[SPOILERS] The Wild Card

[Jowy]

We are in trouble? Fuck I need to get back into this. Maybe tomorrow......................

[The Black Sword]

Not really in trouble yet, I just don't like how spread out our troops are. And then they need to be stretched a bit more to try settle that island before pindicooter. An extra pair of eyes are always good though.

[Jowy]

Okay, Vikings definitely want that island. Vikings also definitely want the islands that we already got. Imo he's the threat number one right now.
We need graphs on him (I see you are already on it, good!) and would be good to have graphs on mackoti as well.
Though I suppose they both already have massive armies, but at least it would be a final confirmation that they're intending to do more with them if the power graph shoots up.

What's our tech plan after the filler techs?

[The Black Sword]

Do you think we should still try settle the island? I think we should try but I can also the logic in saving the settler and troops, waiting for Astro and just taking Azza's islands instead. We don't want the force the Vikings into an arms race. I think we probably have a good chance of getting 1 city on the island but I'm pretty sure Pindicooter will get a city there before we get the second one.

Astro is the next main tech after Aes -> Lit. Then I'm thinking Gunpowder -> Chemistry -> cannons or grens, depending on what we think is better.

We had mackoti's graphs until very recently, but it looks like he just whipped lots of courthouses and we lost them. I figured we'd finish up getting the Vikings and then go back on mack and see if we could catch up.

[The Black Sword]

Dtay picked up Gunpowder this turn, which is clearly very worrying. Maybe we have to go straight that way ourselves. We can save gold on Astro and delay the decision as long as possible at least.

[The Black Sword]

Well, the Vikings got there first.



I wish I had realised there was a coast connection to that place sooner we could have prioritized it more. I'm not sure what to do now, we could try fight for the island. They only have about 5 ports in this ocean and most of them are in the north. Still, it's hard to see us winning that unless they give up and decide it's not worth the effort.

We do have a settler and missionary sitting around now, and none of our filler cities look appealing to me.

Here's the potential land we could take from Azza with Astro:


Trying to hold the mainland seems silly.

There also seems to be some fog to explore that might hold some Astro islands:


And someone still available to fight for GG points:


Here are the graphs, I'm trying for mackoti's again now.







Finally here's why dtay only has 1 front to worry about, beside one island city near Ichabod:


Going to play later today instead to give some time to think about what our goals should be. Any ideas here would be great Jowy.

[The Black Sword]

Thought about it a bit more and I think we should let Pindicooter have the island, at least for the moment. If there is a time to fight them for it, it is when we get Astro I think. Of course, maybe we'll have too many things for our Galleons to do all of them once we get to Astro, but that's a good problem to have at least.

So, I think we sit peacefully for the moment and build up the units we need when we get Astro. I'm thinking we'll upgrade most of our galleys to galleons immediately too. Only question left is should we whack Toledo.

[Jowy]

Yeah can't fight before Astro, *maybe* then but even better would be if we'd get him when he's occupied in a mainland fight.
Might as well go for Toledo if we're not getting anything from him atm.
Though I highly doubt we'd hold it if/when his other cities fall. So ehh, maybe just not poke the hornets nest in Old Harry / mackoti.

[The Black Sword]

I'm thinking just hit Toledo for capture gold and xp tbh. He just built a LB this turn though, but it's probably going towards the land border.

Most important news of the turn though, dtay picked up Music. The Artist is already gone, so the only reason to do that is to go for Military Tradition and Cuirs. He needs more land if he's to stay in this and we're the only people to take it from, so we should probably expect a serious army of Cuirs, drafted muskets, along with the Cats and Maces he's probably been building up. The only tech that we can get to in a reasonable time that might help is Engineering. We have stone, so we can put up Castles on our borders and build some pikes. That only buys us time as he bombards us down though, how can we beat that stack on the offense? Lots of Cats and Knights are the only thing that comes to mind.

Old plans:




I'm not sure we should stick with astro anymore, on the other hand, apart from Engineering, the next good land techs are a while away for Grenadiers or cannons. Our hammers probably need to go to defense though. On the other hand, Galleons would probably be our only chance of hurting dtay back.

[The Black Sword]

The hammer is definitely coming:



Dtay switched to Nationhood before the end of his golden age. He still doesn't have Military Tradition for access to Cuirs but it occurs to me now that these drafted muskets will be his main army.

The good news though, apart from his tech advantage in Nationalism, we seem to have caught up in other economic output.





Need to survive this swarm though. I've been saving gold for the last few turns. We now have enough to blast through to Astro but I think I prefer spending it on upgrades. That's the only way we can compete with his drafting.

The prospective Azza attack is off of course and I'm now sending all those troops back toward the mainland. I went ahead and teched Engineering and I'm now putting up Castles in all of our front cities(and the capital).

Apart from upgrades, what other options do we have to spend our gold on for the current conflict?
-Theology : I'd like to switch to Theocracy during our next golden age, but that's still a while away. Maybe we should eat a revolt turn and switch back to slavery though and take Theocracy as well?

-Gunpowder: Pinch promotion would be handy, muskets might be useful as well.

Anyway, we have a dilemna this turn whether we want to kick things off early:


I've been watching dtay road along the border the last few turns, but I didn't see the point in stopping him, it wasn't giving him access to any tiles he wouldn't already have access to. I don't really like him roading this tile though. I positioned the 2 knights East of Bagabond last turn. Our FW can complete the desert road, and our entire mounted stack can reach that tile and the 2 knights are available to strike the final blow and retreat. The only mounted units he has access to are Horse archers at the minute and I doubt he has many. The sentry chariot can make sure there are no units on the farm East of New Xerxes so we'll be safe from attack.

Of course, he can always road that tile in 1 turn anyway, so I'm not sure if it is that much of a benefit. I'm not sure if starting early favours us or him. I was looking for some feedback before I made a decision.

Our currently unimpressive military: