[spoilers]Commodore is Darius II of the HRE, now with less excuse.

[Commodore]

Roit. So, thank goodness, this crap is tough. This really is a terrible time to fight a war. Dave and Mist are plugging away at it southward. Moar attrition, please! Just hopefully, nothing breaks.



We have our own challenge. I'd feel about nine times safer if I could wipe out Bravery, and that would also be a massive blow to the national Byzantine GNP (about 10%, considering the stupid place still has no courthouse and so is also costing about 10gpt). I'd settle, however, for pillaging all its cottages.



Cannon would break the city amazingly well, but I'm unsure how quickly I ought to get them. I need happy very very badly, badly enough to be considering Notre Dame, but also that means I'm going to go for Compass -> Optics. Those whales would free up about eight units from MP duty, and Magellan's is key. Finally, I'm close to another Great General...



Constitution means that Gaspar's GNP is not going to be much less than our even when we regrow. He's got the inside track to Democracy and the SoL, then, but I cannot allow the Kremlin to fall elsewhere. Ugh, if he attacks I'll almost be relieved, better a million CKN than him outteching us with that killer MFG online.



Still in all, we're alive, we're intact, and we've got the Rifle Draft. Holy Rome still has an outside chance at this, lads.



[SIZE="1"]*famous last words...[/SIZE]

[Commodore]

At last, our long national nightmare is over; we shall not face massive swarms of cataphracts or CKNs without rifles. Now let's indulge in a long national bad dream, of facing too many CKNs for even rifles to matter.



I'm playing with Bravery for now. I won't be able to raze it, I don't think, but every village I pillage is almost half a turn of research. I ain't keeping up with Gaspar or even Mist at their 100% rates, so I've got to be the most efficient.



One thing to also tempt me to spend; The more experienced landsknechts can be upgraded. I might toss out a couple formation landsknechts -> rifles, but mostly these guys are MPs.



In the backline core I'm shuffling old trash hither tither and yon to keep the riots at bay. I need more cheap crap; I regret not building a half dozen more chariots as invaluable mobile MPs. Whales need to get here, stat.



On the plus side, Sasha will be pumping out a lovely rifle every 2 turns, although a raft of catapults ought to be out first. I love the Heroic Epic, this will be the first time I've ever built it with the game still in question. I'd love to grow Sasha up to size 17 and stagnate, but that probably will take too long to pay off, given grocer's costs.



Now let's also pray no arms races are kicked off by us researching optics...Magellan will be embarking the turn after Optics come in.

[Commodore]

Ouch there, Dave. Looks like we've confirmed, once again, this is a bad time to be an attacker. Mist is powering towards Rifling, and Dave is a bulb away from Education then he's on to Gunpowder and musketeers unlocked. Here's to a long, unprofitable war down there.



Meanwhile, I am about to extract another half-turn of research from a Bravery village. My power, crop yield, and GNP are looking nice again, please ignore MFG and land area. At least I'm still top soliders, although both Mist and Gaspar are continuing to climb. Thank goodness for Org EP leads, is all I can say.



I'm considering just not resettling the corpse of Sam. It's such a marginal little site. I think I still have to plant it, given two 2/0/4 lakes and a 2/4/0 iron are worth it themselves for us. Just let me free up 60 foodhammers from somewhere...



At the end of turn, another good tile was enabled. 3/1/6 is darned strong, and the happy is stronger. Gwendolyn will be making a 1-turn caravel before finishing up her university.



That university, paired with The Bun's finishing next turn, will unlock something else very special:



Now let's go bum some stones off of Dave...

[spacetyrantxenu]

Meh, Sam did his job as a spike strip. Cut the brake lines out from underneath Mistabod's big rig as it rolled over. Too much forward momentum, crashed into Riffington, and the air bag didn't deploy. Massive fatality.

Throw down the spike strip again!

I do have some questions about how they sent in their attack forces. It seems like they fairly well divided their attack groups between you and Dave, unless I wasn't really paying attention (which is possible). Is there some über unit in FFH that makes offensive warfare so easy that separating your attacking forces becomes a good idea? I'm no great tactician, but I was curious about that. They both play more FFH than BtS, right? Anyway, I think they should have either tried to beat Dave to death, or you, but not both. I also wonder if the tech pace caught them off guard, like they felt they had to make a rushed attack where they could close to home before their 'phracts became obsolete (enter Rifling!). Maybe they felt they didn't have time to penetrate too deeply into Dave's territory? I'll be interested to read through their thread when this is over. Then again, they do have Byz; if you aren't trying to kill people with super-knights what exactly is the point of Byzantium?

[Merovech]

It's just generally easier to attack in FFH2 than BTS.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Absolutely. Remember, BTS units are limited to either 1-move for strong city raiders/collateral, and 2-movers sacrifice this utility.

In FFH, any unit with 2xp is capable of taking the a promotion that gives it +1 moves. Including units that can cause collateral. Horsemen have base 3 moves. That makes it much, much easier to stress your opponent's defenses, and hence attack.

[Commodore]

But still, no matter the mod, attacking two at once is dumb. Mist no doubt has an explanation or excuse, but this assault was either rash or spiteful.

[Commodore]

So the title, provided by Invader Zim's lovely dog, is most apt. Mist shredded my pillaging stack with cats and then killed it off. One lucky fight killing the rifle, and then he was pithing us hardcore. No matter, Kusari is safe. I just shouldn't have wandered too close.



Also seen, Gaspar hitting Yuri. Dangit. I was so ready to take a Chinese invasion. At least maybe Yuri is fighting, instead of running away...waitaminute...



Sigh. Welp, this is problematic. I do have a Heroic Epic online, at least:



Okee, lessee here. How much growth potential do I have if we just kind of hang out here? Yeah. Colossus is great and all, and we have a ghost of a chance thanks to it, but if Mist gets his lands actually smartly built up and Gaspar eats Yuri, these fishing villas are going to be hard-pressed to keep up.



Setback aside, we're not in any danger right now for dying, that's a good solider count and #1 is beating up Turks. The trouble is, both #1 stats will start to fade if something doesn't break soon.



The scores tell a story of the game right here. Mistabod doing great, waste lead on 'phracting a dogged defense, at Dave's much much great cost. Yuri be-bopping along. Us barely edging out Gaspar until The Suicide, now just barely being edged out.



Here's an interesting little picture. We've got one more citizen than Gaspar, and much much less land. Those inequalities need redressing one way or another. So how we gonna do that?



Clearly, we need a strategy post. Xenu, opinions about how to optimize violence into a leading position?

[spacetyrantxenu]

After consulting with the brain trust, the conclusion is it is time to convert our worthless human capital into a force of terror via the draft!!! Two men per rifle, we can spare the men, not the rifles. Any deserters will be shot, along with the rest of their unit and three generations of their family. We will have complete mission buy-in, our men will be in it for the long haul. Or at least until they violently overthrow us.

Edit: Oh, as for the mission:

Tech to Steel, build a lot of cannons, and blow someone to bits before they do it to us. Gaspar would make a great target if Mist would leave us alone. It does sadden me to see our stack destroyed, but at least it will be no consolation for the villagers of the last hamlet you burned!

[Commodore]

Tech to Steel, build a lot of cannons, and blow someone to bits before they do it to us. Gaspar would make a great target if Mist would leave us alone. It does sadden me to see our stack destroyed, but at least it will be no consolation for the villagers of the last hamlet you burned!

Sigh. So very true, and Chemistry is down, now it's four turns to Steel. Gaspar, unfortunately, has about a million unpronounceable reasons an invasion would hurt. He's shown six+ cats in his lower town, I expect more in The Cathedral. Plus, well, CKNs everywhere.



Still, this is what we have to work with:



Can we launch a space ship with this, before they can?