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

[Lewwyn]

FYI you should consider your turn ended once you end turn when you are in war and not do more movements or whips after that. Otherwise it's going to cause complications, reloads and bad feelings.

[AutomatedTeller]

oh - well, I did do a whip, but it was in a city on the opposite of end of everything from everyone, really..,.

I will bear that in mind going forward, however

Cornflakes moved his settler to the one of the right tile in the red squares (the jungle tile)

I am thinking I should settle on the blue square. I don't really want a city of his up there. it misses out on the 3 water tiles, but blocks cornflakes from all settling places but the purple circle, which would be a pain in the ass for me - but there's no food there for him.

I could settle the yellow triangle (where I am), which completely blocks another city from there), but it also blocks us from builidng another city there. Or, I could build mindy's moai and let him settle.

Any thoughts?

[MindyMcCready]

Let Cornflkaes settle. Mindy's Moai is a good city for us we'll deal with Cornflakes later (maybe). Let him have his city spot for now.

I'd definately upgrade the spear to Pike. The Shock Eles will take the LB and the Pike will defend against non-shock Eles. Good deal there.

[AutomatedTeller]

jowy sent me a pm and below is my reply:

Hey AT,

I'm wondering if we could agree on an official turn order in our PB9 war.
Obviously you play first, and I second, as we have so far, but I'm a bit worried about you logging in many times in a turn.
Would you agree to not log-in during the second half of the turn, when there's under 11 hours left in the clock?
And I would do the same on my part, not log in during the first 11 hours unless I'm the last one to play.

~ Jowy

I can do that - I will admit to not being sure of etiquette. I had sort of figured that it was ok until you logged in to take your turn - Lewwyn posted that I probably should just consider the turn ended when I end turn, so I'll do that from now on.

I will let you know that I did a whip this morning, but it's in a city on the other side of the empire from LA Law and will have no effect, at all, on our battle. (whipped an archer for barb defense)

[MindyMcCready]

PS: No peace for city of course. Jowy can redeclare in no time and fork us with the full stack.

Short term thinking on TT's part.

As for Cornflakes, he did us a solid with that trade. Diplo points for him. He could have easily chosen not to after the organized boycott. Perhaps the world power has shifted enough for us to reconsider who's the big bad now. Commodore's city count means he's the favourite now. Could change again when Cornflakes swallows Azza.

I'd still say that we need to pull out the cats and the mace. We are going to lose that city. And he can fork us 1 turn earlier because of the lack of culture. We need those cats and maces to attack out if he goes for our Heroic Epic city.

[AutomatedTeller]

so, it looks like commodore took the deal, which helps if Jowy doesn't attack now, but it seems to be a violation of etiquette to do so now, so I shall not.

Well, let's hope he brings down the wall.

btw - it seems like I can't count - I thought he had 9 catapults - he has only 7.

That actually means that I don't think he can bring down my walls - I don't think he can make 2 promo catapults, so he can't get accuracy, so he can only do 4 points a turn. He could bring it down 28 points and I think he might do that and let the rest catch up.

[MindyMcCready]

Yes, the gentleman's etiquette is to play strictly on your half of the turn. Players have, in the past, even asked that you're not logged in during their turn. That's the best way to conduct business to avoid the grey zones and head down the 'playing against LP' rage syndrome.

Again, I advise pulling the cats and all out of the city. What survives of his stack will be smaller and easier to collateral when he makes a move for his next city. Anything that doesn't have a strong defensive advantage (chariots, cats) or anything that has an offensive advantage (maces). They won't win any battles on the defense once collateralled but they may help out against collateralled invaders.

Make sure to cut the road as well.

[MindyMcCready]

Suggest the following:

1. Cut road 1NE of LALaw
2. Jowy's best move is NE-NE of LALaw post LALaw.
3. Make road 1 Nw of NCIS
4. Position whatever 'stack' we have NNE of NCIS.

If we can kill some units after Jowy moves NE-NE of LALaw we should do so.

If we can't kill much we should back off and let Jowy make his next move. Then Collateral. He's inside our borders so healing will be slow for him. That could buy us some more time if he has to attack city LBs with damaged Elephants and little collateral support.

[AutomatedTeller]

Perusing CivStats:



Jowy did not, in fact, take the city. I presume he just tried to bring the walls down. I think he made a trade for Engineering - but then, I think that Commodore took our deal, so we will be able to upgrade 2 more archers and have 3 more pikes, as well. I don't think he's taking LA Law, in other words. I assume he upgraded an elephant to Shock.

This would be a nice time to be HRE - Landsknecht would just rip that stack apart - they might actually attack the catapults. Well, we don't have them, so no worries there.

btw - the whip I mentioned - I whipped in the archer I was building in The OC.

And I guess Mindy's Moai makes sense - actually, I think Cornflakes is just building a city that we'll end up overwhelming cuitureally, anyway - he has no food resources and Mindy's will have 2, so it can't really grow.

[MindyMcCready]

Only 7 cats!!! That makes quite a difference. Yeah, he'll need an extra turn to bring down the walls. This will be a tough call for Jowy. He now knows that time is definately not on his side when he sees Longbows and Pikes. I still think that he'll want to preserve his army but his tech disadvantage on his deployed army is now huge.

His best move now is to not bombard but just collateral with all the cats. That way he can take LALaw and hold it. But he's not taking one step further until he completely restocks his cats. (Wrote this before I saw your last post).

So if he didn't take the city then he DEFINATELY is trying to preserve his army. So we may even have 1 more turn before he attacks. Yeah, its beginning to look like LALaw might hold. Reoffer tech for peace. I would so love to see him send his stack over to TT after that trade.

Still no Horse Archers from Jowy? Master Krill would not approve.

Option 1: Leave everything in LALaw to soak collateral and hope that it holds.
Option 2: Take cats and other hitters out of LALaw. Counter attack if he takes (and keeps LALaw). Don't cut road and have combat workers on hand in case he cuts with his chariots.

Jowy has Engineering? Could care less about that since he still can't defend against our maces and we lack HA,...but that means he has Machinery right? Bit of a bummer.

You know what,...screw Jowy. No tech for peace. Even if he takes LALaw I'm not sure that we won't be able to retake it since we can 1 move it from safety now that we have 3-move roads at least until it comes out of anarchy.

I think that our objective in this game should be to thump Jowy and ally with whoever will help us with that.

TT probably won't be any help. From his other games, I've found that he negotiates in a very short-term 'what's in it for me' mentality.