[Spoiler] Desperados: The Black Sword & Agent

[agent427]

Hit him with some cats, but his new stack was huge and it wasn't enough to soften up his crossbows, who sliced apart my macemen. He'll heal up the damage as he goes. Should've just retreated, he gets the city of Red Blood either way.

[spacetyrantxenu]

How many stacks have you lost now? How many more can you create?

[agent427]

I've lost 2. They were separated by only a few turns travel time, so if I had waited behind the city of Red Blood I could have linked them up to make a stack to compete with Rome's current ~30 unit stack. I wasted both though.
I could draw the border garrisons for another army, but then CH would just poach a bunch of my cities.
I can whip, but I've used the whip pretty heavily already so it'll add onto the long-term pain. If I do that and still waste my next army on a dumb move, welp!

I'm thinking my next builds should be lots of catapults and perhaps Horse Archers?
The Maces with anti-archer promotion are stronger than the XBows (1.10 v 9), but the xbows are triple promoted with lots of first strikes, giving them slight odds in open combat-- hadn't accounted for that.
Horchers are weaker than maces but with immunity to first strikes they'd have strength parity.. They'd need enough catapults to knock the Praets health down so they aren't fighting stronger units. They are cheaper than Macemen though...

[agent427]

Is city trading allowed?

Rome offered peace in exchange for Red Blood, Yellow Gold, and the Roman Island colony I sniped.
Pretty humiliating but he can easily take Red Blood, Yellow Gold, Tepapa, Badman's River as is; & could probably take The Ugly and threaten the core. So I may just have to suck up it up and accept.

[The Black Sword]

City trading is allowed IIRC.

Sorry I haven't been around lately. I'll try log in and look about soon. If he can take the cities (and more) anyway, then we might as well go for peace. Diversifying the army from just maces is important if he has a lot of crossbows.

[agent427]

Yup, so I've learned. I also saw that at the end Rome just recently got guilds and had a GG attached to a Knight. I'm still some time away from Feudalism.
I took a turn and resent the peace offer so hopefully the war ends on the beginning of Rome's next turn.

- I set up a Stone for Silver trade with Whosit. I thought Walls & Castles in the border cities would be a good investment. I know they are seen as pretty useless in SP but here they'd slow down enemy catapults and give extra trade routes at a time when I don't have other places to expand? Combine with Harbors for extra cash?
- I settled a third GG in the Capital. Stables set up in a lot of production cities to produce Horse Archers.

[agent427]

Ipecac has declared war on Rome, and has gone full out-- switching to Theocracy/Slavery, and whipping a bunch of times. Too bad it didn't happen 5 turns ago or I'd be helping him out. But the peace is signed.
The whole war was pretty grim on both sides I think.




Old Rome chose to raze Red Blood instead of holding it. So city-wise they still had a net loss. Economically I think I did worse though, I whipped a lot more than Adrien and used up all the Great Merchant gold on unit upgrades that died in combat.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world Elum has finished the Taj Mahal.
I can see on civstats that Grimace has managed to take back some cities in their war.

[agent427]

Quiet rebuilding.

The Network captured Rome's island colony that I briefly held. That war will thankfully draw Old Rome's attention for the time being.
Holy Rome's power remains worryingly high. Feudalism due in 2. Have a spy monitoring Augsburg, may commission another to watch Vienna.
3 settlers coming out soon to plant filler sites, then I am at the absolute limit of places to go without conquest.

Poor Grimace down to 6 cities. Elum's civ is a monster, more cities than I can count, but being on the other side of the world it's someone else's problem.

[The Black Sword]

Seems Elum liberalised Economics when I logged in.

Sorting out the current happiness problem would be pretty handy, both in terms of getting the unhappy citizens back to working and allowing us to work our food tiles again. Some options:

-Revolt to HR? We won't get another free revolt for a long time, given the number of currently unhappy citizens, I think this would probably be worth it.

-Whip the unhappy pop into forges? Need to get our silver back as well. 2 happy and 25% prod is a pretty good building.

-Build a monastery somewhere and spread our religion.

-Rome has a spare silk if you can stomach it.

On the topic of free revolts, should we try to get out two more GP for the next golden age? Il Merc has some gpp built up, so I'd suggest getting one out of there and then choosing another core city for the National Epic and getting the second there.

[agent427]

We're averaging 30 turns of slavery unhappy in every city so I'm a little leery of leaning on the whip right now. I swapped into HR, I think that'll make a big immediate difference. What do you mean by reclaiming the silver? It's in The Network's territory now. You think it worth attacking-- provoking both The Network and Old Rome (the site's former owner) in the process?

Not surprised by Elum getting Economics. I was a little surprised earlier that he got banking so early, even skipping liberalism in the process. I think I saw someone in the general RtR discussion thread mention something about the power of rushing Mercantalism. What makes that so good?

I have no resources to trade Rome at the moment, but once Anarchy is over I'll see what GPT I have to offer. I've no grudge against them, they beat me fair and square. Right after the war Adrien offered a map trade, and he kept the city names, so maybe he's signalling he holds no grudge either.

Those bastard windmill razing Holy Romans though.......