Luddite/Pindicator

[luddite]

Everything's looking good for the war! With Sian declaring on Fierce, that'll make things even easier.

Trading marble for iron is an absolutely ridiculous offer. I mean, even if we weren't already getting marble from mackoti, it would still be ridiculous. Mackoti just got guilds, and his power his #1, so I wonder if he can actually go on the offensive against NoSpace?

[pindicator]

Okay, big update for this turn.

First of all, we got an important wartime technology:



Troops are moving into position and we are 2 turns away from invading. Which turns out is just in time, because look who beat us to the punch!



Sian declared on Fierce! I've moved our troops as far forward as I could, so we can actually invade next turn with 10 HA, 2 chariot, 2 impi + the 3 impi in Happy Anniv's garrison. But that will also leave 2 workers exposed on the border - they're getting roads up this turn - so we may want to wait until t96 as planned.

NoSpace also got himself a great scientist.

I didn't realize this earlier, but NoSpace has no iron:



I declined the trade, but I wonder if he may be in trouble on the land war. Because mackoti has knights now:



But the really big thing to happen was we got a Great Scientist. We used Carl Strauss to usher in the great Khmer golden age.



And immediately switched civics to Hereditary Rule and Vassalage:



Vassalage ends us saving us 5 gold overall. It costs 10 and gives free support for 15 units. The extra promo on our units will be a big help as well. HR just makes our happiness absurd in some cities. For example, HappyAnniv is now up to 23 smiling faces.

I figure we want to get civil service researched by the end of our golden age, because beaurocracy will still win out as an economic tech. I think we have 40 commerce pre-GA in our capital. With that in mind, I set our research to Code of Laws. We will research it entirely on overflow from Feudalism, so the slider is at 0%. I think we'll be able to 1-turn Civil Service after Code of Laws - if not then it will be close. Or we can go another direction if we want, but we want to have Civil Service by t99 so we can revolt on the last turn of our golden age.

So, here's the war party in the south:



The galley north of HappyAnniv can unload its chariot directly into the city if we choose to attack next turn - this way the chariot can participate. If we want to wait the extra turn then drop it off on the staging tile. The galley in the eastern sea needs to unload its troops directly in LongGoodbye - the impi & HA can then move to the staging tile on the same turn.

Then there's this to consider:



I queued up a few longbows, but now I'm reconsidering them. If NoSpace wanted to attack he could have kept the galleon in the fog and boated a city straight-away; he didn't need to show his hand. That coupled with the trade request makes me think NoSpace's war with mackoti may not be fairing so well for them.

Maybe we want to trade them for iron... to help even the playing field up there. They have silver, but i think we already are getting a source from mackoti.

Finally, here are some golden age demographics:



GNP is with slider at 0%. Next turn you'll get to see the slider at 100%. How high do you think the GNP will be?

[regoarrarr]

GNP is with slider at 0%. Next turn you'll get to see the slider at 100%. How high do you think the GNP will be?

I figure it will be pretty high given I'm assuming you have double pre-reqs for Code of Laws (and then Feudalism after it)

[pindicator]

Luddite, you may need to take over turn playing duties for a little while. We're having some internet issues that should be resolved sooner rather than later. But if you don't see me online its because we haz no internets.

I'd warn pbem26 about it too but Sian's held that save for over 48 hours now so i probably don't need to.

[regoarrarr]

I'd warn pbem26 about it too but Sian's held that save for over 48 hours now so i probably don't need to.

[pindicator]

We haz internets again!


[SIZE="1"]And Sian played pbem26![/SIZE]

[luddite]

Luddite, you may need to take over turn playing duties for a little while. We're having some internet issues that should be resolved sooner rather than later. But if you don't see me online its because we haz no internets.

I'd warn pbem26 about it too but Sian's held that save for over 48 hours now so i probably don't need to.

Sure, no problem. I have a feeling these next few turns will be critical, though. Everything's coming to a head. We've caught up a lot, but we're still way behind on tech. We should be able to pick up Fierce's cities pretty easily in this war, but I'm not really sure where to go after that.

The way I see it, we've got three basic options:
1)We can tech knights, attack Sian, and continue expanding to the south through his land.
2)We can attack NoSpace with knights and/or galleons, to try and slow them down.
3)We can just build up our infrastructure, and try to tech as fast as possible.

The way I see it, this map is going to be won by whoever gets to combustion/industrialism first, and builds the first battleships/marines. That combo is so powerful, it just tears up coastal cities at 6 moves per turn. It's basically impossible to defend against them with ground troops because their speed means they can threaten 3 or 4 cities at the same time. And on this map, almost all the cities are coastal. So basically I just want to do whatever gives us the best chance of getting there first.

option 1 gives us the chance to pick up a whole lot more land. We could be really evil and attack Sian's army while it's in Fierce's land, maybe. But on the other hand, it might take too long for that land to pay for itself.

With option 2, we probably won't get any more land. But we could slow them down a bit. Force them to build more units, and maybe raze some island cities. The question is, whether that would hurt them more than us. As long as they don't have iron, we might be able to do something with frigates.

With option 3, we just have to hope no one attacks us before we're ready. But it would let us build some badly needed infrastructure, like forges and courthouses. We could probably get the parthenon too, and the epics. If we do this, I think we'd want to research monotheism and switch to OR while we're still in our golden age.

One big wildcard in all this is what Yuris will do. He chose Byzantium, and he's been teching reasonably fast I think, so he might attack someone with cataphracts soon. Even if he can't win, that might have a huge effect on how things develop.

[pindicator]

Okay, so Luddite and I had a pretty lengthy chat about building the parthenon. In the end, we decided to go for it, and then realized we need 2 techs before we can even begin: Polytheism & Aesthetics. So here is the micro plan for building Parthenon in the capital, because I don't want to forget it.


[SIZE="4"]t94 (turn we just played)[/SIZE]
technology: Code of Laws

Tiles Worked: cow, 2 cottaged floodplains, 5 cottaged grassland, grass hill, cottaged plains.
Total Yields: food +3, hammers +15 (2 overflow from prev build), commerce +50
End of Turn: size 10 18/26 food. 15/33 hammers in Horse Archer

[SIZE="4"]t95[/SIZE]
technology: Aesthetics

Tiles Worked: rice, cow, 2 cottaged floodplains, 4 cottaged grassland, grass hill, cottaged plains.
Total Yields: food +6, hammers +13, commerce +48
End of Turn: size 10 24/26 food. 28/33 hammers in Horse Archer

[SIZE="4"]t96[/SIZE]
technology: Polytheism

Tiles Worked: rice, cow, copper, 2 cottaged floodplains, 1 cottaged grassland, 3 grassland hills, cottaged plains.
Total Yields: food +2, hammers +27, commerce +40
End of Turn: size 10 26/26 food, grow to size 11. 55/33 hammers in Horse Archer

[SIZE="4"]t97[/SIZE]
technology: Civil Service

Tiles Worked: rice, cow, copper, fur, 2 cottaged floodplains, cottaged plains, 3 grassland hills, regular plains
Total Yields: food 0, hammers +54 (22 overflow from HA), commerce +36
End of Turn: size 11 13/28 food. 108/268 hammers in Parthenon

[SIZE="4"]t98[/SIZE]
technology: Monotheism

Tiles Worked: same as last turn
Total Yields: food 0, hammers +32, commerce +36
End of Turn: size 11 13/28 food. 172/268 hammers in Parthenon

[SIZE="4"]t99[/SIZE]
technology: ???
Revolt to Bureaucracy & Organized Religion

Tiles Worked: same as last turn
Total Yields: food 0, hammers +48, commerce +54
End of Turn: size 11 13/28 food. 268/268 hammers in Parthenon

[luddite]

So yeah, like pindicator said, we're going to try and build the Parthenon and switch to OR/bureacracy while we're still in our golden age. This is basically the "teching" option, since it means delaying guilds, but we could always change.

Right now we've got 18 horse archers, 5 chariots, and 4 impis ready to invade Fierce next turn. Not counting the 4 axes and 4 impis that are garrisoning HappyAnniv (the border city there).

[luddite]

I think we should alter the attack plan slightly. Let's move up the whole garrison out of HappyAnniv, and use the axes to attack Prague since the garrison there is only spears. They can be supported by the straggling horse archers that won't arrive in time for the main group. Meanwhile we can have half our main mounted stack take Vienna, while the other half pushes for Aachen.