[SPOILERS] Kurumi & wetbandit serve you Hannibal's Breakfast Cocktail (of Persia)

[wetbandit]

Yeah, Music. WilliamLP has Calendar and a whole bunch have moved into HR. Molach is still the only one with Currency, as far as we can tell. Music before currency, it might be Molach, he is teching like crazy. We are considerably behind techwise, with the lone possible exception of construction.

The settler is in place on the island and is in the future Moai spot. Its not the best long-term spot, but it does have first ring rice which is most important.

The capture of Azza's capital is doubly important since it will fund our research towards currency. To emphasize, currency will be worth 14 Coins with our soon to be 7 cities, not counting Azza's revolt.

[wetbandit]

The battle went about as well as we could have expected.




We lost 3 cats and 1 axe and destroyed 5 axes, 3 chariots, 2 spears, 1 archer, and 1 warrior. The cats were expected losses, but we lost no coinflips. We won a 53% axe vs axe early on that was truly fortunate, a 62% spear vs spear to ensure we didn't have an Immortal have to attack a spear, and a 68% axe vs axe at Azza's size 1 Medic. All the other attacks, except the low odds cat suicides, were x>85%.

After we took the city, I killed the Axe to the SW with one of our Imms. There are 2 Imms and a spear in the city; it is very safe from attack. Only two movers and that archer could hit it.

Before the attack, our power was about 220000 and Azza was about half of that. His power loss is (5x5000 + 3x4000 + 2x4000 + 1x3000 + 1x2000) 50,000, not counting the 3 pop lost.

As you can see, we can potentially snipe Engineer to the west if it is not reinforced. We won't have much chance to grab his island cities anytime soon.

We got a load of capture gold which will power us onto currency. Suttree also has currency, we'll have it in 3 turns.

I settled Finlandia on the island, of which I also neglected to take a picture.

Forgot to grab a shot of the demos, but someone is running at 250 GNP. By contrast, we are 6th with 101. This is not good. This is nutty and I hope we're not too late, though I suspect we're already going to get crushed by a run-away snowball. Doubly bad is I'm fairly sure that it's Molach.

[Kurumi]

Amazing job bandit! Guess Azza chose a self fulfilling title this game for his thread. I wonder if we should act on Molach, if he gets longbows or crossbows we wont be able to do much. Sucks that earliest good staple unit now is Maceman far away from our techs.

[wetbandit]

Azza whipped 3 times, there's going to be another mess of units around next turn.

It's going to take some time before the reinforcement cats get to the front. We have 2 more moving up along with 1 to complete in Mad Dog. We'll need time regardless to heal the axe stack, one Imm or spear will get a medic promo.

Is it worth trying to divide up our forces and take both Engineer and pressure soldier? If we divide, the forces in the north would slowly head towards Engineer with forces in the old capital to siege Soldier. It doesn't look like he has any cultural defenses, which should help on all fronts.

[wetbandit]

Oh yeah, with respect to Molach, I don't think we could really do much to him aside from hitting (and probably not being able to keep) 1 or 2 border cities. Granted, the city SE of Mad Dog is a nice city, but the ensuing Praet-stompy revenge would be harsh. I think an attack on Molach would serve to help WilliamLP the most, who shares a sizable border with Molach now. If only we could get WLP involved, then we could have a plausible chance at cutting Rome down to size. Unfortunately, the first person to make the attack will pay the most costs with probably the smallest chance at overall gain. We'd be playing the role of kingmaker at best, maybe a better opportunity will present itself.

That said, Azza still has a decent amount of strength and we won't be able to absorb his mainland cities completely for at least 10 turns, provided all goes well. Then, we have to worry about his islands. The first unit out of his capital is a galley.

[wetbandit]

Kurumi, please give me your thoughts on the current tactical situation. I think I messed up the current situation by not taking engineer and razing it. Azza left it abandoned and stupidly I valued the Immortal more than the city itself. Ideally, we need to capture cities intact so that was my thinking. Azza really doesn't have much in the field and we have a decent chance of taking Soldier next turn. I sniped the Archer in soldier with an immortal at 88%.

If anything, this war has given me new respect for the utility of immortals. They get defensive bonuses and have a bonus versus archers. While they're no great shakes in the grand scheme of things, they are definitely very versatile.

[wetbandit]

File this away in the Sad Times folder, Molach revolted to BUREAUCRACY.

[Kurumi]

We take everything I think, no idea why we shouldn't. Cities are in good spots. We have Currency coming in another two turns, cities have improved resources. Also, the faster we deal with Azza the faster we can solidify the Molach front, maybe we can leverage the land gains from Azza to overcome Molach's tech edge?
Power graph says Azza has power of his old stack somewhere again.

[wetbandit]

We keep winning coinflips, Azza lost a 50-50 flip against the axe covering the stack outside Soldier. We were able to take the city with no losses. 100+ capture gold and currency thankfully comes in next turn.




As you'll see, there are 2 immortals that can hit Pyro next turn. So absent reinforcement, that city will likely fall.




I decided to take it slow here, he's got more units behind those and didn't want to risk capturing the city, him attacking the Immortal in the city and razing the city.

Domestically, we need to choose where we want to build Moai. There is the island spot which is a classic Moai city, it's just going to take a long, long time to build it there. We're looking at least 40 turns with having to rely on whip overflow for the bulk of production.

Alternatively, we can build it in Belvedere relatively quickly. The city only has 9 water tiles, but we can build it there in about next 10 turns. The Moai will actually help the culture fight there to claim two lake tiles to its south.

After currency, what do you want to tech? I'm thinking CoL as we'll need courthouses yesterday to deal with growing maintenance. I'd really like to get to Mono for OR eventually, what do you think?

Edit: 3 Immortals can hit Pyro, not 2, I moved that Immortal NW of Soldier into the city after the picture.

[TheHumanHydra]

Just wanted to say congrats, guys.