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We would need to plant on the Red-Dot tile soon before M3 gets a city in the area. Back when we were negotiating our NAP they agreed that a city up there to "claim horses" would be OK. We just plant in silence ASAP.
A fort on the red "X" would allow us to boat through the little lake and land a stack right next to Talking Parrot. We might be able to claim control of the red "X" naturally, but we'd probably need an artist bomb. We'd need at least 10 galleys of units (8 cats + 12 non-cats) ... Forts take 10 worker-turns without serfdom, 7 with serfdom. So if we do a SPI swap to serfdom we could carry 7 workers and 1 GArtist into the city on 4 more boats.
We would stage the boats on the yellow "Box", and the turn before our NAP expires we would move all 10 military galleys plus a couple caravels onto the tile 1SW of red dot and leave the 4 galleys with workers/GArtist on the yellow Box. This will look like a normal naval invasion, and M3 will gravitate their military up to the coast on their turn. On the turn our NAP expires we move the 4 worker galleys into the city, bomb with the GArtist, move south to the red X along a road that's been prepared along with the standard improvements that go up around the Red-Dot city. Swap into Serfdom before the 7 workers build the fort, and then move through the fort to unload next to Talking Parrot, while a stack of knights moves in from the Barbados direction.
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A bit of a tangent... I can definitely see 'hot blooded' after what happened in PB 9 
PBEM 42:
As for tech... Horseback Riding or Machinery? I vote Horseback Riding.
As for the plan, that is crazy enough to work. Though we run into a few tactical problems...
A. Not renewing our NAP will telegraph our attack. Nothing we can do about that.
B. Red Dot is on a hill, so M3 has a one-turn warning. Red Dot itself should start setting off alarm bells in their heads.
C. The Great Artist bomb might not work - Talking Parrot's culture is pretty well established.
D. Red X looks forested - we'll obviously need to check.
As for the strategic question of whether investing all these resources for a single city is worth it... probably not. At least scheming gives us something to talk about 
(March 12th, 2024, 07:40)naufragar Wrote:"But naufragar, I want to be an emperor, not a product manager." Soon, my bloodthirsty friend, soon.
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Hey, PB9 wasn't hot headed ... that was opportunistic.
Gotta run so I'll have to think about A-D later 
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Horseback Riding sounds ok, but I think we should slip Meditation in soon (1-turn at 40%) so that we can get a Hindu monastery up in Maracaibo and San Juan ... culture battle vs. TEAM. The sooner the Monastery is up the better.
Are you planning to swap back to Slavery along with Bureaucracy after Civil Service comes in?
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I posted some pictures in the Captain's Log for the record. In response to A-D
A: As you said, nothing we can do about that. BUT with our attack coming by sea it will disguise our intentions somewhat ... especially if we don't have control of the Red "X" tile.
B: It's actually worse than that ... They won't get warning from the hill because we'll be massing our forces behind it, but since all our cities are Hindu M3 probably has city visibility everywhere even if we keep our EP's equal. On the other hand I don't actually mind M3 knowing that we're massing for a naval invasion. As long as they think we're coming by sea they'll put less emphasis on their land defenses. The hard part will be sneaking the workers/GArtist onto the boats.
C: The Artist Bomb will work. All we need to do is swap that Red X tile which is 4th ring to Talking Parrot and 3rd ring to Whatever-City-is-1S-of-Furs (at least I'm pretty sure there's a city 1S of furs).
D: I forgot about the forest, but I just did a World Builder test and forest has no effect the time required to build a fort. Still 7-turns with Serfdom.
Strategic cost: This would be a MASSIVE hammer cost ... 1000 for boats, 500 for cats, 700 for maces, 600 for pikes, 800 for muskets (we'll need to defend Tortuga after capture), 1800 for knights, plus 600-800 Gold for upkeep costs over the 20-turns leading up to the war. Plus we'll have to delete the workers after they finish the fort because we can't defend them (300 hammers). Our invasion will effectively stop after the capture of Tortuga. We won't have the strength to continue advancing.
Benefits: Holy City w/ Shrine (30gpt), revenge ... the game is lost already to Trolls. There's no way that we can win a long-term offensive war against any of our neighbors, but this surprise dash for Tortuga might be successful.
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B: ...I completely forgot that. Will swapping to No State Religion remove that?
D: The biggest thing about the Forest is that we'll have to waste a turn while our Workers move onto it.
Another (potential) route of attack would be a simple Knight blitz, hoping to catch their War Elephants in the wrong place.
(March 12th, 2024, 07:40)naufragar Wrote:"But naufragar, I want to be an emperor, not a product manager." Soon, my bloodthirsty friend, soon.
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Let's not renew our NAP with M3 regardless of whether we plan on attacking then or not. By that time we'll have forges everywhere, Markets/Libraries where they're needed, and in general we'll be through with the infrastructure push except for Universities ... which reminds me, with our cottage-everything-in-sight strategy the Printing Press will net us maybe 80-100 commerce right away (paying for itself in just 20-25 turns!!!).
B: I'm not up on Espionage mechanics ... I just go by experience. I don't think that our state religion has an effect though. I think it's their state religion that matters (i.e. as long as they are Hindu they get the espionage discount on all other hindu cities). The same is true for us though. We're getting a discount on their cities, except they've outspent us in EP's.
D: we could road the forest as part of the general tile improvements that we put up around the city (we can't chop in their territory) and as long as we do it well in advance of the actual invasion it shouldn't cause any unnecessary alarm.
Knight blitz would need in the range of 30-40 ... we'll be facing 60-80% culture defense so we'll need 3 knights to each musket defender. Here's another thought ... plant a city on the hill 1S of fish on the turn we declare war, and then artist-bomb that site. If we can flip the second-ring tile 2NE of Talking Parot (3SE of Barbados) that would allow us to attack Talking Parot in 1-turn rather than leaving our knights exposed in the open catapults + WE's.
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When the 'Would you like to adopt Bureaucracy?' message popped up EOT, I eagerly clicked 'Yes,' then smacked myself when I realized I didn't pair it with Slavery  So another five turns of waiting for us... 
(March 12th, 2024, 07:40)naufragar Wrote:"But naufragar, I want to be an emperor, not a product manager." Soon, my bloodthirsty friend, soon.
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I guess that's just 5 more turns of growing pop before 
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Here's a scheme to set up a massive cascade of failgold. We'll have stone in our borders soon. With stone +100%, Hindu +25%, and forge +25% we can build Chichen Itza to within a couple hammers of completion in several hammer heavy cities (San Juan first, then Melaka for sure, maybe Barbados, Port Royal, and Havana ... wherever we don't have anything particular to build at the moment but have have a couple mines up and running). If anyone else builds it, then great! we get all the failgold. If nobody else builds it we keep queuing it up in the next city and the next city. Then at some point down the road we finish it and cash in.
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