[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[Ceiliazul]

i think a lot of people are still ruffled about the dhalphir rants, i dont have any indication that plako is down on you. hey, a grudge war between you and mack? he ought to be LOVING you guys!

[pindicator]

Turn 178

After seeing plako posting civstats (nice, subtle hint at what he's thinking, that was -- my timing was pretty lousy, so I'm pretty sure I knew what he was thinking ) I was a little bit nervous that scooter's plan had been too risky and we had lost Jets. But I was happy to see that scooter's plan had worked exactly how he hoped:



We lost a knight for a zerker, and bought a little time. In the meantime, the blockade was cautiously moved up to our next cities. Which is all we can hope for now: slow and cautious to pick off the outer cities, and buy us time to get frigates online. And for the reinforcements to come:



Next turn we'll upgrade the two triremes and caravel into 3 five-move frigates. I added the galleon full of knights as an afterthought, but it may come in handy. It can either move into Thunder next turn, and be ready to shuttle out zerkers, or it can stay farther back and keep the knights loaded, and then when we bust through the frigate line the knights can unload directly into Jets and be a nasty surprise for whatever troops mackoti chooses to load. Gimpy is also healing inside Utes, and will move to pick up some more troops from the mainland next turn.

Scooter and I have talked about putting a fort on Utah to help shuttle troops, and I think I want to start building that as soon as the forests finish chopping. We could potentially hit mackoti by surprise, moving frigates through the island and hitting hte blockading ships. I don't think that will happen in time for this round, but it may help out later on too.



Farther north we have a privateer, and for ourselves a galleon and some more triremes for upgrades. I put Expos on a caravel to upgrade as well. The two triremes in Expos i thought about bringing south -- but they can't quite reach the culture of Utah to be able to be upgraded next turn. So I think I'll stay in place and have them meet up with the galleon/trireme farther north to form a second small stack.

And yes, we lost a city, but better mackoti to be re-seiging his old cities than to be landing galleons of knights on Utah right now.

There was one more big even this turn...



I swapped all the specialists in Lions to merchants. It's awful tempting to fire them all and work the workshops instead, but the upcoming golden age will be worth far more than those missed workshop turns. The scientist is headed for the mainland for safekeeping.

And before I go, demos:




Techs:

• WilliamLP got Philosophy
  
• OldHarry & Fintourist got Music
  
• plako got Philosophy
  
• dtay got Guilds

[scooter]

Sorry to hear about the Chemistry thing. Don't worry about it, stuff happens. Agreed that we weren't really entitled to a reload there, but it still sucks. We'll make do.

On the bright side, glad to see the plan for stalling at Jets worked nicely.

[pindicator]

Turn 179 Preview

This may not be completely how mackoti moves because he hasn't ended turn yet, but here's what things look like now:



Jet is in trouble. It will hold a turn more, maybe two if we're insanely lucky. But there are reinforcements coming in:



My plan is to move the two triremes and caravel to the marked tile and upgrade them to frigates there. The galleon will move into Thunder (with 3 knights still loaded). Next turn depending on how Jets looks, we can either attempt a rescue, move in reinforcements, or whatever. The nifty thing about the setup at Jets is that we can hit the center frigate and the ships on the other side won't be able to counter.

The only problem is that if he moves his privateer then he will see the frigates coming and be able to redistribute his ships.

Also, the northern privateer has disappeared. Not sure where he went if he didn't retreat to Black Sword lands -- possibly trying to stay hidden from any frigates?

And just so everyone's spirits aren't as down about the situation as mine are, here's a pic of the capital after it's Customs House was built:



After factoring in Free Market and Bureaucracy, that Customs House was worth about 12c

[scooter]

One note: If we have Zerks on a Galleon, we could always amphibiously attack his stack. That could probably buy us a turn.

[antisocialmunky]

nvm

[pindicator]

One note: If we have Zerks on a Galleon, we could always amphibiously attack his stack. That could probably buy us a turn.

I don't know if I'd throw more zerks at it. The goal isn't so much to save the city as it is to save the units inside the city, with a secondary benefit to killing Makcoti's units attacking. Zerks are going to be 8.8 strength up against 12 strength cannons and 10 strength knights. Not a good proposition. Now, if those units are defending inside of cities, then the CR promotion can change the odds around.

Mackoti finished his turn. I'm in the middle of trying to be constructive, but I admit I'll probably be home soon to take a look at things and play the turn now that I know we're up

[pindicator]

Well, I suppose he had to try



But that "offer" is just

Edit: Do you think there's any reason for us to offer a peace deal in return? I don't want him to be able to focus on OldHarry. And who cares about the island cities that he bought off Black Sword - let him take those back and use up resources and energy doing so. As long as he's not threatening our mainland I don't see why we should worry. Although he will have SotL online soon, and the risk is that he will get offended and just decide to commit more resources at us.

Nah, no peace yet. I will have 5 frigates in range to hit and run next turn. I'll finish up the turn and report in a bit

Oh, and Bigger revolted to slavery. I'm not sure what to make of it -- either he's about to whip infrastructure in new cities, or he's going to go all in and attack us.

[Zed-F]

Offer peace for all his cities

[antisocialmunky]

I'd offer Mackoti peace for Czechoslovakia but I think he'll just come back asking for Poland in 10 turns.