[SPOILERS] *Placeholder* Zakalwe plays a soldier

[zakalwe]

My spies tell me that I should be safe to delay liberalism for one more turn, so I'm grabbing theology first, so I can rush the Apostolic Palace. The AP hammers will be great, particularly in my weak island cities, that have been relying solely on the whip and a free engineer specialist for production.

Novice showed up with caravels, so I was a little tempted to target astronomy with liberalism. But I'm not sure it can be delayed for two more turns (compass and optics), so I'm settling for nationalism, instead. It's not like that is a useless tech. I guess I could take economics, too, if I'm really impatient to start another golden age. It certainly would be nice to get OU up quickly. Though I still lack an academy, so IDK. (As NobleHelium pointed out once, OU doesn't technically synergize with an academy, but if I had both, it would make bureaucracy more attractive.) So many viable choices... it's almost like I'm playing some kind of finely balanced strategy game.

Tentatively, I'm going Theology->Liberalism->Nationalism->Gunpowder, and spending 5 turns in nationhood and theocracy. I can probably triple-draft my crappy island cities without much issue, so why not. (I connected my incense this turn, and I'm about to build temples everywhere; this isn't a very happiness-constrained map.) After that, I guess I can go back to organized religion and build OU.

On the military front, Boldly put 9 units in Great Bend, so I did the chop/fort trick and captured Deadwood instead. I kept it because I want a canal through the island. I'm still not sure how to take Great Bend, but I'm moving even more knights towards the area, and I have reinstated a blockade of most of his sea tiles. At least I'm keeping him busy during his golden age.

[zakalwe]

Also, despite my sprawling empire (now #1 in land area, and cities literally all around the world), my breakeven rate is somewhere between 70% and 80% research. Here's part of the reason why:

72 gold per turn, at 100% research. Pretty nice.

[Commodore]

But a bigger reason is your cities are half to a quarter the cost of your rivals' cities.

[zakalwe]

Sure... but I wanted to show off my 72 gpt.

I think it's pretty clear that I have better traits (and also a better civ) than my opponents for this stage of the game. I'm not denying that.

[zakalwe]

Groundhog Day T131.

So... lacking a clear plan for how to actually advance, I just threw more knights at the problem, capturing Deadwood and moving up reinforcements, hoping to somehow come out victorious, despite the lack of finesse.

Wait - that was last turn, you say? Well, this turn was very similar. Boldly recaptured Deadwood, but didn't have enough to hit my knight stack behind it, so I'm not quite sure why he did it. In any case, it led to even more bloodshed, as I captured Deadwood once again, and hit his surviving knights; partly with fresh knights coming off my boats, and partly with my wounded survivors. All that's left are three defenders in Great Bend, so I figured I'd better go all in. So now I have 8 knights on the ground outside his city, 6 of which are healthy. And then I've got 7 galleys back in my mainland fort, loaded with some knights and a lot of junk. There are two amphibious knights there, though, so I have 8 full strength attackers. Of course, he has a stack of 10 triremes, but he'll need to split it to cover his city, and I have 8 triremes of my own, with combat I promotions. So unless he can unload several galleys worth of reinforcements next turn, I'll probably be pummeling him with kitchen sinks.

Some pictures of that mess:

Also of interest - Novice was evidently able to blindside some of Boldly's ships with his freshly upgraded caravels:

Some overview shots:

At the end of the turn, I completed the Apostolic Palace and Liberalism. Here are my demographics before and after ending turn; note the jump in MFG.

Looking pretty good, although I now need to fix that soldier count again. A round of drafted muskets should help with that.

[zakalwe]

T132 (post-mortem).

I would have razed Great Bend easily, and also the poor great general who got born in the city during my attack. Maybe I could have chased down those injured triremes with my faster galleys, too, although it's hard to say if I would have risked it.

Gunpowder would have been a 2-turn tech. His culture would still cover the southern parts of the island, but I could have made a canal through the island (a fort + Deadwood) to start threatening Boldly's core with amphibious attacks. Though I probably wouldn't be interested in expanding much more in that direction, the main point of my campaign was just to take him down a peg.

Still a looong way to go before anyone could reach a victory condition here, but my position was pretty nice.

[Ichabod]

Wow, so I'd get my dyes sooner than expected!

[NobleHelium]

As NobleHelium pointed out once, OU doesn't technically synergize with an academy, but if I had both, it would make bureaucracy more attractive.

[zakalwe]

That may be unintentionally hilarious. Did I get it wrong?

[NobleHelium]

It's correct, it's just funny to see me get mentioned when I wasn't in the thread at all.