[Spoilers] Pindicator already misses slavery, and other out-of-context quotes

[pindicator]

Turn 159

I messed up.

Went out for beers after work to catch up with a friend, got home late, and messed up the turn. It was something I didn't note in the last turn, something that appears small but can delay my initial declaration by a turn.

In order to get the observation balloon to McDonald in time I had to have upgraded roads the entire way. And with atrader finishing in Yazoo the plan was to send that guy to Nataqua and then he'd be able to improve the needed roads just in time. Only when I played the turn I thought "Boy, Popham sure could use some roads. It's way out in the boonies and unconnected to anything else. Plus that additional production will help. So I forgot about the balloon and sent it to Popham instead of Nataqua. Perhaps this is because I didn't note it in last turn's report and so it wasn't as ingrained in my mind? I try not to bog down this thread with trivia, try to keep it readable, but I might have cut a little lean there.

There's still a way to get the balloon to McDonald by 164. I'll swap to Nationalism on 161. On 162 we finish the civic and adopt Logistics and Professional Army. Then Conservation finishes 163 and we do our swap to Wars of Religion. This might be rough on the last 2 boats I'm building but we still have enough to kick things off on 164.

I really want to get economic builds going, but after giving it a lot of thought I bought the tile at Yazoo for 245g and started the Aerodrome. It's only a 5-turn build, but biplanes will be double that. I still will start production on them right away. I don't think I should take any shortcuts with the war, as if that falters then I have bigger problems. I don't think I'll need air power to win the war, but it will help to have that option if I need it.  I can put an airstrip down close enough to McDonald that planes would be able to move and hit Al-Majrit. I think if anything I will would need planes to push beyond there.

I want to build banks, but I'm going to have to wait. Krill has recently completed a pair of banks - I bet he is aiming to make Big Ben. I need builders more than gold now, and an archaeologist out of the capital.

Alhambram completed Mahabodhi and with his first apostle finally added Wats. About 50 turns later than he should have IMO. I wonder if he was forced to use faith in other ways this game -- but honestly his pantheon either was an awful choice or he didn't purposely take advantage of it. Well, it's truly criminal that nether he nor I took Goddess of the Harvest.

I am going to stay in Public Works for the duration and keep pumping out builders. Triangle Trade would be awesome: 40 gold and 10 faith per turn. But I need to get so many forests planted and chopped now, and builders will grow my output while triangle trade only cashes in on what I've built now.

Besides, I don't really need gold right now. Funny to hear myself with how everyone is stressing gold generation - for maintaining armies, for upgrades, for emergency purchases. And here my initial thought is that i'm not having enough with an income of 85gpt. Krill and CFCJester are both nearing 150gpt. I just don't see the advantage at this point in the game in getting more - later I'm going to want to buy the expensive buildings in my newer cities, but for now I think I have plenty. I need builders now. (Edit - elaborated a little more on my thoughts here.)

Sorry for the lack of pics. I'm doing this from mobile since it was too late last night.

Something else I need to decide on: which units to combine into corps. That should save some gold too

[pindicator]

I have to go meet up with some friends to go for a run, but I couldn't resist opening the save first. Didn't have enough time to play the full turn (thank goodness for mid-turn saving), but this was worth posting for:




I smell a trap.

It could just be a prudent decision realizing this was indefensible... But Alhambram still hasn't taken his Enhancer Belief, and he's left the size 9 city with 4 religious followers of his religion. I think when the city gets captured, pop drops to 8, he becomes dominant religion, and on his turn takes Crusade and tries to counter.

Might have an idea or two about how to counter that.

[pindicator]

Turn 160

As I showed before, Alhambram has abandoned his defense of Al-Majrit.  Which is probably the smart move: it is indefensible right now.  His encampment at Tangiers last turn was a smart addition, giving me another obstacle to overcome.  Likely he is pushing for flight of his own, or some other counter he can come up with.  This is probably a good time to share what my goals are for this war and what I want to have coming out of this.




I have 2 goals that I want to accomplish:

1.  Eliminate any ability for Alhambram to contest me in the inner sea, west of the narrows
2.  Capture the formerly Roman cities Al-Majrit, Tangier, and Coimbra.  Kumasi needs to stay free - I sure don't want that ice bucket.

To accomplish #1 I am going to need to eliminate as much of navy as possible and raze Almeria.  Then with a detachment at the narrows by Alces Alces to prevent anything from coming through, we'll use frigates to bombard and take Coimbra by sea.  Taking Al-Majrit has been detailed already, but then I need to try to sandwich Alhambram's forces between my ranged firepower and the frigates at Coimbra.  Likely Tangier will be the holdout, which makes me lament how I have no decent ports for the outer sea yet.

Also, the naval assault of landing troops outside Coimbra to try to block reinforcements gets trashed.  Good idea, but it doesn't work when his entire army is right there.

Anyway, with Alhambram's deployment this turn I've decided my opening move will not be to use my navy against Al-Majrit or Coimbra, but instead we will sail everything to burn Almeria as my opening move.  That means I need to stage units now, as it will take 3 turns of movement to get to the far side of the sea.  We'll probably have a couple frigates to show along the coast and take some pot shots on units around Coimbra ... but I fully expect all those crossbows I see being made now to become field cannons as soon as the war starts.




Chopped into my 237/240 musket and the overflow went into the balloon.  It's now time to finish Nationalism.  We'll be in Professional Army for several turns instead of just 1, but with recent developments I am going to want to upgrade my navy now so I can send it across the sea right away.  This will also let me combine some units into corps and potentially save a little gold.  I've decided I'm going to combine all my mounted units, and I'm going to combine a couple muskets.  I will also do a field cannon:  it's likely going to get cramped in there and I want to make sure I'm focusing my attacking power as much as I can.  Probably not a fleet because I do have a lot of land to cover there.

This gets Transylvania up to size 10, which means I have another open district.  Some tempting options here:  I could make another Aerodrome here, or maybe even a harbor to have a really good production city on the outer sea.  But I really need to finish that commercial district first...




I moved the trader to McDonald, as this was the only way I could still delay Logistics the longest.  We are going to have to have a trade route that makes a road through the eastern pass.  The balloon will move on 162 and 163, and then on 163 I need to make sure that I revolt to Logistics.  I'll also have to revolt into Wars of Religion on that turn, but it's not as if Alhambram doesn't see this coming already.  The trader will make modern roads on the two tiles I need to have by end of 163, and that means the balloon will go all the way up to McDonald in 1 turn.

Caveat:  Alhambram can ruin this plan by declaring war on me on t163, as that will make Zone of Control rules cause the balloon to stop outside the encampment.  Assuming he can declare, that is; I still haven't tested.

There was another way of doing this, that didn't need the trader at all.  I could have switched into Logistics next turn and then would have needed to buy the plains tile between the wheat and the deer, south of Chippewa.  Then my balloon could have taken the western, safer, road.  But it would have cost me more turns outside of Press Gangs, and I really want to make sure I get those last 2 boats out as soon as possible.  Plus buying a 250g tile to do nothing with it seems like a waste.


Finally, I've been kicking this can down the road for some time, but I think it's finally time for this to happen:

[pindicator]

Goddammit Firaxis, why did you have to break Corps? 

After I loaded the next turn and found I couldn't make any I did a little searching, and it seems like Rise & Fall broke Corps for all games not done in the expansion. Once we get to Mobility we'll be able to build Armies and Corps, but ... AUGH!

Also, my overflow got lost from Nationalism. So I had a turn where I put in like 20 culture to finish a civic and lost 100. This turn is awesome.

[pindicator]

Turn 161

I must have gotten spoiled on our recent weekends, because I'm lamenting that we only got 1 turn in today.




Alhambram finished his namesake wonder - he did a nice job timing those wonders to finish right before the friendship declaration was up - and made the above policy changes.  That's a nice way to get around civic changes ... but what I notice is still no Professional Army.  He must have a civic finishing up soon.... but even then that would have been the perfect time to get into Professional Army and then get out of it shortly after.  Maybe that's still something he has lined up...

I was able to get good vision coverage of what he has prepared, and I think this gives some idea as to what he plans on doing.




6 horsemen, 4 crossbows, 6 mamluks, and 2 rifles makes 774 power
Navies I know of:  2 caravels (one on inner sea, one outer), 2 quadriremes, and that makes 140 power
And there's a crossbow at Almeria, another 40
Together that's 954 power of the total 1,341 poiwer showing (but he's probably actually a little higher).
Where did his battering ram go?

Regardless, this means that the majority of his army is in the west, and I was so tempted to just hold the line at Al-Majrit and just amphibious over a dozen units to hit his core.  But that goes against my goals, and as tempting as that would be if this were 1v1, there's still Krill, so I need to take stuff that I can hold here.

His distribution in the west makes me think he's planning on hitting Kumasi when the war starts.  I'd I'm not really regretting losing Kumasi if he goes that route - the main reason I took it from him was to deny culture to him, and it's just been a bonus that I've been able to use it for as long as I have.  If Kumasi holds out long enough though, it does open up the possibility of my amphibious force and frigates coming in and sniping Coimbra.  And the mountain passes could mean I hold off any attack on my right flank while I position the army and go push after his main force south of Tangiers. That ... might work... Timing would matter.

When I take Al-Majrit I'm thinking what I'll try to do is set a line extending east from the northern mountain - in the row north of the city. I'd love to push the artillery from the left flank then, but the terrain and lack of roads will mean I can't move and attack on the same turn. So I might just need to put the artillery even with the city / in the city and just attrition his troops from there until he pushes back. I might flank with field cannons on the left. And we'll have frigates to support / fire at any land units that get too close.

I am debating how I want to spend my faith. It would be awesome to faith-buy a biplane, for example, but that comes with a price tag of 710 faith apiece. Also, a military engineer. Also, a flat and safe tile to put an airstrip on. I'm not seeing any good candidates. It is probably better for me to just spam out some missionaries and an inquisitor to get DotF in any cities I capture. But there's another decision to make there:




I picked Chaplain because I can hold off on launching an Inquisition one more turn. So do I buy another apostle and keep this guy around as a chaplain for my troops to heal up damage? And then after the war we just enhance with him? That means spending another 325 faith in addition to the inquisitor and 2 missionaries I'll want. If I do this then I absolutely need to get Synagogues after the war and just spam those to make up the faith I've put into these.

And I'm giving up more faith with some policy changes this turn. Oh, Nationalism and Ballistics finished this turn.




Had to get into Meritocracy to make Conservation a 2-turn civic. I don't know if I really lost the overflow or if I just came up a little short. With Professional Army I upgraded the 2 quads and galley, but I'll wait on the land units until 163. The 4 frigates I do have done already started heading east as well.

Anything else? I don't think so. There's a lot going on right now and the turns are taking a long time to play.

[pindicator]

Turn 162




The opening act is underway. He really should have done this a few turns ago; if I had been on the ball I could have sniped Coimbra and potentially gave him hell in the mountain passes where he couldn't bring the brunt of his army down on me. But getting him to kill the city state that was providing a good amount of his culture, and all at the cost of 3 envoys. This war needs to knock Alhambram's science down; he's now surprassed me this turn.

I moved my navy between our Almeria and Coimbra, but I don't think they'll be spotted. He's going to have 1 frigate at Coimbra, 1 at Almeria, and he's retreated the Caravel to Almeria.

We chopped out the Observation Balloon this turn, and everything fell apart.




That's not where the encampment is... Okay, new lesson learned today: support units do not appear at the encampment. I suppose I could have noted that from the Military Engineer, but I didn't think that would even be a distinction so I wasn't even considering it. Honestly I can't even remember the Military Engineer appearing anywhere else, but from my past screenshots it does appear he came out of the city proper. So we'll call this a learning experience.

There is no way to get the balloon to McDonald by 164 now. So we're just not going to bother. The war still starts at 164, but it's the war at sea and eliminating the encampment. We won't push into Al-Majrit now until 165. All these delays are going to add up...

With that, I also decided to delay finishing Conservation. And set my civics plan for the next few turns.




Forgottonia is going to be at size 15 in 4 turns for the Urbanization inspiration. It may not look it now, but we have 1 banana, 2 marshes, and 2 jungles to chop, adding up to 556 food harvested for the city, and the total amount of food needed to go from size 11 to size 15 is about 584 (not sure about decimals with food count). I have a little in the box already so I think I should get there.

That means my civics and policy changes are going to happen roughly on these turns:

164 - Conservation. Policies: Logistics and Wars of Religion, maybe out of Meritocracy
167 - Urbanization. Policies: Into Chivalry

Chivalry because in 5 turns we will be done with Rifling and it will be time to make Rough Riders.

[pindicator]

Turn 163

Alhambram's ready




He just went from 2,000 gold to with 74gpt to 276g with 8gpt. 190g per horseman upgrade, IIRC, so the 6 horsemen I saw would 1,140g. I think 3 field cannons - Almeria has a cannon and I'm guessing the 2 crossbows I saw by Tangiers have been upgraded, that makes another 345g. That's another 230g, so probably 2 more field cannons somewhere.

Kumasi still stands, at least for one more turn.




I went looking for his navy a little, but could not find the Caravel. I was also surprised that he has not upgraded his quad by Almeria. Maybe he's upgraded the one by Coimbra? I think those are also 115g upgrades. Maybe he's pulled the caravel back after realizing he didn't have enough to counter the sea -- but why not pull back the quad too then? (Realized it too late?) Regardless, we'll make our first strike at sea.


I'm ready. Well, somewhat ready. I'm ready by sea.




I won't be able to burn Almeria in 1 turn, but I should be able to take down the walls and put the city below 100hp. Take a hit from the field cannon and then we finish the city off.

Farther west I've got 2 frigates pushed up because we're going to try to sink that quad by Coimbra if I can spot it, to keep him from upgrading it. And they can still be rerouted to take down the encampment by Al-Majrit if needed.

And yes, the slow embarked units will give me some reinforcement by sea if I need it. But by land, I'm not entirely ready.




Except that balloon is so slow.

I upgraded 4 crossbows to field cannons. Could have done 3 more, but I decided to save 380g for 2 cavalry upgrades. I might just upgrade 1 for the city strength though, it depends on how fast I can get Rough Riders in the field.

[pindicator]

Ugh, I gave away additional units heading to Coimbra by putting the frigate right by the caravel. He'll be able to see a support bonus now. Silly mistake

[pindicator]

Turn came around already!  I have to go, but I opened the save and took a peek.  Here's how we face off as of my demos at the start of t164:

	Alhambram	Pindicator
Military Strength	1,562	1,866
Cities & Pop	11 (80)	14 (97)
Technologies	37	39
Science	187.1	154.6
Civics	28	32
Culture	86.1	132.7
Gold	160	401
GPT	7	40
Faith	61.5	33.4

And Kumasi was razed. Hit my culture by about 30 and gold by 25.

[pindicator]

Turn 164 - Part 1




First let us pay respects to Kumasi.  Any city state that lasts this long is one that shaped the strategies of the players in the game, and it being permanently removed is disappointing, but not unexpected.  Again, it's a pity I couldn't have had my troops in better position to take advantage of his mamluks being north of the mountains, but you go to war with the army you have, as the saying goes.

Alhambram had a bit of humor with the razing of the city, naming it 'Lost', so that when I viewed the notifications in the intel screen it told me that Arabia had conquered a "lost" city.  Nice one



Edit: Why is Military Science in upper/lower case and Conservation in block letters?

I've been anxiously awaiting this turn for over a week now, so to finally kick this war off is exciting!  We got the above tech and civic to finish and this enabled a lot of things for us.  First off, time to switch to war policies, so I did my last upgrades and swapped all my cities out of navy builds since there were no more Press Gangs.  It's a shame, because in a few more turns Popham is going to be able to harvest a marble (or the deer, tbh) and turn that into a theatre square.  Chippewa was also working on a Privateer, but I think I set it on a Shipyard instead.

We got access to Cavalry, and I upgraded both horsemen with the rest of my gold.  I'm not sure yet how I'll use them in such cramped quarters - likely mixed in with the infantry at key points.  In addition to cavalry, we can now build a Military Academy, and if Reddit and Civfanatics threads are right, then I can still build Corps even if I can't create them (stupid bug).

Conservation also lets us start planting forests, and I set 3 down on this first turn:




The trees up at Forgottonia were planted after the screenshot was taken.  Next turn we'll add lumbermills on all 3, and when we get to Steel in 7-10 turns this will help production really take off.  Especially for cities like Absaroka and Forgottonia that have a lot of riverside tiles but are hurting on production.  Even if I didn't have a war to fight I'd still be excited about the production jump that I'm about to go through in getting all these tiles improved!

And there was something else that our new civic let us do!




3 envoys from the Conservation and they all went into Zanzibar to get us up to the 6-level bonus.  This well help keep us going with some kind of gold income after all these upgrades.  We won't be pulling over 100 like Krill and CFC, but at the same time we're not as bad as Alhambram who is in single-digit income.  That makes me wonder, maybe he has a gold source that is vulnerable that we can try to take advantage of this situation with.  Even getting an expedible commando force across the sea, and have them pillage a commercial hub or something like that .... oh, I will have to look at those possibilities next turn!




Kumasi gave me one last advantage in its death.  With the trader being automatically sent back to McDonald (because it's the originating city of the trade?  Or because it's the closest city?), I realized I could abuse some trade mechanics to get an additional road.  Because traders automatically move the first turn you send them to a destination city, and because when you go to war with a civ all the traders get reset back to your home base, I was able to send this trader to Tangiers in order to get a free road on the tile northeast of McDonald.  This is huge for me, because now I can move up both bombards to hit Al-Majrit instead of just 1.

I wasnt' actually sure it had worked, because the tile didn't display a road in its tooltip. But when I selected the musket in that square it could now move 4 tiles away, so I know it worked. Awesome news!

Policy change (all the others stayed the same, though I really want to get back into Simultaneum):



Time for the main event:



I used the 2nd apostle to launch an inquisition, bought an inquisitor at Chippewa, and then it was time to go to war.