[Spoilers] Dreylin's short visit to a late Era

[OT4E]

So the plan is slightly faster with just 1 turn to heal:
T290 - move in the forest
T291 - move on the flat
T292 - bombard
T293 - attack

I checked medic will only affect redlines, so probably it is not worth promotion:
- 9.3/15 is already in Tigers and will still have 2 turns to heal
- 9.0/15 has promotion and will be healed in 1.
- 12.6/15 will be healed in 1

We have:
- 3 full HP rifles (2 with stars), and 1 wounded (11,3/14 with star)
- 1 gren with star
- 7 cavs + 2 wounded as finishers
- 1 treb with CR, 1 cata with CR+accuracy, 1 cata with just CR

If borders expand this turn 2 last rifles will only reach LA 1 turn later. I am off making some sims.

[OT4E]

Even with 9 rifles I got city in 18/20 times, so I am pretty optimistic about this our chances.

[Dreylin]

t290 -

Well scooter took the city without loss:


And kept it. Road connection is well underway, and I guess they will plant an intermediate city soonish. I moved the Spy onto the road and we could risk a turn in borders to get a view on the city.

With REM's GA starting, Donovan might be on to a loser here:


We have 5-6t left on our Peace treaty. He's also got a Galleon & Frigate combo moving out from the Capital, which I'm guessing is taking a Settler to the island.

Pete Rose was empty, so now we have Dogs:


I also renamed Tigers to Cats, since they aren't exactly domesticated.

Grabbed the Worker as well, since the Cav can catch up:


Moved as discussed.

There's a lot of fogged territory in the vicinity, so let's hope we don't end up with wandering Rifles!

I switched Chickens back to the Settler for this turn and will be back to Uni next turn. Couple of reasons:

1) The overflow puts us close to the edge of 1 or 2-pop whip (didn't calculate exactly), but if we can 2-pop it we can get a good overflow into the Settler.

2) The city is unhappy and it's probably not worth running 10% Drama for just one turn, so working the Settler gets the 2f from the unhappy citizen. Also we have the Wines online next turn to cover the happiness.

Finances are riding the edge:


We're in the red at 10% anything.

[OT4E]

With REM's GA starting, Donovan might be on to a loser here:

REM switched to Caste so it is the best time to attack him. But if DZ hasnt declared yet, then I start thinking that he is just failing to hide his units from us. I think we have to postpone Serfdorm and make several circles of Cavalries or we are in trouble. Wide lands demands many defenders. If DZ is preparing weaponry for us then we will pull him into our lands and then smoke him out of island.

Pete Rose was empty, so now we have Dogs:
I also renamed Tigers to Cats, since they aren't exactly domesticated. lol

I think we need to rename our civ as well. It can be "Zoo", "Farm" or "Husbandry"...

Finances are riding the edge:
We're in the red at 10% anything.

Do not worry about it. City maintance is extremely low with State property. The problem is that we dont let our cities grow, but I hope we will solve it once.

[OT4E]

Some minutes for observations of what is happening around.

REM is building SoL in Toby I think:


I was checking espionage points for the several turns and they are only growing. He has the most cities and many courthouses. Right now he is in GA. I hope he is our potential friend. I am not sure that it means that we must give him any of Gaspar's cities though.


Scooter with his pacifism and aggressive expansion is becoming more and more dangerous for us in long term. He must be heading to Assemly line for his cheap Factories and aggressive infantry. If he gets 1 more GE he can hurry this tech, but I think his research is not bad by itself, but over than 4000k beakers is not easy to do anyway.

Scooter has got 40% of culture in Radio, his front city against DZ:


But I doubt they have any conflict there since DZ is keeping MG and catapults on our side. Otherwise considering scooter's power DZ could kick him away. Right now DZ is unfortunately for him locked by several civs, but he still has many opportunities to restore the balance. It will be a pity if he chooses to do it from us.

I noticed that top #2 power was not growing by any since we gave peace to DZ. He is top#2, right? Well the same I can say about average one, it is slightly more than the worst.



Pindicator has cottaged his capital and I didnt noticed him slaving ofter, so I hope he is not ready to make us visit. He has gems around, so I dont think that we can rely on very important resources supply to make him rethink about attacking us. But in general I hope we will become natural allies after we establish borders. He must be unhappy with scooter's presense too and he must worry about REM's domination especially if he indeed builds SoL with his number of cities. REM, REM I believe you pull attention from us!

[Dreylin]

I agree that Scooter & REM are the long-term competitors since they are high on both the "Skill level" and "Engagement" axes, whereas the others are lower down one of those two metrics. Short-term though I actually fear BGN more than Donovan as despite appearing somewhat checked out from the game (at least since we beat him to Kremlin), he's a much better player than Donovan and could probably do us some real damage if he put his mind to it. Donovan OTOH has a checkered history of Military campaigns (ref: PB25), so I doubt he'll get far either into us or into REM for that matter. Our Explorer will be entering BGN's territory next turn, so hopefully we'll get a better look at how he's got things set up. We get his graphs soon as well.

Donovan's power curve has certainly flattened since we signed peace, but I think it's likely he's still the #2Power. It's possible that he's not planning an attack immediately, but is staging in the best place to be able to hit either ourselves or REM. He /probably/ realises that we can see that tile, but I'd not be surprised if he didn't. I would also not be especially surprised if he waited until after another round of Declare-Peace with us before making a move on REM. Perhaps we could divert that by offering him Open Borders and "trading explorers" to signal friendly intent?

On the pindicator front, I showed him the Galleon in the vicinity of Camels(ex-Brady) in such a way that it looked like it was dropping something off for the city or picking something up. I'll move it and the Frigate back towards Geese next turn. I am bringing the Privateers up this way as well - going the long way via Ducks - and will use to grab a look at his city & maybe some of Scooter's. I think we can find some spare resources to trade to him - we have our own Silks coming online soon as well as Spices that we can use to replace the Gems-Sugar deal if he mines his own.

In logistics news, my brain finally caught up and worked out the plan for the Galleon chain - it didn't help that the start point that you had marked was 1 tile too far west to reach the Fort by the end of the second turn! The Galleon will be in place for pickup and departure next turn, so we need to decide this turn if we want to send two Rifles on the way East. I think we do.

My brain also finally worked out the tile improvement plan West of Guinea Pigs; we're not creating 2 decent tiles to work part of the time, we're creating one good tile to work all the time and one tile which we'll never work, but needs to be there to provide irrigation to the Corn. Unfortunately I didn't work that out before wasting some more Worker turns.

We have a couple more turns before we can switch civics, but I'm tending to agree that we can't afford to take Serfdom right now and need to stick in Slavery for another cycle (this is becoming a theme). However we should switch from UniSuff to Representation. After buying the Settler, we'll be pretty-much out of Gold anyway and we aren't making any more at the moment; plus Rep will give us added Happy in our key cities ... and we're going to start dialing specialists up again soon. I think that would be the only switch though, as we probably want to stay in OrgRel for another cycle while building Oxford.

No score increase IBT for Gaspar, so no city growth and we'll be able to tell where any whips take place. I also think that the first Settler we get over here should grab the "Chickens" location to set borders with Scooter and stake a claim to all those lovely forests. Perhaps we should move the site 8 - off the coast and onto the Plains Hill - to reduce exposure to boating; then we could plant a filler 6 from the Deer later once we have a presence in this body of water.

[OT4E]

My brain also finally worked out the tile improvement plan West of Guinea Pigs; we're not creating 2 decent tiles to work part of the time, we're creating one good tile to work all the time and one tile which we'll never work, but needs to be there to provide irrigation to the Corn. Unfortunately I didn't work that out before wasting some more Worker turns.

Right now focus on the other improvements, dont waste time replacing one improvement with another.

However we should switch from UniSuff to Representation. After buying the Settler, we'll be pretty-much out of Gold anyway and we aren't making any more at the moment; plus Rep will give us added Happy in our key cities ... and we're going to start dialing specialists up again soon. I think that would be the only switch though, as we probably want to stay in OrgRel for another cycle while building Oxford

I agree that we will have more than 5 turns before we get OU, so we can should stay on Org, probably we will find a spot for a few missionaries. After OU we can consider pacifism and putting specialists in our new brand OU.

But dont we need US for helping our new cities with granaries. May be lets align adopting Rep with the time we will be ready to set up specialists?

[OT4E]

About settler in Chickens, I think we need to finish universities and then switch back to settler. We are in hurry but with both expansion and rising tech but I fear that we dont have enough hammers in settler for even 4 pop whip, neither we have 8 pop, so I think we must do it later, may be with 3 pop whip.

[OT4E]

Pindicator didnt play 2 turns in a row this time. This is suspicious.

Talking about engagement Donovan spends several hours in game each turn, so he definitely has a plan. I worry about his fleet, I do not understand for what purposes is it. Did you see 2 SOLs?

We invested too much in Chameleons, I dont want to lose it. I saw you slaved it before letting grow to 6 and drafting, may be it is good idea to atart countdown.

About scooter, if we whip 10 more cavalry to defend from DZ and it results in 1 more 10 turn peace then I would kick him away from Gaspars land. It is up to you, but imho we need time to chop and work that land before scooter will start sending infantry there. It includes settling good land front cities and getting rid of unnecessary mouths. Even if we become his enemy No#1, he wont have such a good position to attack us. But again I do not want to pull you into one more war if you do not want it yourself. Just telling you my opinion.

[Dreylin]

But dont we need US for helping our new cities with granaries. May be lets align adopting Rep with the time we will be ready to set up specialists?

Well yes and no; some of the new cities have/will have Granaries intact, and some could whip them instead. The real issue is where the money to do the purchasing comes from? We've got ~500g in the bank now, but buying a Settler is going to cost us most of that and we're not making any money each turn. Yes, we'll have capture gold but that hasn't been a rich source of income up to now and there's a limit to it. We can only spend it once, and after it's gone then UniSuff doesn't do anything for us. Rep, at minimum, gives us +2Happy in key cities that are currently crunched for Happiness right now.

We certainly don't need to revolt right away once the opportunity is there, but I think that we'll burn through our money pretty quickly and then there's little reason not to switch across to Rep. Anyway, no rush; still 3 more turns.

About settler in Chickens, I think we need to finish universities and then switch back to settler. We are in hurry but with both expansion and rising tech but I fear that we dont have enough hammers in settler for even 4 pop whip, neither we have 8 pop, so I think we must do it later, may be with 3 pop whip.

Yep, that was the plan. I wanted to get the overflow into the Settler, then switch back to Uni this turn for a few hammers, 2-pop whip next turn with a bunch of overflow and then we should be able to 3-pop the Settler to completion. (napkin maths)

Gaspar just ran 2 2-pop whips, which likely means Rifle overflowing into Rifle; we'll see which cities took the lash, and how many we might be able to cut off with the MG.