(September 16th, 2021, 01:57)Miguelito Wrote: Commodore also canceled OB, and Tarkeel didn't take the incense bribe. I'm trying now with Lazteuq, and OB with Comm for our world map, maybe also provoking a counter offer. I get the sense that somebody is sending around Stop Trading with Miguelito messages, which is mean. Could it be our new friend civac ?
Sounds about right. You shouldn't let up on the drafting IMO. We're Fin with the biggest empire, we'll win this long term. Better to sacrifice some tech pace and instead be prepared for a backstab by Civac (and/or others). But you've been very diligent about keeping up defenses so far, so that's good.
But the most important unit to stop him is cannons of course. And you also need to find the time to build drydocks in high-prod coastal cities. Much to do for sure.
I think we can try to keep Whiskey Johnny if it looks safe on that immediate turn. And then we pillage the roads the turn after (or the same turn if possible). It has 2 food resources in 1st ring so it could be a good contributor to maturing the continent.
Bring Irish Rover musket to main continent. Don't need a garrison there RN.
Maybe send 1 frigate towards Charriu's border so he doesn't get any ideas. He has at least 1 caravel in range of your galleon down there RN.
(September 16th, 2021, 01:57)Miguelito Wrote: Commodore also canceled OB, and Tarkeel didn't take the incense bribe. I'm trying now with Lazteuq, and OB with Comm for our world map, maybe also provoking a counter offer. I get the sense that somebody is sending around Stop Trading with Miguelito messages, which is mean. Could it be our new friend civac ?
Sounds about right. You shouldn't let up on the drafting IMO. We're Fin with the biggest empire, we'll win this long term. Better to sacrifice some tech pace and instead be prepared for a backstab by Civac (and/or others). But you've been very diligent about keeping up defenses so far, so that's good.
But the most important unit to stop him is cannons of course. And you also need to find the time to build drydocks in high-prod coastal cities. Much to do for sure.
sigh...
you're right of course. I went ahead and whipped some cannons, queued some more as well as drydocks, and drafted a full round. Looking forward to happier days ahead.
civac has Chemistry as of this turn. We're still up on him Nationalism, Edu with Economics and Libertarism, Steel, and Aesthetics/Literature. He's up PP and Mono. So far he is not in an aggressive position yet at all. I've lost tracks of his knights, I suspect he's hiding them on the nine galleon stack in the inner sea. Of course any turn he might advance with his ships, and then he's just 2 or 3 turns away from our core cities. Need to be prepared for commandos, luckily with musketeers that's rather easy. We have the better ships, but lesser numbers still. I just hope it proves correct to whip out the drydocks first.
Reasons to worry: He did not return the fish/fish I sent him; and after systematically playing after us even after finishing the Elkad war, now that we declared on Mjmd in the second half he plays before us. And ultimately, if he doesn't trust us to leave him alone if we get destroyers before him (we would, I think), war now might be the most attractive option for him. I just hope he wants to finish Rifling or Military Science first.
Lazteuq is weirdly spending EP on us, it's 0-84 at this point. I genuinely don't get what his problem is? At this point I can see him trying to send galleons towards us.
(September 16th, 2021, 10:04)Rusten Wrote: I think we can try to keep Whiskey Johnny if it looks safe on that immediate turn. And then we pillage the roads the turn after (or the same turn if possible). It has 2 food resources in 1st ring so it could be a good contributor to maturing the continent.
Bring Irish Rover musket to main continent. Don't need a garrison there RN.
Maybe send 1 frigate towards Charriu's border so he doesn't get any ideas. He has at least 1 caravel in range of your galleon down there RN.
I got some more vision and so far it looks clear. Of course Mjmd will have his own workers to replace roads, but if we can pillage them up to into the jungle it works. No further conquest this turn, and I may have misplayed, and moved onto Captain Jack with insufficient numbers. Next turn will tell.
Went with both of your suggsestions.
I figured this might be interesting:
a bit over 20 of those muskets were actually queue built.
Not shown: Our 46 city empire prides itself of a total of 17 workers! We might need a few more come railroad.
The next foreign continent:
Inhabitants:
Mr. Cairo (Genghis of Ottoman)
Amicalola (Roosevelt of... Ethiopia?)
naufragar (Joao of India)
mackoti, now Mr. Cairo (green) pulled off a near total conquest of Mr. Cairo , as well as to my knowledge the earliest Astro, which netted them an Astro island of their own (curiously, so far all those islands are monopolies). mackoti also built the Pyramids, which surely has been important for them to keep up despite playing Agg/Imp.
Amicalola (green) got a few scraps from Cairo, then proceeded to split pindicator with naufragar, from whom he then took the whole conquest for himself. I don't know the details, but those should be some fun reports. Amica's game surely was defined a lot by the GLH which he managed to pick up together with Stonehenge.
Mr. Cairo at this moment has surpassed us in power, and as you see took 3 of nauf's cities this turn. Hopefully Amicalola is prepared to join in for a roughly even split.
Both Cairo and Amica are decent researchers. Both of them have Music, and I would welcome it if they research MT to bang heads into each other. Both lack Chemistry yet, and Amica also Philo->Nat which Cairo has. nauf actually has Chemistry, but I fear it will not do a lot for him anymore.
I think Cairo has the upper hand here at th emoment, but Amica definitely has a lot of possibilities yet, as well as better access to the remaining Astro island and the continent to their west. I can see either of them becoming a competitor for the victory. If that happens, our interaction probably will be limited to throwing ICBMs at each other
yes, those are not banned , although the mod makes them expensive
As a result of like 3 minor to big and really stupid unit mispositionings, and us losing 2 75% fights against spearmen in a row, Captain Jack survived this turn with a 0.6 pike left standing, and we can't kill the units behind it. And we also can't take Whiskey Johnny, because somehow I sent the galleon that I had specificall selected for that purpose towards an island last turn. Depending on where his units are this could prove pretty decisive, or just an inconsequential blunder. It is possible that he set a trap. Oh well, carry on.
It is pretty bad!
Charriu declared (in the middle of our turn, but we had moved the units in Portugual already, and it gives us an advantage in being able to react if anything). He sniped 2 wounded musketeers with knights, and I'm seeing 11 more of his (4 in Dirty Old Town where I arrived a turn late, 11 still in his territory including a GG medic). I offered him peace for 500 gold but he'd be mad to accept.
His knights all have at least 2 promotions (some with pinch even), and the cities we conquered offer no defense boni, so we are fighting at a disadvantage. Even if we could ferry over cannons, they don't do a whole lot if he can move freely on roads. A great artist surely would come in handy. I am starting a bunch of pikes in cities nearby, but they'll arrive late most likely. Charriu is also only MT away from cuirassiers, which would counter us on land on all accounts. The objective is to hold Wellerman, but it's unlikely.
I'm trying to tell myself that Charriu would be smarter to try and split Mjmd with us, but a) we didn't invite him and b) if he can drive us out he may get all of it. I'm not quite sure if he intends to keep, raze, or devolve to Mjmd. Overall a very neat diplomatic play by him and Lazteuq, both using their mutual peace toadvance substantially. I also should have taken him closing borders way more seriously.
So my misplays last turn really come back to bite us, and it looks like we have overplayed our hand. What do you think that we can make of this?
Of course we have total naval superiority and can content ourselves with the islands. For the record, it is possible that I will feel compelled to a spiteful galleon/transport/whatever campaign.
The turn split is Mjmd - us - Charriu. You can log in for the remainder of the running turn 171, and I will only play at night. Btw civac is delaying play which seems suspicious. sigh.
For sake of continuing the series, here is the continent to the west of ours:
Inhabitants:
Piccadilly (Willem of Mali)
Frozen (Vicky of Babylon)
Ichabod (Hammer of Germany)
Cornflakes (Pericles of NA)
Possibly the continent with the highest average, and pretty equal, skill level in the beginning, in particular if you count mackoti and TBS out. Piccadilly is the only one to manage a conquest, eating Jowy together with the awesome jewish AP holy city (the shrine he built himself since). He is in the best position on the continent, but Ichabod is not doing badly either, having aquired the astro island and keeping up in tech with the leaders. Frozen is also doing very well in tech, and has formidably developed cities, but ultimately they will just be too few. Cornflakes has openly been going for a culture victory since the early middle ages at least, but his top city is only at 10k by now, while he's really far behind in tech aside from his beelines (last I looked he didn't have MC). So he'll get eaten in time, and his wonders will be conquered by his strong neighbours.
The players on this continent right now have smaller empires than civac, Mr. Cairo or us, but I think it is well plausible that this continent will ultimately produce the game winner. I think it will depend in a good part on whether Piccadilly or Ichabod (or both) can conquer Frozen after Cornflakes while it is still profitable.
Thinking about it some more, the premises upon which we planned this invasion, technological superiority and an efficient backstab into Mjmd, just don't hold any longer with Charriu entering the theatre. The Lazteuq peace really surprised me, I wonder if they managed to plan for that, given how well Laz was prepared to hit GKC immediately afterwards.
We are fighting with drafted musketeers against promoted knights, and we're still establishing the galleon chain while he can just ride in from his core on the main road. And as I said, those knights will soon be cuirs.
So now we can 1) accept the sunken cost, take over the remaining islands, pin them down from the seas and maybe enact some petty revenge, and ultimately done back with industrial arms.
Or 2) we bite down onto it, defend Wellerman at all costs, research rifling and possibly MT, and whip considerably at home. I don't know how realistic the defense is, regarding logistics and considering that the city has 10 turns of anger. Will have to evaluate next turn. But anyways we were already falling behind economically, and I have my doubts if it's worth it.
Seems like it's time to show Charriu why you need a navy on a water map. He's in a similar (hopeless) spot to Naufragar in PB41. If you're an era behind on the seas you can't do anything. How far is he from chemistry?
Regarding rifling: I'm starting to think we're forced into it anyway to be safe from Civac. How large a percentage of our land tiles are we working right now? Is a golden age worth considering to bump our production and tech during these vital turns? I'd like to end it with emancipation and US though, so perhaps we need to wait. Or do we have a 3rd one ready to go later (which GP did we get in Paranaue)?
How long until we can ferry pikes over? I would like to at least keep Wellerman.
We really need more galleons.
P.S. All of this was written without logging in, so take it with a grain of salt. Unable to look right now.
(September 18th, 2021, 08:41)Rusten Wrote: Seems like it's time to show Charriu why you need a navy on a water map. He's in a similar (hopeless) spot to Naufragar in PB41. If you're an era behind on the seas you can't do anything. How far is he from chemistry?
Regarding rifling: I'm starting to think we're forced into it anyway to be safe from Civac. How large a percentage of our land tiles are we working right now? Is a golden age worth considering to bump our production and tech during these vital turns? I'd like to end it with emancipation and US though, so perhaps we need to wait. Or do we have a 3rd one ready to go later (which GP did we get in Paranaue)?
How long until we can ferry pikes over? I would like to at least keep Wellerman.
We really need more galleons.
P.S. All of this was written without logging in, so take it with a grain of salt. Unable to look right now.
good, then let's fight.
Charriu for the moment can harm us a lot though, as you have seen. If he makes us tilt, we can start to terrorize his coast with 10+ galleons, but that is some way to go yet (but it's an option, sure enough).
Rifling might be 8 turns away, if I can manage not to whip away all the coast tiles.
The first 3 pikes are arriving as early as next turn, together with a new cannon. But they'll face at least 12 healthy knights. (of course we'll have a bunch of musketeers, but I'm still not sure that it's a good idea... - we can still reassess next turn fwiw)
Anyways, while I emptied AllForMeGrog, we still did a last bit of mainland conquest:
After bombarding with the frigates the musketeers had 60+ odds, still we lost 2. Burnt it, sadly, but now it cannot whip him fresh units, we have more room for maneuvering, and we got 180 gold out of it.
You can also see that Ramk reconquered the city controlling the jungle road.
The cities are mostly pretty down in pop. Of the 47 (we're about to lose at least 2), about 12 are below pop 6, and I think less than 5 are over 10. Bonfim and Corta Cana are still the jewels as you know them. We currently have 2GM, 2GE and 1GS. Ideally we would not want to spend GEs on GAs though. Maré would need to make around 600 GPP during a GA for the artist, which will be pretty hard to achieve (average 9.5 artists per turn) even if we take pacifism during the GA again. The easiest solution would be the communism spy, but we have a bad economy and various other tech interests. Paraná is making mixed GPs (spy/priest/scientist/engineer).
Honestly firing a GA sounds pretty desperate, but maybe that's what we are at...
civac is moving his stack away from the Elkad border. He is stacking ships though, and I sense some Commando/Morale action, possibly against Bonfim? I saw 2 or 3 stored GGs of his.
When would be a good time for you to have a look? Of course the sandwich position sucks.
I forgot to take an overview shot of our home continent, and Charriu logged in immediately afterwards.
Logged in for a look, it would be good if you also could have one, but it seems like Wellerman can be held, at least for now.
The question is how do we get back on the offense, when we are always in peril of getting struck by an unkown number of knights through Mjmd's culture (currently there are 12 healthy ones of Charriu's that we know of, but Mjmd now also has Guilds, and Charriu will be bringing more). One thing will be to pillage roads, which probably means we'll have to pillage one town or another sadly. But ultimately those knights have to be neutered. I see three ways:
Brute force: Hold out until we have rifles, then move in slowly with sizeable stacks of upgraded and newly drafted ones, and cannons. Drafting rifles costs 2 pop, and an upgrade is 110 gold. Expensive stuff.
Lure Charriu into attacking, kill his knights with the counter attack. We would lose a bunch of units, but hopefully we'd have the freedom to push into Mjmd again. Need to bring reinforcements from home. Of course it's risky, because we don't really know how much he has, and if it fails he just razes Wellerman. I will try this, and the current turn is probably the best: Last turn he had to get into position yet, this turn he may be enticed by our units being not fully healed and without defense boni yet. We can hide power on ships. Also I'm thinking of sending him a peace offer with an increased bribe (see below). If he takes it good, but he may also think we're desperate and attack, also good.
Peace with Charriu. I would be willing to pay a considerable amount for that, as it would give us all the momentum to finish off Mjmd. He did not take 500 gold, instead he razed DonkeyRiding and sent no counter offer. Offer 800 gold? Of course in ten turns we'd be facing Cuirassiers, but with some culture, defense boni, superior numbers, cannons, and maybe the first rifles we should be able to make it work. In the end he only has like 15 cities, has to take care of his Lazteuq rear, and we can also pin down forces with galleons. If he takes peace an then pillages all the towns that would be incredibly frustrating.
I'm thinking of a GA when Wellerman comes out of revolt in 7 turns, so caste artists can expand culture fast (of course we need Mjmd's culture gone). It seems realistic to finish it with democracy (Frozen is first to as of this turn btw, but we don't care for the Statue anyways). Ideally we can afford to relax the whip and draft a little until then.
?
, as well as to my knowledge the earliest Astro, which netted them an Astro island of their own (curiously, so far all those islands are monopolies). mackoti also built the Pyramids, which surely has been important for them to keep up despite playing Agg/Imp. 
