AT loves it when a plan comes together!! [Spoilers]

[AutomatedTeller]

yes, it's 1f 2H. I assume he's trying to pull in a GS to do a push for education->liberalism. Education is very strong for a philo leader. With an early education, he can might be able to snake liberalism, which would be useful. Or pick up gunpowder or PP - or drive for the economics GP.

I think it's a little odd, especially when he just started a war.

[AutomatedTeller]

well, I tried unpausing it - Commodore had sent me a trade offer of 300 gold for 35 gpt. he had accepted the 400 and iron deal I offered (at least, i have iron, so he must have).

I'm turning that one down - we don't need the cash enough to take a cash loss on it.

[AutomatedTeller]

well, we'll see what the situation is. Since he didn't take the city (our score didn't go down) he did one of the following:


1) Tried to bring down the walls
2) Attacked and failed to take the city
3) Accepted peace
4) Decided to move around the city.

He chose option #4!! I thought that was a bad option for him, but he took it.



btw - 2 of his axes are c2/shock, one of the chariots has C1/shock.

my thoughts:

2 pop whip the LB in Magnum
1 pop whip the LB in NCIS
Move everything into LA Law. Upgrade spears to pikes and the 3 archers to LB. Drill promo the crossbow.
move the workers to where teh mace is, SW of the corn, in case he moves the stack to Magnum and cuts the road with the chariots - I can kill the chariots and rebuild the road.

leave the archer in NCIS where it is, for happy.

Debating killing elephants with maces - I can move 1 mace into LA Law and do it, but the other I can't cover, so it will likely die. Might be worth it, anyway. Any thoughts?

I'll have one more upgrade I can make - I'm planning on doing that in SWAT - upgrade a CG III archer to a LB.



Other news:

Founded Quincy, ME in the Mindy's Moai spot. Moved MASH to a workboat build. Changed BJ and the Bear to a granary. Whipped in a mace in CHips (has to deal with the barb sword) and an xbow in The OC (deal with the stupid barb warrior).

BLockade continues.

Tech, etc - Jowy still doens't have metal casting, btw.

[AutomatedTeller]

k - I executed the plan I outlined - killed an elephant with a mace, (@68%) moved the workers as I said (though I don't think it will be necessary) and moved everything in). Whipped the LB.

oh - jowy has 1 C2/shock axe and 2 c1 axes. He has 1 shock chariot> Everything else is unpromoted. I just found a mode in F5 to show individual units



I think now he's going to keep moving on the blue path. I think that's a mistake - if he does that, he can kill Magnum, PI, but that's about it before he gets swarmed with catapults and his stack dies a messy death. At this point, I'll make that trade.

Alternately, he can attack LA Law - he cannot take it, not unless he gets flawless kills.

Personally, i think he should sue for peace - unless I'm missing something, this invasion is kind of pointless. The thing is, i want a GG = we are 16 GG points from one, so that's just a few kills - so I dunno what to do if he does ask for peace. Well, I know what to do if he asks for LA Law. If he asks for tech, i'll probably turn him down. If he just asks for peace straight up, though? I dunno.



This is now a catapult making machine!! 1 cat a turn, baby!! need some more hammers here - if the workers aren't need for roading, I'll finish off a watermill.



He neglected to kill the mine on that hill as he was passing by, so we get to work it now.

[MindyMcCready]

OMG. Seriously OMG that is so awesome!!!! I just can't believe this. Like what the heck is his objective anyway? He had a decent shot at taking or razing LALaw or maybe holding it. That would have been pretty ok for him he would have at least landed some land out of the 1400 hammers and held a good choke point.

But this? What's he hoping to do, hold some city on the far end of our territory? A troll raze of some middling city? Does he think his stack is that big that its immune to catapults? Does he think that he's forking us? This is in no way the deadly Spulla fork where you can't react becuase he's forked with fast moving Knights.

But the strange-think doesn't end there. There's more signs that he's gone into builder mode. Flat power. A mfg number that is maybe 60% of our but he's not compensating by being in slavery. Whew. I just can't believe our luck.

*****OMG**** Is Horizon empty?????????? We can 1-move that city from LALAW****** Those chariots are going to be useful after all! We need workers in there ASAP before this *UNBELIEVABLE* opportunity passes.

Ok calm. Breathe. We're not quite out of the woods yet. This pic on T140 is that end of T140? Can you specify that in each of the pictures or at least at the start of the post? Thanks.

Assumption: Jowy believes that he's performing the master fork and is headed NNEE of LALaw.
T140 End Jowy is NNE of LALaw.
-He's forking LALaw and Magnum. I'm going to refer to this as a dessert fork since he's not really threatening LALas since he's already bypassed it.

T141 End Jowy is NNEE of LALaw.
-After that he has to pick a direction. I think that we can safely assume that he's not headed toward LALaw since he bypassed it already. Jeez. Still in shock over that one.

Possible End T142: 1 SW of Magnum. Don't know why he would do this. That city is so less important than LALaw. Let him have it.
Possible End T142: 1NW of NCIS.
Possible End T142: Heading to NYPD Blue. That would be awesome because we get another turn. Yeah!

Things that we need:
1. 8 catapults to hit that stack on the start of T143 hopefully covering both 1NW NCIS or 1SW Magnum. If we can hit that stack with 8 cats he's going to walk away empty handed. Our LB should have pretty solid odds on the Elephants after 8 catapults. We appear to have 4 built + NYPD BLue cat + ATteam Cat. I think that we need to whip A-Team + NYPD Blue + NCIS for 3 more.

2. He's got 3 chariots in that stack so we'll need to have something in Magnum and NCIS that can defend against 3 chariots.

3. We need at least 4 combat engineers around LALaw. We need to take the opportunity to raze Horizon if it presents itself. We also have a desperate need to rebuild roads at the drop of a hat. If we lose a city for the lack of a road that will be bad.

4. Horseback riding. A nice to have. Really hate to lose Pikes and other stuff against defending catapults.

5. In general, save the maces. They'll be way more effective against a collateralled stack than they are currently. 68% odds or whatever we're getting is good but we'll be getting high 80% after we collateral. They probably also take too much time to heal since we only have until T143.

6. Attack Option against the 3-unit stack. Generally, I just want to leave this stack alone to wander slo-mo through our territory. We need to save our troops for the big battle. He'll also be tempted to hold up his stack 1 more turn in order to consolidate his stack which buys us more time. However, if he leaves them where they are and we still have an opportunity in Horizon we could consider:
6.1 attack with 3 pikes: 1st one damages the axe. Other 2 should kill the elephants. Xbow for cleanup. 2 workers road and a Chariot razes.
6.2 1 cat to soften + maces to kill.

Battle of the Fork.
-If we manage to hit with 8 cat we shouldn't have any troubles after that.
-After the cats, the whole stack from all of our surrounding cites hits it.
-We need to be careful of surviving chariots razing our surrounding cities. However, after Jowy's T142 End turn, he can only threaten the immediate city with Chariots.
-We have a near number of killers to his killing stack. If we've done enough damage his cats might defend against pikes and LB. Hate when I lose those units to defending cats.
-A couple of HA promoted with flanking would hugely mitigate this risk. If we can afford the research time this should be our next tech. Upgrades probably should come first though.
-The Battle of T143 should have the objective of whiping out his attacking killers. If we clear out the majority of his elephants but he still has 7 Catapults we SHOULD NOT press forward without HA. Let him wander those cats around until our maces heal up and deal with them at our convenience.

[MindyMcCready]

No peace! No peace!

We cannot leave that stack intact.

I tell you Jowy will fold like a house of cards if we can put together a Naval based attack on him. He's going for GPP. He's got no mfg. He's not in slavery. We can fork the crap out of him.

The ONLY thing that Jowy has is an army and not for long.

Opportunity is knocking. Opportunity to take the majority of Jowy's land. Horizon, Eden Prime, Jowy's capital, the frozen southern city. All of these are totally vunderable to attack. Jowy has handed us the opportunity to become a true world power. We cannot pass this up.

This is what the peace alternative will get you:
Commodore with 15 cities + expanding. Cornflakes superpower having swallowed Azza (look at that power!). Taking peace is giving up the game at this point. We have no chance to win without taking Jowy's land,...and he's practically handing it to us.

[AutomatedTeller]

I should say that my most recent pics are the end of MY turn on t140 - he has not moved yet. We go first.

yeah - upgrades are my first priority, too.

My assumption is that he will (finally) promote an elephant to stop the mace attacks. I dunno - there's several things I don't understand about this attacks - one of which is... why is he carting around 3 workers? They have done NOTHING - he's wasted 9 worker turns bringing useless workers along...

speaking of workers, I have 3 workers on the farm SE of the corn right now - Magnum PI has a worker ready to complete, if it gets a chance to.

on cats:

We have 4, NYPD Blue is making 1/turn, MASH kicks out one this turn, as well (forest chop), maybe one next turn, too, with overflow. LA Law will be able to whip one next turn. NCIS will be able to whip one in 2 turns, sp that's something like 10 or 11. I hope he's moving to NCIS, honestly - I'd rather not lose Magnum, PI and there's no way of holding it. If he goes to NCIS, the A-Team reinforcements get there faster.

I completely agree on waiting until we have a good stack of catapults.

[MindyMcCready]

Whatever 'peace' we agree to should be strictly to mitigate war weariness. How does a ceasefire affect war weariness? That could be our best option to continue to make Jowy the instigator of the war.

Jowy has forced empire wide whips and diverged us from the path of building. We cannot recover from this so easily. We also have little land to expand to. Cornflakes has and will beat us to the majority of the north of Lake Blue. He's got the army to hold it and we're currently occupied. At this point it looks 80% that that boat has sailed. So our prospects of winning the game are, unfortunately, dwindling despite our reasonably competitive position of cities, techs and food (prior to war with Jowy anyway).

With that in mind, I am advising the military solution that Jowy's presented us with. Take Jowy's land, jump back to builder mode, plan on ceding north of Lake Blue to Cornflakes if necessary to avoid confrontation.

As such, the minimum objectives to be achieved before a cease fire is declared is the following:
1. Wipe out that stack (paramount objective)
2. Take, hold or raze Horizon (very important but optional). Jowy may not be convinced that we've gone back into builder mode with zero revenge taken. This further forks is north cities.
3. Plant the city SW of LALaw (paramount). This move will destroy Jowy's ability to defend himself in the future. Given the plan to hold the position by leveraging the forest, does cease fire pull you out of the borders the way peace does?

Yeah, peace for Horizon is Jowy's way out. But only post stack destruction. That's actually a pretty good deal for him right now.

[MindyMcCready]

The workers are very good to have. For example, if he had managed to take LALaw the workers would allow him to get to the next fork NNEE of LALaw one turn quicker.

If we had lost our army in LALaw, that speed would have been deadly for us. He could have promoted and healed and virtually walked into another city or two.

But you're right, the way that he's using them they're not doing anything.

Any future initiatives that we do should have 2-4 combat engineers/workers.

[AutomatedTeller]

Some more thoughts - depending on what he does, we maybe can kill the small stack - sac a cat, which will do damage to an elephant, decent collateral on both the other elephant and the axe. Mace/lbow/chariot can clean up after.

On navy - interesting point - he can't slave in units. 2-4 maces in galleys should be able to take his cities. I'm thinking a galley in NCIS and one in BJ and the bear. an upgraded WIII dog and a the mace i'm just making, plus maybe a couple more. Might have to do the 2nd galley from CHiPS, though. I'd like to finish off the NE, but that may not be possible in the near future. I have a hard time believing we'll actually be able to take one of his core cities, but it's worth making the threat.

I am quite happy to go raze horizon - hard to believe we could keep it, though we could try. obviously, that depends on what happens, too.