[Spoilers] Lazteuq and RefSteel's PB51 Adventure

[Lazteuq]

Everything with Guilds I'd been planning was wrong and far too optimistic: Guilds requires Feudalism! Lest you forgot, Lurkers, this is a greens game.
That extra ~1400 beakers of Monarchy->Feudalism means we wouldn't be waiting on great people to pop out, so bulbing Paper+Guilds looks better after all. Or maybe we could be really efficient and research Paper the hard way, and bulbing Education with the scientist? Paper is a relatively cheap tech, but also not important on its own.

[Suite]

Bulbing Paper at Monarch is not very efficient, so I would go for this only in dire circumstances. Like you said yourself.

[RefSteel]

And then there is still a trade mission option. I don't want to provoke Plemo or Superdeath, but I'm betting that Gira would let our Merchant through, and the scouting would be very useful. I moved the merchant towards the border, but haven't committed yet.

Note if we still have a galley sitting around on the outer sea, we can load the merchant onto that and carry the GM into Plemo's borders that way. The Galley (with Merchant aboard) would be teleported back out of his borders if he closed borders or declared war (since it doesn't have "can explore rival territory") - and we could unload the merchant in a port city and either run a trade mission right away or move it up to three tiles along roads if there's another city that close and use it there, all without exposing it outside of the galley. Of course, we can't do that with someone who hasn't given us open borders, and our northern galley may be off exploring islands far away. I'm not at all sure that I would trust Gira (or whatever random other player might have OB with him and a unit in his land) to leave our GM alone, but of course I don't really know what our real relations are like, as I'm obviously pretty distant from the game.

I think we might actually be leading in tech right now.

I very much doubt it - for one thing, superdeath was ahead of us not many turns ago, and Plemo is up by the whole line to Feudalism. Still, we'll be making up for lost time if we can cash our GM in to run research through our Bureau Academy! For instance...

In any case, we're 1-turning metal casting.

That's a very good sign indeed!

[Lazteuq]

T126+127:
GKC declared war on Gira again T126! Now we need to act fast.
Thanks for the idea about using a galley for the merchant. I still chose to send him into Gira's land though, because I think Gira definitely can't afford to declare on us now. 
Good news is, I underestimated our research: Enough gold was stored to have machinery done T127. Breakeven is roughly 160 at 40%.


It is war production time. I think we'll have the luxury of being able to invade Gira on 2 fronts for speed.
-Whipped Markets out of Chile and Ceviche, because I didn't want to leave the hammers decaying while units build.

Question: Is it generally better to 3pop whip macemen, or wait for them to be 2pop?
If Gira has a navy on the inner sea, they could cause some trouble because we only have one galley there. I'm building a Trireme in Ceviche to counter.

At some point I do want to go toward Literature for the Heroic and National Epics, but there might be better alternatives. For now I'm being indecisive and leaving the slider at 0% on HBR.
I should have adopted Buddhism during that golden age. Oops.

Superdeath offered Open Borders and I accepted. Sent a chariot down to explore. I feel like he is gearing up for a war down south/east. I mean, he is certainly gearing up for something... But he must know from the foreign advisor that we have Machinery now. I'm pretty confident our Superdeath front is as safe as a Superdeath front can be.
Graphs

[Lazteuq]

T128:
Merchant has revealed a lot:

El Grillo offered Wine for Stone. I don't know what stone is useful for, other than Moai. I declined anyway, because I see very little need for happiness.
El Grillo has switched to Theocracy and Vassalage. I wonder who the target is?

It is more efficient to work mines than specialists in a bureaucap, right? Assuming other cities like Quesadilla and Tortilla can support the specialists.

We're about to have 13 catapults. I think that's enough for now, so its all about maces. I don't see a reason to build crossbows until later, once other people have maces.
We're already second in power, with only Superdeath leading, of course. Our dramatic power increase will make it obvious that war is brewing. I think the other players will assume I'm not going to attack superdeath, so that leaves Gira as the obvious target. Basically, this isn't a surprise attack for anyone who pays attention to graphs

Question about turnsplits: Currently it looks like GKC is playing after Gira. Then if I declare on Gira I should also play after, right?
I think that works ok because Gira is in Europe but I believe GKC is in the US, like me.

I think its really interesting how the score graph shows 2 distinct kinds of growth curve: The spacing between us, El Grillo, and Plemo has been relatively constant, and we three score leaders have pulled away from the rest of the pack:

Our score will be stagnating from war production, but then should go up a lot from conquest hopefully

[Lazteuq]

T129
Superdeath is at war with MJMD. Again.

I did the trade mission in Gira's capitol for 1100 gold. I don't really feel good doing this, but I think it might be better than setting up a Guilds bulb. Most importantly, it is flexible. Also, because we have more research multipliers than gold multipliers, running at a high slider percentage is more efficient. Maybe I'll regret not saving the merchant, but so be it.

Just before the trade mission, our merchant could see Gira sending units east toward the GKC front. Last turn, GKC took a power hit, Gira also took a small power hit. GKC seems to be still fighting with a classical era military, so they are fighting an equal-tech slugfest. Its certainly a hot war, and GKC just took a city called Petrapolis. I don't think that was one of Gira's most important core cities, but I'm not sure. All cities on our border that I can see are defended by single units.
I think the tech priorities are Monarchy->Feudalism->Guilds and also Engineering. Eng mostly for the road movement, although pikes are cool too, whenever we fight someone who has knights.
I've set research on Monarchy right now, but I'm thinking maybe finishing HBR first is better. Is it generally considered reasonable to build horchers and upgrade to knights? Or too expensive? In any case, I really wish we had some strong 2-movers for this invasion. I wish I'd taken RefSteel's advice of researching HBR a while ago.

Considering how weak Gira is on our border, I think we can basically just walk in after a few more turns of unit movement. Gira does have construction, but I haven't seen many catapults.
Unfortunately, I have overbuilt catapults and underbuilt actual killing units. Anyway, I will soon post a more detailed invasion plan.

[Lazteuq]

T131
Superdeath ate one of Mjmd's size 2 cities.
From what our scouting chariot sees, Mjmd appears to be getting absolutely rekt. From the power graph, it looks like Mjmd didn't start building units until it was too late. Maybe Mjmd thought superdeath was going to fight us instead? Superdeath has at least 16 praets and 6 cats, plus a few chariots and axes.

Superdeath-Mjmd:

Gira:


Plan is to declare on Gira T133. I will move the 1-movers toward the border(into Gira's view) next turn, so war will be obvious on T132 if Gira pays any attention.
Gira left Micropolis and Pigpolis completely undefended last turn. Gira also got a great general and appears to be sending it to Girapolis  as a super specialist. Hopefully.
I loaded a cat and a mace onto the northern galley, it will be in position to hit Micropolis.
Using 2 workers we will be able to road the pig tile and take Pigpolis with a horse archer without any warning.
Then we should be able to take Girapolis on T135.
I think Gira's war with GKC has stalemated, almost all of GKC's units seem to be damaged. I'm really hoping they don't make peace quite yet.

Superdeath just got Code of Laws, probably going for civil service?
Demos at 100%

[Lazteuq]

T132: Invasion won't go as planned because Gira's culture ate the pig tile, and because the whale tile near Micropolis is an ocean, so a galley must go around. I moved a stack of 2 maces, 2 spears, 1 axe, and 6 cats forward. Also I want to move faster because it looks like GKC might be retreating.

Gira hasn't been whipping super hard in all cities, so we will definitely have newly-whipped opposition. My prediction is that after taking Girapolis, we will have to consolidate and defend.

The northern galley won't be attacking Micropolis until T134, but that's OK. All attention should be focused on the southern front, so I'm predicting Gira will leave it undefended.
The southern galley and trireme will be sent along the inner sea to scare Gira. After they find out that our northern galley had units in it, I'm hoping the southern galley will inspire fear, even though it's actually empty.

Thinking about the more distant future:
We might be able to fight a war-weary GKC after Gira, if things go really well.
Or, we might be able to get an opportunistic strike on Superdeath while his armies are busy in the south. I think GKC is likely a far better target.
I'm hoping for conflict between Plemo and El Grillo.

[Lazteuq]

Lurker Question: Should I maintain a turnsplit with GKC as well as Gira? Recently the order has been Gira->GKC->me.
For example, right now I am available to play but GKC hasn't played yet so I am waiting.

[RefSteel]

Still swamped and likely to remain so for at least a couple of weeks, but I'm still following these exciting developments as I can, and at least I can answer this:

Lurker Question: Should I maintain a turnsplit with GKC as well as Gira? Recently the order has been Gira->GKC->me.
For example, right now I am available to play but GKC hasn't played yet so I am waiting.

No need to maintain a turnsplit with GKC unless and until you expect some interaction - e.g. attacking GKC's units directly or doing anything (fighting units, pillaging tiles, or taking a city) that you think GKC might have units in position to do too. (That is: If we think GKC has units in position to attack Girapolis when we're planning to attack it, then we should maintain a turn split with GKC.) Otherwise, as long as we play after Gira, we should be okay. (For turn pace reasons, it's preferred that we avoid a 3-way turn split when it isn't strictly necessary.)

On tactical considerations, it's hard for me to be sure of the details of what's actually where, but it sounds like we could use some more maces (also more Horchers, especially if we can produce them in cities with stables relaively far from the front) to consolidate our gains and/or press on after our first attack!

Good luck with the war! Let's see what we can do!