[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[fluffyflyingpig]

This just means you're cutting iron in 10t and piling on, right?!?

[spacetyrantxenu]

We'll see how it goes for him against Serdoa. I'd like him to kill as many of those knights as possible. And I don't need iron to build gobs of longbows and elephants so we'll see when the iron gets shut off. I still have Azza's copper from ages and ages ago, so I'm not hurting for metal myself for now. I'd like Brick to stand up against Serdoa for a while and hopefully drain him a bit. But that isn't very likely I don't think, Brick was woefully unprepared for attack. His garrison in Blue Fish was by far the largest in his empire. It wouldn't have saved Terrapin (the city he lost to Serdoa), but it would have made the attack a lot more costly.

[Qgqqqqq]

How's powergraph looking?

[spacetyrantxenu]

T173 - What, a turn report?! Pure madness!!!

As way of brief summary since I last reported, I've been in EXPANSION MODE for a while, not that there is much to show for it. I've added a few crappy little cities on my forsaken little end of this continent. I only have one spot left to add but there is absolutely no food or resources there, so I haven't settled it yet.

After what seems like ages working on it I finally completed my second Great Scientist this turn, stupidly I'm sure many would say, because he came from my bureaucracy capital. During the Age of the Restrained Whip that encompassed the many, many turns following Brick's earlier invasion I did not have a lot of hammers to go around in my empire, curses to the RB Mod. Nerfed whips, and each major city having whip anger in the 30 - 40+ turn range made whipping less attractive and a tool to be used in case of emergency in my core cities. Thus, infrastructure completion has lagged behind schedule, including a lighthouse in the capital. So rather than working 1/0/2 coast tiles I worked a pair of scientists for a long time. Thus the GS this turn. One Fish now has a lighthouse and is working tasty 2/0/3 coast, for Carl Freidrich Gauss has led the Portuguese empire into a golden age, probably the only one we'll ever see.

But enough of the history lesson, you guys came here to read today's news, you bloodthirsty lot. Yes, there is again war on this end of the continent and death, carnage, and cities changing hands. I'm not involved in the war for now, but that's subject to change whenever Serdoa decides to move south. I won't be at war with Brick for 10 turns (at least until T183) because I traded him iron for Blue Fish, ending 780 years of despair in the Microbrewery Captivity. Alas for our brothers of Black Fish, they shall have to suffer a while longer as I presently have no trade nor army with which to secure their freedom. Brick shuttled his sizeable garrison out of Blue Fish toward Black Fish before he handed over the keys to my governor, so now Black Fish is sufficiently garrisoned to keep me away for a while. I don't think Serdoa will be coming for it right away -- I'm sure he has no desire to have me right on his border yet when he can instead consume more of Brick's core. But that remains to be seen.

So what happened to start this current war between Brick and Serdoa? I don't recall now how well I recorded their previous campaigns against each other, but at the time Brick invaded me and captured Blue and Black Fish, Serdoa took the opportunity to run a very large stack of axes against my slightly less large stack of axes and archers, capturing New Fish from me. I weakened his attack there, killing several units, but I'm sure that he had achieved his objective there as he did not push further against me, having secured possession of the only border city we shared. Brick, meanwhile, consolidated and healed his HA army in his newly captured city of Blue Fish, which was a mistake because in the few turns he healed up I whipped an unbreakable stack of spears, ending his attack against me. So while Brick had gained two cities from me, he had whipped away many ages of development for his empire in the process of building his army and needed a greater return on his investment. Brick held a grudge against Serdoa himself for earlier border tensions (Serdoa had sniped and razed barbarian city that Brick surely would have kept, just as he was about to take it, and then beat Brick to settling a border spot by a turn or two, closing down the last continental area to Brick's expansion). So attacking Serdoa while peace was enforced with me was his option to profit from his horse archer army.

Queue the (First) Microbrewer-Mayan war, which initially went well for the Microbrewers. They captured New Fish from the Mayans and held it for a brief time, and even advanced upon further Mayan cities, until (and our historians are unsure of the details here, but they can speculate) a holkan swarm helped push out the Microbrewers from Mayan territory, at significant losses, and then drove them out of New Fish and then all the way back into Terrapin. The campaign achieved nothing for the Microbrewers except dearly spending their army and leaving a larger, more dangerous neighbor with a grudge and many axes to grind.

To the present day. I've been watching the global power graphs with some amusement for quite a while. There was a time back in the dark epochs of time past when my empire mattered, when my army was something to actually consider, and when I had some modicum of initiative in what types of foreign policy I could conduct via the pointy end of my army. Those days are long past, but we still retain a decent network of foreign embassies and they all report back the goings on in the various countries of the world. Through their ongoing research we find today that we are a veritable backwater in any number of categories, whether it is economic, cultural, or military. We are a terminal patient, not sure of the illness or the impending date, but we know we are going to die and there isn't anything to be done about it. What we know is that we will live as long as larger and hostile neighbors are busy killing off other weak states, so we try to appear the least weak that we may live a bit longer. Thus, our overmatched generals have attempted to maintain the appearance of formidable defense and sizeable garrisons wherever possible, anywhere the enemy may choose to meet us in battle. We know that in no case can we actually stop a dedicated invasion once it happens, so we can only hope to make our enemies think it is not worth the effort. So far our vigilence has kept us alive, or at least not deaf to the sound of our inevitable end.

I'm not so sure Brick has been as vigilent. While his power has always stayed a bit higher than mine, his force distribution has been wholly inadequate given the threats that surround him. He has kept his largest garrisons in the cities he captured from me, Blue Fish and Black Fish, and has kept a smaller garrison in his only border city with Serdoa, Terrapin. As I watched Serdoa's power graph climb and climb, obviously unable to match it myself, Brick never realigned his forces to defend Terrapin. The only realignment of troops he undertook was to siphon off forces from around his empire in an apparently fruitless attack against Merohoc, the only patient closer to death (up until now) than myself in this world. I'm guessing that Serdoa saw the advantage in the war declaration and decided the time was ripe for his attack. He moved in with overwhelming force, 15 or more knights that I've seen, and overran the garrison at Terrapin, killing El Cid, Brick's jack of all trades axeman champion, in the process.

That left Brick's southern holdings (my former cities) separated from the rest of his mainland empire, and Brick's only source of metal under enemy control. I have never seen elephants in Brick's territory and he has no native source of ivory, and I don't think he has traded for it, so no elephants for him. He almost certainly has not researched Engineering, so he has no pikemen to withstand the knights, either. He must rely on the spear and catapult. But I have seen few catapults in his territory as my chariots frequently wandered around, so he does not have a large force ready to soften the mass of knights. He needs spears, lots and lots of spears to save himself. But without metal that would be a difficult thing to do. Meanwhile, I have iron and no real need of it for a while (having my own source of copper by means of an ancient trade with the self-proclaimed Greatest Empire In The World). So I offered a trade, Blue Fish for iron, which Brick accepted. I know the bloodthirsty rabble around these parts would have preferred I spent blood to capture the city, but I need Brick to survive a while and take the brunt of Serdoa's attack, so he needs to be able to build spears. If Serdoa walks over Brick he's just going to come for me next, so Brick needs to hold out a while. I'm certain that Brick will be more crippled by this attack than I was by his earlier, but if he can do enough damage to Serdoa perhaps I'll live on for a while longer yet, perhaps even long enough to pull off a foolish campaign of my own some day. Aye, to dream....

Details:

A world very much at war:


A wide view at the end of the turn, my but haven't a lot of cities changed hands?



Behold, the unmighty and little empire, including the ass end (bottom left):



Our crappy empire produces...not much! (not even in golden age):


So sayeth the demographics:


Our trade relations have been fair and forthright!:


So...small:


So...backward:


So...irrelevant:

I'll post next turn's graphs when I roll the turn, I lost them on Commodore this turn and will get them back next turn.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Graphs, T174 start of turn:

















Serdoa just finished the Hagia Sophia in Mutal, paired with the Pyramids and Hanging Gardens. He has a nice, pure pool of engineer points there. Can you say Taj Mahal?

[Ceiliazul]

Serdoa is playing Single player game, who stacks ENG wonders in MP? Let alone a 11ish player MP?!

Do you think Serdoa will kill Brick off? What is your plan in the meantime?

Also, thnks for the graphs, they'd be even beeter if you chose the 'last 50 tuns' option... is the green spike on he Esp graph made by Plako?

[spacetyrantxenu]

No, he won't completely kill Brick. Brick has two cities on the other continent to the SW of Merohoc that Serdoa can't easily reach. He also has quite a bit of population and should be able to slave really hard to build a ton of spears and cats in a hurry. Whether that's ultimately enough to save himself is to be seen. I'm sure if Serdoa wants he can wipe out Brick's remaining continental cities eventually, including Black Fish. He has the hammers to do it and a tech advantage. But in the cost/benefit analysis, it's probably not worth it. More likely the plan is to completely cripple Brick, then reassess his position relative to me if he wants to keep warring.

If Serdoa thinks he can have a go at me, he probably will. My defensive positioning is terrible (coastal and fork tender) and there isn't a lot I can do about it other than packing in garrison and putting a decent navy in the water. Eventually if Serdoa wants to kill me he probably will. At some point the massively inflated tech costs will stop my tech progress pretty cold. The big states will be able to keep teching, the small, irrelevant states like mine will languish and be roadkill. So Serdoa will kill me with rifles or infantry, who knows, unless Plako reaches this far first. The Zulu are another option but I think they're in the same boat I am, just trying to hang on. They've made a lot of economic progress but their military is almost absent, so if Commodore or Slowcheetah make a real run at them they could die too. But their location is pretty remote from any potentially hostile neighbors (I don't count because I can't spare the hammers, really) so they're reasonably safe for now. Anyway, the game is going to enter a consolidation phase eventually, Commodore, Serdoa, Plako, Slowcheetah, and probably Lewger are going to matter. Everyone else, not so much. If Azza keeps fighting the good fight and takes forever to die, Lewger may not matter too much in the end. But that's a lot of power for now so I'm placing the Dutch in the haves column, not the have nots.

Oh, you asked about my plan for while the world burns. Keep building units and building cities if I can find a place to do it. Slowcheetah has mostly filled out the area to the east of the Zulu as far as I can tell so I'm not likely to get anything there. I can build two more bad cities on my rump of land, those will go in eventually when I can spare hammers from defense. I still think each new city is profitable immediately and as long as I can work coast and grow the cities they're not useless. It's just really slow going. On the tech front I've just finished Feudalism, next is Machinery, then Guilds. You can see where I'm going with this, I'm just trying to stay in contact with the pack with military tech. But after that it starts getting really expensive....Gunpowder...everything after that, ouch.

OK, so next time I'll go for a 50 turn view. I guess no one cares about the ancient age when Portugal was near the top of the graphs.

Yeah, the green spike is Plako's sacrificial alters. Commodore's early (and necessary) investment in courthouses is also apparent. I haven't built a single courthouse. Why bother? Everything is really close to the capital. I don't need a lot of EPs because no one is really spending any points against me, just Plako who has nothing better to do with his. I just met Slow last turn (he found me via galley from the NE, by way of Plako/Merohoc/Brick) so it will be a while before I get his graphs but I'll post those in 10 turns or so.

More questions? Thanks for the interest.

[TheHumanHydra]

Thank you for the huge report; it was excellent.

[Kofiman]

Thank you for the huge report; it was excellent.

Aye. With all the action going on, an overview is very nice.

And all those graphs are very welcome.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Good read. Thanks for the update. So the plan is to tech military and try to hang on. Have you completed any national wonders? HE/NE?

Fake edit: I went back and checked the tech tree. Missing Aesthetics/Lit. Machinery, then Guilds. How long will it take you to save gold for Machinery? At the very least, that gives you maces, then Engineering to counter Serdoa's knights, or possibly down toward Optics for safety on the high seas. Good luck.