[SPOILERS] By the Rivers of Babylon, FIN has no effect (on krovice)

[Krill]

novice, I thought about it a bit more. Mil Trad is going to be a death trap if we invade Ruff, because Cossacks will crush everything and drive us back into the sea. I think with a small amount of wealth builds (like 2 cities) we can get Rifling in 5 though due to saved gold. Save gold this turn, break even or slightly negative next turn and then 3 turns of 100%. Then draft everything into the ground again. I'm already building up pop in Mind Grain so should get maybe 4 drafts out of there before we have to let it regrow and go back to a draft every other turn.

I'm also going to start moving units to attack Ruff asap if dtay doesn't move aggressively this turn. I'm planning for a 3 turn attack involving cannons; slower, but Ruff has nothing that can get odds on cannon and then we can slaughter everything he has put in his cities. It also enables us to get more bombards out from our frigates.

Tentatively planning on landing troops in front of Ruffs cities on T187, although might push back a turn to T188, depends on galleon positions.

[novice]

Ok, go for it.

[Krill]

Any of the lurkers want to see something interesting? This is a map of the local area. it includes what we know of OldTourists east coast, dtay south, dtay north, Ruff, The BGN Lands Formerly Belonging to Qjggggg, and the south coast of Plako.

Beware, it's a big map and will kill your data plan if you download it. I'm not going to put it as an screenshot because of that.

[Krill]

Question for lurkers regarding turn splits:

At the moment I'm in a war with dtay and OldTourist, that goes dtay>OT>me. This is working within the confines of a 48 hours turn.

BGN is in a war with Nakor and Q. The latter is irrelevant, I think he'll be dead in 3 turns. However, BGN seems to be playing first in the war with Nakor.

I am not sure if Ruff is at war with anyone at present, and I'm not logging in to check out right now (I hope to be able to clarify this tomorrow when I play my turn). But if he is...please can people confirm if he is first or last in the turn order? Because this is what I think is going to have to be the turn order for what might be a 5 way war:

BGN and dtay go first (USA evening day 1) > Ruff plays afterwards (USA day 1) + OH plays UK evening (UK day 2) > I play last (UK day 2).

This is important because IF BGN declares war on us, then there is the potential that OH get involved with a war on his other flank. If BGN doesn't move first then I think we end up in a 4 way split where it goes Ruff>BGN+dtay>OH>us, and I really will have to wait until OH finishes his entire turn.

Personally I'm just hoping he leaves me alone to annex a few cities.

[Ceiliazul]

If you find that ruff is in war, I'll ask him about turn order.

[BRickAstley]

Thanks for that overview map Krill, nice to get a big picture of the game as someone who can't just log in.

[Krill]

No problem for that Brick.

My problem is I have a fuck ton of units that I seemed to have forgotten about and only 9 Galleons.

I can attack in 3 turns, but I'll fuck all units on the ground.

[Krill]

Attacking in 4 turns (ie landing on T88) with 15 galleons.

It's not going to be pretty.

Edit: And I'm running 20% EP this turn because Ruff has so much EP on us. It will delay Rifling by a turn, but fuck it.

[Krill]

This game is just bizarre.

dtay sunk a turn into SM last turn, and is 2 turns away from finishing it. He isn't going Steel. This telegraphs that he isn't going to attack us: sheer numbers of cannon would make that appear "A Bad Idea™". Is he going for Communism? Physics would be the other option, for Airships and a tasty GS. Can he beat OldTourist going that route though? He is up Lib on pretty much everyone but OldTourist have about double his bpt and Lib costs very little in that beeline. What is BGN doing? Is he going to compete?

The main reason I'm interested in knowing that is it may give me a diplomatic option to manage our borders with BGN.

[Krill]

Some more tidbits: We started with 33 players. 10 are now dead. A further 6 are about to die (everyone lower in score than HAK), leaving us with just over half of the starting players still in the game. Most people have multiple civs worth of land...but we're still in the top 4 in land area. I don't see what is stopping BGN from killing Wetbandit and HAK on top of that, and Ruff has no reason to be left alive by BGN either: even if he just sat there and let me eat him Ruff is going out of the game in the next 40 turns. I believe that would leave us with 14 players in the game. The surviving players have a lot of land and we need to keep on fighting to stay relevant.

4 people have Constitution, 2 have Corp (I expect the two slackers to get there shortly). I'm saving gold this turn. We could almost get both those techs in 4 turns total. I'm retally torn on this: I know we need Rifling, but assuming Corp is worth 6 commerce trade routes in all cities we would get about 150 commerce per turn minimum. I think I'm probably underestimating that. Over the 8 turns it would then take to save gold again for Rifling we'd gain about a turns worth of research. And a further assumption that doesn't seem stupid is that some people are researching Rifling as well so we'd benefit form the increased KTB there.

With dtay going for SM that's suggesting there is now a tech race going on for the next 6-10 turns. If we can find a way to placate BGN we may be able to put Rifling off for a bit longer and take Ruff out much more safely. Win-Win almost. We need Rifling, but I'm no longer sure how much we need to get it.

Just need to figure out if BGN is competing and what we can afford to do to buy his complacency.