[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[MindyMcCready]

Some planning for next turn. I think that we have to start moving out from Hungry.

It will take 3T to travel from Hungry to Sore if we go the visible route. It will take 4T to travel from Hungry to Sore if we go the "invisible" route assuming that we have a road 1E of Adventurous.

T184: I believe that we have 14 muskets in Hungry right now and 12 catapults.
Visible Route
T185: Units in Sleepy
T186: Units north of Stressed can be seen by the mountain peak.
T187: Units inside of Sore.

Invisible Route
T185: Units in Sleepy same as above.
T186: Units 1N of Adventurous (need road 1E,...)
T187: Units in Stressed
T188: Units in Sore
T189: Units move to forest 1SE of Dragon Herdsman and/or Cuirassiers hit Dragon Slave.

The invisible route is probably better since it will give us an extra turn to get our Cuirassiers upgrades and into position. There is the possibility that MC thinks that we're heading towards Grimace as well and might not be fully guarded against the dissappearance of our muskets and cats.

So that would give us 23 muskets (combined with the ones in Sore,...well I guess 6 of those will probably be dead next turn ) as well as 17 catapults. Along with say, 13 cuirassiers we'd have a good chance of taking down a couple of cities. I'm holding out a bit of hope that MC doesn't plan on being in Nationhood permanently. It just doesn't benefit his large cities the way it benefits our many size 7/8 cities. So if we get lucky MC might switch out of NH at the end of his GA (which would be T189/T190).

[HitAnyKey]

I haven't looked yet myself, so don't have time to do the counts right now, but I'm hoping your counts include leaving a bunch of stuff in Hungry? There is no way I can afford to pull all of the muskets and cats out of there. That would just leave the city available for him to just quickly turn back around after taking a couple cities from retep, to then go after the then underdefended Hungry.
Also, I'm sure he'll see any movement of troops out of Hungry to assume they are headed to Sore. It truly doesn't make any sense for me to even consider moving them towards Borscheland to help with the Gavagai fight. Plus he's likely got a spy or two in my midst.
But I'll take a look tonight when I can.

[MindyMcCready]

I haven't looked yet myself, so don't have time to do the counts right now, but I'm hoping your counts include leaving a bunch of stuff in Hungry? There is no way I can afford to pull all of the muskets and cats out of there. That would just leave the city available for him to just quickly turn back around after taking a couple cities from retep, to then go after the then underdefended Hungry.
Also, I'm sure he'll see any movement of troops out of Hungry to assume they are headed to Sore. It truly doesn't make any sense for me to even consider moving them towards Borscheland to help with the Gavagai fight. Plus he's likely got a spy or two in my midst.
But I'll take a look tonight when I can.

No, I moved out all of the muskets. Come to think of it I really think that you need to move out the swords too.

I'm relying on a couple of things:
1. That Retep doesn't fold like a deck of cards. MC's army is highly effective, but Retep might have numbers and whipping on his side.
2. Retep doesn't much like to be attacked and will probably try to punish MC for this move. Retep's diplo suggested an alliance. I don't think that he'll be bought off quite as easily as Tas for example.

We do have the additional drafts that will either go towards offense or towards defense. So that wil mitigate somewhat. We're also talking about moving in say 4-5T which will allow for 12-15 more muskets. We will also see MC's army turn around and have some notice. I am really hoping that we don't see a teleporting peace treaty. Still, we don't hit the point of no return until we're actually in his land and its 3T back into Hungry from Sore.

Bottom line we must put pressure on MC. If we fail to act convincingly, then MC will be able to pour more troops in Retep's direction and that will be game. We're *significantly* behind in tech, we're still behind in tech speed and we're 30% or so behind in MFG. So what value is Hungry if we've lost the game? More on that point, I'd trade our S7 Hungry to raze S16 Dragon Slave. That trade would give us a food advantage that we don't yet have despite our city count advantage. Then there's the strategic value of that location and what it allows us to do to Gavagai.

Even if we do just unnerve MC into making a quick peace with Retep,...mission accomplished.

Our only other option is to do something drastic with our Cuirassiers so that we could gain more land with the Cuirassiers than MC gains from Retep. I don't really see how we could do that right now. We could take some of the perimter cities away from Gav but we'd have our army spreadout and uncomfortably vulnerable to both MC and Gav. This might be a possible course of action in 10-20T, but I don't see it right now. This is why I think that we have to do whatever we can to contain MC.

As an aside, obviously Retep cannot afford to send Knights for upgrade right now. If he survives and gets a 10T peace, we'll have to look at ways to make that happen.

[MindyMcCready]

One last thing,...

From our earlier chat you indicated that MC only had 8 units in COA? That's a very light garrison given the 12 cats and 14 muskets in Hungry. So what's his plan there?

1. He might be willing to sacrifice that city as a cost of making real progress against Retep.
2. He might be baiting us. Trying to get a teleport peace with Retep?

If he's really thinking about sacrificing that city,...well maybe we can raze it in time for the cuirassiers to make an appearance against Cobra or Spinneret. So maybe we want to move up on COA in order to test his reaction?

[HitAnyKey]

REALLY don't have much time this morning, so first up here is a slew of screenshots:

Demos, etc:

As expected, my screwup with moving additional units to cover the wounded Musket that killed his two really messed us up. He killed all but 1 of them (that original surviving musket) without taking any losses. So yep, just gave him a bunch of free promos.
I pulled back my musket so the Sheep tile is empty again.

Over by Gavagai, we need to decide which tile to put the stack of Catapults on that his Knight/Numid stack up by Bouncy can't hit. He'll likely try to raze/take Bouncy on his half of this turn. And move his other stack up against Wendy's (or onto one of the hills north of it) at the same time.
We can continue a bit in chat, but this is it for the post right now. No time for more typing at the moment.

I may end up having to try to finish the turn later (and then pause it for Gavagai) to figure out what to do on the Commodore front, based on your prior posts from last night. I just gotta concentrate on this work project today starting like right now.

[HitAnyKey]

As requested here's the spam of troop positions. Let me know if there's any other particular spot you need info on:

A couple of my new Knights are able to move this turn (ie. the one in Stressed, etc), as I didn't move them yet because I didn't know which part of the front to go to. Also have a couple workers that can head towards either Hungry or Sore. Didn't move them yet, but they still a couple turns away.
Trying to decide how many more LKs to move into Bouncy to protect it from those Knights of Gav's too. I think he may attack this turn. Also have a Musket train going. One in McDs, one in FG, and another coming from Popeyes. So next turn they can move one city west each turn until it gets to the front.

[HitAnyKey]

I'm kinda sad I don't have visibility or a spy available to go see what's going on in retep's lands. I'm sure I'll see soon enough if Commodore is returning back to Coming of Age (as he's playing right now), but it would be really nice to be able to know if retep was actually able to kill any of Comm's units. Or if he's truly just being steamrolled. As discussed with Mindy I had sent him a couple messages last turn. One to try to signal that I'd be moving in from Hungry with a stack of "Iron" units in 1 turn. And moving in with a "Horse" from Sore in 3 turns. But not sure if it'll help or if I'll even be able to do so if Commodore is able to immediately regroup back at our borders.
Also, waiting for him to finish to see if he did indeed slam the stack of units I moved last turn onto the hill 1N of Hungry.

Also to see what Gavagai is doing to me. I was apparently able to keep him from taking (and probably not even attacking) Bouncy, which was being threatened by his stack of Knights from the shadows (although my Spy saw them). Our Peace Treaty ended last turn, so I'm expecting to log in to seeing his SOD somewhere inside my borders.

[HitAnyKey]

So the update is this....no attack from Gav yet. And Commodore may have taken a decent hit from retep, mainly based on how many wounded Knights he still has left that I can see (thanks to culture from Comm's city).
The demo's are pre-drafting on my part for this turn.

Both of them got Great Generals. Commodore also got yet another great engineer this turn. And I can't see it anywhere, so he's apparently learned and is hiding his Great People in the shadows away from me, so I don't know how many he has anymore.

Ruff also gifted me a 2nd Galleon. Not entirely sure why, since I was figuring my 2 Muskets to him would cover the cost of just 1 Galleon. But if he's doing a 1-for-1 deal that's even better. I now have 2 Galleons which helps.

Speaking of ships, in that last screenshot you can see I had moved up two Caravels to harass Comm's waters. Last turn one sat on a seafood, with the other on a regular water tile, causing Dragon Soldier to actually lose 1 Pop due to starving. But because of that he's set to complete a Caravel this turn. I suppose I should pull mine back now to regroup. I can move both of them back to the tile 1W of Quiet Riot, and also move up the 3 Caravels (some of which have promotions) which are next to that Galley, such that I can have 5 Caravels on that tile 1W of Quiet Riot. Leaning towards doing that, but will decide in morning.

May take a couple more screenshots, but then heading to bed to finish turn in morning.

[HitAnyKey]

Last show for tonight.


I have the two Caravels in the canal. I could move them into Anxious. And I could move the two Galleons into Alexandria. If Commodore doesn't move that Caravel on Happy's Crabs, I could attack it the following turn. Though he'll see my Caravels inside Anxious and likely move that other one onto it as well. Not sure if I want to do this now, or wait for Sonic to make more Caravels first. will think about this as well overnight.

[HitAnyKey]

Here are the build queues and demos after drafting:

Commodore get's Constitution next turn....so incoming Representation swap for him to get his tech speed going EVEN FASTER!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!