RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

OK Sullla, I'll catch up with you tonight on IM. In the meantime, can you shuffle a unit or two down toward Shiloh and maybe slave the Barracks in Antietam to put the overflow into a unit? I'd like to keep that Skirmisher off our hills if at all possible.

We will definitely need another spear or two in the north, and I think the next tech is Horseback.

This game is about to get interesting, I think.

[Sullla]

I'm just going to hold off on anything until you can look at the game yourself. Less chance of error that way.

[Speaker]

I'm just going to hold off on anything until you can look at the game yourself. Less chance of error that way.

Sounds good. I've got a few ideas that I'm kicking around.

[Sareln]

I'm just going to hold off on anything until you can look at the game yourself. Less chance of error that way.

Followup from last turn. What did Jowy & Dantski's Power number do? (up, down, sideways?), Dantski's went up, naturally, but by how much? What does that imply for the # of units he's mobilizing for war?

[Ashain]

You know, its interesting reading Dantski's email, he doesn't seem like he's overly concerned about India being aggressive, only that India being a runaway isn't in his best interests. I think that closing borders and not renewing the NAP is a flimsy cover for what I think Speaker called an attack of desperation before. Closing borders isn't going to significantly impact your GNP, trade routes only add a few GPT anyways this early on. I especially think the attacking of your warriors for his "security" is even funnier given that he hasn't actually complained to you guys yet of any actual aggressive moves. Anyways, looking forward to the future

[Sullla]

Sareln, Jowy's power rating went up by 1k (population increase). No military units built, although it looks like he finished a unit in Sparta this turn (which will appear in the Demographics next turn).

Dantski's power increased by 5k, a 1k population increase and apparently a spear in Kumbi Saleh. I thought it would be an axe, but nope, not so.

Whosit got another huge increase in power, but thank god we don't have to deal with that right now. (I can't imagine he would try another attack in the Ancient period, but his power hasn't stopped climbing at all, even with the end of the war against Broker. As you'd expect, Whosit's GNP is abysmal, and he is assuredly the "Rival Worst" at 21.)

[Sullla]

Alright, we ironed out the details of how to respond to Dantski:



- Spiros moved west to the forested hill, in amongst the spices. We obviously want to preserve this valuable scouting unit.

- Three workers combined to chop a forest for Shiloh. Those 30 shields, along with borrowing a grassland hill mine from Antietam, allowed us to insta-complete an axeman in the city. That should eliminate the threat of an attack there...

Unfortunately, it delays our planned galley to the middle island for quite a long time...

- Speaker advised a single whip in Gettysburg, with overflow to complete a second archer shortly thereafter. Thanks to the imminent Hereditary Rule, this basically only costs us population, not any unhappiness... and Gettysburg will regrow to size 8 next turn, so it's practically like getting 30 shields for free. Good call! Plugs our defense over there in the southwest very nicely.

- Speaker wanted the tile in white roaded for better road coverage, and verily, it was done!

- Our new spear from Chancellorsville went north to defend Hampton Roads, our most vulnerable city. We are going to use one of the forest chops here for walls; I can get walls done by Turn 93, which will be a nice little surprise for Jowy if he tries to come calling when our NAP runs out!

Two spears with 50% defenses can kill about 5 horse archers before biting it, unless you have really bad luck, so that should at least rule out an attack with fast-movers alone up there.

- We've agreed that we need to finish Monarchy first (2 turns), then revolt through Anarchy into Hereditary Rule, and Horseback Riding follows as the next tech (6 turns). That means we should discover HBR around T98... right when our current whips are running out. You can guess what that means!

So unless we've made some sort of disastrous miscalculation, we should be fine to defend against even a combined Dantski + Jowy attack. (Either one in isolation would just be a joke.) If athlete were to pile on, it would be tougher, but we have an NAP with him until Turn 100, so he couldn't arrive until later. I think we would have to get hit 4 vs. 1 with Nakor, Dantksi, Jowy, and athlete all attacking simultaneously to be defeated, and that seems rather unlikely. I hope, anyway!

I sent the above message to Dantski. And also dashed off this quick email to Jowy:

Dear Jowy,

From your recent silence, I guess we can conclude that you're not interested in further spread of our religion. Very well! Then let's discuss the subject of that barb city which has popped up in the east. You have a pair of chariots moving in the direction of the barb city - are you planning on capturing the city? Razing it? Or just trying to gain some experience for your units? We should put our heads together and discuss how this affects the settling plans outlined earlier.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

[Sullla]

athlete and kalin ended their turn almost immediately after we did; I guess they were waiting to be last for some reason (?) Maybe we should ask them what's up with that. So I logged in and took a quick look at the new turn.

- Most importantly, I wanted to move McClellan a tile closer to Nakor territory and safety, so I did that before Dantski could play. Almost everything else I left in place; let's wait and see what Dantski does before moving our units.

- We actually have to drop down to 90% science (42g in bank, 100% science is -46gpt) but have just enough beakers to complete Monarchy tech next turn anyway! Awesome.

Some military questions for Speaker:

* What should be the next build in Antietam? It just finished a barracks. Also, we can pick between 3 food/11 shields per turn, 2 food/14 shields per turn, or 0 food/18 shields per turn. I have us on the highest food option (3/11). Any preference there?

* Do we want to move one of the three archers at Gettysburg over to Frederickburg, which still only has a chariot for defense? We only need two of them (plus the warrior) for happiness.

* I think Stuart the chariot should go to Gettysburg; we can get visibility into Djenne every turn by moving onto the neutral hill tile and moving back again.

I'm too worn out from the game to do anything else tonight, the rest will have to wait until tomorrow! :zzz:

[antisocialmunky]

Thanks for the status update. Perhaps one of you can come up with a roster of all your units when you have more time.

[Sullla]

Turn 90 - my how the time flies! Almost up to 100 now.



- Dantski moved his skirmisher a tile forward. That unit looks like major trouble ahead, since we can't do a whole lot to get it off the high ground.

- Antietam finished barracks, and I set it to axeman for the moment. This can still be changed, Speaker. Gettysburg finished the first of two archers in a row.

- Four cities grew this turn: Gettysburg (8 ), Chancellorsville (5), Fredericksburg (5), and Hampton Roads (3). Lot of extra population there!

- Unit positioning: I moved Stuart the chariot down into Gettysburg. We can watch Djenne each turn by doing a step-in, step-out move on the hill tile near the border... and I plan to do exactly that!

- I also decided to move one of the archers from Gettysburg over to Fredericksburg, because we'll need some units over there and we already have 2 archers + 1 warrior for the capital. Also renamed all the archers after battles from the Hundred Years War, which were famous for use of longbows (Crecy, Sluys, Agincourt, etc.)

- There were two new cities founded this turn, although neither significant for us. IKZ/dsplaisted founded their fifth city (Cuzco) somewhere on the other side of the world, while Broker replanted Pyongyang, now their third city. Confusingly, this appears to be a different Pyongyand than the one that Whosit captured (which was renamed Nar Shaddaa). Two Athens and now two Pyongyangs, argh!

- We got confirmation that Sparta (Jowy), Timbuktu (Dantski), and Rolan (Nakor) all built 35-shield units last turn. I still have to run the numbers to get the exact units, but mark them all down for axes or spears. Nakor got a major power increase last turn, so he may have built two units.

As for this turn, Dantski built another military unit in Djenne, while Jowy built some kind of military unit in Corinth. Not sure why he's building so many units in a city with no barracks over in Corinth! I will spend some more time with the Power numbers tonight and try to nail down the foreign military units more definitively.

We had some requests for more pictures on our military, so:



And here's the GNP graph:



- Speaker, I did not end the turn and left Spiros unmoved, so you should feel free to take a look around tonight if desired. (If not, I'll log in again and end it.)