[pb46 spoilers] Hitru lurks again

[Old Harry]

Turn 128

Whipped away 19 pop this turn. More to come next turn...


Got some practise in. Can we distract Elkad's navy over here?


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 132

We've been umming and ahhing about who we'll attack with our knights, then last turn Pindi offered us gems to attack Elkad. We didn't want to tip our hand too early, so we waited until this turn and demanded 200 gold instead. Hopefully he'll think it's a small enough amount to gratefully accept because we've already started moving our units toward Elkad.

Pindi has small but growing stacks of horse archers, and got Construction last turn, which wouldn't stop us from taking out his cities, but if he catches injured knights with a stack of cats and horchers then he could wipe us out. He also has more build queues and pop to turn into fast-moving units. His land is pretty nice and the Christian shrine should be worth 20gpt, but it's a high risk move. The plan was to sweep through T and hit R and Be, then try to cut him in three by taking O. Big image so spoilers:

Elkad on the other hand just started making PRO/CHA longbows (with totem poles and barracks everywhere and Vassalage they start with 3 promos). He can't hurt our stack (note to self - add an axe or xbow to defend against spears) but he can hide behind walls and make it a slow, expensive slog. Especially against his hill cities. So we've decided we'll try to take H, E and Bu - the island city we wanted, then offer peace. Perhaps F, C and S will fall too, but we're not that optimistic. Please ignore the bad photoshopping around C.


If Elkad then gives us peace (not certain by any stretch) where do we go next? Well we'll have 4 galleys on our south coast and one of the most backward civs in the game - TBW's AGG/EXP Rome with only 11 cities (something we knew already) and only 36 units (thanks Ramk ), it should be easy to ferry our forces over and start taking land from him. It's all a bit unknown though - we've only defogged one city so tactics are going to be very hard to plan, and we'll end up with a very odd shaped empire. But he's soo tempting that even without peace from Elkad this is still likely to be our next move.

Demos and power. Rusten has pulled far ahead of us since we've converted nearly 20% of our population into knights and boats. We'll keep building knights for a while, but the whipping will ease off next turn by which time we'll have twenty of them.

[Old Harry]

Turn 133

Change of plan! A combination of these triremes and some proper simming (making me realise that even on flat ground taking cities from Elkad will be pretty costly) has made us reconsider last turn's plan. So we demanded some cash and ivory in return  for fish.


Demos and power. We'll be declaring on TBW next turn (or the turn after) mostly because of this power graph. Taking his cities will leave us with a long, thin, strung-out, practically indefensible empire. We'll have to do something about that at some point, but let's just kick the can down the road for now...

[Old Harry]

Turn 134

We discover Rusten, with a very weak neighbour (2metraninja) right on his doorstep. I offered open borders, which I think he should turn down. - as a SPI civ with a couple of religions he's got a shortcut to victory with culture, so he doesn't want us to know where his cities are.


We declared war, put three knights and a treb on the hill next to Neapolis and - with a couple more knights on a boat - should take the city next turn. TBW only has one source of iron, so may not be able to produce Praetorians to hit back at us. Unless an unfriendly nation chooses to supply him.


Demos and power. Gavagai has taken a couple of cities off Beardbeard in the last few turns but hasn't whipped hard, we should probably get graphs on him once we have tech visibility on Rusten in about eight turns. Our demos should improve when we end slavery in a couple of turns, with our second golden age letting us switch to caste/mercantilism. Getting some FIN banks up in the GA will help too. But we've got a lot of unhappiness, which will take over 50 turns to wear off in certain cities.

[Old Harry]

Turn 135

Elkad closed borders which thwarts some unit logistics in the NE. I think we built one too many roads pointing to his land. Pindi has stacks of wellies, cats and horchers so not attacking him seems like a good decision too. Meanwhile Gavagai took another two cities from Beardbeard, we've got some catching up to do:


C2 Knight vs C1 Spear - 67%... LOSS - 2 hits
C2 Knight vs C1 Axe - 80%... LOSS - 1 hit!
C2 Knight vs C1 Axe - 90%... Flawless win!

With those two losses we need to attack off a boat.

C2 Knight amphibiously vs injured C1 Axe - 87%... WIN! - 2 hits  
C1 Knight amphibiously vs injured C1 Spear - 94%... WIN!!  

The city comes with 180 gold and a lighthouse. Hopefully TBW can't get a couple of horchers or 3-4 chariots over here to liberate it.


Two turns until we circumnavigate (there has been a bit of a mess with war declarations, open borders and so on with Commodore that delayed it by about five turns ) which will make logistics easier. Then we're getting Optics soon for a few caravels.

Demos and power. We'll start our second golden age next turn, with a switch to Caste/Mercantilism which should give a huge economic boost.

[Old Harry]

Turn 136

This is the theatre. We expect the Praets to move back to reinforce Cumae, then we'll put 8 knights, a treb, a sword and a sentry horse archer on the tile that they're on. If he moves the Praets to threaten Neapolis we can hit them with the knights on our galleys and hit Cumae with our original stack.


I may have mentioned a golden age - we're first to adopt Mercantilism, but Rusten isn't far away - we have tech visibility on him and he should return the favour soon. We paired it with Serfdom for the faster workers, we'll have to decide if we'll have enough workshops to go into Caste at the end of the golden age.


Demos and power. Crop yield is down due to running specialists. Meanwhile Naufrager has replaced Beardbeard, which might mean Gavagai has a bit more of a challenge. At least he's whipping.

[Old Harry]

There's no time like a golden age to plan your next golden age... (GP types in brackets are very low odds)

eot148 - I will pop a merch/pro for the next GA


eot154 - O will pop a sci/spy/engy/(art) for GA or bulbing. Should we drop the spy and engy and concentrate on the scientist?


eot165 - R will pop a sci/(art/spy) for bulbing


eot174 - G will pop a sci for bulbing ( at the unworked wine)


eot185 - H will pop a sci for bulbing


eot193 - Q will pop an artist/merch for GA


We should assume the third GA will be our last - so we'll want end-game civics at that point. Are they Police State/Nationhood/Environmentalism/State Property/Free Religion? I can see arguments for US or Rep in government, Vassalage in legal, Caste in labor, Free market in economy and Theocracy in religion.

I suppose the combination depends on whether we're going for domination or space as our win condition, but it'd be good to know which we want so we can plan when to get the last GP for that golden age. Is turn 193 about right for Communism? I have a feeling we'll get there a lot earlier. Obviously this doesn't take account of free GPs we can claim from the tech tree, but we can be flexible if we get one of those.

[Old Harry]

Turn 138

TBW has got longbows, which is a little concerning - but he doesn't get the promotions that Elkad does and he doesn't have time to make many, so it doesn't change our plans. We took four easy battles here, winning at 74%, 78%, 99% and 99%. We got 118 gold and a terrace, lighthouse and courthouse survived.


Then we killed the longbow SSW of the city at 71% and discovered... TBW's core! Rome only has a warrior in, Antium an archer. Assuming the 4 praetorians move into Rome we'll take the city on t141 after our trebs bombard the culture, we should take Antium next turn though. We left five knights on the hill at the end of the turn.


Demos and power. We noticed Rusten built his forbidden palace right on the border with 2metraninja, so it seems obvious where the knights he's currently whipping are intended to go. I offered 2metra our stone to try to get him to build some walls. Hopefully he'll understand and put up a decent fight.

[Old Harry]

Turn 139

TBW loaded two praets on a galley and retreated the other two rather than putting them in Rome. Odd. Krill seems to be upset about something - he's declared war and stuck his scout in Rome so it took a knight and our sentry HA to capture the city. If TBW had put his praetorians in Rome Krill had two Longbows that could have helped out and made us really suffer. Wonder why he didn't? The city comes with a lighthouse, forge and market.


We also capture Antium - winning at 67% and 98% - which came with a lighthouse and courthouse, and a free worker.

Units have been juggled to block the road south of Rome and prevent the praetorians on that galley from getting odds for an amphibious attack on either Cumae or Rome. I *think* the next two cities are south of the chariot and SE of the plains hill. Do we go for one or both next?


Further north I think we'll beat Pindi to this island on turn order thanks to his war with GKC. Someone really likes forcing players to orphan food in this game. We circumnavigated a couple of turns ago, and it's making unit logistics for the Roman war so much easier.


Demos, MFG (for obvious reasons) and power.

[Old Harry]

If krill is complaining about TBW failing to move his Praetorians in the way krill wanted him to (presumably into Rome) then can we just ignore krill and get on with the game?

a) krill doesn't get to play two civilizations
b) neighbor luck isn't something he can or should control
c) I presume TBW moved his praets to be protected by krill's longbows assuming he could hit us in the city next turn with +50% attack. It was a dumb thing to do, but I imagine that if Gav or beardbeard had reported on their conflict there would have been worse
d) We've never save-scummed a MP game here no matter how badly someone played, eg pb13 with nakor, pb45 with Borsche and plenty of others so I'll be pissed off if we start the first time I get to take advantage
e) we want to encourage and teach new players where they make mistakes, not accuse them of cheating when they don't follow another player's tactical plan to the letter

Of course if it's something else entirely then please let me know that I don't need to be getting annoyed.