(May 26th, 2015, 16:40)MindyMcCready Wrote: 1. What's Master Commodore and Donovan got to war over? Probably just a boat passing through. I'm not sure what else that they would be warring over.Haven't even finished reading the rest of these yet, but wanted to reply quickly to this one. It's not MC & Don. It's Elkad & Don. When clicking on Commodore for viewing his interactions, then hover over Elkad, it shows Elkad at war with Don. It's one of those weird things of that screen that I've noticed once or twice.
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[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues
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(May 26th, 2015, 17:21)HitAnyKey Wrote:(May 26th, 2015, 16:40)MindyMcCready Wrote: 1. What's Master Commodore and Donovan got to war over? Probably just a boat passing through. I'm not sure what else that they would be warring over.Haven't even finished reading the rest of these yet, but wanted to reply quickly to this one. It's not MC & Don. It's Elkad & Don. When clicking on Commodore for viewing his interactions, then hover over Elkad, it shows Elkad at war with Don. It's one of those weird things of that screen that I've noticed once or twice. Well doesn't that just change everything. :LOL: I"m not sure the rest is worth reading anymore (except for the 2 dangled empty, boatable cities. 
(May 26th, 2015, 16:40)MindyMcCready Wrote: 4. Nevermind the Gavagai city raze, what about Bibracate? He's going to plant there with no military. Tsk. Tsk. Do we really have a trusting relationship between us two? Just got back again and about to head to sleep. We'll be getting up bright and early to go to LEGOland tomorrow. Likely won't have time to log in for the turn in the morning. So at any point feel free to log in. I'll be able to do so later tomorrow night though. Quick replies. I don't really understand that city plant either. But I already had a WB en-route. Luckily it was pushed to be on the same tile as the galley. It actually helped me, since it got the WB one tile closer to the clams, which will allow me to hook them up next turn (instead of the turn after). I could always load up the Axe I have in Grumpy to go raze that city, but then that would leave that city vunerable to Grimace sending his own Galley down that way with units (since he would likely have something in range to kill my axe after I raze his city). That is, if it even stays empty by the time I get in position...which is highly unlikely. Not much I can do about him having so much visibiity. If nothing else, him seeing me with lots of units in Sore is a deterrant from him attacking me. I've been tempted to put a Catapult in the city for him to be able to see. Right now I have a Catapult & 1 Axe on a tile behind the city which he can't see. Gavagai & Borsche are still at war. That image only shows the lines for Commodore because I clicked on his image. Yes, I was planning to crank out the UB after geting CoL. I think getting it for all those important benefits (maintenance & EPs) are worth the risk. I'll wait until Commodore declares war on someone before actually getting it, I guess. I can still switch back to 0% research next turn (such that I'm leaving it with just 1T left on it). And maybe get IW before it if we so decide (and if Commodore still hasn't attacked anyone yet). Can think about that tomorrow night. For now, need sleep. Nephews really tired me out today, and tomorrow will be a lot of walking again. Man, vacations are exhausting. Going to need a vacation from the vacation when I get back. 
So I just suddenly this morning realized what Elkad probably meant by his diplo screen earlier....
 Here's a new one. I think he's telling me that right now Commodore is 2T from Knights. Anyway, I decided I wanted to get CoL so had to adjust a few cities to be able to get it at EOT. Also did a bit of whipping to have some overflow into my UB next turn. 5 whips this turn dropped my score a nice amount to keep me from being too high when I get CoL. Also the last chop for Moai finished this turn as well, bringing that to completion as well.
May 27th, 2015, 09:23
(This post was last modified: May 27th, 2015, 09:28 by MindyMcCready.)
So we've got COL - so econ path. My personal preference would have been for more military to divert MC and attack Borshce but our UB is awesome. With the COL path we're going to have to carefully balance infrastructure vs military focussing on neither. We have to keep reminding ourselves that this is MC's big move and Retep doesn't look too easy and neither is Grimace by virtue of his UU.
If it turns out that MC doesn't make a big move,...then the COL path will definately turn out to be best as we sit waiting for the hammer to fall while building unproductive military. So back to saving gold. I think that our path is IW >> MC >> Machinery >> Engineering? We could think about slipping in Alphabet, or just keep paying Retep. Our future military should be: -cats in general -favour WE if we're feeling threatened by MC. -Swords for the Borsche kill. Our cost-effective window will close when he gets LBs. We can still do it with cats + swords. -[EDIT] Swords are about equal to a spear for choke point defense (higher base x many multipliers) so we should discontinue spear production in favour of swords/WE/cats. [/EDIT] Housecleaning: 1. Monument in Sad - why do we need this? We'll never culturally control any part of the region with those 3 cities there. That's 30H that won't get us a return. Given the Borshce-Gavagai war is still going,..(he's teching badly right now) or long term should be to kill him with military not fight him with culture. We might eventually need culture in there, but right now we could bulld wealth and then switch to a Rathus in 1T. Even if we lose 1st ring we can get it back later. 2. Monument in Belligerent - same again. That city will bring in a fair amount of commerce with those grasslands + riverside tiles so we'd do better with a library. I'm not sure that you know how culture works (not entirely sure that I do either). I *think* it works like the following: culture (say +1 monument) goes into the outer ring while 20+culture goes into the inner rings). So when Belligerent makes culture it goes into 1S of seafood. Once it achieves 10 culture, it starts putting +1 into the seafood. Once it hits 100 culture it starts putting +21 into the seafood. I believe that I've read about this and have observed that behaviour in SP. The point being that we'll have +21+21 well before he has +21 so we have no urgency in getting culture into Belligerent. Eventually, but not urgently. 3. How is your Moai city size 1. :LOL: Maximum size or we get nothing from the 125H investment. Maoi should never be whipped as all tiles are profitable (once you get a LH anyway). 4. Next settler please. Hopefully, but the time that the 3rd island city is planted Moai has grown and can pass over that seafood. 5. I know I mentioned score management to get OB,...we've got them so don't need to worry about that as much. Now that we've settled all of our city sites (with 1 exception) all of our food is shared and consequently our pop will regrow more slowly. Less reason to whip so much; especially right before our uber profitable UB becomes an option. ONTO Elkad. 1. I read that plus the other offer that he wants us to attack MC in 2T. Knights diplo messaging is usually iron+horse = Knights (he might not have iron) Either way I don't think that it matters to us. If he's asking us to attack well there's no profit in it for us and whatever troops that we tie up aren't going to be the ones that MC uses to fend off the not-so-mighty Elkad. If it's a message,...well it's a nice heads up and a little ahead of schedule (no Calendar I guess) but within +/- 5T of what we were anticipating and preparing for anyway. MC will have to get cats before he can take a crack at us so our spears + elephants + cat(s?) defense will do for now. We'll get 1T of warning in the power graph before anything hits us. 2. We could try to send him the message that we're not ready but he could misinterpret that as a different estimate of when MC gets Knights.
I take it back,....we need culture in Sad. We need to control those 2 hill tiles N2W and 2W.
That will make an attack invisible (if troops ferried into sad via galley).
Back from a LONG day of wandering Legoland. Turn flipped a bit ago so I logged in to play just now.
Got an odd request/demand from Commodtay:  I'm guessing his super huge cities (Cascade Point is now Size 15!!!!) need health and he's trying to demand it from me? Not sure how to respond. I exited the diplo screen so I could log in, but need to decide what to send back. I certainly don't really want to allow him to grow bigger...but I also don't want to make him decide to simply attack me for a silly reason like my not giving him my second Pigs for awhile. Here are the usual demos/graphs: I whipped a few more things: both Monuments (Beligerent will overflow into a Rathous), the Granary in Bedazzled, & the 2-pop whipped the Catapult from Sore (it grew into unhappy without me realizing it....will overflow into a Market I think) Moai city is pretty crappy right now (since it has a lot of growth to do) but I wanted to just get it out of the way. Now it'll build it's Lighthouse and then Granary. Or maybe I should do Granary so I can whip it for overflow into the Lighthouse to get the bonus? retep whipped EIGHT times end of last turn, so he dropped below me in score. Also I'm getting tired of not being able to see Commodore's research (he's been putting 4EPs into me to offset my 4EPs into him, keeping himself 1EP ahead of what I need to see his research) so I'm almost definitely going to do a turn of 10% Espionage slider. This would be enough to get me Commodore's research and get my research view on Grimace again too. I'm in gold saving mode and not rushing any special techs now anyway, so a turn of that should be fine. Then once our Rathous's come online, we'll easily be able to keep up with seeing their research all the time.
So a GG pretty much confirms that Elkad is just sending us a warning. I guess he has tech visibility.
Demand from Master Commodore: -We are not giving him the pigs for free. Out of the question. First of all he's not so emotionally unstable as to try to throw his game by blasting at our chokepoint over a health resource. Second, cozing up to somebody is pointless in a game of power. 90% of the time they'll take what they can if they can and token gestures don't alter rational analysis for the most part. Poking someone can affect an outcome, but being nice,...almost no effect or at least only an effect on a very tippy margin. -In all likelihood he's initiating a "what do you want for it" discussion rather than a threat. What the hell happened to our econ? 69gpt when we were at +87 a few turns ago? We're building cottages, right? Please don't bring up your Moai. It hurts too much to talk about it. A size 1 Moai pretty much has to be a RB first. "I wanted to get it out of the way". Like, what does that even mean? Why do you want to "get it out of the way" when it provides absolutely no rate of return? This is maddening to read about. Because the city is so small it needs to work all the food resources possible so,.....no Moai hammers for the next 10T or whatever. Do yourself a favour. Only whip a lighthouse and then never whip that city again. Every tile is a positive return,...we don't whip positive turn tiles away without an extremely compelling reason. By the way,...if Grimace gets Triemes we'll need the pop for protection. On the topic of "extremely bad plays"; let's not spend our incredibly precious gpt (only 69 of them) towards EPs on Master Commodore because, just like building a zero return Moai, there's simply no point to doing this. We've been playing with the DTay-induced 95% probability that he's getting Knights. Elkad has been telling us he's getting Knights in 2T. What more do you need to know? And by the way, didn't you just tech COL for 1/2 price +2EP Rathuses? This sounds like another "just wanted it out of the way" and I think that you're going to need to control those impulses in order to play better. WAIT A SECOND! THOSE PIGS! ARE ONE-SIDED DEALS BINDING!?!?!?!? As in 10T enforced peace binding? Has MC just tipped his hand? Is this some way of saying,...no of asking for something so that he can safely attack someone else! If this is the case, I say that we refuse the offer, spend 3--4 turns rushing cats/WE, then sign and then go and take Borsche's cities. I honestly think that it's a mistake to go econ at this point. More military means more options right now. Landing those 3 Borsche cities (plus 1 later GJ city, later) and we'll be sitting at 20 cities. Then we fire a GA and build econ and then land Cuirassiers in a timely manne while having the production capacity to leverage it. The benefits of near-term tech: 1. LBs for defense 2. Knights for offense. There are few econ buildings that we don't currently have. Tech doesn't give us more offense for quite some time but it will give defense an advantage soon. I'll write up my city build wish list and send soon. LURKER QUESTION: DOES A ONE-SIDED RESOURCE GIFT/DEMAND MEAN ENFORCED 10T OF PEACE? |
