RBP3 [Spoilers] Capac of Mali

[Swiss Pauli]

Better late than never:



Chatted to Carthage and acceeded to their request of a settler to keep them sweet. Bundled the deal with a furs for spices trade. Settler doesn't cost us much these days, and I won't forget how much the loan of furs and fronting Construction helped us in the early game.

Hot Stuff led to increased costs of a shade under 11gpt (also pop growth at Steel Wheels). We saved 3gpt in unit costs, the city itself costs 6gpt, with the rest made upof number of cities and increased civic costs (I think).

Nothing happening with Inca, but England seems to be considering a lightning raid to raze HRE's Singa Mati city. Would be an attack across a river. However, there's also a proposal to invite HRE & Ottomans into PAT, which I would support. Ottomans are up with the leaders, but have no more room to peacefully expand. HRE has lebensraum, but they're down in the pack after their early loss of a settler.

Spread Hinduism in Babylon Bridge and Uberfish. Dialled up a 2t worker in Steel Wheels: now that we're foudning cities again, we need more workers.

[Swiss Pauli]

T148 Report

Our sentry curry spotted two unprotected Inca workers outside Kiwi Town, so after a quick chat with Daniel, we decided to capture & delete them. Although we'd also have to delete the curry, the modified hammer cost was in our favour and we'd get some useful intel. Here's what we found:



Inca has moved their main stack elsewhere, and India is confirmed to be supplying obsolete units for Inca's war effort. Inca has also made some lame efforts to chat today, including this one whilst I was preparing this post:

JANK: Hi Mali, are you there?
Sent at 13:29 on Friday
me: hello
was afk this morning
Sent at 13:31 on Friday
JANK is offline. Messages you send will be delivered when JANK comes online.

I think they're going to ask for peace, but seeing as that would only allow them to send their units against Maya or Babylon, we're not going to take them up on such an offer, should it materialise.

Rome's sentry HA showed up again, so I promoted another curry to sentry to keep an eye on the southeast.




We a couple more curries and a cat on the forest tile. Settler produced next turn, and the turn after that we'll start with a few cavalry. Should be enough to secure the city, but we'll find out before too long.

Away from the front lines, we'll finally finish our first lumbermills next turn. Damned 8t improvements. Made a mistake with Uschi: she should have cottaged the grassland rather than putting a 2nd turn on the mill Next turn, Sabrina or Nakor can start a second farm at Gimme Shelter, Cyrinda can jump into the forest at Steel Wheels, and Patti is ready to start choppin' at Hot Stuff.

[Swiss Pauli]

I made a bit of a boob with our eastern sentry: thought it had 2 road movement left but it only had one. Whilst it did reveal a Roman worker, I thought we might lose it. Thankfully, we did lose it, and here's the extra intel:

[Swiss Pauli]

T149 Report

Email from Inca:

Hi Capac Mali,

It looks like the war is a stalemate untill drafted rifles appear.
Are you waiting for this to renew our conflict or are you willing to end it?

Hope to hear from you soon.
Nakor for JANK

Rilfing received from Maya and GP due in 2t from Uberfish. The stalemate until drafted Rifles isn't going to be a long one now is it? Clearly, we should reject peace with Inca: if we make peace they can simply gift units back to India, Ottomans & Rome to be used either against oursleves or our allies.

At the frontlines, I moved the curries on top of Gimme Shelter's workers over to the forest. I also moved a couple of cats and 3 curries out of Gimme Shelter (now that our 1 movers are dug in), so they curries can cover both cities. We now have 8 curries and 1 cat in range of the city we'll found in two turns.

Rome's military has increased thanks to gifts (from Ottoa and India) but these units shouldn't be able to reach the front for a few turns yet, but no sense in being complacent, hence moving curries out of Gimme Shelter.

Away from the frontlines, we completed our lumbermills. Next turn these workers should road their lumbermills (in anticipation of rails). Carla and Jerry should start another farm at Babylon Bridge. Devon can start a lumbermill at Blake, Cyrinda can do likewise at Steel Wheels, Chrissie and Marsha should start a watermill at Ruby Tuesday, and L'Wren should move 1NW and road (reducing the travel time for fast movers from Blake/Babylon Bridge to the new city to 1 turn). Sabrina can start another farm at Gimme Shelter.

Our curries and muskets will auto-upgrade on the rollover. With the additional hammer costs, only Steel Wheels will complete its unit (cav).

[Swiss Pauli]

Sent Inca a courtesy reply:

Team JANK,

We'll discuss your proposal within our team and give you feedback.

For the avoidance of doubt, please consider our two nations to be still at war whilst you're awaiting our reply.

Regards

Emperor Capac

[dsplaisted]

We should tell Inca we don't think peace is in our team's best interest at this time.

Should we plan another attack once we have rifles, cavalry, and possibly cannons? If Carthage does do a raid somewhere else in the world, that might divert defenses away from Inca. Or should we just develop and defend the territory we've won?

[Swiss Pauli]

I'll send the reply to Inca this evening.

I think taking any more Incan cities is going to be a tall order. With cats to take down stacks, and mounted units to flank off siege it would be very surprising if we could take Kiwi Town, let alone get to JANK food with our stack intact. Looking towards Rome, we might be able to raze Ssssssexy but Ssssssnake is on a hill, so it looks like consolidation will be the order of the day.

Short T150 report to follow, along with a long State of the Empire review.

[Swiss Pauli]

T150 Report

At the front, we gained a couple of tiles from Inca which allowed our sentry curry to see into Kiwi Town:



Meh. No chance of a raid with our curries: IIRC win chance was ~38% curry versus musket. However, as we slowly win the culture war we're pinning their units in Kiwi Town rather than them pinning ours in Gimme Shelter.

Rome moved its sentry HA onto Bill's hill, so I covered our workers with curries and moved the mini-curry stack onto the hill along with our settler.

Whipped a couple of cities, including Paint It Brown for 1 pop to get the barracks before we complete the cav. Will probaby want to 2 pop whip the cav, so we'll need to juggle a missionary into the queue once we have enough hammers in the cav. Double whipped the Hindu temple at Babylon Bridge, which I felt was best to get the +2 hammers earlier. Will grow back to size 6 next turn.

All workers have tasks to continue next turn.

[Swiss Pauli]

Reply to Inca:

Team JANK,

Having discussed the situation, we do not believe it to be in Mali's strategic interest to make peace at this time.

Regards

Emperor Capac

[Swiss Pauli]

State of the Empire: T150

Let’s start by looking at where we were 50 turns ago. The full review is here:

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showpost....tcount=388

However, a quick look at the demographics will save you some reading because this will give a reasonable impression (for the most part) of what progress, if any, we’ve made versus the rest of the field.

T100:



T150:



The breakdown:

GNP – unfortunately this metric is worse than useless in a game like this because it rewards culture and 100% slider whilst penalizing things like gpt gifts and running 100% cash. That said, we were researching on T100 and we’re researching now, so we’ve closed the gap on the GNP leader somewhat.

MFG – having exploded production during our Golden Age, we’re back in pack but, again, better positioned than 50 turns ago thanks to settling our production sites. Lacking rivers and fresh water, these spots weren’t so attractive in the early game. Our overall increased pop also helps here, of course.

Crop Yield – we’re definitely worse off here than we were. The leader has streaked away and we’re still riding just below the average (though a couple of spots higher). Must do better here if we’re to stand a chance of winning.

Soldiers – Huzzah for Mali! We really turned this around during our GA, and we gained our reward by taking the Incan city of Kalin’s Burgers (now renamed Gimme Shelter). Inca hold the number 2 spot thanks to some large-scale unit gifting from Rome and other cuddle civs. Our HE city of Steel Wheels churns our some impressive hammers, and has not maxed out yet.

Land Area – we gained a lot of points of useless land from our culture bomb, but it also secured once city to the east of Gimme Shelter. The early figure was intentionally low because we consciously ran an overlap strategy and little culture. Now that we have Sistene & Mercantilism, we are effectively Creative as well as Financial and Industrious. Sweet. We will found another city next turns, adding 9 tiles to our empire.

Pop – meh. Although we trail the leader by a country mile, we have at least closed in on the average. We’ve been held back by the whipping and drafting we did during the key phase of the Incan campaign. Will be interesting to see whether we begin to close this gap. Also, being in Representation & Merc allows us to punch above our weigh in pop.


City Review




After our round of drafting, we were cramped for happy once more, but some gifts from our allies and the capture of Inca’s gold has given us some headroom. Health is becoming more of a concern. Without seafood, we’re going to have to consider Grocers and Aqueducts in our largest cities.




Our capital. ‘Only’ produces just over 1/3 of empire’s beakers which means we’re not as reliant on Bureaucracy for our science as some others might be. Hammer bonus not to be forgotten though. Still swapping tiles with Uberfish (plains river cottage), and can call on mines from Babylon Bridge if needed (e.g. wonder production).




GP (our 3rd from our own production) due next turn. If it’s an Artist we’ll have to decide between GA and culture bomb in our floodplain city being founded on the same turn. Scientist will be saved for a GA, and an Engineer will be saved for a GA or Wonder-rush. We’re heading to Communism after Steel, so Kremlin is quite appealing though the tech speed of this game mitigates against wonders which expire (though Fibre Optics is some way off).

Will get its monastery whipped, and we will complete that market one day (production started on T100)




Poor old Blake got double-drafted and twice whipped when things briefly got dicey in the Incan war Our early-game military chugger is thoroughly outshone by Steel Wheels, but we’ll be adding farms here and come Biology Blake will begin to motor.





Founded to stop England culture-crushing Uberfish in the early going, I’m pleasantly surprised by Sticky Fingers’ contribution. Lost a cottage to a marauding barb HA, but REP specialists mean we lost little overall. England is upping the cultural pressure, so a theatre is the right build here if we’re to hold what we have.



A really super city that even has a reasonable amount of hammers thanks to the AP. Will still need whipping now and then to get things built though. If we go cultural, a clear choice as our third city (and it can also steal strong tiles from Blake).





Developing very nicely now and, with 2 workers improving the city, it should always have strong tiles to work, so we won’t be assigning more specialists here for some time.





An excellent military pump now, Steel Wheels has scope for yet more hammers from workshops as well as from the final lumber-mill. Its location also secured third ring stone and spices.





This city got very cramped for happiness following a double-draft and a whip, but with our additional (empire-wide) happiness and recent religious spread it’s ready to grow like a weed once more. Would have been settled much sooner than we did but for the fact that its pigs were in the jungle (and its corn dry).






Our recent acquisition, and one of only three to have been obtained from another civ (the other two being Sumerian cities captured by India). Has superb commerce potential and is already slowly easing back Incan culture. Once the theatre is whipped, we’ll be able to assign an artist which will allow us to focus on optimal infrastructure rather than the cultural battle.






Founded on Spices, our newest city cost us a settler to keep Carthage sweet, but that seems a cheap price for a site that will be fantastic come Biology (there’s corn NW of the sign), but will need lots of worker turns for farms & workshops.