Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[SevenSpirits]

That puts the "min" in "min/max"!

Tell me Seven, do you still see little 3d sprites running across the terrain... or do you see the waterfalls of green text from The Matrix on your screen?

Text? Sprites? Pshhh.

I see a real empire, carefully mismanaged so it's unfortunately "forced" to default on its debts. =)

[Ceiliazul]

I see a real empire, carefully mismanaged so it's unfortunately "forced" to default on its debts. =)

You see modern Greece?

or perhaps future USA/Europe?

[SIZE="2"][/SIZE]

[SevenSpirits]

I looked at mack's power increase last turn, it's 115k. Construction makes up 4k, but population loss probably accounts for -9k or so. So I'd guess 12 knights were whipped that turn. (12 knights = at a guess, 6 cities losing 1 pop (factoring in regrowth) and 6 losing 2 pop (this is consistent with the cities we have vision of), which is -18 pop ergo -9k from power. Fits better than necessary even.)

Three of the five cities we have vision of have stables.

[SevenSpirits]

Played. There will be a report soon. Nothing too surprising though.

[SevenSpirits]

We decided to offer Mackoti Ariel + 100g for peace. Any bets on whether he'll take it?

I think he will. He'll get to screw up Luddicator who as you recall took over the southern jungle between them. And he gets free money and a city.



So Mackoti has this island, which whipped at least one knight. Our fleet moved to block the easy path home. The only safe way to get the galley back to the mainland now is to move it 1S (keeping to coast) and then 2S or 2SE, which is a turn slower than what he could do before. Our fleet now also has the option of heading S and pillaging more greek seafood.


Here's the potential location of attack. Since Mackoti just got engineering, he can move two spaces into our borders even from fogged tiles. The farthest spaces he can reach are marked with !s. Note that there's no spot that covers all of these spaces that's not vulnerable itself. That's why we need Engineering to defend. With the faster road movement we can just station our army in Ganymede.

There is still one problem we can't avoid. Dione is vulnerable directly from his borders. He has only to road that forest and he can strike at it from the fog. And we can't really afford to defend it since we need floating defenders for if he invades northward instead, for example forking Gany and Callisto. It's imperative that we be able to attack his stack in such a situation.


Merchant mission is in; I bulbed and completed Education. If we get peace:
* We continue with Printing Press, putting in enough that a bulb will finish it.
* We revolt to Bureau after drafting.
If not:
* We tech Engineering t96-97.
* We spam catapults (a few are already started).
* We switch to slavery/OR t97.
* We probably build a catapult in Ganymede even on t96-97; this delays Taj only one turn.

Iron will be hooked t98 and we can build a couple pikes if it seems useful. But man, catapults are probably better. Quantity over quality, that's our motto.



Mack's power is up 62k this turn.

[Ceiliazul]

We decided to offer Mackoti Ariel + 100g for peace. Any bets on whether he'll take it?

Wow, like 5 turns ago you asked for *his* city for peace... he should wait another few turns and see if the offers keep improving!

[SevenSpirits]

Wow, like 5 turns ago you asked for *his* city for peace... he should wait another few turns and see if the offers keep improving!

Well that wasn't a serious offer. Our serious offer was a few gpt.

A lot has happened in the intervening turns and both offers are IMO, despite appearences, fair. Mackoti has whipped an absolutely incredible amount of population away since the war started, producing maybe 10 caravels and 16 knights. That's like 1400 hammers. Our offer is things we value at less than a quarter of the cost of those troops.

[novice]

I guess Mackoti pondering our offer means we found approximately the correct price for peace.

[novice]

I'm out and about tonight, so I guess you get to play the next turn as well, Seven.

[SevenSpirits]

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

I guess we're not ready for Liberalism quite yet.

Mackoti declined our peace offer and countered with peace for Ariel and 600 gold. No thanks! Let's fight it out.

Delightfully, Engineering was a one-turn tech after all, in part because Sian just researched it. (Other tech news: Luddicator got Aesthetics.) That's fantastic news, making it easier to defend. We can also be happy that we got another scientist, rather than a prophet (15%ish) or engineer (5%ish).

As you can also see here, I started Callisto on a Spear. The reason is that the Catapult would have become a 1-pop whip due to the forge, and I didn't want that. So, started a spear which will become a pike soon. (We'll hook iron t98 thanks to some backup workers.)



I microed Tethys to finish the galleon this turn. That allows it to go pick up three maces more hastily than previously anticipated. Speed is essential right now. A galley is already transporting two maces back to the mainland too.


By the south island, reinforcements were delayed a bit because I neglected to redirect Challenger last turn. But there was not much point in redirecting it this turn - it would end up one away from being able to unload in a city. So I let it continue to grab the worker, and it will bring three maces into Europa (or Dione, should it still stand) t99.


Here's the (future) battlefield. Mackoti's trying to be sneaky and has a worker on the jungle doing "build a mine (7)". It was there last turn too; obviously it will finish a road next turn. There are also two workers on the forest with a chop queued up. Yeah right.

Unfortunately there's not much we can do to defend Dione, since it's in first strike range and defenders there are useless for other things. So basically it's doomed but we can force him to pay a decent price for it. I ran 5 artists to pop its borders (should have started on this earlier, oh well) to 40% cultural defense, drafted a mace, and left 4 maces there. The war chariot I moved out since it won't make a difference on the defensive; we'd rather have it to finish off a wounded knight when we get a chance to attack them. Our maces there will have odds against attacking knights due to the 40% culture, 20% river, and 25% hill, but not amazing odds.


But OK, let's not be all grim and cynical. There's more than one front. As you may recall, our 5 galleons (1 of them C1) + 1 caravel have been in a standoff with mackoti's 8 caravels and 1 galley for a while. This turn as I predicted his stack moved 1S, the necessary first step to escort the galley to mainland shores. This left the seafood open to be pillaged. Doing so also revealed his other city on that island, and I also took a peek southward with another galleon before deciding what to do next.


I'd done some sims on an earlier turn that indicated an attack was close to a good idea, but still too risky. The problem was that if we lost a galleon, there was a decent chance he could get in a profitable attack and wipe out multiple ships at a good loss ratio. But this turn he had one more caravel, but we had one more galleon (albeit out of attack range, just able to reinforce). With an extra half-defender (his caravel counts as half one of our units, here), it was safe enough that he shouldn't attack back even if we lose a galleon.

So the tactical plan was to attack until we lose one, then stop. The C1 ship attacks last because we want it on defense if we have to abort the attack.

Odds were 73.4% for the normal galleons, 78.3% for the C1 galleon.

Going well...



Oh hell yes.



I'm sure he'll refuse but let's keep the negotiations going.

But right, what did we really get out of this?

* We killed 5 caravels - half his navy.
* We gained another 15 great general points!
* We'll now have a C2 galleon and 4 C1 Galleons.

Basically we have naval superiority again. Feels good.

Builds before ending turn.