[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England

[TBW]

I like oceangoing ships being balanced by oceans being 3 move points, it means early ships can't use movement bonuses to alpha strike people from halfway across the map in one turn and makes naval sentry pickets important.

[TBW]

T157:
Now that I have Paper, I can see that I'm in a great spot tech-wise compared to most of the other players. 2metra didn't even make it to Feudalism before Rusten annihilated him, while Borsche is in good shape to hold off Rusten until his advantages snowball into cuirassiers and beyond. Rusten finished Nationalism this turn, it doesn't look like he has a Great Engineer stashed away but that gives him a considerable head start on grabbing Taj. I might not be able to beat him to it and he'd have to be an idiot to not be building it now.

GKC's tech situation isn't great. He doesn't have Guilds, Aesthetics, or Horseback Riding, but he does have Feudalism, Construction and Engineering, so a pure knight invasion wouldn't work very well. Though I would love to add his territory to mine ASAP, it's probably better for me to keep building up my supply of knights and siege weapons and my infrastructure for now. One thing I've learned is that you never start a war in this game unless you have a set goal, a clear way to execute it, you want it to be over as quickly as possible, and you want to take as close to no losses as possible. Right now, I only have one of those criteria against GKC. I have three out of four against Rome, but punching through 6 longbows (4 CG1, 3 CG3) in a walled hill city with knights is a stupid idea when the prize is one city. At least I don't have to worry about any invasion since he doesn't have HBR or Guilds, unless he has a bizarrely large trebuchet/sword/pike or war elephant stack built up. I can't totally rule that out, which is why I walled and castled Sneatonthorpe and have my defensive stack staged nearby.

I completed circumnavigation this turn, pretty amped about that. I mean, I'm not like standing up and celebrating or anything, but it's nice to be up to sea parity again. My Moai city finished its harbor this turn so I'll be pumping out privateers; I don't have a specific goal for what I'm going to do with them yet but having a fleet I can use to ward off Rusten seems prudent.

[TBW]

T158:
Adler/AT finished Sistine Chapel, which suggests that he might be playing for a culture victory and not a military victory. Looking over his territory, that doesn't seem like a bad play. He doesn't have any land neighbors as far as I can see, and his sea neighbors are GKC who will never make it far enough to launch amphibious assaults, and Dark Savant who has been tied up in a stupid grinding war with Superdeath for a while now. Whether he'll be able to hold out long enough to pull off a culture victory before somebody's teched enough and smashed through his neighbors to take his cities is another story, and I feel like not having Feudalism yet is a really, really dangerous play for him. But we'll see what happens.

Rusten finished Spiral Minaret, which I expected since he grabbed Apostolic Palace. He also polished off 2metra this turn, then Borsche will almost certainly be next. I don't yet know how I'll deal with him, or really if he can be dealt with at this point, but I still have the latest power spike in the game coming in the form of redcoats. He'll be aware of that too, though, as will OH and the others.

Domestically, it's still just building my buildings and filling in my last tile improvements. I'm keeping pace in power despite most of my cities being dedicated to infrastructure right now, which tells me that infrastructure is the right choice right now. I'm #1 in GNP when I turn research up to 100% despite two people being in GAs right now, which means I'm in really good shape there too. Maybe it would have turned out even better if I hadn't had to pick up Engineering when I did, but then again, I won't know if that stopped OH from pushing through Rome with his knights and invading me until after the game.

[TBW]

T159:
GKC finished Guilds this turn. I'll watch the pbspy page for sudden whipping sprees and power spikes, but I'm not terribly worried about a sudden attack from him since he doesn't have Horseback Riding yet. I've swapped to running spy specialists in my cities that aren't focused on production instead of scientists for now, bringing me up to 69 espionage per turn. Nice! I'm still way behind the people who got their courthouses up early, especially GKC and AT (Aztec and Sumeria), but that might be enough to start closing the gap on total espionage production and bringing my espionage costs down against other players.

One thing that I've neglected that I need to beef up is my defense in areas that OH could bring in galleons from. We do have fish/fish and iron/iron trades and he clearly games with honor, but I had deals with him as Rome before he swooped in and wrecked me. I can't tunnel vision on economic infrastructure and then get my Heroic Epic city flattened by the galleons he can build now. I suspect strongly that he's going to be focused more on Elkad for now, since Elkad is weak, can't counterattack without knights, and has a coastal Statue of Zeus city. OH is showing absolutely no fear of me right now, with a lot of Rome's cities not even garrisoned, but I can't press the attack there because his huge knight stack is sitting in Footfall healing and I don't have nearly enough army to kill it. I also don't have the shipping capacity for a huge landing in his core territory, which would probably be devastating with so much of his army sitting on another continent.

Rusten has Gunpowder now and revolted into Theocracy + Nationhood. Borsche is going to be staring at drafted muskets and cuirassiers pretty soon and, while I know he's a good player, you just can't overcome the disadvantage he's at very easily. Maybe I should be thinking about getting Astronomy soon and taking advantage of Rusten's core being relatively open?

I'm up to ~950 beakers per turn at 100% slider. Once the rest of the stock exchanges complete, I should be north of 1000. Everything seems to be on track for a full tilt run through Calendar/Theology -> Education -> Philosophy -> Nationalism. I need to pick out a city for Oxford, I have three good candidates: my capital, Sneatonthorpe (the city at my GKC chokepoint, which I'm building my Forbidden Palace in now), and Aldeburgh (my Moai city). The safest choice is my capital, but it's a little behind the other two cities on total commerce, and I'm not going to be running Bureaucracy this game. Sneatonthorpe is a good spot because it has well developed cottages and lots of coast tiles, but it is a flatland city currently next to a potential enemy. I'm much more inclined to put Ironworks in Aldeburgh so I'll have a city that can 1 turn powerful modern warships on both sides of my empire, but we'll see what I end up deciding on.

[TBW]

T160:
OH is taking care of Aesthetics and presumably Literature now, and he has enough gold saved up to punch through at least one more tech after that. He's making 580 gold at what I assume is 0% research, and Rusten is doing 581, while I'm bringing in 476. Not great considering my UB, but they did both get to Banking before me and they both have more cities than I do, and I'm still building my stock exchanges. I'm going to run one more turn at 0%, then bust through Calendar and Education at 100%. Turns out I forgot the bulb order for scientists and researching Paper means my scientist bulb will be Education, but that actually turns out better for me because I'll generate 700 more beakers with that bulb than I would have with Philosophy.

That'll leave me 5 turns before my next GP comes out, which I can use to stack up gold to get through Theology, Nationalism, and Constitution with my 2 person GA. After that, I'm looking at Gunpowder through Rifling and Astronomy. I really feel like getting to Rifling fast is going to be the best call there, but we'll have to see how it all works out. I'm building privateers in Aldeburgh to post up as sentries in Rusten's direction and sending one north to scout out OH's territory.

[TBW]

T161:
Logged in to Superdeath sending me a request for 400 gold. He's at war with Commodore right now, who I still haven't made contact with, so presumably he's trying to scrape together emergency gold to save his own ass. I turned down the request, since we don't have any active deals besides open borders, he's on another continent, and the guy he's at war with has twice his score. Sorry dude. Best of luck to you.

I turned on the afterburners and crossed the 1000 beakers per turn mark. Sweet! Somebody else, I believe Rusten, also stepped on the gas and has 1960 GNP to my 1566. Sad! It really does look like he's going to run away with the game after flattening 2metra and I'm not sure what I could do about it. Even if I dropped everything and rushed to Astronomy, I'd be walking into muskets and 8 str pikes with knights right now. By the time I get to Rifling, he'll be a pretty good ways ahead of me, especially if he grabs Taj like I expect him to. I'll just have to keep an eye on the border and see if some kind of opportunity presents itself.

Three more stock exchanges go up next turn, I'm getting close to having them finished in all the key cities I really wanted them in. I'll get demos on GKC next turn and have a better idea of what I'm dealing with there too. I'm going to feel like a jackass if it turns out I could have just rolled him 10 turns ago, but I think attacking into walled cities with knights against a guy with longbows and Engineering is a losing proposition 99% of the time.

[TBW]

T162:
Got graphs on GKC this turn.







He launched a GA last turn and revolted into Hereditary Rule / Bureaucracy / Mercantilism. Bureaucracy over Vassalage is probably not the choice I would have made in his situation, but I don't know all the specifics of his gameplan. Maybe he doesn't suspect I'm planning on rolling over him? I put my Forbidden Palace in Sneatonthorpe, I feel like that's probably a pretty big tipoff. I'm going to casually walk a scout around in his territory and see what I can spot, he's been walking one around mine for a while so it feels pretty reciprocal to me.

I'll be finishing Education this turn thanks to my bulb, I'm just about done with Stock Exchanges and I should be able to one turn Philosophy next turn with overflow. I'll be pretty close to having Nationalism done before I have to charge up my gold reserves again. All in all, my economy feels rock solid right now. Getting into Nationhood and having drafting available will put me in a much stronger position even before I get to redcoats, just because I have a lot of high pop cities and a big happy buffer right now.

[TBW]

T163:


Yikes. Good thing I didn't just blunder in when I saw how low his power was. From reading his thread in another game I already knew GKC wasn't an idiot, so I expected him to have some kind of powerful stack lined up there. I didn't think it would be his entire army, but I guess he doesn't have any pressure from any other direction. Trying to invade 15 crossbows + 9 catapults + 8 pikes during the medieval era would pretty much be like running naked backwards through a cornfield. Since it's a one mover army, I still don't have a lot to worry about in Sneatonthorpe (I have it walled and castled and a good supply of 3 promo knights to hit a stack with already), but I'm still going to pack the garrison in there with CG2 longbows just to make sure I mathematically can't lose the city to crossbows and catapults.

Gavagai sent me a spices for wine trade, which I accepted because it's basically a neutral trade for me, and Hitru offered me a fish/fish trade this turn which I also accepted. That gives me two fish/fish trades with him, which tells me he's really worried about me possibly backstabbing him. Looking at the incredibly sparse way he's garrisoned Rome, I can't blame him. I just don't have enough of a tech lead to roll over the (now 7) longbows in Rome's last city + conquer and hold Rome before it gets reinforced + hold off an opportunistic one mover stack from GKC. In 10 turns, that'll likely be a different story. We'll see how it goes.

[TBW]

T164:
Rusten got University of Sankore, which I expected. He planned for a religious economy and hit every mark on it, thanks to the enormous empire he was able to secure early. He's just going to keep snowballing ahead at this point. He's drafting muskets now, which he'll be able to upgrade into riflemen before anyone else in the game. He's also currently walking all over Borsche with huge stacks of 2 and 3 promo knights that Borsche isn't going to be able to stop. I've got caravels and privateers on sentry duty along the most likely borders, but he has such a huge industrial base that I don't know if I'll be able to counter a serious naval invasion. He doesn't have Astronomy yet, at least.

GKC is whipping like mad and reacting as if he thinks an invasion from me is imminent, to the point of leaving cities behind his border ungarrisoned. I loaded up the Sneatonthorpe garrison and I have my knights standing near it, but I'm not planning on invading any time soon because walking into all of those crossbows and pikes with knights would be suicidal. At least this buildup and mass whipping will slow him down economically and leave him stuck with a lot of medieval defense units. I'm starting on my universities over the next couple turns, I should have enough done to start on Oxford in about 10 turns, not accounting for hammer boosts from the GA I'll be starting soon. I'm finishing Theology with overflow and 0% research this turn, then I should have enough gold saved up to 3 turn Nationalism. After that, it's 2 turns to my next GP and then we smash through Constitution and start walking the Gunpowder -> Rifling line.

[TBW]

T165:

OH picked up Taj this turn, which I wasn't expecting. I figured out how, though. I have basically no visibility of OH's cities, so I didn't know that engineer was his. I've got what I understand to be a military agreement with him (iron/iron) so I'd rather have him get it than Rusten, if I have to pick someone besides me to get it.


It looks like Elkad's been able to blunt any potential sea offensive by OH too. I doubt that stack's going to be broken by privateers, but maybe. There probably aren't going to be any galleons slipping through there. I'm definitely interested to see what the rest of the territory up there looks like.

I got my calculations right and I will be three turning Nationalism, then two turns of gold before my GA. I should be able to 3 turn Constitution and do my civic swaps then. Representation should be a huge boost for me, I'll definitely make up some ground catching up to the leaders here.