[PBEM22] Friends with Benefits

[roland of gilead]

i can talk nonsense a fair bit.

I do have a question though. Is there anything you can do to overcome nuclear weapons being banned by an emergency?

I've never reached the world congress but I think it's decisions are binding even though it's silly to ban nuclear weapons because if you use them it means you don't care what anyone else thinks.

I guess just use conventional? Or go for the space race if conquest is too hard on the map?

Yeah it's a joke. I took control of all the Uranium and built them now can't use them. Pretty sure i lose a diplo victory now but maybe i can GDR my way to a win.

[roland of gilead]

To me it's a coin toss, because I do not know how to value the pluses and minuses of the scenario, but here is one point:

If we hold Nan Madol, then the only way Chev benefits from the Suzerain ability is to get boats into the water and fight us for it. Fighting on our terms, when we are strong. And it has to be Chev that liberates it for the free envoys, right, because the suzerain bonus is not shared between allies, right? (Honestly I don't know about this). So the gamble is that we can hold Chev back with one city on constant longboat duty. It doesn't matter if he cracks the city once he gets to Jongs - the lack of NM will have held him back, and the city would just be the first speed bump and buy us more time, which is still a net plus over razing. And if both Phoenicia and Indonesia try to crack the city then we are getting them to waste resources when they can't reach your boats on the ocean.

You know, let's just look at that extra 75 gold as the key to unlocking Nan Madol as a frontier outpost and see how far we can role that snowball, and get you into Oligarchy with Conscription ASAP.

Yeah he has to liberate it. 

But he in theory only needs to do the final attack to do that. 

1 boat under the right circumstances. 

I don't see you losing it anytime soon unless he is already building.

[Krill]

We have the gold to buy the tile immediately and it is 5 pop. NM can start 3 turning once captured right? In other words any longboats sent over there would not arrive before new ones are built so why even bother?

[Krill]

Here is a thought.

The CS are placed around each team as easy to capture outposts when you look at them from each start location, but when looking and how to invade players they are a cage. Should we not consider the potential to capture them to try and cage all of our opponents?

[roland of gilead]

Can we track military strengths yet?

[Krill]

Nit until we meet them I think. One of the reasons I do the overview shots every turn.

[Krill]

Does it matter if we target Japan or Portugal? I ask because we aren't sure where either are and the CS near Portugal may be available to help cage them, more likely that we run into Japanese galleys than Portuguese.

[Krill]

Then send what is needed to Nan Madol to hold and harrass (pillage economy etc) and plan for the long but hopefully effective knock out blow against Japan/Portugal with the potential to cage them?

So the choice is raze NM and throw everything at Japan/Portugal, and leave Chev to machinate his way to Jongs unmolested, or setup a 2v4 and leave Gaul/England alone?

I'd rather try to hold NM.

[roland of gilead]

Here is a thought.

The CS are placed around each team as easy to capture outposts when you look at them from each start location, but when looking and how to invade players they are a cage. Should we not consider the potential to capture them to try and cage all of our opponents?

Yeah, this is what I was thinking when I said the map might have gone back in our favour. We should definitely cage them and I'm thinking to blockade especially cities with single tile water access. If I put 3 ships around a capital in the 2nd ring, then this will actually prevent the capital from building ships because you can't end a turn with more than 1 units on a tile - you have to delete a unit.

You can control shift enter or something and force the turn to end. 

But i think that will limit you at 2 i think and they can't even attack out.

[roland of gilead]

they can shoot at you with ranged units.

probably ineffective though.

one thing is they know where you are but you don't know where they are necessarily unless you have them all totally locked down of course.