greenline gets rushed and eliminated on turn whatever: Huyana Capac of Mali

[Khan]

I had my third city razed and had a lot of problem with early warring so had a reasonable army. I was bottom in every demographic except power (where I was top) for a large amount of the game. I figured I had to make a Hail Mary play to try and get back into the game so I moved a big force to the middle and claimed it. I declared war and prevented anyone else getting any gains there if they moved a settler nearby. I razed Adrien's claim to the middle and attacked El G's quite heavily which, although it held just about, did stop him getting control over any of the juicy tiles there. Your game seems to have been fairly peaceful. Ours certainly was not! Founding on the marble, chucking in walls, a castle, hordes of pikes and maces and having built chichen itza and SoZ elsewhere meant nobody fancied trying to crack that particular nut.

[El Grillo]

Those were indeed some pivotal turns, especially with Adrien's reinforcements being one turn too late and my reinforcements being just in time to save my city. And if, as Adrien mentioned in his thread, he had upgraded a warrior to an axe instead of teching, he would have almost certainly have held as well, and his city would have prevented you from settling the Marble.

[greenline]

WAR

To start off with, I noticed Sian moved a Knight and chariot in the center region right next to my pikes. This was not a good idea by him.




Pike vs Knight: WIN, pike down to ~1.7
Pike vs chariot: WIN, pike down to ~4.7

That leaves his city in the middle rather weakly defended, and I would have moved all of my knights and spare defensive units out to attack it if not for Jowy's units sitting right there. So I'll wait and see what he does next turn.

In the south, Sian added a mace to Thomas Aquinas and nothing in Averroes (he just revolted to Nationalism but can only draft maces ). I still had five knights that could hit the city, so the attack would be determined by how the battle with the pike went. Sent in a shock knight. The results...




Booyah . Next three Knights win no problem and capture the city.




not a bad infra haul, but no way I can hold it from the swarms of maces soon to be headed my way. Razed it and reclaimed a gems tile

So I don't think I'll be invading much further unless Sian's center city isn't reinforced. Knights are cool but won't make that much headway vs drafted maces in castles. The main goal here was to set him back in his war vs picklepickl for now so invading him with Rifles later becomes easier. I also consider it revenge for making me build all those knights and pikes in the first place. Hopefully it'll work. Hopefully.

[greenline]

haven't been updating much because nothing much interesting on my end has been happening. just chilling with my pikes and LBs in castles while Sian does the same.

but next turn i'll have nationalism and rifling

SOON

[greenline]

I decided to delay my GA+revolt a turn because I could grab Economics in one turn and throw in a trip to Free Market on the way

civics:




Sucked to move out of Bureau but I need an army and drafted rifles are the quickest way to get one. Caste is for bursting out some GP points for GA #3. Free Market is there because it's better than garbage and Theo will be more useful then OR in the following turns because I've already built most of the essential infra I need and the extra XP on draftees will prove quite useful.

Future civic plans: I'm going for Constitution->Democracy to get US hopefully on before my GA runs out. Boosted specialists are nice but I have a lot of towns that would benefit from the extra hammer, and cash rushing is also something I plan to use a lot. I'm not sure how long I'll need to stay in Nationhood: Bureau is still amazing but armies ain't gonna build themselves. I'll probably swap out of it in GA 3. Free Market is good for now. SP would be a little better (although i only have like 7 workshops and zero watermills) for the maintenance reduction but it can wait. Theo will probably stay in for the rest of the game. No more land to settle so units!




My capital even out of bureau is still incredible, rocking the triple monastaries + Oxford. Beakers would be around ~450 with Bureau.

Whether I go all out on Sian will be tricky. The issue is Jowy, who isn't in Nationhood but does have Steel for cannons (his tech path is kinda weird... he went all the way for Chemistry without Astro... for the workshop bonus? his MFG hasn't been spiking though so ). If he moves menancingly on my borders I won't be able to invade much.

Drafting thankfully hasn't put any serious happy pains on my empire, most cities are rocking surpluses of 6 or so happy faces. Special thanks goes to the barracks happy:

[El Grillo]

How many towns will you have by the end of this GA?

[greenline]

How many towns will you have by the end of this GA?

No idea, but I'm at the point in the game where hammers are more valuable then beakers (I think) and happiness won't be an issue (once the draft penalties wear off, anyway )

Ofc what's killing the game is the turn pace. I think it's my fault since my two lousy work required trips brought the game to a halt on weekends, and now Jowy and Sian can barely be asked to pass the save around. What's more frustrating is that the game is still in a volatile enough state that it would be difficult to just call it: all I can say with reasonable confidence is that Sian would end up in the lower bracket, but even that isn't set in stone

[greenline]

But luckily, thanks to my incessant nagging in the tech thread, I got to play a turn today!




owing to me not knowing you don't need to research printing press for rifling, it turns out that Sian is much closer to Rifling then I thought. So I probably should have done this sooner. Hopefully losing this city and doing more drafting/whipping will slow him down a bit (he asked for a ceasefire this turn: yeah right buddy, not while I still have a double front war to capitalize on)

I haven't done any simming of the battle beyond 'rifles and cats should totally own that stack'. I considered moving my knights on the other side past the city ruins to try and raze a core city but decided it would be better to have them as collateral absorbers since 6 knights isn't exactly a wrecking ball of destruction.

Also, here's a porn shot of my shrine city for some reason:




(The extra non forest coast tile it's working should actually be a merchant, but drafting keeps messing up my tile working schemes )

[El Grillo]

Yay for turn pace

Also, how can Sian get Rifling without Printing Press? Aren't PP, Replaceable Parts, and Rifling all 1-arrow techs?

[greenline]

Also, how can Sian get Rifling without Printing Press? Aren't PP, Replaceable Parts, and Rifling all 1-arrow techs?

that's what I thought too- it's possible he 1 turned it and got past my EP lead on him that way. Kind of silly how that works

for civics, I decided to go with UniSuff + Bureau, since a lot of my cities can two turn rifles now and the unhappy pressure was building up to a point where I couldn't handle continuous drafting. a few of my cities are already in need of temples.

Anyway, first thing I noticed when I opened the save is that Sian is obviously paying a great deal of attention to this front of the war




I wonder if that scout (the one I started the game with, btw) can get all the way to where picklepickl's army is

It also gave me critical info that there isn't a big cat+Cuir stack waiting to jump me, so I decided to hit the stack in Thomas Aquinas. Here was the situation to start




I sent in ~4 cats, which let my three C1/Pinch rifles take out the top LBs at ~67% odds. The C2C/1 rifles I had after that weren't getting better odds, so I sent in another cat. Annoyingly after that I lost a couple of rifles at ~85% odds and had to use my knights to clean up.







In the end I killed everything in the city and lost 5-6 cats, three rifles, and a knight. I feel like this is my inexperience with the military side of the game showing. I probably should have been more aggresive with the cats instead so I lost less rifles. I did get a GG though, and he'll make a fine M3 knight soon.

On the plus side Sian is getting minimal value from Chicken Pizza here. Why did he build that again...?