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

[AutomatedTeller]

Got a lot of offers, all of which I declined:

Jowy asked for a cease fire
TT asked to be bribed to attack Jowy.



Which I declined.

2Metra asked for a small amount of cash for Feudalim



which I declined.

The barb city:



That's a nice prize, though it has to wait until it's size 2, of course.

Jowy whipped in a cat down in his border city there:



I offered peace... at a price:



I doubt he takes it, but maybe. He can see this stack:



Though he can't see the roading (and they are safe, anyway - if Jowy had a GII archer, they'd be in danger, and if he had engineering, they might be, but as it is, a horse unit would have to be on the red line to get them, and would have to know.

The entire stack, except the two units in yellow, will heal next turn. I can dump them next to his city - we'll see what happens. Maybe they'll intimidate him, maybe not. I'd probably not take the deal, if i was him... but he might. I am sure he'd take it for HBR - the city might be tough, though.



There;s the dip in power!!

We are still #2 in soldiers, thought:



This is a little worrisome:



Cornflakes turned his stack around - coming after me? That stack could take SWAT, I think, though I'd get an upgrade and a LB whip in, so maybe it would be tough - 5 cats is nothing to sneeze at, though, even though I'd probably kill 2 of them with crossbows.

Azza's territory:

[AutomatedTeller]

I whipped in the galley in BJ and the bear - It will swing up, pick up an LB, swing back, pick up a mace, then stage for the raid, so that goes off in 4 turns (unless Jowy accepts the peace deal, of course).

mace/LB will be very tough in Noveria, and we can shuttle over a pike pretty easily, I think.

[AutomatedTeller]

hey - is there any way to tell who got circumnav? I'm guessing it's 2metra, Azza or TT. It's not vital, but it would be nice to know...

[NobleHelium]

Well you can tell by finding a ship with one more move than normal.

[AutomatedTeller]

From CivStats, it looks like Cornflakes finally broke through on one of Azza's cities. Azza lost a lot of score and cornflakes gained a lot of score.

Also, Jowy rejected our peace offer - no big surprise there.

[AutomatedTeller]

I haven't finished the turn - I'll give more pics later:

jowy offered a ceasefire again - I wonder if he just thinks I'll eventually hit ok by accident?


Looked at the interturn:



two more auto-spreads of Buddhism

Azza lost STEVE, which was his capital, and not the one near us.

TT got Notre Dame, which makes him as Charismatic as us



Jowy built another catapult, from his capital. So, he'll be hitting us eventually, so that's something to worry about.



He added an archer and an elephant to the horizon defense - I guess he feels safe. We'll see what he does after I dump a stack there.

I offered feudalism back to 2metra, for more cash.

[MindyMcCready]

From CivStats, it looks like Cornflakes finally broke through on one of Azza's cities. Azza lost a lot of score and cornflakes gained a lot of score.

Also, Jowy rejected our peace offer - no big surprise there.

Bad news and good news.

Jowy is worse off than I thought. It doesn't look like he has much more power than pop and tech. And the vultures are circling. TT and Commodore are probably smacking their lips at taking chunks out of Jowy right now.

Jowy's army currently lacks the critical mass necessary to defend. When he has only 3 units in a city, we lose the first 3 units in roughing up the defenders; he loses the next 3 units. So as of right now we can pretty much take cities for an even hammer trade.

If he doesn't start retreating away from his cities, that lack of critical mass won't change. So I think that we should keep pushing him. Yes, we'll likely lose a big chunk of our army doing so, but it should be worth it. We have some street cred with the serious thumping that Jowy took to help keep us safe.

More to come. Long story short, post-Horizon conquest make a push to Eden Prime while simultaneously showing up with 3 galleys around Citadel. Galleys could be loaded or not.

[AutomatedTeller]

My assault on Horizon:




There is an obvious question from this assault deployment, which is:

Why is there a CG III LB out in the flats on it's own?

The answer to that is that I hope to suck one of Jowy's elephants out to kill this great unit. It is, in fact, bait. and in no way does it reflect a mis-click on the part of the person wielding the mouse. No sirree - all part of the plan, in fact. *sigh*



That's not setting up for an assault on me, I don't think. Course, he can pretty easily kill Quincy, ME (the Mindy's Moai city) with that stack, if he chooses, so I need more military.

that will come from NYPD BLue and from V. Speaking of which, V is looking pretty tasty right now:



Let it grow while I improve the banana, whip in a rax and then some military units...

I'm going to whip a market into MASH next turn, btw - it's time it got one - then it's Rax/military for awhile. That's a risk - cornflakes might get frisky - but it's one I think is ok.

Got optics - why optics? Well, we have all the whales and I'd like to trade surplus to TT. Though, TT may not be around for all the much longer.

Some maneuvering around the barb city:



One thing I missed before:



Presumably, he's going to go for liberalism. Also, presumably,he'll trade it for compass and guilds - we'll see. Oxford is, for us, a dream right now - we have just 3 libraries (out of I think 7 needed) and hammers for universities are a joke - so I don't know how much use it is to us, which is why guilds is better.

[MindyMcCready]

Personally, if I was Jowy I'd take peace for Horizon in a heartbeat. That city is small, my culture would dominate it and I'd have 10 turns to rebuild my woefully inadequate army.

Unless I'm seriously mistaken, he's going to lose that city anyway. And of course if we're in his territory anyway we should want to demand the next city/concession for peace. Rinse and repeat until he wises up or until his army materializes into an actual threat. His lack of critical mass means that we're basically trading hammers while taking his cities.

And the only way he's going to put together a decent enough army is by retreating and buying time. Or by whipping his capital and core cities right down to size 3 while being fed tech from abroad. Until this happens, I'd say that we make that double pronged attack on Eden Prime and Citadel. If this sounds like something that we'd want to attempt, then I'm ok with redirecting that settler away from SSSWWW LALaw. If we make the kind of progress that I hope for, we can settle that city later at our leisure.

My top city pick is that other choke point, City D (I think? Its been awhile.) from our discussion way back when. It was the unboatable city, and I think that you liked it. If we need to rediscuss, let me know but sooner or later we'll be glad that we have that city to act as a deterrant against either Cornflakes or Commodore.

Did Cornflakes move his settler out of that location north of Mindy's Maoi. If he did, then that was an awesome concession towards us. That city makes the north of Lake Blue tough to defend. He could hit 3 cities at anytime.

NNNE of Mindy's Moai would be a strong city site contender if Cornflakes backed off. That mountain peak would allow alot of visibility. If we can get that spot I'd be pretty happy with our border with Cornflakes. I can see why Cornflakes might have backed off. It's hard for him to hold culturally and it definately ruffles my feathers to have it there. I'm hoping he concluded that its not worth the agro. For us, totally different story.

So regarding the invasion plans.
-3 galleys later or 1 galley now. If we make a move on Eden Prime we can either capture Citadel or, at minimum, capture and keep that south tundra city. If we move with 1 galley now, we may not capture Noveria and we'd probably have to raze.
-As long as we're threatening his north, 3 loaded galleys have a very decent chance of capturing this capital or at minimum making the Battle of Eden Prime a very easy affair. Worst case scenario would probably involve capturing and keeping Noveria.
-I have no way of knowing how feasible it would be to put together 3 galleys or 3 loaded galleys while simultaneously pushing toward Eden Prime, so hopefully we can discuss this.
-I'd totally advocate whipping the capital if necessary to accomplish these military goals. Don't love to do it, but time is of the essence if we're going to overwhelm Jowy.

[AutomatedTeller]

Cornflakes did move it - I think he's settling in on Azza's land, which means he'll get iron.

The one issue on major pushes into Jowy's land is the SoZ. Also, he's maybe a deterrent to Commodore.

We need a couple of spies, I think, so we can watch Jowy and cornflakes troop movements...