[68] Miguelito's famous last words, and Amicalola's sighs

[Miguelito]

And this time even the fresh GG unit (Yamamoto even! ) won. Also notice the sweet flanking kills, without those I would have lacked hitters to mop up everything. The one samurai who lost to a catapult at 90.x% was unnecessary, at the time the knights were already getting 99%+. Not thatI'll complain.

yuriin the southwest hasn't sent his stack into our territory yet. So, do we go and fight him there, or do we press our advantage against the utterly destroyed, or so I'd hope, Commodore? I'm leaning towards the latter, unless yuri invades before we are sufficiently healed. yuri is a bit tricky with all the crossbows, but I believe he doesn't have many pikes yet, so just charge in with knights. Of course wehave zero siege at the moment, will just have to do without.

[Miguelito]

Both Amica's and my instincts are however to fight yuri next. He has already started to settle land that we have liberated, so let's see what we can do about that.

[Miguelito]

Why? Why does an oasis take 2 movement points ? Could have smashed right into  that crossbow + catapult stack  
On the new city: We did all the work destroying Rome, but yuri decided to disturb our circles. We feel rather more combative about it than ole' Archimedes. Cost an artist, but we have another one on hand if needed, although I wouldn't mind spending him on a GA either.
yuri's new city was then in range of our catapults. We lost two or three, and a shock knight who went down against an injured pike at 94% .

With the attack through the oasis foiled I did something questionable:


In my defense, the sentry knight had confirmed his real units were elsewhere (shamelessly vulturing Commodore ?). And I didn't want to let him die alone on that hill. Nor the knight that razed the city. There are 4 crossbows, a pike and the knight, 4 catapults, and a couple of axes/bowmen/spears. I would think that both stacks still have odds after 4 catapults, but we could suffer some losses.

Faux update from the interturn (after yuri playing butbefore Commodore):


This is unexpected. There is a fresh pike in the city, but the knight is gone and there are just some 5 axes and bowmen. Which means that I'm pretty sure we can raze it. Did he really have no warm bodies to pile in there? Ah well, stay tuned. We are setting up ourselves to burn 4-5 GSs in bulbs and lib Steel, but the game might be over much earlier.

[civac2]

Excellent name for your new city.

[Miguelito]

Comm played shortly afterwards.


The pike didn't even get a kill because the softening HA retreated .
I then lost an HA when I greedily wanted to raze the city with him, so as not to expose a knight.
yuri can kill the C3 knight now, but will have to spend at least one unit on it. I think he's down to 3 cities now actually? Capital, Gruul, and one behind the capital. There is room for a very bad city between him and Commodore, where we haven't been able to scout. Don't know if he founded that one. So that would put him behind Comm, although he still has his stack so he's got that going for him.

Amica, what do we use that settler for? We could safely found on the iron hill.... or should we go for the hill between clam and horse? Might help to provoke a battle with yuri - but the artist probably wouldn't cause much effect, or any at all, on this ages old culture, so the battle might not be in our favour. Mind he has engineering.

[Amicalola]

Well this all looks very promising. I think I prefer settling on the iron hill, as you're right that the GA won't make much headway against Yuris' culture (maybe 1-2 rings?).

Are we pushing into Gruul smash, or is that too greedy? What is the total units we have in the area? It might be better to wait things out and crank out more units, as I feel the only way to lose from here is some catastrophic luck in combat. How healthy are knights? If they're in slavery, could also try to force whips.

[Miguelito]

So that big* catapult/crossbow/stuff stack still has to be somewhere, and I'm not confident that we could stomach it, less so with yuri's first knights appearing now. I have actually been responsible in always checking with the sentry so we wouldn't get caught. I suspect that yuri in fact went on Commodore after he saw his power collapse, and that gave us the opening. If I had fit in a new spy (built a new one this turn) we could think about Gruul, but the way it is I feel it's too risky.

* it doesn't compare to what Commodore had, but it will still cause pain if he gets first strike

Played the next turn. yuri let the C3 knight live .
In a moment of cheek I settled 1N of iron after cutting all the roads. The new city will get quick second ring with a caste artist, and together with the passive culture from My Circles I think we get the wheat pretty quickly. However on closer inspection, yuri might force a raze if he goes about it methodically - plant NW or NWW of gold, recover the horse, and threaten with catapults. But we will see it coming, and then we can consider if we want to expend the second Great Artist to try and flip the horse.

I think if yuri doesn't offer a battle we'll be building wealth in a few turns, after rebuilding a few catapults for safety. Of course the new cities are unprofitable, but need to secure territory.

[Amicalola]

Yeah, we take the land while we can. Gives us the advantage of being able to play defensively until they force us to do something. Agreed on wealth, too, although assuming ML continues cranking out knights?

[Miguelito]

Yes, HE hammers are too sweet to pass up on.
As you had suggested, we might start to divert from knights a bit and queue some samurai/muskets/trebs and build up overflow. Knights have been great for mobile defense on both borders though.

[Miguelito]

I spy with my little eye....


not sure if this is enough to accomplish anything. He has some knights behind yet though. In any case I left a force in position to join the party if the city falls.

And we begin the bulbery:




Next turn Paper and Education; Edu will need a turn or two of research as well. Then power on to liberalism.