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

[Old Harry]

Okay, sim #1, with mack bombarding defenses
t178 - draft Om, France and Nuremburg, defense is 6 musket, 2 knight, 2 longbow, Axe, attack with cat
t179 - Mack bombards culture down to 4%, move three more muskets into the city: defense is 9 musket, 2 knight, 2 longbow, Axe.
t180 - The three cannons attack with 90% odds, then knights, mace and Jans attack and kill half of our stuff. We only win a couple of battles
t181 - We heal up, he attacks again but can't take the city this turn
t182 - The result is in the balance - it's down to RNG luck if he takes the city this turn or not

Sim #2 - no waiting around
t178 - draft Om, France and Nuremburg, defense is 6 musket, 2 knight, 2 longbow, Axe, attack with cat
t179 - three cannons attack, one or two survive, everything else attacks, half of them die, we mop up the survivors with our drafted muskets from France and Nuremburg.

So you're totally right, he doesn't have enough hitters there. However his three Galleons are heading back towards his mainland, so I'd expect more units to turn up t180. Our great person can be born EOT179 if we starve Cannae this turn, otherwise it will be born EOT180, giving Mack a chance to kill him if he adds more units t180. Which would you prefer?

Delaying Bureau a turn is only going to get us two more muskets, it will give France five unhappy faces and mean we have 11 muskets to defend with. I'm inclined not to delay, as getting Cuirs earlier is important. (Disclaimer: I've no idea if Bureau actually helps that...)

I also think adding a bowman next turn and moving the knights out of the city to avoid collateral might be a good idea.

Shall we offer white peace?

[Old Harry]

Turn 178

BFF? Pindicooter.


WEF? Mackoti. Odd that he didn't burn Barca, maybe he was just giving us a chance to give it back to him?


Ah, this would be the reason. Three cannon, three knights, two Jans and a mace. I'd guess there are plenty of promotions still to be taken here.


So in a change of plan we draft Issy, Nuremburg, France and Om (it gives France one unhappy face - I asked Pindicooter for a spices-silver trade to fix that), we have a Musket and a Cat in Nuremburg, which can arrive 2nd half of t180. Our Bowman and the selected three Muskets will arrive next turn. Should they wait until the cannons have done their worst before wandering into the firing line though?


Looking at the rest of Mack's empire his capital defense stack has shrunk, but is still too big to contemplate going up against.


Then is this stack providing cover for the coastal cities from Pindicooter, or is it on it's way to take Barca?


This is the shape of our defenses in Jamestown. So long as the city can hold out for one turn the knight stack can then arrive and help out.


I've done all the moves for this turn, but haven't revolted. I think we need to revolt to Bureau this turn, because Om is the only city on the island that can actually draft next turn, and one extra musket isn't that much. What do you think? And what other civics should we consider? I don't think we have the pop for slavery and we need caste to get the great people over the next two or three turns.

[Fintourist]

Sim results sound promising. If you think we can safely get GPs out of Cannae and Om without starving Cannae, it would be nice, but obviously securing 2 Great Persons and a new GA (or useful bulbs/missions) is a bigger thing than 1 pop point in Cannae..

I've done all the moves for this turn, but haven't revolted. I think we need to revolt to Bureau this turn, because Om is the only city on the island that can actually draft next turn, and one extra musket isn't that much. What do you think? And what other civics should we consider?

Well, I think HR+Caste+FM+Pacifism are obvious. We could consider slavery just that we can whip our cities to size 1 before Mack can take them (and for one extra musket emergency whips), but maybe that's not yet an issue. I want to get rid of Pacifism as soon as we are done with producing GPs, but that's not yet either. With Theocracy+Barracks we could draft Pinch/CG/Charge muskets, so that appeals to me a bit when I think about our situation in 10 turns. Theology is not that expensive anymore.

There's a scenario where Mack lands more troops next to Om and we wish that we could just draft that city every single turn, but I'm fine with Buro switch.

EDIT: Note that we lose barracks happiness so check our luxury resource situation before switching!

[Old Harry]

Heh, yeah, I realised that France, Dunkirk and BoP would go unhappy due to the barracks happy, so I offered Bigger silk and wine for gems. Dunno if he wants to prop up the enemy of his enemy's enemy, but we'll see... we can shuffle MP units for all but France.

Edit: Theology after Mil Trad, or do we save up money to upgrade Knights to Cuirs?

[Old Harry]

Okay, I nearly revolted to Bureau, but then noticed it puts our costs up by 32 gpt, so I worked out our benefit - which is 37*0.5*1.5 = 29 gpt and 10 hammers in Agincourt. So that doesn't sound like a good trade (until we start building Oxford). Why do we have such a shit capital? Vassalage is + 24 gpt, but gives us 20 free units and 20 free military units, so actually improves our situation by 16 gpt and gets us an extra 2XP on anything we build (only Jamestown is really doing that though...) I didn't revolt in the end, but there are 8 hours on the clock and Bigger and Suttree still to play, so we could get that extra 16 gold this turn if you want it...

I left Cannae to starve. We'll start our golden age in the second half of t180. If only we knew what Mack will add at the start of t180 - if it's nothing much I'll be both happy and kicking myself.

In an ideal world we'd want to keep one more unit in the city than those he can hit with to reduce the collateral pool, but we need to keep in mind he could attack straight from a galleon, so I'll keep as many muskets and old units in there as possible and just pull the knights back.

We'll get Ichabod's graphs back next turn, and should get research visibility on Mack too. That should be depressing!

Just noticed we're exactly 1000 thread views behind Commodore in our fight for second place. Would it help if we declared on everyone? Hmmmm. Not really a long-term plan. How about if one of our lovely lurkers goes to the lurker thread and says something about how dumb something I've done is? What do you mean you can't think of anything? Okay, in that case lets have a competition for what to name the units in Omdurman - I'll give you "Ottomans Go Home" for free. What else?

[Ceiliazul]

How about if one of our lovely lurkers goes to the lurker thread and says something about how dumb something I've done is? What do you mean you can't think of anything? Okay, in that case lets have a competition for what to name the units in Omdurman - I'll give you "Ottomans Go Home" for free. What else?

How do you knkw we arent already doing that in the lurker thread?

How about "crusaders"

[Hashoosh]

Yippee ki yay?

[TheHumanHydra]

Low blow: each of the Balkan peoples the Ottomans once oppressed, especially whichever one mackoti's from (I think that's where he's from?). Don't actually do this.

[Old Harry]

Brilliant. We'll have the first two. I'd love to do yours too THH

How do you knkw we arent already doing that in the lurker thread?

You're already unable to think of anything we've done wrong at all? I knew we were good!

[Krill]

You should name them after pokemon (Gotta catch'em all) or stuff like AIDS (which is just wrong).