[spoilers] Commodore and Dtay are Sitting Bull of Inca, somehow.

[Commodore]

Interlude of madness aside...turns have suddenly slowed down. Part of that is HAK on vacation, part of that is the Gavagai/Borsche turn split coupled with Borsche's tech issues...but another reason is that Donovan and Elkad are splitting turns. So that's a thing that's going to be happening soon. The power spike out there coupled with bridges showing up Indian territory tell us the Dutch aren't long for the world.

So upshot is that this tile definitely needs to get half a dozen G2 crossbows soon. Hill roads everywhere!

Commodore and Dtay:
Beelined knights,

Killed you with crossbows.

[Ceiliazul]

I'm currently majoring in physics, graduating in about a week. (Though haven't done anything in that field, so have a vague idea of the concerns at play but haven't worked with them before).

I saw interstellar, without much cheating by looking stuff up before I watched it. Seemed like as serious a hollywood movie as they make anymore. What did you think?

How about Europa Report? Another reasonable plot with some science and some stretches.

[Ceiliazul]

Oh and, congrats dtay!

[Commodore]

So this probably should have been a spoiler but I read it, it's done, and it kind of squares with what I've seen anyway...

Also, there is PB25 which is my worst game by far - and this includes PB20. I hope, one day I will make a spoiler thread in a respective sub-forum to explain what happened there.

I think our good buddy Gav down there has stalled out; Borsche whipped a ton (probably Agg spears) and no more Ottomen cities have fallen. Now Gavagai has a massive tower of power and nil economy, so expect even further destabilization out that way. Given his early Judaism and then fast GSci, I expect he was wagering hard on pulling off the same slingshot we managed, then when that failed he threw the dice on Numidians unto glory but came up short.

...I'd call this reassuring, but this is Gavagai. He might very well appear out of the fog with twenty Numidians to raze and hurt us. He's neither predictable nor passive. :nervous:

[Ceiliazul]

If you're nervous, grimace should be terrified. Also, id like to reiterate the importance of taking the southern Retep port early in the war for a naval presence in the Eastern sea. Also to cut ivory, fork cities, block out grimace, yada yada.

[Commodore]

Alright, I'm about to go down into the weeds; tactics and micro. Those as always however serve strategy first and foremost. Geopolitically, we're in a very interesting time right now. As I said above, Gav's winning chances seem to be fading (although he's never as out of it as his dour Russian self thinks he is), with Borsche prickled and crippled, probably very nicely set up for Joey's own knights to hit mere spears. Donovan and Elkad are heating up, which will either turn out well for Donovan or well for Joey, depending on how many catapults Elkad has mustered. Meanwhile, we're totally committed to this knight beeline paying off; Retep is aware of the Sword of Damocles, as is HAK, and both are building mass spears...which still get pretty wrecked by knights and crossbows. So we're keeping on.

The future is in flux; I am confident we can kill Retep, but the question is how much it costs, how long it takes, and how much of his backline gets eaten by Gavagai (island) and/or Donovan (peninsula). If we make a clean sweep this could win things for us, but Donovan, Gavagai, and/or Joey are all possible beneficiaries soon as well...even HAK could probably sweep Grimace while we're busy. But for the here and now, we're committed to our course. Which is where the details of city planing and then tactics start to come in.

Looking forward to seeing how the rest of the empire is planning to contribute to the crush of Knights.

Cool, well, the holiday weekend is over and I'm stuck here running some of the duller system tests today, so let's look at the rest of the contributors. Filling out the mainland set we'll look here at Spinneret; it's a pretty dull rubric here of crossbow to whip->overflow + chop making a knight at the Guilds Turn. Simple enough, eh? The “far” cities of Spinneret, Cascade Point, Cobra, Deadman Switch, and Manta's Gift all must complete their knights on the turn Guilds finishes to get to the Warhorse staging ground; this knight from Spinneret here needs a road 2N of the city as well to just squeak into position in time. That's fine; a worker from Triplet is due next turn and will road the sucker just in time.

Size six, eleven unhappy...I sense much butthurt here.

I tuned and I tuned, but I could not get blood from the Coming of Age stone. Nor could a knight finished on turn 0 of Guilds get to the staging ground in time. Much simpler is to get this overflow+chop into a crossbow, whip that, then overflow into a nice little longbow or something for the follow-up. One interesting bit here; I cannot whip off that hamlet without delaying Guilds a turn. The beaker/coin totals are that tight, unfortunately. If that strikes you as astonishingly fragile...it does me too.

If HAK sends in the war elephants, those archers are going to feel a little underqualified.

Okay, last land city, Heir to Empire. Losta flexibility here, because the knight can follow a languid *two* turns after Guilds arrives (can't quite get enough food to brutally quadruple-whip for two knights in the target timeframe). So as a result, this sucker is kind of goofing off, building a sentry chariot, then a crossbow, before slouching its gentle way off to the knight whip. I mean, that's three whips and four citizens dying under the lash, but still, we're gonna call that languid.

And between these two sets of shots...inflation struck, making the coin situation that much worse.

The peninsular cities are in kind of a weird place; they can't build much for the knight push because our lift capacity just isn't there (one galley for the whole empire, stupidly), so I'd ideally like to have them push wealth...but with the Elkad Instability, they need crossbows too. Deadman Switch is pretty easy actually, just build, build, whip. Thanks to the forge, we're looking at that being enough to finish a knight 90/90. Then we need to regrow on crossbows and/or longbows. Much as we'd prefer to have more ships or wealth, needs must as devils' drive.

Also need to, you know, protect the Colossus city that is key to so much of the economy.

Last and pretty much completely least, here we see Manta's Gift. Two chops plus the whip nets the hammers for a knight, then the city is left to weep the orphans and cobble together a lighthouse out of tiles cannibalized from Deadman. Interestingly enough, this will be the only 2xp knight in the whole wave; every other one will be enjoying two promos.

Seed corn! Hell yeah!

Thus goes the micro; now for the tactics. Below is shown our front with Retep; you'll note he's improved his theme to something more tuneful. Our primary punch will stage out of Warhorse; 11 knights, 7 horse archers, 5 chariots all get dumped on the lonely cottage 2W, 1N of his capital the first turn of the war. Meanwhile, 2W of Empty Chairs a secondary force of 9 crossbows will menace; as you can see there is a hill road to both Who Am I and Stars. This is why the southern half of our empire will be making longbows and crossbows as the reinforcements. Retep has started building catapults this turn; he's got six turns to build enough to count.

See Who Am I's lake? That awesome beauty is our ticket to the other sea, just need two forts NW of the city.

Retep is piling most of his new power in the form of spears in Empty Chairs. Although that's hardly a pleasant stack to hit with knights, we could grind through if we had to...but our Protective Drill 1 crossbows get 60% odds on the fully-fortified axe even. They will cut through those spears like a hot knife through butter. Which probably means he'll be retreating the bulk of those spears back towards his capital, but I'd rather deal with them in the open; unfortified our knights ought to gut them unless Retep manages a lot more catapults than I expect. Even if he does, I'm fine with making the war about maneuver...so long as the big knight stack is intact, Retep will fall, and swiftly.

Nothing can possibly go wrong! It shall be a short, victorious war!

A coda; Triplet now officially has all its tile improvements! It won't exactly be a commerce monster, but this will definitely be worth a university.

And yes, a library. Look, seed corn okay?

[Commodore]

If you're nervous, grimace should be terrified. Also, id like to reiterate the importance of taking the southern Retep port early in the war for a naval presence in the Eastern sea. Also to cut ivory, fork cities, block out grimace, yada yada.

Agreed! But as you can see, Stars is kind of blocked by Empty Chairs right now, so gotta go through it (neither we nor Grimace have Alphabet so no OB). The aforementioned lake enabling Panama is the long-term goal.

[Ceiliazul]

Bah, OB nerfed by mod. Forgot about that wrinkle.

Well durn it, I like your plan and im sure it.will succeed.

Can you stage the xbows a bit further south, right on the Grimace border, and land on the cow on t0 of the war? Retep expects your sledge out of warhorse, but the crossbows are more dagger like, and need to haul ass. Also, spare a spear to cover those blokes?

Specifically: stack the xbows 2SE of Triplet, send grimace 10g for good feelings, and then move NW-NW to land on cow on t0.

[Commodore]

Can you stage the xbows a bit further south, right on the Grimace border, and land on the cow on t0 of the war? Retep expects your sledge out of warhorse, but the crossbows are more dagger like, and need to haul ass. Also, spare a spear to cover those blokes?

Specifically: stack the xbows 2SE of Triplet, send grimace 10g for good feelings, and then move NW-NW to land on cow on t0.

Heh, might could, I'll weigh timings (G2 crossbows are just as fast as knights invading but half speed on roads). But 10g? Really? Where on Earth would we get that kind of money???

[Commodore]

Dear little Pitboss 25 muddles ever onward. Last turn, the fireworks intensified off in the Other Continent, but here in peaceful Home Continent we're all just twiddling our thumbs and building up power. While our power is still definitely tops in this corner, unfortunately everyone else is also still moving upwards. I'm pretty sure the massive spate of whips retep just launched will show as catapults; nothing is coming cheaply out here, that's for sure and certain.

We all know what's coming, but do we all know who is coming?

But I said more stuff happened Over There? Well, looks like Elkad declared war on Donovan. I suspect this was a defensive declaration, because Elkad also coupled it with an offer for our third horses source, his own first silks. The whips are about to crack hard, so yes, we took it with gladness...anyway, this turn, Elkad managed to get himself a great general. I'd be more impressed but if he was fighting within his own borders the Great Wall means that was a mere 10xp; certainly we expect Imperialistic retep to churn out several great generals on the first couple turns even if we enjoy smashing success. Still, good on Elkad for fighting; and maybe some of that was out of his own borders for all I know.

If HAK sends in the war elephants, those archers are going to feel a little underqualified.

I'm twiddling my thumbs whilst waiting for Guilds to finish, getting a few beakers here and there where I can; I shifted these two hamlets to Colossus coast after taking this shot, for instance. This contortion here amuses me greatly, actually...Cascade Point finishes the quechua, of all damned things, 30/15 to net 12h of overflow (forge, remember). That seems painful, but it's absolutely needed to get the 42h needed next turn into the horse archer to finish the knight. It's actually kind of scary to me how all the knights for the push are finishing 90/90...this is very much a strained push of a plan. But every turn knights are delayed is a turn more of consolidation for our target's catapults.

Not Ottawa...but not all that far away from Ottawa, either.

I would be in tryhard/push off moment of truth mode with this all last year. Hinduism is nicely spread; OR courthouses and then hard bulbs up to Universities, coupled with GE-grabbing the MoM, would see us easily top game power and a lock for Liberalism. But as nice as that would be, I just don't think the peaceful path would do anything but push off the moment where the die is cast.

Wish we had Theocracy, though.