[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[MindyMcCready]

Hey HAK,

The picture of taking HAD,...you have a 'C?' marker. The city has to go 1N of that to provide a canal.

We might also want to move the other city 1E to work an extra free tile. That one's no biggie,...crappy city wherever it goes that's only viable due to Rep specialists + cheap Rathus.

Can we start tacape on a Lighthouse? Those lake tiles,...

So happy about the 25% defense boost for Tacape - does that boost actually work against gunpower/canons units? Don't forget that we could run artists to 1T the border pop bringing it up to 45% if MC doesn't strip it in 1T. Thaspus is also safe so we can move a LB or whatever to Tacape's defense.

Wow,... I did not think that we would close the MFG gap that much. Only 3T for Kerk, Had and Utica to come out of revolt. We've been 30% behind in hammers all game and we're now only 11% behind.

And rifling in 10T while saving gold. Yeah! MC took 7T to tech Rifling,...and we're now showing a break-even of 5-6T? Are you sure that that was break-even rather than depleting gold?

Are we winning?

We're likely to lose 3 cities in the next few turns while taking 1 off of MC. Even trade population wise; MC probably has more infrastructue in that one city than we do in 3 of ours.

Post Rifling,...I think that we tech Astronomy + cash upgrade a bunch of galleys and bash through that Anxious blockade. MC will take quite a few turns to get ironclads built and then moved into position. A quick strike that breaks the blockade might let us re-take whatever island cities we're about to lose. Cavs,...

[HitAnyKey]

So just spent the past two hours taking screenshots and editing them while sipping the last of my wine.

First up, since it was an obvious move I went ahead and killed the units Commodore had left after doing another round of attacking Tacape...here's the log and the resulting overview of everything in that region:

Next up is GavLand, showing what Gavagai has left on the mainland. Basically this shows that it's fully save to move the SOD to the tile 1N of Utica, and maybe even send some more of the Cuirs (and maybe even some other stuff) westward to help deal with Commdore.

Part of tomorrow's discussion will be what to move in which directions. Most of the stuff in Hadrumetum will move SW towards Carthage as well.

Next up we have my inner core with what Comm has around Hungry's lands.

Then we have the Sore threater....

And lastly the naval problem that will be coming at my core. This is my biggest worry right now. I'm sure he already has some stuff (likely some Rifles, etc) loaded on some of the galleys and will be loading up more this coming turn. Whether he sends them to the island or tries to hit my core remainds to be seen. That's why I'm getting muskets and Cuirs into my coastal cities.

The Caravels of his that are not marked a single C1 Caravels. I just didn't feel like trying to mark them all since they are all over the place.

Last screenshot for tonight is just another updated Demos:

One somewhat odd thing that I noticed....Comm is now researching Aesthetics. I didn't even realize he didn't have that tech yet.. So any turns that he spends on anything that's not directly military related makes me happy.

[HitAnyKey]

One thing I had forgotten to mention during the chat this morning was that last night I had also sent Donovan a diplo (Iron+Crab+World Map from each of us). He sent this one back. Basically the same thing, but without the Iron. Probably because he doesn't want to let others know that it might be a military alliance, but I'm hoping he's at least stating that he's good with us being at peace.

Then I took the low odds battles against Comm's Caravels....I lost a bunch of ships, but so did he. I won a couple of the under 30% battles, but sadly my C1-Medic caravel lost it's 80+% fight. So I no longer have a medic ship. Also my C2 lost it's 50/50 coin flip.

Then I rolled the turn and here are the demos (first one is before rolling the turn):

As you can see, we should get Rifling in 5t. I switched it back to 0% research after taking the screenshots since I'll be running binary. So likely 2t of gold saving, then 2t of 100%, and a final turn of whatever gets me the tech.

[HitAnyKey]

Just a quick screenshot spam for this turn as I'm headed to bed. Maybe I'll add some words tomorrow.

Basically just a bunch of stuff on Commodore's front:

And I got city visibility back on CoA, Dragon Herdsman, & Dragon Thief. As you can see below, he's getting 193gpt at 0% research, whereas I'm getting 340gpt at 0% research. What I can't see is how many bpt he's getting at 0% research, but whatever it is it's enough to get Literature in 1T. And he also got Aesthetics in 1T. As we discussed, we're sure Music is next, followed by MT.

My Forbidden Palace finishes this turn, so next turn I'll have a better idea of whether I can shorten my time to Rifles.

[HitAnyKey]

Exciting turn this one is....
First the expected crummy news....Thebes has fallen:

Then I took a shot of the Demos before moving onto my main phase of the turn...

Which consisted of taking Hippo & Carthage...

Sadly I lost 2 Cuirs in the fight, but it was worth it to get the city now. The first one was something like a 67% battle so I was kinda hoping for a retreat, but the other one was a loss at like 85% (if I recall) which kinda sucked.

In the log you can also see that I used my new Cuir from Alexandria to kill one of Comm's Muskets and retreated back into the city to give it a Pinch promo for some additional healing.
Also used one of my freshly purchased Galleons to kill one of Commodore's C2 Caravel that he had sitting on Alexandria's seafood. Buying 2 Galleons for the cost of 2 Cuirassiers certainly worked in my favor right here.

Now for the really nice part of the turn while showing the updated Demos & graphs:

Yep, with the gold spoils from capturing those two cities, along with having many of the BorsheLand cities doing Wealth builds for this turn......RIFLES IN TWO TURNS, BABY!!!!

And we have 3 cities coming out of revolt at the roll of the turn too.

I moved a whole bunch of the Cuirs and other military towards Tacape from the GavLand core. I didn't take a screen shot this turn since they're kinda scatted across a half dozen different tiles right now, but next turn when I start consolidating them on the tile SE of Tacape then I'll take a screenshot to help with planning. The Catapults will also head that way starting next turn. Gonna need those if we are going to try to go after Quiet Riot and Dragon Judge.

[HitAnyKey]

So just to add a single thing for the lurkers to possibly have fun talking about while we wait for Donovan to play.....

In a very quick chat between Mindy & I we are actually considering something a bit crazy. Since Ruff has messed things up for us pretty bad in many ways by starting this war with Donovan and leaving his front with Commodore basically empty of defenses, when he should have been using his Galleons to bash against Comm's Caravels....
With the newly purchased Galleon that I used to kill Commodore's Caravel (after which I put it inside Alexandria), I could load up a couple units from there and go right across the straight and raze Ruff's Capital. This would accomplish two things.
1. It would get us another nice boost of Cash since we'd be capturing a size 13 city
2. It would tell Ruff that he really messed things up for us by not using his own naval dominance against Commodore and basically leaving trash units on the island...Commodore will likely DOW on him as soon as he takes Alexandria so that he can have the whole island in just a matter of turns.
3. If would make it so that Donovan couldn't capture that city and keep it for himself.

The one annoyance about doing this is that the Galleon I send over to do that would likely die within a turn or two. Since It would not be able to escape the retaliation of Ruff's galleons that he still has around Sparta. I'd also have to quickly reinforce my own coastal cities (ie. Bouncy & RollinEyes) to cover for any retaliation. Right now both those cities only have a single Mace.

[MindyMcCready]

In a very quick chat between Mindy & I we are actually considering something a bit crazy.

As posted earlier a space race against MC would be our best chance to win. We're beginning to realize a significant tech speed advantage over MC. Once we get Astronomy we're likely to open up that advantage even more as we add science multipliers to our many cheap gold multiplier buildings.

So things were looking pretty positive for us. I envisioned Ruff and Donovan putting aside their difference to act effectively as the world's 3rd superpower. Ruff would have/should have kicked MC off his land mass either by direct land forces or with naval forking to get a favorable negotiations. That would have removed 4 cities from MC's control further increasing our city count gap over him.

Instead Ruff has completely emptied out almost all of his cities along the coast of the 2 biggest powers of the game. MC's going to take 3 cities off of us and it would be hard to imagine MC not taking the easy picking of another 4 cities off of Ruff,...the 2 nations have had something like 4-5 wars over the course of the game. All for Ruff to nab 2 cities that are probably swamped in Donovan's culture and exposed to first strikes of catapults (not really sure of this since I haven't paid attention to which cities Ruff nabbed).

So that's going to nicely put MC back in the city count running,...where he really shouldn't be if Ruff was playing a normal self-interested game. So the capital raze would be a nice way of voicing our displeasure at his game destabilizing play as well our disappointment of his discontinued alliance.

So,...the game that should have continued to be us containing MC while developing a greater tech advantage while Donovan and Ruff keep themselves alive has probably turned into a dogpile race of who can gobble up the most of Ruff. Domination is probably the game that we'll be forced to play.

This is all in MC control of course. If MC does the good-sportsmanship, but profit irrational move of treating the rest of this game as a duel between us,...then they'll be no reason to destroy Ruff. But MC is probably looking at a low chance of beating us in a duel. If he can't break our choke (and he can't now that we're 2T from Rifles) as we catch up and get cannons defense will be king and time will be on our side.

So MC will probably have no choice but gobble up Ruff and we'll have to follow suite.

[HitAnyKey]

Can someone confirm for me the mechanics of the turn roll. I think this is how it is, but just need to be sure since this is a super important one....
If we get Rifling EOT this turn. And I have a whole bunch of Cuirassiers that are 1t from completion right now (ie. they would normally complete at the roll of the turn), they will convert to Cavalry before they get completed because I would have just gotten the Rifling tech right? I need to be positive of this, because I don't want a whole bunch of Cuirs coming out on the same turn that I get Rifling because of the game doing things in the opposite order.

[HitAnyKey]

Have a couple things to think about overnight tonight while I sleep, so will finish the turn in the morning. In the meantime....

Demos & Graphs & build queue:

Then we have the picturespam of the military front around the island. This includes showing the naval activity:

As you can see....he's got a bazillion ships. And he's moved his Galleys forward now so I'm a bit concerned about what is on them. Silly me forgot to take screenshots of the military defenses I have inside Sleepy, Happy, & Anxious. I don't feel like logging back in, so will do that in the morning. He even made himself a 4-mover Galley that's coming in from way up north.

Then we have what he has along our border on the mainland:

Final two shots are a flyover of GavLand/BorscheLand and then of one showing the area to the north displaying the main lands of Ruff & Donovan:

The main decision I need to make is what to do with the Galleon I have inside Alexandria right now. I need to get it out of there. Because Commodore moved 3 Caravels onto Alex's seafood, there's very few places I can send that Galleon where he won't be able to hit it with the Caravels. The best spot being the tile in my culture 3N1W of Alex. After that, I can move it inside Athens, and then bring it around to the west of Burning Spears to get into one of my ports over there to heal. This move is almost a definite. The question is whether I take some of the units out of Alexandria with it. It's looking like there's a high chance of him capturing the city next turn, or if not he'd get it the following turn. In either case, I don't think that's enough time to complete building another defensive unit. And because he is on the seafood again, I definitely can't get the city to Pop 8 for a Rifle draft. So I think it's time to abandon the city, save my units, and not give him any further XP.
Since the other Galleon is a 5-mover, it can also sail past Alex to pick up units and end on that same tile with this one. Then they both sail into Athens to escape his caravels.
I didn't do it yet, but will also likely switch the city to a Wealth build since it won't complete anything before being captured. May even Draft a Musket just to get it down in population before Comm can take it, and to load said musket onto a Galleon.

The other reason I haven't ended turn is due to the prior post...need to confirm that all these Cuir builds will switch to Cavalry before completing.

[Mardoc]

I'm sure that units upgrade in queue when you tech the appropriate tech, such that you wouldn't be able to build the old unit anymore. People get burned when a) they misjudge the amount of beakers and fall short of the tech or b) they haven't gotten the upgrade right - for instance, caravels upgrade to Frigates, so you can't auto-upgrade them to galleons by researching Astro.

I haven't looked at Cuirs in particular, so I can't say for sure - but if you have, you need to be sure that they upgrade to Cavalry and only to Cavalry, and Rifling is the last requirement that you haven't yet unlocked.