[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

If TAD holds it for a turn, though, couldn't I just retract the offer on my turn if we see that Kaiser suzereigned? That said, I'm also fine with rejecting peace for a few turns just to be safe, though I guess that does run the risk of TAD changing their mind once they finish up at Hattusa.

[ljubljana]

Holy crap, never mind about the possibility of the largest empire ES points - CMF is up to TEN cities this turn, on t84. That's with Work Ethic + Tithe + Dance of the Aurora. We could be looking at a serious runaway here - maybe that's another incentive to not only make peace with TAD but also start shifting my navy south in case we need to turn the phony war into a real war to rein them in.

[Woden]

I say delay peace a few turns and let's take Mitla. It probably would be good to shift focus to our south but I think we need to take 10 or so turns to develop infrastructure. That being said, we can declare earlier to get the era points and make it look like a fake war to start, then turn it into a real war when we can.

[ljubljana]

Sounds good to me, finishing up the turn now.

[ljubljana]

Turn 84 - Phoenicia



Peace delayed with TAD so we can take Mitla without interference. In the meantime, my units put on their best "we're still at war with you because we really want to be, not because I messed up and escaped out of your peace deal, wooo scary" faces, advancing south in what is nominally an attempt to interfere at Hattusa or pillage the English core but what is actually an attempt to keep up enough offensive pressure that TAD doesn't reconsider between now and when we're ready for peace. If no other galleys appear, next turn we can either trap and kill this lonesome English galley or sneak into their core for some scouting and/or pillaging.

You can see that I also embarked my warrior - my tentative plan is to send it down the barb camp in case it needs to clear it for the extra ES. It should barely manage to get there in time to do this before the era change - that's just a precaution, though, and hopefully there will be enough wiggle room in the math on my end that you can clear it for a second GA on your end.



Domestic screenshot. Not visible here (but visible in the earlier Mitla screenshot) is the chariot that Mitla has landed on the east coast of our island, which means my builder at Demotic can't safely build its farm until the horse finishes. I therefore reallocate it to the rice chop at Cuneiform, and will plan to buy a builder before the era change to farm the wheat for 1 ES. This is probably a good idea anyways, since the CH at Cuneiform probably can't be boosted (since we need to finish the Linear A campus to boost it, which isn't finishing until right before the era change) and so will take 8t or so to build, which means getting to size 7 sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, Hieratic will (finally) start the third trader after either this bireme finishes or it becomes obvious that we can take Mitla without it. It will take 10 turns (ugh) but we now need to buy a builder next for ES so there's not really any faster way to get it. Linear B will have to hard-build its builder after the Cothon, I guess, which is equally unappealing, but at least with Mohenjo-Daro suzereigned it will have the housing to start growing once that finally happens. As for Geneva, which is already working two unimproved tiles and is about to pick up a desperately-needed forest for production, I guess it'll have to buy a builder too, since it's still a fair few turns away from its magnificent +5 Cothon. At least once the policy swap comes in my gold income will shoot so far through the roof that it won't actually take all that long to do so.

Speaking of which, I sure would like to swap out of Maneuver/Republican Legacy and into Conscription/Naval Infrastructure in 3t with Military Training rather than in 5t with Drama and Poetry, and we sure could use the MT envoy to steal Anantanarivo before the era ends. Is this possible? Well, the math is close...



5 turns for D&P + 16 * 0.6 = 9.6 turns for Monarchy = 15 turns, and it's t84 now, so a straight-shot with MT added in there somewhere would finish Monarchy on t101, which is one turn too slow since I need to swap to the new government a turn before the era actually rolls over. However, in the next four turns, we have a Pingala city growth coming at Linear A, four normal city growths at the other cities, and the monument repair finishing at Writing on the Wall. That should be enough of a culture boost to shave one turn off this ETA, so I think I can squeeze it in, and will plan to do so, and I can also drop an emergency envoy into Anantanarivo if needed for another small boost if something goes wrong. Double-envoying Anantanarivo is trickier unless I'm willing to spend 4 turns in the double-envoy policy (which I'm not) or wait until Monarchy (which I am, but that's risky) but we should be able to get by without that if need be.

Do you remember if we need to equal or to exceed the number of envoys our opponent has in a CS to steal suzereignty? That would make the difference in terms of whether or not we need this. Also, wait, CivWiki is making me unsure of whether we get ES from stealing suzereignty from a civ we're not at war with. I thought we did, but they only list ES points for "Enemy City-State Pacified"...if we have to attack suboptimal to get the ES points, obviously that option becomes somewhat less appealing.

I'm free to declare Formal War on CMF next turn, but maybe I should wait until we get peace with TAD to avoid giving them a reason to deny peace ("they just attacked someone else, maybe they're stretched thin and we can retake WotW"). I assume that should be fine, though, since I doubt CMF is really going to DoW just to deny us ES, and even if they do, we could always denounce suboptimal instead if need be.

I'm also irrationally nervous about something - CMF and suboptimal have both built significant militaries, and neither has really done anything with them besides eat a few city states (in CMF's case). Moreover, sub in particular is falling way behind on expansion (their team has just 9 cities next to 13 for us and 14 for CMF/marco), and might be at the point where they need to attack someone to stand a good chance of catching up. If they are planning to do this, wouldn't we be the natural target, since we have a few outlying cities in the east and they can assume most of our navy is tied down in the west fighting TAD? If so, I'm not sure what we should do differently in the short term save to shift troops to the south and east like we were already planning to, but maybe it's worth keeping in mind.

[ljubljana]

Look how active we are! I guess this game's heating up

[ljubljana]

Turn 85 - Phoenicia



Well, it looks like TAD took our refusal to sign peace as a declaration of intent to renew war and moved a bunch of ships back down, as well as finishing up the Hattusa conquest. Dang it, I really messed things up by not accepting peace last turn . Well, I've learned my lesson about escaping out of deals, I guess (which is the same thing I said last time this happened in PBEM19, but, uh, second time's the charm? maybe?). I don't think they're likely to break through here or anything, but I'm also not eager to go back to the days of 1-1 ship trades, constant military builds, and paranoia about a possible Geneva counterattack...



Mitla built a catapult, uh oh. I'm confident the bireme isn't in its kill range, but it might get knocked low enough that it can't do 21 HP of damage to the city next turn. At least I have another bireme coming in 2 in case of a real emergency here. Also, can embarked military units capture or kill my settler? I assume not, but I've been very cautious about advancing it these last few turns in case I'm wrong about that.

[Woden]

I was able to take out all of the health at Milta so your Brieme can take the city but I did hear something die when I pressed end of turn, so you might have lost the Brieme. My longboat is close enough to take the city next turn, so if you boat did die, I will take it and then gift it to you when I can (I am pretty sure that was within any discussion on city gifting). If you boat didn't die, take the city and offer peace to TAD. They have a lot of boats in the fog but didn't attack my longboat, so I think they are in a defensive position.

[ljubljana]

Turn 86 - Phoenicia

Looks like the sound you heard between turns was your quad getting killed, not my bireme . That sucks, but it does mean I manage to take Mitla:



Not exactly the greatest city ever, but a city's a city. I'll repair the monument and maybe also the granary, then start the slow march towards the halfway-decent +3 Cothon. My settler also starts moving again - it's still headed for Oracle Bones, I think, but my mind could be changed if we end up in a hotter-than-expected war with Russia.



I offer an apologetic 1g to TAD to take the same peace deal they proposed two turns ago. Here's hoping they accept, I really don't want to have to deal with...



...this pretty decent-sized fleet of ships. I don't think it's a threat to take Akkad back, but neither of us can really afford to be making ship trades on this scale while CMF is starting to pull away in development. Speaking of whom, if TAD accepts, I'll probably phony war CMF next turn to lock in the era score, unless you think it's better to hold off on that until we have more boats down in the south.



Also speaking of CMF, I lost suzereignty of Mohenjo-Daro this turn due to this. What to do about this? Every turn I don't have suzereignty costs me a fair few food per turn, since most of my cities are housing-capped and are about to get more so after the policy swap...but if CMF takes suzereignty sometime in the next few turns, I can attack and take it back for 2 more precious ES. Not sure what the right play is here...I'll do more thinking about the ES math over the next turn or two and decide then whether to add my envoys now or keep saving them.



Domestic screenie. I finally (just in time) realized that, because we're on track for Monarchy before the era change, we're also on track for the normally-difficult Castles eureka, so I should switch off of that and try to finish it the same turn as Monarchy. I'm putting a turn into Stirrups now, and may finish it unboosted, since the extra food on pastures could be very helpful and who knows where Feudalism is. The +1 ES from the first tech in the Medieval era is also still in play, but I don't think it's worth wasting the Castles eureka just to have a slightly better shot at that. I'll also need to finally do Currency in the next 2 or so turns, timed so CHs unlock after Linear A starts its boosted campus (which should be next turn after the Linear B Cothon completes) but before Cuneiform finishes this next settler. Rice chop is incoming in 2t too, which hopefully will be enough to actually hit size 7 (it should be with Magnus, but if not I'm in some trouble lol).

In the "interesting times" category:



Suboptimal has a plant pretty close to Russia in what will surely be a very difficult spot to defend once frigates are on the scene. We have cities not far from here, too, which will be even more true if I settle Oracle Bones. I'm keeping my eyes open for some potentially serious 3-way fighting in the seas surrounding the former Nazca.

What do you think about offering suboptimal a DoF after we declare on CMF? I can't see any reason we'd want to fight them in the near future, but I can think of plenty of reasons why they might want to fight us, and it could be very useful to get 30 turns of making sure we're not on the wrong end of a 2v1 in this area.

[Woden]

Looks like the sound you heard between turns was your quad getting killed, not my bireme . That sucks, but it does mean I manage to take Mitla:

Better result than you losing your boat and not taking the city. I am a little surprised that they were able to kill my quad, he was barely injured but I guess catapults are no joke against quads.

Speaking of whom, if TAD accepts, I'll probably phony war CMF next turn to lock in the era score, unless you think it's better to hold off on that until we have more boats down in the south.

I will have to see where his units are located before I agree to this. CMF did have a few ships checking out my recent conquests and I have an injured warrior sailing back to Rupu that should be able to make land on my next turn. My eastern cities have walls and are safe from any attacks before my fleet can make it over, so no worries there. I just want to make sure my warrior is safe. I will let you know when I send the save along.