[SPOILERS] Muffin's spoiler thread of delicious baked goodness and half baked ideas

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Will your economy hold without currency or some kind of happiness boost ? You need some expansion to get enough production for phracts.

Sorry this is because I haven't been updating - I have the best GNP currently at full gold. I chopped out the GLH in 2 turns when it occurred to me apart from my capital that all my other cities will be coastal, and it is paying huge dividends now. As of this turn I have OB with cornflakes and Bob plus an island city.

For happiness, I have ivory and gems hooked, and with forges in my 3 biggest cities that is enough happy to keep me going currently. I have wine I can hook but it is on the border with bob so I have been tentative hooking that until now, as he has been amassing a good amount of solider points with no strat resources - ie a large skirm army I guess. I noted that he took one of cornflakes's a cities last turn though so they may be locked in a bit of a feud from now on, which will make me move over there and attempt to connect it. But I haven't been having to hold the growth of any cities basically since I got monarchy more or less.

EDIT So at the end of this turn, including the GE bulb (he is due within the timeframe, at 100% odds) at my current break even tech rate after burning through all my stockpiled gold I should have the ability to build cataphracts turn 106.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I have some free time! Let's report!

It's eot 95 which is a fair while since I last reported anything, and I feel content with the empire.




I am at 9 cities, and soon to add a final tenth (for horses) before starting to go full military. My growth has picked up a bit recently, the 2 furthermost western cities are 5ish turns old each. My core cities however are well developed and ready to try and produce units to take what we need to win by force.



The cap - went unhappy at the eot, I moved a warrior out so I could keep another west in case retep tried anything, however I will move him back in next turn to keep the faces smiling. It has a pretty good eco output, and has got me to where I need to be now. I will be slaving away those cottages hard shortly though, as nice as they are to use.



My second city, buddhas homeland. Sadly just 1 religion spread to a city that didn't really need it. Nowhere near as useful as I had hoped. Just whipped in a monastry as I was fed up of waiting for spreads to get culture around. It has the GLH, which I managed to build with the lighthouse prerequisite building in a mere 4 turns That has been rather helpful to me.

I have quite a decent amount of war infrastructure that I have been slow building up ready. All my cities except the most recent 2 have granaries, 6 have forges and a 7th shortly, 4 have barracks and another 2 eot next turn, a few lighthouses where needed and a library in the capital.




Demos - I am lagging a little here now a bit but I have been whipping infrastructure fairly liberally so I am not too concerned. My eco is much better than it seems, and I will tech machinary in 4turns, guilds in 1 with the bulb and HBR in either 1 or 2 depending on how kind the overflow beakers are to me. Then a quick revolt to feudalism so I can skip stables and whip away. Crop and MFG are again more of a symptom of me using the whip hard I feel, although Retep has a good amount of cities now, using his fast cheap courthouses to good effect. I have a good solider lead but I don't think any of the others have as many military techs as I have so I am a bit inflated there I feel.

Also of note is my export - import status. The only open borders I don't have is with Jowy, so all of my cities have all of their trade routes at either 2 or 3 gold each. I expect this to falter in a bit, but currently it is serving me well.

I believe that I am the tech leader currently as until Jowy fired his GA I had pretty much been exclusively first in GNP even when going all gold, and am not putting out huge amounts of culture to inflate this. Plus of course I got the oracle, and at my current break even tech rate the bulb will save roughly 10 turns of tech. As I have not gone in for the eco techs of CoL, maths, calendar or currency I believe I will have a good window where I will be facing classical units with my phracts. I essentially need them to not have pikes, and if people continue to head down the eco route for beuro then all is good. Whilst they might pick up maces this does not concern me too much, as they are expensive to build and not a great counter to phracts anyway. People would probably be better off with 2 spears than 1 mace against me.

At the moment Jowy seems to have a decent teching ability, which will be clearer of it's long term potential once he is out of his MoM golden age. He also has had an impressive MFG for a fair while too. Retep will become a monster later on in the game also given his size. Flakes seems to have faltered a bit and lost heart since loosing a city to Bob, and Bob seems a little overstretched atm, however he did just start a war with Jowy and I think razed a city as I am sure he had one more than he does currently the last time I looked. Good job I kept a decent defence over that side, he will sniff at any weakness!

The Bob-Jowy war could be good or bad for me - if Jowy beefs up his forces then it is annoying, although if he has a bit of attrition with Bob then I should be able to benefit. I am still sadly a short way away from being able to muck in effectively though. I need 6-7 turns to tech and a revolt to vassalage to make the most of my advantage, so probably 15 turns out from any sort of attack yet minimum. As we are enveloping each other I plan to push forward with my phracts on a few different fronts in one go, about 4 to each of the three cities, and 2 across the water in my galley towards his cap. The faster I can take him down the less time he will have ability to whip in emergency defenders accross the empire.

Unfortunately I do not have an easy solution to denying him metal... It is well protected by his other cities. A galley with a couple of phracts might suffice, although I think it would be likely that someone would prop him up, so it isn't too appealing.

I hope to be able to sustain the whipping with a quick move to maths - currency/calendar as my next techs. Currency will help keep the tech up with a minimum of 10 extra gpt and calendar will give me happy from the sugar under the cap and I have dyes that I can unjungle and use soon too. I also have the wine that because it is right on the border I have been hesitant to use, although with the Bob/Jowy war I may try and chance it shortly. Otherwise the 2 per city from gems/forges, 1 from ivory and the monarchy happiness is doing more than enough for me atm.

So current plan is - get horses, tech phracts and revolt to vassalage, whip phracts, ??? - profit!

[AdrienIer]

I'll forgive you for not reporting enough if you report the war turns

I realize that you don't have horses yet, why didn't you settle the Iron/horse spot in the NW ? Or if you want food in the city (who wants that anyway ?) on the hill NW of that horse ? From the screenshot I can't tell how close it is to other people's homelands.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I'll forgive you for not reporting enough if you report the war turns

I realize that you don't have horses yet, why didn't you settle the Iron/horse spot in the NW ? Or if you want food in the city (who wants that anyway ?) on the hill NW of that horse ? From the screenshot I can't tell how close it is to other people's homelands.

Haha cheers. Jowy has been owner of that horse as his second ring for the last 30-40 turns. His city is 2N1W of it, and it is much closer to his cap. I shudda turned on the culture colours. I have been trying to buffer us a bit out of fear of the WCs, although that has been less over time now I have a decent solider lead. So it is the horse 2N of my city Arlen, or 5W1N of my cap which I am settling for shortly.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

That explains things better really

[GermanJoey]

Looks good, thanks for the nice overview. How long until Guilds?

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Guilds is in 5 turns. Need horseback riding after that which with the overflows should only be a turn further, 2 max. So a very respectable turn 100 guilds! Turn 101/102 phracts

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Update post 2:




My resources. It is probably my imagination, or perhaps poor expansion (although I am joint 2nd cities) but I have claimed far fewer food resources than everyone else it seems... Perhaps the trade screens just look a lot better with all the calendar resources on them.

I have had a few follies over the turns. I had an episode where Jowy moved a war chariot one off my copper - I thought an attack was imminent. Given I would have nothing to build other than warriors I sucked it up and dry whipped a spear in the cap and another in a different city, and whipped to completion a third that I was building. That was annoying, although better than a war chariot war.

I also have put around 80 hammers into the colossus in South Park. I was going to fail build it, however I had the issue of if it went there as a full build it would taint my GE chances, or if it went in New New York then I would have more GPP than south park and miss the engineer. So that was about 30ish hammers wasted there (with ind bonus + forge + copper built for 175% of hammers)

I also just whipped in a bhuddist monastery for culture in Arlen, to have Judaism spread to it naturally that turn... Rather unlucky with the religion spreads I feel. I would have hoped to have had more than one natural bhuddist spread to my cities.

Barbs have not been too much of a problem, just wandering warriors approaching me mainly from the SE, where I have the choke city.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

The war plan - beginnings.

I hope to take Jowy by surprise. Even if I don't take him completely by surprise he should have issues teching to where he can get pikes in time. I know he has calendar and currency. I believe he is heading to CS, perhaps through CoL? Someone founded Confu a few turns ago anyway, although he did revolt to judaism so perhaps it wasn't him. Anyway, I am fairly certain I will be able to attack before he has chance to go through the IW/MC/machinary/engineering line, and if he builds longbows against me I should be able to rampage the countryside for a lot of razing cash before bring in a few cats. Plus with everyone having a flat sugar cap it seems I think I should be able to take out the longbows even if I don't have any cat support.

So where to attack...

The obvious route - because it is where we shared our borders first.




I can stage on that tile out of sight and then move in ready to hit next turn, giving him only 1 turn of warning. I think this is where he will put troops though if he sees my power rising so I am unsure how effective this will be for a quick attack and win.




A less obvious route... I can stage in my city unseen. I believe that he has a city 3N1W of the horses there from the culture layout, which I could hit with one turns notice from over the river. It has the added bonus of making Bob twitch a bit too, although if it makes him go early engineering that could be a pain in the long run. More awkward to beeline for his cap though.




I already have 1 galley here, which I could use in some way. I think 1S of my city is the best place. That way I can either attack his city T1 of the war or offload units close to his cap. I think I will probably want to put 1 movers in there, perhaps longbows to defend the new city, although unsure as of yet.




Here is the most ambitious idea, which will almost certainly not be expected. I could sit on the hill on the first turn of the war with 4 workers, and road that tile and the one north to hit that city in one move after being seen... I don't know when it is due to pop third ring culture though. It will be at most 50 turns from founding, and possibly earlier as I bet there will have been religion spread or a library build there to screw my master plan over... I like this avenue a lot. But unless he doesn't keep the square 1 N of the city I will still be 3 turns from hitting the cap, not 2. Although I can spear his copper city with them most likely.

Sullla Edit: Fixed misspelled screenshot tag to make picture visible. Nice reporting!

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

No worries Sulla, nice to see you reading things And it doesn't make up for the last month or so really! Although tbf I was probably over reporting a bit.

I think I will enjoy the next 10-20 turns of this game rather handsomely. With the amount of warring I intend to be doing I will probably stay in vassalage and so skip the central part of the tech tree here, although I may start to cripple my research without courthouses. The map is not being kind with maintenance costs at all here - but then again will I need much more tech?

I feel with calendar for happy, currency for trade routes I should be able to push on for construction and engineering for the movement utility. I will be spamming as many phracts as possible so I probably won't get around to building many courthouses and I will not want a beuro revolt either. From PBEM62 it seems people can hold rather large empires without any courthouses (not spoiler as everyone knows that confu hasn't gone yet of my last read there)

I think I will try and capture Jowy and then quickly Bob. Retep will be the main contender after that but attacking him really doesn't fit in well with my empire, so not a lot I can do there.

Just played t 97 and had an enlightened moment with the bhuddist missonary I built. I used him to get double culture in Arlen so firstly I could get the horses to the north of the city the turn I can start my phract builds, assuming a revolt to vassalage.
This means rather than settling for horses to the west of my cap first ring 1NE of them, I can put the city in the much more useful long term position 2N of them to pick up the whales. Whilst the city has no food resources it isn't isolated, picks up my bonus TRs from the GLH and will be considerable once it gets a lighthouse. Short term it won't help much in the war effort though.

There was a city I was contemplating to my southeast where there is sheep and wheat and the possibility to compete with Bob for the sea resources if I put them first ring. However as I am gearing up for war I don't want to have to commit more units than needed for homeland defence.

I have tried to time defensive unit builds to all finish in time so I can build phracts straight away. A few longbows and spears to follow the main force and cover the taken cities, and to dissuade any opportunist strikes at my border cities. I also have 1 more missonary which I will either use on my new city to pick up the horses there and whale, or in dimmsdale to get the lake and oasis. Whilst in dimmsdale will be more profitable, my newest city is more important to ensure a second supply of horses. (I feel my iron is fairly safe currently, I will stand a longbow on it shortly pre war)