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

[Old Harry]

Turn 205

First things first: Merchant! Only worth 2100 gold (3.5 turns at 100% research), but that's probably the best we can get. (I didn't check elsewhere as we need the cash now.)


Ichabod can declare next turn. But he only has two galleys in range, so I don't think he will. I want to keep our powder dry and keep our Frigates hidden in the hope that he stops building up his navy. Is that going to work? He didn't build a new frigate this turn. Should we declare-peace him next turn, or be more mellow? Our frigate at Zanzibar has taken a defensive position on the clams for now (we could perhaps snipe a caravel next turn, but I'd rather not provoke Ichabod), both our caravels can be upgraded next turn if needed.


What are you up to dtay? there are two galleons poised to hit Midway, with the highlighted galleon capable of getting to France! (I've put a galleon and a galley in it's way so that it can't.) Also he keeps building threatening roads over here. I'd like to get some workers and knights into position to snipe the workers, pillage the roads and then offer peace, but I'm not sure that's the most friendly way to resolve the situation.


Demos and power

There are still some whips and worker moves to do. I'll see if I can get to it at lunchtime.

[Old Harry]

I finished off the turn. Earlier I missed that Plako declared on Bacchus (who is calling himself Ataturk for some reason) and took the island that they've been squabbling over all game. Bacchus has Gunpowder but doesn't have Engineering, Nationalism or Optics yet, so I don't expect him to hold out too long against drafted Rifles on Galleons. Would that put Plako back into contention with Mack and Scooter?

Dtay only has a single musket in each of his two coastal cities nearest Commodore. Brave or foolhardy? Commodore seems to be role-playing Ghandi this game, so maybe it's perfectly rational?

I've had our gang of workers farm over a bunch of workshops around Konig and Quantrill to let them grow back quick while we're in slavery, but they should start pre-building workshops again next turn - I expect to switch back to Caste soon, unless you want to stick with the whip? We could perhaps switch to Nationalism next time we run out of cash and draft while saving cash for five turns...

[Fintourist]

Agreed on caste+nationhood as the next civic move, and yes, let's burn some cash with our oxford-buro capital first and perhaps whip couple of extra frigates too..

Maybe it's time to declare-peace dtay just so that he does not get any stupid ideas? I think it would be a fairly good fit with the timing of our enforced peace with mack. Our "chance" is that nobody wants to be the first one attacking us. Our central position sucks hard and once the fireworks begin (feels inevitable) then we will get piled from every imaginable direction.

Not sure how we should deal with Ichabod, killing couple of ships with high odds is definitely a good move if we are sure he is coming for revenge.. I'm wondering if we are just too optimistic when we even speculate about the possibility of peaceful co-existence. Btw, part of our navy is kind of awkwardly positioned/hidden E-SE of "VV". If we have workers around we should pre-build a fort E and/or SE and/or SE-S of "VV". Razing a town is painful, but if things escalate those routes might become handy.

[Old Harry]

Turn 206

I declared on Dtay last turn and offered peace, this turn he offered it back to us, so I accepted, and Ichabod hasn't done anything aggressive with his forces (galleys are still galleys). So should we declare-peace him or just leave things as they are to keep the peacetime trade bonus building up? If Corporation wasn't coming in a the end of turn I'd declare, but I'm torn... We're getting +25% peace bonus with him now, which we'd lose and we're going to need a bunch more cities to keep our trade routes full. If we leave our boats where they are though he can kill a galleon if he chooses to declare. I'll come back to it after thinking about it a bit.


After Corp finishes this turn Steel will probably be eot210, so I started building trebuchets, since they can store more hammers in to queue-upgrade to cannons. We can start building Wall St when the bank in France finishes (7 turns without the whip), it'd be best in Agincourt unless we got a prophet (in which case BoP would be ideal). We're not getting another GP for ages though so Agincourt it is!

[Old Harry]

Turn 207

Lots going on in the wider world. A couple of turns ago Commodore completed the Kremlin, then over the last two turns Plako started eating Bacchus. If William is on his toes he should gain a bit in the north, which might make Ichabod feel frisky or feel safe, who knows . Corporation seems to have upped our 100% beakers from 1631 to 1863 (before known-tech or pre-req bonus) .


Over on the other side of the globe the Viking naval advantage is evident again. This might be good for us though - if Scooter gets bogged down Mack could look to take advantage in five turns when their peace expires...


Possibly bad news on the Ichabod front - he built two more Frigates, bringing him to 5 Frigates, 2 Caravels, 2 Galleys and a Galleon. And fairly soon he'll have concentrated his forces. We could kill the two Caravels at the price of a Galleon and (possibly) a Frigate. We have 4 Frigates, 2 Caravels, 2 Galleons and 2 Privateers with another couple of Frigates on their way from the east. Right now Ichabod doesn't have any money for upgrades, and I don't think he's finished the tech he's currently on (RP, Mil Sci, Mil Trad and Steel are all still available) so I guess we have two or three more turns before he does anything. But I now suspect he is planning to do something.


Our three trade routes are only worth 17 commerce, that's before multipliers kick in, but the cities they are in don't have many multiplier buildings anyway. So declaring and signing peace would be fine by me. We seem to have 13 internal trade routes out of our 104 trade routes.


Agincourt is now making over 450 beakers per turn. So this would be a good time to switch to Nationhood, right? Cannae finishes a bank eot, so we'll run 100% this turn and 60-70% next turn and the turn after to finish Steel. We could finish Replacable Parts this turn instead if you'd rather get the economic boost to our hills? Steel would then be about 5-6 turns away.


Demos and power - we need to get dtay's graphs back

[TheHumanHydra]

I support declare/peace[maybe]ing.

[Fintourist]

We chatted with OH and I switched research from Steel to Replaceable Parts. Side effect: Our GNP jumped from 2268 to 2500+ (and from 4th position to 3rd position). Another reason why getting Corporation was in our position a nice deal. (Clarification: Corporation boosts the known tech bonus in this version of RBMod and more people know RP than Steel, 6 vs. 4). Currently we are getting 41 % known-tech bonus boost for RP as 6 opponents already know the tech. Without Corporation it would be "only" 27 %. That 41 % means for us this turn 762 extra beakers if we compare to situation where nobody knows the tech. Btw, in vanilla BTS the boost would be 16.4 % or 304 beakers.

I spent quite a while looking at BoP and Zanzibar and wondered whether we should be producing Frigates there... Did not change anything yet, but I think that's something we should monitor every turn.

We decided not to declare Ichabod just yet, maybe next turn... It's questionablehow useful action it is here, if Ichabod wants revenge, he won't accept peace, but if he has peaceful intensions (who knows) and accepts, then things don't change too much. We still need to keep producing navy so that we are ready in 10 turns.. On the other hand my temptation to sink 2 of his caravels is quite big and I'm debating myself whether we should just go forward with a small preventive strike... I guess, this was also the reason why OH spent the whole day staring at Ichabod's coast So do we take a minor benefit that helps us in a very probable war or do we try to increase the minor chance that Ichabod will not attack us, which would be of course great..

One benefit in being the one who declares in this Ichabod conflict is that in the eyes of mackoti/dtay/others we might look like the one in command and not a weakling that needs to be piled on..

[Old Harry]

Some questions for turn 208:

1. We're revolting to Caste + Nationhood - should this wait until we have Rifles to draft or are the cheaper muskets more use to us? We could have Rifling in four turns. Mack isn't coming for us (his power is still stable and his stack is still defensive) and Ichabod's threat (knights) would be far better countered with rifles...
2. A 1-pop whip of Agincourt will overflow a bunch of hammers into Wall St. I think this is worth it.
3. Is our next tech Rifling or Steel? (we have a bit of overflow to assign)

If I don't hear back in an hour or so I think I'll go for
1. revolt and draft
2. yes
3. Rifling (Cavs!)

[Fintourist]

Super-quickly:

I'm a bit afraid of not having the ability to whip Frigates (caste). I'm just confirming you have thought of this X times. Otherwise I'm fine with the decisions.

[Old Harry]

Turn 208

More action with Plako:


And Scooter:


With Replaceable Parts in the bag we start saving cash (1100 gold per turn!) the plan was to run five turns of Nationhood and Caste, but I don't like the prospect of drafting more muskets just when they're going out of style, so I'm going to put off the decision for a turn, which allows us to think about whipping Frigates in Issy and Watling St next turn. We'll also start Wall St in Agincourt next turn.

Next tech could be Rifling (for Cavalry!) or Steel (drydocks and cannons!) in four turns if we wanted. Do we want to think about something more economic instead? Is there anything more economic at this point in the game? State Property doesn't help us so much with our AGG maintenance discount, I guess bee-lining factories could be good.


Ichabod added a Privateer to his navy, I moved our Galleon out of range and will replace it with a Frigate next turn. I still can't guess what Ichabod's plan is. Only three troop carriers isn't going to be enough to hurt us. We have one Frigate more than him in the area, but don't know what sort of XP his boats are going to have since they're sat in port where you can't see the blue glow.

I don't think we need to worry about Mack attacking us in four turns - his stack is still looking defensive . I was trying to work out if there was a way we could hit the stack - the great general and artist make it a high-value target - but I think we'd need to capture both Barca and Stalingrad to clear the culture and allow us to hit it. With a stack of Cavs on the tile SE of Gallipoli and enough to take out Barca and Stalingrad staged NE of Konig it's possible. But Mack would see it a mile off .



Demos and power - managed to lose track of both dtay and Ichabod again , so I've added a couple of spy specialists.