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

[Fintourist]

I need to learn not to try to be helpful (see tech thread for details).

Nah, it was all ok.

Anyway we'll get a great general in the next hour or so. I'm assuming we want to settle him in Jamestown, to pump out 9XP Cuirassiers, although we could save him to create a couple of commando Cuirs once we have military science? If he spawns in France we could attach him to a galley for a 5-mover that can shuttle past the blockade, otherwise I can't think of anything useful for him to do over there...

Settling in J is probably the most solid use. I love moves that commando units enable, but it's still kind of 1-time trick and I don't think mack leaves e.g. his capital with only 1 defender.. 5-move Galley would be useful, but probably its use would be marginal. Our island needs to take care of its own defenses..

How solid are our defenses in Cannae? If I would be mack, that might be the place to lauch an invasion.

[Old Harry]

Okay, cleaning up Mack's attack force:

C2 Knight vs 9.6 cannon 84% ... WIN (4.6 left)
C2 Knight vs 6.3 Jan 88% ... WIN (8.2 left)
C1 Knight vs 5.2 Jan 94% ... WIN (6.2 left)
C2 Knight vs 6.1 Mace 97% ... LOST (with one hitpoint left!)
C2 Knight vs 4.8 Longbow 99% ... WIN (4.8 left)

I let the mace live so he can use it to kill the city, but I'm a bit worried that he'll kill these knights with his four knights. So I covered them with four healthy C2 knights. That 97% loss is painful - probably tips the hammer exchange in Mack's favour for this battle (even excluding the lost city). I would have started building a settler somewhere to re-plant Barca (Quantrill can do it in three turns) but we're building wealth absolutely everywhere that we can afford it.

The Great General was born in Cannae, so it'll take him a couple of turns to get to Jamestown. This is what we've got in Cannae, with three Cats, a Mace and a Musket on the hills two tiles away. There are also 14 knights exactly six tiles from Cannae (so they can't get to BoP in time, but they're covering Hastings and Stalingrad too...)


Question about Omdurman - we're running a lot of specialists just in case it survives long enough to make another great person, is a scientist or a merchant going to be more useful? I've got it on scientists assuming we'll want to bulb Astro at some point, but a merchant->Ichabod mission is handy too. Could send him over to the capital on a galley and make ~1900 gold.

[Fintourist]

Question about Omdurman - we're running a lot of specialists just in case it survives long enough to make another great person, is a scientist or a merchant going to be more useful? I've got it on scientists assuming we'll want to bulb Astro at some point, but a merchant->Ichabod mission is handy too. Could send him over to the capital on a galley and make ~1900 gold.

What's the rough ETA for great person in Omdu? If it does not take long, Great Scientist is solid, if it takes so long that we might have both Astronomy+Printing Press already I think we should go for Merchant.

[Old Harry]

Btw, do we want 10 turns of enforced peace with suttree or do we have some realistic chances for gains? Only if we get peace with mack I'm afraid..

Check also the build in Jamestown, I put knight in as a placeholder, but maybe we want to build something that we can 1-turn.

I forgot to answer these earlier - I offered cease fire to restore the pre-misclick status quo. Leaves us with the flexibility to attack, but I haven't found the stack of cats yet so not sure if we should...

The golden age took care of the 1-turn knight problem (J is making 108 hammers a turn!) although I built another Musket there instead as once we have Mil Trad we just want to build Cuirs and I thought a couple more highly promoted Muskets would be handy too.

Question about Omdurman - we're running a lot of specialists just in case it survives long enough to make another great person, is a scientist or a merchant going to be more useful? I've got it on scientists assuming we'll want to bulb Astro at some point, but a merchant->Ichabod mission is handy too. Could send him over to the capital on a galley and make ~1900 gold.

What's the rough ETA for great person in Omdu? If it does not take long, Great Scientist is solid, if it takes so long that we might have both Astronomy+Printing Press already I think we should go for Merchant.

We're making about 60 GPP in GA pacifism, if we get theocracy next we could switch to that or Org Rel to build harbours, banks and universities. We need 900 for the next GP, so I'll guess about 20-25 turns (although if we can get our clams hooked up again it'll be quicker.) Astronomy isn't much use without Chemistry for frigates, so we want that first, but I'm not sure what else is more useful than Astro. Steel? Corporation? Printing Press?

Edit: Looks like I got my sums wrong for the Bureau boost by the way - I was just counting commerce from the ground and ignoring trade routes and the palace, so Bureau is probably worth more like +30 gpt and +10 hammers from where we are now...

Edit2: And we're now only 400 thread views behind Commodore. If he just doesn't ever post anything again I think we can just about overtake him before the game ends!

[Old Harry]

Just logged in to check what happened at Barca and discover that Dhal has offered us his remaining cash (233 gold) - he's obviously still pleased about being offered the happy resources... That gets us to Mil Trad without having to run any more wealth builds! Thanks Dhal!

Over at Barca Mack burnt the city and deleted the mace. He also retreated his Jan, but still has four knights that could hit either of our little stacks. He hasn't finished turn though so I didn't do anything.

[Old Harry]

Turn 181

Something a bit odd is happening - we lost graphs on Ichabod and Suttree, our espionage with Ichabod is 45/44 in our favour, but we now need 49 to see his Demos, so I don't understand what suddenly changed? Found Suttree's cat stack - he has 27 and 18 axes 2N of Maximin... So we could put enough cats to take out the walls NW of Madrid without him hitting the stack. Then take the city and cut through it to flank the cat stack...

In other odd happenings, it looks like the shenanigans with the city liberation have messed up the culture around where Barca was. I think Gerard will claim this tile next turn, and possibly the one to the north too eventually, so we should make sure to be far enough away when that happens.


Back to normality, and Mack unloaded a bunch more units at Om. And he's got Military Science so we need to keep two (or three) units in each of our cities in case of commando raids. 1 Gren, 4 Cannon, 12 Knights, 2 Mace, 2 Jan. Wouldn't you know we don't have any pikes in the place. Do we abandon, or sit tight? Do we attack with our two cats or use them to absorb collateral? Or offer peace for Stalingrad and go after Sut?


I'll be back in a few hours to finish off the turn.

[Fintourist]

Quick comment, now this is a stack where offering Stalingrad for peace starts to make sense. Although without Stalingrad any gains we could get from suttree can be forked.. We probably have some units with fortify bonus that we want to leave in Omdu? If we can somehow force 1:1 unit exchange that's already good in our position (assuming staying put would mean getting slaughtered). Remember to take new cultural borders into account when retreating! And draft Omdu for the one last time..

Sigh.. Fighting with massive production and tech disadvantage sucks I will save my next m_h rant for some other turn though..

Because 6 smilies is not enough: Let's make mack fight for every little step anyways.

[Fintourist]

Hmm, mack has "only" ~300k more power than we do. There must be a spot where we can take a city if we concentrate our forces (eridu, ur, plainfood and gerard are probably our options). Although razing 1 city and losing an army by doing it is probably better for mack than keeping a reasonable defensive force that makes this war a slow grind for him.

[Old Harry]

Just ran a very rough sim and he'll lose ~ one unit and wipe ours out at Om. We need to fall back or offer peace. The annoying thing is that Gerard is wide open now, we chuck three or four knights onto the two Jans and Pike and after that we get even odds against the three cannons and four knights. We could even tip the odds in our favour using the same GG morale catapult trick that Mack used on Peterloo.

With peace on the other hand I think we could swallow Suttree pretty quickly, while getting a lot of experience... I'll wonder how he'd feel about Stalingrad for peace now...

[Old Harry]

Turn 181 fin

I don't want to lose too many units in Om, so I'll leave two 25% fortified muskets along with a CG2 longbow, and axe and a bowman. Everything else will retreat to the hill 1N of the city, where the workers will start building a fort that will be ready t183...


Our options for retaliation are to hit Gerard next turn with 22 knights. It'll take three or four to knock the units that get a defensive bonus down to 50/50, then the rest pile in and if we're lucky we burn the city for a loss of 22 knights (as Mack will have a zone defense force to mop them up with.)


Or we could plant 25 knights on the corn N-NE of Eridu, next turn, in the hope of burning the place the turn after.


I don't think either plan will work, so how about offering Stalingrad for peace and sending our 25 2-movers and 9 cats to Attack A? We can move in to A1 on t184, then bombard Madrid and kill a load of longbows. If Suttree moves the cat and axe stack in we won't get through enough units to start killing cats, but our knights at half strengh (after being collateraled) will still beat most of his units. Alternative #2 is to move our knights to Attack B to try and panic his defensive stack - if it stays put we can't advance without getting hit but if he moves it to Madrid or Maximin then we can hit the other. Alternative #3 is to try and pursuade Suttree to attack with the cats, once our knights are all 5/10 strength we'll still get odds on his axes and a turn of GG healing gets them back to 9.5.


Oh for a simple life. I offered peace for Stalingrad. Ten turns of peace isn't much, but it's better than losing Om. This was a depressing turn, as all the options seem to fade away as soon as you look at them properly.


Demos and power