[SPOILERS] PB7: Winning The Hard Way - Mao Plays Craps

[AutomatedTeller]

out of curiosity - why keep Grim Monolith? it's gotta be hard to defend and expensive for the empire, no?

[Commodore]

out of curiosity - why keep Grim Monolith? it's gotta be hard to defend and expensive for the empire, no?

It's actually not that hard to defend, slap a pair of CG3 archers down there behind walls and it's not dying this side of HA or cats. With two flood plains and fair bit of riverside, it's a decent enough little booster, and for the nonce a single fp farm is fine for the 42601061 whips that are incoming.

This reminds me, Xenu, might need to watch for a SMack double-move to relieve Frantic Search, you going to be able to watch this evening?

[spacetyrantxenu]

As of right now there are six players left to end turn before it rolls over. I'm headed to bed very soon so if they get first crack when the turn rolls, it happens. I agree that razing is the right choice for Frantic Search, it's too close to the stronghold at Mind's Desire to think about keeping it.

Nice work Commodore, we're up to seven casinos and counting! Even if we have to burn a few of our competitors' casinos along the way, I think we can make a nice resort out of this end of the continent eventually. We just have to continue with our judicious use of eminent domain to remove those who stand in the way of further mega-casino development. Maybe pillage money from burning Frantic will be enough to get us Mathematics. One step closer to catapults.

On a sad note, the $6 I invested over the weekend in the $640M lottery drawing was a waste. I'm afraid I can still report that I'm not a millionaire.

[AutomatedTeller]

oh that's right - i forgot about you guys being protective of north america.

If there is a combination designed to hold on to what you take, especially in the early game, that's the one.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T98 - Well so much for taking Frantic Search. I logged in to find our units killed and the event log looking like this.



A check of civstats shows MackSeven both logged in within 30 minutes, ending turn 35 minutes after it rolled. So they played quickly to annihilate our remaining units outside of Frantic Search. Granted, it is now five hours later but when the turn rolled I was at work anyway so it wouldn't have mattered. Moving on.

City builds look good, we have the following items underway:



One thing that is clear is we're enjoying the additional happy resources from popping the gold and recently connecting the silver. Mic's happy cap is now 8 and I'd like to grow onto a few more river grass cottages. I think the first one to make should be the shared tile 69 of Seneca so that it can be used at all times (Seneca can incubate it while Mic is working a mine, if necessary).

Speaking of Seneca, they do have a bit of whip anger don't they? Would you like some more? Yes, please. Seneca grows in 3 turns to the happy cap, we can 2 pop whip the barracks any time between now and T100 in 2 turns. Maybe we should wait until T100 and whip with regrowth due. The only thing that sucks in the meantime is working unimproved tiles. Blah. If you play the next turn and whip the barracks it won't bother me because I don't care for working unimproved tiles anyway. But leaving it until T100 for now.

I swapped a tile at Mic, off the PHM onto a river cottage that will grow to a hamlet next turn. It delays the library completion by one turn and grows the city two turns sooner, seems worth it to me when we have enough tiles improved to support the extra population already. We do need more workers over here soon though, because as Mic keeps growing up to the cap we should be working as many river cottages as we can complete.

So with our invasion force in disarray (or killed, depending on how optimistic you are feeling), is this a good time to consolidate a bit or keep throwing units toward the front? We need to finish Math soon if we can, looks like we can do it in 3 or 4 turns. We lose 30 gpt @100% science, and even at that rate it is just over 1 turn to finish. Maybe less if we micro for a few spare beakers. We're 22 beakers short of doing it in 1 turn @100% once we can save up an additional 12 gold. So 0% research one more turn, run 100% science next turn, and then breakeven the next turn will get us Mathematics. I'll have to check to see if we have any chops coming in before 2 turns elapse -- yes, Hard Way's mine at Poarch Creek needs to be delayed a turn. Maybe he can build a road.

At Mohegan Sun, do you think cottages or farms for the grasses by the lake? I'm always partial to cottages just about everywhere but I wouldn't mind another opinion. Farms to whip everything here would be faster in the short term, but if we survive the war with the Hunter-Gatherers we'll eventually want as many cottages as possible to prop up Mao's slow economy. Pitboss is starting a cottage SW of the city, will post a sign and do a cottage/cancel in case you have a different opinion here.

Bartender is going to road to Turning Stone over the forests, in case we need reinforcements down there. He should be safe as long as we keep cover in front of him.

What is the plan for our super archer (level 4 shock/formation/CG1/drill II super badass Jonathan Archer)? I'm going to keep passing him up toward Blackfeet for uber defense duty, unless you think we should hold him back at Mohegan Sun to make sure he survives until it's time to build the Heroic Epic.

I think our plan for now should be to hold what we have, mass units, and forcefully overthrow the walls at Mind's Desire in a bloody, bloody frontal assault. The medic chariot continuously healing their units is galling me, but I wonder where the unpromoted megaspear went? They're probably up to something. For now I'm going to be a bit more cautious and fall back with the remaining chariot pair. If they want to attack our archer fortified on the hill sheep, they can go for it.

There's a barb axe 112 of Cahokia, I put a sign on him too. Maybe he'll attack the city and give us free XP, without tearing up any of Dealer's fine work (I renamed the unnamed worker to Dealer. Just because our dealer died doesn't mean we can go without one! )

More demographics stuff.

Looks like our soldier count has taken a beating with this little war of ours. NEED MOAR SOLDIERS!!!! NEED TO KILL MOAR HUNTER-GATHERERS!!!!!one!!! Evidently if we're 8th in power, there are seven people out in the fog ahead of us. That's certainly a change from before our first sharp decline when we went stack to stack against MackSeven. At that time I believe we were either #1 or #2 in the world. Do you think we're slowing down the tech rate on our part of the planet just a bit? Get 'em!

[Commodore]

Meh, no shock, annoying though. It was a double-move that wiped out the attack stack. We gonna die in Turning Stones? I guess you saw the roaders going thataway. For MSun, I was actually thinking farming the lakeside, and cottaging the riverside...which reminds me, we need to shake loose a worker pair and a settler for the Foxwoods fur/deer/cow location up north, the happy and the commerce would be huge.

Frickin' Mackseven. It's darned annoying to get double-moved, man.

[Commodore]

Okay, so the turn rolled, and I played. Maybe foolish given the SMack tendency to clock-ride, but as the turn will roll tomorrow during US worktime, Outer Mackotistan playtime, I figure why not. First of all, they vacated Mind's Desire to double-move our stack. If we had about seven more chariots in Blackfeet, we'd be in great shape.



Blackfeet is about to finish a much-needed Totem Pole, but once the pole is done we need to put 4/35 into a spear and grow to size 4, stat, then double-whip for max overflow. I expect HAs soon, so spears will be very much in order, and they don't like us there, so two-pop whipping is better on the angries.



Cool thing, which means a bit of micro-shifting. Researched at break-even (up to 30%!) this turn, so next turn we can go 100% and finish Maths! Which means a loooot of hammers to us. This should go into backlines settlers as well as frontlines archers/spears/dogs, if possible.



One last little weird thing. SE of Mohegan, the worker needs to go one more SE and start roading, covered by the archer. This means the turn after the archer can boogie into the city in one turn. The forested tile can be roaded by the worker NW of Mohegan. After that, it's off to Foxwood.

[novice]

Can we see your F5 screen?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Sure, I'll post F5 next time I log in (probably tonight if there is a turn to play, unless Commogawa handles it). Prepare to be disappointed. Our army is probably smaller than you think, especially if the turn rolls while we're both at work again.

[AutomatedTeller]

I believe that you can build Heroic Epic if youi have EVER had a level 4 unit, not just if you have one at the time of building.