[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

How did you do those purty range outlines? Paint copy/paste?

Quill and vellum .

Or paint.net, which compared to Photoshop probably isn't far off quill and vellum.

BTW, for this war we really need someone unspoiled on our thread to take over for TBS - the surprising number of commandos we have is an integral part of the attack plan and we've been talking about them non-stop since turn 150...

Then again there should be 15 more turns before he's off, so we should really be done by then.

[Old Harry]

Turn 223

Next turn Kirby will pop a great Artist to go with the Merchant that I may not have mentioned we got a couple of turns ago. Then My Finger gets a Scientist in about ten turns (depending on starvation) and Gertie will pop a Spy/Engy/Prophet for our 4-man GA around t247. In the mean time Kirby can be working on a Merchant or a Scientist to pop near the end of the GA. At that point which is going to be more use to us? I presume a Scientist is more immediate benefit, while a Merchant will give more flexibility.


We got visibility on a bunch of TBS's cities this turn, and the good news is the culture attempt isn't happening soon - even running the slider and revolting to free speech Frontline will only make 600 culture per turn - perhaps 650 in a golden age - so he'll need >70 turns or 11 Great Artists to hit Legendary. He's up to 1800 GPPs for the next great person, so I'm breathing a bit easier.


Similar Story in Elensefar - it'll make ~ 900 culture a turn in a GA, so it's at least 50 turns (or 11 Great Artists - we should get visibility on his National Epic city next turn to see how many he'll be able to pump, but at this stage it can't be that many) away. I think we should have got to space by then... It looks like he's aiming for Radio to get Eiffel Tower and Broadcast Towers to speed things up. We'll beat him by three turns, but Eiffel will take six turns to complete - if TBS has a great engineer he might be able to gazump us.


Anyway, to be absolutely sure he doesn't get a chance to do it we stay at war . We've got a lot more production power thanks to our coal plants and surfeit of cities. I started to wonder why he hadn't built any Coal Plants yet and when I checked the resources oh Commodore... His neighbours (Joey and William and whoever just took Cheater Hater's source) all have coal, but he's a bit screwed...


Other cities we can see include Lashing - not our best bet as a target .


Hornshark, the national epic city, can produce 20-turn Great Artists (perhaps faster once it grows). That's not a big worry for bombing Frontline. (note I snapped this pic after the turn roll when we got more EPs on him, but I didn't think TBS would mind).


His capital actually looks like a good culture city - it should easily do more than 1000 cpt once the slider goes and produce Great Artists at the same time.


This is where we are on tech now. We'll try to get some overflow in a few places to 1-turn Bombers to rush up to the TBS front...


In other news we draft Yummy and Ursula and will draft Kipple next turn, there wasn't anywhere else that I thought was suitable now, so we're pretty much in Nationhood for economic reasons! BGN didn't make any threatening moves with his galleon stack, but he did upgrade two to 7-move transports and a bunch of Frigates became Destroyers. We'll have to see what he does next turn again before panicking.

Demos and power. Out of the golden age we only have 2/3 of BGN's mfg.

[Old Harry]

Turn 224

Good news - BGN's fleet is either holding position or moving north. He could still burn one or two of our coastal cities if he wanted, but I assume a war declaration would be more ambitious than that.


Bearing that in mind we can commit to attacking TBS with as much stuff as possible - the current plan is:

EOT225 - discover Radio
EOT226 - complete 7 bombers, start RnR and Eiffel
EOT227 - complete 3 more bombers
- start moving our fleet towards Lashing
T228 - move our fleet to the tile 1S of Lashing
- put 8 bombers in Ratholas & Hearthstone along with bodyguard force of 6 Inf, 3 MG. Put 2 bombers in LaFell (I tested and it looks like you do get defensive bonus from someone else's city)

T229 - attack Kharbranth or Arcanclave

TBS has 6 Destroyers in Lashing, 5 more completing in nearby cities over the next four turns and 7 Frigates that he could upgrade making a total of 18 that could try to sink our fleet. If we upgrade two Frigates next turn then we'll have 18 as well - however upgrading two Frigates is problematic for getting Radio in time - we may need some wealth builds or should we rely on defensive bonii and slightly better promos on our Destroyers to ensure that if TBS does attack win two battles well enough that our Transports and Carrier won't be targeted?

An impenetrable spreadsheet showing where we're building wonders and bombers is here and I was wondering where TBS's Heroic Epic was. I don't think it'll make a big difference, but it looks like he's getting 10XP units out of here, so we should beware of amphibious attack.


Demos and power

[Fintourist]

Quickly here, your post count lead has become ridiculous!

- Overall plan + city specialization sheet
- Wealth + upgrade is fine for me, I think we can get couple of hundred extra gold in place without too big problems. Just upgrading 1 destroyer is a compromise as well. Or we get Radio eot225, save gold on t226 and upgrade required units near zebedee on t227. That should allow reinforcements to join during t229 (although I guess some of our destroyers from BGN front are already a bit late..)
- Did you solve our 4-mover galleon / more hitters question in some way?

[Old Harry]

- Did you solve our 4-mover galleon / more hitters question in some way?

I'm planning for all the battles to be 90% anyway, so that we can then attack again on turn 130 as well... We'll see how that goes.

(+1 post )

[von Adlercreutz]

How are planning to solve the problem of having lions and horses on boats at same time?

[Old Harry]

- secret weapon.

[Old Harry]

Turn 225

TBS has 1228 gold - so if he wants Radio in three turns then he won't be upgrading a lot of Destroyers. We've uncovered a couple of possible backup cities which could be destinations for a hypothetical stack of great artists. We have at least a 100 beaker cushion for getting Radio this turn and will get going on Bombers and wonders next turn. Our score should start creeping further away from BGN over the next ten turns as our land points from Pindi, then Dreylin's land kick in.

There are 14 Amphi Inf, 2 Amphi Cav, 4 Amphi Cuirs in our fleet. Then we have 12 Cav that can be commandos or Amphi, one GG medic and three almost-commando Cav. We have four Transports, 5 6-move Galleons, 3 4-move Galleons for them to ride on. We also have a bunch of Destroyers and Frigates and one Carrier.


- four 6-move Galleons get the 12 commando/amphi Cav
- four 5-move Transports get the 14 Amphi Inf and 2 Cav
- one 6-move Galleon gets the GG medic and 2 Amphi Cuirs
- three 4-move Galleons get 2 Amphi Cuirs, 3 almost-commando cav and one can stay empty to attract the first hit from TBS boats if he attacks out...

Plans:
On turn 226
- the northern destroyer moves to the Dest t226 sign.
On turn 227
- the fleet moves to the t227 fleet sign
- except the four movers (Frigates and Galleons) which go to the t227 Frigate sign instead and are met by the northern Destroyer. These boats aren't that useful and they might tempt some destroyers into the open to be killed.
- The three Frigates and Galleons in the north stage on the Frig + Gals t227 sign.


On turn 228
- The fleet moves to the t228 sign, bombarding the culture of Lashing away.
- The northern Galleons drop off 6 Inf and 3 MG in Ratholas. They will move to Hearthstone to protect our bombers (perhaps one Inf stays in Ratholas?)
- Four Bombers move to Ratholas and Hearthstone, two move to La Fell
On turn 229
-

Demos and power

[Old Harry]

Turn 226 prelude

I logged in to micro our cities before TBS played since I won't have a lot of time to play tomorrow. Zucchini can easily five-turn Eiffel. TBS is showing two turns on Radio at the moment, but he's down to 385 gold, so he's going to need to dial down the slider and without a Great Engineer he's won't beat us.


RnR is a different matter - with a couple of extra workshops from next turn it becomes a 7 turn build - but we could still lose it.


The other thing we're building this turn is Bombers . Do we need more after these first ten? We've got 15 Fighters already with another five in the pipeline. We're up to 25 Destroyers and four Carriers, 109 Infantry, 14 Artillery and 26 Machine Guns. After the TBS conflict what sort of balance of forces should we aim for?


Just unit moves left to do tomorrow...

[Old Harry]

Turn 226

TBS killed an airship I had scouting Plako but other than that another quiet turn.

Unit movements for next turn:
- Use the highlighted airships to scout the "airship" tiles
- The two fleets are already separated - they move to the two indicated tiles
- There is a transport (down south) and a Destroyer (up north) to join the main fleet
- Move the northern fleet to the "Frig + Gals t227" tile
- Leave the bombers somewhere safe


Demos and power