[Spoilers] Harry Hydra Tours his Hit Charitable Thoughts

[Old Harry]

Turn 181

We decided on a quick burst of HR/Bureaucracy/Caste/Merc/OR, partly to build the Apostolic Palace (Superjm has had the tech for ages but not built it yet - can we snipe it?) and partly to spread some more of our religions. Expenses don't change much.


Overview of the target.


Our islands and Krills coast. These 8 privateers *might* be all Krill has, but we're going to resist exploring him in more detail until a) we've got enough frigates to do that and b) we've taken care of Lewwyn.


Is Cairo sending his boats to attack Superdeath? Fingers crossed.


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 183

We uncover Lewwyn's reserve. Pleasingly the catapults won't be able to hit our stack before we clatter into his city next turn.


This is what we're facing. The drill longbows don't take much collateral damage but I think we're going to be alright.


Demos and power. I accidentally killed one of Gavagai's privateers. I offered him 30 gold - who knows how he'll take it?

[Old Harry]

Turn 185

We aborted the attack on Lewwyn and offered peace this turn (a delay of a turn to let our units teleport to safety. Hopefully). Given time without interference we could roll over Lewwyn fairly easily, but we've only got the boats to transport about 40 units and a window of a couple of turns if we're gong to get our stuff back in time for the expiry of peace with Krill. Now if Krill took any sort of steps to be friendly (like accepting open borders for instance) we'd be tempted to risk it, but the last time we did that we lost Free at Last and the next city he captures will be our heroic epic city and game over.

Given that he's set his sights on us instead of Superjm our only hope is to hurt Krill bad enough that our naval advantage keeps us safe at sea. Unfortunately he just got Astro and Chemistry in the last couple of turns so we've got a very small window of opportunity to burn as many of his coastal cities as possible before his ridiculous land means he can totally out-produce us and steamroll our island holdings... If we can capture Smooth Sailing and burn Stormy Weather and FlyMeToTheMoon then we might have a chance, but really we just need to figure out how to drag this out long enough that Krill will concede to Gavagai. Peace expires on t189 and whoever gets the first move on that turn is going to have a nice free shot at the other's exposed island holdings...

[Old Harry]

It's been a while, with some pretty complex turns, so I'll see if I can remember what happened...

Turn 186

This turn Krill offered us fish-fish. Now, does that mean he's signalling ten turns of peace so he can build up his fleet and come and destroy us, or that we're now best buddies for the rest of the game? Whichever way we take it as an opportunity to think more strategically. Here's a zoomed out map of us and a neighbour, spoilered for size.

Damnation has been culturally annoying us for ages and The Great Lighthouse in Time Walk is hugely tempting, and I've always wanted to visit Carthage's interestingly historic precincts, sample their exotic food and drinks and kill their people.


We also started a golden age, mostly to help get a few wonders built.

Turn 187

Offering fish-fish back to krill with OB's attached to see if he'll let us see his troop movements. Now Krill famously stabbed Darrel with an entire gifted army and he's been nothing but antagonistic to us all game, but fighting Krill just hands the game to Gav. I was sorely tempted just to get things over with and move on to a new game, but calmer heads prevailed and we're going to see if it's possible to work with him. It's really weird that Krill doesn't see this and has focussed on us rather than the practically defenceless Superjm on his other side (oh okay, he has Cuirassiers, but not many). I wonder why he's seeing the game so differently from us?

This is a look at our army now, we have small forces of frigates in the east and north and our main fleet is heading towards Superdeath. The dot in the west is a single frigate doing sentry duty. (The privateer belongs to Superdeath, not sure why I selected us both here.)


Domestically we opt back out of Bureau because we have a lot of units stacked in queues that want the vassalage XP and the Apostolic Palace build won't be affected. It costs us around 40 gpt though so going back to bureau again later isn't off the table.

New city!

It should grow pretty quick onto some workshops so we can work all the tiles of the island. Until Krill decides to kill it.



Turn 188

Did I mention that Mr Cairo and Superdeath have been at war for a little while? Cairo seems quite serious with ferrys set up to shuttle a bunch of pretty useful units. Superdeath has to be able to out-produce these ferries though, right?


We're building lots of boats to try to keep the pressure on Krill especially.



Turn 189

We have the Apostolic Palace! Next tech is Meditation so we can build some monasteries.

Krill isn't attacking Superjm. This is hugely vexing. From here it'd only take 3 turns for him to burn CS. I think we need to bring our Superdeath expeditionary force back asap.


If we want to go on a naval spree it's going to take about 10 amphi units (losing 3-4) to burn each of Krill's coastal cities. That's not a winning return on investment, but when we decide he's pissed us off enough and we want Gav to win the game that's what will happen.


Demos and power. For some reason everyone keeps investing EPs in us, so we can only see Krill and Gav!

Turn 190

It seems that Superdeath has seen our fleet so we position our boats to hit Time Walk and Damnation and a tiny island city in the far north and kill a couple of privateers at 80 and 90%. Then we offer peace for 1000 gold. If we didn't have the threat of Krill hanging over us - poised to attack the minute he thinks our forces are elsewhere - we think we could have taken the Great Lighthouse and held it for long enough to make it worth while. As things are we want to get a decent force of knights back to the mainland to stop Krill getting any ideas. This is the fleet and we have another few frigates hovering around Damnation.


Down south we find Mr Cairo's vanguard in the first city he captured last turn.

[Hitru]

OH has been busy so I have assumed direct control over China.

SD offered back peace for 1000 gold, which we accepted. That should give us mil science only 2 turns behind Krill and thus preventing him from hitting us with SOTL. We have been building religious infra hevily (we have AP and SM, looking to complete UoS in 3 turns) and will settle our fillers + some islands while building infra. Once we can change to PS we will go full war mode and aim to hit either SD or Lew while keeping Krill at bay.

SJ does not look like having almost any military, our hope is Krill goes after him and we can eat Lew and capture core cities from SD (We don't have his graphs so this assumption is just based on our scouting). Right now we are firmly in 3rd spot and Gav looks like winning this game. At least from our perspective this is mostly due to Krill who has 40 knights threatening us and achievieving nothing but making sure neither of us can expand, while Gav just finished eating OT and has many weak neighbours available.

If lurkers have any questions feel free to ask. We will try to provide you some blood once we think we can deter Krill from attacking our flank.

[Old Harry]

Turn 194

We're at the stage of the game where the turns are taking so long that I don't have much time for reporting. And while there's a lot of detailed stuff going on it's not hugely interesting to report. Essentially the game boils down to what Krill the hell is trying to do. We've finally scouted some of Superjm's cities and a LOT of them are empty, so right now Krill should be building galleons and sending his knights to roll right over him. If 2nd place attacks 3rd again then only Gavagai wins.

We exchanged fish-fish eight turns ago, so if we're going to hit one of our edible neighbours (we can attack Lewwyn t196, Superdeath t201, Lewwyn has knights now though, so probably not wise to attack until we have a force of grenadiers) we should probably fish-fish Krill again the turn before we attack to try to get a free hand. While we don't particularly trust Krill to respect the sanctity of fish-fish we hope he realises peace between us is the only way either of us beat Gavagai. This is the force that will greet any land-based Krillian invasion. At sea we're probably about level on frigates, but Krill has an advantage in the number of privateers he's built.


A couple of things that are handy to know:
- we can keep building CKNs until we have both Rifling and Military Science
- when we eventually hit Scientific Method we'll lose The Great Library and The Parthenon. Also our monasteries will stop getting the +10% to research and lose the +2 gold and beakers, but they keep the +2 AP hammers. So we're going to keep building them everywhere we can.

In foreign war news Gavagai finally finished off OT4E and so is sitting on 3 civs-worth of land. Superjm is actually the tech leader, but with so few cities and units should be an easy mark. HINT. HINT. Cairo (Julius Caesar) seems to be making good progress vs the more technologically-advanced Superdeath (Huyana - who is up Printing Press, Banking and Music, so probably raking in cash from the songs lamenting the cruelty of his neighbours).


Having 23 single-military-unit-carrying caravels (a new feature in this version of the mod) saves the hassle of researching astronomy and building six galleons...



Turn 195

Cairo is besieging with 4 mace, 9 knights, 9 wellies, 6 x-bows, 9 cats and 3 trebs. SD seems to have whipped everything he has into longbows. Will the city fall this turn (no, according to PBspy.)


Gav and Krill are almost touching borders over here. Gav has three galleons off-screen to the SW, so nothing approaching an invasion fleet just yet, but it's nice to think that if Krill declares on us Gav might want to probe a little.


In other news we capture a foodless barb city to the far west and prepare to settle the rest of this island, the other marked island, one more city on Donovania and some empty land to Lewwyn's west. All the trees should make for quick development.


Demos. We're ahead of Krill on MFG thanks to our infra push.

[Old Harry]

Turns 196-200

The reason Cairo didn't take that city is that Superdeath got to rifles, and wasted him. So they made peace. So we thought that we'd like to make war. Another fish-fish message to Krill was echoed back on t198, so we feel confident enough to go get our gold back. Then we'll think about hitting the Great Lighthouse city again, perhaps using it as leverage to get peace?


We began the campaign on t198 by killing two of SD's privateers so he couldn't see what we were up to. We also switched to Police State and started building a few grenadiers. Y'know, for fun...

[Old Harry]

Turn 201

Now let's get rid of this thorn. I don't know for sure, but I think that if SD had left our gold alone we'd be hitting Lewwyn again around about now. Remember kids - border culture wars are all fun and game until someone with a lance comes to poke you in the eye.


First up we sacrifice 3 CKN and an amphi knight to get odds on the next fight, then we win all the remaining battles except for the one that Hitru jinxed. ("Really nice to lose only 1 knight!" ) With a granary, lighthouse, forge, courthouse and Hinduism the city is ready to go straight away!


Next up is Fireball. No particular reason to take this city other than to hurt SD and because it's easy to defend with frigates. We had hoped to burn Mox Ruby as well, but these rifles appeared in the last couple of turns, so we're going to have to cross our fingers to get Fireball.


Our first knight wins at 9%! I can only apologise Superdeath, that's just rude...


Finally we set up to hit Plains, the castle makes this a nasty fight. We may want to wait for more frigates for bombardment, but that gives him the opportunity to whip another rifle.


Looks like Superjm attacked Gav and did very badly indeed. Next turn's power graph should be revealing.


And in spite of our sacred fish-fish bond of trust Krill keeps building boats. We're going to have to do something about this - as Shallow Thought says, "Krill unto others before Krill does unto you"


Demos. Our monk splurge (did I mention we got AP, Spiral Minaret and University of Sankore?) has put us second on the important metrics while Krill keeps building units. If Gav now rolls over Superjm this may all be for naught, but we've got Music and we're building Sistine and have plans for some cathedrals so our hopes aren't totally dead.

[Old Harry]

Turn 202

Superdeath demanded 1000 gold for peace. I think we made him mad... In foreign news we're halfway to a religious victory.


And it looks like Krill just killed a stack of Gavagai's privateers. Nice work.


We shuffled some units around to let us hit Plains next turn or the turn after. This fight and getting hit by the barb galley on the interturn will allow the galleon promote to be our fourth 6-mover.



We've got graphs on everyone so lets do some analysis. First Krill's score has plateaued badly - is that because he's just building boats?  


Our GNP is finally getting competitive (until Gav turns tech back on). Three shrines (Hindu is worth 75 base commerce, Buddhist is worth 34, Jewish is worth 38) and the monk wonders are really helping here.


The AP helps our manufacturing a lot, as does the regrowth from the whipping spree about 50 turns ago.


We're still firmly third on CY, normally I think this is the most important metric, so how can we spin this? Ah, the monk economy and our tech path is making us competitive even without the food that our neighbours have.


This is the graph that spells doom. It looks like Superjm trotted his whole army into Gav's lands and got it wiped out. He's going to have to fall back until he can make inroads into Gav's attacking forces now... If we assume permanent peace with Krill can we stop Gav from running away? Or should we just embark on conquests of our own instead and hope we do it better?


Demos.

[Old Harry]

Turn 203

We decide to run one more turn of Organised Religion to build infra, then we'll switch to Vassalage/Theocracy next turn and really start to pump units out. On the war front we killed a trio of Superdeath's privateers to create three 6-move frigates. We're going to spend a couple of turns bombarding the defences of Time Walk and Black Lotus, then hopefully we'll have enough amphibious Grenadiers to take out the 6 rifles in TW and 2 rifles in BL.


Demos and power. Superjm seems to be bouncing back fast, hopefully it's enough to stop Gav rolling straight over him. Their war weariness is 220/131.