[SPOILERS] Cornflakes and Q Eat 'Em for Breakfast!

[Cornflakes]

And for completeness ... the sorry state of defenseless Azzaland overrun by hordes of musketeers.

[Azza]

By the way, Azza, you did put up a stiff fight overall. I was genuinely worried when your stack came from Zombie towards Paradigm. I think that planting Zombie Pitman was a mistake though. First of all it slowed down your stack for a turn, but more importantly it caused you to divide your forces when your stack that marched on Paradigm. You still would likely have overcome us if it wasn't that we got another big break when 2metra traded us horses for our only source of ivory a couple turns before. At the time you didn't have Praets yet, so HA got odds on everything plus flanking on your catapults (which otherwise do remarkably well on defense vs axemen). Towards the end I think you should have built more Praets. You had something like 25 Catapults and only about 10 actual killing units. But enough of the "what if's" ... I'm a lover of strategy and could theorize about this all day

The problem with Zombie Pigman was that you instantly recognised the possible fork on the jungle hill, and took that away from me. And I really wanted to do the damage to your established city in Pork Chop, not the fresh city of Paradigm. One day I'll get this offensive warring thing down pat.

That note about HA reminds me again of our horrible strategic resource availability When we loose Apocalypse next turn we'll loose our only source of horses, so we'll have to go begging again You may say it's partially our fault that we don't have Horses of Iron, and you'd probably be right. We do have a horses directly to our north that we allowed 2metra to settle. And we do have iron directly to our south where we allowed Commodore to settle. But still, horses were across a lake and had no 1st ring food (plains cow 2nd ring or shared pigs with Mars if we want to stretch) while Iron was across a jungle AND towards Commodore with the only food available being the grass cows which Commodore claimed early.

Given the lush, easily defensible core you have, I'm not particularly sympathetic to your plight here :P

[Cornflakes]

The problem with Zombie Pigman was that you instantly recognised the possible fork on the jungle hill, and took that away from me. And I really wanted to do the damage to your established city in Pork Chop, not the fresh city of Paradigm. One day I'll get this offensive warring thing down pat.

I have to admit, I was impressed by the idea of planting a city there. That forced me to garrison the hill instead of pile everything into Paradigm. If you could have forced the hill before I got a few HA's online you probably could have razed both Paradigm and Pork Chop. (EDIT: I just think that once I garrisoned the hill you should have left the settler behind and just pushed strait to Paradigm now that I'd weakened it's garrison ... although I doubt you actually had sight in Paradigm at the time).

Our core was unbelievably lush! Green everywhere. Food. That combined with FIN perfectly and is probably the reason we didn't fall behind while warring with you.

[Cornflakes]

So ... civics. I think that after Steel I'm considering a revolt into Slavery. I'm also considering a revolt to Bureaucracy or Vassalage. Nationalism won't benefit us much in the near future because most cities in the south and east have been triple drafted or worse. We are at or exceeding the happy cap in every city. I'll only revolt out of Nationalism if it can be paired with slavery for just one turn of anarchy, and only if I actually decide to revolt to slavery.

[Cornflakes]

:sigh: ETA on Steel has not decreased in the last 2 turn. Still stuck at 6 turns remaining. One problem is that Bigger keeps capturing our western cities, lowering our total commerce output. The other problem is unhappiness. We lost gold this turn with the capture of Apocalypse for -2, we have "brothers in faith" for -2, we have draft. How can we survive?

Against just 2metra and Commodore I am confident that we would have dominated. We crushed each of their initial stacks, and with Horses/Iron we would have had another 6 knights at least by now, with about 2 being produced each turn. With the full weight of Azzaland behind us we could would have Steel in 3-4 turns. Neither Commodore or 2metra have another invasion stack ready, so it'll be 3 turns at least before they come again in earnest (plus another 2-3 for walking though our culture), which would have been enough to get a cannon or three on each front with careful overflow and auto-upgrade timing.

As it is I don't think we can prevail anymore. If we move our knights over to the Bigger front we can't defend against Commodore or 2metra :sigh: our beautiful empire is crumbling before our eyes. But if one must choose the circumstances in which one gets eliminated I think this would be my choice. 1st in tech, 1st in land area, 1st in pop, 1st in power, 1st in MFG, 1st in food. 10 turns from cannon which would have made invasion impossibly costly. Dogpiled on 3 fronts at once to bring us to our knees.

[Cornflakes]

AT accepted my Horses request (for his only source too)! Thanks AT, if we survive long enough to lend you some assistance in the future we definitely owe you.

I've been thinking, maybe an immediate revolt to Bureaucracy/Slavery would be best? We have rampant unhappiness in our nation now, so the draft is pretty much only going to get used in Pork Chop for the next 20 turns. Slavery would loose us only about 15 hammers per turn nationwide since we lost half of our WS already. We have innumerable unhappy pop to whip away into knights now and cannon later ... plus we can pre-whip catapults to get Cannon on the turn we discover Steel.

Bureaucracy would net us about 40 commerce, adjusted +75% to 70bpt. After this we'll have 5 turns of teching left. Revolt slows us down one turn, missing out on about 400 beakers. 70*5turns = 350, so it almost comes out ahead. I should have calculated this out earlier and we could have revolted this turn ... too late now since Bigger has started moving. He captured the two cities he could this turn, then offered peace for Chemistry + 800 gold + Kayak. NOPE, NOT GIVING UP THE GOLD! Kayak is dead next turn regardless, but it's the last city except for crap marble and Google, which has decent garrison and Bigger had no catapults. He can't advance eastward anymore in the south either.

[Qgqqqqq]

Can you 1-turn revolt into both?
Remember NH is worth 2 happy in pretty much every city.

[Cornflakes]

Oh, and I almost forgot. Commodore has a GG nav_2 galley (4-move) in our former Dye city. I'm guessing it has enough XP to promote to Morale, but he's hiding it by not promoting yet. A 5-move galley can hit Doughnut. I put a mace and archer inside this turn, and I parked our Caravel in the one-tile-wide coast choke point on the direct path. He can't move through ocean in our territory so he'll have to take the long way around. I didn't grab a shot of this, but here's one of the region from a couple turns ago:




The direct YELLOW route is blocked by our Caravel on the RED circle. The longer PINK route would allow him to unload 2 units onto our Ivory ... but what can 2 units (presumably knights) do from the ivory tile in the heart of our territory? Nothing. We have impi, after all. They can run up from Postos or down from Mars. We also have a full-strength 11xp knight and a mace in the vicinity, plus HA for cleanup. No worries there.

[Cornflakes]

Can you 1-turn revolt into both?
Remember NH is worth 2 happy in pretty much every city.

Yeah, already checked that it's a 1-turn revolt. Good call on the Barracks happy. I forgot about that. This makes it much less of a sure decision. In fact, I think this tips the scales back to not revolt.

[Cornflakes]

2metra played. Lost of forces shifting westwards in the north towards Google. We have 2 choices:

1) We are losing everything else up here, so we might be bests abandoning Google whenever his stack moves in. With our 2 galleys there we can safely evacuate up to 8 units in one turn as long as we have a road on the hill 1S of Google. I already have 2 workers on that hill (they were just walking through as refugees from Azzaland, but they might as well stop for a turn and road).

2) relocate our knights up to Google. 4 knights can arrive turn after next. 4 more the following turn. I don't think that 2metra will have his siege in place by then. Moving the knights does may compromise our defenses though. Bigger cannot advance without seige, which is still 5 turns away minimum. By that time we'll have at least 5 fresh knights in the field. In the south we still have our slow mover stack. Since we just annihilated Commodore's stack last turn I do not expect a considerable troop buildup in the next 5 turns. The east is where the lack of knights may compromise the defense.

We only have something like 10 units remaining in the east to defend both the cities. 2metra does not look threatening, but Commodore is building up a stack in the Dye city. I'm planning to use most/all of these units to strike at 2metra's coastal cities. Commodore has full city investigation, so he will see that we move everything out of the cities, so he may send in a knight stack of his own to quickly try and blitz us while the units are away. In light of this I think I am going to send the knights back east.

...

I wrote the above before eating dinner, but forgot to hit post. I have since decided that it's probably best to split the knights to both fronts. 4 to Google and the rest out east. The plan is containment everywhere until Steel, except that I'm going to strike 2metra's coastal cities ASAP. I'm estimating 2-3 turns until my strike. Goal is to raze at least one city, hopefully 2.