[Spoiler] Desperados: The Black Sword & Agent

[agent427]

He peaced out- fine by me. Red Blood Beach isn't worth the cost of holding since I've already stolen its silk resource through culture. I'd have just suicided a bunch of catapults to raze a 2-pop city. He passed up a chance to pillage the silk tile, lucky me.

I missed this when originally going through the combat log:

So we both lost a spy that turn.

[agent427]

R.I.P. Grimace. He died with his boots on...

[agent427]

Hellbenders is the city I settled on that tiny island off the Roman coast. It's had a cultural revolt from Roman pressure unfortunately. I'm going to put in some outdated units as cultural garrison. Nothing else I can do about that for now I think. When the treaty wears off I could boat-raze Ashes, but then he'd just resettle it and the culture problem remains the same.



Couple graphs:




Old Rome's production bump is from its current Golden Age which should be ending shortly. He's spent it in perpetual war-- first with Network, then with me, then the Network declared again and 1st turn captured a Roman city-- so his golden age may be going to complete waste. Don't know what's going on in HRE, maybe he fiddled with tile allocations to fuel a bunch of specialists?

Didn't get the shot but I''ve taken power lead beyond Old Rome and Mongolia. Still a ways from Holy Rome, but it's reassuring. Perhaps CH will turn his aggression on to one of them next.

My MFG and Crop Yield could be a lot better. I've been looking around for places to fix up tile allocations. To date I've mostly just spammed cottages blindly, not accomplishing much. I'm hoping to specialize a few cities by ripping apart unworked cottages to make room for workshops or farms. In some places there are mature villages and towns that should probably have been production or food tiles from the getgo.. not sure if I have the heart to destroy those. But we'll see.

Companeros, my offshore colony surrounded by Mongolia, is the most food rich at the moment (as a late settlement I had realized by then that it made sense to give it more farms). I'd like to make it a National Epic city but I have no Marble. Sending out resource trades in vain to everyone.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, city specialisation is certainly something we could have done better(and earlier). Do you have spots chosen for Moai and HE too?

I'd be very wary of choosing Companeros for the NE given how isolated it is. It can fall pretty easily and you don't want that to happen with a GP half-way done. Perhaps just finish the current GP there and then bulldoze the farms for workshops? Then get the NE somewhere else and get another GP out for a golden age.

Is Elum still running away with the game btw, and if so who does Persia border?

[agent427]

Always more lessons to learn Good news is that we're approaching printing press to make even better use of those mature cottages.

Companeros was making about 34 food a turn while the next best (Few $ More) is ~25 food a turn. Few $ More doesn't have room for more farms until Biology. But it's a safer spot, yeah.

Heroic Epic is going in Il Mercenario, which was my best production city outside capital. I was thinking it would make a good Moai spot too, it's got plenty of water tiles. The drawback: It could be boated from HRE's small city that borders the same lake as it. I'd have at least 1 turn of warning because I have visibility on the city & could see any ships... but it is still risky if he knows to target Il Merc.

Persia borders Mongolia and the Network. They take up a big continuous strip of the world, maybe 1/3 or 1/4th of the total landmass. I know Mongolia got into the war on Grimace but it looks like Persia took the lion's share of the spoils.

If Persia attacked Mongolia next it would immediately destabilize our own situation... I think the reason HRE hasn't gone all out war with us yet is because they have to maintain a long land border with Mongolia, and can't leave any openings. (Their border with Old Rome is a single city chokepoint, the rest of the border otherwise occupied by a mountain range). If Mongolia were in a major war with Persia then I think HRE would take advantage of it to either attack us or attack the divided Mongolia. We're barely overtaking Mongolia power-wise so I figure he'd opt for the latter.

If HRE declares on Mongolia then I think we'd have to declare on HRE... It'd be the only chance we have to exploit a weakness in his far superior civ. I'm not quite ready for that yet. So though I hope it happens eventually, I hope it's not soon.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, Il Merc looks like a good spot. I wouldn't worry too much about being boated since we have vision into the cities that can build the boats. If you're going to put both HE and Moai in, might as well do the Moai first.

[agent427]

Lost Hellbenders to culture pressure! What a drag. Nothing built there yet but a waste of a settler. Also my units took damage getting warped out, never encountered that before.

[spacetyrantxenu]

The damage is from the revolt. Teleporting out is because you don't have open borders.

[agent427]

Haven't been posting cause there's been little news. Just been mixing units builds with infrastructure builds where possible.
HRE's GNP lead is insane. He's had rifling for awhile now, so if he wished he could invade with little I can do to resist. Old Rome has gunpowder but Musketeers aren't too scary right now.

I managed to squeeze in another city in that little silver island spot that has been the focus of war between Old Rome, the Network, and I. Looks like the Network razed that spot after Old Rome retook it, and then no one ever got around to settling it. So I sniped in an already improved silver tile. Every bit helps I suppose.

[The Black Sword]

Whosit sent a horse+iron for horse+iron and asked us for 5g when I logged in. Maybe it's a count down to attack CH?

You could kill the city that replaced Sabata still pretty easily. The other option is here:



He doesn't have Optics so he can't see boats 1N of Il Merc. You already have two boats in this sea, you could build 2-3 more and raze this guy. So that's 2 cities we could kill on the turn of war declaration without giving him any warning.

I don't know if you just want to play quiet turns from here, that would be understandable. But it also might be nice to give CH some payback. Obviously it will be hard to attack into Rifles, but maybe all we need to do is raze these two cities and then sit back and play defense? Meanwhile it signals to Whosit that we're involved and he might put some pressure on CH elsewhere.

Disclaimer: I really have no idea what the geo-politics are like right now.

The only other point I'd make really is to work all the specialists we can in Companeros. We could get the GP out in about 10t if we do. A second GA would be great.