It's Clobberin' Time! Raging Barbs Highlands Tokugawa on Monarch

[Zalson]

Yeah sorry. I was thinking that if I just skipped, and you played, then RFS-81 would likely then not be able to play, which would mean another skip, but it's not up to me to rewrite the roster.

With the (justified) time that Haphazard has needed, I'm going to struggle to fit any serious play in before next Monday - and I may not be able to play then. With Brian out that makes a bit of a mess of the roster. Not sure what to suggest.

Ah. Well, we can proceed at a leisurely pace? If haphazard1 gets done this evening, could you pick it up and play?

[haphazard1]

OK, turnset finished. Sorry for the time required, but these turns took a while with constant barb whack-a-mole and then fun with Rome. I will try to summarize rather than do a wall-o-text stream of consciousness

Main event was shifting our forces west to block Julius' stack. He continued west and I decided to block him on the hills southwest of Flimbo's Quest:

Our stack is just east of the old 'Filler' sign. I did not want to let Julius get into the hills, in case he then tried to go west towards Can't Get Ye or Jungle Strike where we would have a harder time using our roads to block him.

Rome decided to throw the stack at us on the hill, opening with cats.

We lost: 1 samurai, 1 axe, 1 spear, 1 crossbow
Julius lost: 5 cats, 3 elephants, 3 crossbows

He had a bunch of injured units left on the forested hill, but only the badly wounded praetorian got any defensive bonus. With more Roman troops coming along behind, I decided to counter-attack immediately to try to clean up the wounded units before he could cover them or retreat. We got a couple lucky rolls, but mostly we had good odds. We killed:

5 knights
2 elephants
1 praetorian
4 cats

Without losing any units during the counter attack. Overall we killed 23 Roman units while losing 4. We now have a ton of wounded units, but our super medic should fix that quickly. Julius has three or four units following along, but this particular attack has been smashed.

Julius is still ahead of us in power:

This is not yet including the counter-attack, so that drop is from his losses attacking us; it will fall further next turn. Here are the demos for the current values:

Rome is still ahead of us, 690K to 571K. So he may have yet another stack to send our way. But we have hurt him pretty badly, crushing one stack earlier in my turnset and now this stack. He has lost more than 30 units in the last 10 turns, including a lot of expensive knights and elephants.

Other items of note:

- Mansa Musa built the Statue of Zeus. I am just glad Julius does not have it.
- Our explorers in the west have revealed a fair bit of Willem's and Shaka's lands, including this interesting bit:

I don't know if Shaka conquered Nijmegan or flipped it by culture, but Willem lost it somehow.

And here is Shaka's commerce center:

Double gold mines. How are you in last place with land like that, Shaka?

Current diplomatic situation:

We are not very popular, although Gilgamesh is pleased with us. And poor Mansa, hating the entire world.

Known techs:

Note that Julius has Engineering; watch out for faster road movement if he gets back onto his road network. Aesthetics and Philosophy are pretty widely known.

For our own tech, breakeven research is between 10-20%, closer to 10%. Guilds would take about 20 turns currently if we burned through our cash, more like 25 at a sustainable rate. Engineering would be pretty similar if we prefer that instead; nothing has been invested in either tech.

I have a bunch of infrastructure projects going at the moment: courthouses, forges, a couple Hindu buildings for the AP bonus hammers. A couple cities (Goldeneye, Streets of Rage) need worker attention, but most have been focusing on getting more commerce with cottages. Also windmills have replaced mines at cities where we do not have enough food to work the hammers and grow.

Hinduism has been spread to more of our cities, and we could control the AP if we made it our state religion for double votes. Our influence still trails Mansa's since he is Hindu, but we are getting close to being able to block proposals we do not like.

And here is a look at the border regions. First the northeast near Wolfenstein and Cholo:

I marked a potential spot for deer and the other two furs. Not a priority as we have hooked up the one fur tile in our culture. There is another deer to the northeast, but not much else. Note the line of mountains plus lake that cuts off access to the northeast without going through Mansa. That may have caused more barbs to head south and hit him, which might explain some of his troubles.

And here is the central north:

Some potential here, particularly the silver and the wheat. (Sonic the Hog has grown large enough to have unhealthiness.) Lot of open space to guard against barbs, though. Maybe some day.

Here is the western northern region near former Inca territory:

I am not sure who built that road, including the bit in the forest to the west. There are some resources in this area, and the former Inca city ruins look pretty good: iron, sheep, and a flood plain that somehow snuck into this highlands map. Maybe a corn/sheep city north of Golden Axe as well. It would cost us some money, but cutting down the barb spawns would be useful. They continued to hit us with multiple units spawning and moving in every turn.

- There are still some units un-moved, but others have moved as I killed barbs and counter-attacked Julius' stack. You may want to cover the horse archer there with other units, or maybe not.

- We spawned another great general from fighting Julius, so we now have 2 available to use somehow, somewhere.

- Also, Gilgamesh is willing to trade stone if we want it. Not sure what we might use it for, and he may want a lot for it, but it is available if we want to make a try at a wonder or build super-super-cheap walls.

Roster is a mass of confusion right now. Good luck to whomever is next!

[Zalson]

Zalson (on deck)
RFS-81
hapahzard1 (just played)
Brian Shanahan (SKIP)
shallow_thought (UP!)

[Zalson]

Is that a flatland deer in the tundra or a hill deer? Either way, that city is worth founding and quickly:

It requires 150 hammers or so (settler + MP longbow). It can grow to size 5 working the ice fur, tundra fur, tundra riverside cottage, and the deer. I think it just builds wealth and gets us +2 gpt and +11 commerce per turn.

That's worth it. Game is going to go longer than 150 turns.

I'll try my hand at dotmap; Inca land is a higher priority. That's a whole lotta green.

[haphazard1]

Probably best to assume two units to guard any city we settle beyond our current borders; the barbs are absolutely swarming out there. Just a constant flow of swords, axes, horse archers, and the occasional archer/spear/warrior. If we can fill in some of the open space, that might start reducing the impact on our existing cities which would help make up for it.

The furs city should pay for itself pretty quickly. I agree we should try to find hammers for a settler and escorts. And a couple of the stronger sites north of former Inca territory would be worth it as well, although it might take longer to pay off in terms of commerce.

[shallow_thought]

I'll aim to pick this up this evening and see how far I get.

EDIT: As I can't get into the game until later, a quick brain dump: Did we build the Forbidden Palace, and if so, where? I remember comments about putting it in Inca Gold. A dotmap would be great if Zalson has time to get one out before I play - although how much settling I'll be doing with this economy I'm not sure. Are we anywhere near the "conqueror's plateau?" or are new cities going to really hurt in maintenance? I'm tempted by Guilds next for Grocers in addition to Knights. Engineering does nothing direct for economy.

[haphazard1]

The forbidden palace has not been started yet. Overall distance maintenance is getting to where it would be useful, especially if we plan to settle more cities to the west and north. It was greyed out in the newer Incan cities, I think because of needing a courthouse first, so those were being built.

I think we have reached the plateau on number of cities cost; I was looking at various cities while building courthouses and it seemed like they were all showing the same round number (6.00) for number of cities cost, which is usually the sign that you have hit that cap.

Guilds is tempting, for grocers and for knights since we have horses and iron. Engineering would help a lot militarily, but I agree that it would not directly help our economy much. It would allow castles for an extra trade route, but that is only a couple of commerce per city. With how much of our commerce is going into gold, grocers would be a bigger boost. And they would help with health, which our largest cities are starting to have issues with.

[shallow_thought]

Got it. As we're on the defensive and did so much damage over the last turns I think I should be able to look at getting the economy moving, with wealth builds if necessary to get to Guilds; try to keep military builds to the front.

I like Advance Wars (former Cuzco) for the FP, as it has so much chop available and the culture will help push Gilgamesh back. It's a little far west for our current empire, but I can't see us letting Willem tech in peace for that long...

As for the HE, I'm less certain. I'd like to get these instructors down, and I'd like to get them on a city nearer the front than SoR or Cholo. I therefore favour Flimbo's quest.

I'm still looking around, and will check for comments before committing us.

Sadly, I don't think I can cover the horse archer, not with a knight ready to hit it.

[Zalson]

I agree; we should chop out the FP in Advanced Wars.

What's our ETA to the next great person? If we can get into Organized Religion and Buddhism as our state religion, that might be a decent choice.

Cholo has enough food to work all its mines, I think. That makes it a more attractive choice.

2 woody 1 axes should be enough to protect that horse archer. They'll be strength 10.25 axes? I'd rather give him a coinflip?

Stitched together the images; dotmap incoming soon.

I'm fine with us defending with what we have and building economy for guilds/knights/grocers/banking.

Can you generate a second great person sometime soon? It'd be nice to go theology/organized religion + state religion happy if we can...

[haphazard1]

I knew we might lost the horse archer, but wanted to finish off the remaining Roman cats. If Julius sends the knight after it, we might be able to kill it next turn. If not, well, it happens.

It would be good to put the GGs somewhere. I probably should have done so, and if we end up putting the HE elsewhere then we do. We will still get some value from them.

Good luck!

Edit: Cross-posted with Zalson.

Not sure I understand going for Theology? Or OR. Expensive civic, and we have monasteries if we want to build missionaries.