[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[superdeath]

If only i wasnt spoiled..

[Ruff_Hi]

If anyone's still unspoiled for PB52, we are in need of a permanent replacement for Pindicator. The civ you'd be taking over is not out of contention for winning.

Link to the subforum

I am not spoiled ... but this looks like a big big game.

[pindicator]

Yeah, and you're about to be invaded with rifles in 2 turns so you need to start whipping catapults everywhere and start thinking about what you give up and what you try to defend right now.

It's possible but it is likely very tough.

[Old Harry]

Subscribed. It's yours if you want it Ruff, I can play if not.

Not sure why Mjmd sent that PM, waiting for you and sending the PM if you didn't play early in the turn would have been far better.

There was some consensus in the pitboss etiquette thread that the attacker should get to choose which half of the timer they get, so if you were planning to declare and offer peace and he's planning to properly attack then he should probably get the choice. If both players are planning to properly attack on the same turn I've no idea what we should do...

[Ruff_Hi]

Old Harry ... you take it ... I will chip in and criticize comment.

My PC is a little flakey here and I don't want to commit to this right now.

[pindicator]

Yeah, I'm happy to give any insight into what I was doing

[Old Harry]

Cool, it'll probably be at least 12 h before I can log in. Any specific plans or previous diplo would be good to know. Any bits of the thread particularly useful/fun to read?

[pindicator]

Cool, it'll probably be at least 12 h before I can log in. Any specific plans or previous diplo would be good to know. Any bits of the thread particularly useful/fun to read?

If you haven't been following along the thread and want broad strokes we were at war from t37 to t176. Our neighbor to the south tried to pink dot us and then choked with warriors when I stopped the pink dot. When I got HBR to invade him, Superdeath then whipped up an army of horse archers and perfectly timed his attack to go when I moved my army out of borders; I barely hung on. When I decided to push into Superdeath then Mjmd backstabbed me and prompted another round of whipping everything massively. Now superdeath is and gira are both assimilated, and Mjmd has used the luxury of no hostile neighbors to tech up to Rifles. I feel like Mjmd plays like this is single player; over-reliance on Rifles and prone to split his stacks. He is also a very cautious attacker from what I have seen but at the same time in his first attack on me I was able to kill a lot of knights he left in vulnerable positions. I do not think he has a lot of MP warring experience. Now our economy is starting to come on track but we're staring down Rifles at the end of next turn.

Here is the last interaction I had with Mjmd. That is also the last unit count I have on his troops. In addition, I know of at least 8 catapults plus whatever Rifles he has built. His power has gone up by 150k-200k since he discovered Rifling on t185.

Mr. Cairo has been nothing but a solid ally all game. I think it's been a bit of mutual need for a safe border while we go in other directions, but I haven't seen any aggression from him and have tried to maintain things as such. Especially with us both having a mutual interest in seeing Mjmd held in check. However, Cairo has not offered any military aid and I do not expect he will. He's hoping to swallow up AT and is slowly doing so. Similarly, Jowy & Charriu have been tied up in a long standing war where Jowy is finally starting to get the upper hand thanks to Rifles of his own. I've been trying to organize military aid against Mjmd all game, but nobody has seemed to have the appetite for it yet.

We've captured the Pyramids from Superdeath but there has been no revolt yet. There is a Great Scientist at the capital and we either need another great person or to complete the Taj to get that golden age. So because the leaders ignored it I made a run for Nationalism and have a plan in place to build Taj. However, I think I picked a bad city to build it in. I went with the city with the fastest completion, Multnomah - but it is also very close to the Mjmd border. You can 6-pop whip Taj to completion on t198 if you use the workers by that city to workshop over the Silk tile and the grass farm this next turn. There's 8h of leeway there, so you could wait to workshop both tiles for a turn or work the silk for 2 extra turns if you want to put it right up against the edge.

As for our current units, most of the defense is in our highly promoted knights and numids. There are a few numids back in superdeath's lands, but most of them are south of the capital. We also have 20 catapults but they are currently split up: 8 of them are in the south, where I was beginning to recall them north to defend the core cities, and 12 of them are in the east by Clackamas and Multnomah. I expect Mjmd to hit the hardest there. He knows we have sight on his approach to the south and he's only sent a couple rifles that direction, but not much.

Once we get into a golden age and can start drafting Drill 1 musket defense will get a lot easier. You may even be able to push him back at that point. My goal was to get Theology and Banking done before the golden age as well. There is also the luxury of choosing between Police State and Representation when you can revolt.

Heroic Epic has just completed up in one of the superdeath conquered cities on the west coast. I forget what I renamed it to. King Montival, I believe it was. Superdeath was kind enough to settle 3 great generals and a great merchant there. That will be an awesome military pump.

National Epic is still about 10 turns away and is being built in the city of Benton. There may be a faster way to ultimately get that next great person but I was going for building the National Epic and growing as large as possible before assigning lots of specialists.

Gunpowder was in 3 at current research if i recall correctly? Or was it 5? I believe defense gets a lot easier with gunpowder (pinch) and especially Nationalism. Nobody has researched Theology yet. Nobody has built Notre Dame, Taj Mahal, or any of the religious wonders. Jowy and Mjmd are both getting around 500bpt at their breakeven research while we're growing fast but are still only up to about 300bpt at breakeven. The superdeath conquests are still growing onto mature towns and villages.

Mjmd's tech level is Rifles and Knights. He has just recently grabbed Engineering and Optics as well, so he can rival us at the sea with Caravels of his own if he chooses. I'm guessing he is going for Astronomy next? I don't know why he never grabbed Taj himself (he has MoM), or why he hasn't picked up the free Great Merchant from Economics. He was the first to Liberalism. Jowy is also at Rifles and Knights, but a little farther behind in other branches. Mr. Cairo has Knights and AT and Charriu are just scraping along with whatever they can scrounge up militarily. I think they're both at Engineering and Feudalism.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

[Old Harry]

Turn 190

It's weird knowing an army is coming, but not where or what it will be. Down south we just have a stack of catapults. I'm not sure quite where the best position for them is. I'm tempted to pull them further back to cover the core, but left them here for now. These three rifles shouldn't be able to go further than Belisarius II, but does he have more in store? I put in a few different builds after taking this pic - maces are going to stand a better chance vs rifles than anything else we can make right now.


We have three triremes and a caravel vs 2 galleys and a trireme in the central sea, I pulled the caravel back and moved two triremes a tile forward after this shot. I'm tempted to declare before Mjmd can next turn to put some pressure on Maple Sugar.


Up north Dance Floor is our crumple zone, but if I were India I'd bypass it and head straight for Clackamas.  I presume this area is the main target since there isn't much of value down south and I haven't seen a navy yet (I asked Cairo to cancel OBs with Mjmd just in case there are boats trying to flank us - but that seems a little unlikely). If I was India I'd road N and E of the city ruins next turn and put a big force in range of Clackamas, so I moved a few numids up to try to snipe the workers before they can do that. The numids probably won't be as much help vs rifles as delaying the attack a turn or two.


Finally on the economic side I went with your max hammers plan for Taj (we can always rebuild the plantation if it's not needed) hopefully the city will hold out for long enough.

Gunpowder is set as the next tech, possibly in 3 turns but probably 4. After that I wonder about Mil Trad versus Chemistry->Mil Sci. Grenadiers will pulp Mjmd's rifles and put us close to cannons which will make me feel a lot safer, but I don't know if we'll have time to get that far. Cuirs give a slight edge over our knights (and will be a cheap upgrade at the cost of resetting XP to 10) and come perhaps 5 turns sooner than grenadiers. Any thoughts?

[NobleHelium]

Hey Harry, I'm on GChat if you want to talk about the game a bit. Same deal as 3-4 years ago.