I logged in basically at the same time as Krill. A message popped up, saying that Krill and Gavagai now have signed peace. Neither of them is interested in a two-front war so it`s perfectly logical that they stopped the war. Okay, if Gavagai is going to attack dtay instead, then all the better. There is a lot of tension between them at a distant front so let`s see what happens next. Dark Savant and chumchu signed peace a number of turns ago. I think it was mentioned in a turn report but since there are a lot of things going on I might not have stated so.
Also, here are a few screenshots of three of our cities. Especially Nambui and Muqa are just beautiful in a Golden Age.
I had forgotten about those half-built Galleys! Oghul Qaimish actually has 45 hammers invested in a Galley and Danashri has 20. That will make the Galleons we`re planning to build a bit cheaper. Annoyingly, Danashri makes 20 hammers and would finish the Galley on the exact hammer eot working the same tiles. I`m reluctant to drop the GA Workshop so it`ll have to wait until next turn.
EDIT: I just realized that FOUR civs are giving Joey open borders. Checking F4 more often is surely a good idea. We`re the only civ with just two open border deals. Perhaps it`s worth a try to offer it to Dark Savant (or Gavagai)? No wonder we`re doing so well in the trade balance demos!
I was going to wait on playing the turn until tomorrow but according to Civstats, something happened at the end of last turn. Dtay lost two massive cities to Gavagai. That`s the prize for playing 10 minute turns at this stage of the game, I guess.. The cities captured by Gavagai were indeed the island cities NE of Bayan Khutugh. That does mean that dtay`s chances of winning diminished sharply while Joey`s chances increased accordingly. I`m glad we most likely get to Astronomy without being attacked. Dtay and Gavagai got a Great General each. Also, note that the Buddhist faith now unites more than half of the remaining players! Dark Savant also wanted to join in. Well, I`m not complaining. Muqa is making a whopping 190 gpt on full tax. (We also got two free spreads, one to a Greek city and another to an Ottoman city.
2 Knights and 2 Pikes complete eot, to help our power rating. We are building units nonstop, out of necessity. We now have 9 Knights an a Keshik on the tile 2SW of Muqa and more troops incoming every turn. Kokejin are making a ton of defenders for the exposed island cities on the eastern sea. Sugabala will join in once the Grocer is done.
We still have a shot on Notre Dame, just 3 turns left now! It would be good wonder if we stay alive. 2 extra happiness in our mainland cities sounds worth the risk to me.
Also, our 2 Caravels are on their way out to explore the world. They could be attacked at any moment, of course, but are not dangerous to anyone so hopefully they will be worth the investment.
Graphs and demos: Dtay surely took a big hit as he lost over 60 points last turn. Let`s see if he can recover quickly enough to get revenge on Gavagai.
(October 6th, 2017, 10:09)JR4 Wrote: Dark Savant and chumchu signed peace a number of turns ago. I think it was mentioned in a turn report but since there are a lot of things going on I might not have stated so.
You probably did mention it, and I had just forgotten; I remember Dark Savant getting peace with at least one other civ, but I didn't remember with whom, and was too tired to search the thread this morning. Thanks for answering anyway! And yeah, Nambui and especially Muqa are great cities even under normal circumstances, and they certainly shine in the golden age!
Quote:Annoyingly, Danashri makes 20 hammers and would finish the Galley on the exact hammer eot working the same tiles. I`m reluctant to drop the GA Workshop so it`ll have to wait until next turn.
That's okay; we'll keep losing more of the hammers in those Galleys to decay, but we probably shouldn't resume them until they would complete on the same turn as Astro anyway (in which case they actually won't complete of course; their hammers will be put into Galleons instead). Starting them again doesn't reset the hammer decay timer; it only stops the decay while the unit is actually being built (thus, we start losing hammers again as soon as we switch back to a different build).
Quote:I just realized that FOUR civs are giving Joey open borders. Checking F4 more often is surely a good idea. We`re the only civ with just two open border deals. Perhaps it`s worth a try to offer it to Dark Savant (or Gavagai)? No wonder we`re doing so well in the trade balance demos!
Not much point in opening borders with those two right now: We've warred with them recently enough that I'm not sure our trade routes with them will beat our domestic routes. I believe it takes 50 turns of peace for trade routes to return to full value, which would be T179 for Gav and ten turns later than that with Dark Savant. Not sure when they start to beat out domestic routes though ... maybe soon for Gav I guess? (Or already with big cities?) But the reason he wants OB with us may be at least in part so he can stage attacks on dtay (and/or look for weaknesses in our border cities) from the relative safety of our territorial waters. Also...
(October 6th, 2017, 15:31)JR4 Wrote: That does mean that dtay`s chances of winning diminished sharply while Joey`s chances increased accordingly.
100% agreed. I was going to say before this happened (and before I knew GermanJoey was getting OB from everywhere to feed his GLH routes) that it was looking like GJ's game to lose, as he and dtay are the only ones with two civs worth of land, and GJ's GLH will keep working for him for a long time to come, whereas dtay is being forced to tech Astro and obsolete his Colossus (and, much less importantly, his conquered Stonehenge). So what's GJ's next move? Could be a couple of things, but with China gone, we need to be ready to defend our southern front.
Quote:Also, our 2 Caravels are on their way out to explore the world. They could be attacked at any moment, of course, but are not dangerous to anyone so hopefully they will be worth the investment.
Not sure what you mean by "explore the world" - if you mean they're going to use them to search nearby for possible incoming threats or to look for targets of opportunity, that's a great call! If they're meant to find updated information on distant lands though, I'm sure we can find different civs who are willing to do some more map trades instead.
Okay, let`s stick with the two open border deals we have atm. If we come under attack by one of our land neighbors then we could perhaps reconsider it (when commerce is needed at all costs). Our Caravels can sneak around and look for enemy buildups. An extra turn or two of warning is very valuable to us. So they won`t be sent too far away.
Hmmm, dtay made another 14 whips this turn so he must be pretty desperate for more troops. He`ll likely get Astronomy next turn so I`ll expect quite a few of those whips to be Galleons. Gavagai captured another city from dtay so that war is still real. If Gavagai can get away with that he`s perhaps going to be a challenger for the win after all. Joey is definitely the favorite now. I`m really unsure of where he sees his next conquest. It could be us.. Let`s build up a massive Catapult stack to hit him if he comes for us. It`s still annoying that Joey can choose which of our front cities he`ll go for. Nambui will also get an upgraded garrison in the next turns (and Walls+Castle).
I logged in to take a few screenshots and offered map trades to chumchu and Krill. We could use an update on the geopolitical situation on the Krill/chumchu border. They have been at war for a very long time now..
The locations of the 3 cities captured by Gavagai should be easy to guess. Dtay really doesn`t have many island cities left on that side of his Empire. That 6 food city he captured from Dark Savant a long time ago and his marble city are the only ones left. Actually, I think Gavagai can possibly get away with it because of the lack of port cities for dtay`s part.
Oh, dtay is in trouble it seems. Look at this: Gavagai does indeed have Galleons. When did he get that? Maybe I shouldn`t be surprised.. Our scouting Caravel found an Ottoman Trireme/Galleon pair near Wildabear. Dtay has whipped out quite a few defenders but that`s obviously not what he wants to do at this stage of the game. As long as this war drags out, Joey will pull ahead of the rest of the pack. The crop yield and power graphs show some very interesting things. I`ll get back to that when I post the graphs.
Another 3 Buddhist spreads help us a lot. When the other Buddhist leaders are building Missionaries the spread rate is just fantastic. Muqa is 1 turning a Harbor (and even gets a lot of overflow) which is worth the investment. We`re finishing a lot of units next turn, 2 Pikes, 3 Catapults, A War Elephant, 2 Longbows AND and a Barracks! Let`s see if we finally can get higher in the power rating than 6th then.
Notre Dame is still under construction. Next turn we`ll have a coin flip at worst. Astronomy will be finished eot 161. We might have to build Wealth in a city. All things considered, we`re doing okay. We just need to dissuade Joey from coming after us.
Graphs and demos: Take a look at that, both dtay and Gavagai`s power took huge hits over the last couple of turns. Gavagai`s power went down most but he`s probably very happy about the way things are going. Dtay needs to be careful not to lose his last two cities on the eastern sea. Dtay`s crop yield is no longer much higher than Joey`s. I expect it to fall even further when the loss of the third city shows on next turns graphs..
Our own numbers look pretty good. Nambui is working all its tiles now (and is growing in 2 turns) as the plantation completed this turn. When Oghul Qaimish and Bayan Khutugh get back to growth mode our numbers should look slightly better.
Dark Savant`s Golden Age finally finished. That`s 24 turns of GA in total which helped him out a lot.
Wow ... if Wildabar falls, we'll neighbor Gavagai by sea on both sides. I'm a little worried about Kokejin if that happens (or if they peace out and dtay decides to use all the galleons and other units he was forced to build to turn south) but I think if Gav wants to win this, he needs to get peace with dtay and then pivot to hit Dark Savant's islands. Our eastern islands would be a stretch for him, we're several turns closer to Astro than Dark Savant and still in a GA with whips available, and crippling Dark Savant will make a land conquest easier for him later on, whereas crippling us will make a future land conquest easier ... for GermanJoey. (Or dtay; the Buddhist shrine would do wonders alongside his ex-Russian holdings to put him back into serious contention.)
I have to say I'm a bit gratified by Gav's success against dtay here: It's basically the same operation he conducted against us thirty turns ago, just with a different tech level and on a different part of the sea. Hopefully we'll be more prepared for something like that next time either one of us is involved in a Pitboss game, but it's good to see that even a top-tier veteran (okay, second tier if you let Mackoti have the top tier practically all to himself) can meet the same fate.
Gavagai waited a long time to strike, but timed it very well it seems. I agree that he could be a strong contender if he hits Dark Savant soon after getting peace with dtay. There is no way that we could have beaten Gavagai to Astronomy even if we had gone all-in. I`m wondering if he might have bulbed it. That would make sense because at no point did it show up that he was researching it on the bottom right corner of the main screen. Maybe we should have built an earlier National Epic to get more Great Persons to play around with. Being ready for a pile-on is surely a good idea but we really need Astronomy before thinking about going on the offensive (and a ton of units). Kokejin currently has 3 units iirc, a Longbow, an axe and the Sword that captured Vulcania. A Longbow completes eot so the defenses aren`t awful. As we can ill afford to lose the city, I`ll make sure that it gets more quality defenders.
Also, I think dtay`s defenses in Wildabar will hold. Gavagai would need a massive army to take it and it has a moat-like river running around it for increased defensibility. If dtay was gearing up for a big hit on Muqa (and Chubei) then it was a massive strike of luck for us that Gavagai chose dtay for target. All in all I`m glad to see that we`re getting Galleons shortly without losing anything.
Somehow we got an extra land point this turn. I`m unsure where that came from tbh.
