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

[Serdoa]

We had 1200 bpt at 100% I think - and this is no GA anymore is it? Well, even if, we should be able to get up to ~800 bpt and finish Optics. I mean right now it is at 0% so we wouldn't finish Compass this turn nor Optics next obviously. Though do you think anyone is coming to attack us right now? WK seems to be the only one that isn't in a war or was recently that is nearby (well Jowy, but he won't have Astro for certain, I don't know that for WK).

I mean updating is expensive yes. But having 5 more Rifles down there right now seems pretty good imo. If he attacks it will cost him units, even with Catapults. But unupgraded he will just kill those units, take the city and we'll have to again kill them behind high cultural defense, losing more Knights. I don't know how many units he has but I'd guess at least 10 Maces and 10 Cats + some LBs. It could cost us the everything down at Billie if we lose Billie imo. That size 3 city we would still have wouldn't be enough to attack anything. At best we could hold it till our Rifles come, but that's easily 10 turns out. And he can declare war and keep it, pushing us into unhappiness because of war weariness, costing us gold, food and hammers. I think making this war as quick as possible will save more than the 1200 gold it costs to get those upgrades.

[NobleHelium]

WK's tech is showing Astronomy in five turns. I'm guessing we can tech it in about the same timeframe without upgrades. I was thinking we would evac all the knights out of Billie, let him take it if he wants, then kill half or more of his stack in the open before retaking the city. I definitely don't think we should be defending the city with the knight stack.

I'm cool with the upgrades if you want to hold the city though.

[Serdoa]

Yeah, I think holding it (without the Knights though I think) is the better option. We move the Knights to the spot 1E of the other city next turn as you had laid out and upgrade our troops. If he still attacks he might fail or just lose so much that we can much easier take the city back. And if he does not, we can still take Rageinald. Depending on the amount of buildings that come with it, we might even raze it and move the Knights up to Cat instead. I mean we clearly are not fighting this war for the cities anyhow, we just fight it to get him off our land (and of course to avenge our warrior from the start of the game that was killed by BaII without ANY sort of aggressive move from our side that would permit his cowardly attack).

[NobleHelium]

You are so channeling your inner Lewwyn. Anyway yeah I think we definitely move all the knights out no matter what.

[NobleHelium]

BaII moved his chariot away, back south through our future city location. I think next turn we move the spearman out of Clarissa 1NW, which allows us to hit multiple hills by moving along the road, wherever the chariot may show his face.

He also moved the axeman out of Rageinald, leaving only the longbow. You know, we could actually re-dotmap that area and plant a city 1S of the wheat (to catch the fogged lake which I've pegged a city for), and then 1W of the pig. Preference is still to keep Rageinald of course, but if we had to raze that's probably what I would do, razing Cat as well.

[NobleHelium]

I recommend drafting Rita, Fernanda, Sabine and Katharina this turn. Katharina will need its market whipped as well.

And yeah, we're making over 1200b base at 100%. Didn't realize it was that high. ~850b breakeven.

We really need MP in our remaining medium size cities by the way. I don't know where we'll get it other than just parking one rifle per city until we free up the knights after the war though.

[Serdoa]

Ok, so we need ~600 gold for Astro if we tech

T171: Compass (at 0%, +691)
T172: Optics (at breakeven)
T173 - T175: Astro (~80%, -200 per turn)

Seems we can invest all we have in upgrades OR burn it all on tech to get Astro either T173 or T174. Not sure those one or two turns early would make any difference though tbh, so I'll go ahead and burn it. Still think those 5 Rifles will come in handy in any case.

[Serdoa]

And instead of 691 we now make 730 at 0% - hooray shrine!

edit: settled our island-city, now we make 736 gold... we make gold for settling cities?

[Serdoa]

And also I mismoved a little bit against BaIIs chariot. We have it covered imo, but I could have used the spear more efficiently than I did. (the one in the north that is)

[NobleHelium]

By the way if we get a GE at some point we should consider saving it for Wall Street.