[spoilers] Pindicator and Regoarrarr - Bismark of Ethiopia

[regoarrarr]

So we have found a few cities that give 1100, and 2 that give 1300 (Azza's Moai city and Krill's capital). If we want to sail it 30 turns to Scooter's capital, that would give 1700 but that's probably right out

I think at this point we are trying to figure out how to get our merchant by galley to Azzas Moai city. Krill currently has a galley and trireme in between us and Azza so we're trying to assess the odds that Krill attacks

a) a lone galley in the water
b) a galley / trireme pair
c) a galley / 2 triremes

[pindicator]

We're also exploring other options, including the possibility of double-moving with a Great Merchant. In the end, I don't think we will double-move just to avoid the possibility of someone getting upset, but I kind of think this would be legit. Or rather, if someone did this to me I don't think it would be a big deal to me. Still, I've been wrong before about what is acceptable to me translating into what is acceptable for other players and I'd rather not make that mistake again.

Rego won the debate. I'm conceding to his plan of 2 triremes escorting 1 galley. The idea is that Krill will definitely know what is on the galley but won't be able to do anything about it -- I'm just concerned that Krill will have more in the fog and will be able to do something about it. And we've had stuff in and out of Azza's lands enough that a single galley shouldn't send off any alarms. But Krill has a trireme on our border and it wouldn't be any big deal for him to pick off a single galley. Then if we're going to go with 1 trireme we might as well go with 2. So Toonces will build us a 2nd trireme, meaning it will get in 1 less HA. But we can just swap a future trireme from Coneheads to a HA to make that up. Or we can build a galley instead and have 1 less HA overall.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I believe PB2 had some GM double-move shenanigans that caused consternation among the players (GM double-moved to scout prior to invasion and then ran the trade mission for some handy $$$$). So GP double-moves can be frowned upon. On the other hand, the GM assassination in PBEM 17 which you guys are obviously trying to avoid would motivate you to make sure he doesn't die. So what's worse, people being angry at you or possibly having your GM eaten (if you guys think that's a possibility here...I mean it was a bit off putting in PBEM 17 when that happened so maybe there wouldn't be a repeat action here anyway).

Perhaps there is a way where you won't have to double move and also won't have to put your GM in harm's way? Although it was a dastardly act in PBEM 17, murdering the GM was effective....

[regoarrarr]

I believe PB2 had some GM double-move shenanigans that caused consternation among the players (GM double-moved to scout prior to invasion and then ran the trade mission for some handy $$$$). So GP double-moves can be frowned upon. On the other hand, the GM assassination in PBEM 17 which you guys are obviously trying to avoid would motivate you to make sure he doesn't die. So what's worse, people being angry at you or possibly having your GM eaten (if you guys think that's a possibility here...I mean it was a bit off putting in PBEM 17 when that happened so maybe there wouldn't be a repeat action here anyway).

Perhaps there is a way where you won't have to double move and also won't have to put your GM in harm's way? Although it was a dastardly act in PBEM 17, murdering the GM was effective....

Yeah I think that is where we're at - we've currently got a plan to try and get the mission to Azza's city without double moving

[pindicator]

Btw- assuming that we land our GM our trade mission on schedule (t177) we are looking at finishing Machinery at end of t176 and Guilds at end of t180. Just want to say i called it 10 turns ago!

Looking further ahead: golden age is triggered t181 with ~800g in the bank. Engineering comes in at end of t184. And then... ??

[pindicator]

Regoarrarr was asking me to get an idea of how many knights we can have by the end of the golden age. I did a city-by-city calc and this isn't 100% accurate, but I think we can have 37 knights by the end of our golden age, that is the end of turn 188. Assuming galley transport is not a bottleneck then we could theoretically have all 37 in place and ready to attack by maybe turn 190.

More realistically, I think galleys are going to be a bottleneck for shuttling that many knights, but not a huge one. We won't have to shuttle all 37 - 9 of them are being built in Hanukkah Song or Coneheads. So we may need to turn a knight in Wayne's World into 2 galleys for instance, but we'll be able to get very close to 37 across. And then HS will be able to continue pumping out knights while ones built in Blues Brothers and Toonces ferry over - although if we set it up right then the transit time may be as low as 2 turns.

So very likely is 8 HA and 37 knights ready to attack on turn 190. Looks like we're not only hitting our goal, we're surpassing it (Oh, less HA than before because I shuffled some builds around to have HA builds roll into knights. Also on the mainland we'll have 10 cats, 2 xbow, 4 longbow, 7 elephants.)

[regoarrarr]

Does that include funding for Operation Funyun? Speaking of OF - I was thinking we might want to include a crossbow or two. We know that he has 2 axes down on inferno island, and since he knows (or will quickly figure out) that we have lots of mounted units, i would think that he will whip a lot of spears, which of course will be eaten alive by crossbows.

The only question now would be what does our force composition (approximately) look like if we attack a turn or two earlier? I agree with going in with the but obviously the sooner that we can attack, the better. Remember that the knights built on the last turn of the GA will not have the Theocracy bonus (as we'll swap to OR on that last turn)

[pindicator]

Well, we can make the argument that every turn we push the invasion forward is about 4 knights less we'll have to work with. So adjust accordingly. I really don't want to optimize build plans and logistic movements so 4 or 5 different attack dates. Doing it for one is already taxing.

[regoarrarr]

Well it looks like we won't necessarily need to worry about Commodore backstabbing us



Krill offered a world map exchange, which I took.

Commodore is fielding maces and of course war elephants. The city square has 8 axes and 5 spears.

And thanks Yuri for another 1.25gpt!!!

[regoarrarr]

Looks like Yuri thinks something is coming



(He built Walls in his border city). Though he already had 40% cultural defense in there so the walls won't add that much. We'll lose a knight or two probably though a C1 Cover knight attacks at 11 vs. 11.7 (34% odds as knights are immune to first strikes) to a fully fortified CG1 longbow, and actually has odds vs. an unpromoted longbow.

Or we could send in some Flanking 2 knights, who would have ~ 22/21% odds to win or retreat