[SPOILERS] Serdoa, Ichabod and Ex-Girlfriends - co-starring NH,Bigger and Lewwyn

[Serdoa]

Noble, feel free to end turn when you did the promoting of our GG-Medic-Knight and set HE as build for Pamela. I just left it unended in case somehow everyone would play before you get a chance to log in.

[NobleHelium]

Okay so we chatted about this. One thing is, we're not going to lose Martina (at least permanently), which is the former city of FeedshotGG, because that was his city and he still has 99% culture there and thus cannot raze it. We've moved two knights next to the city and will recapture next turn, but as a result it'll go down to 1 pop and we may destroy the granary on recapture. And we'll need to go through three turns of revolt again. On the plus side, we'll get some capture gold again. So I've gone ahead and dry whipped the scout, which will give us 22.65% chance to hold the city (chance of the spear winning against the axe). I debated between dry whipping and just running two citizens and building culture to prepare us for recapture, and I figured holding the chance of the city would be worth more. It's not impossible after all.

Also, I started sending the vulture from Katharina down to Renate, planning to then move the warrior back up. Just in case he decides to keep going north with the galley or has some other galley or whatever, who knows. I also upped science to 40% as a precaution, seems our beaker output dropped midturn for some reason.

[NobleHelium]

Large image ahead.

[Rowain]

Thanks NH. So many cities still left to settle.
Do you think you will manage to claim all that land before the game ends?

[NobleHelium]

Hard to say really, but I think we can settle most of it at least. There's another big island west of the one that's visible, that one is partially settled by Jowy. Our settling speed has been slow mainly because we've been super lazy about scouting the land, and we're scouting now so it should be much faster.

Serdoa, I'm planning to move the trireme north three tiles and we should be able to cut off his galley before he can get away. That'll prevent future shenanigans and the trireme isn't being effective right now anyway. You okay with that?

[Serdoa]

Sure, go ahead. Makes definitely more sense that what we do right now with it.

[NobleHelium]

Yuris wants a loan of 197g for 22gpt. It's paused so I'm just going to close the game.

[NobleHelium]

I'm going to change our tech to Engineering and turn off science for now. We can tech Engineering in 3t and Banking in 2t, and that's the fastest we can finish the Taj anyway, so we'll be able to swap into Merc in time regardless. So I think Engineering is worth getting for combat purposes when Economics isn't under threat and we don't need Banking yet. We'll need Engineering to unlock Chemistry anyway which we definitely want soon. And even if we decide to go ahead and tech Banking next turn (to say, beeling Rifling or if we decide that Economics is in fact under threat) we're only delaying it by a turn anyway and not delaying the subsequent techs at all.

[Serdoa]

This pause...

Anyhow, should we loan yuris the money? I guess he needs it to get some tech for defense. And I'm think we benefit if those two keep at war and in a stalemate.

As for Engineering: I'm not sure which war effort actually is benefitting from it? All our units will be at the battlefront when we have teched it and wade through foreign culture. I can see a point to be made for Notre Dame (we'll have like 20+ cities benefitting from it) but aside that? Neither Jowy, nor yuris, nor WK will attack us anytime soon looking at their techs respectively their wars.

So, I'm not against teching it, but I'm not sure we really need to do it right now. Not that I see any other tech we need right now actually, as we want to start expanding again. But I still think going Banking -> Economics and just not risking it is the most sensible approach. No reason to gamble on it when everything else isn't benefitting us instantly either.

As for Chemistry: I guess you want to finally get to use workshops a little bit more? If so, feel free to tech Engineering, but please keep an eye on the others, I would hate to lose Economics.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, I've swapped it back to Banking. The main thing is that I thought it would benefit our stragglers more, but there's really only one knight left to catch up by the time we finish and it would just gain one more tile of movement, so meh. We may get some benefit during times of post city capture, but it's hard to say.

Chemistry is good for some limited workshop use during Caste and also so that we can unlock Frigates the minute we get Astronomy. Not terribly urgent though.

As for lending gold, I dunno. 10% interest is pretty low but it may be worth it just for the meta benefit. Hard to say.