[SPOILERS] scooter, pindicator, and Huayna Capac try some fast Zulu cuisine

[NobleHelium]

Well let's just sit on the GA for now. We can use it later, like maybe when we need to swap a civic. Maybe we'll make it to Free Market? You never know. More likely Nationhood though.

[NobleHelium]

Not sure if you're already doing this, but make sure to end turn on coast with our caravel stack. That 10% makes a huge difference.

[pindicator]

Turn 197

We have peace, just in time to gear up for our next war



Meet the newest member of the Fast Food Nation. I hope you approve of the name, scooter. I hope xenu can laugh at it a little too
But capturing this city was really a boon for us - Serdoa just canceled our silk gift this turn, so we will be without silk until the city comes out of revolt. Really, good call on this attack scooter. It happened just in the narrow window that we had, and it got us on a war footing sooner than we might have otherwise.

Because we really need to be on a war footing, thanks to this:




We caught sight on 6 galleons by xenu this turn. Uh, that's a problem, especially the 3 stacked ones down south. That kind of organization infers that they are loaded galleons. Now, our spy did catch sight of a galleon finishing in Paris last turn, but so far we have not seen any land units. I was hoping to shuttle another spy to his main island -- the caravel in the lower left of the first image is carrying a spy -- but it may be too late.

What sucks is that because slowcheetah has dumped 700+ EP into us, we have no idea what kind of relative power the guy has. So we have to assume those galleons are all loaded full of knights. In fact, because the galleon that came from Paris went backwards towards Trafalgar instead of coming towards our cities.... that's a bad sign. That tells me he wants to load it up with units.

On top of the galleons, there are 3 more galleys that he could potentially upgrade. And he has 8 caravels that I've caught sight of, all of them converging towards our cities.

So how are we responding?



Meet TGIF: At the beginning of the turn it had 12/50 hammers into a galley. We 2-pop whip the city and add 50 x 1.25 = 62h, bringing us to 74/50. We finish teching Astronomy at end of turn, and galleons cost 80 hammers.

This happened in 5 other cities, although not all of them were able to get galleons out at end of turn. Our island cities whipped pikemen to help against the inevitable onslaught of knights. Here's a F1 screenshot; I've added the amount of turns it will take for each galleon to be completed.



So we will have 4 galleons finish at end of turn, 2 more galleons in 2 turns, and another coming out of our Moai city in 4 turns. We may want to whip the Moai city next turn for two pop to get it out sooner, but that's debateable.

On top of that we have our native fleet: 6 galleys, and ~14 caravels. 4 of those caravels are scouting cheetah and a fifth is scouting the north of xenu -- he's too far out to come home in time, so we're just going to keep him up there. We will upgrade those galleys to galleons, and so will have a force of 12 galleons in 3 turns time. More if we whip. Moving some of them into position may be tricky, but we have more boats than slowcheetah by what I can see.

Our strategy is to keep cheetah from landing. We have eyes on his boats, and if they get too close, then we need to look at a first strike option.

I think the second part of our strategy has to be to deprive slowcheetah of sight on our lands. Right now he has EP sight into everything we own -- courtesy of 700+ EP points. I think after we raise enough gold to upgrade our galleons, we turn off science and turn up the EP slider. At break even we can put ~350 EP/turn into him. So if he wants to keep sight on us he needs to sacrifice his own tech.

Basically, if he wants to tangle with us, we are going to tie down every resource of his that we can.

But there's still an olive brance being offered: he can opt for peace, or at least start to indicate that he is not greedily eyeing our island:



Maybe he takes it - I spotted a work boat about to hook up his second source of whales. But even if he takes it we can't assume he's going to be peaceful.


And finally, I got careless in our south, and an old friend has returned:



If we're really lucky, Commodore will move his caravel on top of our crab next turn. I'm recalling our caravel that's eyeing Commodore's shores, so I guess we can add another caravel to our total.

Scooter, if you have any idea about defensive deployments, I would like to hear them But really, if he gets his galleons within striking range, we have no choice but to take them out.

[scooter]

I'll hopefully get to look around in-game tonight and think it through. We definitely should be able to sink quite a few ships with the force we have. Five Guys is dispensible, ideally we can save everything else.

Slowcheetah has chosen unwisely. Unless someone else piles on us soon, in which case YEP WE'RE SCREWED . However, we just need to deal with this and hope for the best.

[pindicator]

Unless someone else piles on us soon...

Like, say, xenu in 10 turns?

[BRickAstley]

I will rise from the dead and my revenge 'zerks shall kidnap your houses and burn your women.....

[scooter]

Him and what navy?

[pindicator]

I will rise from the dead and my revenge 'zerks shall kidnap your houses and burn your women.....

I believe you're thinking of Serdoa there

Oh wait, this is still about scooter in pb5?

[Krill]

I'm sorry, but how did you guys make it to Astro before Sloww could move Galleons to your (stolen) island? Seriously, how did you get that many beakers?

[pindicator]

I'm sorry, but how did you guys make it to Astro before Sloww could move Galleons to your (stolen) island? Seriously, how did you get that many beakers?

FIN coast and GLH trade routes. We top 600bpt at 100% now, which is nothing compared to the top dogs, but it got us Astronomy in 9t once we amassed the gold for it.

That and slowcheetah must have diverged for something -- he had 1300g and the ability to tech Astronomy like 20 turns ago. I have no idea how he didn't have galleons on our doorstep 10 turns ago.