Zara, The Newly Minted System Lord(TBS)

[The Black Sword]

I cashed in the Trade Mission on T85 for 733 gold, that's worth roughly 1k beakers in bulbing. I finished Philosophy as expected and It looks like I can 3t Nationalism and then 1t the Taj on T89. I can delay 1t and pick up Calendar or 2t and get to Literature as well. I expect dtay to throw his golden age and revolt next turn, so we'll see then how long I can delay.

Incidentally, there was quite a jump in dtay's espionage graph, either he just whipped quite a few courthouses or he ran some of the slider against me, guess I'll see if the graph levels off or not.

At the end of the turn, Taosim founded in Baal, which is a reasonable spot. My situation is pretty much tailor made for some Pacifism GA action so I'll try to plan that out next turn too. I'm thinking 4 GPs might be possible. I might as well cash in the gpp in Nirrti before I get the Heroic Epic up, that should be easy. If it's the GE, I bulb machinery for the maces, if it's the GM then another trade mission. Then I probably have enough time to whip a monastery and 1 missionary from Baal, along with the free missionary, that gives 2 cities with the religion, should be easy enough to find cities that will work. The tricky bit might be getting one in Baal as well, given that it will have reasonably low pop after the monastery whip.

What GPs to get out probably depends on whether I want to run for Liberalism or not. If not, probably just get out all GMs for continued trade missions to fund my libraries, if I go for Edu I can slip in a scientist or 2. I need to think about whether I'd want to throw my manual GA straight away as well. Short term, Mercantilism and Liberalism are two pretty good tech goals. Long term, I think the best bee-line targets are Drafted Rifles or Communism.

[The Black Sword]

I went with the 3t Nationalism plan. Mostly to be safe, there also weren't massive benefits to the delay either. Here is the last stand of the royal forest of Ra:




Next turn I whip the catapult for 66/33 hammers. No need for anything fancy when I have this many forests. I was wondering whether I should have a few for future wonders, but honestly there aren't any really appealing ones left in the near future. By the time some more good ones appear, my workshops should be on full hammers and I'll build them that way.

One of the casualties of the 3t Nationalism btw is the delay in irrigating that wheat farm, that will occur next turn.

A lot of courthouses are going in at the minute.


Dtay's EP rate has stayed constant btw, it looks like he's whipped in 7 courthouses, quite soon after CoL. Wish I had the luxury of doing similar but I needed to make sure my defenses were in good shape. Still, that's 280 hammers that Org would have saved for him.

My sentry boat is going to do some exploring up this coast rather than heading home straight away.



Pretty paltry defenses, dtay still has the lowest power in the game. And he's not even in slavery at the minute, switched to Caste during the GA. I'll be doing that too, I'm debating whether I can stay in Bureau or should I switch to Nationhood for safety during mine though.

Another use of Cre:


This city needs to keep growing and get into my top 5 for Rep happy but it would go unhappy at size 7 before Calendar comes in. Given the food surplus and the relatively tight happy situation on this map, this will definitely be useful long term as well. I've built one other Colosseum in Apophis so far.

EOT Demos:


Dtay appears to be on break even research. I'm pretty sure the GS born earlier was not from him but another born this turn is. Given his choice of Caste system, I expect him to be doing some bulbing on the way to Liberalism. When I ended turn I got research visibility back, showing him 1 turn from Philosophy, so I guess a delay in Nationalism would have been safe. My GNP actually managed a massive 50 point jump when I ended turn.

[The Black Sword]

Pure fact update because I still don't have a firm plan in place.



Taj built, and I made use out of the mini-GA turn for hammers and GP in a number of places, everything that says 2t in this picture actually completed this turn:



So many options at this stage of the game. Here's the tech tree:




The only thing I have on the right is Nationalism.

And demos after I ended turn and the GA kicked in:


Dtay is running a slight deficit, me a slight surplus, nobody is getting any pre-req beakers because he just completed Paper. Dtay is up Paper and a turn on me in the Lib race, with about 100g extra stored gold, he's the heavy favourite. Obviously I could have got it if I'd forgone Nationalism, but I'm happy with my choice. Lib, the tech, sucks and Education is pretty average I think given how expensive the Universities are. The only thing I'd really want from Lib is Free Religion, and dtay already has the Paya for that. The other good thing is that it's a pre-req for Communism, but Sci Method would obsolete Parthenon and TGL for him. So, Lib is a 1238b black hole and dtay would need to pick up something good with it for it to be worth it. Ideally, I'd like to force him to pick Nationalism but I don't want to actually put any beakers along that path myself. If I could somehow land Lib, I'd like to have Alphabet to pick up Printing Press. If dtay can grab that, well, that's not good for me, but not bad either. I don't want him getting Astronomy or anything worse.

[The Black Sword]

Indecision has been defeated!

My tech path is Priesthood -> Monarchy -> Feudalism -> Machinery(bulb) -> Guilds -> Banking.

If I don't get an Engineer then I'll have another merchant instead to bulb Banking, so I can 1 turn all of these techs and revolt to Mercantilism at the earliest opportunity in 5 turns. This means I'm definitely leaving Liberalism to dtay. The demos strongly suggest to me that he 1 turned another tech at slightly above breakeven research. This was confirmed at end of turn when I got back research visibility but no tech showed up. So, it looks to me like he bulbed and completed Education. My best Liberalism time was 4t, Paper -> GS -> Edu -> Lib with overflow. I'm sure dtay can make it in 3 turns and win. I was looking at options like taking Paper, check for an Education pre-req, if not take the GS but I didn't want to delay things putting beakers into techs that I don't want and that won't be useful for ~10t. I'll keep my GNP as high as possible to try make dtay think he's in a race, and I won't connect up the wines until he takes Lib to tip him off but I'm not putting my beakers that way.

Instead, after those techs, I'll be in Nationalism, whipping Knights, drafting muskets/maces, attacking either dtay or Azza. I'll pick up the Epics and the Globe and 1t Gunpowder whenever the overflow builds up high enough. Engineering will be another good tech. Meanwhile, of my 4 GPs, at least 1 will bulb, 2 will be high odds GM for trade missions and the 4th will be used for my next GA, 5t after the first. It's likely I go for Rifling during that, while generating GS to bulb toward Communism.

Some GA cities:






This city can actually grow a size and still get the final GP, finishing it off after the golden age ends.








I'm not actually getting a GP out of this city, but it will have Taoism next turn, so I will use the GA to generate a lot of gpp to complete next time.

I revolted into Caste, Pacifism and Taoism, obviously, and decided to stick with Bureau for the GA.

Demos, before ending turn, GNP dropped to 562 after ending.


Azza stirring up trouble again:


I offered peace again btw, because I think I'd prefer to attack dtay rather than him, but his price has gone up to Bastet, Anubis and Cronus now. Guess he can sign his death warrant if he wishes.

If this city isn't reinforced come T92, when I have 2 full galleys outside it, I will hit it. The food surplus is just insane. I think he popped borders with build culture though, so he's going to lose the deer island in any case.

[Ituralde]

That's a really nice empire you got going there. Just wanted to say that your detailed descriptions are much appreciated and I look forward to your next reports!

[The Black Sword]

Thanks! Good to know I'm not just talking to myself.

On my end, things are pretty much going to plan. Rolled an Engineer from Nirrti, so I bulbed Machinery. I've teched Monarchy, Feudalism and Priesthood, this turn I'm finishing Guilds with just the overflow.

Summary of the next few turns:



EOT, I got the GM from Baal. I'm going to use him to bulb Banking instead of the Trade Mission. The Trade Mission would be more valuable but I think the turn advantage is more important. This allows me to starting drafting muskets immediately instead of a turn of maces, this gets Engineering a turn sooner which allows at least 2 extra units to hit the staging areas in time, it gets me started on NE, HE and Globe a turn sooner and it probably means I get Printing Press a turn sooner too. After that I'll probably stop 1 turning techs. I'm looking at about 16 techs in the 14 turns after Nationalism.

Despite that, dtay has not taken the Liberalism 'bait'. He continues to 1 turn techs as well, so my research visibility isn't helping me. If he doesn't land it next turn then I could have beaten him there. Still, he doesn't have Compass so at least an Astro bulb is off the table. He reinforced Athens with 2 archers, so I decided to call off my attack there and Azza still refuses to sign peace so I've decided to take him out instead. This might be a mistake, once I'm drafting muskets, dtay's islands are probably very vulneruble and easy to hold, while Azza has some very nice culture on our border. I guess we'll see how quickly I can roll Azza over.

If anyone cares to try interpret my logistics, here you go:




The end result will be a fleet of ships on the signs in the West and a stack of one movers on the T98 tile in East. The ships will consist of 4 triremes, 4 full galleys of 6 muskets, the super-axe and a cat, and a galley following a turn behind who allows me to fill up the boats properly. The land force will consist of at least 5 drafted muskets and 8 cats. I'll also be whipping a lot of knights come T95, though I haven't quite sorted their logistics out yet because they should be fast enough to get into position. They'll take out Tenochtitlan and join up with the 1 movers. Obviously I'll be including a lot of my ancient army as well. Speaking of which:





Builds this turn include a lot of HAs upgrading to Knights. It looks like I should have the happiness levels for this drafting, Nationhood also gives a nice 2 happy from the barracks. That Crossbow is a bit annoying, I forgot that my skirms would obselete with Feudalism .

Demos after ending turn:


I assume dtay's GNP bump is due to adopting Free Religion(from Paya, not Lib). You can see the massive advantage in Soldiers I have already. I hope I'm not overdoing this but obviously the quicker the contest goes, the better.

[The Black Sword]

Been a bit too busy to update lately, but things are getting very interesting.



Dtay landed Liberalism on turn 95, I could definitely have won that race. The problem is though, that I gave him enough time to take Astro with it. If I had went with the Lib route I couldn't have taken my path down the bottom of the tree to invade Azza but I'm really not sure about this decision anymore.

The other thing to notice in this picture is the galley logistics. There is another empty galley under the trireme stack. The Odyssey is following behind, allowing me to fill these galleys with muskets drafted from Heruur, Osiris and Bastet, without delaying the stack. This is their attack path:



Each turn we add a new city to our fork. I haven't decided whether I want to trade 2 Triremes for his 2 yet.

My research wasn't nearly as high as expected unfortunately, I couldn't 1 turn Engineering last turn, so I took Poly instead and only just about squeezed Engineering in this turn. I had to change my draft order a bit to compensate. Part of the problem is that I've got a lot of Mints in my cities and I'm running lots of Engineers rather than Scientists. There are also two cities who can currently only run spies, so expecting 6b per city was unrealistic. I've also done a lot of whipping which obviously decreased my research rate too. I tried to hold off last turn, so as not to lose the GA bonus, but I had to do it in some cities far from the front to get the units ready in time. Most of the whipping happened this turn:



That will give me a total of 11 Knights in the initial attack:



Some of my opposition:



I like the look of that crossbow. I was hoping he might expect me to be coming with drafted maces and build some crossbows, because he doesn't know I've gone down the bottom of the tree. One of the reasons I wanted to get to muskets. I took some EPs off dtay now that I knew his research path to grab Azzas graphs again:



I already knew roughly where his power was btw, because there was a very small gap between rival best and rival worst power in the demos screen, so I wasn't going in blind. Some confirmation is nice though and we'll see when he starts responding.

Btw, I had a weird occurence in Nirrti:

I had the Knight at 35/60 to set up a 1 whip this turn but it required a two whip, despite me getting the full 50 hammers. Does anyone know what's going on here? It's a bit annoying, because now I'll have to use build wealth to save the overflow for the HE, instead of my original plan. With Rep scientists, I only want to be building wealth in exceptional circumstances.

Dhalphir got Paper btw so we traded maps:


I should get some settlers in the water here. I did the trade because what extra map info I did think I have, I actually wouldn't mind giving to him, some islands that him and dtay should be contesting.

Obviously, with dtay getting Astro, I need to keep a watch on my northern shores:


Fortunately, muskets are the best units he should have for a while. I'm going to rotate my skirms from Azza defence up here instead. They have a great shelf life, particularly against Amphibious attacks. I'll also draft at least 1 musket in each. I'll also need to get Astro myself, and then Chem. I think I'll still pick up the Epics first though. If I'm going that route anyway, I think I may look at Communism rather than Rifling. Great Scientists can bulb Edu, PP, Lib, Chem and Scientific Method, unfortunately not Astro in a reasonable time frame. So, I probably just want as many GS as possible from my next GA.

Demos before ending turn:



They took quite a hit due to all the whipping, I was first everywhere. Hopefully that difference in soldier level means a quick war and I can catch up quickly.

[The Black Sword]

Come on dtay, it's turn 97, you can't be leaving cities like that.



I don't care if you have just gotten Astro, no way I'm letting that slide. Burn Baby! I offered a 10t peace treaty. On the one hand, I have more than twice his power. On the other he has Astro and I'd like 10t to concentrate on Azza uninterrupted. In 10t time I can definitely have the difference in our naval disparity rectified. I might be overestimating just few troops he has lying about though.

This boat, the Aurora, is the one I sent with my GM on its trade mission. I didn't know the exact location of Dhalphir's cities and I wanted to make sure I wasn't ambushed en route so I added the sentry chariot too. Then I decided to take the long route home, defogging dtay's East coast and the islands along the world wrap until I arrived at his West coast. So, maybe he assumed the boat was empty all along? But he always had at least one defender in his cities in the East. And he had sight of my boat last turn so he could have easily dry-whipped a defender. I've just been reading the start of Pindicooter's PB13 thread btw, where scooter says that next time he goes for circumnav he'd bring a warrior along in the boat for all the empty cities they found.

Moving up on Azza:





I should have stacked the muskets behind Cronus, only needed to show the Knights this turn. Doubt it makes much difference.

[The Black Sword]

I opened the save to 2 great pieces of news;

1: Dtay took 10t peace! Cool, all my skirms can turn around back towards Azza now. There are 5 cities on my north coast that he could hit from either the ocean or his territory that I couldn't defog. I was dreading trying to keep all that safe while conducting a war in the south.

2.


Azza's army hasn't moved! Maybe he thinks I couldn't have gotten Engineering, as well as up to Gunpowder and Banking? Whatever his reasoning those guys are so vulnerable. 6 Knights and 1 HA to face his 3 crossbows and 4 axes. Then 5 HAs with +50% attack vs 5 cats, this should be a massacre. First though, I had a look with my sentry Chariot:



5 HAs and 1 cat in range, maybe some more 2-movers. I have plenty of units to cover that counter attack.



90% odds with the Knights. They fluctuated a little as promos and fortification varied but they were all around 90.

Knight vs Crossbow - win!
Knight vs Axe - win!
Knight vs Axe - lose

Probably should expect to lose one of these I suppose.

Knight vs Axe - lose

GG Healer Knight vs Crossbow - win! Phew, at least I didn't lose that one.

Knight vs Crossbow - lose

Here comes the my only weak combat of the round:



Lose of course, and he has enough hp to soak up another HA before the cats start defending .

HA vs crossbow - win

Finally we had 4 HA vs cat, 99% odds. 4 Victories.



213h lost for me vs 234h lost for him. That really annoys me when the RNG rewards bad play. Still, at least I took out his cats, which are really important when defending at a tech disadvantage. I then moved the rest of my 2 movers to cover and sent my 1-movers towards his holy city:


The western front:


Those ships complicate matters. First I scouted GeeLong with a Trireme, both of his cities just completed a mace, along with their garrison unit. Guess I gave him too much time to get to maces. I just decided to move up the fork:



If I can just hold his garrison units here while my cats march inland, I'm ok with that. I wasn't willing to sacrifice the Odyssey to add in the last two muskets, so the Daedalus galley is empty. I needed the Bastet musket anyway for defense in case his own galleys are loaded. I doubt that though. He should probably just move up into my territory to pillage my nets, he needs more boats to stop mine. I'm going to skip Drama though, so 2t until caravels.

I've decided I'll delay my GA for 3 more turns, then throw it, take advantage of my dtay treat to stay in Bureau as well as Caste again, it'll finish just before the treaty expires. I'm pretty sure I can get the 5 scientists, so bulbing towards Communism is very likely. I'll have a lot of Engineer pollution, but that's ok, I can save one for the Kremlin if I get it. Since I won't be back in Nationalism for another 10t, there's no hurry on the Globe Theatre, so no need for Drama. Tbh, I'm beginning to doubt the necessity of a Globe Theatre draft camp, I just need a few more cities and the happiness can be managed naturally via rotation.

Demos after I've just whipped/drafted an army:

[The Black Sword]

Doesn't look like Azza is trying too hard here. He could have saved these units if he retreated them. The sentry had a look around:



Garrisons on the coast unchanged, Hawthorn defended with a crossbow and warrior. My 1 full hp shock knight took out the only good defender in the Aztec city:



and this time my knights didn't make any mistakes:



Nice haul. I only left a skirm and spear in the city, most of my Knight stack stood still to heal. If he wants to trade HAs for those two that's ok with me. The 1 movers went to the hill overlooking Hawthorn. On the coast I continued my fork but unloaded a cat+musket on a hill beside 1 of his cities. I still have 4 units in the boats, now forking 3 cities.

I 1 turned the Heroic Epic in Nirrti, the National Epic in Heruur will be delayed to 4t because I built the Great Wall there first, resulting in this:


I've similar ambitions with Notre Dame. If the delay results in someone stealing it, I'm happy with more failgold.

Thinking a bit more about my overall position, I think I want to hit dtay as soon as our peace treaty ends, if I can manage to finish Azza by then. His best units right now are maces, he doesn't even have construction and of course his current army is non-existent. So, I need Astro(delayed right until the treaty ends, but with pre-built Galleons to maximise the Colossus) and Chemistry and then either Steel or Military Science or both to move to the next level of military. After that I'm not sure about my options. I don't think I can finish Communism in 1 golden age, too many techs to physically complete, which should really be the goal. That will allow me to revolt to state property and Kremlin-whip away my GA pop. So, I'm thinking I might chain my 1 and 2 man GAs instead. I really need to get this sorted quickly though.