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

[haphazard1]

Popped a source of gems at Football Manager.

Julius is bombing the defenses at Flimbo's Quest, so we have a bit of time to gather reinforcements and prepare.

[Zalson]

Music also opens up the culture bug, which we should use.

Basically, when a city is about to pop its borders, use the build culture bug to ensure to pop borders (increase it over the threshold to expand borders). Make sure there's another item in the queue behind build culture. This will overflow the hammers from the previous turn into the second item in the queue.

For example:

T221 Sonic the Hog has 499/500 culture and products 22 culture per turn and produces 15 hammers per turn. On the F1 screen, it says 499(1) with 23 culture per turn. It's working on a musketman at 47/90 hammers. Select build culture. This will push the musketman down in the queue. Culture per turn will increase by 15 cpt to 37 culture per turn. End turn.
T222 Sonic the Hog pops borders and now has 536/5000 culture. The musketman now has 62/90 hammers, saving a turn of build time.

Nice on the gems

[haphazard1]

OK, back home after a very busy afternoon. Time to finish up the turnset.

(pretentious deep voice)
"Previously on VideoGameEmpire, brave Japanese forces were rushing to defend Flimbo's Quest from the invading Romans. As Roman trebuchets batter the castle defenses pikes, muskets, and samurai prepare to resist the coming assault. Ivan the Terrible arrives with veteran troops from the earlier battles at Sonic, boosting the defenders' morale and healing the wounded. The defenses are down, the Roman assault begins....

And now, the exciting conclusion!"

Edit: Cliffhanger! Sorry, turns taking a while and I did not have time to finish. Will have to do so tomorrow morning.

[haphazard1]

OK, resumed playing. Julius continues bombing the defenses at Flimbo's Quest. For unknown reasons, a single Roman crossbow attacks and dies, but nothing else in his big stack attacks. No idea what that was about, but thanks for throwing away one crossbow!

Shaka and Mansa have each gotten a great engineer; I wonder what they will do with them? Mansa has better tech and could rush a wonder. Shaka is working on Literature and I guess could rush his Heroic or National Epics if he wanted, although it would be rather wasteful. Maybe bulb a tech?

Bigger news: Shaka just declared on Willem! Well, that should keep the two of them busy for a while. We may get requests from both to join the war, which would damage relations but we are kind of busy at the moment with Rome.

Speaking of which, here is the latest power graph which now shows the results of the clash outside Sonic at the start of my turnset:

If I can crush the stack outside Flimbo's Quest, we might actually catch up to Rome in power. Lots of troops being built as well, I have almost all cities cranking out units and sending them to the front.

[Brian Shanahan]

You'll do it Haphazard. We have total faith in you.

[haphazard1]

Mansa built the University of Sankore, presumably with the GE. No obvious GE use from Shaka yet.

I am setting up to attack Julius' stack next turn (T248), as the first batch of replacement catapults has arrived at the front and will be in position to lead the assault by softening up his stack. Julus is still slowly bombing the defenses of our castle at Flimbo's Quest; the time that has bought us has certainly been useful.

I have spread Buddhism to all our cities except one, and have a missionary on the way to Paperboy.

I have been accumulating cash; we are just about ready to turn on research for Nationalism.

Sorry this set is taking so long, but there is a lot going on with every turn. I don't think I have even mentioned barbs, but we are still fighting 3-5 new barb units every single turn. Persistent, those barbarians.

Edit: And now Julius has started a golden age. Wonderful, just what we did not need.

[Zalson]

What is the stack composition for and against Rome?

What's our ETA to nationalism?

I think after nationalism it's straight on to rifling, yeah?

Echoing Brian: you've got this, haphazard1.

[haphazard1]

I f we go to 100% research, we will complete Nationalism in 4 turns. This will consume our entire treasury, but that is what it is for.

Julius has 9 cuirassiers, 3 muskets, 3 elephants, 2 praetorians, 2 crossbows, and 4 trebs outside Flimbo's Quest. We should have enough to finish him off, now that everything is in position; knights, pikes, muskets, samurai, a bunch of cats (soon to be a lot less, unless we get lucky on the retreats), and some older stuff like axes and horse archers. I will have to count for exact numbers.

[Zalson]

Do we need to attack? All our muskets are at least strength 11.7 in a city. If we have over 26 units in the city, maybe we just tank the attack?

[haphazard1]

I did not want to let Julius attack us with his trebs for stack damage, and then attack weakened troops. We probably could have waited and let him attack, but he was going to remove all our city defenses anyway. Plus, he had some more units starting to move up to join his stack.

So, big battle outside the walls of Flimbo's Quest. Here's an idea of what happened:

We annihilated Rome's stack, and are now more powerful than Julius. We lost 9 cats, 3 pikes, and 2 muskets to kill all 23 units in his stack, with most of his units costing more hammers than ours.

We have a ton of wounded units, but they will heal rapidly with Ivan the Terrible helping out. Then we can consolidate with the freesh siege units coming to the ftont and go on the offensive -- assuming Julius does not show up with yet another stack. We have a lot of veteran troops in Flimbo's Quest, and more siege units are already moving to the front, so we should be able to handle whatever happens next. If we decide to invade, be aware that Julius has Chichen Itza and castles for 125% defenses; lots and lots of siege will be needed.

We got another great general from the fighting; Yamamoto (a good omen for us ) is on his way to Cholo to join the Heroic Epic city as an instructor.

In other news:

- Julius just built the Taj Mahal to extend his already ongoing golden age. Rome has been tremendously annoying this game.
- I have turned on research for Nationalism. We have enough money that we should be able to finish it, with the last turn dropping from 100% but should be enough. That will enable us to go to Nationhood and draft if we feel the need.
- After Nationalism I recommend Military Tradition for cuirassiers. Rifles are a long ways off yet, but MilTrad would get us cuirassier which are pretty good units.
- I used a spy to steal Drama from Mansa Musa; we were not caught. We could not get a more expensive tech even with max discount on our spy, so I grabbed what I could get.
- Be aware that barb longbows have begun to appear. Our northern cities need careful defense. We have samurai and a knight and a musket or two up north, plus some older units, so we should be OK, but some more muskets might not be a bad idea.
- We are a bit low on workers (less than one per city), and several cities need some worker attention. I was busy building troops, but maybe now we can fit some worker builds in.
- Willem has been settling in the northwest. He is welcome to fight the barbs.

Lots of units are not yet moved this turn; there are some barbs in our territory that need dealing with.

Good luck!