[pb46 spoilers] Hitru lurks again

[Old Harry]

It looks like Krill doesn't want to play in a world where we get to take a capital city cheaply due to a stupid move. Hopefully he'll calm down and come back to the game, but either way we have a bit of a pause, so I thought I'd update our world map.


The most interesting area for us is in the south and the new territory we're capturing from Rome - we don't have much intel on this area unfortunately, so we don't know where England is and how much of Rome they will be able to snipe from us.

In the south east we've found Rusten's India, poised to swallow up the bottom-of-the-table Ethiopians (who were crippled by Borsche's Persia early on). America and the great lighthouse are just over the water from them to the east, so once Rusten takes Ethiopia and Persia he *should* then crash through Superdeath as well.

Finally our circumnavigating work boat discovered that Commodore and Gavagai are neighbours - hopefully they'll have some tensions and that'll slow Gav's progress once he's gobbled the whole of Holy Rome (it won't).

Out in the fog the somewhere are AT's Sumeria (25 cities and whipping knights), Dark Savant's Mali (being chipped away at by Superdeath), General Kill Cavalry's Aztecs (seems to have done nothing at all this game) and Naufrager's hospice-care for Holy Rome. We only have one scout and a work boat out uncovering new territory, so it may be a while before we meet everyone.

[Zed-F]

Are all jungles JSON jungles?

[Old Harry]

Are all jungles JSON jungles?

Just checking you were paying attention!

Turn 142

Elkad seems to have a penchant for attacking neighbours whose power is far higher than his (his attack on OT4E in PB38 was fun and very beneficial for us). He captured our Assembler Archipelago city that didn't have a defender in (stupidly I'd sent the knight to Python Island instead of here ). We'll bring a couple of knights to reassert control in two turns.


Down south this stack is a little worrying, but mostly funny.


- C2 Knight vs spear - 90%... WIN (knight down to 2.0/10)
- C2 Knight vs spear - 90%... WIN (down to 3.6/10)
- Knight vs xbow - 96%... FLAWLESS WIN!
- C1 Knight vs longbow - 98%... WIN! (knight promo-healed to 7.9/10)
The Trebs are flanked down to half their hitpoints.

With a couple of longbows and knights in Neapolis it won't fall next turn. Likewise Footfall has too strong a garrison for us to break until our main force gets back from Ravenna.

Our wounded knights are a little vulnerable, but I'd expect Elkad to fall back to Footfall rather than sacrifice good units to no good effect. We demanded 10gpt for peace on the basis that it'll take us at least 5 turns to finish Rome off and get in position to break Footfall. I don't see him accepting, but worth a shot. We have 37 knights now and a couple of privateers on their way, so this isn't a particularly worrying situation. Pindicator just built some camel archers though - if he gets involved things could go very bad, so we'll keep building power!


With paper in we can see what techs everyone has. Rusten is 500 beakers ahead of us in the race to Liberalism - we have a great scientist due in 6 turns to get us part of Education, but I'm sure he'll have one or even two on ice for the same purpose. He is 2000 beakers behind on the race to Astro though, so if that's what he wants to liberate he needs to do something special. Commodore and Gav aren't in the race. Pindi, SD and Baii *could* make a try, but it seems unlikely. I want to find Automated Teller - he seems like the only other possible competitor.


Demos and power. We've stopped the espionage escalation with Rusten (he makes a lot more EPs than we do) - now we need graphs on England, Commodore and Gavagai.

[Old Harry]

Turn 146

Turns have suddenly been flying by, so we missed an important report due to needing to sleep. Back on turn 142 we were at war with Elkad, the next turn we offered peace (there's a bug with the no-enforced-peace-for-5-turns mechanic so that it allows peace as part of a demand) on the basis that we'd rather fight him properly in five turns once we break Rome. He accepted, I'm not sure of his reasoning, because we'll certainly be coming back for seconds.

So on turn 144 we were poised outside three Roman cities, Ravenna, where we had 14 hitters to take on 11 defenders:


Satricum where we had two knights vs two longbows and the odds were barely in our favour:


And Mediolanum - where our knights were possibly having a bit too much fun - and where we had 7 hitters to take on 5 defenders.


The RNG kept us on our toes, killing three of our first six attackers at Ravenna (all at around 75%), but then allowing us to mop up the remnants without a further loss, and take the city by the skin of our teeth. It comes with a terrace and 136 gold.

At Satricum we win at 64% and 70% to get 27 gold, an unimproved city and a stack of 4 workers that we can't quite reach and which will be deleted by the next turn.

At Mediolanum we lose two of the first five fights (C2 knight vs C2 axe at 89%! ), but again scrape the prize with 96 gold, a terrace and a forge. This leaves Rome broken, but still with some annoying cities to clean up. I've done some renaming since then (only cities that were already out of revolt, I'm not a philistine), so here's how the Rome looks this turn:


I'd like to avoid having to capture Circei - it has two CG3 and one regular longbow at the moment - so we've sent iron/iron to TBW to indicate that it's his if he wants it.

Demos and power. We've also tried in vain to fish-fish Pindicator as he has a lot of camel archers piling up. We'd like it if he sent them to investigate Baii while we concentrate on Elkad, but we're strengthening along that border until he does. Hopefully he doesn't look at the power graph and get the wrong idea.

Meanwhile Rusten has shot to the top of GNP and MFG with a golden age (his first?) and the Apostolic Palace. He's going to get the other monk wonders too, our only hope to bring him down to earth is to figure out where and burn those cities. That's a long-term plan. How we're going to beat him to Liberalism is another question.

[Old Harry]

Turn 149

More stuff to anger Krill last turn. Nauf put two longbows from Arretium on this galley to move them to Ardea and prolong the fight. But he miscounted tiles or didn't realise that boarding the galley used all their movement points. So we captured Arretium at 98% getting 72 gold.


Then we captured Ardea (70% vs a longbow and 98% vs an archer) and killed the galley at 88%. Much easier than we'd expected! Sorry Krill.


Setia is a much harder proposition but only costs two knights thanks to a lucky win at 25% in the first battle.


With that our conquest of Rome is - as far as we're concerned - complete. We're not going to throw stuff at the last city - Circei - because we think there are more profitable pickings elsewhere - hopefully TBW (new owner of England) will capture it for us and remove the happiness penalty we're suffering in former Rome (4 sad faces in some cities).

So what do we do with our army now? We seem to have successfully convinced Pindicator to attack Baii (Mouseferatu), so let's go back to this old chestnut. We could claim to be righteously avenging old slights and injuries, but this border was always going to turn bloody at some point, so let's just get on with it.


Our privateers killed two triremes and a galley and discovered this, so we loaded up three knights and put them in range of both Fallen and Mote, just in case Elkad doesn't notice or can't get units to those cities in time.


Up north we should take Burning Mountain next turn unless a longbow finishes on the turn roll. I hope to kill some more boats next turn and we'll go back to recapture Destiny once we have the sea under control.


On the home front this turn we got a great scientist and bulbed 2280 beakers towards Education, meaning we can 1-turn it. Next turn we'll complete Calendar then it should be 3 turns for Liberalism (possibly featuring capture gold and wealth builds). We feel pretty confident about winning the race now - Superdeath is the only player we've met with Paper (presumably for Privateers as his economy is way too weak for a Lib run) and AT - the unmet player with the best empire is whipping in a way that suggests he just got Guilds.

Demos and power. 2metraninja attacked Borsche a couple of turns ago and razed a city this turn, which is very nice for him, but he doesn't seem to have noticed Rusten's steadily rising power. To be fair 2metra has an amazing stack of catapults, so Rusten will have to be very careful with any attack, but I expect Rusten to start gaining on land very soon. Meanwhile he's kept his economy ticking over with monk wonders and religious buildings, which is why he's top MFG and possibly GNP still.

[Old Harry]

Turn 150

Unfortunately Elkad has enough stuff in Fallen and Mote to prevent us burning them.


Fortunately we got some luck attacking BurningMountain - we won the first fight at 8% and only lost one knight to take the city. Then we won some 99% naval battles too. We offered peace for 230 gpt just to take the piss.



Turn 151

The original plan was to put a bunch of units outside Footfall this turn, but Elkad stuffed in enough collateral (2 Trebs and 4 crossbows) and war elephants that he could decimate our current stack, so we're going to build some more cats, spears and other stuff to soak up the hits before we kick him off our island. We started the process at Inferno, spending 3 knights to take the city. Gripping is our next target, followed by the city in the fog down south. Meanwhile we're using our privateers to blockade and pillage Elkad's coast - hopefully we can stop him getting the next level of defensive tech before we get grenadiers and cannons and take his core.


Meanwhile it looks like Pindi is about to have some fun with his camel archers.



Meanwhile, over the last two turns Rusten got his conquest of 2metraninja going with a bang, taking four cities while Ethiopia was bogged down with a bizarre attack on Borsche's Persians. Our gift of stone to help him build walls clearly didn't trigger any kind of realisation.

At the moment the city count looks great to me, but if Rusten rolls through 2metra and then Borsche while we're choking Elkad slowly to death then we're in some trouble.

Player	Traits	Civ	Notes	Cities	Points
The good guys	FIN/IMP	Inca  (terrace/Quetchua)	Confucian shrine, captured 11 cities from Rome, 2-1=1 from NA	43	1033
Rusten	SPI/EXP	India  (Harrapan Gran/Urukku P)	Hanging gardens, Jewish shrine, Taoism	28	1007
Krill/GJ/TBW	FIN/CHA	England  (Stock Exchange/Redcoat)	choked by TBW?, taken over by TBW	23	910
Pindicator	FIN/EXP	Arabia  (Madrassa/Camel Archer)	Christian shrine	27	838
Commodore	FIN/PRO	Mongolia (Ger/Keshik)		20	814
AT/Adler	IMP/ORG	Sumeria (Ziggarut/Vulture)	Colossus t89, Gt Lib t122	26	718
BaII (Mouseferatu)	ORG/EXP	Khmer (Baray/Ballistaphant)	Mehmed	21	718
Gavagai	AGG/IND	Germany  (Werkstatt/Strosstrupper)	Oracle, 'Mids t81, took cities from Beard/Nauf t133, 134, 2x135, 137, 138, 140, 145	23	700
Elkad	PRO/CHA	Native America  (Totem Pole/Tracker)	Statue of Zeus t88, Music artist t118	16	663
Dark Savant	EXP/IND	Mali (Mint/Skirmisher)	Stonehenge,  possibly MoM, 14th city razed by SD t119, another razed t122	16	593
General KCav	FIN/ORG	Aztecs  (Sacrificial Altar/Jaguar)		18	542
Superdeath	AGG/CHA	America  (Armoury/Minuteman)	Great Lighthouse, Razed DS' 14th city	19	526
Borsche	EXP/CRE	Persia (Satrap Court/Immortal)	burnt 2mns second city t62, revenge taken t148	14	518
2MetraNinja	EXP/PRO	Ethiopia (Stele/Oromo)	2nd city burnt t62 by Borsche, burnt one back t148	11	345
TBW/Nauf	AGG/EXP	Rome  (Forum/Praetorian)	Choked Krill? Bulbed alphabet or compass t135	1	243
BeardBeard/Nauf	IMP/PRO	Holy Rome (Rathaus/Landskneckt)	Hindu shrine	5	239

Demos and power. We met Automated Teller this turn, so now we know for sure that only Superdeath has paper and he doesn't have any money, which made us start speculating about how high we could aim with the free tech from Liberalism. Unfortunately the first tech that gets us more adjusted beakers than Astronomy is Steel, so we're going to stick with Astro. Hopefully we can then grab the Economics merchant as well though.

[Old Harry]

Turn 155

Last turn we Liberalised Astronomy - not the crushing move that it would have been in previous versions of the mod (due to the nerfs to ocean travel), but it should give us a decent naval edge over Rusten (and everyone else) for a little while.


Unfortunately Rusten is going to be first to Nationalism and we suspect he has a great engineer stored to rush the Taj Mahal, getting him a third golden age in a row. (It does at least mean we're not facing competition for the economics merchant ) Meanwhile Rusten's conquest of 2metraninja isn't far off completion now - after I took this picture he killed 11 of the defenders here, so the city falls next turn. That leaves a mere handful of cities that should be easy to mop up over the next 4-5 turns. Then, if Rusten turns his attention north to Borsche while we're bogged down with Elkad we think that we're in trouble.


In the last few turns we took a couple more cities, Gripping was hit with amphibious knights and fell easily.


Then we finally (only just) recaptured Destiny. But we're (probably) only going to get one more city (Footfall) from Elkad before we get to Grenadiers or Cannons. That's not terrible as we have a bunch of islands to settle and a load of infrastructure to build, but I really wish we'd started next to 2metra and Borsche instead of Pindicator and Elkad.

We've now blockaded enough of Elkad that he can't trade with any foreign civs, unless I've misunderstood how blockades work, so he shouldn't be fast to the next level of defensive tech.


Pindicator is also doing a very good job of conquering a neighbour. In spite of having Engineering Baii has lost nine cities to Pindicator's camel archers over the last four turns. Can he use his remaining 12 cities to mount a decent defence? If not then we think Pindi vaults into third place in the game. We're going to see if there are any vulture options for us, but we need to be careful that Pindi doesn't just knock us off his new island.

This is what we're building this turn. The Forbidden Palace should help the economy a great deal and we're not building many universities yet because our Oxford University city isn't all that and we should really make sure we win the wars we're (planning to get) involved in. We're also not building many galleons because we don't have an immediate use for them, but the cities building harbours will start on them straight after as with 5XP they can be 6-movers and only use 2 moves on ocean tiles.


Demos, power and food. We've got a good crop yield lead at the moment, but Rusten and Pindi should catch up when cities start coming out of resistance. Elkad's lost a lot of seafood.

[Old Harry]

Turn 160

Footfall fell, costing us 4 catapults, a spear and 4 knights (I think) so now we're wondering who/where to attack next.


We thought about helping out with Pindicator's attack on Baii and poaching some northern cities, but Pindi stalled out because Baii has pikes and Balista Elephants everywhere now. Good work! Pindi got some decent cities, but will be too busy with Baii to cause us any trouble for a while. Best not to upset the balance over here.


Meanwhile Rusten finished 2metraninja off easily and started drafting muskets. He hasn't hit Borsche yet, but it's just a matter of time and we went back and forth about propping Borsche up or trying to grab a bite ourselves. Perhaps even just letting Rusten get a glimpse of some knights in Borsche's territory would slow him down? So far we've gifted stone and gold to Borsche, but haven't moved any units this way yet.

We're trying to sneakily scout Rusten's coast using our double-sentry privateer which can see 4! tiles, without him noticing. If his capital or the Jewish holy city are on this coast then that gives us a sneaky idea...


What really decided our next military move is that Elkad got Optics and has been building a *lot* of caravels (the six in the Statue of Zeus city should all be able to take combat 2), so we need to think about concentrating our navy - we're split in two right now, while he's able to put his boats all into one stack, meaning our privateers need to tread carefully and stick together. So what we really need is one of these cities over here so we can sail between the oceans. Plans are currently being argued over... On a side note I was hoping to use blockade to cut Elkad off from his trade partners, but it didn't work. Anyone know if that's even possible?


We got the last couple of contacts recently so this world map thingy makes a bit more sense. Lots more exploration needed, but at least we now know where everyone is and who's likely to eat who. Gav completed his conquest of Holy Rome last turn, but it doesn't seem to have helped him much on the scoreboard or tech-wise. Commodore has grabbed a bunch of island cities from Superdeath in the last two turns (hope he's being entertaining about it in-thread!) but the real prize there is the great lighthouse - can SD keep it from his grasp?


Demos and power. Rusten finished his golden age so MFG and GNP aren't so scary. Unfortunately he's due to complete the Taj Mahal any turn now and become scary again. We have a great person due at the end of this turn, with 17% chance of being an engineer - if we get him then we'll try to grab Civil Service/Nationalism before Rusten can finish the wonder... Getting Liberalism, Economics and Taj might be a little greedy though.

[darrelljs]

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Wow. That's a big image.

Darrell