[SPOILERS] Seven Isabellas of India

[SevenSpirits]

So there is another option for the merchant which I didn't mention until now because I wanted to look into the mechanics first. Trade mission!

The way you calculate the value of a trade mission is this:

500 + 200*X.

X is the slightly hard part. Imagine that the target city (A) has a trade route to your capital (B). Then, X is the value, to your opponent, of that trade route.

Trade routes are calculated by multiplying two numbers. (I'll again call the city benefiting from the trade route A, and the city showing up in city A's screen with a commerce number next to it, B.)

The first number is whichever is smaller of these two, divided by 10:
i) The distance between A and B
ii) The population of B, or if said number is below 10, then 10.

In almost all cases the distance is irrelevant. All that usually matters is pop above 10.

The second number is 100% plus all those trade route percent modifiers that show up if you hover over a trade route in city A. Like bonuses for having been at peace with the owner of the city for a long time, or having a harbor.

In the case of great merchants, therefore, you want:
1) A high pop capital.
2) A target city at least as far away as your capital has population.
3) Lots of multipliers in the target city, e.g. Harbor, Temple of Artemis.

Fortunately for me, I have the highest pop capital by 3. Unfortunately, I'm the only one with a Harbor and ToA. Therefore, a great merchant will be worth about the same if I use it on someone else, or if say, I gifted it to Lewwyn to use on me (and then pay me the gold). So my clever plan of doing exactly that, because I knew about the Temple of Artemis tidbit, is pointless.

Luckily though, that is all rather academic as the important thing is that the Merchant should be worth 1900 gold if I take him to Lewwyn's capital (2100 in Nakor's, but that would take much longer and also be more perilous). That's a lot! It's significantly better than a scientist which gives me 19xx beakers right now. So I'll probably send him on a trade mission.

[SevenSpirits]

OK, so you know what is a fairly disconcerting event to open a save to?

Nakor's diplo screen saying "Thanks for your world map!"

Seriously, that's what happened. At first I thought it was a joke, but when I reopened the previous turn's save, there was his diplo screen asking for a map trade, which I had not seen when actually playing that turn! I must have somehow clicked through it accidentally and without knowing, during the starting up lag. That... sucks.

Ah well. Reminded of the whole map trade possibility, I offered a swap with Lewwyn.

[SevenSpirits]

I have now been elected the Hindu Pope. It's too bad I already have the vast majority of the Hindu votes, or I might be able to win! (Everyone else coincidentally has a Hindu city. Lewwyn got his spread just last turn! He was unable to vote in the election.)

Since I'm now some sort of religious leader I researched Code of Laws. Got to maintain some semblance of organization if the people are looking to you. Didn't need that before 920 AD, haha.

[SevenSpirits]

Day two of being the Hindu Pope. Starting to wonder about what it all really means. Invented Philosophy.

Day three of being the Hindu Pope. This oppressive regime has gone unchecked for far too long. Invented Liberalism. The religious revolution has begun! And it wouldn't have been possible without the Printing Press, which we plan to use to disseminate the new scripture:

"We are all cogs in the the great wheel of time. Coming and going, whether we live as fish, or as monkeys, or as humans, living lives forever in the great circle of life. All interchangeable. Say, that would be a good way to organize the manufacture of complex machinery!"

Yeah, ok, I'm only getting Replaceable Parts, but it should be at least somewhat annoying to Nakor.



So, Nakor was still showing 3 turns to Lib but I didn't want to take any chances. I swapped to Mercantilism/Caste System immediately after gaining Code of Laws. (Merc actually hurt my economy a little bit, though it hurt Nakor's about the same and it didn't drop my science. But it gave me quite a few extra hammers from engineers in various cities, so seemed good on balance until I swap to Free Market in 5 turns. Caste system was the real science booster here.)

The combination of popping a great merchant, having lots of science multipliers built, and being able to run a crazy number of scientists in my academy capital is what allowed this. You can see from the progress bar that I already have enough overflow built up to almost finish Philosophy. So all the new science that turn is basically going directly into Liberalism.

Here you can see my GNP graph:



That high point at the end? That's after finishing Philosophy. So no prereq multipliers are inflating it.

Nakor is still in a golden age, of course. I will probably pop my first one using the next GP (likely a scientist) out of Brahma. And I'm going to snag the Economics merchant for another trade mission next, too. Next techs after that will be Gunpowder and Rifling.

[novice]

Neat.

[SevenSpirits]

Nakor's economy is doing a bit worse now that the golden age is done, He shows Nationalism due in 5, and that's not at a high gold surplus. Unfortunately, he has decided it's time to take some cities off of Ruff's hands. He declared t159 and captured Finsbury Park the next turn.



Thankfully, Ruff whipped it down to nothing before capture. I also dropped off a couple units in the area to get in a tiny bit of pillaging.

Not wanting Nakor to get all of Ruff's cities for himself, I prepared my own stack on t159. Ruff had foolishly left his stack of 11 catapults (and nothing else) in range of two-movers on a tile he couldn't see...


So unfair that Ruff got a General before I did!

I had done a test a few turns ago so I knew that my 6 HAs/Knights would do pretty well.



(Knights vs HAs is a mostly irrelevant distinction since HAs have +50% vs Cats. Both units have insane odds against them, which is what the flank attack amount is based off of.)

I then moved the rest of my stack in to the tile where all but one of my mounted units ended up.

Here are the demographics. Now that Nakor's golden age has ended (!), I'm even on top in production again. He is still slightly above me in power though - he built a lot of cataphracts in the last however-many turns.



My plans for the next few turns:

Next turn, finish Economics. Great Merchant heads out on trade mission. Also get another great person in the capital, who probably starts a golden age. Also, switch to Free Market + Slavery. (Free speech is definitely a no, I have like 6 towns.)

Then, research Gunpowder and Rifling.

After that, I will consider researching some of the following while I make rifles: Drama, Nationalism, Engineering + Chemistry, Steel.

I have 20 turns before I can attack Nakor, which is just a bit more time to build rifles than I will need. Not a big problem, I think.

[Rowain]

Your GNP and MFG numbers are impressive compared to your rivals

[SevenSpirits]

On Ruff's turn, he attacked my invading stack with the 8 Praets from Rome. This netted him 3 kills, and he deleted those 3 praets as they were presumably quite wounded.



He also ran away with his legions of workers and 2 chariots. (Or, he might have deleted them, I can't tell. Actually I don't see where the chariots could have gone so I think he just deleted them.)

I captured Rome and decided to keep it, as a border city with Nakor. And I moved my stack up to Download. I wonder in what manner Ruff will act here. Suicide units? Whip down to size 1? (He didn't in Rome, oddly.)



Finally, here is Ruff's rather amusing power chart.

[SevenSpirits]

Collateral damage is still something of a mystery to me. I'm not sure if Barrage was better here, or City Raider. I went with Barrage 1+2 on my 5 cats that had 5xp, and it seemed to work pretty well.

Not counting the catapults, I had 12 units in my stack, and Ruff also had 12 units in the city. But I also had two berserkers hiding in the galleon! Therefore to take the city this turn I needed to only lose at most two combats, which I thought would be doable given the catapults.

The defenders were:
1 Super-mace (combat 5)
2 Mace
1 Axe
2 Spear
1 Cat
5 archer

After suiciding all 6 cats (one survived, miraculously), I sent in my two healthy knights next. (I'd rather have them fight maces than spears.) Luckily they both won, each at around 75% IIRC. Then my already-promoted-to-shock mace, while maces/axes were still top defenders. Then a berserker, my most powerful remaining unit. I kept the other berserker in reserve in case I lost multiple combats, because he was my only unit in range of three undefended workers.

Then more macemen, maximally promoted with combat 1 and 2 where possible. (All odds at this point are 99.7 or so, and I haven't lost a battle yet.) The last two defenders were spears so I finished them off with the other berserker and finally my wounded maceman. This left my horse archer and my wounded knight to capture 3 workers, using the newly available road system. Yay! This turn's combat luck partially makes up for my poor luck earlier.




Also I popped my golden age as planned, revolted to free market and slavery, ferried my merchant towards nakor, and ferried my new great general over to Kali (Heroic Epic city).

Here's my golden age GNP spike, which makes Nakor's GA GNP spike look... wait, where is that thing, anyway?



(Well, part of that is researching gunpowder with both prereqs.)

Here's MFG which is a bit fairer:



I have been paving a few farms into 2h watermills in Kali. Wouldn't want rifles to take more than one turn to build.

Next turn, I will whip the 6th university to coincide with the 5th one finishing, so that Brahma can build Oxford.

[novice]

Nice. Ruff has two cities left?