[SPOILERS] Donovan Zoi and AdrienIer: Slümhund Millionaires!

[AdrienIer]

Wow you sure love your wealth builds ! I queued a tech path to guilds after engineering, although it can be changed if you disagree. Also I figured we wanted graphs on HAK so I put our espionage on him. I'm not sure what it was doing on Gavagai. With guilds plus caste system we'll have some nice production soon. Which means we should revolt to caste/bureau/HR/OR ASAP.

Why is there a merchant in Red Bank ? I'd rather have one in SF, it gets us a great person in 17t for a golden age and is actually a net +1g overall in the empire due to rounding. This way Red Bank also grows a turn earlier, and the cap grows on the same turn. (false edit : I did the swap, I hope there was no masterplan behind the choice).

I switched a coast in Savannah to a cottage. I think that some of the coast in NF should go to grassland cottages (unbuilt for now but we should definitely put them up). And Savannah has one workshop too many, it can't work them all with its low food output, one of them should be changed to a cottage as well.

I'm leaving on monday morning so I don't think I'll be able to log in until next month. I'll hang around on the forum though, I'd appreciate some reports (you seem to be running low on time these days, I hope you'll have a little more to give me some news).

[Donovan Zoi]

Hey Adrien, thanks for checking things out, and sorry for the lack of time.

- The Merchant in Red Bank was a mistake, so I am not sure how that happened.

- I am running Wealth in 9 cities this one turn only to bag roughly 300 gold. 100% research would still have us at +5gpt but I did not want to devote all those cities for the duration. So next turn I will be dropping enough cities to go down to -75gpt and we get ENG 4 turns later. I really want ENG fast for the extra movement, plus the Pike upgrades will be nice to get in Ste Foy before Gavagai gets fully recovered since we are his best likely target.

- I had ESP on Gavagai since he still has us like 225/135, but having it on HAK won't be bad either I guess. To me it just was not as important since he is not a neighbor.

- Commodore made peace with Krill, which kind of sucks but it's understandable. Luckliy Krill appears to be taking it out on Elkad but all action still seems to be happeneing in the island. We still have a nice stack of 9 WEs, 3 Swords, and 4 Cats in the region to use either offensively or defensively (hopefully the former).

I'll try to incorporate pictures in some reports while you are away, and always feel free to ask questions here.

[AdrienIer]

I supposed you let Red Bank grow and didn't check what tile the governor gave it. At least it gave me the idea to put one in the cap for a GA soon (we didn't have our first right ? IIRC we settled the first prophet).

Yeah pikes plus road movement is nice. With 3 tile movement we can attack Rotterdam with a 1t notice which is pretty good.

I'd like to know how the other challengers are doing. A lot of HAK's score must come from having more cities/territory than us so I'd like to know how his economy is keeping up. After we get graphs we can go back to Gav.

Offensively against Elkad or Krill ? Either way we'll need many many more units. A stack of 1-movers needs to be real strong to do some damage against a defender using catapults.

I'm crossing the Atlantic so it should be easier to discuss stuff until the 23rd. We'll be more in sync sleep-wise.

[Zed-F]

Sup guys? How are things looking geopolitically?

[AdrienIer]

Well I'm in New York and it seems that relations between the US and Cuba are getting better. Oh wait you were talking about the game ?

[Donovan Zoi]

Turn 143 - 660 AD

Hey all, sorry for the lack of reporting in the game recently. Part of it has been that RL has been a bit relentless for the last few weeks, yet part of has been a bit of anxiety over our next big move in this game. And though I am cautiously optimistic about the path I have chosen for us, I couldn't shake one of the more famous pictures of RB lore from the back of my mind with every click I took in-game this turn:




That's right folks. We declared war on Krill today.

Full report to follow soon....

[Donovan Zoi]

Turn 143 - 660 AD Cont'd

Pro Tip: Did you know that if you mistakenly hit a smiley while trying to copy 10 paragraphs of text (SO YOU DON"T LOSE IT) that Undo won't recover it? With the least bit of irony, it was this MFer that I clicked on --->

OK I guess you get the short version now, sorry about that.

Givens

1. We got ENG on turn 142 and went to 0% research for upgrades.
2. ENG gives us Pikes, Castles and +1 road movement.
3. I have specialists optimized in our capital to get an SP in 3 turns. Doesn't matter which as it will be used for a Golden Age.
3. Krill recently captured Utrecht and is presumably on the way to Amsterdam.

Why Krill?

I chose Krill because:

1. Many of his troops are likely dedicated to his NE conquest, or holdings on 2 other landmasses.
2. Recent run ins with Commodore (captured some island cities from Krill's predecessor Joey) and HAK (sued for peace to get a GJ city founded on his continent).
3. Puts us as heir apparent to Elkad's spoils if we are able to cause significant damage to Krill.

Theatre #1: Creole Osceola

This was a city site that was the only source of ire between Joey and ourselves for centuries and it really wasn't much of a skirmish at all. Joey got the plant for our coveted Marble before we could, but our troop presence did keep him from actually connecting the Marble for 15-20 turns.

Fast forward to today....




As you can see, we have a stack of 13 against 4 of Krill's Longbowman. You can also see that I was able to use hidden FWs to add a road where none had been before, allowing us to drop our troops right at Creole's door (on that beloved Marble hill, no less).

Adrien, I may need your advice on this one. The timing of this attack only allowed me to bring two Catapults to this side of the war, but Creole is only at 40%. I have not upgraded them yet. Which of the following would you recommend?

1. CR I promo - open attack with Cats and have rest of units take on injured LBs?
2. Barrage I promo - open attack with Cats and have rest of units take on badly injured LBs?
3. Hit city down to 24% (no walls) and have the other 11 units go hand to hand with LBs at full strength?

I think one of the first two would be best, since we have better shot of getting lucky with the RNG. Let me know.

Theatre #2: Harrapan

This was another city where Joey got the drop on us, this time by capturing a barb city while we were still gathering up units to even consider it. We never really made an honest attempt to take it. While the city is two tiles off the coast, it does boast 3 different food sources, which is why Size 13 is no problem (even with 4 Plains Cottages!). This city also contains the Maussoleum of Mausollos, which would fit nicely with the GA we will soon have.




Here, we have the 14 units shown taking on 2 longbows and two Axemen. The city is at 60% defense, so we have 4 Catapults here. Off to the west, barely visible under the listed Catapults, are 4 workers coyly adding Cottages to Sainte-Foy. Next turn, 2 of them will road SFoy while the other two will run to the jungle 2S of Frontenac with just enough juice to complete a road for our stack to deploy next turn. I could have made the worker moves this turn, but waited for a few reasons:

1. To give Krill the false sense that the raid on Creole is all we have for him.
2. To utilize 3 new units that just arrived to the stack this turn -- a Cat, a Mace and an upgraded Pike from Sainte Foy. Also another Mace will be out of Frontenac next turn, bringing the stack number to 15.

In this case, I am thinking we use the Cats to soften the 60%, though we have plenty of units to weaken the Longbows so we can use the 4-5 Chariots to finish off the 2 Axes.

The question here: the MoM will still work as expected even if its home city is in revolt, correct? Pretty sure the answer is yes on this, but I want to make sure we can start our GA the minute we have secured this wonder for ourselves.

[Donovan Zoi]

Turn 143 - 660 AD Cont'd

After committing to this plan, I still had concerns about Gavagai and retep, and was actually able to chop out a Castle in Sainte Foy to get it on the first turn possible. Then before logging out, I saw this:




Yep, Gavagai actually declared on HAK this turn, so his objective is apparently to claim the entire southern hemisphere.

So that puts me at ease a bit. I just sent a sentry Chariot to out island to see if we can determine what retep has defending his cities, so we should know next turn. So far all I have seen is Axes and Archers from him, though I did see a WE patrolling the landbridge city about 20 turns back.

Maintaining the Upper Hand

More units joining the fight next turn, plus a couple new Courthouses:




Now that the cat is out of the bag with Krill, I will likely be whipping units pretty furiously the next few turns so that we maintain our edge. We have plenty of happiness and the growth recovers pretty quickly. But this will only be temporary because GA Caste Workshops are gonna be ridiculous even without Guilds yet. So that puts the kibosh on whips for awhile, but our cities can grow back quickly while churning out mad production. We may even be able to get another couple specialists out to keep the GA going.

We will also revolt into Bureacracy as well in our GA, as SF becomes even more of a monster (will probably not whip that one beforehand).

A couple more things I initiated to hopefully keep Krill off balance.

1. Dedicated 70% to the EP slider in order to gain another 210 on Krill. This should be anough to get sight on almost all Zulu cities. Oh, and please tell me there is no such thing as binary espionage.
2. Asked for map trades from Commodore and HAK to hopefully open up more of the Zulu map to us.

Let the games begin!

[Donovan Zoi]

Here are all of our citiy screens. Let me know if you have any questions or advice here:

EDIT: I'll get you some demographics and graphs next turn.

[AdrienIer]

This is gon' be good !

In order :
Attacking four longbows in a city with 2 catapults is really low, but I suppose it will do. The question is whether we want the first two longbows more redlined at the expense of less damage on the other two LBs (ie if we have two very strong units and a lot of junk and/or if two of the defenders are better promoted than the rest). So if we have more than four maces with CR we can go for barrage, else we should hurt the first two LBs so hard that weaker units can take them.

In Harrapan I suggest using two cats on the city defenses and two on the longbows. And once we take the city we can launch the GA, MoM will make it 12t. I like the fact that we can only attack Harrapan easily because of our FWs, a normal worker wouldn't be able to road the jungle on the same turn it moves to it.

Something bothers me, you say you didn't want to attack Harrapan right away (in part) to make him think that this was a limited war and not a full blown war. But the espionage slider will be certain to tip him off. This is Krill we're talking about, he's going to notice things.

SF could use a lighthouse. And I could use a power graph