Genghis Machinates

[The Black Sword]

I assume 2metra must have something similar to force those numbers.

IIRC I have about 20 Christian buildings now. Religion is spread to almost all my cities, I just need missionaries for the 2 new iceballs. Additionally most cities have the ability to build the temple/monastery pair pretty quickly. I've saved a couple of forests in the fillers to get them started along.

[The Black Sword]

Commodore has been sending knights and carracks down this peninsula, I suspect he's going for the island:



It's not really an ideal time for me, but I think I should be prepared to move if that happens.




Fiorina has been left ungarrisoned forever, so if I declare war I should teleport into that little culture gap and raze it. More importantly, I've put together this little attack group to take Cruz:




Hopefully raze/take 4 cities at the start of the war will be a decent blow. I think I'm ok with waiting for Comm to make the first move but I really have to get a move on too. I wouldn't want mack to finish conquering 2metra and I'm still slogging through the mainland. Still I'm not sure how many build-queues I can immediately switch to knights, so I'm considering slotting in PP first. It's only 40gpt though.

Iron placement was very annoying too:


Not like I'm swimming in cottageable land here.

REM golden-aged into HR/Bureau/Serfdom/Merc/Pac. Interesting to see what he does.

[The Black Sword]

Still no move from Commodore, at this stage I'm worrying that his Carracks swung around the peninsula and are staging in the fog here:




My units are a bit out of position to defend that. Comm can't take out any of my main production centres here so I'm mostly banking on the fact he couldn't make any permanent gains against me. I think I'm going to pick up Caravels next though, I want vision on Comm, I want vision on potential mackoti galleons sitting off my coast and I'll probably need to deal with Pin's trireme armada.

Took 1st place in production from golden age Mack.




Mack declared on OH, which could be interesting but I'm expecting a 10t peace treaty.

[The Black Sword]

Not sure why he emptied Cruz? You'd think he'd hold it for a turn for the whipped unit to show up.

[The Black Sword]

Commodore is being a lot more aggressive than I expected here, going for Drumpf and the land beyond. I think I have to pressure him. Where else am I supposed to get land from? And there's no game-changing techs coming up, nothing that's worth delaying to let him fortify his holdings. I need to try do something while the culture is down and he's split between my army and Brick's. I don't want to get into a zero-sum war with Comm but I don't see when I'll have a better chance here.

I was hoping he'd content himself with the 2 island cities, 2 two eastern cities and the 5ish (unfogged cities) in the south west. But perhaps he saw this as inevitable and he had to act while he had the power advantage, that's probably right.

Unfortunately Comm's advance Knight pair managed to take the capital, opening up the roads and dramatically speeding up his main force:



I had to cut the road 2N of Drumpf last turn, in case he wheeled his knight and hit me after I took Cruz. Knights get odds on my maces and LBs, even on hills, so I have to wait until I get more quality in here before I can face him. I'm pretty hopeful I can overpower him eventually:


That's a pretty big hammer advantage, and I have my HE online where he doesn't too. Plus my supply lines should be easier. Short term is quite risky though:



I just decided to give up the sea for now. Too few ports on that coast and his numerical advantage is already too great. I think I'm better off focusing on land for now.

Tech methinks will be Engineering -> Nationalism -> Golden Age -> Constitution. REM just finished Constitution btw. One of my biggest worries is that he dogpiles on me, but he appears to be keeping his power low for now.

[The Black Sword]

I was really annoyed with myself last turn, afraid I'd made a pretty big mistake:




Comm has a bunch of Knights in Neander that could hit my units by/in Chafee. I thought I had enough units to cut a pair of roads and block this, but the 4th unit was a chariot, not an impi with mobility and he couldn't help at all. I tried to bring in extra units to counter-attack if Comm went for it but I felt he had the advantage. That was compounded of course by losing 3 maces at 70% odds taking the city. They were going to get formation too.

Luckily Comm and Brick played pretty quickly though, so I couldn't beat myself up about it all day, and even better we're still at peace!

I ended the current turn safe enough:




Seems like he'll get out of revolt before I can do anything though. Creative will be a pain too.

The game feels pretty open at the minute.

-REM has come strongly back into things by revolting into Rep and chaining a second golden age. Looks to me like he's going for Astronomy next. I think one of REM's best qualities is that he's very decisive and I just can't see him sitting quietly on that island waiting for the rest of the game, he'll probably attack someone. Getting graphs back next turn.

-Mack's GA finished without getting Constitution. I thought that was pretty weird. Then civstats shows OH razing one of his cities this turn! I can't imagine it's an important one but he seems less scary than he was before. Of course, his new scariness is the fleet of berskers on galleons and I'm still waiting for that to crash into someone.

-OH isn't looking too amazing either. He's rocking the food stat, but that's partially obscured by his population, I have a slight lead in hammers and I think possibly 100gpt in commerce?

-Obviously Comm's invasion has greatly improved his own chances as well.

Unfortunately geopolitics (=neighbours) still makes me favour Mack and OH. Even if I do manage to wrestle this stuff from Commodore I really doubt it could be classified as 'easy land' anymore.

Next up:

[The Black Sword]

Comm declared war, trading a knight for my 4 pillaging impis.

Honestly, I can't really see myself breaking through him at the current tech level. He's got some collateral already and I'll need to stand in range of it before I can hit Neander. Probably need to think about Cuirs or Rifles. No reason to give Commodore peace though and release him to finish off Brick. I'll keep looking for some opportunities but I've started putting some economic builds back in.

[The Black Sword]

This was how I ended turn turn T161. When I went to play T162 it looked the same. I moved one of the Impis 1SE to check what was in Comm's city and then noticed there was no asterix beside his name, so I had to wait for him to play again.

This time



He kills my Impi with his sword. That Impi wasn't there the first time he played through the turn and obviously the Impi's jump back and forth, they never end turn on the hill where they can be hit. Oh, and of course now he sees my stack, and for some reason he feels the need to do 3 more whips this time around:




Should I ask for a reload? This turn has already gone on forever ...

[AdrienIer]

What exactly would a reload accomplish ? He knows about your stack now, so you'll gain an impi but not much else right ? (I haven't read Com's thread of course)

[The Black Sword]

I guess so. The only really major effect would be if he had left Prinz vulneruble the first time around(which I don't know). But I was leaning against an attack in any case, didn't think I had enough to both strike there and defend Chafee. I was mostly positioning to see if Comm would make a mistake.