[SPOILERS] naufragar, Charriu, and Zalson's Threepenny Opera

[Mardoc]

Rusten razed Shipping.
No excuse. Only had a bowman there. The crossbow would have completed next turn, but I should've finished one earlier. No clue why I didn't. Shame that he won the 30% battle and shame I can't destroy the crossbow he left. Quite a gut punch.

In world news, last turn Rusten burnt the big BGN city nearest to us. Don't know what to make of that. Opportunism? Idk.

[naufragar]

Rusten razed Shipping.
No excuse. Only had a bowman there. The crossbow would have completed next turn, but I should've finished one earlier. No clue why I didn't. Shame that he won the 30% battle and shame I can't destroy the crossbow he left. Quite a gut punch.

In world news, last turn Rusten burnt the big BGN city nearest to us. Don't know what to make of that. Opportunism? Idk.

Thanks Mardoc. I've been a little checked out, and I think what happened is that I didn't pay attention to turn order. I timed it so the crossbow would complete end of turn, thinking "alright a crossbow + bowman can hold against a galleon." I neglected, of course, that we're in a turn split, and Rusten would move before EoT.

Made a similar mistake this turn.


Receiving was originally building a caravel. Rusten has stacked his two galleons up, so I need 4-5 caravels to take them out. Those two galleons can represent 6 crossbows. The garrison of Receiving is all melee units which would get slaughtered. I can't build a crossbow in time. I could put enough hammers into it to whip next turn, but that means Rusten still gets two turns before the crossbow appears. (1: Land 6 xbows 2: Take Receiving) I panicked a little and 1 pop whipped walls. Commodore is supplying us with stone. The trouble is, and please do correct me if I'm wrong, walls don't add 50% defense. They are just used in place of cultural defense. So, while I should get a 10% defense boost sooner than I would have gotten a crossbow, it's not really going to matter. I should've just hoped I had time to complete the crossbow.

Those two galleons are trouble. Every single city in my empire is on the coast. I have no back lines, so every single city has to have a garrison that can stand up to a six unit assault. These are the resulting demographics.



In international news, BGN lost another city. I didn't get an event log notice, so it's not a city I've seen.

[naufragar]

Goddamn but this game's been frustrating.


The turn before my caravels complete to ambush Rusten's galleon, he reinforces. Jesus.

Trying to figure out caravel moves here.


If he's paying any attention at all he can spot these. If he takes them out, the caravel from The Maw kills a galleon of his. I had to blow my gold on unit upgrades for this island, pushing Engineering even further back. No catapults on the island, but I just didn't have time.

[Charriu]

Sad to read this, but it looks like BGN was hit harder then you, right? He lost two cities. Maybe Rusten wanted to attack BGN and you just declared before that happened. Did you try offering peace?

[naufragar]

Sad to read this, but it looks like BGN was hit harder then you, right? He lost two cities. Maybe Rusten wanted to attack BGN and you just declared before that happened. Did you try offering peace?

I had offered peace, but that was before Rusten attacked BGN. It's possible he wanted to keep up the war, so BGN would let his guard down. I'll send another offer next turn. These galleons so far away from Rusten's core make me think they're headed for our iron (and therefore he intends to cripple us). It would be difficult for him to hold territory so far from his core, so this seems like a strike force.

And you're right. BGN has lost more than us (and our one city was a stupid mistake). His power has climbed as well, so hopefully we can put the brakes on Rusten. Unfortunately, to protect our iron, I blew some 450 gold on crossbow upgrades, so we're still forever away from knight-proofing our cities.

[naufragar]

Well, Charriu, when you're right, you're right.


Opened the turn up to this.

Check the military advisor to see where the galleons were.


The two in our western territory moved to the edge of Moira's island. The galleon I had shown before did not reinforce. So, while it was very tempting to try and kill the galleon blockading Cathedral, I accepted peace. (This is not peace. It's an armistice for twenty years ten turns.)

While we only lost the one city (and that due to my unforced error), this war was catastrophic. Four seafood resources were pillaged, and these were our lifeblood. I had to delete galleys so they wouldn't give Rusten's navy any experience. I couldn't improve tiles on the coast while the galleons were in range. I'm using these ten turns to get a little infrastructure built and then build wealth to race to Engineering.

Here's global GNP.


I wonder if Rusten is sandbagging his GNP. Commodore is in a golden age.

Here's Crop.


Rusten/Hitru and Commodore/Pindicator are neck and neck. Should be interesting for lurkers.

An example of what the war did to us.


Receiving produced 2 caravels and walls basically in 4 turns. By the way, I'm going to resettle Shipping. There's good fishing off the coast. Our maintenance costs are high, but we're a long way away from courthouses.

Here's the final fleet positions in the West.


I feel a little guilty that Rusten may be using the peace to slingshot his galleons towards BGN's capitol. Hope BGN and Xenu catch on in time.

[naufragar]

How's peace treating our empire? We're still building work boats to get back the food Rusten burned.


The capital is building a settler to replace Shipping. Cathedral is building a forge for when it inevitably needs to whip emergency defenders. Bonehoard is finishing the catapult. I'd like to build wealth there next, but we'll see.

Similar infrastructure program on our islands.


Again, forges needed for when we have to drum up a military. Note that we can no longer see into Comm/Pindicator's city of King. Oh well. I've stashed our caravels at Moira's for the time being.

I had planned on building lots of wealth, but we need the infra, plus...


We wouldn't be building much anyway.  

We're no longer second in power.


Rusten's no longer in slavery. What's he up to? He was able to burn a city of mine (    ) and two of BGN's. But the power graphs are relatively close. Is he going to raid coastline and burn cities until he can invade at leisure? I don't get it. Is he waiting for knights? If so, why attack now? Mysterious.

Although we are no longer 2nd in power...


We've moved up a ranking in crop!     (Our crop hasn't actually increased. Somebody's been losing their's.     )

Edit: Charriu, you marked the tile on the capital's river for cottaging, and I've farmed it. I just don't think we'll live long enough to get the benefits of a cottage.

[Charriu]

I marked that long before the war, so no objections.

[Zalson]

Well we have this big army ... and no way to use it for 10 turns.

I mean, do we want to make a limited war attack on Commodore?

[naufragar]

Well we have this big army ... and no way to use it for 10 turns.

I mean, do we want to make a limited war attack on Commodore?

Oh wait, I'm not a lurker! The sad truth is that our power is divided piecemeal over our various cities because I was garrisoning each to hold off the galleons. We have a solid enough force playing zone defense between the capital, Bafford's, and Cathedral, but we can't get it over to Commodore because we have exactly one galley.   We had three. Two were deleted to not give XP to galleons and one made it home safe, and it is now ferrying workers and eventually a settler from our mainland elsewhere. It's a bitter irony that our power is gigantic, and I still feel under-defended.

My longer term plans (such as they are. I have to admit I may have checked out just a tiny bit.) are to keep shoring up defenses, because I expect knights of galleons from Rusten. To do this, I want at least Engineering. I don't have an ETA on this because our current GNP is garbage, and I plan to run wealth builds. 10-11 turns? But I'm pulling that from thin air. Our Great Person counter at Bafford's is at 149/400. It gains 8 Scientist points every turn just from the Great Library, so we'll get a Scientist in 32 turns if we keep the city. We can run scientists in a little bit once we get the seafood repaired. This could cut the time down to ~20 turns from now. A Great Scientist bulbs about half of Astro. (I think. I did the calculation before the war, so we had a lot more pop.) So Astro's still a long ways off, but there's at least a plan for it.

This assumes that Rusten doesn't just nuke us once our peace expires. Speaking of attacking Commodore, we'll soon have to start worrying about the reverse. He got a big score increase this turn, which I suspect is an Astro bulb. Mr. Cairo got a similar increase, so it looks like I'm quite slow to get us to the big ships.

I have a sort of detached, impersonal interest in whether Commodore attacks us with galleons. It's so far outside of my control right now that it's hard to be terribly worried.