[PB58] Tarkeel and Amicalola's rule through fear

[Tarkeel]

Turn 103 (300 BC)

This is not what you want to see Rome be doing a few turns after researching IronWorking:


Sure enought, at least two of those whips are Praetorians, one of which is definitely heading in the wrong direction:


This sent us into alarm overdrive, swapping builds most everywhere into axes. Fondor is still building the Hanging Gardens (so we can whip more axes), and Kuat will build MoM. This is the situation in the border area right now:


The only positive is that AT hasn't roaded his jungle, so we will still get some warning.

On a more positive note, we found a city on the marble to speed up MoM:

Hoth is a frozen wasteland of no real value.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 104-105 (250 BC)

The bad news first:


Serdoa must have managed to find the workforce for chopping nine forests, all the more impressive. I'd say the only way this game can remain interesting is if those Praetorians are heading his way:


It seems like they're not, but I offered AT my now useless marble in an effort to point him at Serdoa. In other bad news, IronWorking was researched by two others this turn, and neither Jowy or Ruff has a bonus hammer on their plains jungle, so I guess it's Serdoa and Superdeath. Lovely.

[Amicalola]

I guess the one thing I would add is that the real wildcard right now is AT. If he attacks us with Praetorians, I think Serdoa is hilariously favoured to win. If he attacks Serdoa, we are strongly (but slightly less) favoured. If he attacks someone else, or no one (probably most likely? There is still lots of land), we get a very fun race. Technically, 3/4 of those options are favourable/even for us, so we're mildly optimistic. Still preparing for the worst though.

So no chance AT attacks someone and himself becomes favored to win?    Not that I disagree. His best chance of profiting off Praets might be to attack us and get wonders, but he's not going to find that easy.

On a serious note, I find praets quite counterintuitive. They're this early game powerhouse, but don't seem that good (against humans) until construction, as it seems you just wreck your own and your targets chances of winning by attacking before then. Humans can and will whip out enough defenders that you just get bogged down if attacking before then. So in a way, they're kind of just very cheap elephants with a couple of weaknesses. At least, that's my impression. Would you agree?

[Tarkeel]

Turn 106-109 (150 BC)
The last turns have been spent following AT's Praetorians around while trying to get some defenses sorted, but he finally closed borders this turn. We've seen 8 so far gathering not too far from our borders, and another 5 were presumably whipped this turn. He still hasn't started roading in our direction, so I'll check his intentions with a war-peace and see what happens.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 110 (125 BC)
Well, AT didn't take me up on peace, but he's only slowly moving towards us. That's a axe/spear covering two workers roading the jungle towards us. He should have about 15 Praetorians hidden behind the mountains, but we can only see two, one of which is unsurprisingly supporting Durkon.


I guess it's time for more whipping, at a time I'd much rather be growing and expanding. This is hurting both of us though, as we're clearly falling behind in cities and Serdoa running further away.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 111-112 (75 BC)
It looks like AT was waiting for Construction and catapults before coming after us for some inexplicable reason, giving us time to get Construction in two turns as well. We're probably dead now that he's finally moved in, but I'll try to give it my best defense. Here's the situation:


We have a galley with axes that's keeing Durkon honest, and can feint going south. There's another galley coming from Kashyyyk, and Kuat is set load one to threaten Belkar and MitD. We're not going down without a fight.

As it was looking like he might not come our way, I sneaked out a settler to found Alderaan on the old green dot, some thirty turns delayed.


We also got another worker out to build some infrastructure on the off chance of getting peace.




I tried to bribe SD into open borders with our excess gold, but he wanted 5gpt for it. He did include a fish-fish in the deal, so I declined and offered the fish back. Serdoa settled three new cities this turn and is up to an even twenty, and is running away with the game. He's even claimed Ruff's inland sea island.

[vanrober]

Good luck on the defense agains praets! will be fun to watch

[Tarkeel]

Honestly, I don't expect much; AT really should have attacked with the first wave he drafted. Endor is dead, but I'll make him pay for it. This is what that city was founded to do, but it still feels painful. We might be able to make a stand at MonCal with catapults.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 113-114 (25 BC)


With the balance of forces this skewed, there's no reason to attack into the wall. We're just playing for time, waiting for Construction which came T114 and HBR which should be another 3-4 turns. We kept our forces in the jungle, tempting him to blow some strength into it, which he obviously didn't.
Which leads us to the Battle of Endor: 10 Praetorians, 3 catapults, 2 spearmen and 1 axe vs 8 axes, 1 spear and 1 warrior.

Discretion is the better part of valor, and we evacuate all metal units northwards towards MonCal. We've just started building our own catapults which should make MonCal defensible. We also have two galleys full of axes south of Endor, and a third steaming down from Kuat on the inner sea. Let's see what we can burn...

[civac2]

Decent army by AT. Does he have workers on the jungle tile with the catapult?