[Spoiler] Desperados: The Black Sword & Agent

[agent427]

This is pretty alarming:

Finished Civil Service this turn. CH already has Civil Service, plus Mysticism and Paper- over 1800 beaker lead.
He's also been building Rathauses everywhere and dumping a lot of EP into me.

A new quest emerged as well, the Master Blacksmith quest to build 7 forges. I have them under construction and can whip them out after revolting to Slavery next turn. The rewards are either Shock Swords or a free Great Engineering if one has a state religion, which we (and a few others) do.

[GermanJoey]

Code:

*******************
*MASTER BLACKSMITH*
*******************

--==Scenario==--

"The master blacksmith in [Civ City] has offered to take on and train
multiple apprentices if the government will build new forges for them to
operate once their training has been completed. We will need to build X
Forges in our cities to accommodate the master's new students."

--==Quest Help==--

"The Master Blacksmith. You are tasked by the Master Blacksmith to build
enough new Forges to provide acceptable working environments for all the
students to whom he intends to pass on his trade secrets."

"To complete this quest, you must build a total of X Forges in your various
cities. This may include Forges already completed. The master smith is a
religious man. An additional reward option will be available if your
civilisation has a state religion if and when the quest is completed
successfully. You will fail this quest if a rival civilisation completes it
first, if you lose control over [Civ City] and the master smith, or if you
reach the Renaissance Era without having met the conditions."

--==Mechanics==--

Chance of Event in Game = 25%
Required                = Forge Building
Obsoleted By            = Renaissance Era (Nationalism, Printing Press,
                                           Education, Gunpowder)

--==When Complete==--

"Congratulations! You have met the goals of your master blacksmith and built
enough Forges for each for his students to have his own to operate. Please
choose a reward from among the benefits your new metalworking empire is able
to provide to you."

--==Options==--

"Use our advantage to discover a new source of Copper."

"Our metalworking empire should be leveraged into producing stronger
weaponry."

"The master's best student will be granted control over his forge when he
retires, launching a tradition of metalcasting excellence in that city."

--==Results==--

Option 1 - "Use our advantage to discover a new source of Copper."

Cost   : None
Result : A new source of Copper is discovered.

Option 2 - "Our metalworking empire should be leveraged into producing
            stronger weaponry."

Cost   : None
Result : Swordsman gain Shock Promotion

Option 3 - "The master's best student will be granted control over his forge
            when he retires, launching a tradition of metalcasting excellence
            in that city."

Need   : State Religion
Result : Great Engineer

--==Failure==--

"You have failed the quest of The Master Blacksmith."

--==Appears in Events==--

"The skilled [Civ Adjective] metalworkers have completed the quest of The
Master Blacksmith"

That's a free settled Great Engineer, btw, not a unit. What city was the quest in?

[The Black Sword]

When I logged in CH had offered a corn for wheat swap, if you want to re-offer.

I left some suggestions around the place. Btw, a city with a stable that just pumps out HAs would be pretty nice. We could easily kill that northern Roman stack with a decent force of HAs for example.

Nice job on the GM; that should help close the beaker lead. What's the plan now the GA is over?

Forge quest sounds pretty handy. So, C1, Shock, CR3 swords ?!?

[agent427]

That's a free settled Great Engineer, btw, not a unit. What city was the quest in?

That sounds a lot more reasonable. It's in Bad, my 2nd best Production city (now that capital is running Bureaucracy). I think I like the idea of obscenely overpromoted swords more.

I'll set Ugly to build that stable, it's the best production city closest to the front.
Machinery finished this turn, can finish Archery next. After that, 3 turns of research could pick up Engineering, which would be really handy for dealing with the large geographic spread of the Empire at this point.

Where should the GM go? The easiest & safest city is the Mongolia city of Lazy Susan, right across the border, but I don't think that would yield much. Now that we have triremes, I could risk sending him across the sea to the Network, with whom we also have OB.

[The Black Sword]

The GM formula is 500 + 200*trade route value. Where trade route value is that of a trade route from our capital to the targeted city. So you're likely getting 200g extra for the island city due to +100% foreign trade modifier. Given our size 12 capital, we should get 1100g from the Mongolian city. If we got a size 14 capital I think we could get 1500g from a trade mission to Network islands.

Engineering would be useful, should consider Literature as well to get the Epics up. Any attack plans? This is a pretty good time for attacking someone, we just got some new military tech and finished a golden age so we have pop we could whip into an army.

[agent427]

My plan was to secure the Roman bay using Triremes and work my way up the coastline with Swords and Maces.
I know you said HAs would work well on that Roman army currently staring at us, but Maces would just as well too, I think?

[agent427]

Hmm, this doesn't bode well


Since he peaced out with ipecac he can throw everything he's got here. I still have my units spread out across a bunch of borders.
Once he takes this city the cities nearby are barely garrisoned as well.

[The Black Sword]

I think you need to move the GG to that mini axe/cat stack SW of Badman's river. If our front city falls he will be picked off by chariots/the HA. Probably put 2 of the impis in that stack as well since they can't reach Badmans.

I don't know whether we should hold our ground or retreat at the front city. Each catapult does about 0.5 damage per collateral hit, so my gut says that the last few units would die for nothing. It's possible he just bombards first of course.

Do they have Engineering btw? Otherwise we should have seen that stack a turn out.

[agent427]

Well, I'd already taken my turn by this point. I upgraded one sword to a Mace (couldn't afford an Axe->Mace), and then promoed everything else as much as possible.
Maybe I should have moved everything onto the hill? That would have neutralized the city attack bonus on the Praets. But by not moving to a spot where he doesn't have to bombard, it'd mean another 12 direct catapult hits.

[agent427]

Yup, aside from suicide catapults defenders only took out 1 attacker. Lost the GG due to poor placement, but another was born from the fight.
So he's got all this left:





He offered peace on the condition I give up that last Roman city. I'm not even certain city trading is on or not but I haven't accepted for the time being. He's got a lot more units than I do in this area, but--
He's down to 2 catapults, one of which is hurt
I just finished a trade mission to Mongolia, which allows me to upgrade everything to Maces.
If he's offering peace on such simple terms then he may very well be throwing everything he's got at me. He's obviously not gassed, but if he is keeping his other fronts weak then it opens the door to an attack by Network or HRE.

... Of course HRE could just as easily decide they want to opportunistically attack me, but that's been the state of the game for awhile now.