AT loves it when a plan comes together!! [Spoilers]

[AutomatedTeller]

so yes, he bought it for 15. So, we basically traded construction for currency and that's a deal I'm ok with as last man in.

[AutomatedTeller]

so, I'm pretty comfortable with our position. I think we can make enough to keep Jowy at bay long enough to get to feudalism, in which case we are close to invulnerbale, and that's if we don't get machinery.

At 100%, feudalism is 8 turns and that's with no libraries at all. We do need more defenders in LA Law - it's still not strong, though it's decent - it can hold off against any non-elephant/non catapult attack right now course, we are getting cats and elephants, but not right now...

[MindyMcCready]

That was a pretty good deal. We got Currency for close to free in that a good part of what we paid we made up in trade routes. Then we got 150 gold for construction.

So, techs sell for about 25% of the beaker cost. That's pretty low. Makes sense. You're the first to a tech and you exchange it for three to four tech you don't have or else sell to 3-4 civs for 25% cost and make your money back.

8 Turns for Feudalism,...that's pretty respectable and it looks like we could make it for the T120 deadline. Wow, I didn't really think that we'd have longbows in time for Jowy's elephants. Just like that,...poof,...Jowy's not scary anymore.

So mad dash to claim the north of the lake? Technologically we're ready for it (code of laws, currency) or at least we will be in 8T. Is that with wealth builds or not? My $0.02 is that I'd prefer to spend those hammers on settlers and get longbow 1-2T later or whatever. If we plant walls Jowy's going to have to spend a few turns bombing down the defenses a bit. And if he doesn't bomb defenses our archers will have pretty good odds against anything other than an elephant even collateralled?

Can we still build archers once we have longbows? Or more to the point, is a 25H archer with 50% city defense an option when 50H Longbows with 25% city defense are available? In SP, I would never do this because I'm (overly) concerned with unit upkeep costs and because the AI doesn't collateral effectively. How well do 2 archers absorb collateral vs 1 longbow? Against Jowy we need Longbows, but against everyone else, archers are still pretty strong defenders.

Will you be selling feudalism to others? As a monopolist we should be able to get more than 25% for it. We should continue to consider how our power looks relative to the other potential Jowy targets before we sell.

Man, if Jowy takes his elephants in another direction,....maybe we should take a military crack at Cornflakes before his tech advantage takes off? Hahaha,...another mad scheme! Still he has no counter to our longbows and we could ask Azza, 2 metra and Commodore to join in. Azza and 2metra probably want a piece of him anyway and Commodore should want to take out his main competition.

Cornflakes probably has his military spread out quite a bit given his hostile borders. And he barely has any more power than us currently. And,..... I would be surprised if he *hasn't* gone into REX mode investing in all he's got in settlers now that every new city hardly costs him anything.

Gawd,...it's lucky you don't listen too closely to me. Go left, go right,....now go left again. Left again now right. I'm starting to remind myself of the "More dots" guy. dots = damage over time. There's a youtube out there with a guy leading some MMORPG quest (Warcraft maybe) and he's shouting out instructions: More dots, more dots, no more dots, stop dots, more dots more dots. Without taking a breath. Hahaha. If I throw out every plan under the sun do I still get the 'heard it here first' prize?

[AutomatedTeller]

That was a pretty good deal. We got Currency for close to free in that a good part of what we paid we made up in trade routes. Then we got 150 gold for construction.

So, techs sell for about 25% of the beaker cost. That's pretty low. Makes sense. You're the first to a tech and you exchange it for three to four tech you don't have or else sell to 3-4 civs for 25% cost and make your money back.

It's probably 1/2 cost right now. Currency has 2 pre-reqs and was known by a lot of people, so the multipliers for it were pretty big. if you add in libraries, it woudl take some thing like 300 (raw) commerce to tech it. And Commodore's other choice was to hope Cornflakes didn't take the deal if it was azza, he might have countered. If he had countered with 20 gpt, I might well have taken it.

8 Turns for Feudalism,...that's pretty respectable and it looks like we could make it for the T120 deadline. Wow, I didn't really think that we'd have longbows in time for Jowy's elephants. Just like that,...poof,...Jowy's not scary anymore.

that's 8 turns at 100% research. With libs, it'll be slightly less, but then, our max sustained research isn't 100%, anyway We won't have it by t120, though we might be close.

I plan to wait until we get the GP and decide the next tech:

If an engineer, bulb machinery, upgrade a couple of archers and tech CS.
if a merchant, bulb CS, power tech to machinery.
If a priest, probably tech feudalism. Maybe settle the priest in MASH, maybe bulb theology, dunno which. Theo can get us aesthetics and calendar and maybe lit, so it's really useful.

So mad dash to claim the north of the lake? Technologically we're ready for it (code of laws, currency) or at least we will be in 8T. Is that with wealth builds or not? My $0.02 is that I'd prefer to spend those hammers on settlers and get longbow 1-2T later or whatever. If we plant walls Jowy's going to have to spend a few turns bombing down the defenses a bit. And if he doesn't bomb defenses our archers will have pretty good odds against anything other than an elephant even collateralled?

Can we still build archers once we have longbows? Or more to the point, is a 25H archer with 50% city defense an option when 50H Longbows with 25% city defense are available? In SP, I would never do this because I'm (overly) concerned with unit upkeep costs and because the AI doesn't collateral effectively. How well do 2 archers absorb collateral vs 1 longbow? Against Jowy we need Longbows, but against everyone else, archers are still pretty strong defenders.

No mad dash yet - a slow dash,perhaps Mad dash if we decide Jowy's going elsewhere, of course. I don't really want to lose LA Law and I don't really want to have to fight to get it back.

We'll use archers still with LB - they make nice cheap garrison units and we are in HR - but probably more LB's. Azza still has praets. Archers are good against Cornflakes untill he gets HBR.

Will you be selling feudalism to others? As a monopolist we should be able to get more than 25% for it. We should continue to consider how our power looks relative to the other potential Jowy targets before we sell.

Depends on if we go for it - it's expensive and thus is worth a lot. Getting value from it will be important.

Man, if Jowy takes his elephants in another direction,....maybe we should take a military crack at Cornflakes before his tech advantage takes off? Hahaha,...another mad scheme! Still he has no counter to our longbows and we could ask Azza, 2 metra and Commodore to join in. Azza and 2metra probably want a piece of him anyway and Commodore should want to take out his main competition.

Cornflakes probably has his military spread out quite a bit given his hostile borders. And he barely has any more power than us currently. And,..... I would be surprised if he *hasn't* gone into REX mode investing in all he's got in settlers now that every new city hardly costs him anything.

Gawd,...it's lucky you don't listen too closely to me. Go left, go right,....now go left again. Left again now right. I'm starting to remind myself of the "More dots" guy. dots = damage over time. There's a youtube out there with a guy leading some MMORPG quest (Warcraft maybe) and he's shouting out instructions: More dots, more dots, no more dots, stop dots, more dots more dots. Without taking a breath. Hahaha. If I throw out every plan under the sun do I still get the 'heard it here first' prize?

that's a possibility. 3 promo Longbows are tempting. Another possibiltiy with LB's is to just keep expanding and building infrastructure, since no one in their right mind assaults a border city with 2 LB with even classical era units.

[MindyMcCready]

Well I'm not sure that waiting is going to be to our benefit. Cornflakes has more food than us and alot more infrastructure so in the end he's probably going to outexpand us. He's also going to solidly outtech us with his awesome combo of financial, GLH, maintenance reducing Ikhandas and with this tech advantage he make great use of his industrious characteristics to Great Wonder his way to victory.

Also, Cornflakes will just wait us out until he has Knights or Cuirassiers and our defensive advantage is over at that point.

We can't beat him by tech, so the only way to beat Cornflakes is militarily. And the time for that is now/soon because:
1. We seem to be retaining a production advantage over him.
2. He is spread out with many hostile borders.
3. We have almost the same size army as him.
4. In 8T we'll have a military tech advantage over him.

Now it doesn't necessarily fall to us to beat him militarily, Commodore could do it. But we'd have to signal that we're not going to be tackling him by appearing to vassalize,...

[AutomatedTeller]

well, I think you are painting a bleaker view of the situation than is warranted. Don't get me wrong - the way of Hannibal is the way of pain. Preferably inflicted on other people. Charismatic means war

But it's way too early to take offensive action. All those hammers could go into things like settlers and libraries and markets (which he doesn't build any faster than us).

IF Cornflakes leaves us an opening or if he (foolishly) intrudes upon our sphere on influence, then we'll hit him.

And when we get knights/curaissers, we'll go after him, of course

Right now, I'm just hoping to get by Jowy. Plus, we are still getting barbs in the south!!

[MindyMcCready]

Agreed. War is expensive. But the cost is relative both across players and in an intertemporal sense.

Two questions
1. 30T from now will we be closer or farther from Cornflakes' food, GNP, mfg?
2. Who's going to get to Knights/cuirassiers first?

3. If 1 and 2 don't give satisfying anwers, can we get someone to act for us against Cornflakes.

[AutomatedTeller]

1) Dunno. I know we have only 1 lighthouse built. We have tremendous potential in GNP and food.
2) Dunno. it depends at least as much on trading as it does on pure teching power.

Knights don't scare me - by then we'll have LB and pikes. Elephants... they scare me.

Also, we will not have LB in 8 turns. We might have xbows. We can tech feudalism in 8 turns at 100%, but we can't run 100% for more than 1 turn.

[AutomatedTeller]

pics in a little bit.

We got a religion spread somewhere we can't see

haven't yet found jowy's army.

we got our granary in LA Law and are working on walls. The garrison there is currently:

CG III archer
CG II archer
GIII archer
1 promo spear

There is another 1 promo spear coming.

Not sure what come after walls. Lighthouse would great, but seems like the wrong thin. I guess it's archer or barracks. Possibly a spy, though i think another city can make that.

[AutomatedTeller]

Events:


Jowy got a scientist. Is he going to bulb Philo? or save it for paper/education?

Tech:





Cornflakes is researching something.



Cities:

A-Team. Grow to build the lib, worker->settler



NYPDBlue:



Cat, then dog (strong melee defender is useful), then perhaps another archer or cat.

LA Law:



I'm thinking I'll grow it till we can 1 pop whip walls, then build either archers or a lighthouse. Don't have a good sense as to what makes sense, is the problem. Long-term, lighthouse is best. Short term is the problem. I've not found Jowy's army and we are on the western edge of his civ. he's got a couple of axes over there, presumably as barb defense.

NCIS


Will grow a few more, then whip in the lighthouse, then grow into an archer and build a worker - maybe whip a settler.

magnunm



Just got a granary, will let it grow into an archer whip, then maybe a catapult - we'll see.


More pics later...