[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[Thoth]

Looks like you got a whopping 1 gold for the city capture.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Looks like you got a whopping 1 gold for the city capture.

Ha, another byproduct of the city sale? I'd say Mack owes you some more gold. Only one way to extract it from an unwilling donor.

There's actually a second relationship given the turnplayer of two key parties in across the two games.

That's actually what I was referring to. Then again, only getting one turn per week in the other game, it's hard to get too worked up over it.

[scooter]

Turn 176 Preview

I noticed mackoti was in-game for awhile, so I jumped in after he left. He did NOT end turn yet, so I didn't move anything. I like to think the fact that he did that means he's still struggling with a few decisions because of us, but who knows if that's true. Anyway, he did apparently do most of his moves, so I'll summarize this turn in three screenshots.

The Good



I did say to pindicator last turn that I was hoping Azza would gift us those Triremes since he had nothing to do with them, and jackpot! The best part is they're both C1, which is a pretty massive boost since we're currently looking at dealing with a lack of Drydocks like mackoti is using. I like to think it's retribution for not piling on him despite how easy it would have been. The best part is getting a minor gift from a dying neighbor is completely guilt-free thanks to you-know-what :P. (I can't wait for post-game when mackoti tries to convince you all that receiving 2 triremes is equivalent to receiving 3 cities.)

Granted, those units do NOT come with Nav1 so they'll "just" have 5 movement, but we'll take all the help we can get.

The Bad



Not only did this Privateer nick this Caravel (we had moved it before spotting the Trireme), but he did it with 4.2h left . We only have 1 Galleon in range (that one off to the side is 1 tile too far), so we can't even get odds on this thing this turn. Seems like we can't do anything but let it promote, and try to deal with it later. Sigh.

The LOL



So this is a pain. However, the good news is I tend to think this is a sign that that sheep city over there is pretty much empty too. So our options are not awesome here. The options I see:

1) Kill the Caravel with one Galleon (Gimpy ideally), then retreat the Galleon back into Thunder. The other two could then assault Sheep city and then move into it (assuming we successfully capture it). Downside: If the city is actually well defended, we lose a Galleon at best

2) Hope there's not another Frigate 1S of the southernmost one we see. The upside of this is we could sail around his boats without any attacks. Downside is same as #1

3) Try to 2 for 1 the Privateer. We definitely lose a Galleon, but at least we take something down with it. In this case, we could go to sheep city and still retreat back into Thunder all in the same turn. Downside: Run the risk of not damaging it enough like last turn.

That's not exactly exhaustive, but that's just a few thoughts that went through my mind. We could always use the Galleon in Jazz to scout it out, but it can't safely run away. I'm kinda leaning towards #1. But I don't think there's an obviously correct choice here. Not attacking sheep city is a valid choice, but I tend to think this formation by mack is because he knows we can take sheep.


Some more good news - mackoti shut off science, and he makes about 760gpt with it off. We can currently make 1075 with it off. Now, disclaimer that we're netting probably 100gpt from wealth, AND our expenses are higher than his I'm assuming, but that's still a highly encouraging sign. I do think we can conclude we're generating more raw commerce than him. He's up on us by about 1.5 modern techs, but we're also getting the known tech bonus from him which is a nice perk. So things are tight.

[pindicator]

Thank you, Azza!   Do you think we can give him anything as a thank you without pissing off Lewwyn & Bigger?  Maybe a couple frigates later on so he can hold on to his islands?  At the very least we should leave his islands alone.

Delaying Chemistry a turn is very much worth it now.  We'll have 4 Frigates in the water, which will definitely keep him from just owning the waters like he is now.  So let's go max tax this turn, and next turn we'll finish Chemistry and have about 1k in the bank for upgrades.

Very happy to see mackoti's moves.  But I think this means we will be seeing a galleon or two shortly.  No way he lets us island-hop like this all the way to his mainland, when even empty galleons would be enough to keep us honest.  (Because we can't assume they're empty.)

Of your options, I think I like attacking the caravel with Gimpy the best.  But I'm thinking maybe we don't even have to attack out right now - just the threat of doing that is enough to make him react to us.  What we could do is move our galleons and zerkers north into Jazz and then threaten both the sheep city and the copper city.  Plus it would be too far away for all his ships to follow.  Downside is that Gimpy can't make it because Jazz is 6 tiles away.  So maybe the best plan is a combination of the two - attack with Gimpy, and then send 1 galleon to take the sheep city.  Send the second galleon north to Jazz.  Leave Gimpy & 1 zerker back in Thunder.

If mackoti turned off research again, then I think that means he took cities off Wealth to get more production going.  I think he had about 150g worth of Wealth generated the turn before last:  He went from 210 to 1100 between t174 -> t175.  Wait, wouldn't we have seen that on our side of the turn then?  So how did he get that extra money?  It must be diplo deals...

Anyway, we'll have to look at things closer tonight.  Are you doing anything or are you free?

[NobleHelium]

That is not the correct connotative use of the word retribution...

[pindicator]

My love for you is like a truck, BERSERKER

[pindicator]

Tech chart is updated: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...sp=sharing

And I did these in a rush, so hopefully there aren't too many errors....


Rankings:

1. Mackoti - 42,082
2. dtay - 36,816
3. (tie) Pindicator / Scooter - 35,191
3. (tie) Commodore - 35,191
5. Old Harry / Fintourist - 31,889
6. plako - 31,166
7. ichabod - 22,537
8. Lewwyn / Bigger - 19,334
9. Black Sword - 17,757
10. WilliamLP - 14,343
11. Azza - 13,459
12. Bacchus - 12,605
13. dhalphir - 8,436
14. suttree - 4,335



City Rankings:

1. pindicator / scooter - 30
2. plako - 26
3. (tie) mackoti - 24
3. (tie) ichabod - 24
5. bigger / lewwyn - 22
6. commodore - 20
7. (tie) dtay - 19
7. (tie) old harry - 19
7. (tie) williamlp - 19
10. bacchus - 14
11. black sword - 11
12. azza - 7
13. suttree - 3
14. dhalphir - 1

[scooter]

Turn 176

So let's get this started right.



We've been calling this Galleon "gimpy" via chat to reference that he has only 5 moves rather than 6, so I went ahead and made it official. He won. So time to unleash the HAX BOATS.



(We scouted the island first by dropping a Zerk from Jazz. The Galleon then retreated back into Jazz safely.)

We decided to leave 2 Zerks behind in Thunder, which should be enough for now. So we could get 60% odds on that longbow:



Note that the longbow has no fortify, and it's facing a direction to imply it just got off the Galleon. Anyway, two victories pleaseplease?



FOUR WHOLE CAPTURE GOLD. You are much too generous, citizens of Black Eagle. After renaming the previous city to "Thunder" (seemed appropriate given it was basically stolen), swapping this one to "Jets" per the Zed-F request also seemed fitting since this has changed hands a few times.

I didn't grab any pictures of domestic stuff while I was in. If you're lucky, pindicator may have done that after I got out.

We did unload a couple Zerks for defense purposes, but we do still have a pair of Zerks loaded. This city spot is in range of one of mack's real cities. He can rather easily defend it with some well-placed Frigates, but it may prevent him from also covering the copper island city. We'll see what our options are next turn.

[NobleHelium]

You guys know that it would be better to finish teching Chemistry and then gather gold for upgrading rather than the reverse given that you can build frigates one turn sooner that way and still get the upgrades at the same time?

[BRickAstley]

What's with the numbers by the rankings?
Also, congrats on the warfare