[90 Spoilers] Saxony's splendour and Miguelusten's glory

[Miguelito]

Huge upset in PB90 as not Plemo but civac builds MoM!

 

Think anyone else has a (realistic) chance of winning from here?

ugh, so some people have done conquests, like Cornflakes apparently? I don't know who's on the other side of Plemo's, but if Plemo can't expand too easily (meaning we stop his rifles with maces or maybe muskets even, and the Mongols with... keshiks?), maybe Cornflakes has the skill and creativity to pull off something?

The other guy who conquered someone, shade, is also quite capable. Ball's in their court, I try to have fun meanwhile.

Can you get a coalition going against Plemo?

I do have a coalition! ...wrong target, but can't have it all.




Awesome, he cancelled 3 turns of payment for his city ! I had cancelled OB last turn (or the one before, not really paying attention), as he was about to see the bulk of what I'm bringing, so that seems to have triggered him enough.

No peace though, we're riding with the Mongols!

- and hope that Plemo and Ari don't interfere. Ari has shown a ~6 axe stack plus 2 recent catapults, but he has flat power. Plemo has cats and a first mace, but is not showing agression, and we have not whipped in earnest yet. Graph's encouraging:



Perfect timing for my second event this game:





More graphs while we're at it (and I have Plemo's for the moment)












Plemo even taking over the culture lead again



Note the difference to top power, despite me being second

[Miguelito]

I chickened out of sending the stack on naufragar. I simmed briefly, and with 2 more HAs of him out of the fog it was a rout pretty much. what next I don't know, but no peace given yet.

[Miguelito]

Operation: screw it all in march!



I think 2 catapults are too little to wipe this, but I don't know what he has behind. At least next turn I'll have the hill. Likely scenario is he retreats, I have to burn the city and then likely lose the stack at some point. Hagen/civac is moving some units in nauf's direction though. Meanwhile nauf must be frantically shipping units from the south, because...


whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy  (ok they seem to be getting attacked by Cornflakes, and nauf admirably burned another city of theirs, but have they seen the power graph?

Whatever's coming, the game owes me some combat luck, because of course...



of course.

[Miguelito]

naufragar emptied Bursa (forced me to spend a catapult though), and retreated to the hills:


Good decision probably because on flatland the horse archers would really hurt him on the retreat.

Anyways, I don't take this game very seriously and did something not very smart:


It worked, somewhat.
Here we are at the end of the turn. Flanking had been a little too little to actually kill anything:


At the end of the turn, I was quite unsure if by the next that stack would still be standing.

naufragar had the same feeling:


Our drill promoted catapults, who don't take collateral damage won the day . I proceed to march on Edirne with all I have.

On the sea I think this is nice, although maybe questionable:


He actually had to know that there were two galleys (but actually there were three). I feel like losing those to sink both triremes is justified (and saves me a lot of immediate headaches, but now we have just two galleys left in that sea, and his capital is probably save for the while being.

I am purchasing iron from Plemo, who seems to be happy to support my second place ambitions, and start to build crossbows.



This city used to be an absoluts stub for its first 15 or 20 turns, but now it's really nice. I hope taking Plemo's tiles there doesn't cause much of a diplo malus, he will know to blame himself for not getting any culture there all that time, and he can fix it easily.

[Miguelito]

nauf apparently evacuated his remains over the sea. I killed a single axe in Edirne, enabling a sentry HA. Then I messed up on the logistics of taking Konya the same turn, so I asked for it in a peace deal, and naufragar accepted. I don't even know if he'll be back for more soon - normally naufragar is a vindictive fighter to the death, but here I don't really sense the spirit, and he has commented elsewhere that he doesn't enjoy the game much. Still going to be vigilant.
First time playing Inca, terraces in conquered cities are really cool, in my case providing 4 culture per turn everywhere immediately. Also 2 forges survived. Courts will be a necessity though.
Here's the now even weirder shaped empire:


I need to remind myself that the war was about getting iron, which naufragar never had . But Hagen/civac/Qin Shi does. I still have by far the highest power locally, but the units are still healing, I have to keep something substantial around naufragar, he has a monster MfG that is on par with Plemo's and has added some power recently, he has CKN, and I was already close to bankrupcy after finalizing the latest conquests.
So the plan is to grow back what was whipped, launch a GA and get civics* before making another attempt at expansion. Dresden should get Moai ready in time for the occasion. Actually, growing takes a lot of time on this map, so GA might be in ten turns or so no earlier.
Now is it a smart move to delay an attack on MoM-holding Qin Shi? Possibly not, but there is the option of outteching, and since Plemo is graciously selling me iron knights could be an option. Anyways, the cities are spent from the last war effort and need some respite.

*vassalage or bureau? The capital isn't great but it might be with Moai? I don't really have much other use for CS though.

[Rusten]

Are you winning, son?

Sorry for not keeping up, I went cold turkey and didn't access this site for months. I don't expect to be of much help.

[Miguelito]

What doth my wrinkled eye spot? So happy to see you drop by!
Winning is such a Plemo* thing, I'm just here enjoying myself . I guess the war against naufragar was a win, but if you look one or two pages back, it turns out that the mapmakers funny to only give half of the players iron (and the other half horses). Of the two that are theoretically in our reach, one is owned by civac of Pro Cho Ko Nus, and the other is,well, Plemo's**. I entertain false hopes of taking civac's eventually, but it is very unlikely to actually happen.
For now I try to grow everything into a GA. Very slowly, because no city has more than one food ressource.
After that, adding infra and hopelessly pursuing Plemo's tech lead, we could try and finish naufragar, or civac, or well the Aztecs? Ari has been super friendly, but has thin defenses and a war against the Maya. An all mesoamerican war would be fun, but I don't think it's profitable atm. Have to constrain myself and just grow the cities. Never been good at that.


* who took Police State as of last turn! He also took his garrisoning macemen out of my sight - to trick me or because he believes in our alliance? (he'd be right)
** and he's selling us some, so I could build some crossbows, and might even go for knights. I just now noticed that he must either have settled up on Empirate so hard that he got his - but Empi settled fast, and has good trade relations with Plemo - or popped an additional ressource.

[Miguelito]

 
Plemo really wants to be our friend? Or make us feel safe in preparation for the stab? We are world top power, pretty sure he must have a better target and just wants his rear cleared. We're not attacking into maces anyways, so sure.



Lovely, got the trade just this turn when I realized the loss on the OF. I should probably milk some failgold, also on Great Wall and Chichén Itzá, but even though it surely is very effective, I never feel like I want to convert hammers to gold here (we're close to the rate where failgold -> rush buying would be cost effective, but not quite there yet. And of course we don't have the civic )

[Mjmd]

Where did they place stone on this, lets call it a map? IE is there a reason Plemo has and you don't? That is a LATE Moai.

[superdeath]

Where did they place stone on this, lets call it a map? IE is there a reason Plemo has and you don't? That is a LATE Moai.