Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)

[The Black Sword]

Finally, I get to to play with my horses!

First, Lavendar Gooms' garrison has not changed:



RIP Wil Anderson. It's easy after that and the city falls:


Granary, courthouse and stonehenge monument intact, 145g nice!

Next up we have Hollabackatcha:


It has 5 maces with full fortify, 1 full fortify CG musket, another just built CG musket, and a holkan. This top musket is the only tough guy, so Steve Ricket takes flanking and withdraws!

Then C3 Brannigan goes in to clear the other musket, allowing me to take shock on everyone else:


Lose. Then the slaughter begins:


Unfortunately, it was for the wrong side:



Yes, apart from Mr Rickett's 'lucky roll', the rest of my 6 cavs lost all their battles with 67-75% odds. Throw in 3 dead knights with similar odds for good measure.

RIP Lt Brannigan, Duke, Craig McCoy, Buzz Kinney and JB Books.

At least the city fell with some good infrastructure in tact and capture gold:


It also gave me access to some more roads:


Wish I had thought to keep more Keshiks free, once Road Rash falls, they can hit Nick-Nack. My 1 move stack is now 1E of the wheat.

Also, since I'm revolting into Rep/Slavery next turn, starved TQM:

[GermanJoey]

Sorry to hear about those lousy dice rolls. How are things going now?

[The Black Sword]

Morning turns aren't great for reports. It's going pretty well though:


Razed Tin Tummy in the south too.

[The Black Sword]

Not sure why these units are sitting out in the open. A misclick from Oxy I guess. Non-shock cavs only get 90% odds on the two pikes. I sent in 2 knights to deal with them:



1 died, and then my cavs slaughtered the rest:


Chariot took the final blow if he wants to put a unit on flatland to take it out:


Next turn Scrooge falls:


Oxy burned his GG on 10 CG2 upgrades. I wonder if he'll hold here or retreat to his capital.

In other news, I'm up to 36 cavs and I obviously don't need that many for Oxy. Maybe I should stop whipping them? Or just invade someone else I suppose ... Cavs + airships sounds like a nice combo. Nobody else even has Grens yet, though they're picking up Nationalism so I presume Rifle drafting is in the picture.

I got my 60% GM this turn too, I'll probably save him for Sushi. I've been thinking about that a bit though, and I'm afraid I might have too much food. You need roughly 5fpt to 2 whip 16->14 every 10 turns, which a lot of my cities already have, the land is very nice. That's 180h with full multipliers so I doubt I'd be able to 3 whip. So what do I do with 10+ food from Sushi? I need either specialists, which requires Rep, but I want US for Kremlin and super towns, or workshops to use up the food. How many workshops per city though? I could just go with Caste and SP instead of Sushi and Slavery. I have some time to think about it at least. I'm heading toward the Kremlin now.

[Molach]

Fun updates to follow.

Is there any sign of any rivals getting ready to invade and stop the runaway?
(Will they ever get a better shot at disrupting your game than just now?)

[The Black Sword]

Dogpile looks unlikely at the moment. Everybody appears to be researching economic techs and hoping that Oxy holds me up long enough. Right now doesn't feel like a good dogpile moment to me either, since I've 60 Rifling era units and they've none. I imagine they'd have a better opportunity in the future if they beelined some military techs. But of course whichever of the 3 of them(Commodore probably, since we don't share a border) stayed out would get ahead.

Here's the most vulneruble place:



It can be 1 turned by Knights from the fog, which makes me a bit paranoid since I've lost sight on Gaspar and Commodore's armies. My rifles with all those boni should be tough for Knights to get through. Up North I have a slightly smaller garrison but I'll have extra notice before an attack.



This is the other place I can be 1 turned, but the Thoth border is pretty safe. His power is the lowest of the big four and I can see that most of the excess is beside dtay. I also have OBs with Thoth allowing my chariot to keep an eye out for any build up.

Last turn, Oxy decided to hold in Scrooge:


I bombarded the defenses and sacked a couple(4 I think) cats to collateral everyone and improve my odds a little.


I let the Rifles do the most of the work


Then when the odds improved, the cavs went in for some promos:


I lost 3 rifles, 2 cavs and a knight I think. My prize had some nice infra:


This turn war weariness is really beginning to hurt. I need to get the new silk from Oxy's territory in my borders quickly. I'm also missing a sugar resource for my tea. This rather drives home the point for me that if I want further war in this game, Notre Dame will be a good build.

I had a bit of a think about the wonders I want at the moment. Commodore is a big potential threat to the SoL, only missing Paper and PP to research Democracy. Thoth meanwhile is only behind Lib and Chem in a Communism race, but appears to be researching Constitution right now. I think I'm going to go for Democracy now and use McLintock to take the SoL. It's been building up an overflow cascade, I'll get 120h overflow at least. Then I'll continue on to Communism where I'll throw my GA and revolt to US/Bureau/Caste/OR. My capital will start building up a cascade now, it should be able to get the Kremlin out pretty damn quickly in that configuration:


Meanwhile, I'll use that OR period to build West Point(unlocked already with my first GG healer) in True Grit, my HE city, and Notre Dame in my Moai, The Sea Chase. A Moai ain't the best production city, but it'll be enough in a GA.

I rather like this plan, so I might start slotting in some wealth builds to make sure the others don't ruin it on me.

[The Black Sword]

7 muskets in the capital, Gaspar declared on Oxy too.



Btw, Lavendar Gooms, even in revolt, + corporation = another 2c trade route everywhere.

[The Black Sword]

T167 I moved up on the capital with my cats and most of my rifles. I decided to split up about 10 2-movers to fork the two cities in the south though. Then T168, Oxy had 29 units in the city, I had a bit more hitters than that, but a fair number of them were knights. Along with Gaspar's 13 knights lurking in Styx, waiting for the borders to fall, I decided to delay a turn.

That allowed me to about double my hitters, in new cavs coming in and the rest of the healed rifles. My GG also caught up and I sprinkled some promos:


I had a fair number of units 1xp off a promo, also a free Keshik->Cav upgrade. My 2 movers took Tock at least:


Next turn, Oxy stood still, added a few units, so I sent in a couple of cats:


Rifles started off at 85%:


Things only improved from there, cavs started at 95%.






I put 4 rifles, 2 cavs and a knight in Gus, added something like 2 extra cavs to the main stack, but it should have enough units with strength >10 anyway to deal with Oxy's knights.

Next turn Homeskillet should fall, I imagine one of the other two will take the last city south of it. Then I'll be free of the War Weariness!

Thoth's GE is pretty annoying, he can probably steal either Kremlin or SoL. On the other hand Mining Inc has got to be pretty tempting if you manage a GE.

Seems like Dtay's time is up too:

[The Black Sword]

The sloooow Statue of Liberty:


At least I should get a lot of gold if Thoth steals this.

I'm honestly glad for this little break Thoth's forced upon us right now, I could use some time working out my strategy post-Oxy. I re-checked the beaker counts and I'm still about 24k beakers ahead of everyone(without taking into account pre-reqs.) I also still have my 3GPs sitting around since forever.

The biggest question is probably how I use my military. The easiest thing would probably be to continue going on through ex-Oxy land, taking Gaspar's stuff. I reckon that's worth about 4-5 defensible cities before I hit his cultural build up. The war weariness from that attack would probably be manageable so long as I defended in my own territory from then on. He does have the next highest power though. On the other hand, it would probably take 5-6 turns to set up an attack on Thoth, who has the lowest power, and if circumstances don't change I could take all of Carthage. His culture might make his counter-attack pretty punishing and the war weariness would probably be pretty bad. In both cases, particularly Thoth's IMO, there's the strong possibility of provoking them into devoting their game against me, in which case I have to wonder if the few extra cities are worth it.

I'm up to 10WW in my capital btw, after a conquest that was pretty one sided.

Settling in for a space race and watching for opportunities is probably a pretty safe path, I have quite the beaker lead and a minor relative land advantage, so that should be winnable. The late game toys are very tempting though and I always feel bad when I have a big force sitting around and I don't use it.

[The Black Sword]

I'm honestly glad for this little break Thoth's forced upon us right now,

I'm sorry, I learned my lesson, I will never say something stupid like that again.

Here's some pictures of the Gaspar border:


Homeskillet will only hold it's first ring from Gurton Buster, which is ok, it's not going to be too important a city. I'm pretty confident I could take and hold that trio of cities from Gaspar. They should be able to hold their first ring. It opens up a front with Commodore though and triples the number of defenders down here. I'm not sure it would be great value.



River Styx on the other hand, I'd like to remove and put down Oxy's old city, I think I could hold the 2nd ring eventually, since Mount Olympus was originally an Oxy city too. As it is, Styx holds the diagonal into Oxy's old capital, which I'm sure will be a very nice city. The Deer forest means it can't be 1 turned but 50% defence isn't great either.



Gaspar razed an Oxy city here, I'm looking to replant it and then figure out whether I want the rest of the island.

Really though, barring an existensial war, which I don't want with them right now, my potential gains are pretty small. I should see if it's possible to change the ownership in Styx without pissing them off.

Here's the other side, with no attacking options unless I want to go all in:



There's about a 500k power difference between us at the moment and he's 7t from Rifling I think.

On the other hand, here's some Thoth ideas:


Here I have about a 1,000k power difference and if he wants to steal one of my wonders he's at least 15t from Rifles. I should see if I can fit Astro in. Bear in mind I can make Amphib cavs from my HE. I really think I could force him back to that chokepoint with the right preparation. Controlling the seas will be vital late game, I have perhaps been underestimating Combustion.

Some other thoughts:

35 cities for me, 33 for Comm, 31 for Gaspar, 29 for Thoth.

11fpt from Sushi's currently, also 42 culture per turn! Looks like I should actually make a little money on it too, with Wall Street up(it will be) and courthouses in each city. Anyone know why the costs have such variance though?

Cristo Redentor would be the perfect way to make sure I can use all that food. It would also probably allow a 4th golden age, which I've sort of been writing off at the moment.

Looks like I'll have about 60 (soon to be) towns.

The war weariness:


That can be halfed with Rushmore + Jails, another +2happy from Optics soon, +2 from Notre Dame. Perhaps a late game war is possible after all. Glad I have SoZ though.