[spoilers] Commodore: Worse than Toku, it's Giggles of Siam!

[Commodore]

Currency just came in! We can no build Wealth, and markets, and...


So, we're now the happy owners of Currency. Saving gold at 0%, let's look at the demos...4th in GNP is also one hundred less than 1st? I like that MFG we're running, and the CY is going up quickly. Good deal. Land area is a very nice stat, too. Finally, soldiers...yeah, I like this, and we're still not making whumpies.


Here's the military situation. Lots of cats, which is nice, and plenty of axes. I'm a little more spear-light than I prefer, but in a city or on a hill those archers get odds on the chariots anyway. I need more 2-movers..HBR will take two turns with a wealth build or two next pair of turns. This should be fun!


I am officially confused about what the heck Scoopin are doing. On the plus side, we're keeping the turn split, so they're not going to double-move us, so moving into McDs is safe this turn. But I have no idea why they're moving out. I saw a pair of galleys go east through the fort...it's a long, long path around the south, are they maybe trying to escape north? Serdoa is looking north and northwest...a fleet moving against that incredibly rich core could take the 'mids, Colossus (+Fin), and the Buddhist shrine. It's crazy, but Scooter and Pindicator tend to get despairing in weird ways. Let's see what we see next turn.


If they do try to contest things over their scorched earth, well, we're near HBR as I said. I settled Riverside Manor here, which speeds up the logistics to the front along the Long Salt Lake. If things get touchy, I can chop out two mammoths in two turns. However, if we don't need them, I see five forests, and marble, and...oh yes. Parthenon chop?


Okay, that was for me, Thoth, this damn settler is for you...tundra island ho! Don't worry, I gave that capital hamlet to Verdant Acres, all without delaying the Philosophy bulb. Growing the core!


...while whipping the outer rim. Coldspring Way gets a second worker, and in a couple turns, a corn farm. This city is shaping up to be a beast, should be able to push a lot of that northern dotmap out by its lonesome. Meanwhile, though...


Let's see if the Zulu army shows up next turn, eh?

[Adbekunkus]

Barring some crazy war antics from the Zulu and the destination of their army, what is your next move? Will you be content to build in your hard fought, conquered subcontinent, or do you plan to expend some of those soldiers and whoompies on some other land? Will you let the poll be your guiding light in regards to international affairs or will you seek another way?

[Cornflakes]

Barring some crazy war antics from the Zulu and the destination of their army, what is your next move? Will you be content to build in your hard fought, conquered subcontinent, or do you plan to expend some of those soldiers and whoompies on some other land? Will you let the poll be your guiding light in regards to international affairs or will you seek another way?

That pink-ish island nation to the east of the Zulu would be a nice addition to the Generican empire ... Your fast galley to surprise and raze a core city out of the fog, plus a couple more to take and hold a border city as a base of operations ... Or spend another GGeneral to spread 10xp between two more galleys so that you can drop off SIX terrorphants in their heart.

[Commodore]

Barring some crazy war antics from the Zulu and the destination of their army, what is your next move? Will you be content to build in your hard fought, conquered subcontinent, or do you plan to expend some of those soldiers and whoompies on some other land? Will you let the poll be your guiding light in regards to international affairs or will you seek another way?

I guess the violence is planned on being horrific but controlled. Like a Machiavellian toddler...


Zulus will either leave or stay, but I will have this subcontinent. It's all about the timing. What we have now is an ancient-era army + catapults, designed to kill another ancient-era army. A few of the more experienced soldiers will get upgrades, but by and large survivors of this conflict will be retired to MP and barbarian-hunting duties. Frankly, I'm not in range of anyone else here...I'll content myself with filling out the 20+ cities down here and not crashing the economy. Wonder and religion plans, builder tech paths, the works.

A better time frame to fight is either:
-Knights at Guilds in the Medieval.
-Galleons, muskets, and grenadiers in the late Renaissance.

Target then? Who knows? Probably one of Lewwyn (assuming they do in the end kill Azza), Serdoa (assuming he's a threat), or Plako/Slow/Nakor over the oceans (assuming reachable reasonably). It's exciting, because if we can defeat the Zulu in a decent time frame we're, if not in the driver's seat, at least in the top 3-4. So it's build, build, build and trust in the truly excellent twin cores to power us ahead.

Sadly, mammoths aren't exactly going to be premier conquest units, given their glacial speed until Astronomy, and once we have galleons muskets, knights, or even maces are better strike units. What BE do ensure, however, is that we are effectively knight-proof throughout that whole era of danger, and they do pretty nicely against curs even. But mostly, they're great for making Scooter and Pindicator very, very hopeless. They mass axes? Cool, incoming mammoths. They mass impi? Okay, meet our axe army. It's largely psychological, but in war morale is the the material as ten is to one.

That pink-ish island nation to the east of the Zulu would be a nice addition to the Generican empire ... Your fast galley to surprise and raze a core city out of the fog, plus a couple more to take and hold a border city as a base of operations ... Or spend another GGeneral to spread 10xp between two more galleys so that you can drop off SIX terrorphants in their heart.

Okay, this is a cool idea, probably not worthwhile, but still very cool. I still think we'd be better off building until knights if we sought to kill India, but we'll definitely want to make contact and check out their power levels sooner rather than later.

[Commodore]

Well that's making it drastically easier to plan ahead, eh? Plako and Slowcheetah both took dramatic boosts in score. I'm going to pencil in Plako for Confucianism, Slowcheetah for MoM, but it could easily be the other way around. Those two are doing amazingly well right now. They need to fight each other, if they can now.


Less mucking about now, please. HBR in two turns; this is actually both me helping it along and also saving overflow.


You too can build wealth to inflate your GNP! Come to think of it, last turn's massive 180 was probably Plako building wealth to land CoL as soon as he could. In any case, I'm doing well, we'll see if I can push to land Parthenon and GLib after this, although the MoM falling in the fog is a worrisome sign. Soldier points are whack, by the way, 16% of my people are under arms? Ridiculous, classic-era farm economy like this shouldn't be able to sustain more than 3% at best.


Elsewhere...

...one pitch and toss.

[Thoth]

Logged in for a quick look and was greeted by this:

I declined.

Looks like 1 archer as token defender in their capital.

[Commodore]

I declined.

Looks like 1 archer as token defender in their capital.

Quite right. Although they added an axe too, probably whipped in, and it looks like a chariot and impi are heading north. We also have contact with Lewwyn/Bigger, for what that's worth. Still, this is a very killable capital.


I reduced the defenses heavily and still wasn't getting great odds with any hitters, so I took a chance on withdrawing with a catapult. Failure.


The rest was effortless, though, as the collateralized axe was butchered by the Carpathian Chariots and the redlined archer was taken out by the Sad Gits. I thought the 98% battle there would be good for 2xp, it's why I used spears. Ah well, let's not look an exceptionally loaded gift horse in the mouth. LJS had no infrastructure remaining.


So next; In-N-Out. It's empty and size one, I've moved the bulk of my stack 1NE of Long John's so they have to reinforce via ship if by anything...yep, barring an overflow axe, we'll probably take this sucker next turn. So where have the Zulu gone?


It sounds weird, but I think they are pulling up stakes and heading north to conquer. Serdoa's juicy core, protected from us by impi-laden jungles and a strong eastern fleet, could be giving them hope. If they could capture the 'mids and Colossus intact...it seems crazy, but what else could they be doing? They offered a city for peace, they've whipped their two southern cities to the ground, obviously they aren't planning on just dying hard to us. Which I know I said before was a good reason to prosecute war against them, but still. If they want to take out a chief rival for the win, I'll give them an out:


The money is about what pillage gold would be worth, I think. We wouldn't want to capture isolated and distant White Castle in the next ten turns anyway. The barbarians, by the way, keep wanting to give us more cash. They love that crap coast!


I think Mysticism->Polytheism->Aesthetics on the loot from dead cities is our next plan. Given RBmod's insane later tech costs, Scientific Method is a long ways off...let's be half-Phi for a hundred turns, eh?

[Commodore]

We also have contact with Lewwyn/Bigger...

Lewwyn (drunk, masterful) and Bigger (talkative, Grandpa with DSL) as Qin Shi Huang(Ind/Pro) of the Dutch (Agri/Fishing/East Indiaman/Dike)

At last, we've somehow met the Roman nemesis, Lewger of the Dutch. They're driving Qin, who combines Pro's cheap granaries with Ind's cheap forges, basically making him RBmod's really depressing Bismark. That being said, I'm not going to cast aspersions, because thanks to their Stonehenge, they basically have the same REX package we do, plus a recently founded shrine to pay for it all. So Qin's paid off, and will continue to pay off as the game goes on with Ind's national wonder and wonder discounts, plus the forge bonus. And I am frankly terrified of their civ in the later game. East Indiamen are hell on wheels to fight at tech parity, and on a snaky continents map like this Dikes will freaking break the MFG later on.

I am not as worried about them as some, though, because of the classic Lewwyn folly: Ancient era war ( don't look at me, I know I'm guilty too). Azza's Chm Praets seem to be balking them, slowing down their settling race. With furs and silver, they are well-positioned with luxuries and I expect them to overwhelm Azza in the end, but it's been a brutal grind as power drops time and again from them in battles over Azza's iron city. Keep it up little guy!

I expect to tangle with these guys sooner or later, and if its "later" enough for EIs or heaven forbid Dikes, I want way more land and cities.

[Thoth]

Quite right. Although they added an axe too, probably whipped in, and it looks like a chariot and impi are heading north. We also have contact with Lewwyn/Bigger, for what that's worth. Still, this is a very killable capital.

I reduced the defenses heavily and still wasn't getting great odds with any hitters, so I took a chance on withdrawing with a catapult. Failure.



So next; In-N-Out. It's empty and size one, I've moved the bulk of my stack 1NE of Long John's so they have to reinforce via ship if by anything...yep, barring an overflow axe, we'll probably take this sucker next turn. So where have the Zulu gone?

Hah. Forgot production doesn't process when you end turn in a simultaneous PB.

Solid results though. Once we can re-net the seafood, McDs can be turned into a commerce powerhouse quickly. 3 Clams, Silks and Gold give it a solid base to work with. Plus some cottageable grass (we'll want to keep 3 or so grass tiles for WS so we can actually build stuff here).

It sounds weird, but I think they are pulling up stakes and heading north to conquer. Serdoa's juicy core, protected from us by impi-laden jungles and a strong eastern fleet, could be giving them hope. If they could capture the 'mids and Colossus intact...it seems crazy, but what else could they be doing? They offered a city for peace, they've whipped their two southern cities to the ground, obviously they aren't planning on just dying hard to us. Which I know I said before was a good reason to prosecute war against them, but still. If they want to take out a chief rival for the win, I'll give them an out:

It had actually occurred to me that they might be trying a run at Serdoa. Scorched earth + no sign of their stack (which has some cats at least) means they're up to something. And sniping some wonder filled cities from Serdoa might just give them a chance to get back in the game.

I don't think they have a hope of succeeding, but x about 8 million if that is what they are trying.

TBH, if they regect our peace offer and we take/raze In&Out on our next turn.....I'd like to offer them a white peace so they can give it a shot.

If they can pull that shit off it would be almost as epic as a metal-less WTFpwning of the guys with the Impis

NM that it will distract our main rival, if they're attempting something that awesome I think they deserve the chance to at least try it.

The money is about what pillage gold would be worth, I think. We wouldn't want to capture isolated and distant White Castle in the next ten turns anyway. The barbarians, by the way, keep wanting to give us more cash. They love that crap coast!

At this point, WC would have to burn. We'll need some commerce development before we can afford cities that far out.


Barbs OTOH, are awesome. They like the site for the food specs + resource. That city will have spawned with 3 axes. I'm not sure where we are on chariot count, but we could slow build 3 x 3xp chariots in the capital to deal with the barb city. 2x F1/Sentry 1 chariots would be awesome to put on exploratory galleys and a C1/Medic 1 chariot would be handy for our stack.

We can build a stables later and just build the 5xp chariots, but the barbs just let us put that off for a few turns.

(assuming OFC, that the Eastern Problem is well in hand )

I think Mysticism->Polytheism->Aesthetics on the loot from dead cities is our next plan. Given RBmod's insane later tech costs, Scientific Method is a long ways off...let's be half-Phi for a hundred turns, eh?

I'd really, really, really, really like to make Monarchy our next tech goal. Either fast (Myst/Med/Ph/Mon) or cheap (myst/Med/Poly/Phood/Mono/Monarchy). Preferrably fast. Sooner we're in HR the sooner we have a size 20 cap.

[Thoth]

At last, we've somehow met the Roman nemesis, Lewger of the Dutch. They're driving Qin, who combines Pro's cheap granaries with Ind's cheap forges, basically making him RBmod's really depressing Bismark. That being said, I'm not going to cast aspersions, because thanks to their Stonehenge, they basically have the same REX package we do, plus a recently founded shrine to pay for it all. So Qin's paid off, and will continue to pay off as the game goes on with Ind's national wonder and wonder discounts, plus the forge bonus. And I am frankly terrified of their civ in the later game. East Indiamen are hell on wheels to fight at tech parity, and on a snaky continents map like this Dikes will freaking break the MFG later on.

Note: With a bit of attention to detail, optics/ Astro are GS bulbable.

That can be made to work both ways.

I am not as worried about them as some, though, because of the classic Lewwyn folly: Ancient era war ( don't look at me, I know I'm guilty too). Azza's Chm Praets seem to be balking them, slowing down their settling race. With furs and silver, they are well-positioned with luxuries and I expect them to overwhelm Azza in the end, but it's been a brutal grind as power drops time and again from them in battles over Azza's iron city. Keep it up little guy!

Well.....the fact that the Zulu and the Siamese have been propping Azza up with strat resource trades might just have a wee something to do with the lack of Lewger pwnage.

I expect to tangle with these guys sooner or later, and if its "later" enough for EIs or heaven forbid Dikes, I want way more land and cities.

Count on it being "as soon as we finish off Azza, we're gonna explain to Commoth why propping up our foes is a bad idea". Or at least as soon as they figure they can manage it.

BTW:

did the Iron for Copper + cash trade go through?

And remember to renegotiate the Gems/Horse trade once we have our Gems connected.