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

[Ceiliazul]

How much defense will you have in warhorse when the retep peace expires?

[Commodore]

How much defense will you have in warhorse when the retep peace expires?

Half a dozen superior-quality units; he could strike at it but not, I think, without completely gassing his siege. Which would of course be fine, I'll trade a good and established Moai city for an empire any day.

[Commodore]

By the way, this is why MY HATE KNOWS NO BOUNDS. Every. Single. X. Was. An. Improvement.

[Qgqqqqq]

Roads as well?

[Krill]

That is why unpillageable towns are needed.

[Old Harry]

Nonsense. It's why you should be careful with enforced peace.

[Tasunke]

so he did a scorched earth before u took him over?

[Commodore]

Roads as well?

Yes.

That is why unpillageable towns are needed.

Some villages, no towns yet.

Nonsense. It's why you should be careful with enforced peace.

True enough.

so he did a scorched earth before u took him over?

Grimace has just run. Retep sadistically forced me to be the one to burn all of these.

[Commodore]

So not with a bang, but with a whimper, on turn 127 the land campaign to conquer the Celts ended. Spinal Tap lacks food, defensibility, and is expensively far away, so it just gets itself burnt for $12. No further losses, of course...the archers were too drunk from their revels after the flawless murder of the last knight. Thus endeth the Early Knight Rush.

Odds of HAK cramming in another city here: 99.999%

We did gain a city this turn, at least. Dark Force Rising is Guns N' Roses, just in a friendlier position, much safer from Retep. With the assumed resettlement of the little peninsula (also shifted west for safety), that means the net gain here is seven cities; already starting to whip out workers to improvement them and chop. That's twenty net cities for Inca, which, once costs get under control, ought to see us looking pretty strong.

NATIVE SHEEP, GUYS. Health problems: slightly ameliorated.

Active and ongoing concerns are as follows; killing off the raiders of Retep trapped inside Celtland without blowing up into a full-bore war, watching for Xenu-style pirate kingdom shenanigans from the Gaelic Remnant, and finally getting a heavy hammer core going on in the conquests; pillaged villages means we needn't bother trying to squeeze much commerce from here.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Xenu style means you should have lost three of the cities you captured and a bunch of units to go with them, while seeing reteps's invading stack set on fire elsewhere. And only abandoning after all other avenues to exhaust the invaders had been explored. The goal must be to inflict pain as well as survive, otherwise survival doesn't accomplish anything useful. I'm not sure Grimace followed the same playbook I did; let's play out the string and see!