By the way, I'm planning to get the boosts for both Civil Service and Guilds in the next 20 turns - IDK if that influences the choice of civics you want to research next, but you might want to go for Medieval Faires and Exploration (which are my next two targets after Mercenaries, and which will therefore be boosted for you sooner) before those two to avoid wasting culture.
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[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats
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Lovely. I guess re-offer DoFs in case they rejected the DoF before seeing the city gift, along with a side of iron for iron? Definitely inclined to pursue eternal war against TAD now since there's no reason to stab us like that if they aren't coming for us. That is a brutal, probably game-ending stab from them, but I guess we deserve it for proposing an unenforceable deal in a gunboat diplomacy format.
I don't know, I guess there's some small chance that they'll change their minds anyways about killing us now that the city's no longer a point of contention...but with them in possession of such a strategic location we're pretty much at their mercy. if i ever get a chance to, I'm going to kill TAD's trapped ships before taking peace 100%  I might even offer iron for iron and demand all their cities just to demonstrate how upset we are, in case they somehow didn't get the picture.
Right now we have a combined MP of 1,122 and TAD/Kaiser have 928. I have a new trader that I sent to your capital for 22
 I will have another one in 2 turns and my original trader will end its current route in 3 turns. I will send both to Coliform for 44 I could have Odin go into a harbor when the library is complete and chop out the lighthouse when a builder gets up there for another trade route. That should get me close to 600 for upgrades by T125. If we build boats and defenses right now, we should be fairly good. I am pretty sure he will focus on you at first, since you are closer to him. I need to figure out how soon I can get to Cartography. If it is fairly soon after the war breaks out, I can give you most of my money for upgrades and then do the reverse after the war for me to upgrade my fleet and hit teh backside of him. We can do this, just need to figure out how!
I am still building a few swords. I think if I can get a few berserkers together, I might be able to sail south and hit TAD from the south while he is busy attacking you. I think TAD's ego is big enough that he will forgo walls in all his cities except the ones on the front line.
Turn 116 - Phoenicia
Incoherent rage.  Here's what I offer TAD this turn. Do you think that's clear enough? I send Kaiser the same but without WotW, natch (and without the 1 iron on my side, since they're maxed).  Policy swap. I don't have room for Limes right now (ugh), so I'm going to build quads for 6 turns and then swap to Limes to take the last 4 turns to make walls in all the exposed cities. 6 turns doesn't sound like a lot of time to make quads? Well, not really, but:  Not pictured is Geneva, with a quad due in 4, and the Runic quad will be sped along by the trader about to finish in Linear A. But this is still two quads each in Linear B, Linear A, Hieratic, and Geneva, and one each in Runic and Abugida, for what should be a total of 10, although Geneva might be just short on the second quad and end up skipping it. I also need two more traders, which will have to happen somewhere - in Demotic and Abugida, I guess? Or maybe in Hieratic and Linear B after I'm done with ships so I don't have to delay the lighthouse + market? Whatever, I'll think of something. Mitla also drew the short straw and has to start its walls now since I'm going to be in Limes for like 5 turns, but whatever, them's the breaks. Oracle Bones also gets microed to finish its Cothon in 6 instead of 7 so it can start Limes walls too. ugh ugh ugh. Okay, deep breaths. We can do this. If we can hold it together navally, Writing on the Wall will turn into just as much of a defensive liability for TAD as it would have been for us in a war. It's so weak production-wise that there's pretty much no chance of it getting to Medieval Walls anytime soon, even if TAD is already in Limes. Did you re-offer DoFs this turn? I guess we should just keep doing that to indicate that we feel we are owed something here. Also, I gifted you a bunch of niter this turn to stay below 20 - that won't work for very long, but in 2-3 turns I can start upgrading frigates to keep my stockpile down.
I did not resend. I sent one to Kaiser too and I figure they discussed it and decided what the did on purpose. We just need to plan for war and make them pay.
Are you going to have any quads when Square Rigging completes? I only have room for 26 last turn, so can only take 23 next turn before I am full. You may need to have a city build a Frigate to use up some niter.
I have been obsessively refreshing the PBEM20 subforum all day, and Kaiser has not posted once since TAD's post from when they were holding the turn. If there was discussion, it must have been over Steam rather than in their thread. I think it's quite possible that TAD simply acted on instinct and they haven't actually talked it over.
That said, TAD will get annoyed if I keep spamming them with these "give us our DoF you jerks" diplo messages. My vote is that we should give them exactly one more out, in 5t right before I swap to Limes. I will have quite a few frigates by then and it will be obvious what the consequences for refusal will be at that point. If we can get them to take a DoF then, great, we have more time to attack China than we planned. If not, though, I'm seeing red and want war until one of us dies. There's no way that's the right move from the point of view of actually winning this game, which is surely to meekly back off and hope TAD just decides of their own accord to attack CMF, so feel free to try to talk me out of it. But I think at this point we've been stabbed so viciously here that metagame hygeine [PBEM17] demands a response. As for quads, I will complete my first one on the turn SR finishes via chop at Linear B (which conveniently acquires the PFH the builder is standing on in exactly two turns). Then I will upgrade the first frigate and start asking for 6 niter/turn from you, with the goal of upgrading one quad per turn without ever letting my niter stockpile exceed 20, then upgrading the rest en masse when I swap into Limes. On that thought, maybe it's better to give TAD their "one more out" on the first turn they'd be able to see the resulting milpower spike, which I guess would be in 7 turns rather than 6. If TAD doesn't immediately attack us, though, there is an argument for waiting a bit before our DoW. That would give TAD a chance to try to talk themselves into going after CMF, and there will also be a small number of turns (roughly t138 - t143) where I will have a trading post in a TAD city but TAD will not have one in Cuneiform for a nice +3 CS bonus, on top of the +3 from the Intelligence Agency. That also gives me a chance to inspire and research Civil Service to pitch CMF on a military alliance. Of course, it might be more important to cut off TAD's gold spigot ASAP. I seriously cannot believe how much damage building a +5 CH in my own capital has done to our odds to win this game  .
Okay, I’m going to try to distract myself from my incandescent rage by stream-of-consciousness rambling about my thoughts about the tactical situstion here. Thought 1: whoever lands the first strike has a big advantage in a force vs force frigates and caravels contest. Thought 2: I have all these biremes that I don’t have the money to upgrade and that I can’t do all that much with. Ideally, I should use them as a screen something like 5 tiles out in front of the main body of ships, such that if TAD kills one, they will expose a significant portion of their force to a first strike.
Also, TAD currently has significant force in both their northern and southern coasts. The longer we can keep those groups from linking up, the better - I should have enough force to destroy one or the other easily enough. I’m planning to concentrate essentially all my ships in this front, leaving only a handful behind at most to fend off suboptimal. I have two biremes down at Oracle Bones now, but I think even those will start moving up next turn. Embolon biremes in the right situation can get almost even odds with frigates, which is not as useless as we might be tempted to think. |
