warendorf instead of running into the tundra.



Demos suck in GNP and look great in everything else. This will continue to be the case until our war is finished and the captured cities come out of resistance / begin developing. We are making very steady progress, 4 cities taken in 4 turns, and I'm reasonably pleased with how we've played thus far. Just don't get me started on how badly WPC has done in the war...

Here is the Livestream recording for the curious. Thanks all. http://www.twitch.tv/rbciv/b/418789750

[Sullla]

Turn 154 - 880AD

Another German city goes down, and good news in the north.

This was the situation on the main front at the start of the turn. For whatever reason, the Germans seem to be concentrating more on whipping out elephants than whipping out longbows. They only conducted a single 2 pop whip on their half of the turn. In any case, the way remains clear to march on towards their capital of Webringen.

There was only one combat this turn, when we attacked the single axe inside Helm S Klamm:



We had 88% odds to win with this Combat I / Shock knight, and we did win without issue. We didn't get much in the way of capture gold, but we did manage to hold the city:



It had grown to size 2 previously, and therefore did not autoraze. Very good news for us, as this city is a spot that we had picked out ourselves to plant earlier, and it will be extremely strong in about 30-40 turns.



We also used our Great General for a Medic III war chariot (with the +1 movement promotion as well for 3 movement points). Ruff, the maces you highlighted earlier in this thread have either already moved this turn (and thus won't heal) or will heal to full health without needing to promote, due to this Medic III unit. We can decide on promoting those units next turn.

Here's where we stand right now on the main front. All of the available one movers are on the tile northwest of Worms, heading towards the capital. Most of our knights are still inside Worms, since they don't need to move forward this turn and we may as well avoid the extra support costs. The Medic III chariot is also inside Worms. We look pretty set to capture the German capital on T156.



This was the situation in the northwest at the beginning of the turn. We used three workers to road the iron tile, and then moved two maces and an elephant onto the tile south of the rice in German territory. Here's what we saw:

There's a longbow moving down towards Weil der Stadt, currently stuck between cities. We also spotted a single quechua inside Wanzleben. We had a disagreement over whether to move up the two movers inside Mano y Mano (pictured in the bottom left corner) onto the tile with our maces/elephant, which would open up a possible play on Wanzleben next turn. That city was size 2 last turn and will not be able to whip a unit between turns; the idea is to force the longbow to retreat away from the Weil der Stadt battlefield or force them to give up Wanzleben.

The tradeoff for us is that if we move up the war chariot and the injured knight, then the knight doesn't get to continue healing. There's also the potential problem of razing Wanzleben before we have our replacement settler ready to go (CivPlayers or Apolyton could sneak in there and steal the territory away). Overall, I'm not a huge fan of the idea, but you could talk me into it. I'm most worried about razing Wanzleben and someone else poaching the area (Frozen Jungle will grow to size 6 next turn, could swap to settler T156, could whip it T157, and would get up there about T159. Ditchdigger is on the same pace, maybe one turn faster).

Anyway, those mounted units are still unmoved for the moment, feel free to keep discussing things.



On the WPC front, the Germans are apparently holding most of their army just south of the city of Warendorf. WPC told us they have 14 catapults, 7 elephants, 14 axes, and 6 chariots in the area around this city. The good news is that this means none of those units can make it down to the German capital in time to defend it from our attack (well aside from the irrelevant chariots). Even better news is that WPC plans to move their own huge outdated stack of some 50-60 units up next to Warendorf next turn. We expect that the Germans will hit the WPC stack with their own stack, with much bloodshed on all sides. We let them slaughter each other and then run around and pick up all the major spoils from the war. Keep your fingers crossed for that scenario, it's looking pretty likely.



Here's the south of our territory; we were discussing on stream whether it was preferable to draft Let It Snow next turn for a mostly-free maceman, and then let it regrow to size 6 and whip a settler, or better simply to triple whip the settler without doing a draft, getting a mace from the Globe Theatre city instead. The mace/settler pair is intended to head for the marble/crabs location on the southern polar island sometime in the near future. We didn't come to a decision on this, so discuss away. (You can also discuss the merits of grassland cottage versus horses tile at French Riviera if you wish.)

We discovered Alphabet tech and can see all of the techs of the backwards teams now as well. I will try to make a post to that effect tomorrow at some point. Science set to zero for the moment as we make our run to Printing Press next. We have a Great Person coming out of the National Epic city in 6 more turns, with 50/50 odds for a Scientist. If we would get a Great Scientist, we will probably use it to lightbulb most of Printing Press, and then we could immediately put research into Banking or Gunpowder tech. For now though, 0% science is the obvious choice.



Demos are slowly improving in GNP as cities regrow from our last round of whipping/drafting and we start to get some use out of captured cities. We were right around +200 gold/turn before we moved 25 more units into enemy territory. I also have to point out that three different rivals are in Golden Ages right now (Apolyton, CivFr, and UniversCiv) which is distorting these numbers a bit. Our situation will look very good as soon as this war is over.

About playing this particular turn: the Livestream was a complete and utter trainwreck tonight. I'm not even sure if it's worthwhile to do them again in the future. One of the strengths of Realms Beyond is an attention to detail... but one of the weaknesses that goes along with that is that RB can also be obnoxiously pedantic about the most trivial things imaginable. Playing this particular turn was enormously frustrating, as we had a dozen different suggestions coming in at once, I started to get more and more irritated, and the whole thing turned into an ugly mess.

I will promise to be more patient in the future, and to try to do a better job of answering questions. I would also like to ask anyone watching to do their best to remain polite, and not get caught up in any ongoing arguments. Remember, we're all on the same team here. If we have a situation like today, where there's clearly not an agreement on something, we should put it aside for the moment and put it up on the forums to decide later. I want to avoid any kind of repetition from today, where I felt like I was getting grilled on the witness stand and wanted to shut off the game in disgust, and half of the people watching were probably pissed at me. We all need to remain calm and stay polite.