[Spoilers] I have enough games already. Oh look, a PBEM !

[Miguelito]

Hm otoh if you manage the ddogpile and break through, you probably would get 1 or 2 cities and Sian the rest. So you don't really want to take retep down. Maybe so him on his way to economic dominance, yes. But we need more land ourselves, and that can only come from Grimace or Sian, the latter very unlikely right now.
So IMO the perfect storm would be the following: you manage a simultaneous attack by Sian and you on retep, do a little fighting, maybe take one city, the give retep peace immediately, and the two of them get into a stalemate after some gains by Sian, while you charge on Grimace. Of course this can go horribly wrong, specifically if retep fights us and makes peace with Sian we could very well lose the Colossus city or even get dogpiled in the south. So of we really want to do this, we have to make sure that Sian attacks first, and for real. Pity we don't even have OB with him to follow his build up, while actually retep can acout us.
The other option is attacking Grimace. If it goes well I see us getting three cities Max, and Sian three as well. Not really great but still improves our relative position.
When we reach engineering, show Sian a pike to signal that he'll have a hard time attacking us with knights. Is it confirmed that he's building knights? No idea what else the spike could mean, but still...
Got an idea what Grimace's most modern units are? Seen any cats specifically?

[AdrienIer]

Taking 4 cities from Grimace should be possible. He should be getting construction some time soon for WEs and cats

[Miguelito]

OK my estimate is assuming that after us declaring Sian and retep pile in more or less immediately. In that case I see us getting the two cities next to Thucydides plus the capital, Sian the city to his west and one or two of the cities in the other border, and retep the other one or two.
Of course that's assuming that our opponents do what I consider rational, and one of the fundamental problems about opponents is that they generally follow their own, generally bizarre logic.

WEs would Anjou (autocorrect typo, but I like it too much to correct it) us a little, otoh our knights are stronger with two promos, and they don't get defense bonuses. I guess a major number of cats would be the one thing that would be truly nasty. Let's hope most of that power's still vultures. He never speed building units, while he really couldn't afford it, so that may not be a false assumption

[AdrienIer]

If I send more units to the south I could try to get the other city in the peninsula. I'll post pictures of the area soon

[Miguelito]

Hm just be careful about conquering cities that border Sian out retro. Them charging into our wounded stack using Grimace's roads is kind of a worst case scenario

[AdrienIer]

Nah at most I'll send a knight and 3 phalanxes to the second peninsula city, the stack will head for the capital

[AdrienIer]

Retep's current demos are really impressive. I'm really considering attacking him, he just got CoL (2t ago) so it's not like he's got great defensive units.

I think I can take all the Grimace cities in the south except the one SE that borders Sian.




But here I could get at least the 3 western ones if I'm quick enough. Sian has calendar now which makes sense if his power rise is knights as I think it is.




My plan currently is to eat Grimace (I assume Sian will jump in) and then take the knights and go after Retep. That should hurt him enough to be pulled back to reasonable levels.

[Miguelito]

Gonna propose the ggression pact to Sian?

[AdrienIer]

I want to wait and see. If it goes like I think it goes and we eat Grimace together I'll send him a message a couple turns before Grimace's death. It may be a mistake but I doubt a dogpile on Retep is really possible right now, we don't have the necessary trust to do it properly. After the Grimace war everything will be different.

[Miguelito]

Alright. Then let's. Hope retep doesn't limb to cuirs out whatever (don't really think it's possible), and take care of Sian backstabbing. Invasion eta?