41 Vice: Commodicator/Pindore

[Commodore]

Well, we have enough knights for our current objectives. Donovan continues to be insanely lucky, though, with the first two knights going against Dragon's Lair failing to scratch the longbow at all. I...there's just no words.


Gavagai has somehow still come out net negative in the war with Donovan. Umr, please recall, was Dutch. Now Rusten is reaching...really really far. Just burned the gems city.

Rusten is still a problem. Winning ourselves half of El Pindore Norte is nice, but kind of just keeps even with Reachy McReachface here. And I suspect he'll have Chemistry around the same time we do. It's still a pretty interesting game.

[Commodore]

It's been expensive, taking El Pindore Norte. We've been debating hitting Atlantis, then calling it quits. Unfortunately, Rusten built a spear and upgraded the warrior there to another spear...so that's costly. Even more unfortunately, this:

I...have no Earthly idea. Also, THIS:

Plus THIS:

...not to bury the lede, that's a single turn's delay in graphs somehow bringing us DOWN TO THIRD PLACE IN SOLDIERS. That's...a lot of mass upgrading. BGN with galleons and knights, or Mr. Cairo with cannons and cavalry? I'm pretty sure that's BGN. So I'm glad we have protective muskets in the build queues, is what I'm sayin'. I sure hope BGN isn't sore about us robbing him of his shot at vengeance.

Just in case, I stuffed the scrubbed invasion knights into Dragon's Lair (d'oh, needs to be another Secretary of War) and positioned the fleet into menacing position. I'd certainly hope BGN would have more of a grudge against Rusten, WHO BURNED HIS MOAI UNPROVOKED, than his friendly neighborhood us, but who knows man.

What I do know is that karma has absolutely been balanced in our combat luck. We should have twelve knights and ten horse archers still alive, instead:

Offered peace to Donovan, we'll make do with what we have and focus on Rusten with frigates.

[superdeath]

i want to cheer for better combat luck, but you have had ALMOST enough bad combat luck to counter the killing of the innocent Carthaginians. :P

[Commodore]

Diplomacy update. We made peace with Donovan, we then had this offer from Gavagai...

...and this mystery offer from BGN...

...which of course is nice, nice, and probably nice. I think Rusten may have pissed off Gav for good:

He's giving Gav gems, but that's still very very close.

[pindicator]

If we're going to plan out how to attack Rusten, we're going to need a map.

In spoilers because it's a big stitch

[Commodore]

'sup, Rusten. Thanks for the flash, yes, I did notice your Chemistry.

Lots of trireme prebuilds on our part. Tech parity with Rusten, sadly, but not surprisingly. RBmod is very rubber-bandy.

[superdeath]

so by my count.. upto 32 cities now? Jeez

[pindicator]

I think it's 35.

Going to be hard to alpha strike him now... But we still out-mfg him if we really want to make a move here.

[Commodore]

36 cities, just like Rusten. Although that might change, depending on what weird things are going on here:

...I got nuthin, gang.

[pindicator]

Battle of the Five Armies?

At this point I half expect a fleet from Cairo coming to land at Pong.