[spoilers] OT4E is gonna try something special

[OT4E]

I found top power:


Poor chumchu...

2nd GNP this turn is 370 and it doesnt seem to be Mr. Cairo yet, because he is still making gold. It can be chumchu, but what can he do against that WE+cata stack without even slavery?

[OT4E]

T122

This is the last turn of my first golden age. And it leaves me in the dark thoughts given the fact that Mr. Cairo will have 10 more turns of GA (he started 1 turn ago) and possibly will land Taj for another 12 turns and after all I believe he can make 3 GPs during it and run the 3rd one. So it can be 34 more GA turns for him to make advantage.

Well, my plan is to try to parry this run. I dont have illusions that I can beat him in Taj race since he has Philosophy and Code of laws at least and during GA he is making 100 more beakers than me, when my GA will be over it will be like 250 more beakers. My goal is not to let him get too far and harvest all the possible goods. My focus right now is expansion and growth. I have several settlers in production and as I said I am going to chop more settlers in the newly planted cities and cover the gap in the food. After that I will grow everything and let boosted workers do their stuff. 138 citizens I have now and my closest goal is to grow this number to 200.



I will take GL in 3 turns if noone makes it better. AP comes in 2, but I dont have many christian buildings yet, honestly I have 1 monastery so far, but they are next in my priority list. The first goal was to spread religion and for the core it is almost done, though I have some problems with bringing it to the former Stardoor's cities.



I am heading to Music. It was hard decision to go for Drama first or not, but after all I decided that the higher chances of getting Artists actually outweight 150 lost beakers. Also I only need drama if I spend this Artist on Divine Right or go to the Nationalism through Philosophy. Right now I have an option to skip it and even Codem though I dont like it much.

Music I need not only for Artist. I need it mainly for cultural expansion in the new cities. I have Stonehenge but waiting 10 turns is not acceptable scenario for city development. I need to pop borders, chop everything and improve key improvements. Therefore Music will save me 4-5 turns in every city growth. Also I will make Cathedral to increase Prophet generation for Shrine.

As I planned last turn I used GE for Parthention.


Pindicator managed to pillage a town before I got culture expansion. This is weak move imho, though I decided that I lose more if I declare him just for this. His army started being dangereous btw. He is stacking some catas nearby and whipping more than he actually needs to bring Stardoors down. Probably the next thing I get will be Guilds for any scenario. May be it was initially the right thing to do. I could get pass through Nyles pretty well without much resistance and be close to Gunpowder to improve my defenses. But right now I am in Serfdorm and only few cities are focused on military, mainly barracks to be able to build double promoted units.

I still lack workers, but I must admit that 4 turns for watermills and 3 workerturns for windmills are not bad at all and the most desired thing is 1 workerturn for road.

[OT4E]

I am really concerned about pindicator's power growth. I remember that in pb31 he showed himself as a desperate guy by attacking Agg/chm India across the water.

During pb33 he literally did nothing for the entire game so it can happen that he is lust for the real challenge and can see an opportunity to attack me. I dont want to believe in it but the facts are the following:
 1) he has over than 15 HAs
 2) he continues whipping 3 times per turn while Stardoors is done 
 3) he is stacking catapults 4 in his front city. It can be defensive measure but I cant rely on it.
 3) he has a sentry in my land and sees that I dont have much units to sit  behind the walls either to counter-attack
 4) he pillaged a town in my lands and it is not a friendly action

So after the Music I switch to Hbr and Guilds. I will also have to postpone half of domestic builds in honor to barracks and knight prebuilds.

If everything goes as I expect I will have to throw incoming GE on Engineering as I planned before the game started. Another option is to run GA and turn back to Slavery though I would really try to avoid it if possible.

[OT4E]

T125
I got Music and Great library, but that's all the good news for today.

Mr.Cairo adopted Bureaucracy and is now making +500 gpt. Last turn his GNP was showing as 1116 and I have no idea how could he get it because the turn before it was about 680 and he was reasearching smth.

Pindicator is stacking up and I think he is going to attack me instead of Stardoors. It is simply too much for Stardoors, who is not making anything. This will be not good for me because I am not in Slavery and not in Police State. What a shame! If you want troubles just say to yourself "I am not going to be attacked".



I noticed his preparation a while ago so I have already teched HBR and I am now heading to Guilds, with all the power of the rep specialists and producing some research.
All this is going to make the game much more interesting, though I doubt I will be able to compete with Mr.Cairo who is obviously not disturbed by his neighbors by any. But I am not complaining, I am just trying to justify the fact I cant focus on peaceful research right now. I will probably have to use incoming GE for Engineering and then continue with Gunpowder to make some fireworks at my lake.




Nicolae declared on chumchu and got the first city from him.
I finally met DTG, I had to offer my only whales to Elkad for this but I am getting another one soon.

[OT4E]

Btw I am now first in land, thanks to my new cities :

[OT4E]

All my efforts to turn this game into dull buildfest are failed. Last turn I noticed some suspicious actions from Nyles. I thought that he would be interested in taking a city which I had planted in the neutral lands but it seems that 2 tiles of forests changed his mind and he decided to attack me directly.

This is a recipe to the win. Wait T130 and whip-whip HA's. 

Unfortunately I was so busy with challenging in economics race and didnt noticed his preparations. I was waiting this from pindicator who will probably join because his stack is marching 1 tile per turn along my borders making it look like he is going for Stardoors. Hey, pindicator! You know you can walk 2 tiles by road, man.!

This all will cost me 2-3 cities at least. What is worse I cant stay in Serfdorm and I will have to burn incoming GE and GA from music for immediate golden age and whip half of my population into military needs.

I am not disappointed, it is gonna be fun. The only sad thing is that I cant expect that Mr. Cairo on his side will meet any pressure. But it is no longer my business!

[OT4E]

Elkad is the man.


Here is a part of Nyles stack, some more HA are in the city.


The biggest mistake of mine was to open borders with them. The second mistake was to spare Nyles while everything was pointing that he is easy target. For a moment I thought that it was enough blood on my hands. What a shame!

[OT4E]

Nyles declared me War and captured the city. But for some reason he decided not to raze it and not to advance. I am not sure that I could keep both of my  cities from his for but whatever. After I recaptured city he offer peace for all the 107gold+25gpt. I accepted it , because even if I was planning to attack him I' d wait those 10 turns better.

My plan is to tech Gunpowder now. Knights are good but I need some solid advantage if I am stacking to the war-path. Janissary is cheaper and better than knight, and it has defense bonuses what is important and can wear defensive promotions. It can perfectly counter their HA's and WE's.

So I skip Engineering for now because I need to build slow jannisaries first and only then I need +1 movement. I am not going to build any pikes because of jannisares and I dnt need engineering for trebs in this mod.

So the tech plan for the next 15 turns is:
Gunpowder -> Code of laws -> (probably) Compass -> Engineering.

After I make some military preparations I must quickly recover the gap in infrastructure. The further cities will build courthouses and the biggest ones will build harbors.

[OT4E]

Meanwhile Mr. Cairo got Nationalism.

Chumchu has lost 4 cities if I remember correctly and I doubt he will recover. I think Nicolae is just going to leave some of his core cities which are bordering with Mr. Cairo and be happy with the rest. Or may be he will come for those cities later.

As I mentioned Nicolae is also under siege by Elkad with his hilarius stack of spears. But as I can see he is ok there, may be will lose just a couple of border cities.

[OT4E]

Nyles attack spoiled my peaceful plans and the most thing I regret for is burning GE for GA. This GA is a plain waste, needless to say that I whipped 30 pop at the first turn of it, my GNP didnt got up but contrary dropped down because of switching from representation.

But as I said I am happy that I have learned this lesson. In fact my previous steps were as bad as the disaster. The right thing is to turn into Serfdorm at the beginning of GA and then at the end of it you can think of leaving this civic. Going away from Slavery made me spend those 10-15 turns in fear despite of the lead in power graph. I was literally waiting for attack  from every side and making forecasts how it can develop for m.

THis is not my style, I prefer to make the biggest army and choose instead of being chosen. Good that I have finally fallen from skies.

Now I have 3 options:
1) attack Nyles because he can never compete with me in reinforcing race. I can swarm him with knights but jannisaries will be deadly against him

2) attack pindicator and/or get more land from Stardoors. I believe there is a chance that Nyles turns his waves on pindicator and I only need to be in the right place.

3) attack them both. This sounds fun and crazy at equal proportions. I have resources to do it especially if they indeed attack each other. If they dont I think I still have a chance. Why is it bad to attack just one of them? There is a risk that another one joins either on the same side when I do not expect bringing a brand new stack by friendly roads or simply hit me from the other side. Honestly thats what I would do on their place.

Lets see how it develops anyway.