[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Turn 174 main course

Quick one as I have to run. Down south dtay spotted the plan, so I just burned Rath (it had a granary and a market ) and got 107 gold.


Up north our boats move as though they are running from the fight, but we can hit Ryan, then Wilfork next turn... (Although 2 Rifles, a Cav and a Pike might be a bit much for our 6 Amphi, 3 regular Cuirs and one pike...)


Great work from Pindicator here - although I think we should be claiming an assist.


Also why does Dreyheard have this stack here?


We're going to need a lot of simming for the next turn - how much bombarding do we need to start to get good odds on Azza's last city with such a small stack?


Meeting Q fills our roster of (alive) foreign contacts! Wahay! (Krovice beat us to it )


Demos and power

[Fintourist]

Turn 174 - dessert (the best part)

Things just got real!

1. Pindi has taken the shrine back. The counterattack is happening even faster than I dreamed!




And about that Dreylin stack.. It might have something to do with the fact that pindicator is paying Dreylin 100gpt per turn!! You know, sometimes civ offers way more drama than you would think (meta game being completely solved and all). If those Dreylin troops will contribute to the fight dtay won't have a single city left on pindi's continent in a bit more than 5 turns.

Btw, I think dtay is unlucky here reg Dreylin replacing Cyneheard. Surely Cyneheard would have been at least a bit pissed off to pindicator and maybe had piled on pindi instead of helping him? Well, dunno.


2. Krill finally declared on dtay and moved in!




There are in addition 2 cannons, 12 knights, 2 HAs and a Great Artist one turn behind. I was tempted to move our scout in the area to find our more, but I did not do it just in case there are any turn order considerations (I doubt not, but did not want to screw up anything)


Consequence:Now that Krill joined in and is in the process of splitting dtay's mainland in half I'm starting to think that we should not use our galleons and cuirs + commando knight for that Jewish Shrine raze next turn. That would be such a nice move and a perfect revenge for dtay's Agincourt commando attack in PB13, but I think we actually want to use those units and galleons for city capture duties. Daaaaamn, burning a shrine city worth 2344534 gpt per turn would be so tasty...

In the Sourthern former CH area I think our goal is to establish Theros as a future border city and take the 4 most sourthern cities:




In the northern part of former CH-land we would optimally want Prairie Village as a border city, everything else is a bit uncomfortable, but we need to wait and see how things develop with Krill's attack:




Even as I'm saying that we should not reconsider the shrine strike, by no means I'm suggesting a retreat from waters. We should keep threatening as many coastal cities as possible in order to tie dtay's units and make our allies life a bit easier.

Let's keep pushing, let's try not to lose the momentum here and in 15 turns we might well be in position where we don't need to worry about dtay anymore and can start scratching our head reg WTF we are going to do with BGN, who can decide between Q, wetbandit, Nakor and Dreylin (and us) reg where he grabs the next 10 cities.

Or as always when I'm getting excited.. Everyone bails out, nothing happens and


What a great to day to actually have some civ time! I even have time to criticize your micro..!

[Fintourist]

Wow.

We have 18 Frigates and like 15 currently under production!! I did not realize we are building THAT many.. I think those are most definitely enough for this war and the focus should move back to land units. Anyways, having the largest navy on the board will in any case be a very useful asset in this game and if things won't go like a dance we should be easily take naval control of that area where dtay currently has his frigates and help pindi and krovice that way.

Also related to above Krill moved the knight stack towards Prairie Village so there might be even a land grab race reg dtay's western holdings.

[TheHumanHydra]

I'd still raze the shrine to deny it to Krovice.

[Fintourist]

I'd still raze the shrine to deny it to Krovice.

Yeah, it certainly has value. Are you willing to sacrifice ~9 cuirs, commando knight and 4 Galleons for that (I don't remember the exact amount of troops, but the cost would be something like that)?

OH, today I'm on the road, but tomorrow I should be available for chat/commenting etc.

[Old Harry]

We have four Frigates and four Galleons in the area, dtay will have six Frigates + whatever he builds this turn + next turn in nearby cities. I'd guess we'll lose three of our Frigates and one or two Galleons, probably killing three of his.

I'll sim the number of Cuirs we'll lose once dtay has played, it may be that our chances of breaking through aren't great, in which case we'll call the attack off and all our units will survive.

I'll try to chat you both (and Ceil) tomorrow.

[Ceiliazul]

The ranks of lurkers are growing, it's not just me any more. Witness the surge inn the lurker thread post count as evidence.

[Fintourist]

The ranks of lurkers are growing, it's not just me any more. Witness the surge inn the lurker thread post count as evidence.

That's nice to hear, this game is in a very interesting and dynamic state at the moment --> It is also very entertaining from player perspective, which I hope keeps OH from collapsing under turn-playing duties (there are a lot of moving particles at the moment and turns are already getting long). Btw, OH I double-checked the domestic affairs and one can very fast see that you are still paying attention to details

Maybe in some distant future we can theorize a bit about the optimization reg immediate hammer gains vs. growing further on food/commerce tiles, which is something I always end up wondering when I look at couple of our cities. There is no right or wrong here really and that's so minor topic in the big picture that it isn't really worth discussing now though.

It's really difficult to predict how the world will look in 10 turns, which is something that can't be said all the time --> So let's enjoy the speculation.



I would imagine that the game slows down during the Christmas time, which is absolutely contrary to my potential civ time I wonder if there is any additional entertainment we could provide with OH to lurkers? We should not do a tier list but maybe some kind of a light-hearted Q&A, reflections from this game, predictions, something? Any ideas?

[Old Harry]

The ranks of lurkers are growing, it's not just me any more. Witness the surge inn the lurker thread post count as evidence.

Lurker thread and Krovice's too...

Maybe in some distant future we can theorize a bit about the optimization reg immediate hammer gains vs. growing further on food/commerce tiles, which is something I always end up wondering when I look at couple of our cities. There is no right or wrong here really and that's so minor topic in the big picture that it isn't really worth discussing now though.

I haven't done any maths for Frigate 3-pop whips vs 2-pop whips working 0/0/3 and 0/0/4 tiles, but since we seem to have plenty of boats now and our GA is so soon I guess we should switch back to all-food anyway.

It's really difficult to predict how the world will look in 10 turns, which is something that can't be said all the time --> So let's enjoy the speculation.

Speaking of speculation - where's Retep? Surely with all his other games ground to a halt he can at least come and tell us how many cities Krovice will take off dtay & will Dreylin help Pindicator kick mr tay off their continent before resuming their own fight? BTW - I'm under the impression that Cyneheard is still very involved with that team, so it's not quite such a case of new player ruins the balance of power as Xenu came up against...

I would imagine that the game slows down during the Christmas time, which is absolutely contrary to my potential civ time I wonder if there is any additional entertainment we could provide with OH to lurkers? We should not do a tier list but maybe some kind of a light-hearted Q&A, reflections from this game, predictions, something? Any ideas?

I'm hoping to make another map stitch to see what's changed in the last 50 turns. And I wonder, from the top 10 players, who has a chance of winning? We know very little of TBS, William and GermanJoey - are they poised to devour a neighbour or get bogged down in an unwinnable war? Can't think of anything else right now.

[Old Harry]

In the northern part of former CH-land we would optimally want Prairie Village as a border city, everything else is a bit uncomfortable, but we need to wait and see how things develop with Krill's attack:

If you were Krovice how would you attack dtay?

I think the shrine city is the big prize, but they've moved in a long way south of that. I presume they're going for land dtay's only owned for ~50 turns so that their artist bomb(s) are more effective. Once they take Willow Lake a bomb should give them access to Avendale and Prairie Village. After that do they slog north into the heavily cultured heartland or do they devour the now cut off southern remnant?

I think they'll do the latter, and we just don't have the units right now to hold any cities that we take down there against the minimal (cut-off) forces dtay has in play, let alone the big stack that Krovice have. And from their point of view why would they let us have a foothold on their continent?

If Krovice strike out southwards I think our best option is to give dtay peace and let him concentrate on fighting Krovice to a standstill (although I'm not sure how well that would work). If they go for the core of dtaynia then grabbing as many cities as we can down south totally gets my vote, once we've built enough Grenadiers, etc, to hold them.