[Spoiler] Desperados: The Black Sword & Agent

[agent427]

just making a note here, tech wise I'm doing HBR & CoL in 2 turn with overflow

I assume I want Code of Laws, even though I just went on a whipping spree for new Axes (so can't whip out courthouses for awhile)
If the Roman War goes OK and HRE doesn't attack right after the end of the treaty then we'll take some time to build peacefully...

[The Black Sword]

That's quite a display you made on civstats.

What does the maintenance look like in cities? IIRC, it wasn't enough to really warrant courthouses. Though with a future GA, Caste and Bureau would be useful. Forges would be another good option.

[agent427]

I was whipping out Axes and Cats there, probably in at least 80% of my cities. Whip unhappy had gone below the 20 turn range in most places so I figure, let's go crazy. I have 6 turns to reinforce my fronts before HRE can attack again.

HBR finished. I can change it from Code of Laws to something else if you think it's not worth doing. Metal Casting to do GA -> Forge infrastructure build?

War report:
Here's what I brought to the party.


Rome had 2 Axes & a Spear in the city at the end of my last turn, plus a Praet headed down by road. After he saw my army, he vacated everything except the Praet from the city. (Maybe seeing me whip a billion times on Civstats convinced him to back down too)



Shock Swordsman attacks, claims city in single hit.


I unload 2 Swords by galley in front of the southern city-- didn't attempt naval assault because I saw a galley of his own there the turn prior. 1 axe defender there, will attack next turn.
Workers complete the road connection to the new acquisition. They'll next move to the forest 1S to chop, which should put the hammers in just as it comes out of revolt, to bring up walls.




The other big news of the turn... Map trade with Whosit.. he had all of HRE mapped! Bless you Mongols!





We also got maps on Elum/Mack to the east. Don't know how old the map is, but it looked like they still had lots of neutral land to conquer. Confusingly they're bordered by another civ with a same light blue color.
Not surprising at all, they have Pyramids, and in fact popped a Great Engineer this turn.

[The Black Sword]

Nice stuff!

On tech, it depends when the GA is coming, if you can fit both MC and CoL in before that, then MC first makes sense, otherwise probably CoL first. Btw, the island cities tend to be the best choices for getting those quick GPs out, since they tend to have a lot of food to grow to big sizes and they're only giving up working coast.

Good to finally see HRE's maps, it looks like you managed to claim more land than him on the North-South axis. Random ideas on how to attack that; Engineering would be useful to hit Vienna from out of his view. If we put some forts down by Fistful of USD we could get boats into that little lake of his and fork 4 cities. I doubt he has any ships already built there either. Lubeck should be easy to kill with catapults.

Also, are you going to settle that little filler south of Badman's river now that we finally have the Roman peninsula?

[agent427]

T2, he reinforced the city with 2 Praets and an Axe, 2 from the galley and 1 by whip I assume, and attacked out with the Praets, killing one sword, failing to kill the second. Withdrew the sword 1 space, next turn it'll link up with the northern sword army. Left a bunch of Axes + an Impi to secure the city we captured.

[agent427]

Random event

Uh, ok I guess

War-


He's abandoned the city entirely, instead choosing to load the garrison into galleys to attack Django. If he claims it I can get it back in due time, but I only have the 1 galley in the sea there. He could probably raze it depending on what else he has on those galleys, ah well.
I intend to offer peace once I claim that 2nd Roman city but from what I've seen in PB22 I'm skeptical that they'd take it...

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, we lost Django.


That Impi was at full strength but lost. I'm not sure how many units he has in the galleys, so I whipped in the 3rd axe in San Sebastien to be safe.



I offered 10t peace to Rome. If they don't take it, I think we should pick up MC next and queue triremes in our 3 cities down here. I moved the galleys out with some extra units, though I'm not sure if that's such a good idea.

In the north, I left 3 units in the gold city, another axe on the way, and moved our stack back into the silk one. I moved some other units into Sabata.

Our scouting galley met Elum:

Who has almost 20% of the world's pop but we have more land. I switched our EPs to him. I also sent him this open borders offer, since we're hurting with our island city razed. Up to you if you want to go with a map swap too.

I queued a new settler up in Bad:


Some other thoughts;

-Boats seem like the best way to make any further progress against either Rome, so naval superiority will be important.

-I'd lean towards throwing the golden age as soon as possible, generally growing a few extra pop is not usually worth the delay. Just get any last whips done first.

-With regard to GPs during the GA, you could get the 200 and 300 ones pretty easily, which would be a good deal. Trade Missions, or do you want an Academy? Maybe get most of the way through the 400 and 500 ones as well for a second GA around Economics time?

-What about picking one of our good production cities, maybe Il Merc or Bad, putting a stable in and keeping it pumping horses?

[agent427]

Thank you for covering for me!!

I sent white peace offer to him last turn, so if there was no reply this turn I doubt he'd sign now.
On those boats were the units from his SW city, which were 1 normal Praet, 1 red-lined Praet, and 1 Axe. If the boats are full-- no telling that they are-- then he's down to 2 Healthy Praets, 1 weak Praet, and 1 Axe (which will be useless attacking San Sebastian). So I hope the city will hold.

I have plenty of units to reinforce A Few $ More, I can move units from Sabata to cover the Ugly if he attacks that. So my west coast is OK.

Sadly, I did underestimate the weakness of my island colonies. Well, live and learn is the name of the game
Thinking about it, I should've invested in more units + walls in Django. Extra galleys wouldn't have done me good here. As far as I can see, Galleys are OK at blocking a specific tile but shitty at intercepting invaders because the invaders get the coastal defense bonus. The layout of this western sea doesn't allow me to pile up galleys to block a specific spot except the 1 tile SW of Mthonjanenim (ugh, I gotta change these city names ASAP), which was under Roman control anyway.

If I keep that city, then get MC, I can park 2 Triremes in that spot there to block future invasion.

Plan as I see it--
Golden Age once MC finishes, start on Forges/Triremes.
I'll check the math on Academy vs. Trade Mission when I log in. I've never done a trade mission against a Human opponent. How do you protect them from killing your merchant as it passes through their lands?

[The Black Sword]

I think he wouldn't accept last turn when he had a chance of burning Django, but he might accept now. Anyway, I saw the turn roll and he had played so I jumped in to check:


Nope, guess we're in this for a while. Things are fine in San Sebastien though:


That should get us our first GG I think.

The plan sounds good. Regarding a Trade Mission, the best thing to do is to have the GM in a galley where your opponent can't see it. Sail into a city and do the trade mission before your opponent can do anything. You generally get more gold for island cities too, so that's often a good strategy. We'd probably get 900g from a Mongolian city, 1100g from a Network island. I imagine you could also try offer them a cut of the profits if you only had a land border; guard the GM on your border, offer some gpt to them. Try to make it clear the deal is gold for trade mission. They'd have to cancel the gpt deal to kill the merchant.

[agent427]

Did you load that axe/chariot onto the galley this turn or last turn? (i.e., can I make the attack this turn?)