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

[Fintourist]

Food demos are looking decent - once you assimilate the captured Ichabod assets and have a few turns of peace you should be able to add a decent bit to the MFG and GNP graph due to those food numbers.

Good point, once Eyes, Spring Breeze, Stray Geese & PlayingWithFire come out of strike the food stat will bump by another ~80 points. We would also love to grow our domestic cities vertically quite a bit as we have whipped and drafted more than we wanted. So yeah, there is some room for economic improvement if we get a chance for it. Obviously it won't be enough to match the leading economies, but maybe we can cut down the gap a little bit.

[Dhalphir]

Well yeah, you guys have been at a state of hot or cold war with mackoti for the last couple dozen turns, to say nothing of the conflict with suttree for the rest of the game. It's possible to keep up horizontal growth during that time, as your food numbers show, but vertical growth is a lot harder. Once you can get your capital up to turn 20+ like the leaders and get some GAs rolling you'll be able to tick along. It's mainly a question of how long until scooter or mackoti makes (or is forced to make) a fatal mistake, handing the other the game.

[Old Harry]

I just realised that specialists in Agincourt will get the Oxford bonus too, so we should be pumping up it's size rather than Endor and BoP . Thanks Dhal!

Anyway on our island I moved everything we have nearby into The Evening Boat to discourage Plako from looking at it. Everything on the mainland is status quo, but I guess we need an ocean sentry net and mobile response force on the island. There are still a few units left to move, but I ran out of lunchtime...

We'll settle the island north of Madrid in a couple of turns, but don't have a work boat there. I'd like to whip one out of Madrid, but I don't really want to drop into slavery again, so do we borrow the corn from Jamestown, or the workshop or gems from Madrid? The workshop makes the workboat a 6t build.

We also have a city-sized gap 3W of Omdurman, which claims no new resources but should break even from the start and gets our culture all over the island. Is it worth the 100 foodhammers?

[Old Harry]

Turn 198

We can only dream of having backlines like this... Mackoti gained a great artist and two scientists in the last ten turns - he beat Scooter to Physics and I presume he'll go for state property next for the great spy. Presumably he'll use them for a golden age to change civics rather than against us...


Ichabod now has Compass, so Astro won't be far away. He also got Chemistry in the last couple of turns, so we're likely to face that naval battle we'd like to avoid...


I offered open borders for dye, sugar and gems. If he accepts we can use galleons to keep an eye on these cities, if not we'll need to use caravels and privateers.


He's going to resettle the Moai site this turn.


These our our defensive positions at the moment - the cats were to defend against dtay, but I've seen nothing to indicate aggression from him yet so they could head south to Mack's border. The trouble with Mack's border is that he has a great artist, so it wouldn't be hard for him to take Tet, bomb it and sweep through Quantrill and Hastings. I just think he's better off using the artist for golden age civic changes, so I don't expect an attack here.




Demos, score and power - what was Mackoti up to? Running wealth or resarch to make sure to grab the physics scientist?

Two last observations:
- We're now getting spied on by Ichabod, Mack and Dtay, we can probably keep graphs on them all, but it's going to be tough. Oh to not be stuck in between three civs.
- We can change civics again next turn - I'm feeling confident we won't face an attack from Mack, so we could just carry on for a few more turns.

[Old Harry]

Turn 199

We have open borders with Ichabod and he made peace with dtay. He's got Optics so Astro won't be more than three or four turns away. So to discourage aggression should we show him our frigate or wait until we have a bigger force? This road seems aggressive to me, but maybe I'm just seeing what I expect...


We settle our 26th city, the first with a numerical name, anyone got a tragic battle begining with 2?


I didn't end turn since I wasn't sure what civics to revolt to - Nationhood/Theocracy or Slavery/Theocracy? Slavery lets us finish boats expensively, Nationhood lets us build Muskets cheaply. Mack can attack on turn 202 (I don't see that happening), dtay on t203 (I don't see that happening) and Ichabod on t206 (more worrying) I think I'd like to hold off completing units for a couple of turns and continue in Bureau/OR until we run out of cash, then switch to nationhood for five turns while saving cash and finish and draft a bunch of units.


Also any thoughts on the positions of our defensive units from last turn's pictures? I moved a handful of two-movers to Hastings so that we have some on each side of the empire.

Demos and power

[Fintourist]

Looked around, changed 1 tile assignment, thought about how to continue this struggle and tried to come up with desperate plan vol. 15. Well here it kind of is:

Dtay's low-ish power level is kind of inviting. If this was a duel, I would like our chances but the sad truth is that Ichabod in the west is probably not too happy with us and Mack in the south and east is more or less the power leader. Anyways, if we ever would get a chance here are some thoughts..

I assume:
- Dtay has city visibility on us (close case, should find the formula)
- City visibility works as if he would have a unit on the city tile (should know this mechanic..)
-----> This means that dtay has pretty much full visibility on us... but not quite! There is exactly one tile in the northern half of our continent that he can't see. And it is located E-SE of Endor.

Which means that we could theoretically do this:



0: Staging turn, we need 4-workers near LB "cottaging". The northern farm needs to be pre-roaded.
1: Declaration turn
2: Possibility to take South City & Ishwal
3: Possibility to take dtay's capital, Rush Valley & Dublith

The island north of our current war zone is also a possible target, in the east we need to come from water if we want to surprise..

Yeah, this is highly speculative, but well, who knows, if Ichabod does not build a navy, Mack & Scooter go into a hot war, Commodore attacks Dtay and all the other relevant and very possible scenarios happen.. We might have a shot..

[Euler]

We settle our 26th city, the first with a numerical name, anyone got a tragic battle begining with 2?

2nd Battle of Bull Run?

[Old Harry]

Turn 200

Thanks Euler. We need to get another city now for you. Events this turn include Eyes coming out of revolt, TEB popped it's borders and we might start making some headway into Plako's culture and eventually get the Gems mine (I've left two artist specialists working in the city, we'll see how quick the percentages change over the next couple of turns...)


PP has improved our tech rate by about 100 beakers (~10%). Maybe we did leave it a little late. We had a long chat about tech path, which depends on a bunch of stuff.


- Dtay has Steel and cheap Kannone, so we want as friendly a relationship with him as possible (unless we can get three 6-mover galleons in the east and west and burn his Oxford-capital and Hindu shrine cities, letting us tech ahead to Cavs and kill him. But that isn't going to happen .)
- Lewger revolted to Theocracy and whipped like crazy, so Scooter is possibly in some trouble. They don't have Chemistry or Astronomy yet but do have Replaceable Parts, so I'm going to guess they're getting Rifling next turn and will be completing some upgraded rifles. Whether for offense or defense we'll have to see.
- Commodore won the Communism race, so Mack doesn't have everything his own way. If he gets the Kremlin that may also be bad news for Scooter.
- Mack's power has been stable for the last ten turns, so we're probably only 10% behind him now. He's not making any aggressive moves - his stack is too far away to 1-turn our vulnerable cities (although it still contains a Great General and Great Artist).


- Ichabod has Chemistry and must be working on Astronomy now. He's putting all his EPs on us and might be a little pissed about our entirely reasonable and limited action against im. He accepted our open borders for Dye, Gems and Sugar offer so we can keep an eye on what he builds in the five southern coastal cities once he does have Astro, but I'm worried that that he'll out-produce us in Frigates and have control of the channel between us. We have fairly limited defense in EveningBoat and PlayingWithFire, but a spell in Nationhood could sort that out. We still have 12 2-movers on the island who can quickly reinforce anywhere we're worried about. I guess we need to keep an eye on the number of galleons and Frigates he builds over the next five turns of peace. Issy is going to add a Privateer and Frigate to the Frigate we already have and a switch to Nationhood/Slavery/Theocracy in four turns time can provide more boats from TEB and Issy.


So our tech path could be
a - Steel for drydocks and cannons
b - RP-Rifling for Cavalry and rifles
c - Constitution-Corporation for Representation and four trade routes in every city
If we could attack Dtay option b would be appealing, but he has cheap cannons so that would be suicide. If we are worried about Ichabod option a gives us a bit more long-term production, but nothing in the next five turns. So I'm going to recommend option c. What do you think?

Will come back to the turn in an hour or two...

[Fintourist]

Just for the record, result of our latest chat is unsurprisingly: We collect some money first before committing to any tech path. Currently we are pessimistic about our near-term attacking prospects, but pretty optimistic about our defensive capabilities, which made us consider the economic tech path ©. That is pretty crazy though, because things change so fast in this game, but we'll see how the world looks in couple of turns.. Lonely RP for mine bonus is a possibility too.

[Old Harry]

Turn 200 Finish

Gallipoli will finish its infrastructure in three turns. At that point we could produce some units or we could cottage or windmill these hills. If I can persuade Fintourist we're going to get Constitution in four turns then we should add windmills as Representation merchants here will be worth 6 commerce and 5 beakers each!


I moved the sentries where you wanted and panicked. Mack could unload 12 units 1S of Cannae on t202. We can have eight cats seven Cuirs and eight Knights poised to hit that tile though so I'm not all that worried.. Worst case scenario is six Cannons and six Grenadiers (along with airship support), which don't beat Cuirassiers.


Over in the east Captain Trips is totally empty, so if Mack is keen on a fight we could do some damage. I'll stick a bowman on the six-mover galleon next turn just in case.


On the other hand it looks like Plako is taking his defenses pretty seriously here - does he just think that we've gone military mad or is he looking at Mackoti?


In domestic news Om will pop a great person at the end of next turn (coincidentally the same turn that peace with Mack expires, but that probably doesn't matter, right?). If we get the merchant Plako's size 20 capital is the obvious choice, the prophet gives us a shrine in BoP, which could then build Wall St after Corporation, scientist is a bulb (Sci Meth) or an academy in Agincourt, artist we keep for our next war.


Demos and power