[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Turn 136

Shall we have some more war? We need to kill the War Elephant that killed our Knight in Carrot:
C2 HA vs 2.4/7 Welly 96%... WIN (down to 4.7/6)


Then we move a sentry HA in and see just enough wellies that we want to wait behind our moats and heal for one more turn. Sorry lurkers, we've got four healthy knights this turn and will have eleven next turn... Our three-move medic chariot then pillaged Azza's horse tile, just to be on the safe side.


Dtay took another couple of CH cities. He then collateraled a huge stack of catapults away .


Also he's got some Galleys exploring us. I don't like this. Closing borders with him would be sensible, but then he might kill our scout. I won't do it this turn, but almost certainly will do it next turn. If we do close borders and he declares war our nets will be fine as they are in the ocean.


It may look like we're not taking this war seriously enough, but actually a lot of these cities just don't have the hammers or spare happy to whip a Knight quick enough for our front lines, so we're building a lot of infrastructure instead.


Demos and power - now including dtay's spike (higher than ours) and Mardoc's dip.

[Old Harry]

Im actually not reading them all. Im reading about five of them every time they get updated, but honestly its too much to really keep track of and provide feedback/encouragement in a non-spoiler way. If theres only a few, I can mentally screen who-said-what for spoilers. With this many I cant remember and so cant add much content.

But yours is one of the five and I hope you'll keep it up!

It is a hard line for lurkers to tread to comment without releasing spoiler information, so we appreciate it .

I just logged in and set Marmalade to put a hammer into a trireme and Izzy to start another Knight. We also moved a knight into Marmalade just in case dtay has any plans and will start a Galley in Ophelia (further south) next turn to see if we can burn some of Dtay's recent conquests while he's busy finishing CH off...

[Old Harry]

Turn 137 preamble

Pindicator re-offered the fur-wine trade and I accepted. I also found his stack in the Hindu holy city. That's quite a lot of rubbish .


Which city to spread Hindu to? Rocky or one of our new conquests?


Mardoc did use his Horse Archer to snipe and delete our workers, our knight gets >96% to kill him then sit in Carrot. The hill was free so our Sentry HA has a little look around. Mardoc used his GG on a welly, but doesn't seem to have taken many promotions - is he going to add Formation or Morale or just use it to promo-heal?


Early thoughts:
- Do we close borders with Dtay to prevent him scouting us?
- Same question about BGN - whose HA and chariot are now in Broccoli.
- Whip Kirby this turn.
I'll be back in about two hours or can play tomorrow morning, off to play some footie now... I think we just want to move 10 knights and a couple of HAs to the hill this turn.

[Fintourist]

Various comments:

Topic 1: Moving our units onto THH hill
- Agreed wholeheartedly, Mardoc actually has a bit less units than I expected.. but still enough to make our life difficult
- 10 knights and 3/4 HAs is probably the way to go. That leaves us a bit vulnerable to Azza, but a) he does not know it and he might not want to risk losing his units in the open b) he possibly does not care too much and just fortifies inside remaining cities
- Upgrade our 10/10 XP knight into Formation. I'm pretty sure that Mardoc has unused upgrades and it would suck to lose that unit for no reason. Formation knights get odds against Formation WEs, but C2s don't. C2 knights get odds against C2 WEs and C1s only get odds against 0 XP WEs. Unfortunately our 9.8/10 Formation knight does not get odds against formation WEs.. 9.9/10 would be enough..
- If Mardoc stuffs everything into Infrared it might be too risky to try to take it. Needs some simming. Here is a dance scenario I can see: 1. We move onto THH tile. 1b. Mardoc defends Infrared properly. 2. We capture Red 3. We reclaim THH tile. 4. We move cats onto THH tile and our stack slowly towards Infrared 5. We bombard defenses 6. We suicide couple of cats and take Infrared without huge losses. 7. We have secured us a nice position and cut Mardoc's empire in half. 8. Due to the fact that he can build longbows there is no way we can kill him as fast as dtay eliminates CH, but we should be able to make progress and slowly grind us the whole continent semi-efficiently.

Topic 2: BGN & dtay - Open Borders
- What can I say, I have mixed feelings.. You know the positives and the negatives, diplo aspect, trade routes, map asymmetry, need to cover our cities... Anyways, one rule is above everything. Do not give BGN a chance to raze a city for free, he might well do it as we are his direct contenders. If we need to kill that HA + chariot to be safe, so be it.

Topic 3: Domestic stuff
- Let's use all our money before the bank in Alfie is ready? Putting beakers into Paper (and/or Drama) is fine.
- Flossie should take corn tile from Kirby (despite the whip)
- Whip SA at Nina?
- Not quite sure about working the tundra mine at Twinkle
- for Marble city for having 30 cities! (their quality equals 20 dtay cities [and he has already 28], but more is more :P)


TBS is playing currently and event log goes wild. 2 GGs are dead and one new is born
I go to sleep now, play well!

[TheHumanHydra]

Agreed with moving in.

Topic 2: BGN & dtay - Open Borders
- What can I say, I have mixed feelings.. You know the positives and the negatives, diplo aspect, trade routes, map asymmetry, need to cover our cities... Anyways, one rule is above everything. Do not give BGN a chance to raze a city for free, he might well do it as we are his direct contenders. If we need to kill that HA + chariot to be safe, so be it.

What Fin said. I'm inclined to close borders with both of them, though I believe that will leave BGN's units still in the vicinity. I'd like us to be the ones going into the lategame with an information advantage (*I can't remember what the reply was about map trading; can't remember if it's allowed/enabled in this mod.)

[Old Harry]

Turn 137

I think BGN can't hit a city (except perhaps Asparagus if he has Engineering already) next turn. I'd really rather not antagonise him, but I feel like its too much of a risk to let him run around our newly conquored and culture-light land... In the end I closed borders and then offered them back to him. If he doesn't get the message then we have options for killing those units next turn . Map trading is banned, so at present only Ruff, CH and Mardoc have seen the lie of our land. Here is an artist's impression of our recent and future conquests (). Note on the left we could hit D'Oh with a Knight and HA next turn, but if we don't then we could hit Communist amphibiously from the fog the turn after... I don't think D'oh has had a chance to grow yet, so I'd favour the latter .


We now have ten Knights and three HAs sitting on THHill. And I killed the HA which sniped our workers (which I'm claiming were bait and helped reduce Mardoc's power to hurt us by allowing him to, um, hurt us.)
C1 Knight vs HA 98% WIN one hit


Dtay has 12 knights around here I hope CH can hold out for a little while longer, because once dtay doesn't need to worry about him he'll probably reinforce those coastal cities very nicely. I closed borders with him (I didn't check how much commerce we lost, sorry!) due to the scouting Galleys. I guess we'll have to see how he feels about that...


CH has a few decent units left, so might last a bit longer.


Domestically:
- I think we want to 1-pop whip Nina next turn rather than 2-pop whip it this turn.
- The tundra mine in Twinkle is worth 4 hammers and allows the lighthouse to be whipped in three turns time.
- We settle Domino, our 30th city, on the Marble. Kirby will start the National Epic next turn and Hazelnut starts the Heroic Epic this turn. Kirby's build will take some time so some whip overflow might be a good idea. And a workshop on the bare grass tile. I was sorely tempted to 1-pop whip a Longbow into the HE, but I think at size 11 perhaps we just want to grow onto hammer tiles (if you disagree feel free to log in and make that whip if you're up before Mardoc plays.)


GNP investigation:
-Paper 681 (Pindicator and Dtay)
-Drama 628 (nobody)
-Theology 735 (Xenu, WilliamLP, one other)
-Music 654 (Whoever got the great artist)
-Philosophy 654 (BGN)
-Compass 628 (nobody)
-Gunpowder 628 (nobody)

We're going to research 95% of Paper this turn, then I thought we should just complete Paper at 100% and start trying to catch Dtay and Pindicator up on the first-to bonii. Alternatively Drama would be handy for a Theatre in the NE city, but that's going to be building the NE for the next bunch of turns, so I'm keener on Music to pop borders in our new cities quicker... Whadaya think? I fiddled with EPs so that we should get research visibility on dtay next turn to see which first-to bonus he's actually after.

Demos and power - I'm confused about Cynheard's power - the only civ he's at war with is Ruff, but that only started this turn and they are miles from each other, so has he just deleted or gifted half his army? Also we welcome BGN to our graphical jamboree.

[Zed-F]

Check the colours again, light yellow is CH and dark yellow is Cyneheard.

[Old Harry]

Check the colours again, light yellow is CH and dark yellow is Cyneheard.

I'm an idiot. BTW you probably shouldn't have pointed that out, but its so inconsequential I don't think anyone will complain. Someone nearly saved Pindicator from chariot-rushing Zulu-Thoth in PB19 by pointing out he'd got the colour wrong, so it can be a big deal...

[Zed-F]

I figured there was no way one of your teammates wouldn't correct you even if I didn't.

[Ceiliazul]

Zed, oy. If you're sure the teammates will point it out, then let them...