[PB61 - Spoiler] bell's uncreatively named spoiler thread

[bellarch]

The Show AI Espionage button doesn't seem to tell me any new information, though I could just not be doing it right. I'll have to try it when I'm more awake.

That being said, I did check the espionage graph when I logged in, and I saw something very interesting:



Bing and JackRB appear to be using the espionage slider in short bursts -- the return to the same upward slope after each jump indicate that the jumps are coming from bursts of EP, which I think has to be from running the silder (or running spies?). Notably, this means that JackRB may not have courthouses yet, but instead be fighting us in EP through the use of espionage spending. It's an interesting choice to say the least. Something to keep an eye on.

Anyway, now to explain what's going on diplomatically. To help with this, I have a very bad paint mockup of the map as it currently stands:



I've left JesseL off under the expectation that he'll be eliminated shortly and is already geopolitically irrelevant, and I'll also not be talking about Bing very much. This is for two reasons: first, he's mostly an also-run on this map, and second, we think we have him locked into a military agreement with us:



We're still negotiating the details (to the extent that's possible through the diplo screen, anyway) but I think we have solid agreement on going to war with Jack. Really, Jack is the one person who Bing doesn't lose from going to war with -- Rome is sending him gold, India is sending him silver, and we're sending him both gems and dyes. All these deals are for a few GPT, but they're all far beyond the payment level expected for happiness resources. 

Now for Jack. The sad truth of the matter for Jack is that he's very diplomatically isolated. He has Open Borders with only Vanrober, and his only deal is another one with Van where he's sending Gems and Gold for Silver. It's an extremely advantageous deal for Van, and so I'm not surprised Van went for it. Realistically Jack is still in a decent position due to his geopolitical positioning on the coast of the continent, but I'm not sure he's going to get any help if he wants it. 

Then come the tricky ones: Joshy and Van. They share a long border, and I'm guessing they want to go to war with each other. However, they also share a border with me, and I can hit either of them in the back if they do so. So I think they'd like me to go to war with Jack to tie my hands for the foreseeable future and prevent a backstab; certainly they keep sending me messages to that effect. I was building up troops as a defensive force in Blessed Isle a few turns ago and Joshy took it as a possible sign that we were going to backstab him, so he sent us this message:



I think this means "we'll go to war with Van if you go to war with literally anyone else" and not what it actually says    We responded by sending crab/crab and moving units away so as to signal peaceful intentions, as we didn't actually want to tell him when we're planning to go to war or (especially) with whom, but there's an open question about whether we want to let him in on our plans or not. I'm increasingly leaning towards yes -- the issue is Joshy betraying us to JackRB somehow, but . . . can he really do that easily through the diplo screen? If Jack is anything like me, he keeps getting messages to declare war anyway lol.

Van also seems to really want me to declare war on JackRB, but I'm not sure why. Notably, he keeps sending me stuff like this (T120):



Or this (T113):




I'm guessing the goal here is to have us declare war on Jack and give him a free hand to go to war . . . but I don't know if he's plotting against Joshy, Bing, or us! Any of those is on the table. And I don't really want to negotiate with Van because so far, Van has basically been extorting people at every opportunity (see the huge cost we're paying for Open Borders, or the ridiculously favorable gold + gems for silver deal). The irony is that we'd prefer to work with Van because he's not right on our border, but Joshy has been behaving like a much better partner all game, so I feel much more inclined to try cutting deals with Joshy rather than Van. 

So basically, I think we should be able to get a free shot at Jack, because Joshy and Van have both indicated they'd like us to do that. However, I don't know if we can do so in a timeframe that's convenient for us. A war right now isn't really convenient -- we're at tech parity and we haven't really built up a military yet. So I think the plan remains to use the Golden Age: get feudalism/machinery/guilds, build some knights for offense, build some longbows at the border cities for defense, and then pray that we don't get attacked from the east before we can destroy JackRB's military capacity.

[Charriu]

Anyway, now to explain what's going on diplomatically. To help with this, I have a very bad paint mockup of the map as it currently stands:



I've left JesseL off under the expectation that he'll be eliminated shortly and is already geopolitically irrelevant, and I'll also not be talking about Bing very much. This is for two reasons: first, he's mostly an also-run on this map, and second, we think we have him locked into a military agreement with us:

I love that map especially because it accounts for the empty area between you and vanrober

[Mjmd]

  I'm trying to remember the last time I looked at the espionage slider..... Watch out folks Bellarch is coming for y'all someday.

Espionage spending isn't unheard of at Realms especially at the beginning of wars. Either to gain or deny city vision.

Base Factor * (100+How much they have against you) * Modifiers

Base Factors for Passive Missions
Demographics=0.3
City Visibility=1.2
Investigate=2
See Research=0.75

Just for record if any other greens are wondering. The * modifiers is relevant for city vision and investigate as there is a distance penalty. There are ways to calculate the distance penalty, but the short hand I usually use is "is my opponent heavily spending on me and are they well above the 1.2 threshold."

Jack I can see being worried enough to use, but I'm shocked Bing has the money.

I'm honestly somewhat impressed at Jesse after the initial start. But the lack of cottages is very predictable. Jesse managed to go from 1 city challenge to actually having a respectable number of cities in a short time frame. However, there is no way Jesse had enough workers for that kind of expansion at that point. Neighbor luck is always big, but greens game its even bigger /shrug.

[bellarch]

Well, I've fired the Golden Age, and all that remains is to build towards war. First, let's have our before and after screenshots. Here's the city overview before and after firing the Golden Age:




And here's the demographics (taken at 100% science while researching a tech which 2 other players know)




I also took a shot of Blessed Isle in the Golden Age, which isn't particularly important but is very pretty. 

Now, the screenshots are lying a tiny bit -- we're actually running 0% science right now. It turns out that if we run 0% science for the first two turns of the Golden Age, we have enough gold to run 6 turns at 100% and the remaining 4 turns around break-even. It also gives us time to finish libraries in Green Stretch and Blessed Isle, which are two of our best commerce cities and would greatly appreciate library multipliers. Based on the tech screen, that projects us to finish Guilds on the last turn of the Golden Age, though we hope to speed this up by a turn. I estimated break-even at 50% when I was doing rough calculations, but it's something more like 60%, and we should also have ktbs bonuses on at least Feudalism before we start on it because Jack is researching the tech at the moment. 

But that's where we are. Nothing super exciting happening yet, just using the extra Golden Age production to produce more units. That being said, there are two big warning signs on the foreign front.




First, we've spotted a stack of Indian horse archers headed west along with some catapults. Van currently has a lot of gold saved, and it's possible that he's planning to upgrade these horse archers to knights and make an attack on either Bing or us. We've moved a mini-stack in place to deal with a stack from Van if necessary, but we'd prefer him to be going to be war with Joshy while we're busy in the west.




The other thing is the production graph. We're still on top -- we should be, due to the Golden Age! -- but Rome has caught up quite a bit. Based on what Joshy was sending us before, I believe he'll try to hit India, but we can't dismiss the possibility that we are the target. Just in case, I have a scout and a chariot sweeping Rome's borders so that we can spot any stacks heading our way. So far Joshy has made no aggressive moves in our direction, so I feel cautiously optimistic that this won't be a problem for us. 

In any case, that's where we are. I'll have another update when we have a better idea of how things are going, but if there's no news you can assume that nothing particularly interesting has happened in the interim.

[bellarch]

So the rest of our golden age was relatively uneventful. The most important thing that happened was that we researched a lot faster than either Mjmd or I had anticipated -- we had planned for Guilds to be done on the penultimate turn of the Golden Age, but instead it was done 8 turns in! This scrambled some of our efforts at building overflow chains, but it goes without saying that extra turns just spent producing knights was very worth it. We had always been planning to declare war on JackRB soon after the end of our Golden Age, but those plans were greatly accelerated by getting knights built earlier. We also had to speed things up when we learned that Jack was attacking Bing! So we planned to attack at the first turn after the end of the Golden Age, right when we discovered Engineering. And then this happened:




We had been just off finishing Engineering on the final turn of the Golden Age, so I did some micro work to make sure that we had enough beakers to finish the tech. And then it turned out that we were actually 2 beakers off! I'm not quite sure how this happened. It's possible that someone whipped a few big cities and that reduced our trade route income, but my best guess is that there's just a rounding error somewhere in the formula that calculates the tech bar display. Something for the people more familiar with the mechanics and code to discuss, I'm guessing. But anyway, regardless of the reason, it was clear that our war declaration timing had been thrown off.

Furthermore, the timing of Engineering was not the only thing throwing off our timing. We also ran into an obscure corner case with clock shenanigans. Mjmd and I had been hoping to get the second half of the timer versus Jack, so I held the turn a bit. (This was actually just much more convenient for me, too, because I had put off a bunch of things on Monday to plan the initial attack that I was able to do on Tuesday instead of playing). But this morning, when we decided that it wasn't worth holding off anymore and went to play, Jack logged in at the exact same time! In theory, this is fine, because we could have informed him that we were about to declare and to hold off playing -- except we had to recalibrate because of the Engineering fiasco. Jack plays fast enough turns that we wouldn't be able to do that in time, and obviously we weren't going to say "please hold off on playing so we can decide whether or not to declare war on you," because that would be a terrible strategic move. But at the same time, this created a massive information issue -- if we didn't double-play this turn and the next, it would be obvious that we were planning to attack! We wanted the element of surprise against Jack, and now clock shenanigans were going to spoil it. What to do?

Well, we weren't just going to not declare war. We had parlayed the immense production from our Golden Age into a huge army that dwarfed the size of Jack's. Our neighbors were otherwise occupied; Joshy had just triggered a Golden Age paired with a swap into Bureaucracy, and Van was busy consolidating and founding additional fishing villages. We had to declare war! . . . So we did.

On Bing.




Now as you've probably guessed, this is an entirely fake war that we have no intention of fighting (well, not yet, anyway.) We've already offered Bing a peace treaty! The purpose of the war declaration was actually to shore up our plans to attack Jack on several levels. First, it gave a natural explanation for why we didn't double-play the turn -- we were "at war", so it wasn't allowed! Second, it explained why we had been doing such a dramatic military buildup -- we didn't need that huge military to go to war with Bing specifically, but it provides a reason that isn't "bellarch is preparing to declare war on JackRB", which was the most logical explanation otherwise. Third, it signalled that we were about to commit our armies to the south -- hopefully giving Jack the perceived freedom to send the other half of his army to attack Bing somewhere. As long as it's busy in Bing's territory this turn, it'll be trapped in his culture before next, and that will give us enough time to finish taking the north.

"Taking the north", you say? Well, yes. This stuff was all last turn, the one that concluded this morning. Tonight, the real war began. And it looks like Jack bought our ruse, because his troops were completely out of position!

bellarch — Yesterday at 8:55 PM
ok, I am now logging in
[8:58 PM]
IT WORKED
[8:58 PM]
IT WORKED BETTER THAN I EVER THOUGHT IT WOULD

Pictured are JackRB's northern territories. Wishvale is completely undefended; its axe defender is moving back into the city. Waterdream Warm was defended by a single axe and a worker, and was quickly captured. (I think Bing did some damage with that one chariot you can see in the war declaration image; good job!) This continued to be true at Cosyton (defended by an axe and three workers) and Lushmeadow (defended by an axe and a spear). It also doesn't look like those cities were whipped at all. If that is the case, then we're almost guaranteed to take Wishvale, Cosyton, and Lushmeadow next turn, and Eversmile should fall the turn after. If we can then kill Jack's stack, which should be possible unless the other half was waiting to ambush us 1SW of Lushmeadow this turn all along, then we should essentially have this war all wrapped up, much quicker than we had anticipated going in. It still won't be easy taking all of Jack's cities, but there's only so much he can do if his core territory and army is gone. 

So that's where we are right now. I'll hopefully have a little something tomorrow or the next day, as I figure out how successful the opening moves of this war have truly been.

[Mjmd]

Ya what sucked is I know Bellarch did a lot of city micro around getting engineering exact and working wealth builds. Even put an extra city on wealth because the gold was literally exact without. I would be curious to know if anyone has a better reason than my best guess of "someone whipped a large city" for the beaker shortage.

But ya I was afraid Jack was going to smell us out waiting and start moving stack back so I was pushing for take first half to get army to key places faster than his returning stack. Then Bellarch logging in like 1.5 minutes prior to jack was just a super "what are the odds moment" along with not getting engineering. What ya going to do.

[Tarkeel]

My best guess for the beaker shortage is trade-route recalculation of some sort, or losing a tile (but I guess you'd noticed that).

[bellarch]

This turn: 

I'm back again today to provide lurkers with BLOOD. I logged in this turn to find this strategic situation around Lushmeadow:




It's hard to count the units from screenshots (and I forgot to take one of the Lushmeadow defenders, anyway), so I'll just summarize. We found:

- Lushmeadow: 5 Ballista Elephants, 1 Catapult, 2 Axemen, 2 Spearmen

- Stack 1S2W of Lushmeadow: 9 Ballista Elephants, 5 Catapults, 2 Longbows, 1 Axeman, 1 Chariot

Now initially I was worried about this -- after all, this meant that our ruse worked less well than we thought, and Jack was prepared for us. But then we realized something. See, we had 14 knights to the 10 defenders in Lushmeadow, and even the least favorable fight (Spear with max fortify vs. CII Knight) was a ~65% fight for us. And if we could take out the stack in Lushmeadow and capture Cosyton, we would clear the entire area of Khmer culture -- giving us a straight shot at Jack's massive stack. 

So we did that. We got somewhat lucky on dice rolls and lost just 1 knight taking Lushmeadow, and then we attacked the stack. The results speak for themselves:




That's one remaining catapult. We lost one Knight, one War Elephant, and two catapults. Jack lost essentially his entire stack. I don't think I could have hoped for more.

Now the one disappointment of this turn was that we were unable to Wishvale. Jack produced a Ballista Elephant in the interturn, which killed the chariot we had landed, and our subsequent attack on the city failed -- mostly because we had decided to commit a knight that should have gone north to the south last turn. We lost one knight and one axe, which barely scratched the defenders. However, we have three knights in the area along with the remaining axe and chariot from the ships, and our galley near Gray Eyries has another axe and a knight aboard. I think they should be guaranteed to take the city next turn. We unfortunately don't have the units in place to take Eversmile next turn either -- after we captured Cosyton, we sent the remainder south to attack Jack's stack -- but we have a mini-stack in place to take the city, along with whatever knights are left from Wishvale and what we can spare from Lushmeadow.




Here's the northern front. Wishvale has a Ballista Elephant and a CI axe; the elephant should also get promotions before next turn. Eversmile currently has a warrior and a treb. They've also both whipped something; I'm expecting a pike in both. 

Anyway, that's all for this turn. I expect next turn to be much quieter -- I doubt Jack has that many units left to fight back!!

[Tarkeel]

How many knights do/did you have in total for this?

[bellarch]

Re: Tarkeel -- I had 19 knights the turn I started this war. I then produced six, I think, on the next turn? And I've been whipping steadily since; I think we usually have something like 2-4 coming to the front every turn.

So last I posted, we had destroyed what I thought was Jack's entire stack and was making good progress into his territory. That's less true now. I think we're still favored, but our current tactical situation is not great, largely due to a series of mistakes on my part. I'm going to try to explain what I screwed up and what I should have done, if only for the sake of my own learning. 

Turn 141

So T141 looked like it was going about as well as T140. We captured Wishvale with little difficulty, and we were moving our mini-stack toward Eversmile with no issue.




Unfortunately, Jack had used this round to whip several knights, but I cut off his access to horses by capturing Wishvale. This is actually one minor mistake on my part -- I should have pillaged the horses immediately when I realized that I couldn't capture Wishvale. Jack doesn't have many knights, but they've been extremely annoying because they're the only unit that Jack has that can match our forces in mobility. Our movement advantage has been the biggest contributor to our success so far, and anything that blunts that advantage is extremely annoying. 

Furthermore, we were moving a knight south through Bing's lands, and we discovered this stack from Jack! While it's unfortunate that Jack hadn't had his entire stack destroyed, this looked fortunate for us because it was entirely trapped in Bing's lands. It could not interfere with us capturing Flowerhat . . . or so I thought.




And so I plotted this attack on Flowerhat. Hilariously, under the assumption that Jack's stack was trapped in Bing's lands, that knight directly SE of Flowerhat was entirely safe. The mini-stack of seven knights would be able to attack at the start of the next turn, and the stack SE of the knights -- my stack of 1-move units produced prior to discovering Guilds -- would be able to hit Jack's stack if he tried to move closer to Flowerhat after we captured it. Even if Jack moved onto the hill tile on the interturn, upon taking Flowerhat, Bing's borders would expand at Filial Piety to include the hill, and trap Jack's stack again! And if something went badly, we would be able to retreat. You know, if I had been competent. As you may guess, this was not the case! We recaptured Cosyton (which had been recaptured by Jack on the previous turn), and then ended the turn.

Turn 142

So with the benefit of hindsight (and access to the other spoiler threads), you may have discovered the one thing I had neglected to plan for: Jack made peace with Bing. This teleported his stack out of Bing's lands, and let him hit our Knight SE of Flowerhat. It also allowed him to reinforce Flowerhat with Longbows, and set Jack up for an attack on Lushmeadow. 




So I should have seen this and retreated. This was my first big mistake. But instead, I decided to press the attack. If I only could take Flowerhat, I thought, I could hit Jack's stack with my slow stack and my mostly-healed stack of knights NE of Lushmeadow. I would even be able to attack across the river! And, you know, it almost worked.




I lost half my knights and a sentry chariot, but I eliminated everything in the city except a catapult at 2.4/5 strength. (I think the other unit in that screenshot was a worker or something). Now this led to my second mistake. I had two Great Generals out in the field -- one just born in Satus from my attack on Flowerhat, and one that was moving to turn my one spare non-Sentry chariot into a medic unit. (Unfortunately, my other chariots had all died -- Ballista Elephants picked them all off.) What I should have done was fully committed to this attack -- used the Great General on a knight, promoted it to Commando, and killed the city. Then I could have taken the city and attacked Jack's stack, and the remainder of my stack of knights would have been safe. Unfortunately, I realized that about twenty minutes after I had merged that GG into Foramen  . So yeah, that was another screwup. 

The third screwup was not scouting. As I was panicking over what to do, Mjmd popped by Discord, and while we were talking suggested that I scout south. So I did, and discovered this stack in Bing's lands:




With this additional information, the obvious move was to retreat and let Bing deal with Flowerhat. But I didn't have that information at the time of the attack because I did a dumb thing. So lesson learned: scout!

So anyway, I am not completely incompetent, so I set up something useful for myself in Lushmeadow: I left only a few units there and let Jack recapture the city. (I actually should have left even less there, but well . . . like I said, not completely incompetent .) The key realization here is that I actually had my stack of knights healing 1NE of the city, so I could rip the rest of Jack's stack apart if he attempted to attack my stack, and if he tried to defend Lushmeadow, I had my catapults right next to it. And Jack didn't have the units to do both of those at once. (Having information is good! If only I had realized that sooner . . . ) 

Meanwhile, there was a separate major battle shaping up around Jack's capital, Eversmile:




Jack had generated a Great General when we killed his stack on T140. (We got two, so I can't complain here!) He used this to promote a Knight and four pikes, creating an actual military force there. On the previous turn, that was just a knight, a warrior, and a trebuchet! He actually had even more defenders there, but my stack killed the trebuchet and a Ballista Elephant he build died attacking my knight. This battle continues still because of another screwup I made: after I killed Jack's stack, I moved my two remaining healthy catapults with my main stack. I should have sent them with this mini-stack, as I probably could have cleared this stack with more siege. However, I didn't, so there's this major theater developing instead. Now realistically, the biggest contributor to my success here has been . . . Jack. More specifically, it has been Jack not building enough roads! Because the hill NE of Eversmile is not roaded, Jack cannot hit Eversmile and retake his source of horses except with a 2-mover -- and if he does that, I can just retake it with the units I have around. (Though I should really put more knights in the area just to ensure this . . . ) Anyway, I currently have my one catapult sieging down the city. Jack has enough defenders that I can't take it without more backup, but Jack can't really kill my stack either without leaving Eversmile vulnerable -- and as soon as I take it, I can move all my units north through the area where he currently has borders and reinforce the city.

Anyway, that was all for this turn. I pressed End Turn and moved on.

T143

So, uhhhh . . . if you read the timestamps or check PBSpy, you will realize that I played this turn at an ungodly hour of the morning. I don't actually think that affected my play, but . . . yeah this has been a week!

So Bing began the turn by declaring war on Jack, but then did not tear apart Jack's stack with his despite moving first? 




I don't quite understand what went on here, but this was bad for us. We could have been entirely safe if he had just done this, but he didn't. I suppose it was better for him if we bled each other, but I feel like it's best to take out the stack while you have a chance . . . In the back of my mind, I'm very suspicious of this because I remember my own fake war declaration. Bing has been reinforcing his border cities, and it's entirely possible he could try to backstab us. It wouldn't go very well for him in the long run, because we have knights and longbows and he has all classical age units, but he could inflict some damage first. I think he's still going for Jack, because Jack is much weaker and has already whipped his cities to death, but I'm still wary. Well, we have another round of knights coming out next turn if Bing tries anything. Between that and the mini-stack we have hanging around the border, I think we have enough units to stop an attack if we have to. 

Anyway, as you might be able to guess from the stack in Flowerhat, the trap at Lushmeadow worked as planned. Jack wasted some of his units recapturing the city, but then he declined to reinforce it or attack our big stack. Probably because he saw our knights, I'm guessing? Anyway, we recaptured it with little issue . . . except for me doing something else dumb. Now what I should have done here was spent my full-strength catapults against the one Longbow he moved into the city, but I considered this . . . and then used knights instead   . Which went very badly when one died without scratching the defender. So I lost two knights here and not one. After retaking Lushmeadow, I mopped up the elephants Jack had spent here, and then I left the stack there to heal. The nice thing about Jack not having two-movers is that I can see any possible attackers with a sentry chariot on a hill. So I could just leave all my units here to heal next to my Medic III chariot, and will be able to move a much healthier stack up to Eversmile within the next turn or two. 




Meanwhile, the battle at Eversmile continued. So the first thing I did here was pillage Jack's ivory. I had landed my axes last turn to dissuade Jack from doing anything, and they now would be used to cut Jack's access to Ballista Elephants! Now I have to check Jack's resource deals next turn -- it's entirely possible that Joshy or Van could send him ivory and horses to prop him up. But if they don't, then we can promote units to Shock with relative impunity and make it so that Jack is less safe from bad dice rolls.

Now you may ask -- why am I not using these units to attack Jack's coastal cities? Well, I did a few dumb things earlier that are preventing it, and also Jack's forces are preventing this from being a useful tactic. Because I didn't send enough knights to attack Wishvale, I landed my chariots, and they got destroyed by the Ballista Elephant. And now we only have two axes, which is still enough to take a city, but not enough to hold it. I would strike at Jack's iron city, but his cities around the area all have third-ring borders, and that means that I can't cut access to Iron by taking a city. That being said, while it doesn't show up in this picture, Snugglehollow is currently defended by only a warrior -- if that continues, I'll be able to raze it next turn with an axe I moved back onto a galley and cut Jack off of one of the cities that is most important to reinforce Eversmile. Anyway, I'll put some knights on the boats once I get a chance, but Eversmile must fall first in order to do so safely. 

Unfortunately, my failed attack at Flowerhat is hurting me here. See, Jack got another Great General from that battle, and of course it had to pop up in Snugglehollow, one turn away from Eversmile for Jack's one-movers. So he used it to promote a pike and a BE to Formation and make it even more difficult for our knight-heavy forces to take the city. I think we still should be able to take it as soon as I move up more attackers from Lushmeadow, especially since I should finish stripping its defenses before striking. But it's going to be a bloody mess. The good news is that once this force is dead, most of Jack's defense should be done. One of the big things about Jack is that his empire appears to be optimized for commerce and not production -- a huge problem when he needs to produce more units to overcome our current power disparity. 

So anyway, that's where we are. I've tried not to shy away from my mistakes here, and perhaps I've been too hard on myself as a result. Although I'm very much not looking forward to the lurkers tearing my poor play apart . . .  even though I absolutely deserve it  Really, we're still in an advantageous position, but we do have a harder fight ahead of us than I had anticipated a few turns ago, and much harder than it really should have been. I wish I had moved the stack I spent on Flowerhat towards Eversmile instead . . . 

In the meantime, we're continuing development to salvage our economy, which has been kind of wrecked by maintenance costs -- we've researched Code of Laws so that we can put up courthouses eventually, cutting our huge city maintenance, and we're researching towards Optics to get Circumnavigation trade routes. We also claimed Theology with conquest cash. (Christianity popped up in Wishvale of all places, lol). But we'll have to see how things shake out to see if we continue this line of research. We're also beginning to build the AP in Ater and Notre Dame in Thalassina, with the goal of getting more GPP for Mausoleum-fueled Golden Ages, and getting hammer bonuses in our cities. (Though Van has a Great Engineer, so he could easily take the AP away from us). Notre Dame is perhaps a more questionable build, but Blessed Isle could still use the happiness bonus, and it will help alleviate some of the whip unhappiness I've built up while producing more knights for the war. 

So that's all for this post. I will try not to wait three turns for the next one, at least not if as much stuff happens as did on these three turns!