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

[Krill]

Ruff losses: 24 cats, 8 knights, 3 maces, 5 pikes, 4 archers, 2 warriors, 4 axes, 1 HA, 1 Xbow
Our losses: 7 cannon, 7 knights, 1 musket.

I gotta be honest, losing a sixth of our cannon smarts a bit, but after checking the logs there were a surprising number of 50/50 battles that we basically split. I think Ruff got a slightly better exchange than he could have hoped for.

The most annoying thing is that he emptied Lynn to attack our stack and I don't have any units that could take the city this turn, I positioned units completely wrong. Fuck.

On the plus side, we make 1950bpt at max, -850gt. SP due in 6.

[Krill]

novice, I'm not going to play the turn until tomorrow after I wake up following my night shift. If you want to have a look around that'd be cool. Ruff said he is going to finish the turn in the morning when he wakes up.

3 people have Steam Power (OT, TBS, Joey). dtay gets Physics this turn and the GS hasn't fallen. I don't know what BGN is doing but he is moving catapults towards Cambridge.

[Krill]

Rudimentary plan atm is to dump the 6 muskets and 1 rifle next to Newton, south of Boston and also send 2-3 cannon down there. We would have odds on taking the city next turn but we'd have the option to play safe anyway. I am also thinking about dropping 1 rifle off adjacent to Lynn, and moving up 3 knights that I can promo heal to a reasonable level of health to take Lynn next turn. Teh main SoD I think I have to move into Boston along with the medic 3 chariot and let them heal next turn. Most of hte units will be fully healed and could move on T197 towards Cambridge.

[novice]

Nice infra / settled gp haul.

EDIT: Jeesus, 11 turns of revolt.

[Krill]

It's not too bad. Only need to grow it three pop and stagnate at 19. It might take us most of those turns to clear out all of the culture.

[Krill]

Turn played. I'm going to report it now, but novice, what I'm doing is a little bit risky. If BGN has hidden a stack in Ruffland and wants to declare war on us he may be able to do a reasonable amount of damage on the first turn of a war. OTOH, if things go right for us (like if Ruff continues with attacking and then deleting his troops) then I can capture Cambridge T198

[novice]

Well, it's not like I'm going to object to taking risks at this stage of the game.

[Krill]

Screenshots:




I dumped 14 units into Boston. Ruff stills has 9 knights that retreated from his attack this turn, plus maybe a few stragglers that couldn't reach the city in time that may attack this turn. The medic 3 provides the healing bonus to the SoD on the corn. The settlers I moved north under the SoD because there are more units there to protect them.





The main SoD. The knights will mostly heal. There are 5 that will be over 80hp and 1 knight at 75 hp that I intend to move north to assist the stack that is dropped off in Lynn to take Cambridge. All of the muskets and all but 2 of the cannon will be full health next turn and can move SE to the Ruff city that is south of Cambridge, or can move at Cambridge itself; the SoD could attack either city on T199. The rifles will heal to about 85% strength.





Lynn might not fall on T196. The knights are in range from the units in Cambridge. I took the risk of moving them here because next turn they can move onto the plains hill and cover the sentry chariot that I want to bring back over here. The rifle however should not be attacked next turn/ Lynn is within 3 tiles of Cambridge so it is possible that the defenders are moved into Lynn.

There are 4 rifles, 4 muskets and 6 cannon on the galleons. Without additional hitters this stack will not be able to take Cambridge IMO, which is why I need to move the knights from the SoD up here. IMO, the biggest loss from Ruffs attack is not the cannon, it is the loss of the knights. Due to culture we are having to split the stack to focus on multuiple targets but we lack tactical flexibility to react to ruffs troop movements because most of our units are slowmovers. The galleons are not going to be useful after Lynn falls. however the cannon and rifles will help protect against another suicide stack attack from Ruff, I do not believe he has much left and until he heals those knights I'm not entirely concerned about losing any stack with more than 6 units atm.

The galleons units could attack Cambridge on T198 with the knights from the SoD.





Overview of the stack pathways. If these cities fell, my only aim for eastward expansion would be Arlington as that gives good, clean borders with BGN; everything else is ceded to BGN but if he didn't attack Ruff then I'd clean out the south and then start razing ruffs cities to get him out of the game so Motherland unhappiness disappeared.








This is a bit of a bluff. Ruff can see that I have dropped off 7 units but there are only 4 galleons that he can see. One galleon is directly north of Newton, the other three are just outside his borders. However there is a road leading to the galleons to make it look like there are all reloaded; only one of them is, with 2 rifles and a musket. There are 2 cannons (both 5XP) on the near galleon to unload next turn if Newton is reinforced.

If Ruff moves the WE back into Newton, he will have 7 units there, we have 7 landed and 3 that can attack amphibiously. He may decide to attack our stack, he could kill it but I believe that he would lose an awful lot of units doing so and give up the fortification bonus. I also believe that he would need to use all of his injured knights to finish off the stack, and even then I'm not sure he could do it.








Depending on how the next few turns go on this "clean up" then I believe that we could get the bulk of this war done very quickly. If BGN intervenes then I don't know what is going to happen. If Ruff has even more junk hidden in the FoW then well played on lulling me into a false sense of security.

The southern tundra cities I am probably going to try and take with galleon borne troops again. Said troops may also be able to help in an attack on Arlington (2W of the wheat on the river in the centre of the bottom picture).







BGN is rapidly powering up. I'm a little bit concerned by that but frankly the only thing we can do is to beeline Infantry which we're already doing. If he doesn't attack someone else soon then I'm probably going to go back to stockpiling cannon and frigates and go screw with his coastal cities. I already have a small frigate stack north of Qjg land by Xenu and wetbandit so we can immedaitely stop Galleons coming around if we want to.

Other than that, our MFG is really joint third, we are equal with OT in hammers. Crop yield we're solidly fourth, the distance between us and TBS in third is about the same as the distance between us and dtay/Joey in 4th/5th. Don't even talk to me about GNP.

[Krill]

One last point. That battle got us another GG. We now have 2 unused. We are making 7XP units from RC. If we added both GG to RC we get 3 promo rifles and cannon. If I build WP on top of that, those units are at 16/17XP. We are not going to get another GG from war with Ruff though.

Should I add the GG to RC? We can always put WP into PE when it has finished the IW to allow PE to make 3 promotion units as well if we want.

[Krill]

Also I've put the temptation off long enough. I'm going to gift Xenu a frigate.