[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England

[TBW]

T166:
GKC offered me a copper/copper trade, which I accepted. I don't intend to invade him any time soon, and he clearly has no plans to invade me, so having an agreement in place makes sense. I will likely be breaking this deal at some point after I have redcoats, but I still have to get through Nationalism -> Constitution -> Gunpowder -> Printing Press -> Replaceable Parts -> Rifling and that's going to take a lot of beakers. I just have to keep repeating "I will not start any stupid grinding wars" to myself in the meantime.

Speaking of stupid grinding wars, the OH/Elkad war looks like it won't be over any time soon, Elkad can't win but he can make it an incredibly drawn out slog with endless CG3/Drill 1+3 longbows. OH will have to burn up a lot of gold on upgrading knights to cuirassiers, but right now he's in a GA and pulling 1135 gold per turn without Printing Press so he'll be able to afford it. On the other side of me, Rusten is clearly preparing a big musket-based invasion of Dark Savant, who has been stuck in stupid wars with Superdeath for a lot of the game so he's a relatively weak target (no Gunpowder or Engineering against someone who has both). I just hope that me trying to keep my head down doesn't end up getting me crushed by people I can't out-tech but had an opening on later on.

[TBW]

T167:
Nothing terribly compelling happened for me this turn. Borsche is pretty close to eliminated, he just couldn't stand up to that many veteran knights from Rusten. It still looks like Rusten's next target is going to be an embattled Dark Savant, and he just finished Printing Press so it looks like he'll hit Rifling at least 10-15 turns before I get there. He's skipped Education and Aesthetics -> Literature, so he'll have to make that up before Military Tradition, but at the pace he's eliminating people he doesn't seem to need Oxford or Epics. I just don't see where he loses this game, where he's got a whole continent to himself now + an easy path to invade another continent that's underdeveloped because of early attrition wars.

[TBW]

T169:
Still really not a lot going on besides building up and getting ready for the GA. I could 3 turn Constitution now without firing it off, maybe I'll be able to 2 turn it with the commerce boost? I'm thinking I should grab Printing Press before Gunpowder, since the village/town commerce boost will be big for me and a couple turns on Gunpowder shouldn't be the difference maker at this point. GKC researched Printing Press, so that means it'll be cheaper for me too. I assume he's rushing for rifles to defend against me, which makes sense. It'll be a pain in the ass to punch through him and I hate long, grinding wars, but I just haven't had a good window to invade him. My mystery Great Person spawns next turn, I'll hold off on my civic revolts until I finish Constitution since just swapping into Nationhood doesn't gain me a lot and I can use the few remaining turns of Slavery to get my universities whipped.

I can see that Rusten has Military Tradition already and finished Replaceable Parts this turn, so Dark Savant's going to get crushed by cavalry and rifles in about 10 turns. As big as his empire's going to be, I have to wonder how he's going to defend it all when OH and I come knocking from different directions. At least, I hope that's difficult for him.

[TBW]

T170:
Got a Great Engineer and launched my GA this turn. My 100% research beakers per turn jumped up to ~1400. Sweet! By swapping all of my spy specialists to scientists, I can squeeze out Constitution in 2 turns, take care of my last few university whips, and get into Representation / Nationhood / Caste System / Mercantilism / Theocracy a turn earlier than I expected to. I'm at #2 for GNP on the demographic screen right now, but #1's GNP is 1000 higher than mine which I don't like. I'm pretty sure #1 is OH, who swapped into Representation and Free Religion this turn. I'm glad I'll be getting Constitution quicker than I thought because it'll leave me a couple turns at the end of my GA to swap civics again if it looks like I'll need Slavery over Caste System. I've also got a pretty wide network of sentry privateers around my borders now, so I should be able to spot any incoming surprise landings, but as far as I can tell my main rivals are both focused on snapping up other civs right now.

I also had a fur for wine trade offer from Commodore, which I turned down because I already have fur from someone else and I only have one wine left.

[TBW]

T172:
Finished Constitution and got my civics swapped over. I'm #2 for GNP again, which I was expecting. I've got fewer cities than OH and Rusten and they're both in Representation now, but my GNP will stay competitive with them thanks to my FIN stock exchanges. I scoped out GKC's main bastion city again with my scout and he still has 15 crossbows and the pikes in there, but he's up to 18 catapults instead of 9 now. Definitely not going to walk into that mess any time soon. I went ahead and decided to knock out Gunpowder in 1 turn instead of grabbing Printing Press in 2, because I want to build gold for a couple turns (I make over 1100 per turn at 0% research) and finish Music and Drama off at 0% before I go up the Rifling tree. I figure it's a good idea to get a head start on drafting muskets to turn into redcoats, too. I can also stack up a pile of muskets to deal the knockout blow to Rome, since doing it with knights into walls would have been really dumb, but muskets and some trebuchets will clear out longbows and one war elephant with no problems.

[TBW]

T173:
Finished Gunpowder and started drafting the first of many muskets. I'm going to go ahead and draft them up, build a few trebuchets, and plan on knocking over Rome's last city with them as soon as it feels like I've got enough army to do it. I have a lot of cities that can afford to give up 2-3 pop with the luxury trades I have going so I should get a pretty good army of one movers going, along with the knights I keep pumping out in Seahouses. OH finished Chemistry this turn, I wonder if he's planning on grabbing Steel and using cannons to blow out Elkad's CG3 longbows or if he's got some other strategy in mind. Rusten finished Rifling, which means he'll have hordes of cavalry crushing Dark Savant's skirmishers. I'm building up privateers to stack up around my outlying islands to counter any moves he makes on that side, but I have scouts in his territory and if he's putting together any surprises for me, he's hiding them pretty well.

It seems odd to me that me, OH, and AT are the only people with Education on T173. I can see why Rusten would have skipped it, since he's got that superpowered religious economy and got far enough ahead of his neighbors to rip them up, but I would think other guys near the top like pindicator would have it. I've already got my 8 universities finished and started Oxford this turn. I have no idea what AT's gameplan is, since he has Economics but no Horseback Riding or Construction, and he hasn't researched Drama so he's not running hard on the culture slider. I still can't see enough of OH's cities to know if he's got his universities or Oxford up yet. Maybe I'm placing too much importance on getting Oxford as fast as possible and I should have put the hammers into more knights? I'll see how that shakes out in the end.

[TBW]

T176:
Rusten sent me a fish/iron for fish/iron deal, which I accepted. I don't have imminent plans to invade him (and can't reasonably do it without Astronomy anyway) and it puts me in a great position politically. Both of the frontrunners clearly want me on their side, since I've gotten fish/iron deals from both of them in the last 15 or so turns. When I end up having to pick which one to side with, I can probably extort a pretty big bribe to make it happen since I'll be basically at tech parity with them both. Maybe it'll end up in the same kind of deadlock like PB43 seems to have ended up in. I've heard of worse outcomes.

On the tech front, I'm going to run 0% research for the last couple turns of my GA to finish off Music and Drama, then head right into Replaceable Parts -> Rifling -> Astronomy. I don't see any reason to swap any of my civics at this point until State Property is on the table, so I won't be making any changes there. Militarily, I plan on hitting GKC by using galleons to move around his enormous stack of collateral damage and just absorbing it by marching through with 14 str rifles and 15 str cavalry against 5 str catapults and 6 str crossbows. As long as I don't lose the units, I don't really mind if they have to sit around and heal up for a few turns, and once that pile of collateral is dealt with it'll just be extended cleanup. I'm going to sim things out just to see how gnarly it might end up being to fight that stack head-on. Also need to sim out how many trebuchets I'm going to need to flatten Rome's last city and whether it'll be worth it to lose some trebuchets/muskets to do it now or to just wait until redcoats.

[TBW]

T177:
Rusten finished Chemistry this turn and OH finished Steel; I'm 0%ing Drama so I can get started on theatres for my Globe Theatre city, which I believe will be Long Eaton. OH started another GA this turn, which I assume he's going to use to blast through the Rifling techs really quickly as he finishes off Elkad. I wonder what OH's next move is going to be? Based purely on the agreements showing in the Glance screen, I would guess he's going to attack pindicator while he's occupied with Mouseferatu, but I really have no way to be sure. GKC is clearly still working towards Rifling, and he has a couple of caravels in a spot where, if I wasn't paying attention, they could lead to a very embarrassing amphibious attack. I'm almost ready to siege down Rome with muskets and trebuchets, another turn or two to get straggling trebuchets into position and then I can go for it.

[TBW]

T178:
Thanks to great beaker overflow management and several people getting there slightly ahead of me, I'll knock out Replaceable Parts in one turn. Sweet! I'm definitely lacking in the hammer department, so the boost to my mines and windmills is sorely needed. I just went out of my GA and I'm in 6th for hammers on the demographics screen, which will be a real problem for me as the game progresses. On GNP, I came out of my GA doing 1500 beakers per turn without Oxford finished, and Oxford will be a nice boost for sure. I'll get a Great Merchant popped out in approximately 6 turns, and a Great Artist out in approximately 10 turns after that, so I'll have the option of my 3 person GA or several bulbs roughly after I'm through Rifling/Military Tradition/Astronomy. All I have to do is come up with the best way to knock out GKC without getting my stacks eaten up by his giant pile of collateral and I should be good to go there. Overall, it's looking pretty good for me right now, as long as I don't eat an alpha strike from a direction I somehow haven't anticipated.

[TBW]

I decided to go ahead and roughly sim out what attacking GKC would look like with a stack of redcoats and cavalry, and as long as he doesn't end up with too many rifles stacked up on defense, I can weather it just fine if he tries to dump all his crossbows and catapults into my stack. Once the raw strength numbers are unbalanced in my favor, the collateral damage doesn't hurt me nearly as much as I thought it would as long as I've got a reasonable amount of units (25-30+) to spread out the damage. He could throw all of his crossbows and catapults at me and still end up with <10% odds on the lead units in a stack that size. I suspect he's smarter than doing that, though, and a more likely scenario involves him whipping/cash upgrading as many units as he can into rifles while he keeps his stack there to soak up collateral from me. If I'm GKC right now, I'm pushing culture in his lead city as hard as possible to get to the next culture defense breakpoint/keep me from pushing borders in with a Forbidden Palace/Oxford city.