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

[pindicator]

Well, that didn't go as planned...

Slowcheetah declared, and took out our scouting caravels. We lost 3, he lost 1. But he did not seem to advance.

[scooter]

T200 has arrived and us Zulu are still alive. Only in the bizarro world of PB8 does that make even the slightest sense. So, slowcheetah declared on us. About time, he's only been broadcasting it for 30 freaking turns. Unfortunately he wimped out and just picked off a few useless caravels, so nothing of note has happened. This made me laugh:

pindicator: but i haven't seen a single offensive unit this entire time
nothing in the Orleans/Paris area
scooter: orleans has FIVE workers in it
what in the world
pindicator: they've just been sitting there
scooter: guess he ran out of stuff to do
pindicator: for 2 turns at least
scooter: maybe use some of your FIFTY galleons to move them elsewhere?
actually
those are probably there so he has workers to improve our land after he conquers us :P
pindicator: keep dreaming cheetah; 6 galleons isn't nearly enough
scooter: oh we have his graphs!
pindicator: NICE

Yes we have his graphs. The commerce plan has been thusly:
1) Finish Astro
2) Upgrade galleys
3) As soon as #1 and #2 were accomplished, dump EPs until we negate the visibility advantage

#3 has been going on now, and we now have his graphs for the first time all game. Ok let's see the damage now, shall we.



Welp, higher than Commodore or Plako, both of whom have been fighting in actual battles/wars. So despite our inability to find real units, he definitely has some on those boats. However, I'm not sure he has enough boats to make it across the water in safety .



It's been 3 turns since we finished Astronomy.



Our measly land force is doing its best:



I'm gonna laugh when he drops off 50 crossbows and just owns every single land unit we possess . We did nail a caravel of his:



2 XP and a promo for us. Here's our boats EoT:



We've been doing whatever we can to stay far enough away from cities to also negate his visibility bonus. We're super limited on how much we can hide (and after dumping a few hundred EPs into him last turn, hard to say how much he can still see), but we're keeping over half our navy 3 tiles away from cities.

I really don't know what slowcheetah will do next. He almost HAS to advance and attempt something, since he obviously didn't declare & trash our trade routes to kill 3 inconsequential caravels. I'm just not sure he can do anything to us other than raze Five Guys. If he wants to amphibiously raze a fairly low-value 1 tile island and get his navy wiped out in the process, he can be my guest.

That's about it at the moment, long waiting game. Any pressing questions/comments?

[pindicator]

We're going to kill his scout next turn. And if that doesn't provoke his navy to come out of hiding, then we may even try for a city.

[Sisu]

Really impressive demonstration of the strength of sea control! Doesn't matter how strong his army is if it can't get to you.

[Kurumi]

Really impressive demonstration of the strength of sea control! Doesn't matter how strong his army is if it can't get to you.

Will the French sink the Zulu Armada? We're writing history here, guys!

[pindicator]

New turn rolled so I took a peek to see what happened on the IT. Most importantly, I wanted to see if slowcheetah had upped his EP spending on us. Good news: he hasn't; we're at 680 to his 744 right now. Do we keep spending EP on him to get sight ourselves or do we start teching Feudalism for longbows?

Then I noticed that slowcheetah double moved us...



Tell me if I'm wrong scooter, but I'm 99% sure that galleon was not there when we played our turn. Cheetah did log in after we ended and moved that galleon up. If it does anything like attack or unload troops when he plays his part of the turn split then I'm going to protest. Otherwise I'll just put a friendly reminder in the tech thread.

Also, xenu is either scouting for an attack, or paranoid that our war with cheetah is a farce:



Good thing Commodore is such a good neighbor...

[NobleHelium]

Looks like Starbucks just expanded borders and we didn't have visibility on that tile before.

[pindicator]

Ok, glad I'm wrong

[pindicator]

Took a peek before heading to work:



So cheetah is throwing his caravels to us? Probably will follow those up with galleons, but I really think he is underestimating how useful caravels are going to be in this war. Seems like we should wipe it all out, using a caravel to weaken the top galleon in the northern group first.

We also need to attack and kill his scout with our chariot - I have a feeling that may give us sight on his galleons as well. (He may have galleons placed to clean up either stack. But we can kill the southern caravels and retreat easily enough, and he can't see our galleons in the north, only the caravels.

I noticed he had 3 score decreases, but didn't confirm that he had swapped to slavery. That'd be a little tougher if he starts whipping a navy in earnest.

Anyway, I'm off to work, so I can't play the turn yet. 10 hours from now at the earliest

[scooter]

That southern Caravel stack has no coastal cover, it's in the ocean .

Seriously though, wiping these out will put us a great deal closer to our next GG. I'll take it. Plus it'll get us C1 on a bunch of our Galleons. Pretty valuable.

I guess his gameplan here for him is to get us to put our Galleons at half health killing Caravels so he can move his Galleon stack forward without as much fear. I'm not sure he has enough Galleons for that though...

I may get a look at it at lunchtime. Maybe I'll whack his scout and see what we learn from that and post a screenshot. Otherwise I'll plan on us going through the turn tonight.