[SPOILERS] Mardoc gets back on the horse

[flugauto]

That RNG sucks. Maybe the chariots can scout the west.

[BRickAstley]

Bad luck there.

[Mardoc]

Been busy. The game's basically in the same state it was, though. THH brought in about ten units to garrison the ex-barb city. I still intend to kill it, but there's no way that makes sense with current tech. My short term goal is Currency and Construction (and maybe also Calendar), and my mid-term goal is Knights. And to get there, I'm thinking I will not worry about trying to claim any more land, but instead grow my current cities tall. Should be able to get them all to size 11 or so, maybe more, as long as I can hold on to the metals.

Horizontal growth is pretty much impossible at this point anyway, except by force. Maybe could sneak in one more city somewhere or other, and maybe even will for Colossus tiles. And maybe it'll be worthwhile taking back my city from THH with catapults + something (HA?). That would save me from having to build Triremes.

But mostly...mostly I'm going to focus on racing to Guilds. Forges, Lighthouses, religion for growth. Libraries, Ziggs, maybe Markets, for cash. And Barracks/Stables where I can.

Target needs to be THH, entirely. Can't afford a two front war, and we're going to be at war with China pretty much indefinitely regardless. Even if we sign ceasefire, we can't rely on anything anyway.

[flugauto]

I wonder if that is a free religion spread in Polynesian.

[Mardoc]

Haven't reported much, been busy. All the other new games don't help. We've picked up Currency, Construction, Iron Working, and do have iron/horses. Have almost gotten to the point of firing the golden age, as our cities are getting to double-digit sizes (but still none are maxed out).

Still need Feudalism, Machinery, Guilds. Archery may be a good idea, too.

I'm not to the point where it matters yet. But it looks like I may have a frustrating choice to make:

What target do I choose for my knights?

THH:
Pros: We hates him. He stole our Precious
He's our neighbor, it's easy to integrate his land in ours (at least the mainland)
Assuming a symmetrical map, it should be fairly easy to cut his iron
He's winning. No one's likely to intervene
Cons: He's leading the scoreboard, most of the demos, and recently flashed a Mace at me. Which means he's ahead in miltech already, and has Cho's already unlocked as well There's a very good chance he'll be able to stop us.
No good way to cross his moat, short of conquering his ports, waiting for them to come out of revolt, and trying to outbuild his homeland cities in navy

Alhazard:
Pros:
He's behind in demos and especially in GNP
He owns a lot of mainland
We have a canal city toward him; I haven't looked, but if he has a canal city too, we can use our already existing navy instead of having to build one in captured cities
He let us scout his land.
His military seems to be mostly War Chariots. Which don't work well as knight-killers
Cons: He's done nothing to make us hate him
He was first to give us a road connection and first to open borders
Good chance that someone either piles on to take the spoils, or hits us while we're distracted

Miguelito:
Pros: Um. He's on our border, sorta?
He's got Mids and HG and is generally one of the contenders
Cons: He's been friendly.
Doesn't seem to be leading in the demos, either.
He's pretty much diagonal from us..
Very good chance that someone either piles on to take the spoils, or hits us while we're distracted

Basically, it looks like we may have to choose between revenge and winning. Or at least between revenge and a good shot at winning.

Course, this assumes that we have the initiative here. It's also possible that someone else (THH) gets to knights first. And if so, then we have to react rather than act.

[flugauto]

Can you get city visibility of TheEvilHydra?

[Mardoc]

Can you get city visibility of TheEvilHydra?

I don't know what you mean by this. We don't have open borders, although maybe he'd give me them if I asked.

Or you mean espionage? I'm currently behind him in EP, Org seems to help with that more than Ziggs do.

[flugauto]

I mean the EP city visibility.

[Mardoc]

Ah. Probably not. He's ahead in EP and has more courthouses and more cities. I'd pretty much have to run the slider if I wanted that, and I'd rather save time on Guilds.

[Mardoc]

Two noteworthy things this turn.

A) We finished Guilds! And revolted to Vassalage, on the last turn of our golden age. Now we just need to finish up our barracks and build a quick knight-based army.

B) THH flashed a Knight at us, in ex-Polynesian.

From this I deduce:
1) We don't want to fight THH just yet. He's apparently ahead in tech, at least a little, and he's definitely ahead in hammers and whippable pop. I'm sure we could ruin his game still, but profit is unlikely.
2) THH doesn't want to fight us. If he did, he shouldn't be scaring me, he should put a bunch of knights and cats just behind the city where I can't see, and slaughter me when I land.

So...I think I'm going to go for Alhazard. We'll hope this picks up enough cities to let us pull actually ahead of THH and hit him later. But I'm not mad enough at his stealing our barb city to throw away the game, not when I think we still have a real chance.

I still haven't seen anything non-ancient in Egyptian lands. I think speed may be more important than army size or composition, as a result. Knights can be hot knife through butter if I hit him early enough. 15-20 Knights is probably sufficient to kick him off the mainland, at least the part we've seen. Which is six cities, clustered around a little sea - they'd be great for us, more production and lots more Colossus tiles. A quick Fort for a canal, and we can bring most of our navy straight to his home sea - that ought to let us grab his homeland island too. He might have something more on the mainland somewhere, but if we've got 2/3 of his empire, we ought to be able to hunt down the rest - presuming that neither Miguelito nor THH get there first.

So...I need to finish Barracks, whip a pair of Knights per city, and get them moving north ASAP. Can follow up with longbows for garrisons, cats for security against vultures, and so on - we're not going to stop building army by any means - but I think I shouldn't wait for them to be built before I kick off the invasion. Not when his border cities with me are each guarded by ~4 War Chariots and an ax. And if I'm reading the terrain correctly, I ought to be able to hit both cities T0 of a war from the fog, without Engineering even.

My biggest worry here is that THH decides to spoil, one way or another. He really can't afford to let me double my empire without doing something of his own, not even when he's in first place and I'm arguably in last. I could see that something being a spoiling attack on me (only why flash knights first?), or a simultaneous attack on Alhazard for a share of the spoils, or an attack on Miguelito for spoils + wonders.

But...I don't see what I can do about it, really, other than keep back some cats and a trireme or two. And, of course, aim to make this a real blitzkrieg, but I want to do that anyway to keep Alhazard from being able to whip much or get to better units. I can't abort, that just means I lose eventually instead of losing immediately.