Objection! [SPOILERS]

[El Grillo]

T92:

Quiet turn. Khan still hasn't declared war, despite having almost 3x greenline's power. I'm conservatively estimating 25-30 knights in the field, and still no sign of longbows/pikes defending. I'm debating when and where to pick my battles: accepted wisdom suggests dogpiling greenline from the south to deny Khan a share of the land and only fight him directly after further building up my forces. This extends my front against ruff's cataphracts, but he still seems to be a few techs from Guilds...

That opens the door to another possibility, which is attacking ruff instead and trying to leave greenline with the most hope of defending in depth. The advantage is that ruff's land doesn't border Khan except by sea to the far south, making it much easier to consolidate any gains I could take. Of course, the downside is that I'd be fighting a much stronger foe, and would leave Khan with a much quicker conquest than I could hope to achieve.

In that light, I think the choice is clear. I'll want to engage greenline from the south, while keeping a strong defense against Khan. I should have a few turns' window before Ruff can project strength with his cataphracts, though I expect him to use his HG-granted population to immediately whip out a dozen or so of them. At least I'll have an ongoing GA and +3h workshops to work with.

[El Grillo]

T94:

The hammer falls for greenline. Power rating estimates indicate that this should be roughly half of Khan's force.

[El Grillo]

T95:

Greenline lost two border cities, as expected. I have visibility on one, with 4 turns in revolt. My first knights are coming online, and I'm already 2nd in power, at ~50% of Khan's power. Pray that the deficit isn't too great to overcome.

[El Grillo]

T97:

Greenline lost his capital 3 turns into the war... rather discouraging, that. Soldier ratings indicate that it wasn't much of a fight, either. I hope he's choosing to pull back and consolidate to a more defensive position, rather than giving up.

The timings didn't exactly line up, but I'll have an uninterrupted 3rd GA and revolt to Police State/Nationhood/Theocracy after finishing my last set of missionaries next turn. After some thought, I think keeping Caste and using the draft as a production enhancer will work out better than swapping into Slavery. Drafting muskets is a 1pop -> 53h conversion, but is more happy-intense if done repeatedly and requires me to build other units by hand, but I'll be at the point soon where the workshop bonus is worth ~20hpt, or a whip a turn, without competing for drafting happiness. It will also allow me to continue generating GP for a 3-man GA, which would otherwise be tricky and likely require teching Economics.

[El Grillo]

T100:

We've come to another benchmark turn, and people should have something to comment on this time! After some reflection, I decided to declare war on Khan. This game was going to come down to the two of this in any case, and I have a plan to leverage greenline's OB, Khan's forces being out of position, and my traits/civics/UU to compensate for my current lower soldier ranking. In the best case, Ruff sees an opportunity to 3v1 from across the water, where he has the advantage due to his circumnavigation bonus. Hopefully, this will also rally greenline's defenses and keep him from bleeding out. In the expected suboptimal case, I slow down Khan's consolidation of his conquests and weather his counterattacks with drafted CG2 muskets, allow Ruff to take a bite out of greenline uncontested, and tech to conquistadors. In the worst case, Ruff declares war on me and I grit my teeth, swap to slavery in 5 turns, and crank out CG3 units before someone realizes it's in their better interests to attack someone else Let's see how this goes, I've been itching for a hot war

First thing's first, a civic swap and war declaration. Finances before and after for comparison: the loss of Bureaucracy commerce is almost balanced out by the cheaper civics, adjusted for inflation. Right after taking that screenshot, I realized I should've used my Christianity missionary first, because now I can't spread it to my cities any more :D. I think I'll send him to Ruff.






Next, a look at the theater: Khan has left one of his conquests lightly guarded, and I've kept a small number of Knights nearby but out of sight in case he didn't reinforce it. My workers (also out of sight) can link up the road, and then my Knights can use OB and neutral territory to attack Istanbul this turn, with enough movement to avoid the river-crossing penalty.






Moving into position, I stumble upon Khan's medic-general and a medium-sized stack of mostly-healed knights. They're in range from my staging tile, too. If I had known, I would have staged a much larger force, but alas. The plan was to liberate Istanbul back to greenline to push his borders out and give my forces a mobility advantage, but those knights are in range of Istanbul regardless, so it'll have to be a raze.




And apparently I couldn't have liberated the city at all. I thought it was based on the city's culture% and its resistance status, but it appears I was wrong. Good to know. I deleted the attacking unit afterward, making a note of the 7 knights. Due to the rough terrain around Big Top, Khan has no visibility on the rest of my forces, even the workers. I imagine that Khan will have to withdraw in the immediate short term. If he sends all of the nearby knights for some reason, I'll have 2 turns of warning minimum at Big Top.




Obviously, a lot will depend on how Ruff reacts. I haven't bothered sending him any faux-treaties like sheep or iron, and he has lots of workers building roads on the border, which is less than ideal. That said, The Stolen is more or less a draft camp, and so will Trump once it grows onto some more farms. I have more pressing draft needs on my Khan border right now, but I'll show him some defenders next turn.




Demos, keeping in mind that Ruff is still in a GA for 3 turns. The tech path will be straight to Military Tradition. Chasing Liberalism is tempting, but right now we need boots on the ground, and I wouldn't even have a great Liberalism target if I beelined it. I think I'll want both Literature and Drama - my citadel city can produce 10xp catapults to unlock the Heroic Epic, and I certainly want the culture slider and theaters as an option once things get messy. If this somehow ends in peace, I'll grab Banking to swap into Rep/Merc and consider Economics and a 3-person GA, or going straight to Rifling.




Cities: I'm a bit short on multipliers in many of my cities, but I've been working low-production tiles and Caste specialists, so the timing never felt right, and I'm not sure about the payback time in any case.

[El Grillo]

T101:

It seems I misjudged greenline's strength (or lack thereof) again. Khan was able to capture his city nearby and another city of his, eliminating his borders and allowing his knights to win 4 out of 4 battles against mine, capturing the two workers as well. I made the mistake of thinking my knights out of harm's way, so I only promoted one of out the 4, giving him one 50% and three 73% battles. In hindsight, I was almost certainly going to promote those knights C2 anyways, so I should've just done it earlier. Lesson learned!

[El Grillo]

T102:

After some light and inconclusive skirmishing, I don't have enough information about where Khan's remaining knights are, so I pillaged the camp and road and withdrew to heal and consolidate. Unfortunately, this means that Khan will be able to bring greenline's cities out of resistance and take a solid lead in land. What's done is done, but I really wish greenline could've held one or two turns longer so that I could've brought up catapults and really deterred Khan from safely advancing with his 2-movers.

Having been unable to attain my desired war goals outside of a single city raze, it's time to re-evaluate. Without greenline's culture to maneuver in, I really don't want to be fight on equal tech with Khan, especially as greenline will now be quickly devoured, unburdening Khan from his war weariness and leaving the three remaining players in a kingmaking standoff. Being the player in the middle is a very unappealing prospect, but we'll try to make this work and at least have fun in the process.

If I'm no longer in a rush to fight Khan and can instead just defend my borders, I no longer need Military Tradition quite as quickly. CG muskets, collateral, and zone-defense knights can handle that for now. Instead, the next tactical breakpoint will likely be reaching Rifling before Ruff, and having Astronomy to project cavalry while drafting rifles. While it will certainly be painful to give up the Colossus, I have a plan to accelerate up to that point: I'll research Banking in the next 2t and swap into Rep/Bureau/Caste/Merc/OR, then start researching the Astronomy prereqs. The immediate boost from Rep/Merc will be worth 104 base science/gold, and I'll emphasize multiplier buildings everywhere. I'm fairly confident that Khan will tech Liberalism any turn now, hats off to him, but I don't think he'll be able to get anything too exciting with it.

As for things I'm less certain about: I've yet to figure out the timing for my upcoming GPs, so those civics will have to do for now, barring an emergency. I also have an option to go for the monk wonders, though without being SPI the returns will take a bit longer to materialize. I honestly don't have a good idea of how long this game will go, but they could certainly be worth it, especially as I have far fewer cottages to grow on. However, I'm afraid that this will devolve into a very bloody war very soon, and I should just stay in Police State cranking out units.

[El Grillo]

T103:




In the past three turns, we've gained 21k power to bring us just ahead of Khan, but drafting and Khan's conquests coming online has already nullified my food lead. Khan offered a cease-fire, but I see no reason to accept it for either mechanical or signalling purposes (I'm not experiencing any war weariness, and the only way I think I can win is by getting Ruff to attack Khan in former greenline land and/or boating him). I'm likely going to declare war on greenline next turn and pick up a city from him to seal off my southwest border. It's far enough away from his fortress city that it won't suffer any cultural pressure, and not taking it at this point just leaves me more vulnerable against Ruff. Hopefully the war weariness from capturing a single city won't be too bad.

[El Grillo]

T104:

Forgot to take screenshots. It looks like Ruff had 3 phracts attacking greenline's city, but I took it with one loss and garrisoned 3 CG2 muskets. Hopefully, he doesn't take that as an offense. It comes with a lighthouse and forge, two food resources, and comes out of resistance in 4 turns. For the infrastructure plan, I decided to build the AP and plan for a longer game. I'm teching toward Astronomy now and should be first to it, though I wouldn't be surprised if Khan took it with Liberalism soon.

I'm dwelling on how to hit Khan without exposing myself on too many fronts, and it most likely involves getting lots of galleons into the water and threatening coastal raids while hoping that Ruff doesn't see value in attacking me. I can't wait forever, as Khan will be up 5 cities with mature cottages and has ORG to continue powering him through the lategame.

[El Grillo]

T108:

No one has built any more soldiers, and I have good lines of sight on Khan's knights, so the past few turns have been fairly uneventful infrastructure building, until I started researching Astronomy 2 turns ago. Khan saw through espionage and used liberalism on it, and apparently Ruff bulbed it or something, because now I'm getting 2 players' worth of KTB on it :S. The good news is that now the water border between Khan and Ruff comes into play, and it could be potentially even more volatile than the land borders, depending on how many of Khan's cities in that area are coastal. I'm going to start shuffling defenders so that coastal cities have at least 2 defenders, one strong, to discourage any opportunism. Unfortunately, I'm a full turn away from fielding any galleons of my own, so getting control of the islands could be dicey.