[SPOILERS - El Grillo PB54] Staying home and stargazing

[Charriu]

I also learned that the hard way in PB52. They do queue-upgrade into crossbow

[El Grillo]

Yeah I really ought to have known better, or at least double-checked, in hindsight. So I set up a whip-chop in Meteor Shower for 100h into an Archer with Feudalism finishing end of turn, and a bunch of other Archer whips elsewhere, which turns out to have been basically the worst possible decision I could've made because now I can't get any Longbows anywhere for another couple of turns. Might actually end up losing the capital for this idiocy, I haven't logged in yet to see how bad the previous turn went.

[El Grillo]

The parade of errors continues. I got a GG and had the option to reinforce Meteor Shower with a Morale Archer and then promote to CG3 Longbow, but I clicked out of order and promoted first, which used the movement points. Not really a misclick, and I won't bother asking for a reload for what is clearly an unforced error on my part. Might not even have been worth trying to save Meteor Shower, I'll just hole up in the capital next turn.

[El Grillo]

That bit I said earlier about how a better player would have handled this much better was awfully prescient, wasn't it.

So even without superdeath involved, I'm down 3 cities, 2 luxuries (including ivory, thankfully I have other sources of iron and horses), and now it wouldn't be at all surprising for Ruff, superdeath, or Elkad to come in and take advantage of my blunders. I think I can stem the bleeding of further cities for a bit with Longbows until Mjmd reinforces with Catapults, but that won't prevent pillaging of my mature cottages and other resource tiles on the mainland until I can build up some Catapults of my own. Thank goodness I have copper and horses from the islands, for now.

[El Grillo]

Finally, a battle the simulations say I should win (especially with the 6th longbow finishing at EOT). It is absolutely critical that I hold Summer Triangle because without its canal I don't have a hope of holding onto the northeastern island, so I drew in reinforcements and spent some gold on upgrades. If he takes time to bombard or bring in more reinforcements, my Galley is bringing in the 23xp Longbow next turn. I'm also finally building up a counterattacking force, but I've offered Mjmd peace in the hopes of keeping the other players off my back for the moment. He doesn't really have a reason to accept of course until he's aware that I do have a stack of my own, but I figure it can't hurt.

[El Grillo]

Mjmd finally is willing to take peace, and I see why. He wheeled around his stack down south to hit superdeath, who evidently has tried to sit our conflict out and is woefully under-force. So there are a couple of options here, but I think the most satisfying one would be to sit out the 10 turns and then attack Mjmd. We just finished Machinery.

Off in the distance, I expect Miguelito is busy tearing into gira, who's down a city a turn after the war declaration. Oh well, we'll have our fun here and pretend this game isn't just over already

[El Grillo]

Something very curious is happening with global power, and I can't quite figure it out.










From these screenshots, I observe:

1. The demographics screen shows me 3rd in power.
2. The charts and score line ratio show me very clearly 4th/5th in power.
3. Mjmd, who declared war on superdeath with ~2x his power, has since then only succeeded in burning a filler city on my border, and is now retreating, but they haven't made peace.

From the KTB UI, 2 people know Engineering, and superdeath is the HRE.

Knowing that the demos are current and the charts a turn behind, the only plausible explanation I can think of is:

Mjmd didn't realize superdeath had Engineering and moved his stack where it could be first-struck by collateral and Landsknecht that counter his hitters. In this way, even though superdeath's power rating per the game is only 2/3 of mine, he was able to deliver a decisive enough defeat that Mjmd's power fell all the way below mine. There's no other explanation - Miguelito simply has way too much, and vanrober as the other candidate isn't fighting anyone.

Mjmd, expecting to roll over superdeath by virtue of the power ratings in time to resume the war with me, panicked and decided to keep fighting instead of asking for peace. Maybe their earlier warring played into this as well, the way I had hoped it would. That's how Vienna got razed, and why I didn't see Mjmd's retreat until this turn. Superdeath must have presented enough of a force that Mjmd realized that staying in his borders would risk losing his stack, and he doesn't want to risk that when our enforced peace is halfway up and his cities are still whipped down.

Meanwhile, I've given superdeath my spare silk for free and we've exchanged horse/iron signals. We both have reason to fight Mjmd in a mutually beneficial way, and are now at a point in the tech tree where we can do so effectively. Ideally, superdeath sees the situation similarly and won't accept peace from Mjmd now (not being able to throw in a city as a sweetener is a big deal here). Even if we might not remain friends forever, this is our best chance to grow stronger together in a world where vanrober and Miguelito are close to putting the game away.

[El Grillo]

The explanation turned out to be correct, but my prediction was off, as superdeath and Mjmd signed peace this turn. Mjmd also signaled wanting to attack Miguelito/Rusten, which after some thought I decided to send back, as well as canceling my open borders with the Byzantines and exhorting every other player to do the same. That landmass is basically impossible for me to reach pre-Astronomy, but Mjmd and gira shared a coastline so if he wants to interfere by all means, I'd even be willing to call off my war plans if he were to do so.

[El Grillo]

Mjmd and I apparently are on the same page, after some diplo-request wrangling we have enforced peace and he's at war with Miguelito. Meanwhile, we finish MoM at the end of this turn and are making a run to Music to try and tech ahead to gunpowder units. Superdeath is extremely heavy on Landsknechts and Ruff has been massing WEs for ages so the Knight timing window is long gone.

Longterm plans depend on if we just concede to Miguelito soon, or if people manage to keep him from consolidating his city count lead. I had brief hopes when Elkad and Cairo declared, but Cairo backed out and now Elkad is on the ropes, so it's looking grim. I've stocked up 1600 gold, maybe we can do something silly with Astronomy before the game is called.

[El Grillo]

...And apparently we're not on the same page re: Miguelito, because Mjmd signed peace a turn later. I really don't get it, was his real goal all along to secure his flanks for a war with superdeath? I mean sure, I'd be happy to participate in that venture too, but why all the crazy signaling then? I wonder what his plan was if I had just stayed at war...

We have MoM, and the plan is to get the Music Artist which should be uncontested (we're 1-turning Literature with overflow, and F6 shows no one else knowing Literature with gira's elimination) followed by building National Epic and running some specialists in the capital. Then I think we try to induce vanrober to finally attack Ruff and take Ruff's island cities in the process, with the outside hope that vanrober gets big enough to compete with Miguelito, and then the two of them slow each other down while our continent sorts itself out somehow. Yeah, it doesn't sound particularly plausible to me either Maybe a really late Liberalism slingshot to Steel? Oh and we definitely should try and build Taj somehow...