[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[scooter]

Christianity fell extremely late in this game. Bing landed a Prophet. Maybe he'll shrine, but I don't think it's an unbelievably juicy shrine or anything.











I have pretty much confirmed a few things.

1) SD's whips a few turns ago were actually primarily, or perhaps entirely land units to defend his core. I have not seen a single Galleon yet. They may yet exist, but I've been looking and haven't found one.


2) His city near me I could have burned last time is still empty, and the newly settled city is wide open too.


This is a guy who looks like he's more worried about Samurai and keeping his core than spiting me. I'm not going to whip myself silly, but if I can make inexpensive gains from these islands, I should do it.





Meanwhile, first opponent Galleon spotted was actually from Yuris. I think if he looks like he's actually going to move in, I should consider providing him actual naval support - defending his stacks with a Frigate or two combined with some culture bombardment. I don't want Yuris to run roughshod over SD, but it is in my interest for him to do some damage and feel like it's worth committing. I would prefer to have one opponent in reach with good feelings for me than two who are open to 2v1'ing me.





Bing picked up Optics this past turn, so he can at least tech Astro now. But again, he does need Civil Service and Paper too. Also, other players are finally all spending EPs on me at once, so everyone except Yuris has tech visibility on me now.





Another checkin on the trade route power. This has been a really fun mini-game for me. Growing Pale and Unta has been my recent project that has netted me more commerce everywhere. But it really feels like I'm playing with the Great Lighthouse.






Here's the empire-wide numbers. 55% of my empire's commerce is from domestic trade routes.

[Zed-F]

I agree with trying to grab SD’s eastern islands — for instance if we can get Hoverweep then we can defer our settlement of yellow dot as long as we feel it’s worthwhile to do so to grow Trygalle faster.

The more I think about the plan to beeline Communism/Physics the more it grows on me. I’m optimistic that we can do that, unlock Kremlin, and still win the race to metal ships further down the line should that be necessary. I don’t see any better way to boost our production empire-wide or any way our similarly production-limited rivals can compete with Kremlin whips for naval production and expensive infrastructure buildings.

[Tarkeel]

Updated tech situation on T161, as requested:




(I forgot to update Astro; SD and Yuris have it besides us)

We currently have monopoly on Engineering, Guilds, Banking, Gunpowder and Chemistry; Both SD and Yuris are also missing Construction. Interesting that so many peoplej have researched Alphabet; I doubt they are going for PrintingPress.

[scooter]

Thanks Tarkeel for posting that.

We currently have monopoly on Engineering, Guilds, Banking, Gunpowder and Chemistry; Both SD and Yuris are also missing Construction.

My general feel in the game right now is that while I am enjoying brain-storming out ideas for tech paths and such, it really is accurate that I can more or less follow any path I would like, because they will all more or less work out OK assuming I don't make some colossal mistake. So I'm not fretting any of the choices. The Physics/Communism Lib does sound fun, so why not? But also, I could just straight tech MilSci right now and have it complete before this (hopefully) upcoming Golden Age. So, there are choices. For now I'll just get Med-Philosophy, and then save gold until the great person pops to check if I get my GA, and then make a decision.

Interesting that so many peoplej have researched Alphabet; I doubt they are going for PrintingPress.

I assume it was mostly done for bulb paths? But a couple players did not leave that route actually open to themselves, so hard to say what happened there.


As for today's turn.




The world is going to war. Mine are actually not quite as scary as they look. There were a few small whips from developing cities in there.





However, that definitely is a lot of orange things completing this turn. 9 military units in total. My military is a bit naval-skewed. I do generally lack the land units to do any sort of full-scale invasion. But there are enough land units to force opponents to defend each city, so they're very efficient in that regard. I also have still been building the occasional Longbow. They're just so hammer-efficient for me. I get instant CG3 with them, and other players are probably 30T away from Grens, so they're going to be good hilled city defenders for a good long time.









No signs of a naval buildup at all from Superdeath. Instead, I just find fresh Crossbows everywhere. Makes sense. But his east is still very lightly defended as a whole.





Meanwhile, I am assuming Yuris will move on Kituhwa first as it's a bit of a cultural thorn, and it serves as a really nice protector for Snaketown, which itself is a protector for his core. Superdeath has walled the city, but I hovered my Frigate in the area. I'm hoping to signal to Yuris that I'm willing to chip at cultural defenses. I don't have a big stack of Frigs in this area (yet) to take them down quickly by any means, but I'm mostly looking to encourage him to go for it.





Development still speeding along over here. I screwed up a WB movement that could have netted me Crabs this turn, but that's OK. Letheras will get its second Fish online in 2T. I keep whipping these cities, but I'm mostly trying to get the critical buildings in ASAP so they'll be more self-sustaining during the Golden Age, during which Caste + GA + seafood online will cause them to explode, but be unable to whip.





The buildup is real for Yuris finally. Superdeath is inching upwards, but honestly he looks like he may be checked out. Actually, he may feel he needs to rush to Feudalism to have a prayer, and whipping away pop takes away Rep science, so he's in a catch-22. It's a tough spot.





One small detail. Pale unexpectedly grew into unhappiness last turn. This was just me asleep at the wheel because after Calendar + HR, I was nowhere near the happy cap anywhere, so I haven't thought about it in awhile. Fortunately, Yuris accepted this offer from me. It's especially nice for me as I have Markets everywhere to double the silk.

[Zed-F]

Nice to get that Silk trade indeed! We have incense available whenever we found for it / capture a city with it from SD, but that's not for a bit. Similarly it will be a while before we are able to get whales online, but that will be a nice boost when it happens. It looks like we've identified a couple other cities to grow above 10 and help our overall trade situation out, plus be ready for specialists during our GA, so that seems promising.

I guess since we have the GA coming up we probably won't be founding our yellow or mustard dots soon, as we won't have access to the whip to build stuff in them. If we need incense we'll probably prefer to take SD's eastern one. I don't see any other new luxuries we could get from his eastern isles in recent screenshots, unfortunately, but hopefully he will build up at least some infrastructure we can capture and keep.

EDIT: I also see Pale is running short on excess health; it might be time to hook some of our grains we haven’t hooked yet.

[scooter]

Superdeath is reinforcing this front city. 1 more turn of enforced peace after this one.


Side note: I'm like 80% sure I will be able to declare first. But I do want to make sure. Turn order goes myself -> Superdeath. I offered peace, and then he accepted it on his turn. He is currently up for the current turn. My understanding is it will expire when he ends turn next turn therefore giving me first strike if I want it. Does that sound right?





He picked up Monarchy this past turn, so he continues pushing towards Feudalism.





Bing picked up the Confucian shrine here.





I still don't have a ton of actual land units, so again, a full-scale invasion is not really happening right now. However, my navy is fairly strong now, with a few more Frigates still queued. I probably overbuilt them slightly. But this is considerably safer.

[Zed-F]

Perhaps we can get another batch of muskets done before Unta’s GP gets finished and we hopefully fire our GA, switching into Caste. I don’t think we intend to really do a full scale invasion but picking up a couple islands would be nice, and we will likely need some more troops for that. We probably need a few more longbows for garrison too.

I’m not the right person to answer mechanics questions, though.

What are the odds we do enough fighting to spawn a general and/or get a 10XP unit so we can tech Literature & build a Heroic Epic? That would be useful for troop production.

[Tarkeel]

I believe you are correct on the peace mechanic; it should count from when he accepted it. I haven't played sequential though.

Getting Superdeath to whip out defenders is probably almost as detrimental to his economy as losing the cities.

[scooter]

Getting Superdeath to whip out defenders is probably almost as detrimental to his economy as losing the cities.

Yeah this is really important. Score is a very crude measure of this, but a quick look at PBSpy score changes shows that Superdeath's score has dropped around 70 points since after the razes, while mine is up around 200 points during that same time period. He also was comfortably clear of Cairo/Bing in score right before the razes, and he's well below now. He had to spend a lot of population during the 10T of peace. My tech rate went up by about 25% during those 10T.

[Zed-F]

If SD whips enough defenders that we can’t reasonably make cost-effective progress on city captures with muskets… well that almost accomplishes our most important objective by itself. Maybe we farm some naval XP, try to get a heroic epic and Kremlin to improve our unit production, then come back with Grens and Airships.