[Spoilers] Shallow Thought and Hitru's series of (unfortunate?) events

[shallow_thought]

Had to play turn in morning because I'm out for dinner this evening and want to keep playing ahead of Charriu.

I think your t-1 stage tile might be visible to him.

What happens if Charriu takes Golden Void then heals his stack in the city? Do you have the units to stop it moving on your territory?

I don't think so - all three of his tiles bordering us are flat. Would optics change that, with extra sight over water? Not relevant here, but a possible source of confusion - I'm certainly not certain . Anyway, all he has to do is take advantage of OB to pop onto the hill for a peek and he'll see our T-2 1-move stage this turn anyway. Surprise is always nice, but I'm not relying on it. I think he knows what's coming now. He has reinforced with more spears, but they're unfortified. As shown in the picture,  I think we have enough units to defend on the other frontier, assuming we can get our city down and thus he has to move through our culture. He paused his assault to heal this turn and is reinforcing with two fresh CKNs.




However, the big news is that RFS-81 may, just, be playing in this game for a while yet. I wonder how he feels about that ? Elkad declared on Charriu and razed Forza. Good news for us, probably. One problem is that this is now a three-way turn split. I'm not sure how serious / long term this is though - razing a plains hill city seems a bit negative to me.




Superdeath's tech continues to be worrying, with Philosophy falling to him. He's well ahead in any Liberalism race. I've just sent Elkad iron-iron and will try OB next turn. Normalising relations with him offers some flexibiity in handling SD. The latter's 2-mover stack is also poised on the Charriu border. Sucks to be Toku, this game .

[Old Harry]

You can see land tiles over water even without optics (see the first pic of post 151 - you can see the rice) . Too late now, but moving t-1 1n would have let you move t-2 1ne and be invisible to a unit on that hill.

Great news about Elkad! Poor Charriu.

[shallow_thought]

You can see land tiles over water even without optics (see the first pic of post 151 - you can see the rice) . Too late now, but moving t-1 1n would have let you move t-2 1ne and be invisible to a unit on that hill.

Great news about Elkad! Poor Charriu.

Sigh. Always good to be told these things. We can still stage on the tile 1N, although - as you say - if he peeked, he already knows.

[shallow_thought]

So, Charriu has chosen to retreat from Golden Void. Just after this screenshot RFS-81 logged on and accepted peace, teleporting Charriu's units back into his territory. Oh well, removed the temptation to hit the treb.




Also, Elkad echoed back iron-iron. This opens a window for us to hit RFS-81. He has 14 defenders, we have a total of 31 hitters and 11 cats in the region, including 5 HAs, 4 swords, 2 x-bows and a wellie. Oh, and one knight, two next turn. I think we can do this if we move fast, even leaving a bunch of cats /stuff to defend JS2. Elkad doesn't yet have knights, and I think we can counter HA's and Praets with our cat-backed Axe/Spear trash in the short term. So, double declaration next turn? Or am I being insanely cocky because I'm feeling smug about that power spike (razing Forza cost Elkad a little, so we're now first in power). It's worth noting that a few turns after I waxed rhapsodic about my GA Bureacadacap GNP Superdeath came steaming past...




Quite aside from the war dec (decs?) next turn, we have a big decision to make: back to Slavery or stay in Caste? Technically we could delay, but I've timed a bunch of unit builds, Banking and the ability to revolt again all for next turn, and it would be nice to get Bureau going for even a few GA turns. Losing the safety net of slavery paints a target on us, but if we keep building units I think we're OK. If you whip every 10t you get 30h: so you need to be working 3 workshops per whippable queue to justify Caste in raw hammers. I feel we can make that break even soon enough, although we're nowhere near yet. Caste border pops at cities coming out of revolt could be a thing for us too. But the real reason is that, without Caste, we will never get another GA. Slavery feels like "lose slower", Caste like a play for the the win. So, next turn could be not just rolling the dice, but getting a great big handful of them, in all shapes and sizes, throwing them up in the air and seeing what happens.

[Old Harry]

I'd probably hold off on fighting rfs - charriu's army is at the western end of his empire, so will go for Elkad if he has no way of hitting you. If you move in on rfs then you give him a choice of targets...

[shallow_thought]

I'd probably hold off on fighting rfs - charriu's army is at the western end of his empire, so will go for Elkad if he has no way of hitting you. If you move in on rfs then you give him a choice of targets...

True, true. The risk is that Elkad moves on RFS-81 before we can, or that enough turns elapse since the iron-iron that Elkad loses any inhibition about hitting us while we're exposed. But deliberateLY starting a two-front war is probably too crazy for me. Let Elkad trim the CKN stack for a bit.

[shallow_thought]

Uh ... Charriu suddenly switched his play position just as I'm about to declare. We've been playing us-him regularly for days. Now, I'm not too fussed - I'm happy to consider we were not in an official split. Given that it was his choice, I guess I'm now free to take the second half of the timer? My main reason for wanting first was to be in the same half as his other opponent (RFS-81); now that they are at peace but he and Elkad are at war, it makes sense to be in the same half as Elkad.

Does mean we could be facing two whipped units in Iron Claw when we attack, but I think we can manage that.

[Old Harry]

Being second is usually an advantage so I'd just accept this. Why would you be facing two units?

[shallow_thought]

Being second is usually an advantage so I'd just accept this. Why would you be facing two units?

I wouldn't - I realised my mistake just after I posted. The advantage of going first was that he couldn't attack out with freshly whipped collateral units. Not a big deal.

[shallow_thought]

Charriu must wonder what he's done wrong   . First Superdeath hit him this turn and took Byblos. We then declared - I wasn't expecting him to have moved his spears out of Iron Claw, leaving only a single archer. If I'd been more alert and positioned more aggressively last turn (and there was no real gain keeping the knights hidden ), we could have had a 70% chance of taking it with a single knight, and then maybe grabbing those workers. Still, we're off to the races, slightly behind as usual.




As you can see, we spat out quite a few units this turn before coming out of vassalage (doing horrible stuff like working unimproved plains to do so in places). We're still top in power, but at one point during the turn were only building only one unit - a trireme. We decided to have at least one knight in a build queue, so CC is delaying its bank while IQ one-turns a stable. A lot of other places are getting courthouses up; I'm expecting it to be painful when we come out of the GA. Still, one free specialist in each city adds up - we're still ahead in cities, and in crop yield. Nonetheless, without slavery we need to keep pumping units out at a respectable rate. Mostly knights, maybe the odd crossbow, a pike or two when we get Engineering, replacement cats. We can't hope to build enough troops to hold our entire border - we need to be threatening to hurt anyone who tries anything.

I'm redeploying our swords and a cat or two to support our "settling party" (now delayed, again), but have been talked down into waiting until Elkad and Charriu are a bit more entangled before trying anything.