Turn 41 - Portugal + Japan
Foreign policy first this turn, which is never a good sign
Banzai gets 2 era score and an empire score and, and, and
thrawn captures a third city-state and contacts Chevalier, at least according to the telltale era score signature (2 for thrawn/chev, 1 for krill/inc). That is strong evidence in support of our earlier conception of thrawn's plan, IMO. On the one hand, it's certainly better for us that they found Chevalier than, um, us, as chev's team has two boats between them and is last in the dom rankings, so they are quite likely the prohibitive favorite for thrawn's first target now. It's also good because, if either chev or inc still retain any delusions about not spamming boats, seeing thrawn's 300 milpower turn up on their doorstep while their team combines for ~100 should cure them of such notions
but on the other hand, it's bad news that they found chevalier, who only has boats out since t38, instead of inc, as this means the contact occurred very close to chev's homeland. that means thrawn has had scouts out long enough to cross the inter-player distances, which means they could find us any second now, and we can no longer assume our CS attacks will proceed without their intervention. hell, even asanoyama might not be safe if thrawn is to our west, and i'm seriously considering swapping off the monument (which would delay PP until after the era change unless we can take vatican city!) in favor of a 6-turn galley
it's also bad news for the global coalition, as thrawn has found them early enough and with few enough boats that they should easily be able to deny that team their own CS conquests, and maybe even snipe them for themselves if they move quickly enough. tbh, i am getting shades of PBEM19 from this map, and i'm not sure how i feel about it... it looks highly likely now that failure to open with boats will result in chev/inc ending up with half the city count of everyone else at t50, permanently stunting that team. that is an excruciating price to pay for what would have been a completely defensible opening in PBEM20, and if it leads to them checking out and conceding before t60 i would not blame them. of course, that would also mean GG as unless chev/inc fights to the death singaboy-style there is probably already no stopping thrawn now
anyways, if we want to survive, we obviously have to pull off our own CS attacks ASAP and, um, just kind of hope thrawn doesn't scout us in time to cut them off at the knees. here's how that's going:
with the grim news from the foreign office, i have indeed chosen to bravely send out TAD's ships before they are fully healed all these seemingly-wounded ships are one hit away from promotion, though, other than the furthest-back one on the harbor pin, so it's not quite as dangerous as it seems. portugal's attack will be ready to go on t44, and i'm pretty confident it will succeed if norway does not show up. and if norway DOES show up, well... hopefully they can only mess with one CS attack and not both at the same time...
you will also note from the pins that i have come up with a possible compromise position re settlers vs boats, though it's not pretty... TAD is about to have way more builder charges than i know what to do with, since all they can do right now is farm and make fishing boats. the sensible plan is probably to head for irrigation after celnav (due in 7, ignore the pottery research above) to start leveraging festivals. but we could also swap to mining right now instead and chop out the settler at MoM so we can start boats 5t sooner. we could even do the same at Last of the Clan, though i'm more skeptical of that as we'd use all four of our extra builder charges that way (with re-mining) and MoM is actually using that rice and could really use a farm...
japan got lucky and did not get attacked by the barb galley, got doubly lucky in that vatican city's galley is nowhere to be found, and got triply lucky in that the city-states have not closed their borders yet. there are some tactical complications here but i think t44 is our prospective attack timing as well.
god, this situation would be so, so, so much more secure for both us and chev/inc if we had built boats instead of holy site projects and (in their case) full-cost holy sites. i can't really blame them as their opening would have made a lot of sense in the last game (and indeed is quite similar to their actual, and quite successful, opening in the last game!) but right now this religious race seems really likely to end up outright resulting in a thrawn win... and, well, perhaps i deserve a major share of the blame myself for letting us get drawn into a race with them in the first place instead of listening to your eminently sensible pro-boat counsel... that's really sad as i was quite proud of this opening before we found the extra CS, but there is no way it can compete with maxed-out longship spam from 6-8 cities. we should have played exactly the same opening as thrawn and used japan as just a worse norway, spamming out +5 galleys from 5 cities ourselves to stay alive long enough for Portugal to take over through economic development. it's pretty funny, six turns ago, building galleys instead of religious infra seemed like hubris.....now it looks like the hubris was that i ever stopped building galleys
what do you think thrawn's plan is right now, assuming they found chev/inc with just one boat instead of a full wolfpack of 3-4? i think what i would do is keep spamming boats and reroute everything that is not currently attacking a home CS towards chev/inc and try to crush their navies as they come out of the docks and eat their city-states - racing out to 10 cities on ~t60 while stunting one team permanently to the point that their future conquest is inevitable seems much better than harassing everyone at the same time and possibly being repulsed. on the one hand that is "good" news for us short-term as it should mean we are left relatively alone to become strong ourselves, which will not take long given our own aggressive foreign policy. but on the other hand, is there any hope of stopping thrawn in such a position? with shipbuilding about to pop, i am guessing they can kill chev/inc completely with longships/warriors around t80, at which point thrawn will have as many cities as the other two teams combined. i do not think that such a game is winnable
Foreign policy first this turn, which is never a good sign
Banzai gets 2 era score and an empire score and, and, andthrawn captures a third city-state and contacts Chevalier, at least according to the telltale era score signature (2 for thrawn/chev, 1 for krill/inc). That is strong evidence in support of our earlier conception of thrawn's plan, IMO. On the one hand, it's certainly better for us that they found Chevalier than, um, us, as chev's team has two boats between them and is last in the dom rankings, so they are quite likely the prohibitive favorite for thrawn's first target now. It's also good because, if either chev or inc still retain any delusions about not spamming boats, seeing thrawn's 300 milpower turn up on their doorstep while their team combines for ~100 should cure them of such notions
but on the other hand, it's bad news that they found chevalier, who only has boats out since t38, instead of inc, as this means the contact occurred very close to chev's homeland. that means thrawn has had scouts out long enough to cross the inter-player distances, which means they could find us any second now, and we can no longer assume our CS attacks will proceed without their intervention. hell, even asanoyama might not be safe if thrawn is to our west, and i'm seriously considering swapping off the monument (which would delay PP until after the era change unless we can take vatican city!) in favor of a 6-turn galley
it's also bad news for the global coalition, as thrawn has found them early enough and with few enough boats that they should easily be able to deny that team their own CS conquests, and maybe even snipe them for themselves if they move quickly enough. tbh, i am getting shades of PBEM19 from this map, and i'm not sure how i feel about it... it looks highly likely now that failure to open with boats will result in chev/inc ending up with half the city count of everyone else at t50, permanently stunting that team. that is an excruciating price to pay for what would have been a completely defensible opening in PBEM20, and if it leads to them checking out and conceding before t60 i would not blame them. of course, that would also mean GG as unless chev/inc fights to the death singaboy-style there is probably already no stopping thrawn now
anyways, if we want to survive, we obviously have to pull off our own CS attacks ASAP and, um, just kind of hope thrawn doesn't scout us in time to cut them off at the knees. here's how that's going:
with the grim news from the foreign office, i have indeed chosen to bravely send out TAD's ships before they are fully healed
all these seemingly-wounded ships are one hit away from promotion, though, other than the furthest-back one on the harbor pin, so it's not quite as dangerous as it seems. portugal's attack will be ready to go on t44, and i'm pretty confident it will succeed if norway does not show up. and if norway DOES show up, well... hopefully they can only mess with one CS attack and not both at the same time...you will also note from the pins that i have come up with a possible compromise position re settlers vs boats, though it's not pretty... TAD is about to have way more builder charges than i know what to do with, since all they can do right now is farm and make fishing boats. the sensible plan is probably to head for irrigation after celnav (due in 7, ignore the pottery research above) to start leveraging festivals. but we could also swap to mining right now instead and chop out the settler at MoM so we can start boats 5t sooner. we could even do the same at Last of the Clan, though i'm more skeptical of that as we'd use all four of our extra builder charges that way (with re-mining) and MoM is actually using that rice and could really use a farm...
japan got lucky and did not get attacked by the barb galley, got doubly lucky in that vatican city's galley is nowhere to be found, and got triply lucky in that the city-states have not closed their borders yet. there are some tactical complications here but i think t44 is our prospective attack timing as well.
god, this situation would be so, so, so much more secure for both us and chev/inc if we had built boats instead of holy site projects and (in their case) full-cost holy sites. i can't really blame them as their opening would have made a lot of sense in the last game (and indeed is quite similar to their actual, and quite successful, opening in the last game!) but right now this religious race seems really likely to end up outright resulting in a thrawn win... and, well, perhaps i deserve a major share of the blame myself for letting us get drawn into a race with them in the first place instead of listening to your eminently sensible pro-boat counsel... that's really sad as i was quite proud of this opening before we found the extra CS, but there is no way it can compete with maxed-out longship spam from 6-8 cities. we should have played exactly the same opening as thrawn and used japan as just a worse norway, spamming out +5 galleys from 5 cities ourselves to stay alive long enough for Portugal to take over through economic development. it's pretty funny, six turns ago, building galleys instead of religious infra seemed like hubris.....now it looks like the hubris was that i ever stopped building galleys
what do you think thrawn's plan is right now, assuming they found chev/inc with just one boat instead of a full wolfpack of 3-4? i think what i would do is keep spamming boats and reroute everything that is not currently attacking a home CS towards chev/inc and try to crush their navies as they come out of the docks and eat their city-states - racing out to 10 cities on ~t60 while stunting one team permanently to the point that their future conquest is inevitable seems much better than harassing everyone at the same time and possibly being repulsed. on the one hand that is "good" news for us short-term as it should mean we are left relatively alone to become strong ourselves, which will not take long given our own aggressive foreign policy. but on the other hand, is there any hope of stopping thrawn in such a position? with shipbuilding about to pop, i am guessing they can kill chev/inc completely with longships/warriors around t80, at which point thrawn will have as many cities as the other two teams combined. i do not think that such a game is winnable
should i violate this in the future feel free to quote it at me