[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Woden]

Sadly, I am pretty confident TAD will have an MA up as well, and will retire Rajendra Chola (blah) for another +3. Still, it's the best chance we have.  My biggest worry is that TAD will find a way to field Embolon caravels of their own instead of going all-out with frigates. Worst-case, those would have 55 +5 GA +5 MA +3 RC +4 OL +7 promotion = 79 CS, with no real counter until I can get to Twilight Valor. I can't believe I didn't listen to you about getting Oligarchic Legacy, I sure won't ever make that mistake again . If we win this war, the promotion advantage we gained from the last war will be what makes that possible.

One thing to remember, in PBEM18 my first attack on Ichabod at a +12 CS disadvantage but had the right plan. Anything is possible. You aslo have a huge advantage against TAD, you get +50% to all shipbuilding in cities with Cothons.

What happens to my traders on routes to TAD cities if war breaks out? I hope the answer is that they get teleported to the source cities so TAD can't pillage them. If it's not, though, TAD has more exposed traders than I do so it might not be so bad.

A trade routes end and teleport to their origin city when war is declared. If you declare, you will have to wait until the next turn to send them elsewhere. If you are declared on, you are able to resend them right away. I am 99% sure you don't get to pillage trade routes sent to your civilization.

As for Akkad, you should liberate them and then you won't need any rams to do full damage to walls. You will get at least 3 envoys and suzerainship when you liberate them.

[ljubljana]

Turn 117 - Phoenicia



Still on track for what looks like 7-8 quads by the time CS comes in. The plan is to upgrade those into frigates and dump the rest of our gold into Embolon caravels. Runic has a crisis of confidence in its quad build with no trader incoming and switches to walls instead - that's sad and inefficient without Limes, I know, but it is unfortunately needed if we want to make sure they complete before TAD can attack here. Nsibidi is the one city that starts a bireme - I'd love for this to be a quad, but the bireme is a 5-turn build (after I switch to double lumbermills here next turn) which is about as much time as we have before the walls need to go up. Cuneiform doesn't go full-cannibalism on Hieratic's tiles because it would kill the quad production there, which doesn't seem worthwhile...it does take the niter back from Linear A, though, and the builder moves in for the chop. One of these other builders will still want to improve the crab eventually, though, since it's worth +1 food/+2 gold in Cartography...I'll probably have the one at Demotic do that once it's done with the next lumbermill.

World Congress emergency session next turn, which is a bad break for us since it means we can't call another on TAD right at the start of the war. On the other hand, it might give TAD an incentive to go attack somebody else, which would be awesome if very unlikely.



I do have exactly one good gold TR available, so the trader from Linear A heads here. The next few traders (to be hand-built at Demotic, I guess) will likely do the same unless we see some kind of improvement on the war front. I'm so sad that I won't be able to bootstrap the new cities with these, but this TR is worth a caravel when TAD attacks and I can't turn that down. On the other hand, though, this TR will take so long to mature that it's going to lock this trader out of a fair few turns of Isolationism, which could be an argument for not locking up too many traders on routes like this. Gold is our limiting factor right now, but if this war goes long there may come a time once Press Gangs comes in and we're out of biremes to upgrade that food and production come to the forefront once again.

[Woden]

Abugida is the one city that starts a bireme - I'd love for this to be a quad, but the bireme is a 5-turn build (after I switch to double lumbermills here next turn) which is about as much time as we have before the walls need to go up.

You should finish the Cothon there and get the +50% for ship building.

World Congress emergency session next turn, which is a bad break for us since it means we can't call another on TAD right at the start of the war. On the other hand, it might give TAD an incentive to go attack somebody else, which would be awesome if very unlikely.

Looks like suboptimal called the special session, since he looks to lower in diplo favor than the previous turn. Should I call an emergency on TAD for Hattusa? I have no clue how I can since you are in a friendship with him but I do have the option.

[ljubljana]

Sure, okay, I'll switch back to the Cothon. It does need a monument badly too to get the banana tile, but maybe I can just wait out the natural expansion since I'm so desperate for ship production.

I imagine if you call the emergency against TAD only suboptimal and CMF will be able to vote on it (unless team MP is actually so untested that we can use this to get around a DoF). It's incredibly unlikely that either would choose to join it, so I'd say just let sub do whatever they were planning on doing, which is presumably a CS emergency against CMF. If they can induce TAD to join the war against CMF with a strength bonus it would be a huge coup for us. Actually, since TAD knows that's what's probably coming, maybe now is a good time to re-offer a DoF to TAD to give them the freedom to say yes without fearing a backstab from us. Not sure if they'd see your DoF offer before the vote comes up, but it could be worth a shot.

[ljubljana]

Turn 117 World Congress - Phoenicia



Nothing to do but hit "Begin Voting" and pass the save. Looks like a military emergency concerning a target we have a DoF with (so...anyone) - fingers crossed.

...oh god look at TAD's gold stockpile though. The mass-upgrade must be imminent. I guess Kaiser has decided to forego any upgrades for themself in favor of funneling all their cash to TAD - probably a smart move given the GA situation. We can probably expect something like 20 Renaissance ships when the DoF ends, likely with a roughly even mix of frigates and caravels since it doesn't look like TAD is building many new ships and we know they have a ton of galleys left over from the last war. I should end up with more than half of that, at least, but will still be badly outnumbered and I don't think there's much that can be done about that, unfortunately.

[ljubljana]

Turn 118 - Phoenicia



New city founded (Abjad), which immediately starts walls since it's exposed to Suboptimal. It will grow on the jade tile for a few turns (pushing one of Hieratic's citizens onto an unimproved plains, yikes), then swap over to the fish once it's acquired to grow onto lumbermills. Abugida also swaps onto lumbermills to work on the Cothon until it acquires the bananas in 13t.

In the actual news of this turn, I chop the forest at Linear B to finish a quad and upgrade our first frigate. It costs 165 gold and 10 niter, pricey even in Professional Army but obviously worth it. I'll probably do 1/turn of these until Cartography comes in to keep our niter low, then switch over to caravels.

In case there was any doubt who their target is, I finally notice that TAD has a DoF with MPF and Kaiser with CMF. No idea how long that's been the case for, but if it's recent we're even more doomed than we were otherwise .



Looks like the military emergency was called against suboptimal by CMF rather than the other way around. This is pretty clever - apparently because suboptimal and roland are allied, roland couldn't vote on the emergency just like we couldn't and thus could do nothing with their 122 diplo favor to help. I'm expecting the tide of this conflict to turn pretty quickly, and only wish we were in a position to intervene to pick up some of the spoils...



I found something kind of interesting off in the west - MPF scouting with a great prophet? Somewhere out there, suboptimal is doing the same with theirs. I'm surprised there's really so little they think they could gain from founding a religion to justify scouting instead, but I guess that's the case.

[ljubljana]

Turn 119 - Phoenicia

We're doing what we can. Hieratic finishes a quad, which I immediately upgrade to keep my niter supplies low, and it starts another, of course. Abugida finishes its Cothon and starts a 4-turn quad, not bad at all for such a new city. Demotic finishes the CH and starts a trader, as the only one of my cities with neither walls nor ships to build. I ask you for 10 of your niter since your stockpile's looking pretty full, which will let me upgrade another quad next turn as it's produced. We're approaching the point where I don't actually need to upgrade one quad every turn to keep us from wasting niter, but I might keep doing so anyways, since the gold wastage is minimal and is probably made up for by the continued increase in apparent milpower.



Speaking of which, in the west, I pull back from WotW in preparation for caravel upgrades. I also make a point of showing off my one frigate in theater, in case it's not obvious to TAD what we're doing. I think this is one of the two best candidate turns for re-offering a DoF, since TAD hasn't committed to a mass-upgrade in this theater yet (for lack of Square Rigging) and it's now obvious that we'll have frigates and caravels of our own in time to fight them. The other option is after the mass-upgrade of caravels in 6t right as the old DoF expires, and the third option is just to try both. What do you think?

Here is an interesting observation, actually. TAD does not have Square Rigging yet, and I, having just got it two turns ago, am only barely on track to hit Cartography in time for the war with a similar science rate to TAD's. That means that, unless TAD gets SR, like, next turn, they are at risk of barely missing t125 Cartography. If they are even one turn late on their upgrades, that opens up a significant window for us to perform a first strike on their navy in port at one of these coastal cities - if we can take out a bunch of galleys and force them to rebuild before upgrading caravels, we could seize the upper hand for at least some portion of the conflict. Alternatively, even if they do barely get their caravels upgraded in time, if they are trapped in port upgrading on t126, we can probably use the turn of travel time to take Writing on the Wall back, if not to trap some portion of their navy in port. I'll think about this more over the next few turns (depending on when TAD gets SR), but I think they're getting late enough on the tech that we might just have a tiny opening to make something happen here.

EDIT: I think the right way to execute this is to come in force at one of TAD's two fleets, either in the north or south (most likely the south since that's the one we can reach), and smash a portion of their navy while it's in port upgrading and can't coordinate with the rest of their ships. It'll be tough getting caravels upgraded in time to get there quickly enough to make that happen, but maybe we can make some noise with a surprise attack consisting of just frigates and biremes if we have to. That, in turn, might justify not continuing to pull back (or only partially pulling back) and instead sweeping around to the north in a few turns with biremes and frigates, then using Cartography to surround and trap the northern TAD fleet. I'll definitely send that westernmost unpromoted bireme back west on scouting duty next turn to assess the feasibility of that, and the southernmost Embolon bireme further south to do the same down there. A northern attack might be a bad idea for another reason, though, which is that it leaves us pretty exposed if the southern fleet then goes for our cities. Maybe it's best to just use the surprise turn to take back WotW and pillage the dockyard for another upgrade or two.



My scouting GA will unfortunately be way out of position until Cartography comes in to let her cross ocean tiles, so she may as well use that time to keep an eye on the suboptimal/MPF war. I don't know how sub's continuing to make advances in the face of CMF's enormous frigate fleet (no caravels yet, for which only Kaiser currently has the tech), but apparently that's what's happening. If this city burns, as it seems likely to, MPF will be all the way down to four, which is really starting to call into question CMF's runaway status.

As things stand now, I'm starting to think of TAD/Kaiser as the favorites to win the game - they'll be huge favorites if they pile on and take a bunch of Australian cities, and will also be significant favorites if they crush us in a war and burn a bunch of my cities. I still am really struggling to understand TAD's motivation for coming after us, though...the one most likely way for them to throw away that favorite status would be for them to get trapped in an unproductive war with us and give CMF time to turn back suboptimal and reconsolidate. Does TAD really think so little of us as opponents that they think it'll be trivial to crush our navies and then proceed to the kind of actual conquest that they'll need to really make gains on the other players? Or am I misreading just how bad the military situation is here for us, and TAD really is about to swoop in here and win the game?

[ljubljana]

Let us take a moment to reflect on the following: if I had not researched Stirrups or had at least waited for the boost, and had not purchased the lighthouse and fish tile at Cuneiform and Linear A, I would have hit Cartography 2-3 turns earlier with 600ish more gold in the bank. There is a very good chance that this will make the difference between being able to hit TAD's ships in port before they can upgrade without leaving our cities vulnerable and not being able to do so! Lesson learned - if you want to make war in this game, and that includes wanting to not die when someone else wants to make war, you need to commit to it! I should have built the lighthouse in Cuneiform manually instead of the Runic settler, and everything else should have gone towards upgrades. In the future, the answer to the question "when should I start saving for upgrades" should pretty much always be "sooner than I think" .

My running tally for "5 silliest mistakes this game" looks roughly like this for folks watching at home:

1. Attacking TAD in the first place, which made us a game-long enemy with very little to show for it other than slightly slowing their opening
2. CH build at Cuneiform when TAD was better positioned to take advantage of the resulting super-TRs than we were
3. WotW giveaway
4. Lighthouse and fish purchase
5. Stirrups hard-research

but hey, who's counting?

[Woden]

Turn 118
Added to trade routes to Coliform for 44. Both are in the eastern ocean, so should be safe from pillaging from TAD. I am now making 93 gpt. Civil Service will finish in 2 turns. What will you work on after Civil Service completes? I am going to need a policy swap shortly before the DoF ends for upgrades and want to make sure I put research into whatever your next civic is.

As for sending a DoF to TAD/Kaiser, I don't think they will accept. They have DoFs with all the other teams, so we are their target. Maybe I will send one on T124 as a last chance but not before. Good to know that TAD might not have Cartography by the time the DoF finishes but he will probably have 3,000 and plenty of quads to upgrade. We will have to think if we can exploit the fact he won't have ocean access by the time you can attack. A strong offense can be a good defense. Bring the war to his shores. I don't see any walls in the cities we have vision on and he might think his position is strong enough to forgo building them. Can we exploit this and make him defend instead of being on the offense? IDK, will need to think about it.

As I see it, there are 3 options for him to attack. (1) sail around and hit your north, where your capital is located. (2) launch an attack from WotW and hit your middle. And (3), sail south, hit me and Geneva. He could be planning any combination of these, so we need figure out how to counter them. I will grab some screenshots on my turn and try and breakdown my thoughts.

[ljubljana]

After CS, my plan is to finish Exploration for Press Gangs, which I will need soon as I won't have the gold to upgrade caravels quickly enough to keep up with TAD's production and will probably need to have my cities actually build some from scratch. If you'd prefer, though, I can finish Games and Recreation first to inspire it for you if you need the policy swap sooner.

If TAD gets Square Rigging on this next turn, they might get to Cartography in time - it will probably be a 6t research for them so they might barely have ocean access, but they probably will not have any ships actually in the ocean yet or caravels upgraded. That probably means their ships will be still in port when war breaks out, or at least the galleys will - that's probably the best chance we'll get to launch a first strike, especially if they move ships up to defend Writing on the Wall (which I am desperately hoping we can bait them into doing). If they don't defend WotW, we can probably do a first strike at the city itself, but obviously I'd much rather kill ships than take a city that they will just take right back.

I think the key thing to do is scout all the sea lanes and see what TAD does with positioning over the next few turns, in terms of which ports they are upgrading ships in and where the frigates are located once they're upgraded. Your longships will be great for that for the time being since TAD still has a few more turns without ocean access. Whatever route TAD takes to attack us, we have enough of a naval presence that they can't really stray too far from their core or risk losing cities. I think attacking Cuneiform would be a mistake, as those cities will be producing caravels in front of TAD's attack while my navy follows from behind and all the city walls take potshots in the meantime, and there's a decent chance TAD will end up getting ships flanked from both sides and destroyed. Moreover, TAD can't even really hurt us by taking Cuneiform since they'd have to hold it, and the cities they could raze in that area are fairly weak. Attacking you or Geneva could make more sense, but TAD would have to be careful to join their fleets in a way that doesn't allow for piecemeal engagement, and the northern fleet would be awkwardly behind schedule unless they do some repositioning over the next few turns. If I were TAD, I'd just go straight for Linear A and try to force a straight force-vs-force battle of my fleet against theirs, which they'd be heavily favored to win with their numerical edge, and after which they can pick apart our cities more or less at their leisure.