I believe the graphs reflect the beginning of last turn, so Chumchu's huge power drop corresponds with his loss of three cities, two turns back.
Dark Savant might also have stayed at war with us just because he doesn't like the forking options we have from Mist: He feels too many of his cities are too exposed. This might sound counter-productive (and frankly it probably is) but maybe he just didn't want us to have ten turns to consolidate and prepare for another attack, under the mistaken impression that we would actually want to attack him again if we got peace and/or that he could make some kind of headway during the ten turns that peace would otherwise have lasted.
Hmmm, maybe swapping to Police State could be an option. I like the idea of having a multiplier on our military builds. D-mishi will definitely be unhappy if we go out of Hereditary Rule. Perhaps Sugabala and Kokejin also would have an unhappy face or two. If no more cities need the HR happiness we probably should swap right away. PS+Bureaucracy+Mercantilism+Slavery+Org Religion sounds good to me. If we go out of slavery we`d be too vulnerable, that`s my first thought. Getting those Universities built quickly is ever so important for us, so a spell in OR is useful.
If only we could secure peace for 10 turns, our prospects would be much better. It`s annoying, of course, that DS is not willing to negotiate but we`ve sort of ruined his game already. Perhaps letting us consolidate our new conquests is a bad idea for him. In the short term I can`t see him taking Mist but he could inflict some damage. Hopefully we`ll destroy a lot of units if he moves in on Mist again. Iirc, we have 3 Knights on one of the Galleons there and a fourth on a second Galleon.
The port cities of DS are generally much better defended than the ones we`ve taken. He`s got a lot of Oromos and at least 3 Pikes in his eastern port city. We know only of the 2 Galleons in that city plus the one further south. Only a single Frigate down south was visible last turn. I can take some screenshots of his military next turn.
Looking at it, I think Nambui would get at least one unhappy face if we dropped out of HR, and another when we lose the sugar Carthage is trading to us (when they lose access to it themselves). I notice we never did road and fort that incense. Other than that, I'm not sure, but our other mainland cities will probably be okay. All that said, I think I'd stay in HR, and the only reason I might not adopt Caste is if we were planning to whip important infrastructure. It's not like anybody's going to mount a meaningful attack on us in the next five turns.... (Dark Savant might try, but stopping him is a matter of keeping track of his 5-move ships, keeping our ports defended, and keeping our fleet in position to respond to him while keeping his units pinned in his cities. I doubt if we'll need to do any emergency whips, given our current power.)
(November 10th, 2017, 16:16)JR4 Wrote: If only we could secure peace for 10 turns, our prospects would be much better. It`s annoying, of course, that DS is not willing to negotiate but we`ve sort of ruined his game already.
I mean, we took three of his island cities. That's not what wrecked his game. Like us, (and like Gavagai) Dark Savant lost the game when the map order was rolled and he started next to neither Russia nor China. Then he lost the chance to be competitive when he tried to defend his island cities with a single shock spear apiece and a series of players (including dtay, GJ, and us) declared limited wars to teach him why this is a bad idea. Then Gavagai declared war on him 20 turns ago and did wreck what was left of his game. (To his credit, his response was very effective, and ended Gav's chance of being competitive more or less just by not getting eaten by him, but it still set Dark Savant back a long way.) As for us, I think if we'd offered peace after taking Tularean Forest, he'd have been happy to accept; I imagine it was Mist, surrounded by his land, where he thought we had taken things too far.
(November 10th, 2017, 16:16)JR4 Wrote: The port cities of DS are generally much better defended than the ones we`ve taken. He`s got a lot of Oromos and at least 3 Pikes in his eastern port city.
Yeah, I could see that Steadwick and Harmondale were heavily defended; I was curious about Lakeside, Vertigo, and Fountain Head. (I realize we might not have vision on all of them.) Of course, if most of his military is tied up on the west side of his land, then Dark Savant's east must be wide open to Gavagai's fleet. So I'm sure it was in Gavagai's best interest to declare war on ... GermanJoey!
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So this might be the war that decides the game. As of this writing, civstats tells me that Gav has already razed a couple of cities. If he makes much further progress or forces GJ to take sufficiently extreme defensive measures, dtay is going to win by concession; it's only a matter of time. I don't see how this helps Gav himself win the game at all (I guess he might agree with you that GJ is ahead of dtay, but even if I agreed, the distant-fourth-place civ doesn't really gain anything by making an attempt to slow down the leader, except maybe if the second and third place leaders are doing most of the heavy lifting) but then, it's not like anything else Gav did at this point would let him win either. Conquering Dark Savant would give him a shot at third place and a remote chance at contention if the leaders collapsed for some reason, but this? I think either he's miscalculated, or GJ defended his islands so poorly that Gav couldn't help seeing red, or Gav knows he can't win at this point so he's just collecting scalps ... or he doesn't like being in a game he can't win, agrees with me that dtay's going to win this anyway, and is trying to hasten the inevitable. I guess we'll see!
Well, that's interesting! I guess you should be keeping half an eye out for a chance to finally get rid of State of Zijin (or whatever it's called) if GJ gets too distracted.
More problematically, this may free dtay to think about having a grab at some of your rather tasty northern cities while Joey is too busy to respond. My uninformed suggestion is to either drop out of combat civics right now for a few turns building, before dtay can think about positioning major forces, so you can switch back in five turns, or else stick with them so as not to make yourself a target.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Uh, Dark Savant landed an unexpectedly big stack on Mist island. We have 2 Catapults ready to hit them. I think we have to. Let`s hope the reinforcements on Galleons will be enough to get rid of that stack. Also, there are 4 Ethiopian Frigates visible E of the island. At least there is still plenty of time left on the timer this turn.
Okay, as Dark Savant landed a very big force on Mist`s Iron tile we had to respond. It really was a lot of units, he even promoted a few of the Oromos to Pinch already, surely to get odds on our Muskets next turn or to get better adds against them if we were to attack out. The situation was actually pretty complicated, after our 2 Catapults did their job (both lost) our Knights had about a die roll`s chance of winning. So we went in...
We were lucky this time, winning a few of the coin flips. No more units had anywhere near odds on Dark Savant`s units so there are still 4 Catapults and 8 hitters left on the iron. We have 18 units in Mist and can get in at least 10 more if needed next turn. Note that DS has 6 Galleons in range of Mist which could be loaded so we could take a lot of losses when he plays t190.. Also, I`m starting to appreciate the strength of boat chaining units over a long distance.
As this turn of events came as a surprise we`re delaying the civic swaps for at least a turn. Let`s see if we can hold Mist first and then reevaluate.
Research was set to Drama, which is very cheap for us. We`re easily 1 turning it, with some overflow, I believe.
EDIT: On second thought, as we`re in a hot war a few builds were changed. Sugabala and Kokejin are building Ships of the Line and Skhodai and Danashri are building Grenadiers. We should use our military edge actively. Getting rid of those Ethiopian Frigates is a priority.
A number of cities would be unhappy if we swap out of Hereditary Rule so I think we need to keep it for now. Sugabala is about to grow into unhappiness in a couple of turns and D-mishi would have 5 unhappy faces without HR for instance.
A Worker is shipped over to the Incense now and we`ll get at least another to help him finish the Plantation. One thing I haven`t said too much about is the pre-built Fort chain which let`s us get ships down from Muqa to Nambui quickly in an emergency. 3 Worker turns are needed to complete the Forts (Borte`s Rice and Horse and Toregene`s Silk.
Also, the geopolitics are very fascinating right now. Joey taking a big hit might indeed hand the game to dtay, let`s see how Joey reacts to this setback..
(November 11th, 2017, 11:56)darrelljs Wrote: At those odds the expected number of wins was 5 and you got 6, so only slightly lucky .
Darrell
Okay, maybe I was blinded by the 6-3 win ratio!? Losing a few more battles would have hurt our chances of retaliating since we badly need the high-XP Knights. At least we have a Medic 1 Keshik in Mist so if Dark Savant doesn`t go all-in next turn our troops should be close to full health, especially as at least 3 of our Knights can promo-heal.
Exciting stuff! I think you handled that well; now it's just a question of follow-up.
Where are Dark Savant's Galleons? Also, what of our western taskforce? If he really has left his east coast undefended, is there a chance we can move up there and threaten to raze something, now that Gav and GJ are occupied with each other? (I don't suppose they can get to the eastern sea in time to help with anything....)
I definitely agree on building Ships of the Line and Grenadiers. The ability to build advanced military units hardly matters unless we do so....
It's great to hear we have a fort-chain-in-potential nearly ready! Note however that we need a fort on the incense: A plantation there won't do anything for us unless GJ has roaded up to the tile through his terrritory (and then only as long as we have OB with him). You need both a fort and a road to connect a resource across water that doesn't have a road or river connection to a ciy on your trade route.
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