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

[El Grillo]

Huh, I'm out of it today. Think I'll take a walk to clear my head :D

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

No worries. I haven't played much late civ, but again I have just been shown how ridiculous the power of an overwhelming airforce can be... And we would get metal ships out long before anyone else too.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Had to log out before I could finish.

Depressing combat results, lost 3 rifles and a Cav. City taken with a granary and forge in place, won't take much to replace the lighthouse and baray. Enough gold for 3 more turns max sci too.

Will post more when turn is done.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So we have a new city! And the ottomans are gone. He sprinkled xp on the units, although forgot that 20xp over 5 units gives 4 xp each, and would have been better moving 1 unit out to get 2 promos on 4 units. But I guess he was rather checked out. So that was 3 full fortify longbows with G1 and 1 full fortify jan with G1 and 1 part fortify with G1/2 behind 20% culture on a hill.

In order, 2 33% losses with rifles on jans, 2 70% wins on longbows with cavs, 1 70% loss on longbow with cav, 1 70% loss on jan with rifle and then the rest were 99% odds from the units on the galleys. Poor RNG rolling in total, but not disastrous. About 100 gold plundered also, and a forge/granary left in the city. 2 free workers and the island full of good improvements (clams netted, 2 windmills 3 goldmines) 5t until out of revolt.

Overview - still trucking the GNP train nicely, beating out the golden age mackoti. He seems to want to stick true to his word abandoning his rifling research. He probably can forgo getting rifling, as his phracts will ensure his safety. He also took another war/peace with scooter too. With this development, and his Gsci I reckon he could reasonably reach communism first, unless Scooter forgos rifling too. Then it would be touch and go. 

In light of this I have kept on the cavalry train of whipping them left right and centre. We are hitting 80 turns of whipping unhappy in some cities... Plako agreed to sugar trade so at least we have a little more happy. But there is a good chance that we will have an opening somewhere. RMOG are still 3turns out from rifling also, and in OR/slav.

I spent a long time looking over them and I reckon they will struggle to get a decent force together in time to defend all things considered. They only have 4 barracks among their cities anyway, and they are rather spread out IMO for the amount they have. Our main issue will be getting everyone over in time, it looks like this at the new city>

That's 2 damaged cavs on that island, 3 knights in that city, and a rifle that would probably stay there for defence also. Then another cav and 2 knights on the silver island. The build in TW of a galley will auto upgrade and finish to a galleon this turn, but it will still take a bit of time to do the shuffling.

I know I am flip flopping on this decision a little, but more information appears each turn. RMOG haven't really put anything into their power in ages. Then we have a few avenues of attack.

We get third ring in Tar Valon next turn, and I reckon it will not be long before we flip the tile with his worker on. Having a clear road to the city would be nice, and from Tar Valon we have multiple avenues of attack. Sadly it is awkward to sneakily road up to them and I have built about as many as possible without telegraphing the attack, but for example windmilling the forest square should calm them a bit currently. If my city location guess is right, then we can fork it and JAO easily on the hill, and on a first turn of a war threaten those 2 and Jungled Fish. I would envisage covering 2 workers on each tile with a rifle for them to road the next turn before an attack.

Then in the south a galleon in Hazukra temple could hit Global Warming turn 1. This is also a good way to use some of the rifles that we have built. We could also hit Jungled fish like this from the clam tile south of TV.

Finally the Ice path... I have started to send a longbow to have a look and see if they are watching it. It would require a fair amount of worker investment, but it is not insurmountable. Also note that with SP ice should be 2 turns to road like normal tiles. Currently 31 worker turns of work with hills also to consider. However this will be cut in a few turns, and it would be easy ish to get 6 workers there in a few turns to make this happen. I would forsee this as not being a simultaneous attack, but rather a turn or 2 after going for the other cities. Let him move defensive units out of those areas before we slam into him. The other way to do it IMO would be for this to be a main attack force and pretend to signal that we are going to attack JAO with a 2 worker roading show. Once all the units head up there then hit the soft underbelly. This has the advantage of reenforcements being able to threaten this area quickly.

Lots of plans, who knows what outcome. At any time all this can always be switched to an eco drive too. Any opinions?

[El Grillo]

To me, the road from Tar Valon is a huge red flag, so I like the idea of using it as a feint while striking from the ice road. Yes, it'll cost worker turns, but that would add to the "surely they wouldn't" element of surprise

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

To me, the road from Tar Valon is a huge red flag, so I like the idea of using it as a feint while striking from the ice road. Yes, it'll cost worker turns, but that would add to the "surely they wouldn't" element of surprise

Didn't get time to finish before work. I lost time doing calculations of movements.

Scooter did a war/peace on us, nothing killed. Mack got lib last turn and is showing 2t to sci meth I guess he burned his Gsci on it after the turn roll? Unsure.

Their power has not increased at all last turn despite the whips. From the culture boost in TV we can see they seem to have built a settler in Jungle fish, or at least have one there. I was right with that other city location too. 

What we can see is 1 warrior only in that city we have just seen, and a longbow/pike pair in jungle fish...

Where are their units? They are lowest power of 400k. We are around 800k. I think that more of it than I thought is the tech/pop/building accumulation. 

Given this I think we need to declare ASAP. They are still 2 turns from rifles, we can catch them before any decent defence. Our peace treaty with mack expires next turn, I have withdrawn all except 1 G2 rifle from the newly conquered city. He did a war/peace with Scooter last turn, I expect him to do one with us next turn. If that is the case we have a decent window of not being able to be interfered with. Our stack of cavs/knights is now in Baradur, it can move to a staging tile next turn ready to move to attacking positions. We could currently commit around 20 cavs 5 knights, by the attack we are looking more like 28cavs with them, a frigate and a galleon of rifles. 

If we move to the staging tile next turn, we can move our 4 workers in the area to help start making roads about the place. We could send a pair to road towards JAO and a pair to road towards JF. Given the power discrepency, I think this would be better than waiting a few turns for the ice road, by which time they could have whipped a fair few rifles. 

We essentially need to hit hard and fast, and we can have that backup team of units from the mack border if we get the war peace deal there for a second wave probably by the time we are threatening their cap.

[El Grillo]

Alright, sounds good. I can hop in for some screenshots later today. One other thing, I can't seem to search the thread for it, but I remember you mentioning a gold and resource trade as an implied NAP with RMOG back when mackoti first attacked Alhazard. That's not going to be a problem, is it?

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Alright, sounds good. I can hop in for some screenshots later today. One other thing, I can't seem to search the thread for it, but I remember you mentioning a gold and resource trade as an implied NAP with RMOG back when mackoti first attacked Alhazard. That's not going to be a problem, is it?

No we just sent copper for copper back and forth. No specific gold duration implied. Basically I implied a 'we won't pile in' kinda thing. There was no length of duration implied at all. I also view all these as long as a piece of string too though - if mack turns around and attacks us despite proposing 20/20 gold assuming 20t of peace I would not call foul, I'd call myself a moron for believing him when the situation on the map said otherwise. Need to tweak things a little, I'm still keen on perhaps trying to get the coastal road up. There is also a question of if we are going all in there might be a point where we will need seige - should we get steel rather than Steam Power? Steam Power is much more valuable, but a couple of cannon could shorten the war a lot. We might have trouble with their ND city which has 60% culture and is on a hill. We could ferry them over in galleons covered by frigates.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Sorted. I went for steel in the end, as if we pull off killing RMOG we will be public target n1, and a few cannon is probably more useful than the father out infantry.

I'll post fully later, but as we are de facto declaring next turn (if they don't take the 2 workers at 2 sites to mean war then they have no clue!) we should act in turn order now. I took all the important shots I think, and will post plans shortly.

Hammertime!

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So we are essentially at war next turn in all but name, the pre war review. Overviews

I went with steel as a tech as cannons are really good at detering land aggression. We aren't gonna have much time to build levees until SP can come in afterwards anyhow going for this full hog. A lot of whipped units, most can join the main attack too. I was debating the durmstrang build as it could get a galleon straight away, or even a frigate in 2 turns. After the cavs from there and Salem whipped next turn they will move to naval units.

There is unfortunately a decent amount of power stuck out in the west... Very annoying. Shipping them back ASAP. All 2 movers will head to RMOG.

We are sliding a bit to mack... But he is golden with a large pop don't forget. So really from our hard whipping we have lost out a little on food presumibly to scooter and GNP to him, but we are probably still making the most gold/sci turn if everyone was non GA currently. Soaring power and keeping nicely afloat.