[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Mardoc]

You could go for D and try something really off the wall, like packing up your military onto boats and invading Nakor...

[TheHumanHydra]

Does mack have a GG? If so, get another unit into Cannae STAT or he'll raze it. And don't apologize for putting more units in; I'm the one who said our cities needed better defences!

Can our troops withstand that stack of mack's? Are they in position to do so?

We almost certainly need to start building catapults and, as you said, longbowmen (tech?), even spears as a stopgap, considering his horse archers and elephants will eat our axes alive.

You should be able to do some simple C&D to determine if he has another stack; you've done it before, OH.

Good work, guys; you've considered various unorthodox strategies and diligently checked them out. It appears they won't work, but still, that's the kind of vigilance that will win you the game if the opening is ever there.

Also, sorry the above sounded snappy; I was in military-mode.

Finally, time for a new motto: mackoti delenda est.

[Fintourist]

Does mack have a GG? If so, get another unit into Cannae STAT or he'll raze it. And don't apologize for putting more units in; I'm the one who said our cities needed better defences!

Even if there's a GG unit with morale available it can't attack Cannae. We have means to defend the city, we just have to decide if we take the 0-risk high-cost approach or do we want to gamble to some extent

Can our troops withstand that stack of mack's? Are they in position to do so?

Yeah, our troops are in the right place and there is plenty. We haven't simmed the possible fight, but I think Peterloo should stand.

We almost certainly need to start building catapults and, as you said, longbowmen (tech?), even spears as a stopgap, considering his horse archers and elephants will eat our axes alive.

We have 1-turned cats for a few turns in our HE city so we already have handful and more coming. We have feudalism and e.g. Peterloo has a partially built longbow in it. Machinery can be 1-turned and knights are only few turns away if we so desire. (probably will)

You should be able to do some simple C&D to determine if he has another stack; you've done it before, OH.

Mack's power is about the same as ours so that is definitely his main stack. Of course he has MP units and maybe even another small stack somewhere, but nothing that could really wipe us.

Good work, guys; you've considered various unorthodox strategies and diligently checked them out. It appears they won't work, but still, that's the kind of vigilance that will win you the game if the opening is ever there.

Thanks. OH is happier than I am, but for an overly competitive person as I am this game has been a nightmare since the very beginning.. But yeah, we have been trying to figure out plans that could improve our positions and we'll (at least OH after I'm gone travelling).

Also, sorry the above sounded snappy; I was in military-mode.

No problem. -mode will probably be the right mode until the end of the game

Finally, time for a new motto: mackoti delenda est.

I still like s.d.e more, but maybe n.d.e. is more appropriate. We have no hard feelings against mackoti, he is playing as well as he can to win the game. It's not his fault that m_h did not defend his border cities properly and he got lots of cities for little cost so that eventually will out-produce us..

Time to check in-game what he did during his own 2-hour turn

[Fintourist]

Hmmm...

Mack is offering peace for 50 gold (actually while I was walking outside 50g was exactly my guess what will be waiting for us) .. So.. Currently I block everyone from joining into game because I can't reach Harry... I don't think mack really deserves 50 gold, because I'm 90 % sure that the galley close to Cannae is practically empty, but:
a) we might end up playing it safely anyways and e.g. paying almost 100 gold for longbow upgrade
b) this ensures that we can spend our caste-pacifism GA undisturbed..

As said, I hate to pay mack any gold, because our power can match his, but if there are 10 turns in the game where we want safe borders.. it will be the next 10 turns.. And for that 50 gold is not that much..

Harry, in 10 turns, promise that you demand 100 gold from mackoti, if he does not pay you have my full approval to go all-in with an attack against him :P

[Fintourist]

After 4 bounce warnings I took the damn peace.. Sorry Harry if you wanted blood. At least now we can birth the GP in Cannae at the end of the turn, launch the planned GA next turn and pump out the 4 GPs that we planned without having to worry about mack.. Angry suttree + mack and no slavery is just a combo that is potentially more costly than 50 gold..

EDIT: FYI, William offered marble for silks. Declined. I think I'll offer him silk for 5 gpt in order to make up the lost money..

[TheHumanHydra]

Re: reply to my post - cool; sounds like we're prepared then. Not that it now matters. (Confusion about Morale threat was because I didn't realize our galley had moves left to block his; sorry.)

You're right that peace is almost certainly for the best right now; we only wanted war if we could opportunistically raze a city easily anyway, not all-out conflict. Mackoti is clearly taking advantage of us with that demand, though - but we can't let our annoyance influence our play; that's how we lose and he wins.

... he is playing as well as he can to win the game.

That is why mackoti delenda est.

[Fintourist]

Ok, since we now got 10 turns of enforced peace with mack, we have sentries inside Ichabod's and dtay's borders and our army should be enough to handle threats from suttree, we should better make most out of the coming GA and our resources.

Here are the main points of our great person plan and below the detailed illustration:

• As a remainder, we used one GS to bulb Philosophy (Taoism) and we are going to use our 2nd one next turn for our 1st GA
  
• We want to produce 4 Great Persons powered by caste+GA+pacifism
  
• 2 GPs will launch a 2nd Golden age, 1 will be used for Education bulb and 1 will run a trade mission
  
• Getting together the necessary GPPs (300-600) was not that easy with our food-poor cities, we have been growing 2 newer cities (K&O) heavily (and chopped NE) so that we can actually pull this off
  
• This turn we run avoid growth in Agincourt so that the city can start burning food with the full food box and we can maximize the amount of turns that we can also work nice GA-boosted plains hill silver tile along with necessary specialists
  
• Apart from cities illustrated below we run specialists in Cannae, the idea is to reach 700 GPP during our 2nd GA
  
• @Harry: Note that the below plan is slightly different from what our spreadsheet says. Especially Agincourt must reach 500GPP eot 154, (in the spreadsheet Omdu is still breaking the barrier first)
  

Lurkers: Can someone confirm that when cities reach the same GPP target on the same turn, it is the city which was founded first that will birth a GP. Otherwise the whole plan must be scrapped, or at least our 4th GP must be delayed.. In our case Omdurman breaks the same barriers as Agincourt and Königgrätz on t153 & t154

Below the detailed plan:

[Ceiliazul]

confirmed. believe there was some simming of this in pbem23 spaceman thread and pb8 (I think plako, maybe serdoa)

[Fintourist]

I checked some older posts that you linked at the start of our thread.. I had to laugh about this (and cry a bit)

From T115:

You can see m_h's chariot here, he's got to realise what Yurimack are up to by now

...

Power - come on m_h!

[Old Harry]

Turn 146

Thanks Ceil. We sent out a couple of happy for GPT offers to plako and Azza, but nothing much else. Cannae gets the great person this turn and we launch the golden age next turn. We'll complete Machinery this turn because, hey! Why not?


Nakor lost another city and William is at war with Commodore. Looks like their borders have met, but that's not good news for William with a strong Ichabod on the other side of his empire. Also dtay is running very light on defenses, although he'll be able to draft very soon... And Mackoti has Guilds now, so I expect ten turns of power increases from him...