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

[Dreylin]

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

Well, we effectively laid out the welcome mat by walking away with the city empty, so I think I'd keep my options open in his position too. Although I do tend to think he'll make a play to raze that location.

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.

Well Donovan has also been know to fall asleep at his computer while in-game and log in from work and leave it in the background for hours, so it's a bit difficult to judge.

I couldn't see a second SotL when I probed with ours and since there's no Fort to get it into the Western Sea, I don't know where it might have gone. I don't think the visible one is the same as before, but I suppose it could be. I do think he's planning to Settle the island himself rather than attack us, but we've still got time to build defenses and see. REM logged in for 20mins this morning but didn't whip or end turn; perhaps he was assessing a war declaration.

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.

Cavs are next in the queue after Unis, but I'm going to try to avoid whipping if possible to let the Anger die down. We are still adding Happiness sources, but there's a /lot/ built up and it would be good to let some die away so we can grow and reduce our unit costs!

Not sure how to evaluate Scooter's claim on Phyrgian/Antiseptic, but it's definitely a back-burner to be watched closely as things wind down with Gaspar and we see how pindicator & Donovan react over the coming turns.

[OT4E]

Bad news:
40% this turn, 8 7 rifles, Gaspar whipped all cities except his capital.


You were right about DZ settling an island:


Not much changing in his frontline. It seems he is just rotating units. What for? Just making it look like he has more than he has in fact?

Good news:
I was wrong about lost hammers from chops while revolting. No idea what caused my strong opinion they were lost. May be it was so in some early patches...

[Dreylin]

Damn, should have put the 2 Workers onto the forest hill, then the Rifles could have caught up. Do we still march them up, or have them head to Camels to prevent pindicator moving in?

Worst case:

t291G - 7Rifles
t291D - 1N of City
t292G - 3new Rifles: George-Richard, Richard-Lance, Lance = 9
t291D - Bombard.
t292G - 3new Rifles: George-Richard, 2xRichard-Lance, Lance = 12 Rifles

So can we block the two additional Rifles from reaching the city? I see he has a Worker on the Desert Hill, which could Road over 2 turns to prevent the MG block from succeeding. Unless we use a couple of Cavs to grab the Worker - but then he hits the Cavs with the new Rifles from Richard, because why not.

Any moves from pindicator? Have his borders settled? I just had a crazy idea that we could Fort the Grassland 4 of Camels and bring the Frigate and a couple of Galleons down that East Coast, but I'm not sure we have enough Workers to get it done in 2t and it's quite vulnerable to pindicator. But if we could do that we could camp outside Lance and then bypass to take out his other cities while taking the extra turns to heal & bringing up further reinforcements.

[Dreylin]

Great news from Geese; so in an ideal world we switch to Culture/Wealth & growth while completing the second 7 3rd chops into the city, then switch to Settler and buy it. As-is, maybe we have to turn those chops into a 0xp Cav?

[Dreylin]

I just had a crazy idea that we could Fort the Grassland 4 of Camels and bring the Frigate and a couple of Galleons down that East Coast, but I'm not sure we have enough Workers to get it done in 2t and it's quite vulnerable to pindicator. But if we could do that we could camp outside Lance and then bypass to take out his other cities while taking the extra turns to heal & bringing up further reinforcements.

Nope, just counted up Workers and it would take a minimum of 3t to do, so earliest would be t293 and that requires guarding the Workers with somethings to keep pindicator away.

[OT4E]

Any moves from pindicator? Have his borders settled? I just had a crazy idea that we could Fort the Grassland 4 of Camels and bring the Frigate and a couple of Galleons down that East Coast, but I'm not sure we have enough Workers to get it done in 2t and it's quite vulnerable to pindicator. But if we could do that we could camp outside Lance and then bypass to take out his other cities while taking the extra turns to heal & bringing up further reinforcements.

No moves from him. His borders established.

I think it is bad idea to give him any chance to get something extra from attacking us.


Returning to Gaspar. He has 1 more rifle in Richard Nixon, probably it came from George W.Bush. I doubt he makes rifle in 1 in LA, but he gets +2 from Richard Nixon next turn and will definitely get 1 the turn after next from LA itself and from George W.Bush. So if he does no mistakes we probably cant take LA that easy. But we dont really need any specific plan to raze Richard Nixon, we just put units between those cities and he either keeps some rifles there and loses LA or he moves all to LA and loses Richard Nixon.

So the key thing is to bring reinforcements. F5 advisor says we have 17 riflemen, but we have only 4 of them attacking. My idea is to produce some catas and pick up promoted rifles and catapults, put them in Galleons and deliver to Gaspar. We need 5 catapults at least and 7 rifles to make it work, may be we should do some more Cavs, but I think the numbers I specified can do.

Let's imagine he gets 15-17 rifles and we get 8 siege and over 20 hitters. But we must deliver it in 6-7 turns, no more.

[Dreylin]

So the key thing is to bring reinforcements. F5 advisor says we have 17 riflemen, but we have only 4 of them attacking. My idea is to produce some catas and pick up promoted rifles and catapults, put them in Galleons and deliver to Gaspar. We need 5 catapults at least and 7 rifles to make it work, may be we should do some more Cavs, but I think the numbers I specified can do.

Let's imagine he gets 15-17 rifles and we get 8 siege and over 20 hitters. But we must deliver it in 6-7 turns, no more.

OK, so assuming none of this stuff needs to have promos, then I think we can do that.

There are 2 additional Forests at Geese that we can chop within 3t, so let's call that 2.5 Cats or maybe a Cat & a Treb. Cats (the city) has 2t to end revolt and a forest 1st ring which we can convert into another Cat (or Rifle with a whip). Donkeys has sent a Cat already and I think is most of the way through a second, which we can whip into a 3rd. So I think that's +5 Siege or maybe 4 Siege & 1 Rifle. If pindicator lets us keep Camels then we can get another from there, and we can buy a unit out of Ducks if we switch this turn.

We can strip the pair of Rifles from Chameleons and a single Rifle from Goldfish this turn to send down the Galleon chain. Chameleons regrows this turn and can be Drafted and then overflow from the Uni whip goes into another Rifle replacement.

So that's 3 Rifles. Are you counting the 2 stuck in transit as part of your +7, or do we still need to find 4 more? We can build-buy one in Goats (or maybe a Gren instead), but the rest will have to be Drafted and/or shuffled out from the Core. We can pull 2 from GP to replace MP units and Draft to replace. Chickens can be Drafted, although it will be very unhappy about it. I think Llamas can also be Drafted, though it will also be unhappy, and then we can pull a Draft next turn from Goats. That gets us near our totals, but I expect we'll be running a negative cashflow for a couple of turns as a result.

If we push the Drama Slider up to cover Chickens/Llamas, we might be able to weather a turn of not having an MP in Rabbits to push that unit forward as well.

The approach route can be shortened by 1tile by adding a couple of roads, but I'm not sure that actually makes a difference to any of the likely movements.

The delay will also let us finish healing the 2 redlined Cavs and the injured Rifle, so everything will be back to full strength for the attack.

And then we just hope that no-one stabs us in the back, side, or soft underbelly...!

[OT4E]

I assume that he gets the worst 12 rifles in LA within next 3 turns and then will be getting 1 rifle per turn. So the maths i easy, by T295 he will have 14, T299 - 17 and so on. But if we do not take it by then we will risk of getting backstabbed. So we need to try maximizing our group by lets say T298. Here is how I see it.


We point exact number of turn we gather reinforcements and try to get maximum ready by that time using all the resources we have. It includes spending gold on units instead of settler, reorganizing universities plan, urgent whips may be even in new cities. Then we calculate how much we need by that turn approximately to take that city safely and cut all the unnecessary and unreasonable measures.

Consider the following things:
- Fort we can start building even outside of the borders.
- We have just 3-4 Galleons, so we really need to try to get something extra by land.
- We can start moving units we keep for MP replacing them later

Imho, what we need and what is doable:
1) Goldfish can spare all 2 rifles guarding it and restore them with draft in 3-4 turns. DZ doesnt see this city. If you fear for it we can bring more ships to defend it. But with his just 1 galleon I doubt he is going to try some desperate raid on the island.
2) Chameleons will be drafted next turn and can be drafted at least 2 more times because it doesnt need to grow to high pop. 1 rifle can honesly go back and do something except wasting his wage.
3) Rabbits can overflow some unit from university, let it be Cav (we buy or whip it to finish) and it has 1 MP unit which we dont really need, it can be replaced with Cata which we get from overflow in GPigs
4) Lhamas build 2 catas for its own MP and for Chickens, so 2 rifles can go away. Unhappiness from draft expires in 2 turns in both, so we can draft them again. It delays university by 3 turns, but I think it is reasonable delay
5) Donkeys will be draftable in 2 turns, we draft and then whip cata there to get 1 more from overflow.
6) 1-2 rifles we can take from GPigs

So it is something like 10-11 rifles and 1 cav total. 1 cata is done, 2 more we get from Donkeys. Other Cata we can do in Geese, may be we whip 1 in Cats, and 1 we can slow build in Goats instead of Observatory.

That's a lot of whips, but it shows how much just-1-turn-late costs. And all this can work if we get attacked by pindicator or somebody else. We need decisive forces, dont we?

[OT4E]

Scooter got Communism with Artist and adopted Nationhood+StateProperty+Theocracy. Well at least he is not on the way to Assembly Line yet.
DZ got Steel.

[Dreylin]

t291 -

I moved the 2 healthy Cavalry forward to join up with the Stack:


I nearly sent them to sit in Camels and deter pindicator, but we'll have 3 healthy Cavs out of Cats next turn that could counter if he decides to move on us with less than significant force.

Are we pushing the whole stack on to block / threaten Nixon? At what point do we start to worry about them deciding to put out Siege and hit us?

I moved the Rifles from GP and lined up the Goldfish & Chameleons to board the Galleon. MP units from Chickens & Llamas will stay for an extra turn to avoid running the slider this turn - next turn Goats will need an extra happiness to support the growth before the Draft anger wears off a turn later, so running the slider next turn for both reasons make sense.

DZ got Steel.

Checked and he's out of Gold, so no immediate Cat-Cannon upgrades for him.