[SPOILERS] Fire and Blood: Nyles Standish and Zalson watch the world burn

[Zalson]

Next one on our list should be Myr. Let's go with King's Landing since we did, you know, conquer it. Actually, I like that idea a lot!

For Volantis, maybe squeeze in the granary between the two archer builds? We do get +100%. I understand the paranoia over there but a granary puts us in a better position to whip out more units for defense. ideally, pindicator never comes. Or maybe another worker? I just look at our land and sigh...

So -- after I wrote the above sentence I realized: let's chop 'em out? We've got 160 hammers right now which is probably worth 4-5 workers and a settler? Maybe that's what we use those extra warriors and spearmen to do? Cover the workers as they chop us bare?

Obviously, it'd be nice to get mathematics for 240 hammers but gotta play the hand you're dealt. Does that make sense to you? I am not sure how we can do it, but I'm sure we can. Probably.

[NylesStandish]

I'll see if I can squeeze the granary in, although if we can produce both before growing I'll definitely get the archer first, since the granary doesn't do us any good until we grow. If we have to get the granary first to get it before we grow I may squeeze it in. Next archer is 2 turns and the granary is 3 turns without any overflow.

Definitely agree with chopping out some more workers and settlers, though. We don't want to get too many workers too fast though and improve a whole bunch of tiles we're not working, but as long as we don't go overboard it's better than the alternative of working a bunch of unimproved tiles.

Don't really think we need much cover for them in most of our territory except right next to the border with pindicator. Trying to pasture either of those plains cows next to that border is really spooky for example.

Also, part of me wants to save some forests for wonders later, and we have more options in this regard if we wait for maths, but settlers/workers is definitely the safer play.

If we're chopping out settlers we have to decide where they go, and all of the good available locations I see need fishing:

-clams city
-fish city north of Alison
-fish city east of Alison
-double fish plant on sugar north of Valyria

So fishing is definitely next on the list. Obviously those two in the middle are contingent on us getting Alison first.

[Zalson]

Agree that we need fishing.

Double fish and the southern crab seem the best.

If we're concerned about Pindicator poaching our workers when we reconnect the cow: what can we do to make him pay for disconnecting them? How can we force him to react to us, rather than the latter?

Those are general food for thought questions; I don't know to answer them yet. My typical error in strategy games is that I try to be too aggressive and too clever, when, like everything ever, being absolutely bloody-minded is what solves the problem.

I guess what I am try to say is we should improve the cows. And attack pindicator while eating dcodea.

At least we have objectives now?

[Zalson]

Hey Nyles,

What'd we whip last turn? And have fun stormin' the castle.

[Zalson]

Saw the pause in the IT thread. I will able to get back into this game (you know, try to get in and take screenshots) sometime next week.

If you get a chance to comment before then, please let me know what's up. If not, I can do some reporting lifting once I get through my work deadline.

Thanks for keeping the turns going; also, let me know if you want to pop on a gchat or something similar during the day. I'm "meeting for 4 hours straight" and then "hurry-up and wait" for several hours after that.

[NylesStandish]

Sorry for the long absence again. Basically a family member went completely insane (to the extent of walking around nude, throwing money and good food in the garbage for no reason, talking to the devil, trying to fight cops and actually fighting cops; not making any of this up.) and has just gotten out of the mental hospital, so I've been dealing with that crap while also preparing for the fall semester which started on Monday.




I built the Archer first in Volantis since it and the granary together take 5 turns and growth comes in 6 turns.




The three-headed dragon moves into position for the attack. The axemen both get 90+% odds on the defenders; even at that taking the city requires either good dice rolls or an excess of patience that exceeds virtue.




Meanwhile, this worker triggers my paranoia. They can put a road on that deer tile and put one movers on the hill NE of Volantis from the fog, and with fast workers they have the unique advantage of being the only civ that is capable of doing that without waiting a turn for workers to move onto the tile before roading, which would give us a turn of warning.

I also whipped the Spear in Tyrosh for overflow, since we've got a laughably small invasion force and we can get another axe in 1 turn with that overflow. New axe can also get to dcodea's copper tile before the borders expand and he hooks it up (dcodea whipped a monument in No Action T60).




Two important things happen on T63: we find our horses, and...



Bad dice rolls stall the invasion and give dcodea some breathing room. Both fights were over 90%, so we had over 81% chance of winning both fights and a less than 1% chance of losing both axes. Won't be storming the castle for a while. No City Raider II Aegon for us either.

That's our only source of horses; none of them in the border areas. That gives me the idea of possibly settling on the silk 1N of the horses since it lets us work the horses and still gets the clams, and also grabs a 3-0-3 lake tile that would have gone to waste otherwise at the cost of the non-river plains silk which is not that special pre-calendar.

Also, if you look closely at the gif, you can see that dcodea's capital is founded on a grass hill tile, not a plains hill tile like ours and pindicator's starts. That might explain why his worker came out more slowly than the other expansive civs. I never took note of it before since I just assumed it was a plains hill like everyone else's. That kind of sucks for dcodea but it's far far too late to do anything about it.

Whipped a worker at the capital for overflow this turn as well (I think this is the turn where you asked what I whipped).




You can see the effects of my paranoia in the bottom left hand part of the screen. 5 units in Volantis: 2 archers, a spear, an axe, a warrior and another spear on the way.

This was before I looked at the graphs, noticed no power spike whatsoever from pindicator, and decided that the dreaded eastern invasion is probably not coming in the near future.




This is after that realization. The axe from Volantis, Sandor Clegane, and the spear Jaime Lannister move east

Building perhaps the most important building en masse. Tyrosh and King's Landing are both working the copper for max hammers until they have enough hammers banked for them to switch back to food and still complete the granary before growth.

Workers camping the deer. Tyrosh kind of needs the food since it's only got the plains cow which is barely a food resource. Afterwards, he could either go for the furs or start chopping.

New Tyroshi axe goes SW; invasion force still camped out on the forest hill next to Alison.

T65 is more of the same; inching forward in the west while building granaries literally everywhere. Included city screens for good measure:

Wide shot. Finished camping and roading the deer, also sent the new worker to repasture the cows with a spear.




Left the cover of the hill forest to look around and maybe block roads and pillage while waiting for reinforcements.

This war is dragging on slowly but we can persevere in the end, it will just take more turns than I anticipated. In different circumstances I might sue for peace, but we've spent this much time and resources to get his land so far that it will feel like a waste if we just turn back and ask for peace now.

He's going to have borders pop soon in No Action, and getting ready to hook up the copper, which means that a window where he will only have garbage warriors available will be closed soon and any attempt at attacking in the future will face much stiffer resistance. We'd also leave a potentially vengeful enemy on our flank. I have no doubt we could beat him one on one, but if he's too strong and we commit too much we leave ourselves vulnerable in the east.

If we leave him be we also leave open the possibility of OT4E taking him over and I definitely do not want him on our border with the land he's taken plus dcodea's land plus his temperament. He's shown his favor for war so far in this game, and in PB30 him and 2metraninja "make waves" as their thread title put it by long distance boating OldHarry's capital in a move that was fun for lurkers to watch but failed to kill OH and resulted in a long bloody war. They also did this:

I wish RB had like, a front page or something, because this beautiful screenshot needs to be shared with the masses and enshrined forever.




It's like, wow! Damn, what a devastating alpha-strike! These guys got this game in the bag!

...and then you notice the +1gpt at 0% science...

So yea, fuck that. Interesting to note that the guy getting his capital razed here is the same guy that OT4E attacked in this game.

[Zalson]

Nyles -- oh my goodness. I hope your family member is alright. That is absolutely terrible.

I can try to jump in for you -- let me know what you'd like to do.

[Zalson]

I built the Archer first in Volantis since it and the granary together take 5 turns and growth comes in 6 turns.

Does this mod change something about how granaries work? Wouldn't we want to grow while building it, then take advantage of have some food storing while we're growing to the next site? So, wouldn't it be more advantageous to build it now (in 3T) and add in, what, 10 food into the box when we grow to 4?

(EDIT: I see now that you were trying not to grow unhappy).

Also, I think we gotta improve the cow. Need those hammers/food.

I also whipped the Spear in Tyrosh for overflow, since we've got a laughably small invasion force and we can get another axe in 1 turn with that overflow. New axe can also get to dcodea's copper tile before the borders expand and he hooks it up (dcodea whipped a monument in No Action T60).

While this move makes sense, this is what we both know is killing us. We've got teeny tiny cities with lots of whip anger built up. This has 3 great tiles it can work, with no way to do it.

However, once we get the deer camped, we can grow on that. I do agree with dumping the hammers into the granary -- although it might be better to work the deer, then the cow. That's 6 hammers plus a +5 food suplus at size 2. We'll fill up the box soon enough.

What a bummer on the invasion. Losing Aegon was a killer.

That's our only source of horses; none of them in the border areas. That gives me the idea of possibly settling on the silk 1N of the horses since it lets us work the horses and still gets the clams, and also grabs a 3-0-3 lake tile that would have gone to waste otherwise at the cost of the non-river plains silk which is not that special pre-calendar.

Settling on the silk seems like an fine choice. Let's just chop the silk before we settle -- although settling the horses might be better? We do get to work the clams right way. Then we can chop the silk into a granary for that city.

This is definitely site priority 1.

Whipped a worker at the capital for overflow this turn as well (I think this is the turn where you asked what I whipped).

Perfect. 4 workers now. We only need like 8 more!

Workers camping the deer. Tyrosh kind of needs the food since it's only got the plains cow which is barely a food resource. Afterwards, he could either go for the furs or start chopping.

Let's chop the silk forest into a worker from volantis. Then go send the archer + warrior to defend plains cow for Volantis and improve/road that?

Wide shot. Finished camping and roading the deer, also sent the new worker to repasture the cows with a spear.

Perfect.

Left the cover of the hill forest to look around and maybe block roads and pillage while waiting for reinforcements.

This war is dragging on slowly but we can persevere in the end, it will just take more turns than I anticipated. In different circumstances I might sue for peace, but we've spent this much time and resources to get his land so far that it will feel like a waste if we just turn back and ask for peace now.

Can we cut the road to Alison, take Alison, and then sue for peace? Or go burn the mine down at No Action?

He's at 3 cities again, right?

I think we press our advantage of warriors/no archers until he is able to get some axes. Then we reconsider? These granaries should help our crop yield significantly.

Let's grow to our happy caps and get out several workers/settlers and then see where we are?

Excellent turn-set, considering the RL difficulties and the position we're in. I'd say, "I'll take a look tonight" but we know how that's gone in the past.

Any way, what are our actions this turn?:

T66

Invasion force:
Burn roads to Alison. Move soldiers south.

Valyria: keep building granary (switch to high 3 hammer tile?)
Volanits: finish granary: start worker
Tyrosh: switch to deer.
King's Landing: keep on keeping on.


Scout: keep moving east?

Titles to improve:

Valyria cow
Volantis Cow
Volantis Fur
vaylria river
Chop Silk forest

[Zalson]

I'm going to ping dcodea and ask if he's okay with me logging in outside of the turnsplit for reporting purposes; have you done this already? This is still your game, so let me know how/if you'd like me to handle the turns.

I'll wait for you to reply before I do anything. Let me know.

[NylesStandish]

I'm in the middle of typing up a more detailed response/report up to the things I saw before logging out when I rolled to Turn 68.

I haven't asked dcodea about logging in outside of the turnsplit for reporting purposes since I usually take a bunch of screenshots when I play the turn. You can ask him, but he's got the first half of the timer and is generally very prompt about playing his turns so we've got a lot of freedom as to when we log in.

I generally prefer to play the turns myself, but you can certainly cover them if I give instructions or we come to an agreement on something. I'll try to actually read/update more often so you can actually play some turns.