The Pen vs The Sword (Gandhi of NA)

[yuris125]

OK I can get behind Basilisk Caves. There's no clear best option, there are several cities which produce 300 culture per turn. But this is definitely the best one. Note that it does not have a Confu Academy - although I am going to build one now

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, after more train-thinking I dislike Silverhead more. It's close enough to the coast that they might be able to shut it down via bombing its tiles, which is quite hard to stop.

[yuris125]

Oh, one more thing. I have a great general hanging out after he was born during the epic destroyer battle. Any thought on what to do with him?

[The Black Sword]

No point settling him at this stage. So keep him for morale tricks(FinHarry sometimes left 4 planes vulneruble to these moves before I left but I hadn't kept my GG in quite the right position) or most likely, sprinkle xp + upgrade.

[yuris125]

We may have a new stack incoming. Not many transport ships to worry about so far, just 4 Galleons - but the Destroyer stack now exceeds what we have, and they added Battleships (and ours are not ready yet)

[yuris125]

Aztec stack has moved to dtay's city of Browner. They killed the scouting Curi we had in plako's land, and bombed some improvements again (losing 2 Fighters in the process)




I can't quite understand what their plan is. They still only have 4 Galleons for transport ships. On our coast, Lashing has 28 Infantries + other units, they're not capturing that. Arcanclave has 5 Infantries + 2 Marines, not quite safe, but they would lose most units if they attack from sea. Sablestone currently only has 1 Infantry, but I will add some Marines there as well. Do they keep looking for a vulnerable place on the coast? Do they sail around the continent to attack our northern cities? Seems unclear

Worth noting that Hornshark is currently shown as our 3rd culture city on the victory screen. While it isn't the actual 3rd city, we certainly don't want to lose it, as the last great artist (4500 gpp) has to come from there. So if I see them sailing to the north, I will need to reinforce that as well

[The Black Sword]

Can we shuffle troops around to increase both the arcanclave and lashing garrisons at least above 12 units? Ideally both have about the same defences, otherwise he'll just target the weaker one and the troops guarding the strong one will have been for nothing. That mean slightly stronger defences in Lashing probably, since it doesn't have a hill.

Can defenders from the West reach? Even above 12 units so that the city will be safe, the more we have to absorb air collateral, the better.

The threat with the current setup is that he bombs the crap out of arcanclave and those 7 defenders are easy pickings, allowing him to release 4-5 commandos into our land.

Also, just fyi, I doubt I'll have wifi for the next few days so I'll be out of touch. I should be back home on Saturday evening to pick it back up.

[yuris125]

Yes doing that moved some infantries from Lashing to Arcanclave (Lashing still has about 30 units), moved some of Arcanclave's garrison to Sablestone, plus drafted units from this turn went to Sablestone as well. Both cities have about 15 units, we should be good for this turn, but we'll see what he does

[yuris125]

The server is down and it sounds like it may be down all weekend, so could be that you're back before the game is online again. As of right now, we still need to play T245. So here's an empire overview for you

First of all, Old Harry and I swapped the turn order, as it was more convenient for me. So we're now going second in the war. I agreed with them that when you're back, they will agree to you double-moving them to return to the original turn order. However, it's probably not wise to do so during the current escalation of tensions

Generally, the empire is building Tanks and Marines as discussed, but I think we need more Fighters. We only have 3 left, I rebased them towards the action last turn, but at least this turn Aztecs could bombard our improvements unopposed. We have a lot of defenders right now, and as long as we keep drafting and building ground units in at least some of the cities, we should be fine defending the coast. Air is a problem though. Could be also worth it to upgrade at least some of the Airships, but any commerce we don't spend toward culture may be commerce wasted. Not sure. Wasn't going to upgrade Airships myself, just throwing ideas at you

Speaking of draft, I drafted most of the cities in the empire at least once, some were drafted twice to bolster the coastal defence. I did not draft any of the great artist-producing cities though

Great artists: this turn there should be one born in Alethkhar, the 3000 gpp one. Tombs of Kesorak and New Silverhead should be next. I went down on the number of artist specialists in Basilisk Caves for the moment, to speed up construction of Confucian Academy. Then I was going to max out on artists. My plan for great artists has been:
3000 - Alethkhar
3300 - Tombs of Kesorak
3600 - New Silverhead
3900 - Basilisk caves
4200 - Elensefar
4500 - Hornshark
Note that the Shard great artist is not in the capital yet, he may even still be in Shard. I sent a few Galleons to the northern sea to transport great artists and units between cities, so getting him to the capital shouldn't be a problem within a few turns

I didn't have to report much on the Aztec war last turn, they had the ships next to Sablestone, but didn't have enough units to capture that. We didn't lose anything this turn, so hopefully they weren't able to do more than bombard improvements. They have been concentrating on taking out our health resources, and I've been repairing them to avoid a drop in GA production. You may have to keep doing that

Can't think of anything else worth mentioning, so let me know if you have questions. Once again, sorry for losing Frontline

[yuris125]

Oh, one more thing, our unit trading with Joey has stopped, but I gifted him a Tank last turn, so that he's not worried about the extra units we're putting in Basilisk Caves, not far from his border