I Am America and So Can You! (Kuro/Whosit Spoiler Thread)

[Kuro]

Ehhhh. You're the driver here, I'm just the one giving possibly faulty advice, but in my mind it's a case of "winning the battle but losing the war." We could whip and chop troops out of everywhere, but if we do that of the cost of the long game, we might as well die here and now. Do we have the tech for Horse Archers? I think we'd actually want a few to try and flank those catapults. Send in a few jumbos to kill/damage the anti-mounted, and the HA's could hopefully clean up a lot of the rest. I'm just going off the pictures right now, but it doesn't look like Com has a ton of anti-mounted in those forces. I'm assuming we don't have a lot of our own catapults.

I think we still want CS over Feudalism. Longbows won't really help us more than any of the other things we can build, and I'd rather get irrigation and Macemen up sooner.

Well, it's good advice, I am just saying we might just die if we take it, IDK. It probably depends on how the first turns of the war go. He only has like 1 Spear and 1 WE there IIRC, but that'll easily eat up 4+ Horse Archers unless we get lucky and then it's only even odds on the Swords, though we do need to flank. Though we could send in the Jumbos first, derp, like you pointed out, a bit better potential. We didn't really start with many cats so we have quite little there.

[Whosit]

So I just looked at the most recent turn, and it looks like I'm one ahead of you. Commodore declared war, sniped a Worker from south of Kansas City, moved his Mega Stack into our territory (there's more than was visible in your last image), and is offering Peace for Seattle. We are last in Power, still, and from the graphs it looks like Commodore is very well #1, so I guess he's using his position to bully us. Thank FREEDOM we didn't put the Great Library in Seattle.

There's absolutely no way the city can hold, and quite frankly, Commodore could probably completely conquer us if he tries. I wonder if he just built troops instead of workers, relying on that switch to.... Y'know, I noticed that he had swapped to Vassalage along with Serfdom, but I clearly didn't pick up the signal. My apologies.

So, from the perspective of a nation wanting to survive as long as possible, I think we have to surrender. Speaking from the position of a player who was dealt a losing hand, we could war to see if it ends it faster, but Com probably wouldn't eliminate us, anyway, as that could stretch him thin. We got a raw deal here. Our best bet might be to just accept the peace, give up Seattle, increase our military, and then try to go kill someone else to make up for our losses.

[Whosit]

I may not be the best adviser, but at least I'm not this guy:

[Kuro]

Whosit, do you mind playing this turn? RL stuff like my cat dying is really keeping me from giving a critical turn like this any reasonable thought. Play it however you deem fit, if you are willing to take this turn.

[Whosit]

Oh, sure. sorry to hear about your cat. I think I'm just going to give Commodore what he wants and try to put our cities on something useful....

[Kuro]

Thanks man.

[Whosit]

Let me know if I should expect to pick up more turns, too. Anyway, here's an overview of this sad, sad turn:



You will pay for this in time....

I'm sure our neighbors will have noticed our weakness. The Inca have a ton of units stuffed into their cities, but nothing really poised to strike us. We should be aware of this, though:



Remember that Chariot we've had on the edge of Ruff's borders forever that I thought we should so something with? I'm scouting out his territory with it now.
So I'm moving our collective stuff here:



Though you may want to stuff more into Colorado because our border there sucks, up to you.


Swapped a few tiles around and added that second Priest specialist since we went to the trouble of building the second temple. That Library is getting another chop into it next turn, and we should turn on science after it completes.



Also changed things around here. Fired the Spy specialist that was running. We get a GP next turn, but there's now an 11% of a Spy, so.... let's cross our fingers. Working more cottages now. By the way, we may want to cool it with cottage builds for a few turn, or we will end up building more than our small cities can actually work. Keep our population in mind for that stuff. Oh, and Washington turned unhappy at end of turn because it needs more MP, though when that Forge finishes, it's +2 happy.



We need to clear those forests around Kansas City pronto. No free workers for that this turn. Oh, one suggestion: Limit use of go-to commands for long distances. I think a few units were on go-to orders and the micro suffered for that slightly.

Moved stuff to scout out France. I redirected our Spy to head for Com's land to get vision on that one city of his we still can't see. I hope it lasts the 8 turns it's gonna take to get there.

Y'know, I feel like Ruff might be the better target, though it's going to depend on what power levels are looking like as the turns move forward. He has that tiny crap coastal city that maybe we could burn with a couple of galleys. Then we could use that Settler we've got sitting around to settle north of Boston so we can claim that orphan Fish. That would be nice. However, getting first strike on Ruff is going to be really hard with our shitty borders.

[Kuro]

You might end up needing to pick up another turn or two: My cat just actually died now, so uh. And how the hell did that Spy get hired?

[Whosit]

Washington has a Courthouse in it, and the AI governors LOVE to hire spy specialists for some reason. Every time a city grows you kinda have to check it to see what the AI did to it.

Again, condolences about your cat. I'll pick up the next couple of turns.

[GermanJoey]

I think the AI governor loves spy specialists because it sees that they're the most efficient specialist to work for optimizing GNP output. A spy specialist adds 4 EP and 1 beaker, which is worth 5 GNP in ordinary conditions, 5.25 GNP with a library, and 5.75 GNP w/ library and academy. In contrast, a scientist produces 3/3.75/5.25 GNP. You should be grateful that your numbers are BIGGER than what they'd otherwise be! Thank you, Mr Spy Specialist, for all your hard work!