[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

Good news:



Suttree did not kill our worker. I'm really confused here. First he whips all his cities and sends a stack of 20 units to bring us down and then he stops and does not even kill our worker..

Consequently we have a lot of interesting worker micro options in this area.

Bad News:

No free taoism spreads.. I really expected to get at least 1..

Random news:

M_h finished Shwedagon Paya..

And we met Bacchus, his borders had changed because he has apparently lost a city since we got his maps. I took the freedom to offer this:

[TheHumanHydra]

Where did m_h build the Paya?

[Old Harry]

Turn 117

Fairly straightforward this turn. We start off with an offer we can't refuse (we'll have another dye in two turns and this allows us to skip monarchy for a tech or two more).


And an offer we can.


For some reason Ichy, Bachus and m_h all have open borders with the great lighthouse civ. Probably because plako is the one with alphabet and he isn't extorting money from them, but still, come on guys!


Note that dtay has taken an interest in Slowcheetah this turn. 2 WW each means just one battle, right?


On our own battlefront Suttree has given up. At least until he adds another 5 cats. You can see a possible route for his stack to hit Koniggratz on t123, but you can also see our GII bowman BrickAstley who will hop onto the hill marked x? to check on the t118 sign once a turn from now on. This is what the grand old duke of York was up to you see.


The worker micro up here is quite interesting - we completed a couple of cottages for Jamestown this turn, the selected workers will chop the dye jungle 2N of Hastings allowing the worker on the hill to put a turn into a plantation there, then the cottage worker will join the crew and they'll finish the dye t119. The highlighted worker is running a great risk - should he get some cover, at least for this turn? The other worker to the south is going to road to Koniggratz. Fintourist assures me we'll get there in plenty of time...


m_h built Shewedagon Paya in what will be YuriMack territory very soon


We'll add a second bow to Midway next turn.


In the west you can see that we'll settle Nuremberg and Omdurman very soon. But Ichabod has two phalanx coming this way. He's already played this turn, so I don't think he can beat us to this site. I also think we should move Mardoc to Nuremberg and we could build more bowmen but perhaps we can hope Ichabod sees the futility of attacking the #1 power in the game.


Power


Demos - doing well on land area, but not so hot on exports-imports

We also chatted about the relative merits of Bureaucracy, Vassalage, moving the capital and monarchy vs metal. Metal casting won. Right now Bureau is worth ~ 15 commerce and ~7 hammers per turn and costs 3 gpt more than Vassalage which gets us 20 gold via free units and 2 XP on the knights that we can get to 5 XP without stables... Bureau is a good long-term option in either Agincourt or Cannae, but for now lets all think about a jolly fun war! We'll get Poly then Mono this turn and next, then get MC and start building forges (with the OR bonus). After that we need to decide on HBR or Monarchy first , then Feudalism, Machinery and Guilds follow. Unless we do something else.

[TheHumanHydra]

I think that worker should be covered.

[Old Harry]

I forgot to put a spear with our rapid-reaction force too...

[Fintourist]

Our sentry chariot performs his first mission:



This is the moment when we think: "Why don't we have a 3-move unit.."

Anyways, that worker is safe and also we have enough vision so that we won't actually need a spear to cover our small axe stack.

We had a long chat yesterday with Harry and I actually have a lot to say about our macro situation and the plans for the next ~30-50 turns. However, this turn looks as good as it gets and I ended our turn and run now to university! Cross your fingers for free religion spreads!

[TheHumanHydra]

If only we had kept that Great General ...

[Fintourist]

Turn 118 - Prelude

Bullshit continues:



My screenshot failed, but that's now..
9 catapults
13 axes
3 spears


It seems that it was only wishful thinking from our part that suttree had stopped.. So we are back in "suttree delenda est" & "we hate you"-mode

So yeah, 9 cats is significantly more than 4 cats.. So I don't know if Hastings city defense bonuses are so good that the city could take it, but probably we need to kill those cats before they can reach our cities. I already chopped the jungle SE of Hastings as discussed earlier so there is no defensive ground next to our cities, but this has the downside that if suttree attacks along the coast our units won't be on defensive ground after attacking suttree's stack.

I think we could try some kind of "we force you to move next to our cities and then attack out of the city" -thing e.g. by stationing our stack W of Jamestown, but if suttree dances "the fork dance" correctly the end result might not be pretty.

So we have currently 9 shock axes, just the required amount of units needed to kill suttree's cats, but then we need enough units so that we can defend our wounded units against suttree's 13 axes.. If we can attack out of the city, we already have enough thanks to defense bonuses of bowmen, but if we need to leave our units on flatland we have problems.. I think we have 3 shock bows that are well suited for the task, but the rest of our units do not get odds in the open field.. Well, normal C1 bows maybe also provide value for their money

We still have a bit time to do something about this though. I guess we finish that axe in dunkirk and I did put Hastings onto axe again. Unfortunately we might need to whip Jamestown once again this turn.. So that puts us up to 12 axes and Jamestown probably gets one more out quickly even with normal production. Probably we need to suck it and produce couple more out so that we can face that stack with something like 14 axes & 7 bows..

That will be a bloodbath..

Our additional options include 1/2-turning Construction ourself and building walls in J/H. Couple of quick cats, could be worth their cost, but walls are likely a bad investment since we want to kill suttree before he can hit our cities. Maybe we can consider putting a hammer into a build in Jamestown if things look bad and it improves our defense odds more than an extra bowman.

In other awesome news...



Mostly harmless proved worthy of his name and finally gifted his cities to Yurimack..

I don't want to state this too strongly, since I don't know the facts, but I have a feeling that there is some serious stupidity behind this. I mean really, ym's power graph cries for invasion and m_h's power graph cries for "eat me". He even built the Paya for Yurimack..

Let's hope that suttree suicides quicly so that we can take couple of cities too..

I hope that m_h even tries a bit and that war will last more than 10 turns.. That galley, which is now transporting our settler for the City O, could pick up couple of axes/something from our

And since this report is all about good news.. This turns only Taoism spread goes here!



I guess this is the worst possible city on the entire map for a taoism spread..

[TheHumanHydra]

m_h honestly gifted cities? That is total BS. Way to swing the game. It's called actually build an army before you need it. Why play a game if this is how victors are decided?

I'm very close to saying "Frack it, suttree is so annoying and m_h just gave yurimack our continent; let's just build axes in all our cities and kill suttree."

Also it kinda looks like suttree is headed toward Koniggratz.

I would support teching Construction for some cats.

[TheHumanHydra]

Are you sure they weren't just captured (in which case, still, build a friggin' army)?