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

[OT4E]

How to build 9 cavalries?

We have 1, so we need just 2 cavs in Goats, Lhamas, Chickens and Rabbits. Chickens has no stables and barracks, but I think it is better to make barracks this turn and next turn to switch on Theocracy. 7XP cavs will receive promotions after the first battle and what we can meet there I think is just drafted rifles, so we need 2 promotions for each cav.

T281 we build barracks, catas and trebuchet
T282 we make prebuilds for Cavs
T283 we whip the 1st circle
T284 we prebuild the 2nd circle
T285 we whip the 2nd circle
T286 we move out
T287 we are position
T288 we can unload

We need some special plan for Chickens, because it is not certain when to let our 3rd galleon out, but I guess we either buy Galleon and make Cavalry in just 1 turn or whip Cavalry from scratch.

T281 we only start thinking about it and T300 they are gone! That's great result, though there indeed was not much resisting from them. But of course they were not paying any attention when found that the game is lost and we cant blame them for it. GG, Gaspar!

We have killed:
- 23 riflemen
- 1 grenadier

We have lost:
- 5 catapults
- 1 trebutchet
- 6 cavalries
- 1 rifleman
- 2 grenadiers

[OT4E]

We no longer need our silk for gems deal with DZ.

6 GG points can be done if we make some skirmishes with our privateers, but against whom? DZ again?

10 turns to GS in Goats, so we can take Physics on T310 if we put all 6 specialists on T303 when Oxford is complete. On T308 if we start golden age, but is it good to start GA before our cities are planted and settler-factories are grown back?

City count on T300:
- DZ has 6 cities + settler on 1-tile island
- BGN has 7 cities
- pindicator has 8 cities
- scooter has 10 cities (2 planted just this turn, 1 on the island where we wanted silver, another one somewhere else, I cant find. May be he has planted 2 cities on the same island)
- REM has got 12 cities

And we currently have 15 cities.
Overall population is 462 citizen, our count is 102 (12 citizen are idle till T302).

We have an option to whip 50 cavaliers and get more. I do not want to put us on the war path just to support my reputation. But it is our advantage provided by Kremlin when everyone's slow-building on workshop capacity is almost equal.

[Epoxy]

May we have some city screen pics? What boost are you looking at getting from Oxford?

Great reporting, I liked your logistics planning for delivering the final blow upon Gaspar.

[OT4E]

Here is an overall picture:


City screens are under spoiler:

From Oxford we expect +100 science points when we put 6 scientists there. Base commerce there is not super high, we didnt build any cottage, but it still has gold and gems + some extra commerce from trade routes.

[The Black Sword]

Military screen would be interesting too.

[OT4E]

Military screen would be interesting too.

Nothing special there, 50 cavalries are not ready yed

[Dreylin]

t301 -

Shuffling units back from the front in event that pindicator gets frisky:


And an interesting little culture glitch which I hope doesn't bite us.

I'd pick scooter for Priveateering off a few xp:


But I doubt he'll give us the opportunity.

If we do go after someone soon, it's really got to be him, hasn't it? We have so many different attack vectors since we practically surround him, and it makes sense to consolidate our area, right? Plus he's one of our two current major competitors. The problem, of course, is that he'll probably have Infantry ready for us.

Having said all that, I'm not sure I'm sold on that being the right path to follow ... yet.

[OT4E]

REM will get this tile first of all, he has some cultural presence there. I changed production in that city to Theatre, because we will need 40% in our fronts in a measurable time.

One comment about spreading religion. You'd better bring it to one further city, like Cats in our case, which can produce quick missionaries for nearby cities. And contrary Rabbits is surrounded by big core neighbors any of which can produce missionary for it in just 1 turn and spread it on the same turn. So there is no need to bring missionary from the other side of the world to make it happy. I'd change production in Lhamas for missionary if you do not object.

[Dreylin]

OK, makes sense.

Things I forgot to mention: Scooter took the Spices-Incense trade, so we'll get our second up soon. For Donovan I didn't move our ship on that front to play down tension, but once he plants the city I plan to cancel the Gems trade and re-offer for Stone. I would have been quite happy to keep that trade going in interest of relations, but now we use it to send a message. Forgot to check whether he has built his own Oxford yet.

Pindicator's city was still working on the Settler, so I think we'll be OK to get that spot. I left the Frigate over here and a single Galleon so we can get a scouting unit on that island; the other Galleons are heading back to the core. I also took advantage of the passing Settler Galleon to plan for a Rifle over to Goats' Island.

We're short of Workers again, especially in the new territories; Silkmoths has surprisingly few improvements for a size 12 (we only pillaged 2), probably because of the Dike, but then we'll whip half of it into a Settler almost immediately.

[OT4E]

If we do go after someone soon, it's really got to be him (scooter), hasn't it? We have so many different attack vectors since we practically surround him, and it makes sense to consolidate our area, right? Plus he's one of our two current major competitors. The problem, of course, is that he'll probably have Infantry ready for us.

Having said all that, I'm not sure I'm sold on that being the right path to follow ... yet.

Let me put down some foreign analysis, so we can decide. I will start from overview information and then will point how exactly can our attack look like and what we can possibly gain.

Here is the power graph:


The first (it doesnt mean that he is the best one for us to attack, dont pay much attention to this order) candidate is BGN:

He had the slowest expansion early game, so I esteem his mobilizing potential as weakest among other rivals.

His power curve will go up a bit because he is currently in Nationhood and is actively drafting, but with his high size of the cities he will hit happiness limit very soon and will switch away from it.

If we are going to attack him we'd better catch him between civics changings so he wont be able to go into slavery or nationhood for at least a few turns.

What is speaking for BGN is that he is not sandwitched from other sides like DZ and it is likely that we can still gain the main piece of the pie without making conflict with other nations.




We take BGN's core in 3-4 turn and are ready just to stay there and defend or advance in one or several directions depending on what BGN and others do.

The second candidate is DZ:

DZ seems to be more tough, he is constantly in Slavery, has Cannons and Ironworks.
But from the other side he is not spiritual and therefore he will be unable to switch to the Nationhood. His army will be split between many of his fronts and island (I do not think that he will leave it with just 2 cavalries inside).

We can bypass this island city and land directly to his Ironworks. But I believe his main army with some cannons is around so we wont get easy fight there. It mght turn into total disaster.


Even if we take this city and get rid of his army we will be hardly able to advance. We cant leave that city empty like we did with Tigerwoods while attacking Gaspar. REM can come and use his opportunity to extend his borders. And we also will have to heal.

The alternative route is to attack from south.


The main problem I see here is that we wont have enough navy to come from the both directions to crush DZ at once. We will also have the same problem with Sector19. It will be very vinurable to scooter and will either tie our army there for over than 10 turns or we will have to raze/replant it, that is not pleasant think to do with such a big cities.

Let the third one to be REM

REM has the highest city count, Statue, Org trait for cheap Factories and nice UB. OTOH he is not in Slavery, not in Nationhood and not Spiritual to adopt any of those quick, also he has used his GA so I doubt he will be able to get 2nd GA to change civics. He has not bad production, but slow-building is not really effective way to get army quick. I believe we outnumber him easily if we point such a goal.

Here is how our attack can look like:


The main idea is to get rid of his strongest cities at the first turns of war. Then we stack our forces, put them into Galleons and make raid on the SoL city. It is important to mention that if we get SoL it starts working for us on the turn we capture the city.

Coming to scooter:

Scooter has one of the highest productions and GNP. He will have aggressive infantry and cheap factories (UB), which will rise his production even more. He is spiritual and will switch on draft/whips in case of any danger. I also do not expect that we can take him unawared, so he will keep scouting ships, explorers to warn him in advance about our plans.

But his power is not high and his land is stretched (he is top2 by number of tiles). Here how can it look like:


We make big cavalry stack and unload it right to the Scooter's core. This will take out his 2 main production cities.
At the same moment or even a bit before we start moving big slow stack to his front city by land. This can help to pull his attention to the wrong direction and conceal the main strike.

And finally pindicator:

Pindicator is in golden age so he can finish it on whatever civics, but I dont think that he will go for Slavery, though nationhood is possible. Also he is aggressive Russia but without huge potential for the late game like REM or Scooter, but with good potential to defend against anything we can put against him right now.

What is saying against full-scale campaign on pindicator is his location. All we can do quick is to raze his front city in the revenge, but I think this will do nothing good for us except annoying him.

So considering arguments above, my chart is the following:
1. REM. I would try. So we will have just 1 strong enemy for the late game and it will be their headache to think how to stop us from total domination.
2. BGN. If we want to expand slightly, we can gain the biggest part of his territory and 2 islands.
3. DZ. The minimal goal to kick him away from islands seems doable and it wont take much extra forces.
4. Scooter. If we want to challenge our main enemy. But I fear that we will break our own neck and open road to REM.
5. Pindicator. Seriously even for me it seems crazy idea.