[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[Zalson]

It’s the small victories.

[naufragar]

I am very confused:


See that tile the galley is on in the inset? That's ocean. How? I mean. Like. How? Perhaps if I waited 10 minutes, the answer would come to me, but right now my only explanation is Commodore gets to boat whoever wherever he wants.

Oh, btw:




Edit: 30 seconds of googling says galleys can enter ocean tiles within cultural borders? I've played this game before, I swear. Leaving this up because editing my idiocy away would be dishonest.

[ipecac]

Edit: 30 seconds of googling says galleys can enter ocean tiles within cultural borders? I've played this game before, I swear. Leaving this up because editing my idiocy away would be dishonest.

Any of your naval units within your own cultural borders can, yeah.

[naufragar]

Aretas has one city left. If you have to ask for whom the bell tolls, you haven't been paying attention. Saw some of Mack's troops. Horse archers, axes, a chariot. Nice combined arms:


Saw the borders of a new Rusten city, and I think his city on the border of Aretas is on the hill 1NE of the gems, but I didn't mark it. I sent a settler down to my south, but I should have sent him towards the conflict zone. I need gems. Only have 1 metal happy.

This is a pic from turn 81 that I've been meaning to do a whole foreign policy post with, but I just don't have time. Here's the quick and dirty version:


I've filled in the Mackoti and Rusten cities that you see from the previous screenshot. The grey dot is the city that gets me gems. I've mentioned this before but without visual aids: it's much easier for Mackoti-formerly-Aretas and Rusten to plant towards me than vice versa. I've shaded in the areas that each of us can plant food-adjacent in order to grab gems or silver. (Ignore that one green square. It should be 1S.) With perfect vision, I would've obviously dot mapped my whole empire differently, but given the way I've done it, there's no natural tile for me to plant for first ring food and mining lux. (I'm not counting plains hill sheep. That's three food=grassland farm.) That one last northern city is about the limit of my natural expansion in this area. If this were a duel, it would be bad, but I'm counting on Rusten and Mackoti butting heads over this area and neither just grabbing it easily. (Although Mack's army is still gigantic. I could post power graphs where he's lost a unit, but he's global leader in MFG, so why bother?) Basically, so long as I get a source of gems, I'll be happy. (As a side note, Mack has easy gems and silver so I don't think he rushes this. Rusten has gems, no silver I think, and there's no silver for him in this area.) I need to find other areas of expansion. Unfortunately, this is my most scouted area. (Which is good. Nice to know what's going to be my Kashmir.)

[Thorite]

Although Mack's army is still gigantic. I could post power graphs where he's lost a unit, but he's global leader in MFG, so why bother?

Would you bother because lurkers want you to post the power graph?

[Mardoc]

Aretas has one city left. If you have to ask for whom the bell tolls, you haven't been paying attention.

As it happens, us lurkers know more about this war from your reporting than from Mackoti and Aretas' threads combined. I really appreciate the window into this part of the world.

[naufragar]

Would you bother because lurkers want you to post the power graph?

Sure thing.


I didn't measure the drop. I think that's like one unit. Two max right? You'd think barracks-promoted archers on hills would be able to give horse archers a run for their money (3*1.2*1.25*1.25*1.20=6.75. That's base strength*guerilla 1 * innate hill defense * innate city defense * first ring culture defense. Plenty of reasons this calculation could be wrong. Not least because Aretas' capitol should've had two border pops.) I saw two wounded horse archers, so that's a bummer. Two of them were also promoted to shock, so I guess Aretas had built melee units. (He's aggressive and had a barracks in is capitol for forever, so one would expect him to have a few Combat 2 spears.) The more I think about it, the sadder I get. I don't know if Aretas had Mack's graphs. I glanced once briefly a while ago, but don't remember their EP ratio. Regardless, he's been at three cities for a while, unless I missed him settling a fourth. He wasn't in slavery, fair, but nothing Mackoti has gets odds on archers in Aretas' capitol. And archers are 25h to a horse archer's 50. Oh well, live and learn. The lesson here is don't start next to Mackoti.

lurkers know more about this war from your reporting than from Mackoti and Aretas' threads combined.

Yeah, that's a bummer. Mackoti especially I wish I knew more about. I've read from other players that is style is to make a super capitol and then build a gigantic army, but he's never one to keep a detailed record. Here he attacked at horse archers rather than knights and that seems to have been the right call. In case no one else has said it, I think Mack blitzed down Aretas' capitol first:


That plummeting culture is from losing his palace. What's weird to me is why it doesn't immediately rebound back up. I had thought that once you lose your capitol, it moves automatically to another city in your empire. This graph doesn't show show rate of culture production, then. (Otherwise it would drop to zero when people revolt to anarchy. Instead the graph stays flat, like you can kind of see with Rusten's.) I suppose what it's tracking is the number in each of your city's culture meter. Aretas' second dip is from losing a city with a barracks, I think.

Because I forgot to mention it during my turn update: superdeath landed the Colossus. (With the usual caveat: I think.) If so, good for him. It's a good wonder, but more importantly, it shows he bee-lined for metal casting, which is a fine tech to enter mid-game with. (My Mathematics is a little silly if I don't get to chopping soon.) I wonder how soon he'll be able to take advantage of it.

Edit: I gotta put this turn to bed, but I realized I can measure Mackoti's power dip precisely. On turn 82 he had 181k soliders. On turn 83, he had 169k. Graphs are a turn or two delayed. That drop is two horse archers (6k each). Assuming things like his pop remaining sorta consistent.

Edit for my edit: Ugh. Axes are also 6k. Whatever. I'm calling it two horse archers because that would make me happiest.

[naufragar]

Hey! Mackoti posted in his lurker thread. That's rare. I wonder if anything prompt-






I don't have eyes on the area, but I'm betting this is this city that Rusten planted on Aretas' border. Rusten's 1-pop whipped like three times last turn so we'll see what'll happen.

I don't really have any new info from the war front. My scout chariot is next to a stolen Aretas worker, but I've never seen Mackoti not move something like that, so I doubt it'll be there next turn. I don't see his soldiers. (Not that I'd sac a chariot just to delete a captured worker.) He left an axe and a chariot in Prague. (This is why I think the rest of that army took Rusten's border city.) I notice that Mack left two units there, when my chariot was two tiles away. Do you not trust me, neighbor?  

Here's what I meant about Mackoti's hammer output making power dips less than heartening:


Mackoti's army has a message for you, curtesy of his MFG:


(Sorry.)

Edit: I guess there should be analysis or something here. Obviously, having two of the top players in the game going for each other's throats is good for everybody else. It would be very bad if Mackoti steamrolled Rusten, but I would be gobsmacked if that happened. I don't know anything about Rusten's aggression levels. The devil I know is Mackoti. He eats people for breakfast, then lunch, and then the game is usually called before dinner. (In this analogy, I stand to be lunch.) RB orthodoxy is that the winner will be the one who eats his neighbor the easiest. I wonder if Rusten follows that dogma, and if so, which neighbor he'll choose. The positive outcome to this Mackoti-Rusten discovered border is that two big dogs can size each other up. The negative outcome is that both might fight over smaller players (ME!) like a chew toy.

[Mardoc]

(Sorry.)

I'm pretty sure I can get it out of my head before bedtime. Pretty sure.

[naufragar]

Things that happened this turn? Let's see. Well, TBS founded five cities in one turn...


This screams "I'm finishing Hanging Gardens this turn." Man, it's hard to feel like you're not falling irreparably behind when the Creative/Philosophical guy has four more cities than you....

Also, more wars and rumors of wars:


I'm gonna guess either worker snipe (unlikely- Aretas probably has his workers in his city) or pillaging. I would be surprised if Mackoti let BGN get in range to raze Aretas' last city. Nice to know where BGN is. Looks to be Aretas' northern neighbor.



There's a horse archer 1W of the archer. I'm annoyed at myself for mispromoting my chariot. I gave it Combat 1 because a couple of turns it was in striking distance of Mackoti's C1 chariot. This was a stupid decision: I'm sending my guy into the thick of Mackoti's army. The chariot is dead if he wants. I should have taken flanking into sentry. What a waste.

I double-moved Commodore. Thought I took a picture but didn't, so you have to check the background of the power graph.


I was getting tired of making all my moves before Commodore and then logging back in to move a work boat. I could only move it one tile due to his own work boat and galley blocking. I hope since the double move made the boat easier rather than hard to kill, he doesn't care. Commodore's galley is parked on clams I believe, which his work boat is heading to hook up. He's parked the galley on them because he gives me no credit. I don't want to offer a cease fire because I'm pretty sure there is still so much more of his creative culture to maneuver through.

Adrien keeps pumping me with EP despite having my graphs. I'll give it a turn before I start getting suspicious.