T223 - Logged in to find a trade offer from Pindicator:
No thanks. I'm going to guess he's 50 gold short of finishing Chemistry this turn. F4 shows that the Zulu are at war with Commodore again (Commodore declared), the Zulu clearly need Chemistry for frigates/privateers (so frigates in their case) to fight against Commodore's naval forces that are probably tying the Zulu down on the western sea. Nope, not helping the Zulu. Commodore hasn't attacked me and has always provided material support, you guys did attack me and took a city and are a pain in the ass. Plus you're my current competition, if you guys die then I move up the ladder one more spot. Not that it matters or means anything, but when you're playing out the string you do the best you can and hope the people on your level die first.
So go get 'em Commodore!
I moved my scouting chariot and found where the action is happening. I hope a lot of these units die very soon:
Not pictured is probably most of whatever Commodore is invading with, since I only see a few galleons there and I doubt, not having frigates yet, that the Zulu could have sunk much of an invasion force yet. I wish I could see the combat logs, I'll bet there have already been a lot of boats sent to the bottom of the ocean.
My scouting chariot had a no (immediate) cost opportunity to burn a city, but I'm not taking this shot with me going out of town for the weekend. With the Zulu tied up in war this would really be the perfect time to take a cheap shot at them but I'm not going to hand over war time to my sub, with apologies to the lurkers.
That would have been a quick capture/raze/have a nice day. There weren't any Zulu boats around that could have killed my carrack, either, so it would have been a perfect crime. It's a shame to let that go to waste.
Anyway the chariot unloaded into the Zulu city of Boston Market so now I will have two chariots running around their territory for whatever reason. I guess Seuss Network News is back on the air.
Seeing my chariot appear and the carrack where it is, they'll surely know I passed on the cheap shot so maybe they'll think I'm not holding a grudge or malice or anything of the sort. I'm really not, but I would like to kick them while they're down if I get a good chance (and am playing the turns!) for the reasons I mentioned above -- climb the ladder!
In terms of instructions, I have units running around all over the map exploring and documenting where rival troops are positioned. I leave a sign with the turn number and a brief mention of stack composition ("T223-Musket,Spear" is a sign I added this turn for Plako's copper city). The idea is to keep an ongoing mental tally of enemy troop positioning so I can sense movement toward me and react, if possible. It's all more effort than I should be going through at this point but I like my little empire and want to keep managing it, so I'm not ready to die.
I have a chariot in Plako's land (Zeep) whose job is to move from Point A to Point B. Those are listed on the map. He looks over the troops in the three cities he watches and notes changes on the map when needed. This turn he noticed 2 knights are missing from the garrison of Plako's IronPlant, so I'll probably want to find those soon -- I think they're on the galley Zeep can see now that he's at Point B. He's probably going to move them into Visibility next turn, but if not then they're two knights that will go unaccounted for. Who knows, I may be seeing them again.
In city management, just keep Black Fish growing for now. I'm going to move one worker onto the two border tiles that I want workshopped, but since I don't need them finished immediately I'll let those workers slowly do their thing over the next few turns. I don't want to tempt Serdoa with a stack of six workers and I definitely don't want to move any of the units inside Blue Fish that have their 25% fortify defense up to cover the workers. So I'll risk a pair of workers on the border and if Serdoa wants to fight over that he can risk his stack in my territory. I don't think he's up for it right now, he seems to be playing the tech game pretty well. (Later addition: Now that I'm thinking about it, we can probably go ahead and workshop the two marked tiles around New New Fish now, too. I have a pair of workers on a hamlet N/NE of Black Fish, send them S/SE to help the worker that has begun a plains workshop at New New Fish. That one is 1/6 now. The city will be capped at size 6 but can still get decent hammer output from workshopping the plains and non-river grass tile).
Speaking of Serdoa, this turn he launched another golden age -- He just got the free spy from Communism it seems, and swapped into OR/State Property. So it's probably OR for the golden age to build the Kremlin
, then he'll swap out of it to either Theocracy for
time or back to pacifism to generate more GPs for a future golden age. He's spent a significant part of the game in golden age, I'm glad Plako built the MoM and not Serdoa or it would probably be even worse for me over here.
I have enough cash to tech Theology already but I'm going to keep saving so I can push through both Theology and Paper at the same time. I still need a few more turns to finish up infrastructure builds that need OR (mostly the National Epic in Red Fish and a bank in One Fish, but I'm not waiting 6 full turns on the bank, I'll probably want to swap in about three turns). Here are the current builds:
I'm moving back toward unit builds, but I think 3 turns from now is the right time to swap out of OR into theocracy as I push more units out of build queues. (I changed the order in Blue Fish to a knight since I'm 2 hammers short of 1 turning the musket). Blue Fish should probably just build knights anyway since I have a stables there. The other cities can build longbows, catapults, and muskets, whatever is the most efficient for the city's hammer output. I have Old Fish on catapult duty, NNF set to regrow then whip muskets when it's 1 turn from growing again, Black Fish may not build anything while it grows up but it will eventually finish the spy and then I'm not sure. Sad Fish can slow build muskets for its own defense. Watch the food tiles between Sad Fish and Two Fish, the seafood frequently swaps between those cities as one is close to growth. Right now Sad Fish is a little hungry as it works hammers and no seafood. Two Fish is building a settler for a location to be discussed later.....(intrigue!) Speaking of that, my carrack Yop II in Serdoa's waters needs to head back toward Two Fish but I haven't set it to go automatically, you may as well scout on the way directly back to port.
I just thought of something else, I can get a quick carrack out of Blue Fish and park it in Terrapin to watch Serdoa's troop movements, so I've queued that up after the current knight. Then probably back to knights but hopefully I'll be back by then, that's three turns from now.
Demographics below and I've taken screenshots of all the charts but I don't have time to enter them now, I'm really really late for work.
Wide view of the area, including most of my visibility:
A bit closer view of my land so my signs don't clutter up the view:
Any questions wetbandit or BaII? I'll be in the office for a few hours today with Internet access, after that...who knows. Thanks again for covering.