[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

I just logged in because I wanted a civ hit, and Krovice have declared on BGN! I presume this is to get the ten turns of enforced peace, but it'd be great if its something more serious. They're also investigating what we're up to, they don't have any way of warning Pindicator do they?

[TheHumanHydra]

I don't know, gift him a ship like we gifted him a scout?

[Old Harry]

Turn 197

I don't know, gift him a ship like we gifted him a scout?

Hadn't thought of that - Krovice don't have any ships nearby . They do have a lot of units fanning out through dtay's land though, almost as if they think we're attacking him...

The turn rolled just as I was heading to bed last night so Pindicator played before us for the first time in ages. As long as we can make sure to play before him on t200 and log in and declare before him on t201 it shouldn't be a problem though. Meanwhile we got an event! We don't need a temporary happy face (option one) and we've already got an Academy (option three).


So thats an extra 21 beakers which takes Alfie over 600 beakers at 100% research . Small steps... The permanent unhappy face *shouldn't* be a problem . Now that we're planning on taking that shrine I wish we hadn't built Wall St here .


In foreign news dtay took two island cities off TBS, started a golden age and hasn't produced any airships yet.


Also BGN seems to have intimidated Krovice - there is a stack of Cossacks SE of Cambridge, some war weariness and Krovice have emptied Boston and Lynn. Does that mean BGN will get to eat Ruff unopposed?


Drafting news - with dtay stealing the clams from Domino we can't draft a third time there. We could replace it with a draft from Jelly Bean next turn, but we'll still be one drafted Infantry short for the attack. I foolishly let Krovice see our Cavalry stack including the three Commandos, I don't think it'll cause us too much trouble, but it would have been better to keep them hidden. I've moved our loaded Galleons over to Zebedee so that Krovice's chariot won't see them next turn. We need to watch out for a Galleon from Pindicator spotting our plans though.


Demos and power. Drafting is starting to show. BGN seems to have built a lot of military in his golden age. I think its due to end this turn.

[Fintourist]

Quickest comments:

- for the event
- Let's just replace that Domino infantry with an existing rifleman out of Butter/Marmalade/Hazel? A rifle will work decently enough. Drafting Butterscotch more often might be an option too?
- Do not leave Galleons unnecessarily in pindi's sight, possibly he does not react/care/notice, but there is a galleon in Gertie at the moment and if we won't play first there pindi will see 2 galleons there next turn
- The plan in Hazelnut? Will the city 1-turn a galleon next turn. It works just fine, I was just confused for a small moment as the sequence wasn't as I had imagined (current one is probably better)
- Factory in Izzy? (instead of current infantry build)
- Maybe culture is just waste in Domino?

Overall, looking good..

[Old Harry]

- I'm not sure about drafting butterscotch at all, are those Inf really needed?
- Not much we can do about visible galleons at Gertie - that's a 4-tile journey to get out of sight.
- I probably did it wrong at hazelnut, but glad to hear it works out... will just check if overflow is an issue. (Edit: Switched to the Galleon.)
- factory sounds good (Edit: Switched to the Factory.)
- domino pops borders this turn, so culture will start to pay off.

Meanwhile if we roll pindicator easily do we:
- turn our attention to Dreylin/cynheard's empire - possibly giving bgn the opportunity to snipe cities on their west coast (he has about 10 cossacks on dalphir's island that I'm keeping an eye on).
- keep drafting our tundra cities, build that cross-continental railroad and try to grab another shrine?

[Fintourist]

- I'm not sure about drafting butterscotch at all, are those Inf really needed?

Maybe not, maybe yes? Drafting coast away isn't that bad, but city is indeed bigger than an optimal drafting camp. But I think we want our galleons filled with hitters so unless you have spare units that can take the place of those infantries I would still draft it.

- Not much we can do about visible galleons at Gertie - that's a 4-tile journey to get out of sight.

Damn, you're correct..

- I probably did it wrong at hazelnut, but glad to hear it works out... will just check if overflow is an issue. (Edit: Switched to the Galleon.)

Remember that the infantry that finishes in Hazel eot198 will need to reach a galleon on t199. So there much be a galleon in position to accommodate that (possibly the one that we are just finishing unless you have planned something else for that 6-mover)

Meanwhile if we roll pindicator easily do we:
- turn our attention to Dreylin/cynheard's empire - possibly giving bgn the opportunity to snipe cities on their west coast (he has about 10 cossacks on dalphir's island that I'm keeping an eye on).

That has been my hypothesis, but let's see how the war with pindicator starts first

- keep drafting our tundra cities, build that cross-continental railroad and try to grab another shrine?

What do you have in mind?

[Old Harry]

- I probably did it wrong at hazelnut, but glad to hear it works out... will just check if overflow is an issue. (Edit: Switched to the Galleon.)

Remember that the infantry that finishes in Hazel eot198 will need to reach a galleon on t199. So there much be a galleon in position to accommodate that (possibly the one that we are just finishing unless you have planned something else for that 6-mover)

Yep, that galleon - or one of the other 6-movers - needs to be 2n2e of Hazelnut at the start of t200 to allow it to hit Crow's Bridge on t201. That means it can get two more highly promoted Infantry (or at least an Inf and a Cav) from Hazelnut...

- keep drafting our tundra cities, build that cross-continental railroad and try to grab another shrine?

What do you have in mind?

Well:
- we know where dtay's cat stacks are (the southern one at least - I didn't look for the northern one),
- he's busy fighting TBS (I suspect he's doing the same superior naval power beats superior ground troops thing that we did to him since TBS only recently got Astronomy, but when TBS gets access to Infantry in a couple of turns it'll be interesting to see what happens ),
- our Amphibious Infantry get odds on his CG3 Rifles (we'll only have a handful of those, but still),
- his shrine has only been lightly protected recently, so a couple of commando Cav might be able to take it,
- on the first turn of a war we should be able to pop three coastal cities and two inland ones (if we still have three commandos by then) - I'll have to look at what that does to the culture and what our chances of using them as a beachhead are next turn
- Krovice seem busy with Ruff and BGN, so may not contest our conquest (although they also won't help, which is a negative),
- the southern region shouldn't be all that hard to take, especially if we get a railroad delivering new troops to the front at top speed,
- the cultural pressure on Pindicator's shrine will be annoying, so kicking dtay off that continent might be desirable anyway

I'm not convinced it's better than attacking Dreylin yet, I'd have to try and work out some attack plans, but I know we'd be in position to do it sooner.

-------

Something else I thought we should consider, given the cultural pressure on the shrine, is that Pindi's shrine city will be out of action for ten turns due to anarchy and we have a Great Artist. Hinduism is covering 24% of the world, we have 3 civ's worth of cities, there were 33 civs at the start of the game, so there are likely to be 50*33/3 = 550 cities on the map. This means an income of about 135 gpt before multipliers. If we suppose there is a bank in there that's 2000 gold lost to those ten turns of anarchy. Is that worth using our artist and delaying our next golden age for? Can you face re-calculating the GP points again?

[Old Harry]

Turn 198

Its late so just a quick report. Alfie with a Levee jumps back onto the top five cities page - that's without Bureau, golden age or multiple artist bombs.


Our exploring worker found another stack in Dreylin's land. Or is that half of his original stack?


Demos and power.

[Fintourist]

- Hmm, pindi is moving 8 cuirs (and a spear towards east). What is our hitter situation? If he adds those units to the stack I think we might be able to kill those too? This might actually make things even better for us, but now it becomes even more crucial that the micro works and we get all those galleons full as planned.

- BGN's GA has now ended. He managed to reduce our tech lead by a bit and we are now 4000-7000 beakers/gold ahead depending on how much overflow he created last turn. Let's see if we manage to get some data reg his break-even rate in the coming turns. I would imagine that his conquests start soon paying off and BGN becomes the strongest researcher even without GA. We still have our own 3-man GA incoming though so I think there is a fair chance that it still takes at least 20-25 turns before BGN has more beakers than us. With any luck at that point we also have new cities and a strong shrine helping at that point...

- I did not do many changes, couple of tile allocations: Endive has Levee so there were some moves that allowed us to take advantage of it and I think I configured Izzy to grow a bit sooner

- I think we want to strengthen Kirby's defenses on the turn we attack. Dreylin has 5 galleys in the hitting range and he might want to help pindicator? We can do it either by blocking the city with 2 frigates or just get couple decent units into city.

- We have almost scouted the whole map! I would not have imagined that we will be able to do that.

- We are actually pretty close to having "investigate city" on BGN. If it comes down to space race that might be pretty useful...

[Old Harry]

Turn 200

I missed reporting last turn due to feeling pretty rubbish. The only really interesting thing happened after we finished though - Pindi moved his stack unexpectedly, ruining our elegant seven city and stack attack plan. This led to a layout like this.


A rapid re-planning session saw us decide that we would try to land our 2-movers in Strand to hit his stack on our terms. We have 13 Cavalry, 15 Cuirassiers and a Knight in range of the city along with some Infantry to cover them. Disappointingly this means most of our boats have to be visible to Pindicator. Perhaps he'll think we're going for dtay?


Anyway, 24 Galleons will take part in the attack next turn...


Demos and Power