Dare you enter the Whizzard's Realm? Magic and Mysteries abide.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I took quite a few pics but cannot post until I get back home.

Sailient points - no war. Mistolin currently has 3 longbows on that island. It would be a bit of a slog.
A few caravels up next turn, we can neutralise the galleon
OU due EoT, enough gold for 11t full tech including this one. At the rate of tech increase I would not be surprised to get cavs in 9t actually.
RP 1t, Gunpowder 1t, rifles 3-4t and MT 3-4t
Need to think about civics. If we go for theo switch now we may struggle to get out of it before needing it for cavs.
Also stables, none currently which isn't ideal, but trying to get a force to balance Mack

Their war - Mistolin has made a good last stand in his cap, and we have a huge wealth of map info from the trade.
Mack still has a lot of phracts though, and a GG healer
I am thinking of loaning Mistolin stone from next turn - getting his cap to 100% defences through walls and castle would be a huge pain for mack. He has 3 cata closing in only.
We get city vis on mack in about 3-5t across his cities.

Looking good, but not ideal still. I think going for gunpowder with 2 peresquite techs we may break 1000 GNP It's currently around 600bpt for -60gpt.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

If Mackoti were to turn on us, how quickly could he start nabbing our border cities? I'd trade land for time, get rifles and cavalry, and counterattack.

And how far is Mackoti from rifling?

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

If Mackoti were to turn on us, how quickly could he start nabbing our border cities? I'd trade land for time, get rifles and cavalry, and counterattack.

And how far is Mackoti from rifling?

I really don't think he could easily. I would imagine that he is starting to hurt from war weary, and if pushing we could definitely get rifling with the gunpowder overflow in 5t from now. His only real way in would be through either the OBs of RMOG or along the ex Mistolin territory, but then he would run the risk of mistolin sniping back cities. He is being quite clever and covering the road network with his phracts preventing this. If he were not pinning the units in the city and turned on us then he would loose his gains.

If he did do this it would take him 3-4 turns before he could hit that western isthmus city, by which time we would have around 4 longbows, 4 pikes and 6 knights in it. We are pretty safe there overall. He cannot make galleons for the sea we share with mistolin easily, they will have to come from the city still in revolt.

Mackoti is showing 2t to gunpowder, although he was showing that last turn. He also has around 1200 gold saved. He has PP, but still needs gunpowder/RP before rifles. Also note he doesn't have nationalism, so he also needs that before he can go for MT too, so cavs are further away again for him.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Last turn - the eeks! See the last post.

This turn - thats a lot of phracts. Its's not bad his attempt at defence, but he cannot stop the horde. It is relentless. We don't have enough to ride in and offer meaningful support. I sent them a stone for 5gpt offer and a stone gift. If they want walls/castles then they will be able to get them cheaply. Note they have 5 cities. Their cap, a city 3 tiles SW of it, the one on the coast with us, their gold island and a city near RMOG which has a castle. I guess this had a few longbows in so was not a great target. 

The economics - Oxford done! Worth around a 10% beaker boost at full tech. Getting us 60 extra beakers/turn. Scary demos, although that is full tech and 2 prerestquites. We are currently 3t to rifles without overflow accounted for (we finish gunpowder at 30% tech). With the whipping I have been doing we have dropped back in crop yield I think to plako. He is golden so is growing and converted to rep etc. 
I guess Scooter/Mack wanted a 10t treaty, as they cannot attack each other now. So much for a pile on mack. Are they hinting a pile on us perhaps? mack also got gunpowder last turn.

Good amount of units here now.

Overviews. Went into theo. Sent copper/copper to RMOG. Settler for city 17 jungle fish built EoT. Mostly knight builds currently. With gunpowder I will sprinkle some muskets to upgrade to rifles around too, and hold the knight hammers so they can go to cavs. 

[El Grillo]

I'm back after throwing ~25 hours at Civ6 and coming away mildly unsatisfied. The scooter/mackoti enforced peace is bad news for us, I'm guessing scooter wants an undisturbed shot at RMOG to keep up in growth, and mackoti was happy to secure his flank since he'll be fighting you over Alhazard's corpse? Speaking of which, is the plan to hit just the island for now, and then contest the mainland with cavs?

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I'm back after throwing ~25 hours at Civ6 and coming away mildly unsatisfied. The scooter/mackoti enforced peace is bad news for us, I'm guessing scooter wants an undisturbed shot at RMOG to keep up in growth, and mackoti was happy to secure his flank since he'll be fighting you over Alhazard's corpse? Speaking of which, is the plan to hit just the island for now, and then contest the mainland with cavs?

I have that same feeling. Bit of barbarian whack a mole, I never really felt like I had a great empire, and I didn't really feel like I knew what I was doing or what would lead to what. Most odd was that it was hard to find hammers invested in a unit. 

I'm not sure of a definite plan truth be told. We are now at 3t to rifles. Likely to have a monopoly on them for a good 5-8 turns as noone else has RP yet and we are teching much faster than the others. Likely 5t to cav also. 

Mack took the cap and SW city of mistolin last turn. So just that holdout with the castle near RMOG, the one on the coast with us (where he has 3 phracts baring down on it ready to hit next turn) and the island. Mistolin still has a galleon and 3 longbows in there. He has walled it too... Bah.

I think we should wait until a rifle unit or 2 to hit it. Realistically a lot more cost effective than going through walls or getting a catapult on it, we should have odds on new rifles attacking the city instead of kngihts. 

Then we need to think - what do we do about Mackoti? Do we allow him the territory, or do we attack and let Scooter have an easy time?
What do we do with the now 9t until a GP? He will be a very mixed GE/GS/GP and a few Gspy points. If we are thinking of going golden then we don't want to be whipping to the ground. If we want to war with the tech advantage then we do.
If we do want to war - where do we go? Ex mistolin land mack is powerful. RMOG is difficuult for us to hit but not impossible. Plako or Scooter aren't great options really.
Where does tech go? Do we go for corporation for the TR boost without needing to do anything else (2 com per city), astro to contest seas, or chemistry to start beefing up the workshops and opening up steam power? I would lean to chemistry to steam power, and delaying the GA until we can get levees on the go for the huge boost that GA levees give. If mack gets frisky at sea we can divert to astro quickly anyway. 
I would also lean to keeping the older units near mack just to provide a buffer there, and looking at whipping an army of cavs to hit RMOG personally... A mack war could drag on which is not ideal. RMOG would not be able to use the east indiamen on us really, and lacks anything above knights and pikes to counter with. Mack will hit rifles sooner than him.

[El Grillo]

I had a chance to log in and look around.

T251:

Advisor screens:

City screens:

From a defensive and feasibility perspective, I think it makes more sense to attack east-west than north-south (yes, I know, mackoti did it successfully, but 1) he faced different conditions, and 2) I think he's still in a pickle, with the most exposed surfaces and assuredly high maintenance costs. Phracts have shown their strength, but I'm confident this game won't be over until infantry, so for mackoti it's a matter of converting all this land into an economy good enough for ~11k base beakers. Given mackoti's skill, FIN/SPI, and Communism being just 3 techs away, I'm confident that he can do it, but back to the point, I don't think you need to extend and hit plako or scooter).

Since fighting mackoti at the peak of his power seems ill-advised when scooter will assuredly react by conquering RMOG, I agree that targeting RMOG for a quick devour seems like the best path forward. If you meet scooter's forces in the process, well, you should have a tech advantage and better promoted units. It might even be possible to keep them pinned behind the land bridges but concede the islands. I'd lean towards whipping out cavs while in Theocracy, then swapping back to OR for gold multipliers and levees.

I agree that the GA timing will be awkward, and saving it until post-Levees seems like a better use than throwing it ASAP. That tech path also leads to Steel for ironclads, which should have a pretty long shelf life.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So I see why Mack was so keen in the tech thread - he war peaced us. He didn't even kill our explorer. That required some thinking... I wasn't 100% sure what to do. If we still had the workers free on the banana then we could have cheaply razed 2 cities, but there was only 1 that hadn't moved. I felt on balance probably not worth messing around currently. I did consider razing tile improvements, but of course we can't get over the culture now. We have limited city vis over the mistolin cities and all that. Not sure what would have been best, but with a crippled mistolin on 2 cities everything would have came our way...

So we now have 9 turns of peace with mack, and a gold city that we should capture. It has walls, 20% culture, 3 longbows and a janassary now. We have 3 caravels on the water and 2 galleys, with a third that just ferried the settler over heading to help. We can whip a rifle to complete the turn rifling finishes in Bubaxtons. With 3 galleys and peace with mack we can easily add this, it just might take a little while.

I've held off finishing units as the hammers invested will upgrade to rifled units soon. Also keeps us more flexible and able to golden effectively if we choose that route.

Worse case going for RMOG is we open up his back end for mack to make more gains from cheaply... Too many choices and thoughts.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I'm inclined to think that Mackoti is desperate for time to develop his territory. A 10 turn peace isn't enough, in fact, it means we can go all-out on getting stables, getting Cavalry and counter-attacking into the Mistlands.

My hope is that us attacking Mackoti will spur Scooter to pile on. But that may take a while, as Scooter also needs to power up. And RMOG is likely hungry for revenge.

But yeah, this is complicated. I agree that attacking RMOG would result in Scooter and Mackoti piling on to him as well.

God damn, I have to hand it to Mackoti for pulling off that deception, using war with RMOG to distract attention away from Mist, when in fact his real build up was on him this whole time.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

If I had left another worker free then we could have razed 2 cities there. But it would have been a slog. The issue with us going into him is all he would need is a few cats or cannon to make us pay attacking. I think we have to use the rifle window that we will get on something.

I proposed OB to him. If he accepts this we can ride through him and raze a lot of improvements with impunity