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

[Ceiliazul]

good play William, keep it up!

[WilliamLP]

Excellent! This whole keeping-alive thing does seem to have tangible benefits in putting the nails in a few coffins.

I was really hoping that you wouldn't let Plako keep that city.

Thanks! I had a feeling you wouldn't disapprove of that move.

Most concisely, the choice was either to let Plako choose the perfect moment to attack or pick another moment myself. This is assuming there is absolutely zero chance of sustained peace in this game which seems to be true.

Plako razed a city as well, which I assume all lurkers know. It's probably C of Conscience (which I don't care about), and if he lost 2 cavs in the deal to kill the 2 CG2 rifles I'm perfectly fine with it.

If he has boat and/or GG double move tricks I'm not as fine with it.

[WilliamLP]

I logged in to a peace offer from Plako! Interesting. Of course, you never take this stuff without looking around, right?

Also, this was a little mysterious:




Mackoti demanding tribute? A secret message? Attacking with 96 units in 7 turns or something? I turned it down.




First, Plako took C of Conscience. He won with a Cav at 31% odds, then lost at 22%, then cleaned up with a knight. But the two victorious units were sacrificed, so it was a city and 2 rifles for 2 cavs and a knight. This sounds terrible but I'm completely fine with this! C of Conscience where it stands seemed like mostly a liability, vulnerable on flatland and on a coast where I have literally zero naval presence, or any hope of ever getting one.

Second, Mackoti gifted an airship! And in range of the pirate ship. (Sorry, I missed the screenshot for this.) This guy has some impressive map awareness to know that I could use something like that right there. So the trade offer was a legitimate request for payment. (The 7 gpt was probably because I was making 1007 at the time.) And I offered the payment back because it's very worth it, both for bombing privateers, and for scouting Plako.




Wow, Plako actually did tear up all the road connections between us. So he quite doesn't want to attack right now. In this light, I offered peace back to him. All I could possibly do would be to win some skirmishes if he tried to penetrate into my culture. Charging into his lands to attack Demolished Man on a hill, in range of cannon fire? Uh, no thanks.

So I just went with the theme and turned some more of Bacchus's former core into a big trench:




I would love to settle a city at "Fortress" whose purpose would be as its name. And maybe even one at "Fortress 2". I can get it down in 2 turns. It will be impressive if Plako accepts peace and has a passive aggressive combat settler ready to block it. If so, so be it.

I'm nearly finished modernizing my cavalry. I think the count is about 45 cavs, 24 rifles, with 16 Cuirs left to upgrade, a cost of 1280 gold.

I should be fine getting to Cannons in time for Infantry. After that it's a judgement of whether I can start on the filler techs to Assembly Line (with a nice prereq bonus), or whether I need to go for Machine Guns first to stay alive longer.

If I do get peace, I wonder if there's anything I could do with all these units within 10 turns. One option is light blue and to the east and at one point would have tasted like revenge. But I feel for Ichabod's weariness of this game. This game is still mostly fun for me but inevitable doom is a lot of work.

[Ceiliazul]

Second, Mackoti gifted an airship! And in range of the pirate ship. (Sorry, I missed the screenshot for this.) This guy has some impressive map awareness to know that I could use something like that right there. So the trade offer was a legitimate request for payment. (The 7 gpt was probably because I was making 1007 at the time.) And I offered the payment back because it's very worth it, both for bombing privateers, and for scouting Plako.

I told you once that Mackoti is the master of the macro game. (Does anyone need a spoiler alert around that sentence?) This is one example of his awareness of geopolitics. I'm often impressed.

[WilliamLP]

Yeah, he's never had a unit around that I've seen so he must be inferring based on checking tile yields through the fog or something like that, seeing nets being pillaged and maybe the coastal blockade. (Does that affect tile yield display for third parties?) That Mackoti would bother to scan tile yields on my north coast is interesting! At any rate, Dtay might be scratching his head wondering about me getting an airship without physics in a no-diplo game...

[WilliamLP]

Turn 222:

I have 10 turns of peace with Plako. As far as quick tactical war efforts go, it went about as well as it could. I might have been able to keep C of Conscience if I'd put more thought into how to get more rifles in, but again I'm not even sure I'd want to keep it.

I'm going to plant the city that's a glorified fort next turn (the hill city marked "Fortress" above), unless Plako has a nice piece of worker micro to get a settler in there and block it. In peacetime it would be an uber commerce city in its own right but its function here is just to push culture and delay a potential attack by a couple of turns.

I'll get Chemistry in 3 and then head to Steel, and I'm pretty sure I can have the ability to field a force of cannons by the time forced peace runs out. That's going to be a real pain for Plako to invade efficiently over land before techs like flight.

Somehow this caravel still lives:




There are pirates of Fintourist to the northwest, and Plako's frigates and galleons everywhere else, but it has managed to dodge all that. I've also got my troll explorer over in Harry and Fintourist's lands.

Strangely, it isn't even worthless to have a view of them over there... Because he's attacking Ichabod it's nice to know if there's a military buildup between him and Mackoti, to guage how committed he can be to his attack on my continent.

So it's peacetime now.






I don't really know what to do with all those cavalry. I don't know what's up with these signs either. I think some smurf might have hacked my password and left them there?




Maybe it's well suited that an opera civilization owns a lake that kind of looks like Italy?

The airship is really nice, because now I see that Commodore has almost absolutely nothing on the formerly contested island. Attacking him would be silly with a pathetic navy, but it gives reassurance because if he were staging a potential invasion very soon I'm pretty sure it would be there.

From references elsewhere I'm suspecting Commodore is at least partly role-playing in this game. (And also conscious reputation-engineering perhaps.)

Speaking of references elsewhere, Ichabod is checked out. He mentioned that he thought he'd be out of this game soon. He didn't intend that as spoiler info but it's very useful information that he doesn't have any fighting spirit right now. He did just get rifling though, a couple of turns behind me.

Also, dammnit, all the best discussion on this site apparently occurs behind spoiler tags and in the PB13 lurker forum!

[Ceiliazul]

trust me, the lurk theead is not the beat conversation on the site. Quantity over quality, friend :-)

[MindyMcCready]

Re-vange! Now that Bacchus is gone, there's really only Ichabod and the Commodore's island.

What's the settler in Lucia for?

[WilliamLP]

Re-vange! Now that Bacchus is gone, there's really only Ichabod and the Commodore's island.

What's the settler in Lucia for?

The Commodore island is a tough one, since it's quite possible that he'll have destroyers before I have frigates.

The settler is for possible filler cities. There's a bit of room around, e.g. at the foot of the Italy lake. Plus, I'm learning that it's good to have a combat settler or two around anyway. It's one move to create a 3x3 culture square and a road and a fort for CG units.

Front with Plako now:




I dropped down Gotterdammerung (spelled it wrong). I'm thinking of the "Fortress 2" site. Being one tile off of both wet corn and seafood it looks like a Kuro-in-PB11 kind of move. The compromise that could actually be a productive city (if Plako allows it) and still is immune to boating is 1S of that site.

Plako looks to be back in econ mode, which is mixed good news.




I just want to show off the shrine and trade routes in the capital at this point:




Also, I quite like RBMod serfdom windmills.

Next turn may be setting up for a quick war the turn after that.

Meanwhile Mack has Infantry + Railroad, and is two techs from Destroyers and Artillery himself, and then may head to Flight. He also just built Pentagon. I suspect the time until he takes over HarryTourist is quite short now. Would that mean concession yet? Who knows.

Certainly if I had a casket large enough for PB13 and a lot of nails, and I shovel, I know what I'd do.

[Hashoosh]

More Ring saga! More Wagner! Great name for that city, hope it's not too apt.

That's a very nice power spike, great execution on the cavs man!