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

[pindicator]

Turn ended...

Revolted us to Caste and hired away:



With this configuratoin we can almost churn out 3 great people over the course of 2 golden ages.
Although I'm not sure it's best for straight research, but getting a merchant will definitely help

And then I tried offering Commodore wine for money:

[pindicator]

Slowcheetah played, and ...



He moved out all the units. That's interesting. They've either boarded the galleons, or they have retreated to Paris. Both Paris & Tours (northwest, off screen) were whipped, but no other cities were whipped.

Our caravel was sunk 1E of Rheims, so the 4 galleons could be anywhere in the dotted area. We need to take caution that those galleons aren't able to swing around south of Rheims and get inside Five Guys. That would be disasterous.

I think our first move should be to put the spy inside Paris to see if that is where he moved his troops to. If they are not in Paris then we need to assume they are on a boat. I dont' see any tactical advantage in putting them between the cities. Then I would capture/raze Orleans, softening up the musketeer with a mace (perhaps put the 30% retreat on our new GG 5xp mace?) and the enemy mace with one of our crossbows.

After that I am not sure. Do we march the army to Paris? Do we try to pick them up with the 7 galleons we have in the area, or do we need to use those galleons to hunt down his navy? I think we do need to try to take and hold Rheims - then he can't move his boats in the south without us knowing about it.

Let me know what you think

[pindicator]

I didn't get to play the turn or take screenshots, but I can promise you that slowcheetah has one less city than he did last turn

[Krill]

Only 1?

[scooter]

Ok, so we had an attack to do. Moved the spy, and here's how things looked:



Cool. Really glad he didn't try to defend Orleans, considering Orleans is on a hill and Paris is not. Also, Slowcheetah did something here that is pretty funny. Not the biggest I've ever seen, but enough that it made me chuckle. See if you can spot it. We did use the withdraw GG promo to give us a 30% shot at not losing a unit on the first attack.



He died doing only a few points of damage. The attacks then went like this:

Withdraw GG Mace vs CG1 Musketeer: 30% withdraw chance - lose
CR2 Mace vs Mace: 27% lose
Super GG Mace vs 6.9h Musketeer: 87% WIN
C1 Xbow vs 6.5h Mace: 76% lose
Guerilla 2 Xbow vs redlined mace: win

Somehow I missed the raze screenshot, sorry. One perk here is that Guerilla Xbow could raze the city and then retreat right back onto the stack because Orleans was on a hill .

So we debated on what to do next. We did the following:
1) Promote our chariot on an island to Medic, load him up and join the Galleon stack
2) Load about 2/3 of our units onto Galleons. Leave behind a good group that can easily defend against the units in Paris



So this lets us do a few things. We can amphibiously capture Rheims if he doesn't reinforce it. We'd like to hold it so we can have vision on the entire south - so he can't sneak any boats by. If he dumps units into it, we simply advance on Paris and raze that too. I also covered Five Guys in case he makes the mad dash to save those units:



It can currently work 0 tiles, so we should be able to starve it down so he can't whip any more units in. Few more Galleons are coming, so we should be good to ensure this city does nothing except cost him money every turn. Also, we're pretty sure he thinks our northern stack of boats has units on it. So... we're screwing with him



Forking 3 cities with 0 units yayyyy. Hopefully this will force him to whip units he doesn't want instead of more boats. So that's where we are. Hopefully Rheims goes down next turn, but we'll see which city Slowcheetah elects to defend.

[pindicator]

We should avoid putting units in sight range of Five Guys. No need to give away our troop placement

Also, I noticed TB had no build orders from your screen shot so we're making a mace this turn

[scooter]

We should avoid putting units in sight range of Five Guys. No need to give away our troop placement

This was temporary and intentional. Two of the Galleons came from the northwest and it's as far as they could make it. One of the Galleons was wounded and technically in range of a theoretical Galleon from the fog, so I didn't want it to get sniped. Just sort of worked out that way, and I didn't want units defending in the ocean.

Not sure how that happened with TB build queue. We need more maces though.

[pindicator]

Ah, I was thinking if we kept our units out of sight then he may think he had tricked us and move his galleons in the ocean where we could kill them.

[scooter]

Yeah that sort of popped into my head AFTER they were moved .

[Gavagai]

Also, Slowcheetah did something here that is pretty funny. Not the biggest I've ever seen, but enough that it made me chuckle. See if you can spot it.

Do you mean pinch promoted knight?