greenline gets rushed and eliminated on turn whatever: Huyana Capac of Mali

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Also, how can Sian get Rifling without Printing Press? Aren't PP, Replaceable Parts, and Rifling all 1-arrow techs?

that's what I thought too- it's possible he 1 turned it and got past my EP lead on him that way. Kind of silly how that works

for civics, I decided to go with UniSuff + Bureau, since a lot of my cities can two turn rifles now and the unhappy pressure was building up to a point where I couldn't handle continuous drafting. a few of my cities are already in need of temples.

Anyway, first thing I noticed when I opened the save is that Sian is obviously paying a great deal of attention to this front of the war




I wonder if that scout (the one I started the game with, btw) can get all the way to where picklepickl's army is

It also gave me critical info that there isn't a big cat+Cuir stack waiting to jump me, so I decided to hit the stack in Thomas Aquinas. Here was the situation to start




I sent in ~4 cats, which let my three C1/Pinch rifles take out the top LBs at ~67% odds. The C2C/1 rifles I had after that weren't getting better odds, so I sent in another cat. Annoyingly after that I lost a couple of rifles at ~85% odds and had to use my knights to clean up.







In the end I killed everything in the city and lost 5-6 cats, three rifles, and a knight. I feel like this is my inexperience with the military side of the game showing. I probably should have been more aggresive with the cats instead so I lost less rifles. I did get a GG though, and he'll make a fine M3 knight soon.

On the plus side Sian is getting minimal value from Chicken Pizza here. Why did he build that again...?

Think before you attach the gg to a knight. GGs give free unit upgrades so an old chariot upgraded for free is usually better.


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[greenline]

Think before you attach the gg to a knight. GGs give free unit upgrades so an old chariot upgraded for free is usually better.

unfortunately the only chariots i have are several turns away and I want the healing to kick in now. Although I don't get why you'd want to upgrade the super medic, since that makes it more likely to defend and get killed.

anyway, I had a couple of questions:



are spies banned?

second, i looked over some recently re-revealed land from a map trade and found some of my rival's worker/settler builds to be a bit confusing:






i mean, i can't harp on this too much since picklepickl was beating me in GNP soundly before Sian attacked him, but still, thatsss a little weird man

also no one will ever know why Sian built so little tile improvements because he never updates his thread

for the actual things i did this turn:




Sian still keeps holding a fairly sizable stack in his center city and presumable has a similar one near picklepickl, so I decided to keep on advancing while keeping a relatively small group of uninjured rifles guarding my super medic and injured units inside Thomas Aquinas. I'm hoping to send those units down to capture Plotinus once they're healed. Boethius should fall next turn.

[greenline]

what's that a turn?




So this is what Dreylin (who didn't bother changing his name I guess ) had reinforced the city with. Which wasn't nearly enough.




Accuracy cats are pretty cool aren't they? Although it would be even cooler if I didn't lose the one rifle at 70-80% odds

Of course the real danger here is that I'm in a potential position where I could get counterattacked with a bunch of cavs. I put four healthy rifles in the city and I have two or three healthy ones guarding the cat stack. I know Dreylin moved a bunch of units out of the center city but a lot of them were trash and some of them could be heading to the picklepickl front. Still I figured him being able to draft rifles and whip cavs would put a dent in further attempts in military action so I decided to ask for peace in exchange for Plotinius. If he says yes then I'll have gathered three good cities and can refound a fourth for comparatively little effort on my part and that will put me in a strong position going forward. What Dreylin does next turn will be pretty decisive I think

[greenline]

Anyway, I thought the time break between the last update warranted a big post, so here's my thoughts on the players and their relative positions going forth:

Jowy:
TECH: Up Chemistry, Steel, SciMeth(Maybe?), and down Constitution, Democracy, Optics, Theo(?), and Divine Right
Jowy's had a score lead for ages with his big pool of wonders, but his GNP has been surprisingly not as good as I imagined it to be considering that he has Great Library, Great Lighthouse, and Pyramids plus very early bureaucracy and shrine. From looking at his farm ridden land it almost seems like he tried a full specialist only economy at one point, which would be much better in RtR where Fin and cottages aren't nerfed. His research rate isn't bad though, but it's worse than mine now and was evenish with mine for a while before. He still has the most or second most pop, and the most score, but he wasn't nearly as ahead as I thought he was.

At some point Jowy is probably going to attack either me or Pickle. It's the best way for him to get more land which will be needed to compete with the stuff we absorbed from Sian, but what will make this game is who he attacks. I'm not sure which of us is the better target, honestly, but I have been fortifying my border with Jowy just to be safe.

Chances of winning: 33 +/- 8%

Picklepickl:
Up SciMeth, Philosophy, Liberalism, Communism, and down Optics, Theo, Divine Right, Constitution, Democracy
Picklepickl has been running an interesting game. From what I know he's been either deliberately forgoing expansion in favor of economy, or just wasn't good at expanding to begin with. He was actually the one leading in GNP the entire time, which was almost certainly due to having ORG which is actually quite good on this map considering the maintenance. He also went for Hanging Gardens at one point despite only having like ten or less cities, which probably wasn't a good decision. His macro decisions meant that he was super low in crop yield and cities for the whole game, and he still has a couple strong backfill cities he hasn't settled. On the other hand, he got both Taj and the free tech from Liberalism, and he might have managed to leverage that into something even better if he hadn't gotten attacked by Sian, which forced him to blow his golden age on drafting and losing cities. Since then his GNP has fallen back into the pack, but there's plenty of room for him to recover depending on if he can get a good peace deal and walk away with some nice cities and ORG boosted civic savings. But seriously, he needs to settle those backfill cities.

Chances of winning: 33 +/- 5%

Greenline:
Looking at my game thus far, it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was, although I did make several mistakes. Not cottaging the riverside spices at my capital, not going more aggresively for the gems site by Jowy, and NOT GETTING THE MoM DESPITE HAVING EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO set me back a bit. But I still was tied for best crop yield with Jowy for the whole game until I started drafting, and had a competitive GNP and got good use out of the religious wonders. Right now I'm sitting pretty having captured some land from Dreylin and getting good use out of US boosted towns. I also have Statue of Liberty guranteed to finish in a few turns which will be great on this map (but Kremlin would be even greater for me... just like SoL would be much better for Jowy who is probably going to get Kremlin instead ).
How the war with Dreylin turns out will be key. If I walk away with my gains and can consolidate I would say I would have the best position. But if I get horribly counterattacked then I'll be more behind, but not abhorrently so.

Chances of winning: 33 +/- 5%

Sian:
Down Constitution, Democracy, Optics, Theo, Divine Right

Sian's game has been the most baffling to me. He got Oracle, Colossus, and MoM: three keys to success, in addition to the gems site on my side and a fair slice of the center. But somehow he stagnated economy wise and had a sucky crop yield as well. His response to that was not to fire a golden age, work moneybag coasts, and get to Cuirs before anyone else. Instead he... built a giant knight stack when both his neighbors had engineering. While I joked about my military being bad before, it was never that far below the highest, and Sian's decision to go for a midieval war at tech parity just made no sense to me. So he attacked picklepickl instead, captured a few cities, and then lost them before they probably even came out of revolt. My decision to attack him was partially because his behavior was so erratic that I didn't see any peace in our future, in addition to him being the best way for me to get land at a low cost. So Sian didn't bother cobbling a giant siege stack to try and fend off my invasion, but instead tried to rush to rifles, which let me capture two of his cities at a low cost. I don't see Dreylin turning this around, although it's not 100% impossible I suppose

Chances of winning: 1 +/- 4%

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I would point out city trades aren't allowed. Ask for gold


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[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Oh Sian has the MoM? Who do you think will get it and maybe get some use out of it?


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[greenline]

I would point out city trades aren't allowed. Ask for gold

they aren't? i thought the main rule was ai diplo only in the setup thread, did that get changed/clarified somewhere?

Oh Sian has the MoM? Who do you think will get it and maybe get some use out of it?

depends on who captures his capital (i'm assuming that's where it is based off 'memory' ). I have a three man GA lined up for State Property but nothing after that, and I'm unlikely to delay it just to try and get three extra turns unless Dreylin completely falls to pieces in the next few turns

on a side note, National Epic feels totally overrated to me. I've gotten a Shrine, Academy, and 5/6 people needed for three golden ages just through careful use of caste system and managing GP pools. The only thing NE will do for me now is speed up the last great person a little bit, and I don't even know if I'll get to communism in time for that difference to matter

Anyway, Dreylin weirdly decided not to attack me at all this turn, which was probably his best chance to take advantage of my scattered forces. So I moved my wounded and extra knights into Boethius while assembling another big stack to take Plotinius.




picklepickl also advanced on Sian's center city, so I decided to move in as well. I honestly don't care which one of us gets it so long as the city falls, which means Dreylin has less cities to draft from and more fronts to defend.




one last thing: Jowy got an INSANE mfg spike this turn. He did pop a GA and revolt to State Property, but those alone shouldn't be enough to account for the giant leap. will be curious to learn what the fizzity uck he did there

[greenline]

[El Grillo]

[El Grillo]

Checking in about diplo screen confusion, did you accept or refuse Dreylin's terms for peace?