[SPOILERS] scooter, pindicator, and Huayna Capac try some fast Zulu cuisine

[scooter]

If I knew we had upcoming peace from both Xenu and Commodore, I'd say screw it and let's go for all-out invasion of his nearby island, isolating it with navy. I don't think we can commit to that now, though, as it leaves us way too vulnerable given our overall lack of military (we'd be basically emptying our continent to make it happen, and with a huge shrine near Commodore and recent hostilities with Xenu, that's wayyyy too tempting IMO).

You know you still want to...

I do. And that might just be enough to decide for us.

[pindicator]

If I knew we had upcoming peace from both Xenu and Commodore, I'd say screw it and let's go for all-out invasion of his nearby island, isolating it with navy. I don't think we can commit to that now, though, as it leaves us way too vulnerable given our overall lack of military (we'd be basically emptying our continent to make it happen, and with a huge shrine near Commodore and recent hostilities with Xenu, that's wayyyy too tempting IMO).

You know you still want to...

I do. And that might just be enough to decide for us.

I'd argue we HAVE to. If xenu or Commodore pile on then it's gonna be GG whether we have our paltry army at home or not. But you said it about slowcheetah: he's given no indication that he's going to give up, if anything peace now means he just builds up for a bigger attack later. No, we need to make him take peace and on our terms.

Also, i really want to whip our cities to the ground for an island invasion a second time



If i don't end up drinking too much tonight at running club i'll draft up some preliminary plans

[scooter]

Ok, so I logged in and got some stuff started on the turn. I was greeted by this:



He tried to assault Starbucks and went 0/3 on the attack. I find it endlessly humorous that after his Knights owned our Pikes amphibiously(!!), his Knights were promptly dispatched by Impis . Long live the Impis. Anyways I could only get 32% odds on that Galleon, and I didn't want to risk a Galleon, so I softened with our Caravel in Starbucks and finished it off safely:



Also, I like the promos on these Knights, should make it easier if/when we get around to attacking them with Pikes:



Ok ok a couple are shock and there's a CG Musketeer, but the retreat promos are nice for us anyways. I used a few of the stronger and more forward Galleons to scout out tours and his island's west coast:



That's an easily killed garrison, and that's better defended than we've seen Orleans and Paris. So the one thing we need to decide before loading stuff up is how to use the Great General. I definitely am leaning towards using it on land units. Our navy is fine without it until Frigates come calling. So let's look at a few options, and we ideally should chat tonight and talk about it. Option 1:



Spread it across 10 units that are all at 3/2XP, so that we can get 10 units up to their second promotion. I think that's a really efficient and all-around useful way to do it. Option 2:



This axe. It's really appealing to me to use it on an axe and get the free upgrade to mace. It already has C1 and Shock, but it's still potentially useful. Two more nice candidates for the upgrade route



This axe could be nice as it's on the front line, OR we have this Impi with which we could create the greatest Pike of all time. The other route is the Maces route you mentioned at Skippers:



By the way, I think we should use these Galleons to go pick some of those Maces up, regardless of what we decide, since the Galleon is wounded and it's essentially backline ferrying rather than any frontline work.

This is the main thing we should figure out. Once we solve that, it's just getting units ready to roll on boats, which I can get us going on if you can't be around much tonight.

[scooter]

Oh, here's the one little pet project of ours that I referenced earlier - the Grand Central Canal.



It's really not a huge deal, it's just one of our Commodore Awareness Projects . I'm setting up a western sentry net to watch for him, and if there's any signs, we can use this canal to get our navy over and ready to deal with him. For the moment I'm just going to finish these forts to within 1T of completion as I'd like to keep the tiles, but our workers have enough downtime on their hands to be ready to complete them at any moment. So yeah, not a huge deal, just a fun thing you can do with forts.

[scooter]

Wrapped up the turn. We went with XP sprinkle:



This is worth 10 promotions to us, so this seemed like an attractive way to go. Sad to not go the super-unit route, but we felt this helps us accomplish goals the best. So we're off on this super misguided adventure:



We're going to attempt some more fancy boat chaining to get a few more units in, we'll see how that goes. Here's some commentary that might be useful. We manage to be both bleak and blindingly optimistic at the same time. This was from a few hours after I finished and rolled the turn, discussing general invasion strategy. First, here is Orleans:



Here is an overhead that also shows Trafalgar:



Relevant discussion:

scooter: I think I want to hit orleans first before he gets more musketeers in there
on a hill those will be nasty
but you suggested something different
pindicator: so i think the big question is if we want to try to hit trafalgar, or if we just send all our units at orleans
scooter: i'm just afraid by the time we spend 4-5 turns sailing way out to trafalgar, he'll have musketeers everywhere
pindicator: it would be nice to raze trafalgar to make it harder for him to reinforce, but i don't think it's such a big difference in logistics that it is necessary
yeah, i'm thinking similar
scooter: I think a rough plan of:
1) take orleans
2) artist bomb orleans
3) fort by orleans to gain access to water on northeastern side of orleans
that gives us full control of the waters and the ability to fork cities at well
*at will
you know, until frigates
haha
pindicator: yeah
which is 5 turns away... omg
scooter: yeah another point against a trafalgar excursion
pindicator: you're right, we dont' have the luxury to blockade, we have to go after him
scooter: if we can capture orleans + paris by then, we can then huddle boats inside cities for a half dozen turns and wait for chemistry
blockades aren't nearly as crippling in rbmod anyways
pindicator: when do we kick off our GA?
scooter: in a perfect world we take orleans and paris, offer peace for the return of 5 guys, and by the end of those 10T we've got frigates everywhere and can defend ourselves
but that's probably a pipe dream
and by probably i mean definitely
pindicator: yeah, i was thinking that if we can get an opportune peace deal it could really help with teching
scooter: golden age. um, maybe after feudalism comes in?
also that'll speed us along to chemistry
pindicator: yeah
i think you're right after all -- we want to hold off on whips because chemistry is the most important thing for us
scooter: it'll also give us an excuse to pause and grow cities, then when chem is in, whip like mad all over again and upgrade whatever caravels we have left
if we can get to that point and still own the seas, I like our chances. otherwise this will get ugly fast
pindicator: yeah
scooter: also he'll undoubtedly bring musketeers which we have no asnwer for whatsoever
pindicator: yeah, we are gonna need a prayer if we can't get frigates in a good enough time frame
we'll have muskets and knights soon enough
scooter: yeah I guess haha
OPTIMISM
pindicator: we are gonna rock it
just you see
scooter: I mean this will only be like the 5th most difficult thing we've done this game
pindicator: exactly
scooter: so really I don't see what there is to fear

Chat goes on, but that may be the only interesting part. This is highly likely to not work seeing as he could drop off a half dozen Musketeers at Orleans tomorrow and that's that, but we're going to do our best to cause some havoc. More detailed plans will probably be unveiled once we possess them.

[scooter]

Super rough estimates on time til Chemistry:

Slow: 4-5 turns
Us: 10-12 turns

Yay?

[scooter]

Oh, one note to self/pindicator: that overhead shot is taken right at the beginning of the turn obviously. If he whips, let's check to see if any of those specific cities lose pop. Any other cities east of this won't make it to this area in time anyways, so I don't care so much about those.

[pindicator]

Chaining plan



This isn't my best photoshop work, but then again I am a few sheets to the wind.

We'll land 4 xbow, 5 pike, 8 maces, & 3 cats by Orleans on turn 205. Hope it's enough, because that is literally all we have.
The trick is going to be chaining in the 5 maces currently in skippers. But we have just enough in the area to handle it. It takes two chains on turn 204. Then turn 205 we unload everything on the hill, and attack t206.

[pindicator]

Scooter, I've got an idea about how to bluff us a peace treaty, if we want it.

As we drop off the units at Orleans, we stack up all our remaining galleons and send them north but out of sight of his cities. The turn we take Orleans, we move the (empty) galleons within range of his northern cities, and try to bluff for peace.

[pindicator]

These turns are all going to take forever while this war is going on... Slowcheetah doesn't seem to play until about 4am local time, and there's no way I'm going to play war turns in the haze that it my morning between getting up and going to work. So buckle up for another 12 hours fellow PB8-ers. Unless scooter wants to tackle the turn earlier.

I did poke in and added a couple whip signs. They are at Culver's and Domino's. Both are for 1 pop and both are because the city is near stagnant, and the hammers gained from a whip now outweigh the hammers that will be lost. At Culvers we're talking about 1pop whip of 52h taking away an unhealthy citizen that is currently hired as an engineer. At Domino's it is 1pop whip of 37h taking away a 3h tile in a city that will be unhealthy on next pop. Both cities have no whip anger, so let's use that.

I really think we need to pull back those boats from the west. We can finish the canal and bring them through by that direction. Because Orleans is already stocking up Galleons again:



Notice the musketeer is gone. There's a musketeer in Orleans this turn, but I dont know if that's newly made or moved from Orleans. Having no musketeer makes me want to take the city amphibiously, especially if we can catch those galleons in port. There isn't any tile we can move to that he wouldn't see coming, but we can send an empty galleon stack north to make him divert resources or at least guess.