[Spoilers] Shallow Thought and Hitru's series of (unfortunate?) events

[shallow_thought]

Hey, we have marble! Charriu goes back on the friend list, to be backstabbed later. Music next turn, try for Sistine. We are really suffering from culture pressure, with EE mostly pushed back into its first ring and JS2 struggling to hold onto its sugar, despite running caste artists. If we can get the chapel it should help, maybe let us run engineers as we'd really like to, and to get enough farms and workshops up to make good use of our pop.




It doesn't mean a huge amount, but with science on we're first in all demos. Saving this screenshot for posterity.




I suspect it's not the important one though. SD has a lot of knights visible to my scouts, in a couple of stacks. We're notionally ahead of him in power, but we only have 25 knights, so his quality is up (although he lacks collateral). The bank in CC is being delayed in favour of a knight, as is the courthouse in IQ. Forges should come on line in a couple of cities in the next few turns, and the HE (6t) in JS2 should help (needs another workshop stat).




EDIT: Keep forgetting about the MS/SD "war". No peace, no action.

[Old Harry]

So we can presume superdeath's war with magic science is phoney, designed to lower someone's vigilance, but whose? Are you his best target? Is there anyone he lacks OBs with?

Charriu's low power would make me assume he's the logical option, even accounting for the CKNs.

[shallow_thought]

Elkad has declared war on Magic Science and is making a serious play for Sofia. Note the knight. Superdeath hasn't moved, but I imagine that will change soon. So, we need to be ready to jackal in our trademark fashion, grab some (hopefully) cheap spoils.




This rather busy picture expresses my current thinking, and shows MS forces on our border. We have 17 knights, 4 HAs and an Immortal trying to stay just out of range of Magic Science's circled chariot. If he moves W he'll see them, E perhaps not. Moving them further east wouldn't get them to the tile 1S of Lhasa any faster, so keeping them "hidden" may pay off for one turn. I very much doubt we can manage to hide an attack for longer than that. They can be joined by 7 cats and some trash including our two remaining swords. Hopefully that will give us a chance of some spoils. And why Lhasa not New Hong Kong? Check out that SD culture already on the city tile ... maybe we'll burn it.




Speaking of culture, it's 8t to Sistine. Fingers crossed.

[shallow_thought]

So, Elkad has taken Sofia. Judging from the stack of defensive units Magic Science has near his cap, I think he abandoned the city (also, no damaged cats for Elkad). Still, the rapid progress means that we want to step in as soon as possible. Next turn in fact - we're lined up to move next to Lhasa. Magic Science asked for a deer-stone deal. Part of me wandered about accepting, just for a turn, to allow him to get walls up in his capital and maybe Almaty, neither of which I am going to get near, but not only is that cheesy but his cap already has 60% culture. I expect him to see us coming, and he may choose to move his cat/welly stack against us. If he does, I'm hoping to soak the collateral with knights leaving our pikes and spears to defend (we have a super-medic to heal). Numbers are very much on our side. If he moves to cover his capital instead, all the better.




All three of the big fish continue to push power. Elkad has finished his GA in PS/Vassalage/Caste/OR, which doesn't indicate a desire to push peacefully for next-tier techs. I'm hoping that Superdeath's lower city count, and thus pop, are going to be hurting his ability to shrug off maintenance costs. With exception of Sistine and the HE we're pushing units in any city except our newest (and even in one of them) that has any production to speak of.




That said, three of our cities with no production are working on GPP. I estimate we will have our three in about 35-40t. Which is a lot faster than we'll be reaching Constitution at our current research rate (60t). Of course, I've managed to pollute the pool at FD, so we could end up with two merchants. Definitely an area of play I could improve - I'm so used to being able to rely on either the Taj or some first-to bonii against the AI at the level I play.

Superdeath continues to just sit there, at "war" with MS. Hopefully this is simply a function of PB39 being more exciting for him, and not the sign of a master-plan. He's welcome to wade in anytime.

[shallow_thought]

Scouting showed that Magic Science had retreated all but a longbow from Lhasa, which made it obvious that we should move in, and hopefully grab the city next turn. What we do after that depends a lot on Superdeath and Elkad. I played ahead of them on this new turn: I'm personally comfortable that wasn't a double move, but we'll all have to be a little careful if our armies get closer. There's no way we can compete for any of the other cities except maybe New Hong Kong. That is a little too close to Superdeath, so I'd like to burn it. I don't think we get enough of an advantage from re-founding any closer to our existing cities - better to try to grab the sugar tile for KB and deny any infrastructure to Superdeath if it can be done without serious risk.







Elkad grabbed Notre Dame. I'm a little sad we didn't get a chance to make any failgold, particularly as moving our troops outside our borders has pushed us down to 4th place in GNP with less than 20% break-even. Still, we got a few more knights instead, and that's probably worth it. Some of our newer cities are getting useful: Olaf can 4t a knight, and QQ is beginning to spread onto its workshops. So, we may be able to assign some of our core to wealth builds and push on soon, although it's possible that Superdeath and Elkad may be considering making sure that this game never gets out of the medieval era.

[shallow_thought]

Logged in to a wierd "demand" from Elkad for crab. Wondered if Magic Science had plundered Elkad's source. So, checked, and saw - a galleon! Well, that's a lot of beakers spent. Elkad is indeed now missing both crab and fish from his resources. I had noticed an in-turn score increase for MS, but had assumed it was a civstats EOT glitch; now I suspect he did indeed get a new city down.




We took Lhasa, sacrificing our remaining pair of swords wearing down the pair of longbows, so avoiding losing knights (C2 knight only got 25% odds). No infrastructure. The swords will be replaced soon enough - pretty much all our builds are military of one sort or another right now.




Seeing MS with astronomy acts as a reminder that Charriu is a long way from being dead. He didn't accept OB, and is flashing a pair of trebs around, but I don't think he'll come gunning for us just yet.




In fact, I'm rather hoping he'll trade us corn. Superdeath worried us last turn by making peace with MS, his knights vanishing and breaking off our corn-sugar deal. I was relieved to see an offered crab-crab, which we've echoed back, so we're OK there. The lack of two health at every city is hurting though. In particular, BeaB is starving through its food box, because I don't want to delay the Sistine Chapel. It may have to throw an apothecary in afterwards.

[shallow_thought]

Bah. Just wasn't focused this evening. I delayed playing because Superdeath was logged in when I fired up the game and I wanted to see the result of his moves. He's hanging around in a position where he could hit Charriu, Elkad or our (weak) Charriu conquests. I'd rather he didn't hit Charriu, as he is supplying us with both marble and corn. I believe that is a metric <ouch>tonne of knights there. It's an odd position - I genuinely don't know what he wants to hit. Take PP, offer us peace while he takes out Charriu?




Demographically we're 2nd in GNP at 0%, and not by a huge margin. No-one is pushing hard for new techs. We're clearly up in crop yield, as before, but this is now beginning to show in Mfg. However, Elkad now exceeds us in power again, thanks to Police State. And that is, of course, before I play war moves like a Monarch-Level SP guy: not totally stupidly but enough to hurt if things break against us. The highlighted square is Elkad's cat/welly stack. He lacks two-movers (lost horse before getting even to HA I think), but if he has pushed to Engineering (no hard evidence) he can easily take Lhasa back - there's a strength 8.8 wounded knight there plus some axes. Worse (?) he could collateral my knight stack on the tile 1W and kill a knight for every elephant he has bar one (there is one pike there). Also, I risked one Immortal deliberately on the tile 2W to get a view but then moved one of my hard-to-replace cheap sentries on top of it. Hill defense gives a chance against axes (I saw no spears), but he could very well kill both (I killed a spear of his that had killed an Elkad chariot on the flat outside Lhasa - he's going for the easy kills against Elkad, at least). All because I was rushing to play before dinner, having chosen to delay. I could well get away with this, but that's not to my credit. I need to raise my intensity and quickly. The era of easy gains is coming to a close.

[shallow_thought]

Bonus rambling time.

So, in a few turns (5-6), if all goes according to the current, short-term plan, we will have a decision to make. We'll have Philosophy, for what that is worth on its own. We'll have Sistine (fingers crossed), allowing us to reverse some of the cultural pressure. We'll have matured a few new cities (Olaf, QQ, KB, LS) and got key buildings (castles, theatres, HE) up in a few of our older but still border cities (JS2, IQ, EE). Oh, and a bank in CC. This might just let us look beyond the immediate and think ahead.

We could accept that, in this game, the knight will be the effective pinnacle of military technology. Try to build enough that a window opens somewhere to hit Superdeath. Or maybe Elkad, but I suspect SD is the better target. He has an impressive force, but lacks strategic depth. If we push out of EE/IQ he could hit PP/Olaf/Nero - but he can't afford to lose those wonder-rich cities of his.

The alternative is to get some wealth build rolling - probably run at (enhanced) break even to slightly mask what we're doing rather than at binary. Go for Nationalism. Go for Gunpowder. Go for Mil Trad. See who doesn't have Cuirs ...

In a truly ideal world, we'd be able to make a play for Taj. It would be fun to drop back into slavery, pull the double-whip trick again to magic up a sea of Cuirassier, then go back into caste with the 3 GP GA. I strongly suspect that is a pipe dream - one reason that SD's GNP is flat now could be that he has reached Nat already and is building his next GA. I'm just hoping that he's gone for Lib. I don't think that this game will last long enough for any tech to justify spending the beakers on Lib and Edu. Cavalary and rifles should be enough, one way or the other.

Of course, if I were any good at C&D, or had actually invested sensibly in EP, I wouldn't be quite so in the dark.

[shallow_thought]

Magic Science didn't punish me for leaving my Immortals uncovered, but he did move up some interested looking spearmen. And moved his cats and elephants into Sidon; oh, and it looks like he's pulling the big garrison stack back across. I took one look at that little lot and decided that a frontal assault would be painful. Very painful. Hitru immediately concurred (almost faster than I could type and post the pics), so we're turtling up in Lhasa. If SD genuinely commits against someone else (I ended up ahead of him againt this turn) we can look to reinforce with our other cats and knights from the EE border and maybe try something, perhaps based on forking Sidon and NHK? Otherwise all we've done is pull troops away from Elkad front.




We can 1t Philo now, thanks to our science specialists (ooh ... or maybe a KTB bump), so I'm doing so. If we built wealth at the cap we could get Nationalism in 18t. Ouch. But if we're not going to make progress with knigs, going to have to pull something else out of the hat. Maybe more wealth builds, speed things up. We're not out of growth potential yet, but we're getting there, with quite a few stagnant cities.

[shallow_thought]

We just got involved in a short, painful and rather embarrassing war. Charriu used Engineering movement to declare and hit PP from the fog. Oh well, at least he'll have paid to get through the walls and the top defender, right? Nope.




The immediate response to this was Superdeath declaring and marching in his knight horde. I really rather hope that Charriu has a lot of CKN's there and is willing to use them. What does he have to lose, after all?




He offered an immediate peace, which I happily accepted, given that too many of our knights were a long, long way from Olaf. I was actually more annoyed about the loss of marble than the city, so have promptly offered him a stone-marble deal in case he wants PRO walls / castles against SD. Also, a corn-wheat deal, because I need that corn. I certainly don't blame him for attacking us in the circumstances. I wish I'd seen it coming so I'd evacuated PP, but it could have been so much worse - he killed four units for free but didn't slaughter / capture my workers. Maybe he didn't have a chariot in range but,as I know he has a super-medic around, I'll take it as a friendly gesture. I guess sometimes limited wars come off, at least if you're up against someone like me .

Here's hoping I've not repeated the same pattern of leaving a weak city over on the Magic Science front. Looks like some serious fighting took place around Cuzco, with a GG for both sides. Elkad may have fewer Praetorians than he once did (that's still quite a lot), but didn't have to commit his knights. We are, however, back in first for soldiers.




So, given that I've pulled most of our forces out of Slippery Slope, leaving it defended by around six units - I'm reasonably confident that MS doesn't have Engineering. You'll notice the ongoing lack of crossbows, suggesting no Machinery, and all the beakers poured into Astro. Our troops have headed back into our territory, the two movers all the way back to DQ, out of sight. In the absence of other problems, we'll head back into MS lands next turn, then fork NHK and Sidon the one after that.




He doesn't have a lot at NHK, and his troops in Sidon are mainly offensive. I don't know where his big defensive stack from last turn is - it can't have made it to Cuzco, and am a bit surprised it's not in Sidon. If Elkad heads up the coast, maybe we can make some more gains. If not, at least our knights are a little more centrally placed.