Graphs and demos: The power graph is still scary but let`s keep building those units to dissuade an attack.
Joey is building a lot of Frigates and Galleons. Our Caravel looking for Greek units is about to get killed by a Greek Privateer (it`s on the same tile as Greek Frigates) but we can`t do much about it.. Oghul Qaimish needs a massive garrison. If Joey attacks us he`s running into a lot of defensive units and collateral.
(October 31st, 2017, 06:25)mackoti Wrote: About culture, is that at a city which was before on DS pozition? If so when he got his 4th pop he got back all the culture he invested till then in that tile.So to take back that tile you need to beat that amount of culture.
Aha - so even though the culture from the city itself can't reach across three tiles of water, it "activates" the existing Dark Savant culture from what used to be his city? That makes sense. I'd say that's definitely a bug (in the base game, I'm sure, not introduced in RtR) but it's good to know how it works at least! I believe this means the tile 2S of Vulcania will flip back to us when we conquer Mist. For the tile SE of Tularean Forest, it's just a question of time and culture. (Unless he leaves Fountain Head inexplicably unguarded so we have a chance at a raze...)
I imagine our Frigates are all (or mostly) spoken for right now, but if any of them have the opportunity between recon missions and hammering/blockading Mist, ripping up DS's fishing nets and/or trolling a mainalnd city with coastal bombardment might help to reduce his port cities' capacity to produce more ships, and maybe encourage him to accept peace after we take Mist.
On GermanJoey: He does not have Education yet. Its prereq is Paper, which we know he didn't have by T177 from the F4 techs screen. Check out his "Can Research" list (and "Can't Trade" list) on that screen now, you'll be able to infer what technologies he has. Also, I suspect he'll let our Caravel live even though his Privateer could kill it. If he postures with the Privateer, he's probably saying, "Get out of my seas," but if we just spotted it, he shouldn't attack just yet. I expect he'll just ignore our Caravel and keep his Privateer with his Frigates (or move it out of sight or non-threateningly). If he does attack our Caravel ... that would call from some strategizing, and might make us wish we'd gone for MilSci instead of Education ASAP. Not because we'd want to retaliate, but because it would mean he's not feeling friendly toward us and doesn't care if we know it!
All the sea power he's building up is very interesting. Do we know where most of them are located? There are any number of things he could be planning, not necessarily against us....
On defending islands: Having five units in each city is great! If one or (better yet) two of them are Muskets, that's even better. One thing to bear in mind is that if Dark Savant attacks amphibiously, he would use Oromos, not Knights.
Looks like we may have a long wait before Team C, Gav, and dtay play, but just in case, the order of attacks I would try:
1) Asess the entire theater, check for suspicious activity/ships/whatever and come up with a response should any appear.
2) Check out the Mist area in particular: Did he try to attack our stack amphibiously? Or land a stack on the iron? Or attack (or evacuate units) out of Mist? Or anything else weird? If so, we would need to respond accordingly. If not...
3) Bombard Mist with Frigates until its defense number drops to zero.
4) Promote two Cats to Barrage 2 and suicide both of them into Mist.
5) If Mist has completed a Pike or Mace or a second Longbow, or if it completed an Oromo that's promoted to anything other than C1/Drill 4, then promote the third Cat to Barrage 2 and suicide it too. You can do this anyway if you want, but I think if he built either nothing or another Drill 4 Oromo, we'll have slightly better odds of slightly better results by just preserving our third cat and sending the Knights in from here.
6) Promote a fresh Knight to C2/Pinch and attack with it. It should have roughly 1 chance in 3 of winning, and should do significant damage to the top Oromo in any case; if it fails to do so, repeat with another fresh Knight.
7) Continue attacking with C2/Pinch Knights until all the Oromos in the city have been heavily damaged. If at any time a Longbow (or Pike) is top defender, check to see if one of those units would also defend against a C3 Knight. If so, go in with a C3 Knight; otherwise, keep attacking with C2 Pinch Knights even if they're attacking a Pike or LB. We should have odds of 2:1 or better in pretty much all of these fights. I would expect to lose between 0 and 4 Knights, plus the Cats we send in, in the course of the entire battle - most likely one or two. I would risk at least one of the 14-xp Knights at slightly less than 75% odds if possible in hopes of getting the unit up to 17xp (to unlock West Point, assuming we get that far, without forcing us to use the GG we'll presumably be getting in that way). When our Knights start getting good odds unpromoted, I'd probably start just promoting them C2 and sending them in that way (assuming odds well over 90%) to allow for promo-healing and/or keeping our options open for future fights.
8) I'd be inclined to take the city with a Knight, then promote both Muskets to Guerilla 2 and fortify them in the city putting them through any combat.
All that accomplished, assuming Mist falls, I'd position any Frigates with movement left to protect the injured stack, load as many uninjured units (including the Cat if one is left over) onto Galleons, and move the Galleons toward our mainland, either into Radnashiri or covered by a Frigate. Then I think I'd offer peace, and I might even include a gift of Stone with the treaty (since Mist would be our second source) as a gesture and inducement toward lasting peace. Of course, just because this is stuff that I would do doesn't mean it's best, and I have no idea how Dark Savant would actually respond. And of course there's probably another war or two about to break out somewhere in the world, so...!
Okay, finally I have some time to discuss the way forward.
Dtay has played his turns early for a very long time now and him delaying playing makes me think that he`s going to attack someone. Well, we kind of expected that anyway, but I`m pretty confident that he`s going for Carthage. All those mounted units plus cannons will make quick gains against Team C. Actually, Joey is the one player I fear the most at this stage. If he sees dtay going north he might just be able to overwhelm us with numbers before our troops return home from the Ethiopian campaign. The thing is that it`s very hard to know where he`s turning his mighty fleet and army next. We know that Joey has some Frigates/Galleons SW of D-mishi (about 7 tiles away) and some ships guarding the access to Seven Mysteries. Our Sentry Keshik in Greek territory spotted a few Knights/Wellies, nothing scary.
We`re pretty committed to going for Education now. Fortunately, it`s only a turn away when the turn rolls. We`ll probably have to go for a big military tech after that. In order to get our Universities built asap we might want to swap to Organized Religion again. Perhaps Org Religion/Vassalage could be an option. I`d rather stay in Bureaucracy, of course, but I`m unsure of whether we can afford to swap to peacetime civics only. We could go for Nationalism for drafting. We`d look really hard to conquer when we`ve got that option.
I really should have known that Joey hasn`t had Education for a long time by checking F4. (I did that when dtay libbed Steel). Let`s see if Joey attacks our scouting Caravel. Hopefully he`ll just give us a warning and let us sail away safely. We`re obviously not going to test how solid the ice is by keeping the Caravel in Greek waters.
Gavagai has weakened Dark Savant so much that DS is probably on his way out, one way or another. If Gavagai is not about to get attacked by dtay he still has a chance to get back into the game. His window is about to close soon, I think, as the larger Empires certainly are planning for war in order to snowball away. Gavagai can`t attack DS for the next 10 turns, so maybe he`ll need another target..
As dtay is playing his turn right now we`re probably finding out if the UoS is ours shortly. Fingers crossed!
Finally, the attack plan for Mist looks good to me. Hopefully, we`ll get minimal losses in the skirmish. Mist is going to be an awesome city for us once it gets out of resistance. It`s got so many strong tiles.
Hmmm. As we're teching Education, we should figure out where we want our 7 Universities, and how we're going to build them. My assumption right now is something like:
If we have a Forge in each of these cities and revolt to OR after Education comes in, Borte's University will cost 100 base hammers, and the others will cost 134 base hammers each. (More in a non-Borte city that produces an odd number of base hammers per turn....)
If we do go for this, then it would be best to complete a unit EoT81 in each of these cities, preferably with a good amount of overflow. Is this feasible?
1) Borte: Not sure; did it just finish a Knight? If it can't 1-turrn anything, maybe put hammers into another Knight or Musket just so we'll have something part-build that we can complete (or even whip) in an emergency.
2) Muqa: I think it can finish another Cat with ~8 overflow.
3) Toregene: Should be able to finish or maybe even whip the Cat it's already building.
4) Oghul Qaimish: I think it can 1-turn a Cat with ~21 overflow right now?
5) Chubei: Can whip its Musket.
6) Nambui: Not sure, but it looks like it's going to finish a Frigate with some overflow maybe?
7) Radnashiri: Can just whip its Castle, I believe....
I would strongly recommend against leavin Bureau right now even if it means going several turns without an XP civic. If we can't afford to build universities and Oxford in Bureau/OR, it means we can't afford to build them at all. I would produce a unit wherever possible at EoT, and put hammers into (but not complete) units everywhere that isn't getting a University while we're in OR (if we do that) but I'm inclined to say we should either revolt to OR and build Unis or stand pat and build units. Either way, I'd try to complete as many units as possible EoT, and see where that leaves our Power (and whether we're at peace with Dark Savant and what GJ has done) next turn.
Finally: If we do get peace with Dark Savant then I would build a Caravel or two or three during the peace (no matter whether we're in OR or Theocracy) to keep an eye on his fleet without the need for OB or the threat of a Privateer. (If he builds a Privateer, a Caravel is a small price to pay to find out what his intentions, just as with GermanJoey.) But I'm getting way ahead of myself here, I think.
Dark Savant landed a few units near Mist. Take a look at that. We should be able to destroy them fairly easily, I think. Mist now has 2 Oromos, an X-bow and a Longbow.
That was an exciting turn, to say the least. We got the University of Sankore in Oghul Qaimish! It improved our tech rate with about 50 beakers (before doing any whips). Also, dtay declared war on... team C! I see dtay winning that war, at least in the long run. It does give us a bit of breathing space. Joey didn`t kill our Caravel so it was moved away from his territory. He`s got 2 Frigates and 4 Galleons SE of Seven Mysteries and our Sentry spotted something like 7 Knights and some Wellies near SM. I think Carthage is an easier target than us but certainly no need to take any chances with Nambui.
Now to the war! As mentioned, Dark Savant mysteriously decided to land a Pike and 2 Oromos next to Mist. We had such an overwhelming force on the Rice that surely we`d crush that mini-army, right?
Everything has gone well so far.
2 Catapults suicided against the city itself. Both were killed.
C2 Pinch Knight - Oromo 34 % - Loss. It got only 2 hits iirc.
C3 Knight - Oromo 53 % - Flawless loss
C3 Knight - Oromo 53 % - Loss
C2, A Knight - Oromo 50 % - WIN
C2, A Knight - Longbow 67 % - Loss
Now our odds improved a lot. We didn`t catch many breaks during those last fights..
C3 Knight - X-bow 93 % - WIN
Musket - Oromo 93 % - WIN
C2 Pinch Knight - Longbow 99 % - WIN! And Mist yielded about 100 gold. The infrastructure that survived was okay, but I`d really appreciate a Granary or a Lighthouse. We got the more expensive buildings, though, so in the long run it`s great.
The Frigates near Mist look like overkill but we have 2 wounded units N of the city that no Ethiopian Galleon can reach. DS has one in a city E and another in a city S of Mist. 4 Galleons were moved into Mist to "convince" DS to take peace. He`s got a few Oromos running around so we certainly shouldn`t relax if we stay at war. Peace was offered (no resources could be offered with the deal).
So, we`re completing a lot of units eot. I agree that we should build up our power a bit more, especially after taking some losses over the last few turns. 4 Catapults, 4 Muskets, a Frigate, a Knight and a Caravel should be 11 units incoming.
EDIT: The C2, Amphibious Knight with 14 XP tried to gain another 3 XP but failed.
Good stuff! The pair of you are doing a nice job of squeezing the best out of a small empire. With UoS and Oxford (hopefully) to come, you've a chance of keeping your military close enough in tech to the leaders to make it unappetising for either to want to risk hitting you first, at the very least.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
(November 2nd, 2017, 10:26)shallow_thought Wrote: Good stuff! The pair of you are doing a nice job of squeezing the best out of a small empire. With UoS and Oxford (hopefully) to come, you've a chance of keeping your military close enough in tech to the leaders to make it unappetising for either to want to risk hitting you first, at the very least.
Things are looking promising! But do bear in mind that an all-out attack by Joey(or dtay for that sake) could destroy us pretty quickly. We would certainly make whoever comes for us pay dearly. The Education path is a bit of a gamble, especially combined with going into non-XP civics but I feel that we have to take some risks in order to stay relevant. D-mishi could possibly build a University. Perhaps some other cities on the west coast could whip out a Uni also. The improved tech rate should help us reach critical techs. Well, as long as we`re left alone..
All in all I`m pleased with the military campaign. We got 2 quality cities out of it and some infrastructure. Our losses were a bit higher than expected, but nothing too horrible I think. Pre-building a lot of units must be a good idea, so that we can respond to an emergency accordingly. Dtay is about to gain even more territory so I`m basically waiting for Joey to show his hand.
Also, here`s a screenshot of the F4 techs. Joey still doesn`t have Steel.
