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

[Dhalphir]

Will you guys be eliminating suttree this turn?

[Hashoosh]

Clearly you have to take the 'mids and revolt into Police State to deal with this. And you're SPI so it's no biggie right

[Old Harry]

We dunno where suttree put his new city, so it looks like we'll have this war weariness for the rest of the game.

I think pindicooter will be happy to gift us the mids won't they? I'll send the request tomorrow.

On a more ranty note I just don't understand what we've done to suttree that Mack didn't which makes him want to spite-gift his cities. It looked as though he came off worst against Mackoti in an early war over the gold city the same way we got jamestown, so why has he consistently attacked us and gifted his stuff to Mack? Is it just the timing? Does he want to be on the side of the winner? Reputation? Edit: For clarity "Scared of Mackoti's reputation?"

[Fintourist]

Hmm.. IIRC mack did not raze/capture any cities from suttree in the early game, so the nature of the conflict has probably been different. Anyways, the fact that suttree decided to play as a vassal of mackoti has influenced the game balance a lot (not only regarding our continent, but the whole competition in PB13). I guess all those earlier suttree-mackoti trade arrangements are totally fine (while extremely annoying and disappointing for us), but the latest peace-treaty-city-gift-when-you-have-30-units-next-to-my-city and I-move-even-my-lonely-archers-out-of-my-Southern-cities-so-that-mack-surely-gets-them actions belong at best to the grey area.

[Old Harry]

Nine hours left on the clock and Mackoti hasn't played yet - if we're going to give Suttree time to play I need to play soon or ask for a pause. So do we assume Mack wants us to have Toledo?

[Fintourist]

Nine hours left on the clock and Mackoti hasn't played yet - if we're going to give Suttree time to play I need to play soon or ask for a pause. So do we assume Mack wants us to have Toledo?

We totally interpret this as an allowance to take Toledo..

But yeah, 9 hours is not much when you have 3-way split and the first guy does not show up. Although at this stage these things just happen and a turn per 2 days is generally not a catastrophe. (it's a lot better than my pbem45 pace)

[Fintourist]

So mack sniped the Toledo as expected and apparently razed suttree's newly founded last city as well (no WW for us, good job mack).

Let's provide our final stats with suttree:
Captured cities: 1
Razed cities: 1
Killed units: 60+
Lost units: 14

My estimate of mackoti's stats (excluding his early conflict):
Captured (including peace deal gifts) cities: 5
Razed cities: 1
Killed units: 5-8 (we know that he got 2 cities for free, for Maximin+Toledo he had to kill 2-3 archers total, I doubt suttree's last city had more than 1 defender and the southern city he took before the peace deal probably had 2-4 defenders)
Lost units: 0-1 (maybe he lost something in the south, northern archers probably weren't too difficult to kill with grenadiers)

Nuff said. What a farce this whole drama was for us

We chatted with Harry yesterday and wondered if taking Madrid was worth it. Hammer-wise obviously not, but:
- we got the pleasure of killing suttree's stack..
- Now those 50+ units are away from our border and if we can get enforced peace with mack we can have fun with new adventures in the west..
Downside is that now our border is even longer with mack, but because mack always got OB with suttree when he wanted ("amazingly" also after his latest attack) he could have attacked via his land anyways and now the scenario where mack attacks us in the west and suttree happily piles on us in the east is gone.

[Old Harry]

Turn 188 fin

Looks like Mack heard the splashing of our ocean of tears (©Serdoa). We'll take it (even though the city is essentially indefensible, it gets us +15 gpt from the start, and has one food resource). Mack can take it when he wants it, but until then we'll try and make it nice to live in... Anyway, wishful thinking back on for lots more peace with Mackoti . His knights are all about six tiles from our border, which I'm taking as defensive positions.


We did a bit of happy trading with TBS hoping that he'll gift us some cash on his way out, and I shuffled our units about a bit - Jamestown will have plenty of cover from amphibious attack, while Toledo can have a musket and an axe and all our cities will have at least two units from now on in case of commandos .


We'll whip a galley in Midway next turn to allow another four 2-movers to join our attack force for t194. So we'd have:
Three Northern galleons (aimed at Spring Breeze, Talk of the Town, others):
- 1 Amphibious Musket
- 6 Amphibious Knights
- 2 Muskets

In the middle (Stray Geese):
- 2 Knights
- 1 Cuir
- 4 high-promo knights - who can continue the attack down south if all goes smoothly.

One southern galleon (Eyes, then Playing with Fire, then The Evening Boat):
- 1 Amphibious Cuir
- 1 Amphibious knight
- 1 Musket

I'm pretty happy with this, so I'll switch the galley build in France to a pike that we can 1-whip next turn. (Leaving it on the galley would get us another four units - so give me a shout if you want me to switch back). Also - do we want to swap in the medic chariot for a knight? He can join the fray a turn or two after the others instead.

We've got dtay's graphs back but what's going on with the espionage? Is this just courthouses and spies or have Mack and dtay got more espionage infrastructure going on?

[TheHumanHydra]

Suttree has been destroyed. Now my life is complete.

[Molach]

Strange offer from Mackoti.

Perhaps he is trying to say "I won't attack you for 30 turns"

and

"To show my good intentions here's a free city" (which I can easily take back in 30 anyway)

...or perhaps that is what he wants you to think....

Mack is out to win the game, and grinding through your lands isn't perhaps the best way there? What would you do if you were in Mackoti's shoes now?