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

[Dreylin]

Played.

Still not sure where we're getting all these Rifle from, but I did Draft a couple of times and whipped a few as well - none of the Cavs yet since they were all about to pop.

[Dreylin]

Overnight thoughts & notes:

I intend to plant the island settler 2 of Wines, but I stuck it on the Galleon to drop off since it doesn't take any extra time and is less exposed. If situation has changed, we can also redirect easily.

Goats can drop a bunch of Specialists this turn and still finish the GSci - I think it should do so to get the Bank complete gayer and grow an extra pop for whip/draft.

Also, I think we want to switch back to Bureau when we can, it gives us a significant economic boost in Goats and we don't have the pop yet outside the core to support extended Drafting. Having said that, I think we need to maximise use of it while we have it so I suggest we draft each of the core cities (excl. Goats) once. That mostly fixes our Rifle deficit. Barracks happy will be replaced shortly by Silver civ-wide.

I pulled 3/5 of the experienced Cavs back from the East into a Galleon; I think we should leave the other two in place to prevent opposition wondering where they are.

South Gasparland city plants next turn (if I remember to complete the road first!) and the we don't have any Settlers in queue/ plan. Geese will grow quickly though and deliver via large whip. Next priority is NE core, since we have some improved tiles to work. Most cities still have 3-4 Farms, so Bio will be valid, and core workers are moving to windmill duty.

[OT4E]

All points are good.

I marked some points where we need farms in my view.

Also it seems that we need 143 citizen next turn to take physics. Keep in the mind that we need to start airships in many cities at once or the turn after next at most.

Growing Goats was a hard job, I'd refrain from spoiling it. After biology we can grow it to 17-18, but higher population there I think is not reasonable.

Drafting core is ok. I thought slavery is more effective, but if we just need numbers we can use both temporarily. I'll check how much rifles we need total and how much we actually have, may be thats enough already.

[OT4E]

I start thinking that idea to attack DZ might be really better than going all in to BGN. DZ got Steel but his power graph was not growing from that point. Let's take a look at it:




Demographics show that the worst power is 515K and it can be Donovan. He has constructed Oxford and was busy at building universties. Right now we can expect that he is making all military and ships but isnt it late? Also he cant switch into Nationhood and he has just 9 cities so far. He has no Factories, no Infantry, not even Railroad yet.

Returning to the question where to take rifles:


We have 2 rifles standing in Donkeys, 1 in Gesse (0 unhappy from drafts!) and 1 in Ducks. I believe we are not going to be attacked there and we can replace them with catapults and draft once more. Also those cities will be used for building navy. New city we plant on the island doesnt demand any defenders, while Goldfish does, so we can use those 2 rifles in our attack. That's 9 rifles. I think it is enough for the begining. We will take more from Chameleons and Goldfish after we start. Core needs to be focused on Cavalry and it must be big to put specialists once we say we are satisfied with how our attack is going. Though we can still draft Rabbit and Lhamas once, but I am not sure it is reasonable. Military advisor says we have 34 rifles and I cant explain that we still cant share 10 for attack.

The timing as I see it is the following:
- T310 we plant city on island and arrange hammers to get 20% culture in 1 turn (I checked it is possible if we give this city workshop from Goldfish). Prebuild airships.
- T311 we cross our channel with our fleet. Whip airships.
- T312 we get into fort in position. Keep in the mind that we need 8 worker turns to finish it (T309 - 1/8, T310 - 4/8, T311 - 7/8, T312 - 8/8). Airships in position.
- T313 we capture 1-tile island and examine situation.

I hope that airships will advise us what to do. May be capturing just 2 islands is not perfect start for the war because we give him time to regroup but it is the only way I see how to push him away from the sea and open us different ways for possible attack on his core. Also by T313-314 we wont have enough galleons for serious landing, but we must solve this issue in just 2-3 turns. May be we consider walking to his front city by land.

[Dreylin]

Heh, I just finished replacing the MP Catapults in that region with Rifles so we can have some Collateral support near our more exposed front cities, but I guess we can switch them back again. Also Geese only just regained size6 after the Settler whip, hence no Draft yet.

We've also been planting more border cities which I've been trying to keep more than 1 Rifle in so they don't fold as soon as they are breathed on.

But as you say, a lot of that can be fixed by a huge fleet of Airships.

I'll inventory and you're probably right that we can pull a bunch from the central region and Gasparland. I'll also see whether we can get the MG over in a reasonable timeframe.

I think we'll need to wait and see how the attack goes after the islands; we can also land on the Oil 7 from the city and walk a clean-up force onto the hill across the river. Or we skip the front city and land 9 from the Ironworks...

[Dreylin]

t309 -

Freed up a bunch of units from Gasparland and started them on the way West. Also founded this:


Started on Culture, but I assume this will be an Airship next turn as well.

The Galleon has the MG, Gren and a Rifle onboard (I did check that nothing was in range before leaving it there uncovered); we can drop the Rifle into Hedgehogs as MP if we want to on the way past. The whipped SotL from Dolphins can cover it next turn to deter Scooter from any silly ideas.



I switched Chameleons from a Cav to a Galleon: as you mentioned we don't have enough ships - all of the ones in the vicinity are already loaded mostly with Cavs, so we need to reshuffle if anything else is needed. We might also want to get Chameleons to generate another Galleon after the queued Cav.

I Drafted the 3 marked cities and also whipped a few times:


I did count pop carefully before doing anything and we had ample space to guarantee 143 next turn with 11 cities growing and a new one to plant.

[Dreylin]

t310 (pre-turn) -

Plan on track:

[Dreylin]

t310 (the rest of it) -

REM has his first Airship on our border:


And the MG on its way back. He also ran the EP slider against us last turn so has research and possibly some city visibility. We should have pindicator's graphs next turn so will start to put a few back at him (though not enough to dent his lead unless we ran the slider ourselves; his courthouse advantage trumps the single extra EP from Nationhood! Spy will go and check out the new city to the South, but I haven't seen any sign of stacking.

Physics revealed that we had just Settled for Uranium:


Not that it matters so much since Nukes are banned.

The local Galleon has moved into the city to drop off the Cavs - not this turn since Donovan could see them this turn if he moves 69, but at start of next they'll be out of sight and can be dropped. The Galleon can move to reload and join with the main ship stack. The Cavs can either be used to give land-based support to an attack on Ant Zen, or can be used to restock the Galleon that makes the attack on Kaos Kontrol:


For the record, I still have concerns about our long-term viability by pursuing The Art of War, but I've not really embraced this sort of approach before ... and am rather enjoying it!


Need to fix those 2 non-military builds!

Also civics are up next turn, which I think is probably just back to Bureau for 5t for improved economy ... with newly minted Bank!

[OT4E]

Donovan has top GNP of 700+ now after his universities. One of the arguments for going for him was that he can possibly get quick Combustion and we cant rely on his peaceful intentions after all his actions.

[Miguelito]

and we cant rely on his peaceful intentions after all his actions.

Subtle!