[SPOILER] On This Day

[Jowy]

We got 50% odds at worst, but we lost the first three rolls. Then we won a 72% and lost a 75%. The rest were clean-up except we lost a HA at 90%.
Ruff spawned a GG and we did as well. What should we do with ours?



Killed the galley (and a scout, free exp). Sending an axe and a knight to take the island.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Either a supermedic (we don't really have much in that way), or settle it in a future ironworks/heroic epic city

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Also, we take falstaffian and the island next turn, right?

[Jowy]

Also, we take falstaffian and the island next turn, right?

Falstaffian yes. Island city maybe if we want to risk amphibious attack.

Either a supermedic (we don't really have much in that way), or settle it in a future ironworks/heroic epic city

Mm those will probably be split. Watergate has Moai so it can only fit in one more national wonder. Ironworks makes sense since it's natural hammer city with iron.
Heroic Epic and possible GG settlement into 47 Ronin then?

[Jowy]

Two more down:



Got lucky with the amphibious attack. The axe won a low odds battle so the knight didn't even need to attack.



Holus-Bolus should fall next turn. There are some war elephants running around now, no stack though. And a single catapult was spotted.

I forgot to check if Ruff got Engineering after rolling over the turn. Well, I'll find out when it's time to play again. We raided a good bunch of gold from those two cities so he might not have had enough.

SD started whipping (saw a mace after turn roll over). Since he has so many catapults, maybe it's better to create a secondary Knight stack for defense rather than longbows.

[Jowy]

Ruff reinforced the city:



Combat went well for us:



Only casualty was a retreat-knight who valiantly damaged the GG elephant.

We got a second GG spawn:







I think I forgot to report that we got a Great Scientist. So we need a non-scientist from Henry's Joust to trigger a 2nd GA in 11T.



Stacks are a little scattered right now. I want to blitz through to the capital ASAP.
Ruff has Engineering now, so incoming pikes and gotta watch out for 3 move roads.

[Jowy]

Ruff attacked out with his only defender and lost:



This could have been a poisoned apple. But the only units in range to attack (that we can see) are 2 chariots and 1 catapult, so I don't think he's planning to counter attack and raze.



Here's the front. I think we need to wait for at least the second knight stack to join before attacking. The catapult stack is another 2 turns behind.

SD's catapults disappeared. Gotta find them ASAP. It doesn't seem like he is prepared for war yet, but it would still be annoying if he did attack.
I think we can gather all knights from now on as a defensive stack. If we end up needing them for the last Ruff cities, we can send them in then.

[Jowy]

Ruff suicided two catapults at our knights.



Next turn we attack. Approximate setup in vodka gives 100% odds to win with around 4 knights lost.

Ruff's cities are coming out of revolt for us. They don't have culture, so I'll send out Confucian missionaries.

Not sure where SD's catapults went, but they did not go towards us, so that's good.

[Jowy]

Attack on capital:



Ruff had reinforced with another Pike, and we had some battles where we didn't really manage to damage the pikes, so losses were higher than expected.
Still think it's worth it to knock out the capital though. You see how we went from expected 4 losses to 10 after one pike and some bad luck with damage rolls. I'd rather not wait for like 6 pikes to be added before attacking.
Now we can take it more slowly I think and roll with the 1-mover stack. I'm unsure on whether we should upgrade our axes to maces.. We've already burned a lot of gold on the HA upgrades.
I'm sending new knights to the battlefield again. We still have over 20 knights and we're at 3.3 of Ruff's power, but better safe than sorry.

[Jowy]

What's this?



Astro island? Technically not.. Tarkeel could reach it with 2 more border pops.



WW is hitting hard at the capital. Seems like a good excuse to finally build the market.



SD's catapults have been centralized. I'm more concerned about Cairo, but I can do nothing but wait in his case.



Four of our new cities are out of revolt. I whipped some lighthouses before the sacrifical altars. Those cities were not in a good place food-wise without their BFC.



His western cities don't have many defenders. I'd like to capture them while waiting for the knights to heal in his ex-capital.
I'm a little confused because Ruff's city count is at 7 and we can see 6 of them. Did Serdoa/Cairo capture cities this close to his core?



We've been getting EP pushback from every direction. SD and Cairo at least used the EP slider or they wouldn't have caught up so fast.
We can only see 1 of 3 Cairo's cities, though the 1 is the most important one. I'd like to keep that visible.



Overview. I whipped 47 Ronin after the pic. It has 5 whip unhappiness despite our UB 



Research has been turned back on. Engineering will make it faster to reinforce the front. And good to have access to pikes just in case Cairo shows up with a stack of knights.
Undecided on what to pursue next. Banking is always good, though banks are damn expensive without Fin.
Philo/Nat with Taj in capital could be an option to deny it from Cairo. I'd like to grab Meditation first to see if anyone has Philo and then save all the gold needed first.
Literature for HE, but I don't think we have a 10 XP unit yet. I'm working towards it. Anyway it'll be a pretty cheap tech. Music GA I assume is long gone.
For PP I'd have to check our town/village situation, but I reckon it's very good because I built and worked a lot of cottages from very early on.