[Spoilers] Bacchus debuts on RB showing unmatched vision and slick dice-rolling

[Bacchus]

Oh, the drama. Now retep will be the last to take his turn and take forever.

[Bacchus]

Bastard.

Just kidding.


Even though he pillaged a village, looks like he lost another axe to the strike. The two incoming HA's aren't doing anything for him. I have 4 spears, 4 axes, shock Numidian, c1 Numidian and an archer defending against, currently 7 HA's, 5 axes, 3 spears and a chariot. Sent him a peace offer, the teleported units at least will get to defend from Wiilliam. Some more Numidians will appear on the scene in a short while, I want to finally finish the forge in the capital for the 2 happy and extra hammers.

I revolted into Buddhism last turn, forgot to say. Have it in two cities, including C of Conscience which was having really happy problems.

Not much else happening.

[Bacchus]

Retep took peace, and also resigned peace with WilliamLP. I need to decide what to do with the army.

Also, I'm an idiot:


So, the options are: found and attack the galley, most likely losing the city and the galley; get the settler back on the galley and piss off. Of course, I could also found and not attack, hoping that plako is nice or didn't bring an MP unit (yeah, like that's happening). I guess, my best course is to attack the galley first, and then either delete the settler in case of loss or found in case of victory. The reason that I can even consider war is due to having MC, of course. Also, I don't think plako needs this conflict. DIfficult, difficult. I'd be the gentleman and found, letting him avoid conflict and sail away with the settler to plant elsewhere, but that's just not going to happen in AI-Diplo.

[Bacchus]

So, I had a big hard look at where else I could plant this settler, and options are actually pretty tight. Not that I have no use for him at all, but it's giving up a 40% chance at a really decent city here and now for the certainty of god knows what god knows when. Another factor to consider is psychology, some people in view of this attack will just get pissed and get into a war with me whether it's worth it or not. I have a Trireme being built already (in fact, I can whip it this turn in the closest city), and plako is not going to go mental, I'm sure. I'm not really happy doing this and I hate to be the first to chase a little advantage at the cost of destroying a healthy relationship, but this is a fairly major settler race, and one has to take a chance. This double fish island is the strongest remaining settling spot in the area and the only viable IC locale for me. Maybe given the death of the relationship I can play the pirate and pester his GLH ports with Triremes until he buys me off :D (not really, no).

[Bacchus]

I forgot that cities autoraze if they haven't grown to 2 for a second, so there is no reason not to found -- he'll still need to expend his own settler after the attack. The combat went exactly as you'd expect it to, the galleys hit each other an equal number of times, so mine died and his didn't I offered peace which I'm sure he'll re-offer after razing the city. Or he might let me have it, who knows. Also, I felt that I should explain -- there reason there was no MP unit on that boat is of course due to having every single unit committed to defense. My backline is already down to single warriors, and double star is actually guarded by a lone axe (risky!).

Moved the army towards William's border. There is a nice staging tile from which I can hit with two-movers out of the fog. I don't have than many though, just 3 chariots and 3 numidians. That's only about enough to smash the spears, sacrificing chariots to take off a bit of that base strength, but what will kill the axes? I might not attack William at all, I'm as happy taking on Dhalpir.

[Bacchus]

Re-assessed and decided I'm going to take on Dhalpir, who has expanded into the jungle way too much for my liking. Even took the barb I so had eyes on, this arrogance has to be answered for, especially whilst I have Numidians. 1-movers will stay up north to guard against possible nuisance in 10 turns.

Plako razed the city, of course, and I assume settled it. I will take it after it's grown and there's some infrastructure. Thing is that plako's seaboard is much more vulnerable than mine, war is highly assymetric, and his closest city to my triremes is the Moai city. So, I don't really even have to build a defense force, if we each send a stack into each other's waters, he is losing much more than I will, even if all I do is blockade the closest city. So I'm pretty sure that he will rather avoid conflict than try to contest the city, but we'll see.

It's all proving rather fun. Says a guy who has lost three cities this game already.

Some more context for the above re-assessment:


Such a cute little building set. It's a smart move, actually, even if does delay the Granary by a considerable time.

[Bacchus]

I wouldn't say I've given up, but I'm playing pretty mechanically. Teching Currency and building some Numidians to take down Dhalpir. I'll go in with about 10, plus 3 chariots, of which 1 is a medic. He'd need some serious spear presence to hold out. I'll have a couple of Combat1 Flanking2 Numids too, to soften up the first painful combats. Then it's c1 combats.

[flugauto]

Do you have Construction?

[Bacchus]

Nope.

[Bacchus]

So, not the first one to be eliminated. Woohoo!