RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Zara of the Ottomans

[Sockboy]

Guys, Had a look ingame and I think we've got decent odds at surviving. WK is right that Carthage's attack will make or break the offence, since us rolling poorly v their first units makes it very difficult for us to win later battles. I don't think we'll get to promote/Heal as easily as I'd like, since I'm pretty sure that xp gets applied the turn after in a pitboss game This is a bit unfortunate. The good news is that all the 2-movers have been pulled out of Fort Klamath, which means what strikes at Turan is their entire attack force! If we survive here, then they're on the defensive. Although we probably will be too

I think getting both Chariots into the city is probably a good idea, but I think we definitely want our medic chariot in there since the only time our enemies get to both move before us is:

England <- turn rolls <- Carthage moves <- Us

If I'm not mistaken the healing takes place on the turn roll, so having a medic in the city could be a big deal for us, assuming we survive England's barrage.

This turn we can road to allow our catapults to get into striking range for next turn (move to 2N1W of Turan) either to crush their attack or to claim some vengeance. Importantly the road tile to the N of Turan should remain in our cultural control (it's 4th ring of Aquilonia), not allowing them a chance to strike/flank our catapults on their turn even if Turan falls. In the event of Turan falling (or seeming likely to fall) we should pull back to this tile and not chop the forest.

WK Looks lke whipping the jannisary in Zingara was a good move , we'll get our worker out as well We should discuss how many units to move out of Zingara along with our catapults, not point using our cats to barrage them and not having the attacking units to finish them off.

Fingers Crossed Guys!

[WarriorKnight]

So... How did it go I hear you ask?

Well, Carthage didn't move in at all.

They did just get Gunpowder though, so they might be upgrading everything to Cuirasers. But even if they are, Turan gets its border pop next turn which means that they can't 1 move our city.

I still reinforced it, just in case England decided they want to move in (I doubt it but better safe than sorry).

Also Carthage moved their sentry away from the protection of their 2 pikes for some reason, so I took the liberty of killing it.

Also we got our Globe plan back on track. We might finish it just in time, since HRE predicts 5-6 turns left for RP and Portugal should be ~8 turns for Rifling.

[WarriorKnight]

So I was looking at Sabotage Production costs for PAT. The one that stands out the most is the Mayan capital, who has a cost of ~3500. That's a wonder right there, probably almost complete. I hope it's Notre Dame since we need a GA to prevent 3 turns of anarchy in our cities (in a war no less) and I don't really want to decide between that and ND. (Others will high counts are Krill and Mali)

Another bit of good news is that Turan has expanded borders, which means we can see the ministack where the English units are fortified. The Carthage 2 move units aren't there for some reason (nor are they in Fort) so I dunno where they have gone.

I've sent the Rifles/Cavs attack proposal to India again since the attack on Turan overshadowed that a bit, and it would be nice to know what they think of an attack.

[Sockboy]

Great news about the botched attack Border pops make me feel much safer, especially sinc we get vision of a heap of their tiles now. Gotta love being Creative

I've logged in and put up worker signs WK. I've also got a few build things to discuss.

1) Brythunia completes it's Barracks this turn, I think we should get it onto a jann next, although I'm not sure there's time to squeeze one out before we need to start prebuilding a cav here.

2) Nemedia completes The National Epic next turn, I'd like to put it on a university next. Thoughts?

3) Koth is on a Jann at the moment (2t), only problem is it doesn't have a barracks yet, I was thinking we could leave the jann at almost complete, then finish a barracks the complete the jann to get the promo. I don't think we'll need the Jann in the next few turns, but if we leave him at 1t away from completion then it's easy to get him out if necessary. Did we want any more missionaries out from here, or are we straight onto Janns?

4) Stygia is almost finished it's library are we going straight to university here? Or do we want to slip in a courthouse/hammam/barracks/other?

5) Turan is on a forge, is a monastery better here? I'm a bit torn either way. Forge is better long term, but quicker culture is better short term. It would also give us a place to get missionaries out once we move to Theocracy. Thoughts?

In other discussion, we've got two workers down near Krill's border. if we road that tile we can move units from Zingara straight into a forest on Krills border. Would be nice to station a jann in the forest there once we have one spare. Also the knight who is acting as a setnry for us W of Koth could probably move a touch further south now that Khitai has popped borders.

Lastly there is a tile where we can station our cats to strike out of either Zingara or Turan in a single turn, although we need to road another tile near Turan. Once we've got a few more janns up for defence down near Zingara it might be worth stationing the cats here for a more mobile defence.

[Sockboy]

oh and because I don't like unanswered questions, I spent the lat half hour trying to find the espionage formula that T-hawk provides from time to time. (It's really hard to use the search tool for the forums when you know there are threads that you shouldn't be looking at!) Here's the data for those who want to check my homework.

Mayan spending v us = 28 ESP
City View = 401 ESP
Sabotage Production = 3334 ESP

So I got a figure around 355 hammers for the big build in the Mayan capital. TBH though without checking the ESP screens every turn for the next few turn we won't know if people are doing partial builds to get whips into wonders, only if people are building them straight up. If my numbers are right then we should still be pretty much locks for ND (which I think we should take if we can get it). Might be worth waiting until near the end of the turn that the GE pops to check if anyone is building wonders via the ESP screen to makes sure we don't burn him on a tie.

Then I guess we need to work out how long till the next GP so we can trigger a GA. 5 specialists in Nemedia will get us a GP in around 10 turn I think, so I think we can get the next one out soon enough for a civics swap, provided that PAT don't get rifling absurdly early.

[WarriorKnight]

1) Brythunia completes it's Barracks this turn, I think we should get it onto a jann next, although I'm not sure there's time to squeeze one out before we need to start prebuilding a cav here.

I don't really know. I think I would prefer to keep it on infra since it's going to be hard to build stuff later.

Also, we're running out of improved tiles here. Should we cottage over some of the farms here?

2) Nemedia completes The National Epic next turn, I'd like to put it on a university next. Thoughts?

No complaints here.

3) Koth is on a Jann at the moment (2t), only problem is it doesn't have a barracks yet, I was thinking we could leave the jann at almost complete, then finish a barracks the complete the jann to get the promo. I don't think we'll need the Jann in the next few turns, but if we leave him at 1t away from completion then it's easy to get him out if necessary. Did we want any more missionaries out from here, or are we straight onto Janns?

Whoops, forgot about the barracks, better put that in.

Dunno about the missionaries, I switched to a Jannie in response to PAT, but missionaries is probably better since soon we won't be able to build any.

4) Stygia is almost finished it's library are we going straight to university here? Or do we want to slip in a courthouse/hammam/barracks/other?

I think Uni is a bit of overkill at this size. If it still has enough happy/health (3 sizes for both) then maybe a courthouse? If not a Hammam.

5) Turan is on a forge, is a monastery better here? I'm a bit torn either way. Forge is better long term, but quicker culture is better short term. It would also give us a place to get missionaries out once we move to Theocracy. Thoughts?

Hmmm, since Sci Method is right around the corner (10-15 turns?), building a monastery seems a bit of a waste. Then again, if we aren't teching it we can always delay aquiring it.

Given that Turan probably won't have much long term potential, switching to a monastery might work.

In other discussion, we've got two workers down near Krill's border. if we road that tile we can move units from Zingara straight into a forest on Krills border. Would be nice to station a jann in the forest there once we have one spare. Also the knight who is acting as a setnry for us W of Koth could probably move a touch further south now that Khitai has popped borders.

Might be worth doing to scare PAT a bit. Although moving the Knight is kinda risky

Lastly there is a tile where we can station our cats to strike out of either Zingara or Turan in a single turn, although we need to road another tile near Turan. Once we've got a few more janns up for defence down near Zingara it might be worth stationing the cats here for a more mobile defence.

Might be worth doing too, although the workers near Turan should be improving the city and not building roads (although we do need roads there at some point)

oh and because I don't like unanswered questions, I spent the lat half hour trying to find the espionage formula that T-hawk provides from time to time. (It's really hard to use the search tool for the forums when you know there are threads that you shouldn't be looking at!) Here's the data for those who want to check my homework.

Mayan spending v us = 28 ESP
City View = 401 ESP
Sabotage Production = 3334 ESP

So I got a figure around 355 hammers for the big build in the Mayan capital. TBH though without checking the ESP screens every turn for the next few turn we won't know if people are doing partial builds to get whips into wonders, only if people are building them straight up. If my numbers are right then we should still be pretty much locks for ND (which I think we should take if we can get it). Might be worth waiting until near the end of the turn that the GE pops to check if anyone is building wonders via the ESP screen to makes sure we don't burn him on a tie.

OK, so not quite completed yet. We should try and track the numbers though since we're some 4 turns from it.

Then I guess we need to work out how long till the next GP so we can trigger a GA. 5 specialists in Nemedia will get us a GP in around 10 turn I think, so I think we can get the next one out soon enough for a civics swap, provided that PAT don't get rifling absurdly early.

OK, that sounds good. If ND falls then we should try for an artist instead for a bomb somewhere.

[WarriorKnight]

Checked in-game and liked most of the suggestions you put down. I do have a few questions though:



You seem to have the Globe plan under control with the workers, but should we maybe farm the tile 1W of the city? I see that you also have 1W2S marked as a farm but that can also be worked by Koth, and during the draft phase it's best if Ophir only works tiles that it can only work (since there won't be many of them due to drafting).



Maybe instead of farming one of the precious river tiles, we could farm the grass tile near the lake and use another river cottage? Probably doesn't make too much difference in the end though (if we work the farm first anyway, it's better on the river for the bonus commerce).



Now that we seem to be approaching the improved tile limit at Brythunia, should we maybe cottage some of the farms or the plains? As probably our best research city, we could do with some more cottages here.

[Sockboy]

Yeah, keep checking out what I'm doing It's best to have all of us on the same page with micro and two (or three or four) eyes are better than one.

I thought we had a discussion back a whiles about whether to bulldoze any cottages around Ophir and I thought we agreed not to. Personally I think it's best to replace both of those tiles with farms (the grassforest and the cottage) since Koth always needs more food and Ophir needs at least one more farm. The chop needs to go for the globe though. I'll get that cottage farmed over after that's done.

Khitai, my thoughts were that the tiles I've marked for farms were the ones most likely to come under cultural pressure from our neighbours, and I would prefer to lose a farm rather than a town. If you think that's a non-issue, then what you suggest makes sense, it's better to farm the lakeside tile and cottage up along the river. I think it'll be our second ring v their third rings, so I'd guess they're safe, but not sure. Also we should check if there's any chance we can steal the 2N1E tile from Ruff's control.

Brythunia is running out of improved tiles but I think it's also getting close to the happy cap. Maybe we need to start stationing some MPs here too? Cottaging the remaining plains tiles makes sense, although those chops should be saved for Oxford I think. Once Biology comes in it should be able to run cottages on most of those plains tiles ok, Not sure if we have any spare. I'll send some workers up this way soon (maybe M+S or some from near Turan). Good catch.

[WarriorKnight]

Yeah, keep checking out what I'm doing It's best to have all of us on the same page with micro and two (or three or four) eyes are better than one.

Agree

I thought we had a discussion back a whiles about whether to bulldoze any cottages around Ophir and I thought we agreed not to. Personally I think it's best to replace both of those tiles with farms (the grassforest and the cottage) since Koth always needs more food and Ophir needs at least one more farm. The chop needs to go for the globe though. I'll get that cottage farmed over after that's done.

Sounds good

Khitai, my thoughts were that the tiles I've marked for farms were the ones most likely to come under cultural pressure from our neighbours, and I would prefer to lose a farm rather than a town. If you think that's a non-issue, then what you suggest makes sense, it's better to farm the lakeside tile and cottage up along the river. I think it'll be our second ring v their third rings, so I'd guess they're safe, but not sure. Also we should check if there's any chance we can steal the 2N1E tile from Ruff's control.

Well, both Ruff and India are part of CUDDLE and AWTA, so a culture war is unlikely. Even then, we're CRE. It wouldn't cost a lot to put a cheap theatre in there if we really had to and then there's no chance we lose anything from the BFC.

Ruff's city has been there for a while, so taking that tile would be unlikely, at least for the near future. Might be worth seeing how fast our culture goes there, although it still won't be for a long time.

Brythunia is running out of improved tiles but I think it's also getting close to the happy cap. Maybe we need to start stationing some MPs here too? Cottaging the remaining plains tiles makes sense, although those chops should be saved for Oxford I think. Once Biology comes in it should be able to run cottages on most of those plains tiles ok, Not sure if we have any spare. I'll send some workers up this way soon (maybe M+S or some from near Turan). Good catch.

We'll be getting fur and sugar shortly. We'll also soon be getting ND if we're lucky. So the happy cap is probably not worth worrying about.

Chopping Oxford makes sense.

[WarriorKnight]

Well, news for this turn:



Carthage have moved off the roaded tile. I'll be sure to put a Jannie there ASAP since we need to keep control of it.

I think Carthage might road the tile that the 2 workers are currently on. Doesn't matter that much since they can only 2 move our city.

Also note the 3 possible first moves of war. We were originally discussing the UUber tile but 1W gives visibility into Lakewood and 1E kills the English stack (assuming it stays there) as alternatives.

Also sent this to Inca. I think it's self explanatory:

Hi guys

What is your situation with Mali? Do you have a NAP with them or something similar? I'm only asking because Mali's power has been spiking during their GA, they have over 900 gold, are in Nationhood and you are their nearest CUDDLE neighbour.

If you don't have any sort of NAP with them, it might be wise to start building up your military in case they want to attack you. Even if they aren't planning on that, it's better to be safe then sorry.

Please respond

WK

Hmmm...I'm glad somebody's paying attention to that. We do not have an NAP with them...I'll start the build up...

Athlete