[SPOILERS] Novice and SevenSpirits play Suleiman of Korea

[SevenSpirits]

So no golden age this turn but probably next. It's extra convenient as it accelerates the Statue of Zeus and our next great person each by a turn. Plus we are aching for vassalage's XP, especially as we haven't built any barracks.

Here are our cities AFTER ending turn. Novice set up lots of longbows to not quite complete. The axeman build has some hammers in it but might never be finished; it's showing up there because we did whip one longbow pre-vassalage, where it's in view of GN.


Here are demos with Mackoti in a golden age. Could be worse. I noticed that our beakers per turn have doubled in the last ten turns.


Power graph.

GN are up 80k on us. We have more power from population and possibly a bit more because we are garrisoning more cities, but more importantly they've surely built some barracks/stables and we don't have any. So maybe like a dozen HAs? I'm not sure.

We still have no way of knowing whether GN plans to attack us or what. My read of Gaspar is that he thinks we're better than everyone else and therefore they have no choice but to try to bring us down, but it's all just supposition.

So what's our reaction? Well, spamming spearmen would be pretty silly, so we haven't done that. The basic issue is that we have no idea which of our cities might be threatened. So every spear we build now is really like a quarter of a spear when it comes to defending against the horse archers, and you don't win civ games by spamming spears. And spears can only do so much against 2-promo HAs anyway. Basically if they attack us we're going to lose some ground, and this is unavoidable. My expectation is to stop any invasion at the second line of defense. We'll have vassalage and can build both longbows and spears, of which a mix will be nice. If we get a great engineer in the next few turns and find a couple hundred gold for Construction, we'll even be able to build pikemen. Doubt this will play a role though, as we probably can't afford that detour and still reach banking in the GA.

Even though a HA invasion would hurt us (or anyone) I think it's just an awful strategy on this map. The fact that Mackoti is 2-3 turns away from engineering right now (and we aren't far behind) and the HAs haven't even done a thing yet is revealing. I do expect them to make some temporary gains but I think they'll soon lose more than they won, because their economy is terribly neglected.

One final note, Mackoti adopted caste system for his golden age, presumably to taunt us for being next to crazy classical unit guy. (He also adopted HR, Bureau, and OR. Remember: our own GA plan is Vassalage/Pacifism (about $0 net effect on gnp) and then Merc/OR at the end.)

[novice]

They decided to attack at Jest Is Anarchy.

They will be able to get that city but that's also the only city we've got up there... Annoying stupidity on their part.

Anyway, we also found ourselves revolted to Organized Religion by the game and in anarchy, so that's no good. I asked Goblium to replay their turn. There was only fight this turn (they killed our chariot north of JiA), so hopefully that's manageable.

[SevenSpirits]

Novice is a bit annoyed. Don't worry, I got this. I wish there was a trash-talking thread so I could ask "Hey guys, didn't we agree on No Barbarians?"

10 horse archers, an immortal, a spearman, a bowman, and a galley (to carry those two one-movers). A motley crew. The question (once we get a playable turn) is whether to accept peace or not. They demanded Jest Is Anarchy plus two island cities, Magical Tents and Oil Radar.

Pros of accepting peace:
1) It's a guaranteed 10t peace during which we can tech in a golden age and probably don't need to build units for most of it. If we don't take it now we may not get it at all.
2) Maybe after they see us enter a golden age they will be more reluctant to make peace.

Pros of denying peace and offering a lesser deal back:
1) We get one more turn out of those three cities.
2) Maybe (if we offer only two cities) we get to keep an extra city.
3) Maybe after they see us start a golden age and adopt vassalage and build Statue of Zeus they will be more eager to make peace.

I'm not sure which I favor, I want to see a turn with us not in anarchy to judge our GNP loss from those island cities before deciding whether to push our luck.

I wish I knew their minds. Unfortunately I will have trouble understanding someone who teched Horseback Riding and whipped a massive army of near-obsolete units to capture what, one or two cities? While their opponents enter the renaissance?

[SevenSpirits]

I'm thinking we should accept peace, tech code of laws, and then start the golden age NEXT turn instead so we can use caste.

1) We are about to finish a lot of longbows, whip or no.
2) NoSparring won't be able to do anything.
3) Lewwyn still has 4t of enforced peace with us and has few avenues of attack against us anyway.
4) Mackoti's in caste and OR and will be focusing on economy.
5) Our border just got a lot easier to defend!

Btw losing those three cities actually raises our GNP - the big loss is in crop yield and the associated whip production. We also lose Rice, Banana, and Dyes, and the -3 health is annoying to a few cities even while the happiness loss is completely irrelevant.

[novice]

After looking at the save, I agree.

[SevenSpirits]

OK, we took peace for Magical Tents, Oil Radar and Jest Is Anarchy, and 1-turned Code of Laws. Offered a couple resource trades to NG and pretty much just set up next turn.

Pics, plans, and refreshments will be provided when the golden age dawns.

[novice]

We got the lurkers talking at least, even if they don't dare to speak up in here.

[Commodore]

We got the lurkers talking at least, even if they don't dare to speak up in here.

Hi. Troll for comment accepted. Xenu Mao is shooting awesome diplomatic sunbeams of joy and chaos over a dynamic Medieval battlefeild/dogpile, while bizzaro-you guys show us how not to dotmap.

This mere skirmish is the what the greens do for breakfast.

*edit, adding some content...what's the long-term plan now? Vengence, or strategic gifts to funnel the Lost Ones into the Mackotigrinder?

[SevenSpirits]

Hi. Troll for comment accepted. Xenu Mao is shooting awesome diplomatic sunbeams of joy and chaos over a dynamic Medieval battlefeild/dogpile, while bizzaro-you guys show us how not to dotmap.

This mere skirmish is the what the greens do for breakfast.

This just got way too surreal for me.

I hereby award you the Catwalk Award from PB7 even though that game has already started, it's the wrong game, your post wasn't a question, and only Catwalk gets to bestow that award. Xenu Mao is from PB7, which is where the award comes from. And now he's YOU!! But wait, he ALSO exists in the alternate greens reality of this game. Where Catwalk is US!! Makes sense so far? Yes it does. Also the reason you think we're being dogpiled is presumably because of the multiplicity of the Maos, plus the fact that we've been established as catlike via alternate reality.

I will heed your inside-knowledge advice about dotmapping this though. Next time we will include the unclaimed greens' game land into our settlement planning. Then we can join the greens for breakfast where we all lose a chariot and then sign peace treaties. I'll invite Mackoti too and then we can all have +50% attack against riflemen.

[SevenSpirits]

There is no long-term plan, but the medium-term plan is to get knights, and probably bully back some land with knights while continuing to tech well (via banking, education, and hopefully the economics merchant).

All three opponents have been jerks to us but not in an unforgivable way. First one to show signs of cooperation probably gets it. Lewwyn will not be a target as he's not next to us.