[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

[Bigger]

if its 2 BPT in every city that has a library, that would be useful

I'm sure the quest is something like that tale where dying farmer tell his sons that he buried a treasure somewhere in the field, and after years of futile digging they realize treasure was a lie but that the real treasure was the land that became fertile due to frequent tilling...

clever

I sure hope thats not the case. we have 7 libraries already, but already 1 that is basically just for culture (king arthur).

El Cid will need one eventually as it has gold and will have a cottage and some coast/lake income. a shah and mah libraries will just be ok, shah will just have a bunch of coast tiles and mahabrata will have a lake, marble, and 2 wine tiles (maybe cotttages eventually).

probably won't be building a library in maths or song of roland for a long, long time - no real benefit in either.

[Rowain]

What I found sofar:

Classic Literature
Prereq: WRITING
Obsolete: NATIONALISM or PRINTING_PRESS or EDUCATION or GUNPOWDER or ASTRONOMY
Active/Weight: 20/500
Aim:
Build default number of players for this world size libraries (7 for standard)
Result:
1.+2 research in one (triggering) city's library
2.get one ancient era tech
3.IF you control the Great Library wonder gain +1 scientist specialist for this wonder

and a lot of agreement that the rewards 1 and 2 are on the weak side.

[Bigger]

ok, so I won't sweat it unless we land then GL then. which honestly seems unlikely since I pretty much have to grab machinery first .

im not even sure if the +2 research in trigger city or free meditation tech would be a better option, lol.

[Bigger]

first, some random city shots so Lewwyn can see what I'm doing:


I have something like 24 overflow from the worker here. the wealth build is just to preserve that overflow - the missionary will hit the city next turn and I want the overflow to have the OR bonus. I have 2 workers on the roaded forest 2N of popol that put a turn into a chop - so one will finish it, putting 45 hammers into the courthouse which should finish it next turn. Good, I don't want to whip this so it can regrow tall. once it reaches size 6 I'll whip out either a settler or worker. we're short of labor on this side of the ocean so may have to do worker.


last turn I let El Cid have the pigs. I had to put 1t into a road west of the gold for micro reasons so I just went ahead and finished it. he'll finish a cottage there long before I have the pop to work that tile anyway. the forest N of the grassland mine is being chopped so I can finish the library without whipping - then its onto navy, I think. more on that later.


sucks, I cant whip yet. sheep are finished - next I chop the forest being worked in this picture, then connect the wines. I have a second worker building quarry on the marble. one of the workers chopping the forest for popol will be in charge of connecting the western wines and farming from the lake to song of roland, while the other mines the plains hill for roland and then works on farms too. the last worker (N of roland) is building workshops for shahnahmeh and song of roland.


building an axe here that will become a maceman before its done. I can slowbuild it or one pop whip off a coast tile, we'll see.


I'll have to whip this spear for overflow soon, then time it to whip the market on the last turn before machinery, and overflow into a mace.


same situation here with the cat and the courthouse.

last turn of max tax. then we can run 3 turns of 100% science, and hopefully will have enough gold to run 60-70% and finish machinery 5 turns from now. I'm not positive, it might take 6. azza will need either 9 or 10 turns, depending on how much civil service boosts his commerce.

[Lewwyn]

Looking good. Nice work in Popul with the missionary and the wealth build. And you are really getting good use out of the whips. I'm glad we didn't switch to Caste yet it was the right call.

I think there is a high possibility that Azza will head towards Guilds after Machinery. A) Because of the knights, B) Because of the WKshop bonus. He is building WKs so I think it would be natural progression for him. We may be forced to do the same as a result.

[Bigger]

Azza revolted this turn:



thats right, he revolted to Civil Service AND caste. I'm so glad Lewwyn talked me into keeping slavery for a bit, Azza is going to be hurting without it. he whipped 6 cities first, pretty much following my previous plan
He only has *1* workshop built. its in A7X, right on our border. so unless he's planning to pop out a great artist he's not going to get much use out of caste for awhile. he's building more cottages, from what I can see, not workshops.

So here's my plan to skirmish with Azza:

I want to raze Iron maiden. Maybe presets if we can, but the important thing is Iron maiden. that eyesore is a big pain in the ass and creates an unnecessary extended front. if we raze it, king arthur expands to size 3 borders that will prevent azza from resettling it, and capture the horses and 2 more grassland tiles permanently. It will also make him lose stone, which means the silver and wines he is getting from scooter will disappear.
If we're able to raze presets, even better - we can settler a blocker city that claims the stone and a bunch of lake tiles (not to mention all the farms azza has built).

here's my plan:
Part 1:
I can get 10 catapults in place before we have machinery in the west. thats 4 we have now, 2 more each from gilgamesh and maths, 1 from king arthur, plus the cat currently in the odyssey. that will leave 3 in the aeneid (2 current plus one building) for aggressive defense. we will have a 4-5 turn head start on maces, and will have slavery, unlike azza. gilgamesh and maths can pump them out, while king arthur, el cid, the odyssey, and the aeneid whip them. plus the 1 from the iliad. I think if we can quickly get 12ish, plus 3-4 in the east in the odyssey/iliad for defense, we can easily raze Iron maiden.

I DO NOT plan to take back Beowulf. whoever holds that city is vulnerable, and I don't see hte point in pushing towards it until we are strong enough to take all of azza's mainland - which may not be until gunpowder units, maybe not until riflemen . however as long as we keep our elephants and spears, along with a few maces and a few cats on that front we should be fine defending our current holdings.

part 1A: the sneaky

judaism hasn't spread in thepresets, so we can't be sure what he has defending there. but we can see he only has a warrior in his capital, and there's a decent chance he has a similar defense in the presets. with courthouses sprouting up its possible we can get enough ep's on him to know even w/o religion there before the assault.
anyway, the tenative plan is to build a fort on the plains tile, load up 2 maces in our galley (or mace and spear, whatever) and funnel them across the lake, dumping them on the grassland mine the turn we DOW.
he has 3 HA's and a chariot in A7x, but he'll only have 1 turn to react. if he runs them all into a mace and spear on a hill to save presets, I can live with that . that will make his border stack weaker and won't prevent us from pulling the same trick a few turns into the war.
Really my plan on the theodyssey/aeneid/A7X front is just to be conservative and wait for azza to make a mistake anyway.

part 1B: the even sneakier

. After the library I need to get a galley and trieme built in El Cid. do we need 2 trimes? Not sure what kind of navy azza has. several turns before war we load 2 maces on the galley - and we can move our navy to this staging point here. it will take 4 turns to get 1 N of the staging point, 5 turns to get here. then if we aren't ready for war we just sit in the ocean acting menacing. the point is to scare the hell out of azza and hopefully make him withdraw some troops from the front to cover muse. if we are short on maces I would even be ok with having the navy be empty just for this purpose . But if we can afford to put troops in it we can hit either muse or interpol the turn we declare - and raze if not adequately defended (or drop off and raze next turn if defended enough that the landing modifier will make it too risky). or if his capital still only has a warrior we can move towards that and put some real pressure on him .

part 2: the feint

I don't really expect anything to come of this, but it could also pull troops back from the front and possibly make azza make a mistake. whatever military I can produce in song of roland in time will come this way towards the living end (I think probably 4 maces, maybe 1 catapult). we can road the forest so the troops can stage on the cottage and move to the desert hill the turn of war. or we could move them a few turns before war, again to make him pull back troops from the front. I think I prefer surprise here, though.

the beauty of this is that azza has just revolted OUT of slavery, and I'm pretty sure the appropriate response to war will be for him to revolt back into slavery, wasting a turn of anarchy and keeping him out of caste system. he may have to crash his economy too, while we won't be hurt that much. and I REALLY want to raze Iron maiden .

ok lewwyn, we have at least 15 turns of preparation, tear down my plan or improve it .

[Bigger]

turn rolled.



fucking hell. that barb galley wasn't visible when I ended the turn . it has 32.2% odds, what bad luck. we had our chariot on board too. new plan, I think, is to whip a trieme out of shahnahmeh to reach adhoc, plako, and slowcheetah. then we can either swing back by scooter's island to reach xenu, or get open borders with serdoa and send a chariot through. fuck, we are having the worst luck making contact here.


speaking of ad hoc and plako, they are at war again - plako lifted a city of ad hoc, as you can see.


here's wear jews spread. I hope it spreads to all his cities . the workers are building a workshop, so thats two here. see a trieme, so I would need do get 2 triemes and a galley for that part of the plan.

Looking good. Nice work in Popul with the missionary and the wealth build. And you are really getting good use out of the whips. I'm glad we didn't switch to Caste yet it was the right call.

I think there is a high possibility that Azza will head towards Guilds after Machinery. A) Because of the knights, B) Because of the WKshop bonus. He is building WKs so I think it would be natural progression for him. We may be forced to do the same as a result.

thanks, agree about caste.

I think its a no brainer to get aesthetics and lit after machinery. they will be really cheap, both epics will be useful plus we are IND and have marble so they'll be cheap. the national epic will be essential I think to get a GP out of shah for our golden age.
Azza still takes 9 turns to complete machinery, so we have a 5 turn tech lead on him - about what it will take to research LIT. we'll have an academy in our beuro capital with towns and villages so the tech lead will only get bigger. the real question is can we squeeze in paper after lit instead of feudalism/guilds? I have a sneaking suspicion we are still in the lib race (we have a strong GNP that will get better, no one has paper yet that we know of, and only commodore has philosophy - from a bulb, his economy is bloated and probably not that powerful atm, so I don't fear he will get liberalism). It would be nice to land paper to find out.

azza doesnt have many workshops, thats not a concern. and if we go with my plan we can force him into slavery again anyway . knights is a concern though - we don't have as many elephants as him . and the grocer +workshop bonus would be awesome.

[Bigger]

turn 154:

put the chop into a trieme. realized the library here isn't time critical, useless until we've grown onto cottage and gold, and I can 2 pop whip it out at will. even if we don't attack we need a navy here. plus we'll build a library in shah soon and I don't want to hit that 9th library until TGL has fallen, in case we end up getting it.


whipped the workboat for overflow into the courthouse. chop from the PH will come in 4 turns, so we should be able to finish the courthouse and barracks 1-2 after machinery to get some maces over here.


whipped the forge here. workers working the marble and western mines. worker just finished roading the sheep and will move to chop next turn. we need a lighthouse, courthouse, and walls too before library. not real sure what order to do them in, tbh.


we need courthouses bad, for the maintenence AND the espionage. azza whipped in some courthouses right before revolting, he now has more espionage capacity than us, as does serdoa. need to keep up the pressure on him and get graphs on commodore. right now i've got 1 EP/turn going into commodore and 5EP/turn going into azza.


i've decided to squeeze a maceman out of volsung. im going to whip it when the forge is down to 1 turn, then overflow into the mace. galley will be in the area anyway to pick up the great scientist, which will popout a few turns later. then we can fire the scientists and grow for whipping market and maybe courthouse too.

[Lewwyn]

I think courthouse in Maha next.

I haven't decided whether your attack plan is good or bad. It is interesting at least.

[Bigger]

I think courthouse in Maha next.

I haven't decided whether your attack plan is good or bad. It is interesting at least.

thats what I'm going for!

I like the attack on 4 fronts plan because it gives Azza plenty of chances to make a mistake. all I really NEED to do is raze Iron maiden, but if he makes a mistake there is plenty of chances for something better to happen (raze presets, capture Beowulf, raze muse or living end).

Even if all we accomplish is razing Iron maiden, its good to chip away at the edges of his empire to prevent a long cold war that would just drag both of us into permanent mediocrity.

If we nix it, I would like to have an alternative plan. The only alternative that I can think of is waiting for riflemen. Since he has Ivory, I don't think we can make any progress with knights, and I don't see how musketmen will be that dangerous to him once he has longbows.

btw, I've decided to move the worker improving the aeneid via galley to song of roland next turn. since I can't figure out how to squeeze in a settler in the west without delaying other more important things, we're going to have too many workers in 10-15 turns. OTOH, we're short in the east, and moving a worker over will allow me to whip a settler instead of worker out of popol when it reaches size 6 - we need to claim the deer site for gilgamesh to grow w/o health loss anyway . we'll have 3 workers on mahahbrata, 2 on song of roland, and 1 on the more improved popol for a bit, once we settle the new city should easily be able to move 2-3 workers there to get it going quickly. the galley will have plenty of time to get up to volsung afterwards to pick up great scientists and maceman.