[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[Old Harry]

Too lazy to PM I think we all can check the diplo screen at this point so:

AT/Cairo I'm 3rd in turn split
OH/Mjmd I'm 3rd in turn split

Ty ty

       

[Old Harry]

Turn 226

Jowy doesn't seem to be attacking Mjmd. Maybe the war declaration will cause a few Indian units to stay in the east though. Our scouting HA is positioned to hit the empty Berserk Halfling next turn if it isn't reinforced. Should we burn it and delete the scout or liberate it to Charriu (is that allowed?) and keep the scout alive?


Down south Mjmd has 11 frigates and 2 privateers to our seven frigates, so we need to tread carefully. The highlighted tile would give us a shot at Buckets and Mud, and would force him to redeploy some units from Evaporator, but it also loses the coastal defence bonus and leaves us open to being cut off from retreat. I think we're better to just sit out of range of his second frigate stack and keep the status quo until we can get some SOTL in the area.


Up north Lincoln has a dry dock so 6XP boats will come quickly from here. Next turn the selected galleon will drop it's grenadier on top of this scouting frigate, killing it.


And on the inland sea a SOTL has joined up with the blockade. Do we just sit here starving Mixed Drinks (it used to be size 16) or do we use the SOTL to sink some of the frigates that are just the other side of the island? We're only 118 XP from the next great general...


Demos and power. Don't get carried away - we're at 100% research in a golden age and Mjmd is saving 600 gold this turn. When the GA finishes next turn we should be tied on MFG.

[Old Harry]

Question for the lurkers - city trading is off, but I really want to liberate this city. Is that showing up here a bug or an intended mechanic?

[Hitru]

If city trading is off I would say also liberating is off the table

[NobleHelium]

If city trading is off because of the game option, and the game option specifically allows this, then I think it should be allowed.

[Old Harry]

Turn 227

This seems strangely careless. Did Mjmd empty it because Charriu opened borders with Jowy?

If city trading is off I would say also liberating is off the table

I'm afraid you're outvoted. Charriu, Jowy and AT all went "Meh" in the tech thread, so BH is donated to a good cause (obviously if Mjmd had had a problem with it I'd have burnt the city - but he didn't and I think Charriu's argument that this is the intended behaviour holds water). Noble pointed out that this is even worse for Mjmd than it looks - the numidian cavalry just can't see how far the borders have really popped - imagine them stretching another tile towards India...

This leaves GoldsmithSkags and ExpiringFauns open to attack as soon as Jowy wants to stop mucking about with AT.


There were a bunch of little skirmishes this turn: This was the combat that I had to replay - we got a marginally worse dice roll second time around, meaning the SOTL won't get odds on defence vs a frigate now.


This frigate just dies to our grenadier (without giving us any xp ). It's risky leaving your ships in port undefended. :D


And I made a mistake stranding a sentry knight here last turn because I didn't notice a border pop. There was an Indian cavalry in range to kill it, but because I pillaged the road last turn the cav got stuck. This turn a pike was sacrificed and our GG knight wins the day and retreats to safety. Knight+pike for cav isn't great hammer-wise, but they're both pretty much obsolete, so I'll take it.


Demos and power. MFG is slightly better than I thought, GNP still suffering by comparison. Unfortunately Mjdm is going for Physics next, we might be able to use a bulb to beat him to the prize, but he's probably going to get there first.

[Old Harry]

Turn 228

I may have been a bit pesimistic about Physics - with overflow from Sci Meth we're putting about 222/485 pixels into the tech this turn. Physics is 5980 beakers, so that's 2737 beakers. A great scientist will bulb 2367 beakers making a total of 5104, meaning we only need another 876 to complete the tech next turn. It might take some wealth builds to achieve, but that should be very much doable. I think we'll set our tech rate to 50% this turn in case Mjmd has tech visibility so that we don't spook him into speeding up his eta.


Mjmd has come up with a neat scheme to stop us bringing more boats into the inland sea - his mace is bloking our route through Company and getting the city's defensive bonuses too! Unfortunately for him we thought he might be trying something like that and have a knight and numid in range to pop him next turn, as well as a boat load of grenadiers if those guys aren't enough. I also asked Mr Cairo to close borders (we're still paying him whale, sugar and gold from the last time we got him to cancel his deals) so perhaps no unpleasentness will be necessary. (Also note that the galleon is currently a 4-mover, but can promote to be a 5-mover. This may become relevant in a future turn.)


This is a strange place for a slightly damaged frigate to be. It doesn't give us a good enough shot at killing it (75% but bound to get mopped up on the counter) so we'll just let it be for now.

We're now decisively out-boated down here, but we have to keep our galleons pinning his units to keep our own coastal cities safe. This is a pretty costly operation though - about 30gpt for unit supply + inflation so we need to do something with these units...


What? Another empty city? Do we 1. liberate to Charriu, 2. burn the city or 3. leave it for Jowy to capture?
1. We could perhaps ask a few favours of Charriu if we gift him his entire empire back...
2. Capture gold!
3. If we let Jowy take the city we lose out on about 30 gold, but we put Jowy and Mjmd in direct competition and perhaps turn their cold war hot? If Jowy doesn't capture it that tells us something about their war as well, and Mjmd is unlikely to only leave it empty for one turn, so perhaps we take it next turn instead? (Funnily I think Jowy would have taken Berserk Halfling amphibiously last turn if we hadn't sniped it. )


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 229

Hmm. Cairo is playing hard ball. Maybe if I cancel our gold, whale and sugar resource gifts and reoffer them with a 10gpt gift it'll help his thinking a little?


In the east Jowy made peace with AT, captured Goldsmith Skags and has 14 cannons that could hit Exploring Fauns in a couple of turns. That's a relief. I don't know where the city he burnt was - perhaps on the south coast - but it looks like he's going to take the war seriously. Now we need to figure out how to make sure he doesn't get too powerful...


It might be easier for lurkers to know how the war is going if you could see where our units are. We have lots of cats and knights but the reasons our power has spiked recently are 28 grenadiers and 11 cannons. Meanwhile at sea the power isn't so high, but 22 frigates, 4 SOTL and ten galleons are very useful.

Army
Our core defence force is a bit light on hitters, but there are a lot of cities to draft from if that becomes an issue. The units around Clackamas are:

15 cat
3 cannon
2 knights
2 musket
4 LB
2 pike
3 grenadiers


Down south we have more hitters whose job has been to stop Guimaraes getting 1-turned. In five turns the borders will pop again so I'd say this area is safe now:

1 knight
9 muskets
4 grenadiers
2 mace
3 pikes
1 WE
5 cannons
12 cats
2 LB


Then we have a zone defence force of 11 knights which can help out in the core or the south.

Navy
At sea I've let the number of boats slip a little while building dry docks, so the balance *should* start to swing back our way again soon.

In the inland sea we have a bit of a dance happening around Company - our knight won a 25% battle to kill a mace in the city and I decided to put two CG2 grenadiers in the city to protect our canal. It looks like Mjmd is planning to strike out with his own amphibious fleet travelling through Waffles so our core needs to be on high alert from next turn.

We'll have our own galleon able to hit four of his large coastal cities t231, with a second arriving the turn after and another hot on its heals. I'm hoping he's counting tiles and our numid/knight can take an empty city when the boat suddenly becomes a 5-mover, but that might not happen.

This is a highly volatile area, so I've included units that are arriving in the totals:

1 SOTL (2 arriving soon)
7 frigates
1 5-move galleon (1 arriving t232, another t234)
1 amphi gren (3 arriving t232, 3 more t234)
1 knight
1 numid
2 CG2 grens guarding Company


In the core sea we have a bunch of units that should probably head north east to defend against amphibious attack:

2 frigate
1 SOTL
1 privateer
2 trireme
1 galley

And down south we're still pinning a lot of units in his cities (although some cavalry have disappeared, so I expect his north coast to get some reinforcement in the next few turns). I'm planning to use our 6-move galleon to gradually remove units from these boats, as the threat is sufficient and the units can be used elsewhere and unit supply isn't cheap.

The ultimate plan down here though is to use airships to scratch everything in Foam, burn it and replace with our own canal city. It'd be nice to have Music to be able to pop borders the turn we settle, but I'm not sure if that'll be possible.

6 6-move frigates
4 4-move frigates
1 6-move galleon
7 4-move galleons
5 amphi knights
7 knights (2 nearly commando)
1 amphi gren
8 grenadiers
1 gg medic

Speaking of airships - are we going to win the race to Physics? We're on 2115 beakers right now and the great scientist is worth 2388, which leaves 1477 needed to get the tech this turn (and give Mjmd no chance). Let's light our bulb and see what happens?


Great! We just need to switch a few wealth builds to be research builds and we get a nice margin in case of closed borders or inflation increases.


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 230

Here's the beaker analysis for the contenders over the last 30 turns or so:

Turn	The good guys (total beakers)	Mjmd (beakers relative to us)	Jowy (beakers relative to us)	Mr.Cairo (beakers relative to us)
t199	21 658	18 687	7 026	1 047
t205 ish	22 585	17790	7 325	120
t211	29 013	19 435	4 335	-6 308
t230	48 149	13 156	-4 934	-10 315

The golden age and bulb let us close the gap on Mjmd by about 6000 beakers, but he's put 4000 into Physics, so unless he now ignores that tech we haven't really made up any ground. Just look at how many techs we're behind...

We're up: Theology, Military Science, Physics, Steel
Mjmd's up: Drama, Music, Constitution, Corporation, Democracy, Economics, Education, Liberalism, Military Tradition, Replaceable Parts, Rifling

We managed to overtake Jowy over the last 20 turns and since he has to get Astronomy soon and obsolete the Colossus (or someone will crush his coastline ) I don't think he's going to be a threat on tech. Except that he's gaining cities at pace and looks to be favourite to take Charriu's capital eventually. He's got all the important military techs for this era and a war-chest of 2400 gold, so he can hit his next tech-target pretty fast.

We're up: Astronomy, Military Science, Nationalism, Physics, Scientific Method
Jowy's up: Drama, Music, Education, Military Tradition, Replaceable Parts, Rifling

Cairo has fallen further behind, but he has Cavalry and 2200 in the bank, and with AT almost dead I'm expecting him to come back into contention.

We're up: Aesthetics, Literature, Theology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Military Science, Physics, Scientific Method, Steel
Cairo's up: Drama, Music, Constitution, Military Tradition, Replaceable Parts, Rifling

Our short-term plan is to get RP then Steam Power and then decide if Education->Economics->Constitution ->Corporation-> Assembly Line or Railroad->Combustion are going to be better for us. AL would either be for the factories or infantry, Combustion to keep up at sea.


The only action this turn was the sinking of this empty galleon.


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 231

I thought all my deception and planning were for naught. The first three cities I uncovered - Pork Chops, Pancakes and Maple Sugar were all stuffed with units. I wondered if we'd have to hit the size one Bomber, but then Time came through for us. It's the least valuable of the mainland cities, but it's still worth the effort.


The galleon is going to be exposed at the end of the turn so on the way down to Time the amphi gren takes a shot at Mixed Drinks.

- amphibious grenadier vs C1 rifle - 74%... LOSS (rifle down to 16HP)


We also unload the knight 1N of Mixed Drinks. Hopefully he'll attack out to mean there's one less unit in the city, which we can hit with 3 more amphibious grenadiers next turn.

Oh, and the numidian cavalry burns Time. (And then gets deleted).


Down south Guimaraes will pop borders in three turns (or more if we want to slow it down) meaning we take the gold tile. In about five turns we can put twelve airships in our three cities down here to hit Foam. We've got about six amphi knights, two amphi grens and five 5XP grenadiers on boats right now, so we could use those guys and put our knights in Guimaraes to hit Foam the turn the gold flips.

That might be costly so I'm wondering about putting a stack of cannons, cats, grenadiers, muskets, pikes and knights 1W of Foam the turn after the borders pop. He'll be able to hit it with five cav and 7 rifles. Is that going to be more costly than a surprise attack?


Our next golden age can start in a couple of turns when Benton and LordOfMountains will have full food boxes. Benton will get a merchant/spy/prophet which would be great or an artist, which would scupper our immediate 4-man golden age chances.


LoM runs a 10-15% risk of getting a non-scientist, which would also be a problem. If we get one bad roll it'll take Benton 10-15 turns to pop out another GP, if we get two bad rolls it's more like 30 turns.


Demos and power. It's possible that our military is a bit too big now...