[SPOILERS] By the Rivers of Babylon, FIN has no effect (on krovice)

[novice]

Played most of the turn. Seven hours on the timer, so I'll finish up in the morning, in case you're able to comment in the meantime.

[Krill]

Worked a night shift, so no chance.

[Krill]

We can settle 1S of where Overland Park originally existed if you want, novice. We just need to make sure we have some real units when we do so.

[novice]

Or maybe SE of OP's ruins. Either way, the city will be 1-movable by knights and pretty undefendable, but maybe we should just settle it anyway to get some culture on the tiles, in case dtay turns his attention elsewhere.

[Krill]

South blocks dtay from settling another front city,, but yeah, hills make that area a bitch to deal with.

[Krill]

OK, I played T129 because novice wanted to go watch Chess and I finally have reached a period of free time over the next few weeks, my first since late June.

What we have is frankly, little better than a clusterfuck. It's a technical term to describe any war that has more than three participants, and this one does. And if we aren't careful, it could very well become a 4 way war.




Whosit is about to lose the last of the western empire to CH. This is wide open to a dtay attack with no culture defending the taken cities, limited culture and few hills. WE are not exactly brilliant units any more, C1 WE have 66% odds on defence against C1 knight, 33% against C2 knights. Not seeing anything else to show CH is able to defend himself from dtay.





dtay is holding the captured cities, but does not seem to be positioning to attack CH. According to novices tallies, dtay should have around 15 knights in the area, plus reinforcements. So a good few are still missing. So we go scouting.





Er, shit. If dtay tries to take this city, and all this land, he will basically have access to all of our flanks. Long term, we cannot defend our entire flank from a player with so much land (cos frankly CH is dead in the next 30 turns), so we basically have no choice but to prepare to fight for this city and the gems area. dtay can have the rest, but this area can't be his.





Well, fuck this. Now that we see 7 knights in position to attack Whosit's last real city, we have to move up plans to settle and hold gems. The real concern is that those knights are going to be able to position to attack FR or Whale Away in the far south, and we can't get units into position to defend any more...so likely to have to whip spears to upgrade in the queue T131. So if dtay decides to attack at gems and buy us a few more turns to defend those areas, that's actually good for us, provided we have limited losses.

There is a second point, that I've only just thought of, which is those 7 knights are actually in a good position to attack CH front city against Whosit. And CH likely does not have good defences in that area, with dtay having a knight that overlooks CH approach to Whosits city. If CH has any units trying to take that city, dtay would know it and then position to take advantage, by taking either, or even both, cities after CH makes his move next turn. We don't know what Whosit has on defence though, could be 2 spears or 20 unit stack. See what I mean when I said clusterfuck?

Plan is, put 3 WE on the workers. Next turn, settle 9 of the gems, shove 3 WE in the city, backed up by the 9 HA we have healthy. Not much, but we have to play after dtay and CH so we can react and pull back if dtay plays safe. But if he commits those knights to an attack, we can defend that city for a few more turns until we get pikes out and borders popped. River is in a position that it's really hard to attack from any direction except the north for the next few turns, and we need that bonus for the WE to stand a chance against knights. If dtay risks losing a few knights, on offence and then a few more when we reply, we can slow him down a bit more. It's potentially very expensive, but these next few turns until we get Engineering are when we are going to be at greatest risk. Well, until dtay gets Cannon and Cav in 30 turns, but I don't think we can do anything about that anyway.





There isn't much more to say. Domestically, we get Engineering eot T131, so we're just in the transition between not being able to reach anywhere to defend it, and being able to reach it and get slaughtered by superior units anyway. That then leaves us with no gold, but breakeven rate is 250 working about 10 scientists (thanks to Rep giving over 35 bpt). We don't want to whip more WE (why would we when they don't get odds on the units we need to defend against), so we're basically prebuilding a bunch of pikes and continuing to slow build a few more units whilst growing. As you can see above, crop yield is sound. GNP could be better, but there are a bunch in GA, and MFG sucks but then we only just got the ability to build workshops. We need to start putting a bunch down, but workers are busy and still growing anyway so they can wait a few turns.

Techwise, I haven't looked at the known tech bonus, but saving gold after T131 seems like a good idea. We can save gold on Myst, and then just get Meditation and Priesthood on subsequent turns, still saving gold. We would be able to 1 turn Monarchy, no questions asked T135. Feudalism is at most a 6 turn tech, but I suspect that it's only a 4 turn tech with overflow/not running 100% for Monarchy. I suspect that saving gold after Monarchy is a better move though to get CoL>CS by T141, maybe T140 depending on known tech bonus. Yet we are no where near a golden age so can't revolt civics. That means, need to whip spec building in a high food city to run 4 specs.

Still, one advantage of Guilds path is that Banks are just beyond that, half price for FIN, and saving gold for a few more turns would potentially enable a slingshot for the first GA, yet knights are essentially worthless for us. Nationalism is better, drafting would be trivial for timing at the end of GA #1, and Mil Trad for Cuirs is our only viable answer to cannon short of somehow blowing up our tech rate in the short time we have. All this is unknown at present, we lost tech visibility on dtay but should get it back in a turn, maybe two, then reassess with better knowledge.

Would be fun, if we weren't playing so slowly...

[novice]

Finharry took three cities from Azza, worth a total of 44 score points. I fancy their chances in this game.

[Krill]

Long story short: Offered dtay spices for nothing, settled 9 of the gems, and will wait for his answering actions.

[Krill]

dtay offered marble for Stone. I accepted, even though we are going to get marble, because Plano has stone and he might have decided to attack to get Plano for it. dtay seems to be pulling a few units back. I think he might be trying for Notre Dame? Also Engineering eot, units repositioned to use 3 tile movement, our HA can now cover the entire front, walls started in RC, spear slaved in DS, Castle due there eot T133.

[novice]

Sounds... Not exactly good, but less dire than a few turns ago.

Is anybody moving on Plano?