Turns out I didn't delete the chariot and workers . Also OT4E reinforced with enough that I'm not getting JJ this turn. I want to stabilize the western front (get rid of the jungle road) before sending the cat stack to capture the JJ. We have a sentry chariot coming from TSC next turn who'll give us more intel.
Looks like the Galley is empty. Might get a shot at killing it next turn.
Should we offer peace? In ten turns we'll have Forges built everywhere with Knights rolling off the production line. He might have PRO Longbows, but probably won't.
Just to note we're pausing for 2metraninja being away this weekend so the turn won't roll until Monday . That does give us a chance to think about what we're doing next though.
I've been switching research around a bit recently, meaning it might have been a little hard to follow where we're at, so this might help.
I want to finish Machinery for windmills. Then we have a few choices.
- HBR->Guilds->Engineering and pound on OT4E a bit more - if we can kill him with Knights we get the Hindu shrine and end up with a hugely elongated empire wrapped around Mackoti in a dtay/Krill in PB18 style. That may not be entirely wise. Leaving him intact to plot revenge might be just as problematic as trying to kill him though.
- Philosophy->Nationalism and try for MoM-Taj
- Philosophy->Paper->Education->Lib and Lib either Printing Press or Nationalism (or perhaps something more expensive if there's no competition?)
- Compass->Optics->Astro and boat Mackoti's capital
Have I missed any others? At some point we need to get Aesthetics->Literature, but that can wait until Big Bird is ready to build the National Epic or we have a 10XP unit (8XP is our best at the moment).
I've switched EPs to Mackoti because I think what he's doing is going to influence what we want to do, but in the absence of that info right now what do you guys think?
(April 29th, 2016, 05:07)El Grillo Wrote: Are those four tech paths in descending order of preference? How long before you get graphs/research visibility on mackoti?
I don't really have a preference for the first three yet - I think we need more information (such as the lie of the land in OT4E's core or Mackoti's tech path) to make an informed choice. There is a pretty huge fall-off to the last one though. We've been speculating in chat that TBS's Knights (we know he had Machinery five turns ago) might go for REM rather than his continental neighbours Commodore or Pindicator which would mean Astronomy would help us take a bite out of REM ourselves.
(April 20th, 2016, 16:48)Old Harry Wrote: Turn 123
We got graphs on Mack, nothing ground-breaking here...
If Mack doesn't react to our EP spending we should get tech visibility in 6-7 turns.
I thought I'd take advantage of the pause to do some digging and planing for the next thirty turns (hopefully). Lets start with an overview map with some speculation about where the folks in the fog are.
Joint-most importantly I think Mackoti stretches out to the south which could explain why Mack hasn't captured Avar yet - it's not a great city and is far from his core. Meanwhile I think OT4E stretches to the south east. That leaves Ollytantambo, Jungle Juggler and Cutthroat pretty isolated, if we could take Cutthroat then we *should* be able to hold the whole of this blob of land. I doubt we'll do that without taking out his stack first, but we need to need to use the Swords before they go out of date (ie OT4E gets Longbows).
Going back to my tech thoughts:
(April 29th, 2016, 05:01)Old Harry Wrote: I want to finish Machinery for windmills. Then we have a few choices.
- HBR->Guilds->Engineering and pound on OT4E a bit more - if we can kill him with Knights we get the Hindu shrine and end up with a hugely elongated empire wrapped around Mackoti in a dtay/Krill in PB18 style. That may not be entirely wise. Leaving him intact to plot revenge might be just as problematic as trying to kill him though.
- Philosophy->Nationalism and try for MoM-Taj
- Philosophy->Paper->Education->Lib and Lib either Printing Press or Nationalism (or perhaps something more expensive if there's no competition?)
- Compass->Optics->Astro and boat Mackoti's capital
The two big first-to bonii (Taj Mahal and Liberalism) go via Philosophy, but someone got Philosophy on t125. The suspects are plentiful - Mack, TBS, REM and Pindi all got score increases greater than 18 but I think TBS is heading for Knights and Pindi is fighting 2metra at the moment so it's one of REM and Mack. We'd already be 3 turns behind if we switched off Machinery this turn so that's not appealing. Better would be to get Philosophy ourselves, see which way the competition has gone and head the other way ourselves. There is only one Great Engineer out there (who belongs to Commodore or perhaps 2metra) so Taj won't appear right away, but if we've got Philosophy we can see when someone completes Nationhood. Or do we just grab the first-to-eat-a-neighbour bonus?
In other tech news we know OT4E and one other have HBR. No-one has Theology, Paper or Compass. TBS and one other have Machinery and Mack, 2metra and one other have Aesthetics.
This is the stuff we know about the others:
Reference stuff at (t120) 128
TBS
Ginghis of Zulu (AGG/IMP)
Landlocked capital
(17) 18 cities
Pindicator
Charlie of America (PRO/IMP)
Stonehenge, Landlocked cap, War with 2metraninja
(14) 14 cities
REM
Peter of Holy Rome (PHI/EXP)
Buddhist Shrine, Hanging Gardens, 5 land
(14) 15 cities
Mackoti
Willem of Viking (FIN/CRE)
Judaism, Gt LH, 5 land tiles, SoZ
(14) 14 cities
Harry
Sury of Sumer (CRE/EXP)
MoM, Landlocked cap, TGWall, ToArtemis
(14) 16 cities
OT4E
Sitting Bull of Inca (PRO/PHI)
Hindu shrine, Oracled Monarchy, 8 land tiles in start square, TGWall, ToArtemis
(11) 10 cities
Commodore/dtay
Cathy of Portugal (CRE/IMP)
Colossus, 5 land tiles
(14) 14 cities
2Metra
Boudica of India (AGG/CHA)
Mids, TGLibrary, Landlocked cap, War with Pindicator
? cities
And we need some plans for our cities - up to now I've been focussing on war at all costs in most places, but things are looking good right now, so an infra push might be worth it.
After it builds this sentry Chariot TSC will get a Forge, then some more units, then the Heroic Epic and eventually West Point and maybe even a military academy.
Animal will get some windmills and take back the wheat once it finishes its settler. Forge, Uni 1/6, Oxford and possibly Wall St will be here.
Forge then Triremes? Uni 2/6?
Forge, Zig? Windmills! Uni 3/6
Forge, Zig, Library, Market? Windmills! Uni 4/6
Forge, Barracks?
Secondary great person generator, Library next.
Forge, Windmills to grow, then lots of hammers for units?
Forge, Windmills to grow, then hammers for navy.
Windmills! Forge, Zig, Barracks?
Lighthouse, I'm not even sure that the Zig is that useful here, its never going to grow much .
Grow on to windmills. Build navy.
This should be a good 'un if it survives long enough. Granary, Lighthouse, Forge, then navy?
Granary, Forge, Library, Work Boat, Zig, Temple, Market (it'd be earlier but we're getting a Merchant from Fozzie so we don't need the slots), Uni 5/6
Granary, Forge, Barracks, Units.
That leaves us a University short for Oxford - I think TSC is probably the best location for it, unless we have a gems city nicely set up by then...
The trap is sprung!
Galley vs Galley 32%... LOSS (4 hits )
1.4/2 Galley vs 0.5/2 Galley >99%... FLAWLESS WIN!
And now our Galley can take Nav 1. I forgot to do a demos before and after to see how much power OT4E lost on his Galley. To make up for it here is how much he lost a couple of turns ago.
Not a lot else going on - workers in place to start windmills next turn and the stack in place to move SW of JJ next turn. I'll send in a Vulture first, to see what he's got stashed on the horse tile, but I'll be surprised if he's already built a road to allow his cat stack to sneak around. Would the roads in the fog change to show links to it?
My number one worry at the moment is a stack of HA's plonking themselves SW of Oscar. If that does happen we can get three spears, a Sword and a Vulture into Statler and most of our main stack into Oscar, unless he does it the turn we move on JJ, in which case we need to decide which city we like best...
Machinery is in and we can have Knights in 10 turns... I'm saving cash on HBR for the moment while we figure out which path looks best.
Commodore noticed that I cancelled the spice gift so he cancelled OBs. That's fine, since we're full from everyone else, but I'd like to have good relations, so as soon as Pindicator realises he's buying spices from us twice and cancels I'll offer them back to Com. Even if he's offered us OBs again in the mean time.
On the front lines we *should* take JJ next turn. Do we want to raze and resettle 1SW or keep? I'm leaning towards the latter as it makes a 2-mover strike a little harder once borders pop. Like a noob I split our stack in three. If there is a force of eight HA just SE of his chariot then our Spears, Vultures and Sword on the hill should stop them dead. If there are more then at least our catapults are safe from flanking.
If however the HAs are poised to fork Statler and Oscar then our forces around those cities (7 Vultures, 7 Swords, 5 Cats, 2 Chariots and 4 Spears) can *probably* hold them off. Oscar will pop borders in four turns at which point the paranoia can subside.
You may have noticed that our Sword builds upgraded to be Maces in an expected and not-at-all surprising way. We've only got 15 swords now for the rest of the game, so I'll try not to waste too many...
Last ditch effort to lobby for the Electric Mayhem
Went down a youtube hole with muppet videos and found intros made for German television. Seeing "Die Muppet Show" has entertained me to no end tonight.
Keep JJ if he doesn't flash[/Embed] his presumptive HA stack.
OT4E cut the road on the grass hill so that we wouldn't follow and spy on him. I think that means he's giving up on JJ, although he did take the opportunity to take a 50/50 shot at a Catapult with his Axe .
I bombarded the culture and decided to suicide one Cat so our Swords get better than 60/40 odds. We can replace Cats, not Swords...
- Cat vs CG1 Drill 1 Archer - 20%... LOSS (three hits and 2 collateral)
- CR2 Sword vs injured CG1 Drill 1 Archer - 83%... FLAWLESS WIN!
- CR2 Sword vs injured CG1 Drill 1 Archer - 85%... WIN (1 hit)
- CR1 Sword vs injured CG1 Drill 1 Archer - 96%.. WIN (1 hit)
- C1 Vulture vs Injured Axe - 99%... WIN ( 1 hit)
We get a granary and 42 gold
We chatted a bit about pushing on but decided that the big stack of Catapults somewhere in the fog made that a very bad idea. In an ideal world the settler that Animal completed this turn will pitch camp on the hill NW of the sugar a couple of turns after we get peace with OT4E since, as Ipecac said, its "our turn to get a peace treaty and then settle up obnoxiously" .
I've been a bit worried about all the whipping OT4E has been doing, but it doesn't seem to be doing much to his power rating. Fingers crossed.
After a couple of turns without our spices I wonder if Commodore will donate his deer to get them back?
. Also OT4E reinforced with enough that I'm not getting JJ this turn. I want to stabilize the western front (get rid of the jungle road) before sending the cat stack to capture the JJ. We have a sentry chariot coming from TSC next turn who'll give us more intel. 
. That does give us a chance to think about what we're doing next though.
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