[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[MindyMcCready]

Did you notice that Ichabod's down to 5T for Guilds? T150 for guilds and T148 for his returning army.

How are our 40 (:LOL LBs or other impenatrable defenses coming? Time for a whipping to get everything into place and fortified up as much as possible? Just a reminder that it'll take him all of 1T to strip our defenses AND/OR he might not bother if we're undermanned.

We'll need all of our spears on standby to chase down a Knights or HA stack as well.

Only a few turns left to convince him to go beat up Fintourist or whoever's taking his island.

[WilliamLP]

How could anyone forget that epic wipeout!?!? Or the determined naval defense that followed?

I would have bestowed Scooter with THE TITLE had he not just been terrorized and swarmed off the continent by archers.

6 cities in 3 turns! :LOL: We'll have to see about the title after this game is over. Titles are not given out for low hanging fruit however.

Does this "title" come with anything? Is there a belt for it at least?

I'd really recommend it. We're not really losing anything with that deal just a reverse 1/2 wealth build + a settler teleport. :LOL:

If I had an option to create and teleport a settler to a location for 200G, I'd probably press that button every turn for 10 turns. We might save hammers on the LB or other units as well.

I don't think it's that good a deal. The city itself isn't worth anything until we can have enough workers in place to build it up, and we really don't. 200 gold is more than a whole turn of economy right now, so it could set back guilds by more than 1 turn. I'm not only worried about knights for defense, but the world after the point when Ichabod is (hopefully) locked up and realizes he isn't going to make easy gains. A couple of turns of head start on knights is worth a lot more than a second city on this island right now.

Also, if Commodore wants to invest hard in a long distance sea war with a 10 turn lag between what he builds and when it gets here, ok, let's play.

[Zed-F]

Good luck on both fronts

[WilliamLP]

There are some interesting things to report this turn!




At first I scanned this as "declared war on you!" which gave me a start. But maybe Harry being at war will encourage Ichabod to go after the large island to the south. I'm not going to focus on that in this report because there's enough here already.




The red text speaks for itself. He has one galley that isn't in time. Plus it's likely that his first shipment would have been a worker and a missionary.

The city for gold deal has several problems: first we don't have the gold (and delaying HBR seems unwise). Second we could only offer while 2 turns away from taking the city, which would give him time to reinforce or grow and whip. We can raze the city T147. With a proposal we'd propose the offer T147, and then we couldn't attack until T149 since we wouldn't know until T148 whether he accepted.




There is pre-netted fish, though he's virtually sure to pillage it. And my theory of there being a NW island chain looks to be wrong.

Hey look:




We now see into Suit Up. Retep has forced peace with Bacchus right now. If Cheetah had shown some teeth, this would be the right time to send a 30 unit stack in here, but alas. Note those archers have a +185% bonus in the city, plus the first strike. And he can whip them for cheap.

We're going to see inside horse city too fairly soon.




Vision from the sentry chariot. There's no road on the FP 1N of Withered Fields. And that city doesn't have much in it. And if he's staging an army it's not obvious. But I'm sure he's smart enough to consider that we could be scanning him with a sentry unit.

The other thing surprising is that he's putting 0 EP on us. He hasn't put a single one on us in about 50 turns. So I'm actually having my first doubts that we're his target. (But we probably have to assume we are, anyway.)

He's two turns ahead of us to Guilds, if his 4 turn counter is accurate. We can get it in 6 (with a respectable +200g at 0%), but probably not in 5.

The dream is if he starts fighting hard vs Harry on the SE island. And that would leave us with a huge army, and knights, with both Retep and Bacchus very weakened.

A lot could change in the next few turns. Trying to lock him into 10 turns of peace 5 turns from now could perhaps allow throwing the kitchen sink at Retep and still being able to come back in time. (Peace with Retep expires in 6 turns.)




Current contents of Boheme are 6 axe, 9 spear, 3 lb, 1 archer, 7 catapults to the NE. We have 12 longbows in total and nearly all of them are trickling down here, along with more axes and spears.




Who wants some arrows to the face?

If we didn't really need to whip military where every turn could matter, I'd be running 5 turns of serfdom for sure. Watermills are 8 worker turns and the +75% to worker builds would be amazing. We have a really really nice river network and a lot of nice spots for them. And it would also give us 2 turn chops at Magic Flute.

[MindyMcCready]

At first I scanned this as "declared war on you!" which gave me a start.

I bet it did!

The red text speaks for itself. He has one galley that isn't in time. Plus it's likely that his first shipment would have been a worker and a missionary.

The city for gold deal has several problems: first we don't have the gold (and delaying HBR seems unwise). Second we could only offer while 2 turns away from taking the city, which would give him time to reinforce or grow and whip. We can raze the city T147. With a proposal we'd propose the offer T147, and then we couldn't attack until T149 since we wouldn't know until T148 whether he accepted.

I'm ok with the no deal. For future reference this is what I had in mind:
T146 Start: DOW. Move units to 1 tile away. Make offer.
T146 End: Comm gets the offer, declines to look around and then re-offers.
T147 Start: We get Comm's offer and accept - sparing us the unit replacement and/or hard feelings. No offer/counter-offer, we raze.

Definately, minimizing his reaction time. Also, if he didn't have units at his doorstep he would never seriously consider such a proposal. Only when he's going to lose it anyway does the offer become a win-win.

Vision from the sentry chariot. There's no road on the FP 1N of Withered Fields. And that city doesn't have much in it. And if he's staging an army it's not obvious. But I'm sure he's smart enough to consider that we could be scanning him with a sentry unit.

The other thing surprising is that he's putting 0 EP on us.

I don't doubt that we won't see his stack until the DOW.

EP spending makes people nervous - this is projecting a tranquil border. Nothing to worry about here.

So I'm actually having my first doubts that we're his target. (But we probably have to assume we are, anyway.)

If the island was his target he could have just sailed that 35-unit Cheetah killing stack over there while building courthouse, markets, libraries and forges instead of that huge power up we've seen. That probably would have been enough. Instead, what he's doing is putting together a 60-70 unit stack with cutting edge power and mobility,....a stack that's capable of seizing mature, well-defended cities.

This is a pretty natural progression for him after hardly losing anything to Cheetah. You've already got half the units you need, so just build the other half and conquor the continent.

You should probably dispel those doubts.

He's two turns ahead of us to Guilds, if his 4 turn counter is accurate. We can get it in 6 (with a respectable +200g at 0%), but probably not in 5.

Not sure about how the trade routes work, but we'll really need to double check that we've still got iron if there's a DOW. Between Commodore and Ichabod that likely cuts off a lot of our routes. Bacchus may join in if he senses a dog pile; even though he apparantly got whipped by Retep.

T146,....Retep should get elephants one day right? :LOL: Bet he never saw that coming.

The dream is if he starts fighting hard vs Harry on the SE island. And that would leave us with a huge army, and knights, with both Retep and Bacchus very weakened.

Well our power trajectory is steeper than Ichabod's is now so he'll probably start considering other options.

Sending him the other way would be very, very good for us. It could very well be a bad move for him, since post-Retep + Island defense we stand to grow more easily than he might narrowing the gap between our 2 civs.

A lot could change in the next few turns. Trying to lock him into 10 turns of peace 5 turns from now could perhaps allow throwing the kitchen sink at Retep and still being able to come back in time. (Peace with Retep expires in 6 turns.)

Current contents of Boheme are 6 axe, 9 spear, 3 lb, 1 archer, 7 catapults to the NE. We have 12 longbows in total and nearly all of them are trickling down here, along with more axes and spears.

Who wants some arrows to the face?

:LOL:

Well it's not 40 LBs but it's coming along nicely.

Other things:
-I want to double-check that our 2-pairs of eastern eyes are going to be permanently stationed there. From PB9, AT moved his scout away from the most likely attack route and missed Jowy's incoming stack of 30 units. No nasty surprises please.
-It's unlikely, but if Ichabod takes out our eyes in the area, we'd be much more in the dark about where he's attacking from. We're 3-4T away from Die Walkure and we should be conscious of that.

Like I posted earlier, with proper combat workers Ichabod could surprise us a bit with his speed on the eastern end. We relied on our ability to see ahead of time but that exists only in a state of peace. It could get pretty dicey if we're blind over there because we would be really hesitatant to move our strongest defenders away from LaBoheme once he gets Knights.

[WilliamLP]

I'm ok with the no deal. For future reference this is what I had in mind:
T146 Start: DOW. Move units to 1 tile away. Make offer.

I'm pretty sure you can only offer unilateral agreements for peace on both sides when at war (give up the city for free), so unfortunately that couldn't work.

I don't doubt that we won't see his stack until the DOW.

You sure? I think he has to move onto a staging tile at least one the turn before he declares, no? And workers roading that tile would be a huge tell, but he wouldn't have to do that if he used a stack of 5.

But I'm really not saying I don't think he'll attack. Or that we can afford to do anything but assume he will, with everything he can. I'm just not absolutely sure he will anymore. He could be building up some naval power as well. That's one thing going for us: he does have a very large and critical coastline contested by some very big players that he has to defend.

Not sure about how the trade routes work, but we'll really need to double check that we've still got iron if there's a DOW. Between Commodore and Ichabod that likely cuts off a lot of our routes. Bacchus may join in if he senses a dog pile; even though he apparantly got whipped by Retep.

I'm pretty sure we have a path through the south and Plako, but I'll double check that the next time I'm in game.

T146,....Retep should get elephants one day right? :LOL: Bet he never saw that coming.

To be honest I'm pretty confident he doesn't even have Math yet.

Sending him the other way would be very, very good for us. It could very well be a bad move for him, since post-Retep + Island defense we stand to grow more easily than he might narrowing the gap between our 2 civs.

Yeah, with any kind of diplo, I think it would be in both of our interests to keep the border absolutely peaceful. Ichabod could push east and we'd push west, and we'd both be better off.

Other things:
-I want to double-check that our 2-pairs of eastern eyes are going to be permanently stationed there. From PB9, AT moved his scout away from the most likely attack route and missed Jowy's incoming stack of 30 units. No nasty surprises please.

That's a good reminder. I'll post a pic of that soon.

[MindyMcCready]

Right,....one-sided deals. Duh.

Power graph update:
T146: 553K -up from 536K.

So he added 3 units. I had missed a power tech so his max potential mobile army now sits at 63.

[MindyMcCready]

Can we rename our units before the Commodore attack?

"2 Canadians have razed Bathurst".

I really want to read his post about Canadians killing Canadians. :LOL:

OR
"Disciple of Comm has razed Bathurst". Full cred that you made the island push though.

[WilliamLP]

I could go for "Jane", "Islington", "Kipling", and "Royal York", lol. But I wonder if he'd even get it.

[MindyMcCready]

How about "Jane" and "Finch". :LOL:

If he doesn't get it a quick google search will fill him in.