[PB65] Pinch-Hitting Pindicator

[Zed-F]

What mix of HA & Elephants are you expecting to field?

[pindicator]

I think it's going to be 5 elephants, 4 horse archers, ~10 metal units, and ~10 catapults in the initial group.

[pindicator]

122

Mjmd finished MoM




I'm more upset about the culture pressure. But at the same time, that city could be vulnerable if I decide to go after Mjmd in the future.

Our great person is still 4 turns out so we weren't necessarily close here. Next turn I'll turn on the research for Calendar and then hook up the 2 plantation luxuries in my territory in advance of the war and war weariness. Now if we land the Great Engineer I am probably going to use him to bulb Machinery.

We hit #1 in power after ending turn.

[Miguelito]

I do remember Operation Your MoM

[pindicator]

123 & 124

Next turn we show our hand, but it's rather obvious to anybody who is watching what we are aiming to do.




We claimed #1 in power a few turns ago and we're only continuing to climb.  Mjmd has had a scout near our units and so I've tried my best to keep our movements as dispersed as possible - but as time ticks down we need to get our units to the Rice tile next turn.  Mjmd probably has pieced together where we're going, what with our reluctance to accept his agreement.  Cornflakes and Superdeath may be a bit more up in the air.  I wonder what our war declaration will do for that battlefront: will Cornflakes feel emboldened to attack without me?  Will superdeath maintain a more defensive posture?

To steal some parlance from chess strategy, I believe you need to always be on the lookout for a way to transform your advantage.  In this game we've taken a temporary food and commerce advantage (after completing the Hanging Gardens) and are converting it into units and a power advantage.  If this goes to plan we will convert this into a lot more food and population which will turn into more population.

The crop yield graph shows this off fairly clearly:




Over the last 15-20 turns our food production has been relatively flat as we have whipped several rounds of units out.  Again, now we have to hope it pays off!

Here's where we're attacking to:




Received a little more intel on the land we're invading into, with the placement of Bing's city of Vitcos. Vitcos is really in an awful spot for our purposes; we would prefer it to be a couple tiles east. But it's still got 2 first-ring food so it isn't likely that we will burn and replace it. In fact, I had thought that I would need to build a settler to fill in east of the pig, but now I can see that will not bear any fruit.

On t123 the Temple of Artemis was completed by ... someone.  It wasn't Superdeath as he netted about 70 fail gold.  I suppose it could be Mjmd - if he's just been sitting back converting into economy this move would make sense.

I do remember Operation Your MoM 

  I do remember that game now!  I'm hoping this one has just as good of an outcome!

I did start building my next wonder:




With Libertalia already being deemed "too far away" to contribute units to the war effort, I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet on putting out Moai now.  We chopped both forests on 123 and with growth we should be able to finish by end of t130.




You can see Bing is researching Writing right now.

[pindicator]

125

Pretty sure Bing can now see our stack on the rice thanks to the peak in his territory.




I have a few more horse archers racing to catch up, and we will also be adding a few more slow movers out of Gloomhaven.

Turn ended, and our next great person is:

Now where do we send him?

[pindicator]

Charriu, did you get rid of the ability to shift-click with Great Merchants and to be able to see how much gold a trade route would give in each city? I was not able to do that on my turn and now I need to go dig up the formula

[pindicator]

126

And the other part of the turn:

[Zed-F]

I'm unspoiled, but it sure looks from here like Bing is not at all prepared for this. I'll wish you good luck, but for now it doesn't seem that you need it.

[pindicator]

128

Who's ready for a 2-front war?




Or ready for Superdeath to snipe some cities from Bing's south?




Moai is going to need to wait; I'm sending Libertalia back to catapult duty. Clank! is going to whip a war elephant next turn, and at worst I think we can suicide in our catapults and still have 8 strong defenders to deal with Cornflakes' stack. Really, Cornflakes is not going to break through here without a good siege stack of his own and it appears he's only just now started his catapults production. Still, I'm going to have to pump out some units to feel safer in the east, and I went ahead and whipped the horse archer at Azul just to bring another unit in faster.

No picture, but I moved my Great Merchant into Superdeath's territory and find I can get 900 gold from a trade mission to his nearest city. I think I am going to aim for the capital, but that may not matter: since the trade mission is based off the same formula as foreign trade routes, we only have a few criteria to look at. First, the only foreign cities that are over size 10 are owned by Cornflakes and I have no doubt he would declare war just to keep me out. (Superdeath still might but I'm hoping he would like to have one friend. Actually, perhaps I should jump back in quick and suggest he declare on Bing and Cornflakes both? If he's going to snipe those southern cities of Bing's anyway then I might earn some points with him by offering them first and aiding him against Cornflakes?) So extended peace is probably more important and Superdeath has had open borders and extended peace with me for some time. You know, I think I'm just going to cash in the trade mission next turn, especially if Cornflakes attacks. 900g will be enough for me to finish Code of Laws and Metal Casting both. Or ... I could go for Feudalism if I think I will need the buffed up defenders.

As for Bing, that part of the war is going according to plan. Better than expected, really:




Bing had left 3 axes in the city and moved the Quechua out to the northeast. I considered just skipping the city by or trying to force through without using the catapult movement, but we aren't in a rush here. We just want to efficiently capture cities. So I bombarded his city walls down to 6% with 11 catapults, and then went in with a single CR catapult, scoring a win at 27% odds. C1 chariot had 90% odds and won flawlessly, then I could have risked a premium C1 elephant with 73% odds but decided against, wanting to save those for pushing deeper into Bing's territory. I decided to send in a C1 axe instead at 41% and was rewarded with another unlikely victory. Then we mopped up with a final axe.

I moved a horse archer up a tile and found that I am closer to Bing's capital than I realized:




Looks like our plan of attack is going to be advance the catapults and main stack along the road, and then use a smaller stack of about 4-5 units to threaten his copper. I think we have enough right here to just march up to the capital, siege it down a couple turns, and then throw in the catapults and take the city - however, it may not be that simple and so we should plan to cut his metal in case it gets protracted.

The pillage gold was enough for me to 1-turn Iron Working and I took the opportunity to find out where the Iron was:




Poor Bing, I had already sniped his Iron from him. Also it's a bit sad that I settled Sushi Go on top of the iron out there, but at least I can't have it pillaged easily now.