[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[von Adlercreutz]

Congrats for the campaign! Also being that large and still having 70% breakeven slider is impressive, shrine helps a bit with that.

[Fintourist]

Congrats for the campaign! Also being that large and still having 70% breakeven slider is impressive, shrine helps a bit with that.

Yeah, 3500 beakers at break-even should be really strong compared to our competitors at the moment and it will get even better once rest of pindi cities and Dreylin's cities come out of revolt. In addition to that we still have our 3-man & 4-man GAs incoming, while BGN is currently burning his 4-man GA --> We should be clear tech leaders for the foreseeable future and get to our prioritized techs before our competitors (we are still having a hard time though deciding our path between various military and economic techs: Destroyers, Tanks, Fighters, Happiness wonders, The Internet, Gorges..).

The high slider comes from a decent amount of sacrificial altars, gold multipliers, a large number of commerce cities and from the fact that we are way past the hurdle where new cities impact the no. of cities maintenance in other cities.

Yeah, we should not be failing this game because of our tech speed unless BGN gets again bigger (and does it fast). It's the MFG and overall geopolitics that are our challenges.

EDIT: And thanks Assuming we can consolidate our gains (especially protect the shrine city) this invasion really exceeded our expectations. (Maybe not the fact that we could manage it eventually, but the speed of it, it's just 10 turns since we declared pindicator..)

[Old Harry]

I'm seeing the green moon around. Planning on the Islamic Shrine?

These green moons?

I don't think we'll have a spare great prophet and Islam doesn't seem to have spread much (unlike Hindu - us, Confu - TBS, Taoism - BGN who I don't think has the shrine and Judaism - dtay), so you won't see too much of any other green moon in our empire . I'd really like dtay's Jewish shrine some day, but we'll have to see if that's possible .

the speed of it, it's just 10 turns since we declared pindicator.

Ten turns for the attack is way better than I hoped, but as with the Mardoc/Azza wars a bunch of things broke in our favour:
- Dreylin finishing Pindicator off for us
- Dreylin exposing his stack
- dtay giving us ten turns of peace to finish the job
- Krovice distracting BGN - it could have been a lot worse than losing one city to him if he'd had any boats nearby when we took out Dreylin's stack

Also - we only started drafting Infantry on t195 - before that our power was mostly ships! (Although we were still fifth.)

Also being that large and still having 70% breakeven slider is impressive, shrine helps a bit with that.

I think it's mostly down to having cheap FIN banks in a lot of cities - we were close to 70% even before the shrine came out of revolt this turn.

[Old Harry]

Turn 212

We were greeted by offers of open borders and defensive pact from dtay, while Fenn (Ruff) asked for a 1000 gold loan. Meanwhile BGN completed the Pentagon and adopted Theocracy. He's already top power, so this just seems like overkill. He's also completing a bunch of Intelligence Agencies, Jails and Security Bureau, so our EP advantage may not last too much longer. While we have visibility I thought it was a good time to get an overview - this is us and BGN and our neighbours, next turn, thanks to an Airship, we'll know more about TBS, so perhaps an overview of him will follow. Its spoilered as it's 4 Mb. As always click to expand.

You'll see that I renamed the 28 pindreyland (okay, we really need a new name for the northern continent - suggestions welcome) cities. I struggled to come up with a Guinea Pig food starting with X or Z (we've got Xigua and Zucchini already) so happy to change if anyone has inspiration.

Chives
Dock leaves
Elderberry
Flowers
Grapes
Horseradish
Indian Pea
Jicama
Kale
Lettuce
Mustard
Nectarine
Okra
Pea
Quince
Raddish
Samphire
Turnip
Ugli Fruit
Victoria Plum
Wheatgrass
X-man
Yarrow
Zen
Artichoke
Bell Pepper
Celery
Dougie
Ernie

Commodore asked about religion - we have the best shrine (thanks Pindi!) although TBS isn't far behind. BGN still doesn't have a shrine, even with PHI and Anghor Wat .


Demos and power - I drafted four Infantry, which put us top on power for the first time in the game .

[pindicator]

You should actually be thanking Barry! That's the team that went Polytheism-first

I guess I did sire the Great Prophet, so I'll take some of the credit

[Old Harry]

Turn 213

Played quickly to ensure we get in before dtay. Clock games, but in the direction of playing our turn as fast as possible - that's alright right?

We started off by offering dtay the defensive pact back. I don't want to offer open borders until all our new cities have popped and there is nowhere to mount a sneaky strike from.


This border is likely to discourage aggression, right? Next turn we'll hopefully remove the road and mine N of the shrine to stop 2-movers hitting Lettuce, although we also need to get enough units into Lettuce to guard against the 3 Galleons in Rhi'anon. Whether dtay moves his Cannons and cats up to Snow Bowl this turn will dictate how worried we'll be about the shrine.


Our airship uncovered Elensefar which must be TBS' second culture victory city. Note that it is seven tiles from an easily-accessed south-coastal city, so with one railroad a commando could hit it. Unfortunately the layout of hills in the south means we'd need to take/burn three cities - also with commandos - to lay that railroad.


Our top production city Zucchini is building up overflow from Machine Guns - so if we finish Electricity in three turns it should get some extra early hammers into Broadway. BGN finished Physics this turn, so it'll be interesting to see where his tech plans are taking him.


Carrot will be our secondary wonder-producer, with Rock n Roll penciled in. Both of these cities need to deal with their unhealthiness, but because we aren't heading to Medicine any time soon they'll just have to do it with farms . Note that the two farms to the west of the city will become workshops in the next few turns.


Endive can also pump a lot of hammers if needed, but the Military instructor makes me keen to keep it on unit builds for now. I think Infantry benefit more from being 7XP than either Machine Guns or Cannon, but happy to be corrected if anyone disagrees...


BGN just finished the Pentagon in Grant Village and between Vassalage (+2), Theocracy (+2), Barracks (+3), Stable (+2), West Point (+5), Statue of Zeus (+3), Pentagon (+2) and 4 GGs (+8) he can 1-turn 25XP 1-movers and 27XP (commando) 2-movers easily here. Theoretically he could bulb Mil Sci with a Great Scientist but I think he needs to clear too many techs. In any case we need to be very careful with our railroads and important western cities. Also note that he's birthed 14 great people so far (and won the Communism spy), while we've just had our 9th appear. We think he's had four golden ages + the Taj golden age + engineer-rushed the Kremlin + built one Academy. This means he has a maximum of three GPs left over to bulb or store for a 5-man golden age, and we're fairly sure he used some of them on bulbs.


If we were going to pick a fight with him that would be one of my choices for first city to destroy, and happily BGN built a couple of railroads to enable a commando Cav landing in East Entrance to hit the city. Unhappily if he's 1-turning units in the city it's very rarely going to be under-defended .


So between production and XP BGN is the main reason we should be fearing an opponent right now. His golden age finished last turn though and ours starts soon, so maybe we'll make up some ground?


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 214

We'll be starting our 3-man golden age next turn. One small spanner in our plans for generating GPs for the 4-man GA is that Gertie went unhealthy and will stay at -2 health even after the Aqueduct. The good news is that we'll be able to add a prophet from t217 (I added a note to the spreadsheet FT - I think we want to run nine specialists during the GA, then seven afterwards).


The big decision this turn was what to do with our three Great Generals. We had been holding onto them to get ~7 commando Tanks in about twenty turns, but looking at BGN's Grant Village last turn scared me enough that I realised that a swarm of commando Cav might even be better than seven Tanks, and will arrive a lot earlier. I think in the time it takes to get the Tanks together settling the GGs allows us to build nearly twenty Cavalry, opening a whole lot more options for attacking BGN, TBS or dtay. Whoever we're annoyed with at the time. The other important thing is that we're at 66/300 for the next GG - the one that will allow Commando Tanks to roll off the production line .


Things seem quiet on dtay's border - he moved his big Cav stack out of range of Lettuce, but just to be sure we removed the mine and road from this tile and put five Infantry in Lettuce. We still have 11 MG, 34 Infantry and some other stuff in Jelly (the new, pronounceable, writable name for the shrine, sorry Pindi - or was that Barry's fault too?)


If we decide to go after dtay anyway we have ~12 Amphi Infantry, and three other Amphi units, along with 3 Commando Cav and 3 near-Commando Cav. I haven't really thought about how to do that yet, and with him backing off the shrine we could let him live. But he is getting Assembly Line in four turns, so if we want to hit him it has to be soon.


Here's that overview of TBS I've been threatening. We uncovered the third culture-attempt city this turn, Elensefar. Please feel free to make attack plans! I think he's getting Physics for Airships, for early warning, then turning culture on.


To get Investigate City on the three would need: Weldyn - 1026 EPs, Elensefar - 1014 EPs, Frontline - 955 EPs. We don't really need it though, as he's now showing up on the victory screen loud and clear. So how do you figure out how long a culture attempt will take?


Demos and power. I just drafted twice to keep us no. 1 for soldiers .

[pindicator]

We still have 11 MG, 34 Infantry and some other stuff in Jelly (the new, pronounceable, writable name for the shrine, sorry Pindi - or was that Barry's fault too?)

A comet was seen in the days before your arrival; 1000 years of darkness have befallen upon Muirthemne and the Cath Bruig Empire.

[Old Harry]

We still have 11 MG, 34 Infantry and some other stuff in Jelly (the new, pronounceable, writable name for the shrine, sorry Pindi - or was that Barry's fault too?)

A comet was seen in the days before your arrival; 1000 years of darkness Guinea Pig foods have befallen upon Muirthemne and the Cath Bruig Empire.

FTFY

[Old Harry]

I've been thinking about stopping TBS's culture attempt

We could try to do it sooner or later, if we go sooner:
- Better chance of catching him unawares and thus success
- Does he then have time to reboot and try again in the ~40 turns before we get to space?
- Or does he turn his mind to ruining our game? (Retep, your predicting expertise is needed! )

If we go later:
- He'll have to turn off tech at some point, so we could have overwhelming tech superiority
- BGN might decide to do the job for us
- Less time for him to try to ruin our game afterwards
- Less likely we can surgically remove one city - more likely to be a pitched battle in enemy culture when we should really be concentrating on building spaceship parts

I made a quick set of plans - there are three coastal cities 7 tiles from a target so a 2-move commando can hit with only one added railroad. All these plans require open borders or war with dtay to pass through his waters.

Plan 1 - Kharbranth - Starting from the nearest city to us, but a lot of TBS's water needs to be traversed to land in the city, meaning he'll know we're coming. Once on land only one tile can be railroaded and the restrictive road network means that a small stack sitting on the wrong tile could foil the scheme.

Plan 2 - Arcanclave - It may be easier to hit this city without tipping TBS off (yeah, I'm betting TBS spots us a mile off whichever we do, but you never know). On landing three tiles can be railroaded and the road network is very flexible. The tile 1S of the city should be clear of TBS culture meaning we'll have the trade connection to use coal to railroad the necessary tile, but if Luna pops borders the city will be surrounded - does that cut the trade connection?

Plan 3 - Sablestone - This is very far from us - its impossible to put a fleet within striking distance without tipping our hand. On landing we'd need to railroad a hill, meaning we also need to burn the two cities with red crosses through them. The road network is pretty restrictive here.

Plan 4 - Not illustrated - The other option is to land a huge force with a few unpromoted 26XP Cav just north of Lashing, then if the force survives the Cav can take Commando and hit Frontline on the next turn. This is a pretty horrible plan, relying on TBS being too dumb to reinforce a culture city when the attack is obvious.

So Plan 2 just edges Plan 1 for me, but a big force in Arcanclave would make me rethink. I'll check what troops he has next time I log in, but I assume it's a lot of Infantry .