I'm ambivalent about the need to reload for ~10 commerce over a mistake as I'm sure it won't happen again, but given there were no combat rolls during Plemo's turn and he was last to play, it also shouldn't be too onerous. Not sure what the precedent for this is.
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[SPOILERS - El Grillo & Charriu PB51] One step at a time
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Congratulations on scoring first in the AI survivor
Mods: RtR CtH
Pitboss: PB39, PB40, PB52, PB59 Useful Collections: Pickmethods, Mapmaking, Curious Civplayer Buy me a coffee 
Well Plemo took the question of inconsistent passive Espionage visibility and rendered it irrelevant by putting a bunch of EP into me, I believe via the slider or some hired Spies. After posturing a bit, he's withdrawn his forces from the border, and I've taken care to hide my own Knights as well, with no major combat thus far. This turn I threw some War Chariots at a Spear to capture a Worker and get some visibility, showing that his border cities are lightly defended and again no sign of his Knights.
In conjunction with Ramk declaring war on GKC, I expect Plemo plans to use this opportunity to attack GKC as well. My Sentry WC in that region will try and keep an eye out for them. If so, the question is what I do from here - continue with my Plemo attack plan, stab Ramk while his forces are away, or take my army all the way down south to eat vanrober while Plemo's away. No, I think it has to be continuing to put pressure on Plemo. Ramk and I have had a truly mutually beneficial relationship so far this game and I see no reason to upset that now, and I hesitate to give Plemo an opening to exploit. So we continue to gather Formation Knights and Amphibious Crossbows, I unlock the Astronomy bulb next turn, and then we put the pieces in position to stab to his capital while razing coastal cities. If Plemo does attack GKC, then of course we up the timetable. If Plemo feels pinned by us and unable to join in, and Ramk and Lazteuq manage to divide GKC, then we can continue to put pressure on him until he cracks. Screenshots, yes, someday. Soon. I finally got a weekend without having to work and it was quite refreshing. Hopefully things stay quiet on that front this week.
I'm not sure how he's managed it without my noticing with all of these turns of research visibility, but Plemo is 1t from Liberalism. I guess it's a real downside of getting the first half of the timer, he can accumulate enough overflow to apparently have finished Paper and Education and Philosophy without me ever getting to see and then set his research in the second half of the turn, while all I see is tech set to nothing or Gunpowder. I suppose I should have been checking F4 techs every turn, my bad.
Presumably he just takes Astronomy here, and then we can concede whenever the others are done having fun fighting their wars. Lazteuq and superdeath are now fighting each other while Ramk continues to push into GKC. I still don't know where Plemo's knights could have gone to, but it's getting to the point where I just have to go in and hope for the best. Poor production planning and holding up the option of an amphibious attack means I will only have 14 Knights available, and only a slight Power lead over Plemo, means that this will be an attempt to raze a city and withdraw with minimal losses. The amphibious component won't even be in position in time to hit Maastrict like I had once thought, so instead I'll send it south over the world-wrap via Galleons. Maybe I can avoid his sentry net and find an unprotected target, but I doubt it. They'll hardly be useful on defense though, so why not? Looking at everyone else's techs, we're the only civ with even a chance at getting to Astronomy in a reasonable timeframe (maybe Ramk if he's saved a couple Scientists, but he has no ports on the outer sea anyway), so Plemo will be able to claim the treasure island (or islands?) at his leisure and raze my southern coast and Lazteuq's western coast, and then hopefully that will be enough to call this game.
Seriously? The turn I decide to move in, he has 10 Knights back in Maastrict. Maybe he got passive espionage vision on me? Maybe he had some Chariots or Scouts from earlier and has sending them in and deleting them? Moving my Knights into collateral range AND hitter range would be suicide, so I've been thwarted again. Two stacks of Caravels are also heading in from the south and north, which I suppose must be screening the inevitable EIMs). Plemo hasn't played his turn yet so I don't even get to see what he took with Liberalism in F4. The other players should take note of it though, since only a few have had Alphabet.
How many cities am I going to have to lose, and how quickly, before the other players agree to concede? I'll set the over-under at 5, within the next 10 turns.  How is it okay to put this rich of an island where Plemo and Amicalola are the only starting positions likely to find/settle it? Those are 7/0/1 and 2/6/3 tiles by the way. Maybe there's another island in the central sea, in which case the Egypt start is just out of luck? Also it's likely Plemo managed to trade for my maps so he'll know exactly where to strike, and holding that island makes my southern cities impossible to defend from EIM out of the fog. Get me out of here already, we're so outplayed it makes me sick.
Wow, someone was inspired by PB40s map, but there it was fair.
Mods: RtR CtH
Pitboss: PB39, PB40, PB52, PB59 Useful Collections: Pickmethods, Mapmaking, Curious Civplayer Buy me a coffee
I decided to use our enforced peace to attack vanrober with the Knights. Unfortunately I'm only now researching Engineering so we don't have much time before possibly needing to break off and return to defend against Plemo. The plan is to cut northwest to a port on the inner sea and ignore the coastal cities on the outer sea because of how vulnerable they are to Plemo anyway. As part of this, I've feinted some empty Galleons to 'threaten' those cities and move towards his capital. He seems to have taken the bait and is fortifying 4-5 units down there where they won't be relevant.
If I can take one of Zulu inner sea port cities, I should be the only player with Astronomy to do so and I can test my hypothesis that there's something equivalently rich in there compared to what Plemo's settled in the outer sea. I'll be 15-20 turns later to any land there, if it even exists, as has been the running theme for this game, but at least it'll sate my curiosity. There's also a chance vanrober misplays his defense badly and I can take a bunch of his land to stay competitive for longer, but I highly doubt it. Shock Knights against C2 Impi fortified behind cultural defenses is pretty close to a coin-flip, after all, and I would hesitate to commit my collateral stacks down here unless I see Plemo move in force against someone else. Plemo and I are both scouting each others' coastal cities with Caravels and EIM of course, and as expected we're both barely defending them. Now this is a much bigger issue for me than him since he'll have naval superiority well until I can limp somehow to Chemistry (in theory only Gunpowder->Chemistry away, but my tech rate isn't that great and I don't expect to have a Great Person bulb up my sleeve this time). Frigates do beat EIM pound for pound, but if I'm stuck taking Navigation and he can take C1, it's still not ideal. I'll whip in a token Longbow or two in my coastal cities, and stack a few more in the Heroic Epic city, but only to prevent the most casual of opportunism. I have no illusions about holding the less relevant coastal cities against a dedicated boating attack. I'm still hoping he decides to eat GKC or hit Lazteuq while he's occupied with superdeath instead, and I hope I've done enough over the course of the game to show him that I won't be a pushover. Meanwhile Plemo just finished Nationalism and is going to get the Taj GA, but there's nothing I can do about that. I'm still happy to concede to him and end the game at any time.
I severely miscounted how many Catapults vanrober had in the area, he must have had a bunch moving southwest hidden behind the hills from my sentry units. So he managed to trade 10 Catapults for as many Knights, which kills my momentum and is a valuable lesson that I can take away from this. I wasn't really forking his two cities, I was just giving both of his defending stacks access to an alpha strike
 Also, it was really poor planning not to have my Crossbows in better position against his heavily Impi-based army, they're only going to be able to cover the stack next turn. The good news is that that should have been all of his Catapults in the area, and though he's whipping down furiously for another round, I decided to commit my 1-mover stack including my own dozen Catapults, so any further collateral will be buffered substantially. Well, plans only last until the first arrow flies, and now I'm in a really tight spot if Plemo declares in force immediately. I'll start whipping in more units and especially Pikes, but with so many of my forces out of position it'll be really tough to defend effectively. |
