Dare you enter the Whizzard's Realm? Magic and Mysteries abide.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

No OB given. Do we try to raze his improvements? We can get a few of them and really weaken the city sharing our copper island sea

[El Grillo]

Sure, winning this game will inevitably involve taking mackoti out, so there's not much room for maskirovka here In 10 turns, with access to drafted rifles and cavalry, a cataphract-led offensive should be a much more manageable threat.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So basically I really cannot be bothered to argue the toss over something which is neither here nor there. On reading El Grillos above comment I made the move at the next available opportunity. There would have been absolutely no way that he could have razed roads to prevent things based on where the units were before but I am not going down that route of arguing the toss and dragging admins in for this. We are in enforced peace for another 9 turns too anyway.

[El Grillo]

This is one of the things that makes me reluctant to play PB-style games. I agree with you that it's better to just let this pass.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So as in agreement not to rock the boat those 2 knights were left in place. One of them had already been bumped out of position. The one that razed the wheat was where the other one was when mack played. It had moved twice along roads. There was nothing that he could have done to prevent it doing what it did that turn at all unless he had made all his moves first and razed the road before I had made any moves at all... But those who shout loudest get what they want eh? 

Overview - all those muskets will autoupgrade to rifles in the queues. No irrelevant muskets built anywhere! Woo. Knights for cities that won't finish them before getting MT in a further 2 turns. New city settled, working the 5/0/2 jungle fish already. Will get spread in 2 turns, and get the temple/mon/courthouse trio. 

I'm still not sure whether hard whipping cavs and rifles or playing the eco game is best here. We still have a lot of sites that we can settle although admittedly few of them with a great amount of resources. We can set up a good amount of 8-4 whips for settlers. Who knows... We are short on worker labour especially in the north.

International news - we might be about to annoy RMOG. Not long till we flip that rice.

Scooter - he proposed OB and maps this turn. I thought about this for a while and accepted. We need good terms with him as he is the likely one to help us out in a taking mack down a peg or 2 war. Responded also with wine/spice and silk/dye trades. Hopefully they will see the intent behind this. If we agree to hitting Mack then we should count Scooter down from far out. Might prevent them taking another war/peace dec.

Also - SoL built. Never would have competed with that completion date.

What has he done - surprisingly he has cottaged everywhere more or less. Surprised at how low his GNP is with this method of play actually. I suppose going eventually to FS/US could go well here, but if we convert quickly to a hammer economy I think that we can do better. Plus US competes with rep for the SoL. Also we can keep Beuro for oxford too. 

RMOG seems to have gone similar ways.

I think mack sent some units this way. Explorer will cover them and see.

Demos - Mack shooting ahead in food. Not much else yet. 

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Lots to update when I get back from work. Sailient points - now only 5 turns of Mack peace left. He has also leaves with ottomans, essentially leaving the gold city for us.

Will be able to land 3 rifles and 3 cavs in 2 turns. Will be able to move some knights and a rifle the turn before to be able to board the empty ships and also hit the city should we have bad RNG. He still has the 3 longbows and a jan in there, also a great general. I think he will be glad for the release.

Targeting is difficult. RMOG and plako both have RP now. Mack is showing 2 turns to RP. I would assume they are all going for rifles. Can we amass enough soldiers to hit someone? Realistically it will be a limited war with Mack or a full out war with RMOG. More on that later.

Dialled in a 2t chemistry. We can decide whether to push Astro or SP after that.

I perhaps should be whipping more heavily if we are going to all out war though. Very tricky. I would also like to get the NE up when we have marble available, won't be for a few more turns.

Also getting quite a few watermills up now, workshops will start to become interesting soon too. A nice E-W road network is up and still a few forests around now.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Big update incoming... In short I am struggling to see a good grand strategy long term currently.

[El Grillo]

I hopped in for a look, and I think I understand your concerns: GA!mackoti is trucking along to Rifling, along with everyone else. The window for a cavalry attack is probably not large enough now that everyone is on guard. The usual plan of using the tech lead to cash in the next tier of bonuses is made difficult due to not wanting to obsolete monasteries. You, scooter, and RMOG all want to take a bite out of mackoti, but no one wants to make the first move. Attacking someone who isn't mackoti allows him to develop the Ottoman land and build up a huge population and production base. A right thorny puzzle, indeed.

Advisor screens:

City screens:

mackoti's big stick:

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Overview. Note the fairly intensive whipping of cavs, especially off coast tiles, and mines etc. Only city I am sparing is the beuro cap with Oxford which obviously works best larger. Got a few workers up around SM now, a lot of tiles to develop there.

17 cities now. All except unnamed Yodshapura with mon/temple/courthouse. All those building units also have a barracks, and 7 universities and 8-9 libs, plus a market/grocer pair in tower. Decent amount of infra. Space for 8 more mostly filler cities, 9 if we push up against plako. We will also be able to nab the gold island soon. 

Demos forgot to SS still solid, and despite 3 GAs we are 1st GNP and 2nd MFG to mack.

But where can we go? Currently we are leading, but Mack WILL eclipse us unless we do something with his land advantage.

Let's get another gold island first. Just the one galleon to worry about, 3 longbows and a jan. 2 workers and a great general. In Bubaxtons we have a rifle and 3 knights ready to move out, and 2 longbows for defence. 

Next turn the 3 galleys with 3 rifles and 3 cavs all double promos will end in the city, whilst the 3 knights and the rifle will move onto the western windmill. Not much point hiding the attack. Then the turn after land the 6 units and board the other 4. I'm tossing up whether it would be better to put one galley 44 of the city, covered by a caravel. It could raze the clam fishing boats that way before we capture the city and then prevent mack from gaining them.

Then next turn we should get odds with every unit, and if not then the boarded units can mop up the damaged units.

But where from here? Powers

Here is most of macks power

We have 5t enforced peace - can we do anything?
Currently see below we have options even without galleons. We are first in turn order still so could hit without retribution unless he gets unlikely 3rd rings, we could hit gigadon from 99,996, 9966 (depending on roads). This would then open up the culture 77 of leaping lizard allowing a hit there. Maybe even Brave knight.

The issues - this would be majorly obvious. He has more units than us regardless, even if they are a lot of junk units. He could pack those cities and kill us on the counter. We might be able to do something with galleys/galleons north, but possibly not. 

Could we get anyone else to join us? No idea. Without astro it is difficult for Scooter or plako to do much, especially against phracts. We should also give them signals too if that is the case. 

Mack is 2t from RP, probably then 3-4 from rifles. He has huge stockpiles of cash.

Conclusion - I can't see us getting enough units here to make the difference. 

I will ignore the possibility of hitting Scooter/plako currently. Plako has RP and redcoats will make rifles meh, but are the same v cav, and Scooter is easily doing best behind us, but is far from rifles. Basically unless we completely kill them taking and holding any land is difficult. 

RMOG does also have RP, but currently isn't making many units. It is easier to attack him. We could even go along the ice path, which would require a lot of worker investment. He doesn't have culture vision over it but 1 unit would spot us coming a mile off. We could hit from multiple angles including Jungle all over and Jungle fish, possibly even global warming (I would perhaps suggest scouting with a unit first, although no OB so would need to be caravel or privateer)

Issues - I imagine they will go back to slavery at the end of the GA. THey have large cities for whipping of rifles out of. Mack could easily try to take more for himself. HOWEVER even worse is they seem to be friendly again. He could ride through on his OB and pick and choose a time to hit us. slamming phracts into damaged cavs would be painful. We can probably get another 10t peace out of mack, indeed I reckon he would propose this. But I don't think that will be quite enough... If we were to war them we would look to start it in about 8-10 turns really. 5t before he could wipe us out. 

Third plan is to go growth, although there isn't a great new window for a while. You're right we will ignore some aspects of the tree for a while, but we will be able to industrialize fast with org and OR/slavery. This we could slingshot into a great MFG lead for a while. Doing this we ignore communism and physics GP. 

Thoughts - Kremlin is the next big prize. Obviously we will not be competing - who will get it? Mack or Scooter it seems. Mack has major incentive to hit this line given his empire would hugely benefit SP. Scooter being aztec would love the kremlin. I would say mack if he goes there after rifles is more likely to get it with that cash reserve... I would prefer Scooter to claim it however. But with getting SoL he is far behind. He still needs to get gunpowder/RP/rifles to be safe from phracts really and no astro. Erg. 

We can claim the free great gen from facism easily I reckon at least. 

Where do you guys think we should go? RMOG is a no go if we don't get more mack peace. Cavs have a decent window even v rifles. On a flat city 2 cavs normally kill a rifle, but we would need a lot more than them. At least a whipped out cav army would not obsolete for a long time. 

I'm tempted to say go on the path to kill RMOG anyway. I think that is most likely victory path. That or tech to factories and have a massive MFG lead, but I think mack might be able to convert that land lead to make it a similar proposition then... It's the mack/RMOG OBs that I most worry about.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Note - on a quick glance this morning Mack is back in slavery and theocracy. This could be a mutually destructive path both whipping massive armies...

We are first in soldiers now though.