[SPOILERS] Pindicator promises brighter days ahead

[Lewwyn]

I don't think its worth spending any money to upgrade to a caravel. That gold is for getting as much tech out of this golden age as possible. The galley's are too injured right now to be much of a threat. They will likely move onto the ocean square that the trireme can't hit, but our galleys can and he won't have coastal defense bonus.

If we are going to move on Byblos we need the units on the galleys to help soak up collateral. I think we still need more units to move in on Byblos. I want some more Pikes and maybe a few more CKN on top of our knights.

Do we keep the barb city? I think yes.

So take the barb city, move the units off the galley next to Giza, prep for taking Byblos, which is close to the same as we were going to do anyway (build up to counter plako).

Plako is researching aesthetics if you notice.

BTW we are 9XP from getting our next GG.

[Lewwyn]

Okay this turn we're moving into logistics. We will likely have to take Byblos ourselves as Plako seems to either be waiting or disinclined to waste troops to kill Byblos. Makes sense, the longer NotGav is alive the longer he is safe. NotGav represents a buffer and his army a deterrent from leaving our own cities undefended. So we will have to marshal our forces to move in on NotGav and I expect it to be annoying.

Here is a picture of the situation:



My plan is to land on that hill T163 with our stack. This allows us to hit Byblos with knights if his army leaves Byblos. If he doesn't we move forward to the next hill t164. We brace for impact or prepare to lose a bunch of CKN as we hit Byblos t165.

I moved our medic south to alexandria to help heal the knight there. Though if the knight is a 1t heal in the city, we might move both to Hirscher(ex-Giza) and heal the two units on the boats that we'll unload in the city. Either way we'll get them all healed next turn and then all those units will be able to reach the hill t163.

You may also notice on this picture that Mackoti is 1t-ing Liberalism.  

We have tech vision on almost everyone, which is fun. Finishing up tech vision on dtay and then we'll pack EPs onto plako and get city vis on him:



Here are demos:



Better GNP, Better Land area. Notice we are now fourth in power... How'd that happen? Here:



TBS is drafting Maces and building knights. He has surpassed us, but because he has so many new citiies off the mainland, I'm not worried about him attacking us. It's clear he's got bigger fish to fry. To his north are Dreylin and dtay. Dreylin has passed us in power as well. The light orange line below us that is close to us is dtay. So both of their powers are rising. Currently Mack, TBS, Dreylin have more power than us, but only by a narrow margin.

Luckily, plako's power continues to to be low and only above NotGavs. Bodes well for our newly minted expansion plans to settle a bunch of cities in plako's "back line" in the south by the barb cities. We have 3 settlers moving and 2 settlers in production:



You can see a lot of our cities are new and small and need granaries. Luckily all of those will grow oonto improved tiles so it shouldn't take too long. Only 3 of our cities are still in revolt.

You may wonder abouut our military and how we're going to defend these new cities from plako. Current Mil:



Knights are spread out a bit right now. Try to consolidate them for the byblos offensive. We will likely get 15+? in the stack I think.

I really want to get that final XP for the GG asap. Settle it in Hyjun and enjoy 9XP knights... Need another for 11XP mounted units (cav)



So goals:
Tech edu and get Unis and oxford asap. -> tech toward rifles > cavs
Take out Byblos.
Build knights, pikes and LB.
Settle 5-6 cities around plako.
Conquer plako.
Conquer Commodore's mainland.
Solidify our continent against TBS.
Tech to parity with Mack.
...win?

[Lewwyn]

Also I just noticed but we can fit another city on that island. A little fishing village. It's low priority, but of course every city matters. We also have that desert fishing village south of Gleisccher to settle and the one by Commodore's border. That's 3 we haven't accounted for yet in our settler building. The current 5 need to get down and block off plako and comm(north of Byblos).

Just a note to lurkers, but we hit the barb city and forgot that it auto razes at size 1. So that got razed. That's one of the places we are sending our settlers now. The other barb city is at size 2 and has 3 archers in it. We are moving our injured knights towards it, but we have not made a decision on whether we will try to take it or not. It depend on plako. If he doesn't move his stack of knights and HAs south towards it... we will likely take it. We are also debating running the medic knight down to join them and help out. We are a bit concerned about the possibility of plako declaring in order to kill our settlers and medic, but I do think that is a very low probability given A) plako's lower power and B) his low play time. He does seem less invested.

[pindicator]

Oh yeah, we definitely have a number of spots to cram in cities if we want to do that too. Each island has another fishing village location; there's the "port city" i had marked earlier in the game; i believe the capital has a spot to its east that can cram in too. Now that we're running merc those are probably all worth settling.

[pindicator]

Its a travel day for both Lewwyn and myself, but we were able to collaborate on the turn last night.




With the islands wrapped up - Lewwyn sunk one of the galleys this turn, but due to my mistake in positioning the boat last turn, NotGav was able to sneak away south with the other wounded boat - we now just have Byblos to crack. There are 16 hitters and 6 catapults in his stack. We were originally going to move in about 53 units 2 turns from now, but Lewwyn realized that we can still go forward next turn with about 44 or 45 units. Since that's more units than the catapults can collateral against, and leaves us with 30-some hitters not counting the CKN we're going to go ahead with that. It dawns on me that we still have yet to build a catapult or treb ourselves this game. While culture defense isn't too awful yet, we probably will want a couple trebs if we ever get into the heart of plako's territories. And we are already building replacement CKNs.

it is funny how whomever plays the turn immediately starts to wander towards thoughts of all the infrastructure and wonders we could be building right now. I was doing it when I logged in before, even adding a few castle builds in where trade route yields were over 4c. And some places like Kingston,our Moai city, absolutely need some items now, like a forge. But this turn we talked about adding another wonder to Lundby,and the forges or libraries that our southern cities could use. And they would be great! This is ideally the best time to put that infra up. Except it doesn't fit with the strategy ... If we are going to try to catch mack and TBS in city count there's only one way that's going to happen, and that's by conquering plako.

Although I think we might need to make an exception for universities? We do want to get Oxford in the capital ASAP after all.

[Lewwyn]

it is funny how whomever plays the turn immediately starts to wander towards thoughts of all the infrastructure and wonders we could be building right now. 


Although I think we might need to make an exception for universities? We do want to get Oxford in the capital ASAP after all.

Builders at heart.

Yes, we have 2t to edu then we start unis. we need to pick the cities next turn I guess and start prepping the queue lines. We want just enough unis to get Oxford I think. I have to check how many that is. But we need to hit the Oxford number ASAP meaning some cities that need unis, won't get them this round and we may have to push out unis in production cities. Need to get Oxford started ASAP, its just so good with our burea cap + PP soon too.

Preliminary Uni List:
Cap
Lundby (another reason for not going after Sankore)
Kingsbury
Wust
Gerard
Anderson
Dhalmeier
Gleischer
Pieffer?
Klaepo (eventually)
Asyut (eventually)

But yes, Unis are going to help us tech to rifles and cav = faster plako conquer

[pindicator]

Wust and Peiffer are both a little weak on production. I'd swap them for Krueger and Laffont. Though we only need 8 at first, so that means only one of those two will be needed. Agree with the rest of your list.

Anchorage is chilly and overcast. Time to go exploring

[Lewwyn]

I've arrived in Beijing and the turn hasn't rolled. No problems for us.

[Lewwyn]

Okay I invaded with 46 units. I'll put a pic up when I get it working.

Plako has 3 settlers that I've found. He still hasn't played his turn so that means we have to play before him next turn and settle the southernmost city first because he can reach that next turn. Just have to play before him. I'll try to keep an eye out for the turn, but hopefully plako respects the turn order on this one.

Next turn 8 Unis:
Cap
Lundby
Kingsbury
Gerard
Dhalmeier
Gleischer
Kruger
Laffont

Should be able to do them all in 4-5t.

BTW looking at demos and Mack's insane MFG is just

[Lewwyn]

Invasion:



3 settlers: