[SPOILERS] Peter of the Ottomans carries a big stick

[thestick]

So CFCJesterFool launched a joke war against us? Okay... it screws up the 'Peace' modifier of trade routes, so we'll probably get less commerce than expected down the line. Him not actually wanting to attack is great, hopefully we can get that trade up and running again.

[thestick]

I'm wondering whether we should go north or south. North means less maintenance with our capital at Krakatoa. Algebra has GRASSLAND RIVERSIDE TOWNS. South has glorious floodplains and SAT's sources of copper and iron.

[Bigger]

I prefer south - don't really want another trundra city.

And wtf, I'm bored so I'll hit the DOW button? Yeah reduced trade routes for both him and us sucks, good for nicholae .

[thestick]

I prefer south - don't really want another trundra city.

And wtf, I'm bored so I'll hit the DOW button? Yeah reduced trade routes for both him and us sucks, good for nicholae .

So the south, then Algebra, then peace? We'll probably have to burn Vocabulary if we take Algebra, the culture will squeeze us. Losing trade routes for a couple of turns (1 to offer peace, 1 to sign OB) stinks, but having a game-enforced 10t peace treaty might be worth it.

Pictures:
CFCJesterFool's DOW:


End State:


Chernobyl's pretty undefended. That worries me a little bit. I'll need to move a unit up on that hill to give us visibility over the battlefield again. Also, there's a Holkan on the ruins of Geometry that I didn't kill because it couldn't reach Addition (soon to be Variola Vera) in time.

Power:

Definitely slipping. WW is up to 2 unhappiness. I love how you can clearly see the 3 major battles so far, Arithmetic, Death Hill, and Geometry.

Demographics:

The WW is ruining Production. How do we have negative Exports - Imports if we don't import anything? And we're still stinking in land area - I blame SAT's culture still swamping everything.

Good news if we capture Addition, we stand at 7 cities vs. SAT's 5, a bit improvement from our initial 5 vs. 9. Bad news is Nicolae has 8 or 9 cities and we're still extremely backwards. Hey, maybe we could go for a Conquest/Domination victory.

Again: if we take Comprehension, will it flip back to Sian? I'd like to keep it, it has a prebuilt Shrine. We could always declare on Sian if losing Comprehension becomes a problem. He only has Archers, Catapults should do the job nicely.

[thestick]

I need more Spears. Even if I plant a large force on Death Hill, Chernobyl is still in danger of being hit in one turn by Horse Archers coming out of the fog. One way to stop it is to get some cultural buffer, but that doesn't look like it'll happen until Algebra falls or we get more culture than a Monument. Another way is to pillage some roads, but that'll take healed Chariots and vigilance against combat Workers. A third option is to build a Sentry Chariot to get an extra tile of visibility from that hill so that Horse Archers can't one-move Chernobyl and Addition from the fog. Forking will still be a problem, though. I'll queue up that Sentry Chariot in Krakatoa.

What stinks is that it looks like Death Hill will remain in SAT's borders. The culture after Addition falls should make reinforcing it doable.

[Bigger]

im gonna go open up the save again tonight, and look around. its been 3-4 turns and it looks like you've made some progress. then I'll give an opinion .

[thestick]

Just beware, WW is getting to 'crippling' levels. Our economy isn't really that negative, CFCJesterFool cutting off our foreign trade routes did that. And try not to cry when you see the villages that aren't being worked.

[Bigger]

ok, so w/o open borders with cfcjester we're losing 24 gold on 0% research. lmao.
start working those villages, even if it kills our production. we need code of laws and courthouses badly, we can switch to production temporarily once we have code of laws.
How much will our economy improve when we re-open our borders?

im not worried about chernobyl too much. SAT's power graph is atrocious. why oh why do they have a horse archer in vocabulary?

war goals: I don't know if this is feasible, or if are economy can hold up this long: but I would like to capture addition and raze subtraction (preferrable pillaging the useless cottage north of subtraction). Then, if you want comprehension, they might give it to us ina peace deeal (that city is going to be cut off and not much use to them at that point, we leave them with a bigger empire than sian at least, including their capital). If they refuse, we could march towards their capital until they agree.

OTOH, how many cities is buddhism in? I only see 2 - comprehension and analogy. I don't think 2 shrine gold a turn will even pay for the maintenence on comprehension. we don't have organized religion or monasteries, so we'd have to add meditation or priesthood to our techpath pretty quickly to spread the relgion.
Addition will be too good a city to raze, though. we could consider peace immediately after that - if they will give us subtraction (don't really want it, but we have to remove its cultural presence on addition). or we could raze subtraction and just take a peacedeal for some cash and a resource, I suppose.

I'd love to just integrate their whole territory but our economy is in the shambles. as soon as we can get peace we need to -
1. start working cottages everywhere we have enough food to support them (i.e. all non-tundra cities)
2. build libraries, hammons, and markets in every city. and courthouses as soon as we can squeeze out code of laws


we are running 0% science and yet have no markets build, that makes me cry more than anything :'(

[Bigger]

question - in the save I have (470 AD) our entire stack of doom is on the hill W, NW of chernobyl. addition only has a catapult, swordsman, and HA (w/ GG) in it and looks like it could fall easily - so it makes sense to promote all units and move them towards the city - with that many catapults we should be able to take it in one turn, then we can heal in addition if we wish to keep moving. yet in the pic you posted above you split the stack - including moving some axemen (or at least one, I cant tell) directly south where they are still in SAT's cultural borders but not in range of addition - why?

[Bigger]

you're right about us being short of axes and spearmen. Yet we have plenty of catapults, more than we need, and yer still building 2 more <G>. stop building catapults, hehe!