[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

Couple of ideas/suggestions:
- Now that we are certain to lose that northern spot (thanks to f***ing turn order), we could also consider sniping that little iron-clams penisula close to dtay.. We could settle it on turn 116. Or do we want to secure us that clam+rice spot SW of France?

I like it, we'll see if he's settled it already from Endor. What do we need to put in the city beyond the initial bowman to keep it?

Should we really? We won't put too much in it, maybe 2-3 bowmen.. It's kind of based on dtay's goodwill.. But then again, we are both dependant on each other.. It's one further gamble! We can reinforce the city from Endor.. Finish the road on cows etc.

Or an axe or bowman for Ichy pressure?

Would you prefer it? I think we could get away with an economical build. I think Ichy can see our power graph, but does not know that we are in war.

- Workers that are currently E of Hastings could put cottage turns to the tile NE of Hastings. Next turn they can help chopping the tile SE of Hastings.

Better than a road?

Can't remember the situation exactly. If you see tactical value in roading it's fine for me.

Sure. Sounds good, along the Ichy coastline or ours?

Ours is faster so I think we take it.

I also suspect that dtay will be quick to Guilds, so our other aim may have to be being quick to pikes...

He has went the Aesthetics line so he won't be that quick!

[Fintourist]

Hmm.. We have a settler coming from BoP. If we go for that penisula we won't have a galley to transport a settler to the island. Consequenly France should overflow this turn into our 3rd galley!

[TheHumanHydra]

THH - the dtay city isn't there yet, but will go on the Slowcheetah island north of Issy. Guilds would be sweet, but I suspect are at least 20-30 turns away and don't really augment our AGG bonus. I'd really like to use our axes to try and take cities from m_h (while YM do the majority of the work) and Suttree (if we can lure and destroy his stack first). I also suspect that dtay will be quick to Guilds, so our other aim may have to be being quick to pikes...

No, I know it's not there yet, I just spoke lazily ... ok, that clarifies it, thanks; when you said "north" I thought you meant like the top end of the river valley, and I was like "where's this grassland hill?"

Oh, I know we're a bit away from Guilds; what I'm saying is that I think it should be our first "medieval tech target" (as distinct from our first medieval tech, which obviously it can't be). As in, most people probably beeline to Civil Service; I'm suggesting we might want Guilds first, and certainly before anything like Music or Engineering (idea being to get to knights before anyone else, so pikes would be less necessary for a bit). This, for reference, is what I did in 46, not that that was the paragon of play, but it seemed to work well; I didn't tech Civil Service till after Banking (revolting to Bureaucracy and Mercantilism at the same time, incidentally), and I didn't tech Engineering till after Rifling, 'cause I didn't need it. Now, I'm not advocating anything so extreme, because our situation is/will be very different from mine in that game, but I think it demonstrates what an early Guilds can do for your game (if only you bother to actually keep the cities you take ...). We might decide we can accomplish as much with whipped (or drafted?) macemen, while simultaneously improving our economy with Bureaucracy (not if drafting ...), but I think Guilds should definitely be on the table.

Now, as to using axes on m_h and suttree ... if we were going to do this, I think we should have started a long time ago, before suttree would have catapults for instance. Fighting at tech parity is almost as a rule not a good idea in this game. It might become a good idea if yuriMack do indeed pile on to someone, but if we're going to fight now, I think we almost certainly need to tech horse archers and/or catapults pronto and start whipping. Without a decisive tech advantage (and even with one ...), this will be an "all-in" affair, every city sacrificing a great deal of growth in exchange for the hope of horizontal expansion. There's no other way to do it. So yeah, as much as I'm a warmonger I strongly caution against waging offensive Ancient/Classical warfare unless rapid and drastic steps are undertaken to alter the balance of military potential immediately. Even then, the costs and potential benefits would have to be weighed carefully. Remember, Harry, this is what Serdoa tried to do to you in 46 - and look where it got him. Just some food for thought.

[Old Harry]

Turn 111

I just finished off - put two turns into a cottage NE of Hastings (we probably don't need the road), whipped the barracks in Jamestown, promoted Rowain and put France on a galley. This is where the Galley can go, the peninsula is totally cut off by the mountain though, so the galley will need to stick around to ferry stuff from Endor. Is it a yes?


The other galley will be marginally quicker coming back along Ichabod's coast, and can reveal cities/defenses/etc on his way.

Demos - at 100% we're #1 on GNP

I ended turn.

On medieval war - I agree civil service doesn't do much for us. If dtay is dallying in the Music line, TBSJ and m_h are a little behind, and Suttree is screwed then I'm convinced. Right now we need:
- Code of Laws (3 turns)
- Philosophy (bulb) - start spreading Taoism
- Polytheism (1 turn)
- Masonry (0.5 turns)
- Monotheism (1 turn) - org religion (and caste and pacifism?)
- Metal casting (3.5 turns) - forges (back to slavery to whip these in)
- HBR (2 turns) - start pre-building Knights and actually building HAs
- Monarchy (2.5 turns)
- Feudalism (5.5 turns)
- Machinery (5.5 turns)
- Guilds (7.5 turns) - switch to vassalage for five turn whip-fest
That's a total of approx 30 turns at our current break-even rate, which will probably speed up somewhat as new cities go down. What are our other alternatives?

[TheHumanHydra]

Don't forget stables too if possible. Feudalism, Machinery, and Guilds are obviously the big obstacles - any chance of a Merchant or Engineer?

For the record, I think I may not have expressed myself perfectly - I do think Civil Service is a viable option, since it improves both economy and military capacity; I was just pointing out it can be delayed in favour of other goals, like knights, which most people I don't think do (though I don't really know). But I think knights against Classical units, longbows max., is the best way to seize land relatively early in the game, and I think seizing land relatively early is the only way to win the game. But first, as to your premises - is dtay indeed dallying, and are TBSJ and m_h indeed behind, or was that more to frame an "if-then" proposition? (Regardless, though, the knights could be used to curb-stomp suttree and defend ourself against these others, even if we haven't out-teched them.) But yes, I'd like to see our other alternatives as well, as that is a big tech investment.

[Fintourist]

What are our other alternatives?

If we are first to Philosphy, we could be first to Nationalism and we could be first to Taj..

But yeah, 15-17 cities won't be enough to win this so I also see us grabbing MC, Mono, Monarchy and those military techs..

I checked in-game and everything looked good

Random comments:
- I think we want to improve riverside plains 2E of Cannae and then pasture horses, Cannae needs soon a new tile, right?
- As a continuation, are you sure we can cancel that whales to horses deal in 2 turns?
- That flood plains farm has actually 3/7 worker turns, damn slow..

As spoken earlier, my day will be extremely hectic tomorrow. So I'm hoping that nothing drastic happens..

EDIT: Btw, I noticed from F4 screen that slowcheetah & dtay already have "-1 our close borders spark tensions". Interesting?

[TheHumanHydra]

What are our other alternatives?

If we are first to Philosphy, we could be first to Nationalism and we could be first to Taj..

If so drafting maces like in the ISDG could be an alternative.

It seems like we do have a relative agreement on knights, though, which is good.

[Fintourist]

Just checked quickly what happened:

- Ichabod settled the city
- No movement from suttree except galley looks different

- dtay offered maps+OB+1gpt, feel free to re-offer something if you want!

EDIT: And Rowain won against the barb axe.

Random:

Let's double whip an axe next turn in Jamestown?

[Fintourist]

Breaking news speculation:

m_h whipped 3 times this turn. My bet: Yurimack showed up at the border. Assuming war declaration really happens we should consider whether we want to snipe a border city in ~10 turns.. Let's allow m_h whip his cities down and send his units to yurimack border first though..

[Old Harry]

Turn 113

Our neighbour continues to stretch his points lead - I think dtay completed the Heroic Epic t111 and now has 51 points from wonders, so even without them he'd be ahead! He offered open borders, so we re-offered at a price.


He hasn't settled the peninsula yet - probably wanted to get the intercontinental trade routes up first. So we might beat him... Our intentions should be clear though, so he has the opportunity to beat us there.


At Issy as I was writing up the plan to settle the next city on t119 I accidentally moved the worker from the forest he was due to chop (typed 1 when I thought I was on the micro sheet - extra annoying because I never select units that have movement points, but I wanted to check he hadn't started the chop yet so the timings lined up ). Still by building a road where he is next turn and either:
- getting the iron-mining worker to finish the mine, finish the road and move SW of Issy to build a road or
- moving worker G to build the road SW of Issy when he finishes this one
the next city is only delayed by one turn and we save a forest to go into something else. Still, I hope this isn't the delay that lets Ichabod in. The plan for the rice silk site is to whip the galley next turn, whip the BoP settler t115 then settle the city t119. We can't complete a road to it in that time, so what should we do with the worker?


Suttree moved his galley last turn, we're guessing that he dropped off the axes in preparation for an assault. If he moves up this turn we won't have cleared the jungle and may have to hit his stack straight away. If he waits one more turn we'll have cleared one or both of the jungles and will have a nice flat killing field. Shock axes get around 70% odds on cats, and will hit them unless horse archers are added to the mix or there is defensive terrain. If he doesn't have spears our chariots can clean up any injured cats or kill axes for us. Fingers crossed. I haven't moved anything here until YM plays. I think we should bring up the Chariot from Dunkirk too.


Dear mostly_harmless, I'd very much like to have both of these cities please. Is that really asking too much? We should build that road to get our stack down here quick if the opportunity presents. Should we offer m_h a map trade so we can see where the fighting will be and the lie of the land if we do want to attack? Also it'll show him that YM aren't fighting us...


Should Flugauto move to threaten this worker? And perhaps to sit on that forest?


If Gallipoli works the rice this turn and switches back to the farm next turn it can grow next turn.


This means Dunkirk works the forest hill to complete the axe this turn (although it could work the cow instead and Hastings could work the cottage - probably best like this though, Hastings needs the food more.)


Power


Crop Yield - Suttree's new city might be starting to pay off?


Demos - someone has crazy GNP this turn, but at 100% we're 192 and sneak into second. I tend not to worry about GNP too much, as culture and turning research off has so much to do with it. This might be a flaw in my play though...