[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Some questions about era score math before/while I play the turn:

I have 43 ES this turn, and need 62 for a golden age - so 19 more points. Here are the points we have guaranteed:

3 from a +3 campus
3 from a +4 CH
1 from a medieval civic (unlikely to be first)
1 from a medieval tech (also unlikely to be first)
1 from a horseman (could be first, but don't want to count on it)
1 from a second Great Admiral (at 3 GA points per turn this could be close, but we should manage to pull this off)

That leaves 9 more ES I need to find somewhere. Here are the questions I have as far as how to get those points:

a) Should I liberate Akkad rather than conquering it outright? This is worth 2 ES, but it also has another advantage - if I liberate the city and then conquer it, we shouldn't have to worry about the occupation penalty like we would if we conquered the city outright. Do you know if this either gives Akkad a bunch of free units or locks us into peace with them for some number of turns?

b) I'd like to denounce CMF/marcopolo, in what will look like a response to their ongoing spree of city state conquests, then declare phony war on them in 5 turns with the Formal War Casus Belli. That's worth 2 more ES - is that okay with you?

c) If Hattusa is still standing and not suzereigned by anyone else in 4 turns, I can pick up 2 ES from Amani and the Naval Tradition envoy. I don't really think there are any other CS where I can do this, though - I caught something of a bad break here, with all the other CS either conquered or already suzereigned, but oh well. Never mind, this is out, after loading up the save it looks like TAD suzereigned Hattusa this turn. Ouch! That means no more ES from Amani

d) For the 3 ES from having 3 more cities than anyone else, I think we can cheese this by having you gift me a bunch of cities for a turn at some point down the road. Are you willing to do that? Moreover, while I don't think there's a rule against it, do you think it violates the spirit of RB PBEMs enough that we shouldn't do it?

e) I'm still hoping to kill TAD's 2-promotion galley with an unpromoted bireme for 3 ES. Will this trigger if I take the city with an unpromoted bireme with the galley inside? If not, are you okay with me delaying the conquest for a turn to try to bait it into leaving the city where I can kill it?

f) I guess at the margins I could get 1 from settling on tundra and/or 2 from settling on another continent. Do you know if there are any convenient spots for making this happen? I'll need to check and see if Akkad is on our home continent or not. I guess I could also get 3 from running a settler all the way down the coast and settling by the natural wonder - that's pretty sad, but I'm pretty desperate.

g) Is there any other way to get ES in the next 20 turns that you can think of?

[Woden]

I wouldn't liberate Akkad. You would then fight to recapture while at war with TAD/Kaiser and might just lose the city. As for more points, there are barb camps around for a few era points each. You could settle a city in the desert on the south side of the continent. You could settle a city next to a natural wonder. The island east of Vilnius is a different continent.

I will not send you my cities because you can only trade them once, i,e, one direction trade. I would have no cities left and IMO it would be too gamey. You could liberate Nazca. Build the Great Lighthouse or Colossus. Lots of ways to get points.

[ljubljana]

Oh, I didn't realize you can only trade cities once - yeah, that's definitely out then. I don't think I can liberate Nazca though - it's halfway across the world and requires winning a war with CMF and his undamaged navy. As for the GL/Colossus, the era's going to end on turn 101 most likely - none of my cities have enough production to build them in the next 20 turns. Cuneiform could maybe do the lighthouse, but it would have to switch to it now and then make no more settlers for the rest of the era, which doesn't seem like a good idea. Hopefully I can send a warrior or sword over to clear a barb camp, and I'll try doing that once we finish up at Akkad, but it's kind of a trip - it'll take close to 20 turns to even get to one of them, and it's not clear that it'll even still be around by the time I do.

I'm pretty sure we lose the game if I can't manage a second GA - I'll drop to <20 BPT on turn 100 with zero campuses built and then have no way to tech to Frigates, and we'll get run over by anyone who gets there first. I think we need a concrete plan of the specific things I will do to get 9 more ES, and if one of those things is liberating Akkad for two points, I'm not sure how we get around doing that.

[Woden]

Send you current settler south and settle the island south of Rapa. I believe that is a different continent, or settle near the natural wonder on our south side. I will pin the location when the turn comes around again. I think the island would be a better spot because your next settle could go to the natural wonder spot.

[ljubljana]

Current settler is earmarked for the inland spot, because I really need an actually useful fifth city and I need the free builder from there to get Linear B growing at all. I think I can send the next two settlers down to make ES-related settlements though, and they should get there in time due to the extra movement that Phoenician embarked settlers have. I can just settle a desert spot next to the NW that you were planning on and then gift the city to you, since it makes much more sense logistically as part of your empire.

[ljubljana]

Turn 80 - Phoenicia



I spend about an hour staring at this game board. TAD managed to kill my quad with just a galley and their quad, wow! Quads are way weaker on defense than I expected. They also spent 110 gold to upgrade a sword in the city to up its defense strength. This doesn't seem like it'll make more than a turn or so of difference - I don't think it can one-shot my warrior to break the siege, and we should have the units in place to finish off the city in two turns anyways. Unless...how close could those walls be to completion? They only started on t78, so even if they're in Limes and have a trade route running, I don't think there's any way it can finish next turn...right?

Anyways, what to do with this motley collection of boats. I should clearly devote a unit to killing one of Kaiser's galleys, which are likely in promotion range - it's a shame I can't get both. That probably means the central Embolon bireme, in the yellow, which shouldn't lose enough health to be vulnerable to the other galley on the counterattack. I can two-shot TAD's quad myself, and the embarked slinger will keep the killing unit from moving into range of a counterattack by TAD's promoted galley, but that would require the full-health bireme produced last turn, which means giving up an attack on Akkad next turn. I can also use the westernmost Embolon bireme to kill TAD's weakened galley, but that would give them a straight shot to killing the redlined bireme and getting an English galley next to Akkad again, which would seriously disrupt our conquest.

In the end, I can't think of any viable plan to keep the redlined bireme safe and retain access to the city unless I have the green bireme essentially sit in place, foregoing the chance to kill the TAD galley and committing to only one attack on Akkad this turn. Or...or I could use the redlined bireme to our advantage by going for the kill. The two biremes next to the city could both attack, with the redlined one dying, and I could then get in a third attack with the green bireme in the west. Would that knock the city into kill range of the warrior? It looks close...I attack with the easternmost bireme next to the city to see how much it changes the combat odds. I decide to go for it, and this is the result...



...my first PBEM city capture from a human, against TheArchduke, no less . I keep the city, as per your advice, which looks especially prescient given how ragged our navy's starting to look down here. That means I don't have to worry about keeping the fresh bireme around for an Akkad attack, so I take the two-shot against TAD's quad as well. That wounded TAD galley does have a path to escape, but whatever - my ships should barely be safe this interturn, and we just traded a bireme and a quad for a quad, two galleys, and a sword, which seems pretty good to me.

Now, how do we defend this city? My first thought is that we should occupy that little triangle of coastal tiles SW of the city with healthy ships as soon as possible. We were only able to crack that formation because you had longships attacking from the ocean - TAD/Kaiser would only be able to hit our ships there once per turn, making them very difficult to dislodge. We could be in some trouble longer-term with Kaiser likely racing towards the Renaissance ships, but that's a problem for future us.

Other stuff:



Capturing Akkad gives me a third mine for the Apprenticeship eureka, which is after Castles. Okay, I'll swap research to that unboosted and just build a horse and upgrade it rather than building both a horse and HC. Most likely Linear A will build the horse after NT comes in (so after 2 more biremes), after which it will need to start the campus to get it done before the era change. It appears not to have enough time to pull even that plan off, actually...but that's because the campus isn't discounted right now (Linear B's still working on its Cothon), so we should be fine in the end as long as I remember not to start it before the Linear B Cothon completes.

As far as the rest of the ES deficit goes, I'm planning to send the settler currently out to the inland city site, since it has fresh water access for bootstrapping and gives a crucial free builder to get Linear B growing. Then the next two settlers, which will finish on t82 and t89, will go south to a desert spot near the natural wonder and east to the island east of Vilnius for 6 ES, after which I'll most likely gift one or both of the resulting cities to you. I do have to deal with an irritating barb quad that appeared at Geneva a few turns ago before I can make that work, but I should hopefully be able to send a bireme down from Linear A to deal with it, or maybe you can get it with one of your longships in production. Does that seem good to you?

Also, what in the world happened in China this turn? They lost 4 empire score, 5 science, and...15 culture (!?) since last turn. That's way more than we'd expect from something like a Pingala move...can you think of anything that might explain it?



As I mentioned earlier, Kaiser suzereigned Hattusa this turn, kicking out my attempt to do the same with Amani. However, this means they un-suzereigned Mohenjo-Daro, so I actually can send Amani over there instead to try to pick up those 2 ES. I don't know what will happen if Kaiser responds by sending over their Amani as well...hopefully I'll win the tie by being first to move in the turn order? If not, I guess I'll have an envoy sitting around from NT that I could use to seal the deal.



Oh, and I denounce CMF too, who just conquered another CS this turn (RIP Nazca). Hopefully they'll see that as some kind of oblique signal about their unchecked aggression or whatever rather than as a desperate ploy for 2 ES, and won't pre-emptively DoW me to keep me from more precious ES points.

Question for you: I'm starting to rethink the Mitla attack, since we're kind of running out of ships at Akkad after this turn, and there are still a fair few galleys down here to deal with. I'm also worried because Linear A needs to come off the 2-turn biremes soon for the horse and campus, which could leave us precariously short on ships if TAD and Kaiser keep producing them at full speed. What do you think? Is it better to just come back to Mitla once we get a peace deal with TAD? We should still have some time to take a shot at the CS, since I don't think sub can reach it without going through our territory (until caravels, at least).

Also, what do you think our objectives for this war should be going forward? I imagine the best answer is to pillage the heck out of England and Japan with coastal raiding in the hopes of forcing a peace deal that concedes Akkad - does that seem reasonable?

[ljubljana]

Turn 81 - Phoenicia



Um...where are all those English and Japanese ships going? The answer could be to just retreat and concede Akkad, but I think it's more likely to be a brewing counterattack at Geneva. I'm taking advantage of this lull in the action to heal up some of these critically-wounded ships for now, but we'll need to stay alert in case they try to swing around and hit us there. I'd love it if one of your longships in this area could scout around for such an attack, and maybe buy us some time by blocking some of those one-tile sea lanes between Geneva and the English mainland if necessary.

In the meantime, do you think I should try sending TAD a white peace offer where they concede Akkad? Their response would go some way towards telling us whether they intend to fight on here or at Geneva, and I'm not sure what else we want to achieve from this war short of finding some way to get them to concede the city. It'd also free us up to swing around and eat Mitla or maybe Hattusa if they do agree to peace. I suppose we may want to press on and try to take their other CS away, but I don't even know where it is, and should probably heal up and consolidate for a few turns first at least.

Domestically, another settler is finishing at Cuneiform this turn. I think it's headed for the island east of Vilnius, since it's more likely to be sniped by someone in the next 20t than the spot by the natural wonder. Not sure where on the island to settle yet - maybe inland actually makes the most sense, since it's a pretty isolated location that would be hard to defend against suboptimal from the sea. It could still build a sad +1 Cothon though, which has the advantage of potentially letting me move the capital there sometime, which, thanks to Phoenicia's unique loyalty mechanic, would essentially remove loyalty as an issue in a potential attack on China/Indonesia down the road...

[ljubljana]

Hmm, note to future me, I think I need to be saving gold for a builder at Cuneiform instead of the third trader. It brings me no joy to let a trade route go unused for this long, but I think it has to be done - we need the rice chop at the capital to get the CH up in time for the era change, and no city can feasibly build it in time - Linear B's too stunted, Linear A's committed to horse + campus after the next two biremes, and I don't dare take Hieratic off of biremes as well unless we get a peace deal with TAD. I'm getting a free builder with the Demotic founding next turn, but I think it needs to make a lumbermill at the new city and then a farm and fishing boats at Linear B to unstunt it. The new city, in turn, probably needs to go monument-first instead of builder-first or the game will be decided before it gets its production tiles online .

This is awkward enough that I think I will send TAD a peace offer next turn, in a desperate bid to free up Hieratic for the builder. I doubt they'll accept, but maybe they will - I don't think they have much chance of breaking through at Akkad once we heal up, and they might need a break from constant ship production as badly as we do to keep up with CMF's increasingly troubling growth curve.

That said, of course the city to be founded east of Vilnius will immediately start walls and probably an encampment after, and Geneva + WotW will get their walls too as soon as they reasonably can (with an archer built somewhere so they'll actually be worth anything). I'm probably going to have to spend a fair bit of time in Limes to make that happen, but oh well.

[ljubljana]

Turn 82 - Phoenicia

Turns out we've only been at war with TAD for 9 turns, so I can't actually offer peace yet . I'll do so next turn, then. In the meantime, healing and scouting:



TAD "killed" my Great Scout (Admiral) last turn when it was on the marked tile, presumably with the galley visible in the last turn's screenshot on the "TAD galley t81" tile. Unless there are other ships out in the fog, I believe this means the TAD galley can only be on the tile I marked "TAD galley t82?". That's where I hope it is, at least, since that means it's heading back to England rather than on a beeline for Geneva. Next turn, the GA will hopefully survive unbothered to give us a clearer read on this.



Position at the end of the turn, with the critical tiles for the WotW defense occupied by biremes. Note that we're not actually that far removed from plausibly being able to move out here - I could have four healthy ships ready to start poking around to the west in just two turns, if we're sure nothing's going to turn around and swing back at WotW from the south. It'd be nice to get at least one Royal Dockyard pillaged, if only to slow down TAD's march to the third Great Admiral - we're currently barely on track to beat them there with the fourth Cothon completing in Linear B, but another Dockyard build would change that, and obviously I am, as always, borderline-desperate for the era score. On the other hand, though, making peace to get Hieratic off of the constant military builds could also be nice. Not sure what the best way forward is here.



Anyways, I found Demotic, which I forgot would give me 1 ES from being on a floodable river - nice! Actually, wait, I can get another ES by farming that flooding-enhanced plains wheat, can't I? Okay, now that's a goal worth leaving Linear B in stunted-sad-city-land a little while longer for. It looks like Hieratic picked up the jade, too, which is a solid enough use of the third charge. Cuneiform also finishes the first Phoenician super-settler, with a nice 4 movement and an absurd 5 vision range, enough to spot any approaching suboptimal ships. It starts the long (~10t) journey towards the Oracle Bones site...



...which is here, I guess . It's worth 2 critical ES, is a fairly nice city compared to what's left on the mainland, and can be settled inland for some amount of extra defensibility against the galley-heavy armed forces of our opponents. It's also already in the negatives on loyalty (only -2 for now, but that'll change when the surrounding islands start filling up) and is closer to both Russia and China than to either of our cores. This spot will probably be a huge defensive liability in the midgame once Frigates are on the board...but, well, I'll most likely lose the game due to missing a Golden Age without it, so I guess I just have to do what I have to do here .

...uh oh, I'm just now realizing that Mitla's borders cut off my approach down the east coast of the mainland. My settler will be fine, since it can just disembark and go around, but I'm not sure how my escort bireme is going to keep up. Then again, Kaiser's in the process of moving Amani there, so maybe the problem will take care of itself in a few turns. This might be a persistent annoyance to us in the future unless we're able to conquer Mitla, though.

[Woden]

Turn 82-Vikings
Finish...
   

And change policies to...
   

I can get a little gold now to buy the campuses or upgrade my archer. I am done with ships for the time being, as I need to get some improvement in my lands before I become irrelevant. Here is my home land...
   

Now that the war has cooled off a bit, I can focus on my empire. I am desperate for more production. I have a total of 2 hills within my borders(on mainland) and there are lonely 9 total hills on my island, Frigg on south. And if you look, 6 out of 9 are near the southern tip, with 4 of them desert. Luckily I have a bunch of forests that can be lumbermilled. I placed one at Loki this turn but I am in desperate need of builders. Thor will finish the builder in queue after the quad, then we will see about getting some Harbors built, so I can increase my gold.

Once I get a few builders out and can get greater than 8 in a city, I will build a few campuses and still need monuments in most of my cities. I also need a few settlers in the south and settle the only half-ass productive land near me. As for you (ljubljana) settling the city near the natural wonder and then gifting it to me, I will have to re-read the game thread. I know there was discussion on city trade and I think we landed on cities can be traded once but not sure if there were other conditions. If it is against the rules of the game, it might be better for me to settle it. I want 2 holy sites down there for the faith income to buy troops once I can build the Grand Master's Chapel. It would be only way to build halfway decent units, since production is so scarce. There is also an island to my south that I need to check out. It might be on 3rd continent (forgot to check). There is a barb camp that I am going to sail my slinger down and see if I can draw the spearman out of the camp and grab it with a longboat.

Speaking of longboats, I have one sailing around the southern tip of our island that took out the barb quad this turn, one more down there poking around the island. One heading towards Milta, along with 2 quads, that might be able to take out the city. If we can get a little time to develop, we should be sitting pretty good.