[spoilers] The Emperor Protects(?) Mr. Cairo PB45

[Mr. Cairo]

Turns out SD had a fleet after all. And he moved it to block mine and declared war:


So I'll take Adolf Twitler instead from Naufragar. I offered SD a peace treaty and I'll take that city from Nauf instead. I need a larger fleet down there before I can take on SD. I'll move my Triremes down from the north, since GKC has control of the seas there and we're "allied". And even if he wants to attack me I wouldn't stand a chance, so might as well use the boats where they can be used.

[Mr. Cairo]

I took Adolf Twitler from Naufragar, who didn't contest it. I ended up giving him 50 gold in the peace deal just because I didn't want to deal with more conflict yet.

In any case I've been focused on Courthouses, my expenses were getting quite high, and my teching getting too slow because of it, even if I had plenty of beakers at 100% science.
But I've been building them (or more accurately whipping them hard: 3, 4 even a 5 pop whip in a fishing village).

And my fleet arrived from the north, and so, time for round 2 against SD's island. This time I have 6 Triremes:


Hopefully it'll be enough.

I'm teching Engineering right now for the Castles and for the Workshop bonus. I'm also slowly working my way towards 2 GP for a GA so I can get into some decent civics as well.

I have a lot more cities that Naufragar so I hope to be able to outproduce him and eventually just roll over him. If the game lasts that long. But it doesn't look like MS is giving up, so there's that.

[thestick]

What purpose does buliding the Castles serve? What circumstances need to be achieved 'eventually' to be able to 'roll over' naufragar?

[Mr. Cairo]

What purpose does buliding the Castles serve?  What circumstances need to be achieved 'eventually' to be able to 'roll over' naufragar?

Well, they were more attractive when I thought they still had the Stone production bonus, now they don't and are just a little cheaper (80 hammers). But I want the Castles on my border with MS to prevent any opportunistic attacks. I don't think that MS is planning a war against me, he's too busy dealing with GKC. But if I attack Naufragar and leave a city or two vulnerable to a quick attack, I would expect MS to try. Castles make that a lot harder, by making it take longer and require more units to take a city.
Plus the trade route is nice too.

On to the turn. SD saw my fleet and once again declared war and put his fleet in front of mine. He had 4 Triremes and 1 Galley (Against my 6 Triremes and 4 Galleys). I got lucky and won the very first Trireme vs Trireme fight at ~ 35% odds. All the subsequent battles went with the odds. I lost the next three T vs T battle, won with a Trireme against his Galley, and then finished off the injured Triremes with the last Trireme and 2 Galleys at 99+% odds. For some reason I attack with the galley with CKNs in it first, so it couldn't unload. But the rest did and he doesn't have enough defenders in the city to survive my attack:

[superdeath]

You caught me at a horrible time. Was planning on whipping a settler the turn that you showed up again. Plus my fleet being out of position... GG

What is your plan?

[Mr. Cairo]

You caught me at a horrible time. Was planning on whipping a settler the turn that you showed up again. Plus my fleet being out of position... GG

What is your plan?

Well, I've revenged myself upon you for that forward city plant. Now I just need to do the same on Magic Science for his inexplicable attack on my island city. Unfortunately that'll be a lot harder. I'll probably have to try and conquer Naufragar first. So mass CKNs it is.

[Mr. Cairo]

Saw this:

The highlighted stack is the one on the Ivory

Made me curious: that's a lot of Catapults and Samurai, but if that stack goes anywhere I can hit it with my stack of CKNs it's dead, so what's the point? I moved my stack 1 tile forward (the desert tile that has 1 CKN on it in these pics) so I could hit it if it invades near Barbarus.

But it did make me paranoid suspicious so I decided to have a look in the one place I haven't been able to see lately*, the recently planted city of Kagoshima, so I moved the Spear I had sitting in MS territory watching out for attacks from there onto that jungle hill to see inside and lo and behold:

The highlighted units are in Kagoshima.

A bunch of HAs. I destroyed the road in neutral territory 1S of Nauf's Chariot there so it can't hit Barbarus from there and moved my stack back (the desert tile that you can see a sword on) onto a Pike that ran out of MP on that desert, as well as moving some more Pikes/Spears to join them. I also spent all my money upgrading some more spears to Pikes (which is really annoying as I was planning on a GA next turn and wanted that money to tech to Feudalism. I'll still pop the GA but I wont be able to tech as much, I mainly want it to swap civics, I'm still really behind on that count.).

He can drop that stack outside of Barbarus and I wouldn't be able to hit it with my own, but I still have a bunch of CKNs in Barbarus that would be able to kill most of the Samurai and weaken the Cats. I also have more and more CKNs arriving. I had been keeping a bunch in each of my coastal cities there in fear of Naufragars Caravels, but they moved back too and I have built my own fleet of Caravels to contest the waters.

*Although I've had city visibility on Naufragar for a while now, he's recently been trying to catch up and as of this turn according to the Espionage screen I need 6 more EP into him to have city visibility. But as you can see I still have it on the cities near to me for some reason.
I don't pretend to understand how Espionage works in Civ4, but I do wonder if Naufragar did the math and is moving that stack up because he thinks I can't see it? Although, even without city visibility I would be able to see it as it's 2 tiles of flat land from a hill in my territory, so who knows.


Final bit of news, GKC has landed a stack of Berserkers and a couple Trebs in my cap, presumably to go through my territory and attack MS, but he has positioned units in my territory to watch out for just such a move and has his own stack of Xbows near his Southern Border, so...

[Old Harry]

On the espionage screen try clicking on the different city names - depending on a variety of factors like distance and religion you need a different number of EPs to see each city.

[Mr. Cairo]

On the espionage screen try clicking on the different city names - depending on a variety of factors like distance and religion you need a different number of EPs to see each city.

Aah, I knew it had something to do with distance, I didn't know about (or try) clicking on different cities to find out exactly what I need for them individually.

[Mr. Cairo]

Is Nauf just trying to end the game as quickly as possible? He's attacked MS, using his HAs to kill a stack of Cats. I don't see how he can keep any MS cities, but burning them doesn't exactly help him either. Also, it gives GKC a green light to attack with the Beserkers he has sitting in my territory.

I need to keep watch and possibly attack either of MS or Nauf, but with the intention of keeping any gains.

I'm preparing to attack and take the closest MS city. I think a plan could be to take that city, remain at war with MS to lower Nauf's guard, who I then attack. But I need some mounted units to really take on Nauf, so I can do what he did and wipe out the catapult stack, which is why I'm teching as fast as possible to Guilds for Knights.