[SPOILER] Nicolae Karpathia Khan of France

[spacemanmf]

So what's that - 15 cities now?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

17 cities. It's why I'm going for Constitution, Merc-Rep is a powerful combination. Not to mention that I want to make the switch before my Golden Age ends, and I control almost every happy resource in the game. The only ones I don't have are Silk and Incense, and I'm trading for the latter from GE. A similar deal with furs and gold, except I had to burn cities to control these.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

For you, mysterious man from space, here's the F1 screen:

The AP finishes at EoT. I have ~26 buddhist buildings, more will be added. In fact, my Heroic Epic city is getting them laid down, that way I'll be getting 1t Cuirassers all the way until I get 80H Cavalry. Other cities are building Cuirassers, I've timed it so next I whip a bunch of Banks and Grocers with the Org Rel bonus, and then I switch to Rep/Nationalism/Theocracy.

Hopefully Violeta dies in 2 turns. I have enough overflow from this Cuirasser to build another next turn. Plans will change if Ioan dry whips a Pike there. I expect him to upgrade the spear to a pike as well, he's been saving gold for whatever reason. Horse Archer to Knight upgrades? I'll have 4 cuirassers, 2 musketeers, 3 knights, and a HA (the latter 4 can be upgraded to cuirassers, if I'm willing to afford it). Up against 1 longbow, 1 spear (probably upgraded to Pike), 1 knight, and 1 catapult, and a final dry whipped unit (assuming nothing else behind the city). I'll sacrifice a worker by moving him onto the hill to check for 1-movers in range of that little hill SW of Violeta.

(Also, I only have 16 cities . Meh, I'll be settling another one soon, and I have another couple of backfill sites overdue).

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Nope, Violeta isn't dying because he's crammed another pike into the city already. I'm going to have to wait for reinforcements. Alternatively, I hit Gladiola. I've upgraded another pair of Cuiraissers, and should have another 4 cuirassiers in the area in ~3 turns. Gladiola is a hill city with 60% culture, but it doesn't have any pikes right now, and killing it exposes Garofita to be 2-moved. Next turn, I can move 8 cuirassiers and 3 muskets next to Gladiola.

Here are some pictures I took last turn, while the forums were down.

Demos after civics switch, on the last golden age turn and the turn after

I've bit the bullet and moved my scout onto the same tile as GE's stack. Let's hope it doesn't get wiped out next turn. I move before Ioan, so if GE retreats, so can I.

Oh yeah, and my break-even bpt is ~650 . It will get even better once my last 2 gold multipliers finish!

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I'll type up a nice ~T152 report if I get the turn in when I get home. Otherwise, the southern invasion plan is not coming through. You know that tile marked "Staging tile?" I was correct. I sacrificed a perfectly good worker to get vision on that tile before I invaded, and it turned out there's a stack of 4 cats, a pike, crossbow, and 2 more units I can't remember on that tile. The pike's the decider, he has enough pop to dry whip another pike in any of the two cities. It's not a true fork anyway. Simming the battle said I would not reliably win Gladiola with what I had, and this was before I gained vision on those troops.

I'm going to shift things around and probe for more weaknesses.

Otherwise, I've started on Economics for the free GMerchant, and I'm working on the Spiral Minaret. I want to get the religious trifecta bonus asap, no waffling around with failgold.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Re-opened the save, I'm definitely not getting it tonight.

See what I mean?

Here's an update of sorts:

Here's what I'd like to hit Ioan's city with. I've been shifting around forces. There's a chance I upgraded too many troops in this re-opened save file, I can't quite remember, but I do remember where I staged my units and what vision I had. I always patrol my sentries to the same location every turn.

For some bizarro reason, Ioan's putting alot of deficit research into Music, to the point where he may not be able to upgrade a pike next turn (let's hope it stays that way, I'll find out what slider rate he'll be using next turn). And that's with the great artist already taken, Sistine already built, many many beakers away from Nationalism, and only 3 jewish cities left on the planet.

Here's Ioan's core:

Cities, some of which I'm drafting heavily to get this kind of striking force out.

The Sareln front:

F1 and F3, with breakeven and 100% research.

Techs screen. I want to make use of this advantage. Sareln does not have enough land to win the game, though I'm going to need to either hold him off, or crush him with a massive technological advantage. I'm not really sure if I should go down a military line with Steel or Rifling, or get the Statue of Liberty up with Democracy, or the Compass-Optics-Astronomy line for galleons (on a lake map :/) and Salons (free specialist sounds good, though I'd rather get an engineer for Mining Inc), or even Rep parts-Steam-Corps-Assembly line to really push for infrastructure. Either way, I'm going to de-prioritise Scientific Method, I'm not about to obsolete a massive source of commerce and hammers for no good reason.

F9 screens. Demos are strong as usual.

You can see in the MFG graph where the AP boost came in.

You see in the food graph when I started whipping and drafting.

The parallel drop in soldiers with Ioan was taking down the jewish holy city, I wasn't playing optimally then and left alot of troops exposed for no good reason. Of Ioan's other big dips, the first is all mine, the next I'm unsure about but I suspect it's GE's fault

Finally, the rarely seen statistics screen. I could have made better trades in the schemes of things, but otherwise I'm satisfied with the cost-benefit of my warmongering. Shame I'm not always able to take advantage of opportunities.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Bit the bullet and moved in my 2-mover stack. My sentry HA spotted Ioan's capital defended only by a longbow, suspiciously quiet, but nothing I can do. There are some tiles where Ioan can hit me with hidden cats from. I could have revealed them by promoting another HA to sentry and moving him alone to another tile, but I realised that after I moved the units and I have no idea if that would work anyway. Ioan just whipped a Castle in Garofita, which is good because it does nothing against Cuiraissers. Let's just hope he can't pop his borders to 4th ring. Unfortunately, he does have enough gold this turn to upgrade a spear to a pike.

God, I'm scared. I hope I did the right thing, I felt a bit railroaded by beelining Mil Tradition and having Musketeers. It's hard to fork cities on lake maps.

[spacemanmf]

God, I'm scared. I hope I did the right thing, I felt a bit railroaded by beelining Mil Tradition and having Musketeers. It's hard to fork cities on lake maps.

Heh, don't be scared. It's all part of the fun.

I didn't see loads of draft anger in those city shots. You've got some way to go yet... =)

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I do have draft anger now. It's kinda screwed, I drafted a city and that dropped it below the population threshold for representation happy, meaning it has a 3 unhappy faces. I'm tempted to whip them into a market, I already have furs and ivory, I'll have whales once I go for Optics, and if this war works out I'll have silks as well.

And I am rightfully scared of getting a stack annihilated on flatland. I'm the Buddhist pope, look at what I did to Ioan's stack earlier, by karma my entire stack should be destroyed next turn. It's a very risky thing I'm doing here, though I have no evidence Ioan has any been whipping himself into the ground for cats and knights. Though I think he's settled 2 Great Generals, as he's been mass producing 3-promoted knights.

The one advantage of my moves is that I can attack without crossing the river, and there's no way Ioan can attack out of the city with 1-movers and retreat behind the walls. It's not like he'd have odds with any units without collateral. I have a 2 cuiraissers promoted to Formation, another few for Shock and Charge, the rest can still promote and heal. Hopefully he just holes up behind 40% defenses, and that they don't upgrade to 60% next turn.

Oh yeah, and that screenshot I took last turn from the re-opened save was wrong, I'd upgraded 1 fewer cuiraissers. On the other hand, I have another pair of cuiraissers following half a tile behind, they won't be able to attack without the river penalty though.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I snuck a peek at the save. All Ioan did was use a catapult on my stack. There are 2 longbows and 2 pikes in that city . Ioan moved out a trireme to kill mine at 32% odds, but for some reason didn't move out his galley. Oh well, it dies this turn anyway.

Now the question is, what do I do with these cities? Ioan's cities aren't very tightly packed, so he'll lose cultural control over alot of territory, meaning I can probably move around with impunity.