Thread of Lost Tales: Bismarck of Japan

[The Black Sword]

So it was in year 800AD the Knights of Doriath came upon Devon. Passing through the secret path from the Anfauglith, they were unlooked for and the city taken without struggle. The Lord Devonish fled down the coast and the Knights followed in his wake. Outside the gates of Shetland his guard was overthrown and the Lord himself was slain.







It felt a bit unfair going through with that attack. I put the worker on the forested hill, put a turn into a chop and showed him that it was chopping. Then next turn I put a road turn in and cancelled. Wouldn't have worked if Tsargon was paying attention, but I was reasonably confident he wasn't and it was worth the risk of a worker.

He has another Phalanx SE of the city, but if that boat is empty Shetland will probably fall. Slightly unfortunate, as the boat has been parked NE for the last few turns. If he can hold the city and transfer in mainland reinforcements it could be a bit of a slog. But I have the two Samurai and the rest of my Knights available the turn afterwards and some trebs along the way too if I have to take the long approach.

His northern border with GJ is still garrisoned by 1 archer though, which is not going to stop the incoming Rifles.




I've got to admit, they're teching a lot faster than I expected. I'm mildly worried about a GJ-Haram dogpile to bring me back to the pack. They've got to weigh that against actually acquiring new land themselves though. Anyway I need to get to frigates quickly and get my defenses prepared in Metal-land. Also why I picked up the Statue of Zeus a few turns back as another deterrent.

Also rolled a GS this turn to go with my GE, I guess another 3 more GP should follow in the next 20t. Not sure if I want to golden age though. And actually, getting a non GS or GE might be difficult.

[The Black Sword]

Tsargon moved the phalanx in and upgraded the first one to a mace but he didn't have the boat loaded nor did he complete any unit EOT.

So, 4 Knights and a HA vs LB, Mace and Phalanx.

Pretty sure I can win that; Knight vs LB, he has odds, then a shock knight vs the mace, I should have odds. Even if I lose, just need to redline one of them enough for the HA to clean up, I have a Knight for the other.

So I went for it;

C2 Knight vs LB - ~22% odds => Lose and the guy is only scratched.

Actually, the LB is scratched the perfect amount, where he will defend against a shock knight but he lets the mace fight a C2 one.

C2 Knight vs Mace - he had odds, but they were close - mace is still 5/8.

2 Knights kill Phalanx and LB. HA has 55% win, 10% withdraw vs mace -> lose.

He completes an LB EOT, mace will promote, could potentially ferry 4 units over with the 1 galley. This might get expensive.

Meanwhile GJ has 11 musket-> rifle whips, he must be getting Rifling next turn. That means I can estimate his tech rate a bit. IIRC, he's had 5 turns since the GA to get through 9000b in RP+ Rifling. That's 7500 base beakers. I think he had 1k gold in reserves so 6,500 - some possible overflow = over 1200bpt?!?

I find it hard to believe it's that high but I doubt he'd be doing much wealth building when he could pre-build rifles instead. At least he'll lose some now to get all these rifles out.

[The Black Sword]

I've been wondering why my trade routes aren't given the value I was expecting. I thought the base value was

min(city size*0.1, distance between cities*0.1).

Turns out I was wrong and the distance is scaled by map size. Which I guess I should have realised but I never figured out the numbers before.

M =
0.06 for Huge maps
0.08 for Large maps(us)
0.1 for Standard maps

Base value = min(city size*0.1, distance between cities*M).

In practice, this means my ToA city is still getting base value 1g trade routes instead of 1.3.

[The Black Sword]

That was expensive.




Though the infra haul evened things out a bit:




I also caught GJ saving 1150gpt, and that's after whipping out a bunch of rifles. Guess his research rate really is that good.

I'm a bit worried about GJ right now. He took Tsargon's first border city last turn and Tsargon isn't reacting much(a grand total of 0 whips). I'm really out of position to hit the other border. I was intending to quickly grab the island and get back in time for GJ's invasion but the timing is messed up. Considering ferrying units directly over via galleon instead.

I'm not sure what Haram is up to either. I think he actually has top power but what does he intend to do with it? He's got a privateer who killed my sentry as well.

Actually, I really wish I had declared on Tsargon back when Dreyling started moving towards Haram. We could split Tsargon, I have a strong Dreylin bordering Haram and there's no easy land for GJ to invade. Big mistake there.

[The Black Sword]

On the other hand, these guys really seem to want me to win.







I was a bit surprised GJ had just a skirm in the city while Fenndit had a road on the diagonal.

[The Black Sword]

Tsargon has peaced out with everyone(me included), so GJ-Haram is the only war at the moment. I don't think there's been much casualties there beside that city raze judging by the WW. The Forbidden Palace has just finished so the costs are now manageable up here.

I've got some 40% borders popped and have some CG muskets in place too to defend against naval rifle attacks. I'm sending a bunch of Frigates up around too, which is my main plan to defend the area.

I just have a cease fire with Tsargon and I'm maneuvering around for my potential invasion at the minute. It looks like I have the forces to break through in Suffolk right now, but I'm not sure I want to go in. If I start eating someone else it might bring GJ and Haram to their senses. I think the status quo favours me right now, so I'm happy enough and can hopefully position myself to benefit from invasions of either Tsargon or Dreylin if they start. That said, if I have the Frigates in place there to cover my land invasion I might just go in vs Tsargon.

I'm going for Steel instead of Mil Science next, mostly because Steel leads to other useful stuff, while Mil Science is a 4k beaker dead end. I have my eye on Mining Inc, so I'm not sure I can afford that. But I'll have to be careful with my defenses without either Rifles or Grens to take defensive bonuses. Haram has just thrown his 3p golden age, and I think he has 1 Great Engineer left unaccounted for, he expressed some interest in Mining Inc at the end of PB20, so he might be looking at it too.

[The Black Sword]

I really don't understand why a 3-way split is so important to Joey, I doubt Tsargon has a navy and I don't see Haram landing on Tsargon's mainland(though this is more possible).

Not that I think a 3-way split is warranted even if that were the case.

[Commodore]

*squints*
*calls it early*
Good game, man. What would you say was decisive here?

[The Black Sword]

It was close but it looks like we get to see whether the game is decided. I'll give a more detailed answer later, but at the moment GJ and Haram quit, I wouldn't put myself at a greater than 50% chance at winning. I think with 3 players in relatively close contention we have a pretty unstable situation.

Anyway, here's the current Tsargon situation:




Things have worked out pretty well, I've been able to pick off the cities on my coast with few casualties(only real 1 was a Knight at 90% odds). I could have taken his capital this turn but I decided to grab Boer instead.

Tsargon's remaining cities are going to fall quickly, except for his border fortress with Dreylin. Then the culture will collapse and I have a free for all with mack. I didn't want to start that period quite yet, as I should have more reinforcements coming in. I'd really like a peaceful transition here. I'm sure mack would like one too, but he needs to take more land than me too. I wouldn't be adverse to that but we can't negotiate so for the moment I try to take as much as I can and if I have to retreat some that's ok. I don't really know whether I have the forces to hold off his Rifle forces yet, so I'll have to be careful.

Meanwhile, scooter's power is through the roof and his real MFG is like 1200h into military each turn(including Nationhood and HE).




So he can't be given a free reign through Dreylin either(I see his boats headed that way, though they could still turn to me). Ideally me and mack agree some sort of split and then go vulture more stuff over there.

End of turn I got a game-changer though:





Probably a golden age right there. High odds for a scientist, in which case I planned to bulb Steel, PP and Edu while saving the last GE for Mining Inc. This feels like a pivotal moment in the game and I think I need to cash my great people in now. I think the bulbing would give a similar value to the golden age but I'd really like the extra hammers right now and revolting into Nationhood, maybe Free Market could also be good.

I wonder if Joey made a mistake not picking up Nationhood before his Rifle spree, it would have delayed it a bit but it would have given his military a lot more staying power.

In other big news, I found a GS in scooter's territory. I had kept a count of Haram's GP and I thought he still had one spare but I couldn't find it till now and I suspected it was his GE, for Mining Inc. But if he actually saved this GS instead then I'm the only one with a GE saved at the moment. IIRC, Mining Inc will be worth about 10 base hammers per city at the moment, costing about 5gpt.

[The Black Sword]

I've got about 40 units in the area, Mack has about 20 better quality ones. I could attack now with my collateral to get a bit of an advantage while his units are injured but I don't want to get into a fight. I settled for pillaging the roads on the row of hills, which will buy us some temporary time if Mack wants to attack.

I then sent some of my best quality units over here:




Domestically I threw the golden age and decided to revolt to Vassalage. Another big plus of this, it sends a 'don't mess with me' message.

My heroic epic city is probably the most interesting one during the GA:



It has about half a GP created and if it doesn't finish it during this GA it will never catch up. I'll starve the city down 1 size at the end of the GA to complete the GP. Size 17 should still be enough to 1t any necessary units, so it's only costing me ~3 cannons for the great person.

GA demos: