[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Bacchus]

Further thought in the same line: I don't see much sense in counter-attacking Regna, or even defending the islands cities that much. If we still have a chance to move stuff out, we should, to save hammers, and we should bolster up at Mandrake. The island directly north of mandrake we threaten with 6-movers, no other island presents anything like a decent base of operations for the bay, and Mandrake continuously threatens Krill core if he overcommits in the north. We just need to make sure that our garrison is strong enough to resist CR/Amphi swords or maces, and that we have some knights to sortie against a landing.

And then GJ will hose it all up. Maybe offer peace gifting world map, to suggest attending to the wider considerations? It's too late anyway, so who cares, but we have to at least try for chances.

[Coeurva]

Upgrades eat movement points alas, and I don't think his army will linger.

Indeed. This is what Krill can do, could always do, from the moment he obtained his Theocratic 4XP galleons:

Nothing is safe from Combat 2 galleons before frigates, and these are a long time coming. All you can do is to build more galleons than your opponent has in-theatre, which is indeed the plan. They are like 12str cataphracts.

Note group of longbows heading south from Ignis in preparation of the worst. Because the 153 tile forks Ignis and Westward, it's even worse than the worst, but we can at least reinforce Ignis by that point.

I don't really understand what his war goals are going to be though.

As indicated by Old Harry relaying the master's demands to us, rather than Krill answering my PM, and more than that, the customary "Krill Offers: Peace Treaty (10t) for Peace Treaty (10t) and all your goddamn stuff" whenever I log in these days, I assume that his war goals could be expressed as "fuck you sideways". I guess to the victor goes the right to taunt. Or perhaps he misinterpreted why I offered him peace (to allow him the freedom to consume Donovan before Joey does, not because I thought he was weak).

Joey has 950,000 soldiers when everyone else is just below 800,000, and just took a size13 city off Donovan. The game is a race between dtay and Joey with everyone else watching in awe of their abilities, unless Gavagai goes to consume someone immediately.

Bizarrely, there's an Ottoman caravel at Swallow's Gyve, where nothing is happening. Either this is a warning (fruitless; Swallow is another city that's categorically screwed, because even if we shoved 8 longbows into it, Krill can always fork it and Spire next turn), or Gavagai just wants to watch the action, but then he's in the wrong place.

He has even less of a chance of holding Regna against GJ than we do, he can't economically hold anything on the mainland, so what is he trying to achieve? Sink us before we run away with the game?

The runaways, here, in this thread, make it known.

Krill doesn't achieve anything to strengthen his position by razing our coastal cities (if he tries, and succeeds), but he sure as hell can render us into Savant/dtay fodder ahead of schedule.

I sure wish we had razed those islands when they were empty. I now understand perfectly why some players put swords on scouting galleys.

If we still have a chance to move stuff out, we should, to save hammers, and we should bolster up at Mandrake.

There isn't any stuff to begin with. We have walls and a longbow per ex-Savant island, plus whatever we can whip. Because I was dumb enough not to claim second half, this probably means nothing. Maybe it'll kill 1-2 swords, but with 125% city attack, I doubt even that.

Krill doesn't have maces, and won't have them for a while. Bureaucracy holds no value for him (loses the 4XP galleons).

And then GJ will hose it all up. Maybe offer peace gifting world map, to suggest attending to the wider considerations? It's too late anyway, so who cares, but we have to at least try for chances.

I assume there is no way Krill will ever take peace, unless he makes some huge mistake. (He won't.) But if we can make landfall at Bracken next turn, I'll offer him peace: he'd get to keep Regna and Sweet Water for Mandrake, which should benefit him overall. If he declines that, we'll have to drop all pretense, and basically set everything onto military builds until we die (this is already in place, at least for every city east of the Whitehall-Lifeblood line). Maybe we get to play out that island nation after all.

dtay has Renaissance graphics, not from Astronomy (Colossus remains active). Guess what that means (I assume Nationalism, or Paper into Lib into something like MilTrad). We've been dead ever since dtay teched to knights 30t before everyone else, unless he decides he'd rather kill the Khatunate first, but why would he want to border Joey?

T151

This is the actual tactical situation:

The numbers count galleons. That "4" of ours should read "5". Krill's eastern group has three C2 galleons, one Nav1. They're in range to hit Regna and will capture the city on his half, unless it's all smoke and mirrors and he had something like 3 swords on board. Somehow I doubt that. Sweet Water has a garrison of CG3 (iirc) lbow/CG2 xbow/C1 CR3 sword. We could hit that with knights, but exposing our Nav galleons to his C2 ships is a horrible idea. Fortunately, we also have a C2 and a C1 galleon in-theatre, as well as several more C1 galleons. (One of them sank at 1% odds against the trireme, which still irks me.) This gives us an opening for tactics. Possibly that makes it worse, but at least it's not as predictable as sitting inside Mandrake for five more turns.

I've put all of our classical-age junk in such a way that Krill's two easternmost galleons in the central group cannot land at Mandrake unless they take Navigation 1.

The garrison of Mandrake is 3 Guerilla2 xbows, 3 C2 shock knights (two bought with upgrade gold from shock Numids), 2 catapults, 1 axe. I suppose this should hold, if only because the three western galleons are unlikely to actually hold any units. Krill's military power is still a good notch below ours (or Savant's), and I couldn't fathom that he wouldn't keep a garrison against Gavagai (but maybe he doesn't). If it doesn't hold, we have nine CR2/CR3 swords next to the city and can recapture, although that would be a horrible hammer exchange. The silver lining is that we could probably sink all his galleons via sheer concentrated force of shitty ships if he makes that attack. Unless Krill razes Mandrake to take away the canal. In which case I claim moral victory. Besides, I think he couldn't do that, because it should still hold his culture.

We have a rather amusing supply chain because the whips work out such that there is always exactly one galleon to ferry one knight. The circumstances don't make the sight as enjoyable as it could be.

Spending almost 3hrs on every turn is possibly driving me (more) insane. Not that Krill takes much less time, apparently.

Elderberry was Krill's 16th city, by the way. Mandrake was his 13th iirc. Just to put that into perspective.

[Bacchus]

Don't go overboard with knights, I think 3 is enough at mandrake, then we need to bulk up defenders (lbows/xbows) to 7.

[Coeurva]

At Vermin we might as well build knights, rather than waste overflow building xbows/lbows. Everywhere else, I'll try to put some lbows/xbows in queue, but we also need galleons and wealth, and don't have enough queues. I think the entire western empire is building wealth at the moment (except Moai at Styx, and knight at Dragonish) and it's barely enough for acceptable teching.

Chehalis has 4 C3 Shock NumCav and a G2 longbow. How many, if any of these, do we upgrade? Engineering takes 4t at 50% sci losing 90gpt. We really need castles.

[Bacchus]

Two knight upgrades in Chehalis I think. Pretty difficult to take down C3 Shock knights actually, at least amphibiously.

[Bacchus]

Also, overflow at Vermin won't be wasted, it will become gold, which may not be a bad thing.

[Coeurva]

Just to make sure, if we upgrade two knights (more isn't possible on T152 anyway), we won't have Engineering before eoT157 (perhaps eoT156 by gold overflow, if you are right*) rather than eoT155. Worth it?

* Overflow beyond item hammer capacity converting into gold was patched out in BtS 3.19, but Krill might have re-implemented it in the mod. It's not mentioned in the change log.

[Bacchus]

If we do just one upgrade, does the delay reduce by a turn?

I would assume the gold conversion is absent then. Too bad, and a strange thing to change.

[Coeurva]

Yes, our current gpt is 170 and a knight upgrade costs 140g; Engi takes 4t at 50% sci costing ~90gpt. One upgrade then?

[Bacchus]

Basically, what you need to judge is how many turns of warning do you have for any stack targeting chehalis to arrive and how large can that stack be. In the current timeframe, I think at most 6 units with 2 turns warning. 1know and 1knight in place give us enough time to bolster defenses on 2 turns I think.