[SPOILER] Asoka of the Vikings (Nakor & Gaspar)

[Ellimist]

Thanks!

[Nakor]

Ended our turn and started the new one.

Aquafduct done in Greenland, onto a Missionary.
Taoist Missionary done in Silverland, Forge next.

We get a few border pops. The Granary in Broccili Pie is done, so we get back to the WB.

Did the moves, but feel free to change things before you end turn.
Really not sure what our best course of action is....

[Krill]

[Nakor]

Thanks Krill.

Gaspar, you know I'm a builder at heart, but we need to pick a target. For now I think Locke really is our best option, especially with help from Luddite and Plako.

Or we build fleets with Zerks and raze all coastal cities of everyone and get hit by everyone...

Seriously, Plako and Locke are much better neighbours then LP. He doesn't give anything and I just don't want him to win.

I'm way to tired for this. Can you clear up my mind?

[Ellimist]

Gaspar, you know I'm a builder at heart, but we need to pick a target. For now.

Or we build fleets with Zerks and raze all coastal cities of everyone and get hit by everyone...

Sounds like a solid plan. That is why you picked the vikings, right?

[Gaspar]

I looked at the micro and ended turn. New turn started: Alphabet is in, onto Paper (3T @ breakeven.)

Greenland: Confucian Missionary -> Taoist Monastery (3)
Fishfood: Market -> Barracks (6)

Lord D-bag built the MoM. At least its a good wonder this time. He's going to win the game, unfortunately.

Fishfood is reconfigured to max food after completing the Market. We should leave it there until it hits the happy cap. After that, it will long term be a good production city, but lets eke out every last drop of commerce from it first.

So the bigger question... what do we do. Well, we just got Alphabet in, so lets look at the tech picture. I'm going to ignore WK, Adlain and mackoti, as I don't think they can impact the big picture here.



I'll break down everyone else in a future post. The takeaway here is this is the snapshot on research: Lord Parkin >>> Locke >> Us > Everyone else. We're pretty much with the pack but slightly ahead of it. The nice thing is that I think we're gaining a bit more power every turn than the rest of them. We're currently breaking even at 300 bpt, at 100% we're just shy of 500 bpt. That's pretty nice for T148 in this game.

Targets? That depends on what we want to do. If nothing else changes, there are 3 teams that can win the game: LP, Locke, plako. Though if absolutely nothing changes, LP will win. I'd really prefer one of the other two if it came down to it, but I don't think we're quite at the "throw the game to someone" stage of things. Did we ban nukes? I'd love to nuke LP. :P

We can tech in peace for some time. plako doesn't need any more land, and he won't be in a position to go after it for at least another 30-40T. Locke would be stupid to attack us instead of Adlain, who he'll roll over like an obedient puppy. LP is caught between belligerent luddite and dangerous rego. So we're safe another 100 turns, minimum. Also, our tech rate makes us a quite unattractive target, since we can expect to have appropriate defensive technology. If we took a T210 NAP with plako, where could we expect to get? Well, we're ~12T from Printing Press. Another ~8T for Education puts us to T168. ~10T later we could do Philosophy -> Liberalism and if we were first take Nationalism, thats T178. If we want Liberalism we realistically should have skipped Machinery and instead have gone Philo, but we could still skip PP and go for it next, but without PP I'd guess we'd land Liberalism around T170. Realistically Locke, who already appears to be on the beeline will beat us there. So let's forget about Liberalism.

Back to T168 and Education. Then we grab Guilds -> Banking -> RP -> Gunpowder -> Replaceable Parts -> Rifling would realistically take about 28 turns. So we could probably have Rifles on a strict beeline at... T196, give or take. Problem is, with a slow mover stack like that, we'd need heavy siege support, so slip in Construction and call it T198. So a Rifle/Cat army beeline would mean we're probably ready to attack someone ~T205, which means we could attack any of our main rivals around then. The downside? LP and Locke would probably have at least Muskets if not worse. plako I doubt can get to those techs in time, but he'd have a billion CKNs to collateral our Rifles. The ideal army would be Cavs, but you can basically add around 15-18T for that, since we've not so much as touched the top of the tree for Music, nor do we have HBR. While Cavs could probably still do some damage T220, the longer the game goes on, the more these Civs who have more land than us are going to be utilizing that land and we'll lose whatever advantage we have. Its also worth noting we'd need a minimum of Caravel support for any war we fought, so we'd have to grab Optics at least. Might really need Astronomy, but that depends on the target.

Zerkers are a non-starter. While plako doesn't have machinery yet, CKNs will eat our Zerkers for breakfast, and he's only one tech away. Both Locke and LP are NAPed to a point where Zerks will be obsolete. The only entertaining thing we could do with zerkers is go raze a half dozen of luddites cities, but we'd have zero chance of keeping them, and I'd really rather luddite survived as a potential buffer to LP in the north.

What's all this nonsense prove? Not much, but I think in the short term the correct course of action is to get PP and Education in and then reassess from there. Best case scenario - we have a window to use a Rifle/Cat army against plako. Worst case scenario, we realize we're screwed and beeline a fleet of Nav1 Frigates and choke LP to death.

I'll do another post soon, analyzing a few alternate tech paths. Nakor, I did the tile micro but moved no units, feel free to end turn when you're ready.

[Nakor]

Hit end turn after moves.
Are workers are getting even fewer tasks. Do we want windmills instead of mines?

I think we can shave a few turns off your plan if we start using our GP Farm a bit better. Getting into CS will give us a GS to help bulb Education to speed things up a lot. I agree that Lib is not an option at this point, unless something happens with Locke.

Seems like we can agree to a NAP with Plako since we won't be ready to attack untill earlier, but then again, not siging a NAP is an option as well. I'm really not sure.

Your thoughts help a lot!

[Gaspar]

I wouldn't be inclined to sign a NAP with plako until we fully flesh out our thoughts. These NAPs really constrain our play.

[Commodore]

Honestly Gaspar I'm not sure why you're so grim about your chances. You've kept up in tech, spiritual has come into its own only lately, and everybody seems to be on good terms with you guys. It sucks that you're a small fish the pond, but keep it up and you'll be a small fish with rifles as the big fish have muskets.

[Gaspar]

Honestly Gaspar I'm not sure why you're so grim about your chances. You've kept up in tech, spiritual has come into its own only lately, and everybody seems to be on good terms with you guys. It sucks that you're a small fish the pond, but keep it up and you'll be a small fish with rifles as the big fish have muskets.

Because our potential is not very high. I forget our current city count, but I think we're at 15-16. There are players with 20 already, and we've basically filled everything. We have 2 more pretty lousy backfill locations and that is truly it. So our tech parity is not the result of supreme play on our part, but rather because of a choice on our opponents to prioritize expansion over infrastructure/vertical growth. A choice we'd also have made if we had enough land to do so.

That's the point I was trying to get at in the post above - we can maintain tech parity/pursue small tech advantages in the next 50 turns. 50 turns from that we'll start to lag behind. 50 turns after that someone's going to come knocking with the superior army that all the extra production they can get from all those extra cities will provide. Still, I think the important thing for us to now is to continue accruing the economic techs which provide the opportunity for a tactical strike down the road. While I think the absolute best time in terms of an opponent weakness would be when our NAP with plako expires, as plako still recovers from the WK escapades, the simple fact that plako is likely to build lots of x-bows because of his UU makes him a poor choice for us. Not to mention we don't have a naval movement advantage on him because he circumnavigated.

Perhaps I am a bit too gloomy, I think we've played well for 50T or so. I just think a bad land deal with plako and bad luck with Locke and LP, combined with a slow-starting Civ/Leader combo that we didn't play particularly well early on basically stagnates our long-term potential. I have no doubt we'll be a factor in this game before all is said and done, however.