[SPOILER] PB37 Dark Savant tries not to be a blatant MP n00b

[ipecac]

Turn finally rolled ... I can't get to it just yet, but:

Coeurva just captured a size 7 city of Krill's.

Gavagai is suddenly whipping a bunch of what I'm guessing are knights, after whipping nothing the past few turns.  Though he must have had knights in production anyway to be doing this.

I don't know just yet what the best response should be.

Build pikes? And cats are always useful.

[Dark Savant]

t148:

dtay offers straight-up Open Borders.  Global politics aside, that isn't going to get me that much, is it?  Well ... hmm ... we've actually been at peace long enough to rebuild much of the peacetime trade bonus.  Still, I already have live treaties with both Gavagai and Krill where I do get the full +150% bonus.  I'm going to turn this down and look around first, at least.

I wish I had a much better feel for what OB gets the other player ... Okay, it does turn out that OB gets me non-trivial additional commerce; some trade routs are down to +2, since my trade with yuris125 is pretty much gone.  Still, this is going to get dtay more than me ... but he has OB with GermanJoey and Krill, so it won't be that much, will it?  I don't know where the city Coeurva took from Krill is, so I'm going to re-offer with World Maps attached.  It beats trading with any of the other players who have taken cities from me.  

GP #3 turns out to be an Engineer.  Oh well, there's nothing good for him to rush anyway; I pop Golden Age #2.  Optics arrived this turn.

I'm going to need some combination of Pacifism and the National Epic to push out Great People for GA #3, aren't I.  I'm ... not sure that's ever going to happen.

Coeurva and Gavagai both have Astronomy.  Well, I can research that in ~10 turns with the Golden Age, or get both Guilds and Gunpowder in ~9.  I think I have to do the latter; Guilds is due in 3.

I have to rethink my plan to build a lot of caravels -- the time for that was when I was first thinking of researching it; it's too late now.  Okay, so fewer caravels, more pikes and catapults.

I don't know whom Gavagai is going to attack.  He's got Open Borders with two other players, and they're Krill and me.    Okay, so pikes and catapults bordering Gavagai.

Since we've got OB with Gavagai, I have a couple units poke into his territory.  Oh, he has an attack stack there just out of sight of Castleview -- 4 swords, 3 crossbows, 2 catapults, 1 horse archer.  That's not enough to seriously threaten Castleview, but it might be if a half-dozen knights join the party.

[Dark Savant]

t149:

I rolled the turn, but I probably should do way more to show the tactical situation here -- since I don't have a great grasp of what goes in MP war, and I'm not going to be eliminated imminently after all.  I haven't touched t150 yet.

dtay accepted OB+WM, so I have replacements for the trade routes I lost to Yuri.  It's rather one-sided in his favor nonetheless, so I'm still wondering if that was a mistake.

Yuri's last city fell this turn, so at least I won't be the first gone.  Also, GermanJoey just declared war on DZ/CH/Ventessel -- I was expecting one of his neighbors to declare much earlier than this.

Where are these galleons of Coeurva's going?  He can't attack me for a few more turns.  Does he think I can't see those galleons?  I started a longbow in Tularean Forest to whip it next turn; that one will hang out on the forest so he doesn't have anywhere to land, which I can manage JUST in time in case he's planning an imminent attack.



Our Sentry chariot has tea with Gavagai's attack stack.  (That elephant stack is only 1 elephant + 1 chariot.)



Both Marsin and Izmir are garrisoned by just 1 archer apiece.  My entire navy in the area is 1 galley, though -- I'm working on fixing that, I was focusing on not losing cities before.

GermanJoey is reducing his defenses of Portsmith -- this is now something I can crack.

[Dark Savant]

I now have 1 caravel, 2 triremes, and 5 galleys on the eastern sea total (one of these galleys can't be used to attack Coeurva).  I'm wondering what to do about military here: try to attack someone's islands (either Coeurva or GermanJoey -- they're both already at war with someone else), or just do all I can to hold the last island city I have near Coeurva?  Krill's triremes are still chilling in the area, too.  Maybe they're staying out of the way of Coeurva's galleons now? 

I'd be attacking with a bunch of swords, axes, catapults/trebuchets, and crossbows/longbows -- the only reason I'm even thinking about this is 8-10 of those is still quite a lot.

I don't know for sure if GermanJoey has Astronomy -- I still have seen no units from him past triremes/swords, and he did just declare war against DZ.
 
I don't have enough of a navy on the western sea to really think about anything more than defense there.  JR4's island cities in the area are relatively heavily fortified; I should build more galleys/caravels in the area anyway.

My best guess is that Gavagai had that stack ready to attack in case I collapsed, but it looks like I've done enough to prevent that at least.  

[Dark Savant]

t150:

Coeurva's galleons move in position to fork Tularean Forest and Fountain Head.  I move to try to cover against that.

The Sentry chariot doesn't find much military in Gavagai's territory -- a couple of random knights, nothing alarming though.

Here's my possibly-hilariously-inadequate stack of thrown-together units, moved in such a way that I don't have to make up my mind what to attack just yet:




I can't do much without galleons, but I feel I have to try something.

[Dark Savant]

Still t150:

Krill just captured a small city of Coeurva's -- I should be able to see where when I log in next.

GermanJoey has captured the first city of DZ/CH/ex-Ventessel.

[Dark Savant]

t151:

Guilds comes in.  I think I'm going to interrupt my plan to go straight for Gunpowder and just grab Horseback Riding in 1 turn.

GermanJoey continues to take cities of DZ/CH/ex-Ventessel.  The White Walkers are finally dying out, it seems.  

GermanJoey also offers me Open Borders.  I'm going to do the "turn down and look around" deal here.  Okay, that might get me as much as +2 commerce in trade, since we don't have much of a peace bonus.  Trading with one of dtay or GermanJoey is a net profit for the other, but not by a ton.  The second trade would be a ton.  The only reason to accept is to not get attacked.

Gavagai has some knights which he just produced.

Coeurva is suddenly whipping a lot of stuff.  He's got these galleons on the border:



I whip the longbow in Fountain Head and move a couple extra troops in.  The peace treaty we have is going to expire soon.

Also, the city Krill captured is the small one I originally founded near him.  So the Incest Empire must have something in the area.

Okay, possibly-hilariously-inadequate stack moves in.



Alas, Regna's borders recently expanded, so Coeurva can see this.

I'm going to offer a NAP with GermanJoey.  He's threatening to take a significant lead, but I feel I also can't attack him unless one of the other major powers also does.

[Dark Savant]

Still t151:

Okay, so Krill actually had what it took to capture Regna before I could do so myself -- I thought I'd have a couple more turns for that.  He must have some serious force in the area.  He accidentally liberated the city to me, so we probably have to reload.

Once we reload and he razes (I'm not sure why he'd raze instead of capturing), I'm going to try to re-establish a presence there.  I can have the nearest island city start a settler and whip it the next turn for 4 pop.  I'm not sure I can scramble enough defense there quickly enough but I'm going to try.

Possibly-hilariously-inadequate stack can retake Emerald Island, which is still only guarded by 1 unit -- I thought Coeurva would reinforce it properly, but if Krill is hitting him this hard he might not be able to.

I think I can withstand whatever Coeurva tries to throw at me on the other sea, or by land, as long as there's someone else attacking.

[ipecac]

For the record: liberating a city is not the same as the average city gift, and can't be abused to the extent of the latter. If unit gifts are left on, I don't see why someone else can't help you recapture your city and liberate it back to you.

This is probably moot for this game since Krill didn't intend to liberate but might be worth discussing for future ones.

[Dark Savant]

For the record: liberating a city is not the same as the average city gift, and can't be abused to the extent of the latter. If unit gifts are left on, I don't see why someone else can't help you recapture your city and liberate it back to you.

This is probably moot for this game since Krill didn't intend to liberate but might be worth discussing for future ones.

Well, consensus seems to be that it's still abusive, though I'm not sure what the concern is.  I thought the big problem with city gifting was with people playing kingmaker by giving cities to your enemy's enemies.

There's other drama going on with ... whatever Coeurva did; I don't know what happened, and can't really know without spoiling myself.

While we wait for that to sort itself out ... it's possible Gavagai is going to take his just-produced knights and try to run them past our fortified border.  That means I may need more pikes and shouldn't wait for our UU.

How much of a threat is that?  I already have spear/warrior pairs on standby in our interior cities just in case a few two-movers get past, but that won't hold up against a half-dozen knights.  Well ... actually this is kind of moot because I'll know by next turn already where his knights are going, but it'd be nice to know in general.