[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Woden]

Yes, just accept it. You will still get first strike since you are player 1. I am just not sure how it would work if you didn't have a friendship but I did.

[ljubljana]

Turn 96 - Phoenicia

An absolute embarrassment of positive developments this turn:



Sub offered a DoF and TAD/Kaiser accepted our DoF request, so we're safe to develop in peace while harassing CMF until t126. Miraculously, roland also accepted my 6g for 6gpt deal, removing that source of international tension while recouping most of my 210 gold. Even the pinned niter is in an unbelievably good set of spots, invalidating zero districts while boosting three different IZs! I may have to buy the tile at Cuneiform, which is annoying, but well worth it for that beautiful adjacency bonus. In the southeast, meanwhile, Abugida now jumps ahead of Nsibidi to the front of the settlement queue to start building up a stockpile for frigates.

Okay, now I have a development plan. Next turn, I'll swap to Monarchy and Ilkum/Veterancy and start a wave of boosted Serfdom builders in Hieratic/Demotic/Linear B/Geneva, while Linear A and Cuneiform wrap up the ES districts for the GA and the Runic builder heads south to finish off the Feudalism boost. In 4-5 turns, I'll buy the lighthouse in Cuneiform and start the corresponding trader in Linear A, while the capital returns to Magnus settlers for Abugida and Nsibidi. When Feudalism comes in, I'll swap to Serfdom and then found Abugida while the builders complete for 25 builder charges, enough to solve my builder labor problem for essentially the whole rest of the game. Then, using the production tiles that this brings online, I'll do lighthouse into trader into maybe settler in just about every city. That should give us enough of an economic boost to really accelerate into the Medieval era .



In the "embarrassment of riches" category, an Australian scouting galley steps a little too close to Writing on the Wall. It gets two-shot by this bireme and the one 1SE of the city, knocking both ships into Embolon range .

With the TAD DoF, I should now be free to reroute the biremes at WotW to go harass Russia and Australia - it'll take ~10 turns to get there and ~10 turns to get back in time to be around when the DoF ends, but that still leaves another 10 turns in which to do some damage. Now the question becomes: do I sail these boats east to attack along the same vector as the ones moving down our east coast...or do I sail them west around the worldwrap to hit CMF/marco from multiple directions at once, to try to catch them out of position and maybe get the jump on some undefended Australian cities? I'm actually inclined to favor the latter plan - splitting my fleet is not thaaat dangerous in this situation, since even 8 ships can hold off CMF's whole navy for a long time by occupying choke points while the other 8 ships do whatever they feel like in Russian/Australian territory. Moreover, if one group of ships does get tied down by the Russian navy, a second, equally-sized fleet approaching from the opposite direction provides an interesting opportunity to flank the Russian navy from behind and perhaps trap and kill some decently-sized portion of it. Finally, attacking with two groups of ships from different directions doubles the odds that at least one group avoids being scouted, which is probably required to actually raze any cities with just biremes at this stage of the game.

Prospects are suddenly looking really good for setting up a global coalition against CMF. After Feudalism, I might go for Civil Service to unlock military alliances and offer them to TAD/Kaiser and/or sub/roland, which has the double benefit of effectively extending the DoF while locking down a nice CS bonus.

Three questions about alliances:
1. Do both parties have to have Civil Service unlocked to sign one, or is it enough for just me to have it?
2. Do alliances stack? That is, if we both sign an alliance with both members of the sub/roland team, will all our units get +10 CS? Because if so, holy crap, this could get out of hand for CMF/marco in a big way.
3. Can you and I sign a military alliance with one another even though we're on the same team?

If the answers to the first two questions are "no" and "yes", respectively, I'll delay the builders to get Civil Service up ASAP, in time for it to come online as my biremes are arriving. Honestly, there might actually be an argument for doing that anyways, since sub/roland have pretty strong culture and will probably prioritize it too given the geopolitical situation, and getting the lighthouses and traders first will provide just as much, if not more, of an economic accelerant as the Serfdom builders. That would also boost CS for you quickly so you can do the same and we can sign an MA with each other, if possible. If we do that and sub/roland do that as well, marco's lagging culture will become a huge liability for their team, preventing them from responding in kind.

Finally, other than the lighthouse purchase in Cuneiform (which I think is pretty much mandatory for snowball reasons), I'm going to be saving my gold for caravel upgrades from here on out. I'm due for a big bpt increase over the next few turns, hitting probably 70ish by t101, so I might actually get some caravels in time to help out against CMF/marco. If that's the case, my GA is incorrectly positioned and I should start sending them down now to boost any caravels I might manage to put on the board. Perhaps my land units (such as they are) should also start the slow, agonizing crawl towards Russia in case we decide it's worth trying to hold any cities over there.

[Woden]

You'll get first strike either way (and Woden last). DoFs expire when the turn number changes regardless of who offered and who accepted.

Yes, but what if I have a friendship and my teammates does not. Would he have to wait until the other team plays before it officially ends? Some stuff, although ends at the start of the turn, might not be in effect until the first player plays. Not sure how it works with teams.

[ljubljana]

Another random thought: I didn't do this intentionally, but I think it works out well that, due to the somewehat-staggered pace of healing, both attack forces consist of an advance guard of maybe one or two ships followed by the main body of ships. The advance guard can identify any scouts while not revealing my true numbers, potentially lulling CMF/marco into believing it only represents a pillaging or scouting force rather than a full-scale attack fleet. Meanwhile, as long as I'm cautious and stick to choke points, I don't think there's much chance of even the advance guard being stumbled upon and killed by CMF's fleet without getting at least one turn in which to run away.

[Woden]

Three questions about alliances:
1. Do both parties have to have Civil Service unlocked to sign one, or is it enough for just me to have it?
2. Do alliances stack? That is, if we both sign an alliance with both members of the sub/roland team, will all our units get +10 CS? Because if so, holy crap, this could get out of hand for CMF/marco in a big way.
3. Can you and I sign a military alliance with one another even though we're on the same team?

1. Yes, both parties to the alliance have to have Civil Service. 
2. No, you can only have 1 of each type of alliance, so only 1 military alliance is allowed.
3. Not sure.

[ljubljana]

Turn 97 - Phoenicia

Divine Right comes in, so I swap to Monarchy and make the following policy swap:



Veterancy is only boosting 3 outlying Cothon builds in Mitla, WotW, and Runic as of now, but it's better than nothing, which was the other option . And, yeah, I went with builders-first rather than lighthouses-first (with the exception of the one I'm going to buy in Cuneiform). I'm planning to get 5 Serfdom builders in the next 10ish turns - at 90ish hammers each, they're half the cost of a lighthouse + trader right now, and, while they won't all give 6 extra yield immediately like the traders will, some of them actually will (Geneva's is worth 6h + 1f + 2g + amenities just on tiles currently being worked plus a forest the tile picker is working on), and all will give 3+ yield immediately with more coming in with the tile picker. Feudalism-first also has the advantage of getting Serfdom online before our next few cities are founded - Civil Service next would waste a few charges by necessity since we can't get that + Feudalism done before t115 or so. I'll do CS ASAP after Feudalism comes in, though.



I'm pretty sure splitting the ships is the right move at this point. Look at this poor, exposed city - it's way closer to Writing on the Wall than the nearest Russian/Australian city on the other side of the world, has no walls, and is sitting at 20 defensive strength with marco unlikely to have an HC ready to turn into a knight or anything like that. If we attack this city and CMF's western CSs at the same time, I think CMF has to choose one area or the other to defend, and if either of those locations is left with no naval garrison, it's pretty much doomed.



Geneva finished its super-Cothon this turn to jump-start my science, and I've got more from the Linear B repairs and the two ES buildings coming in over the next few turns. Geneva starts a builder, which Hieratic's trader will help it complete in a reasonable amount of time (I checked and it's juuuust barely in range of a TR to Cuneiform). Hieratic and Linear B will start Ilkum builders after their current projects; Linear A will build the trader for the bought lighthouse at Cuneiform, then make a builder as well.

We're going to learn something about how the production queue works in 2 turns...or at least I am. It turns out that Linear A's campus is exactly 2 turns + 1 hammer from completion. There's no way to get the extra hammer by working different tiles or anything...but the city has a TR active with Cuneiform, which will be boosted by 1h when the CH completed. So will the city get the extra hammer, and thus finish the Campus 1t early, given that Cuneiform is presumably processed before it in the production queue? With this game, who knows .

I also have to do some sneaky manipulations of the district discount formula to successfully get that CH at Demotic (the next build there after the builder) to be discounted. By my count, we'll have the discount if the Campus and CH (plus my 5 Cothons) are finished, but if Apprenticeship has not been discovered to unlock IZs. My plan is therefore to keep Military Engineering 1t from completion, and switch off Apprenticeship for a turn to make the discount update after those districts finish up. ME is so close to completion that I'm optimistic about pulling this off without actually having to delay Apprenticeship any.

EDIT: Just to confirm, TAD can't get around my DoF by declaring war on you, right? I assume so, or all these DoFs are pretty pointless unless we get all four pairwise DoFs, but just thought I'd explicitly confirm it.

[Woden]

Turn 96-Vikings
The slowdown over the holiday weekend gives me a little time to report on my latest turn. Start off with completing...
   

I decided to just finish Theology instead of waiting for the boost to do a policy swap since we are no longer in threat of war and I can switch to cards that allow me to build a bit before gearing up for war again. The policies I go with are...
   

Most important, I switch into Colonization to get at least 3 more settlers out to fill up the south. I also slot Veterancy to build harbors and lighthouses for gold and trade routes. I dropped the prophet card. I looked at the current beliefs to see if anybody snagged DotF and Russia had grabbed it with an apostle, so no need to hurry a religion. Also, no way I am going to get a Golden Age, so I will save points until the next era. I am 1 point shy of a normal age right now and will get the last point with the prophet the turn before the era change. It would be better to get the dark age and then slingshot to a heroic age but no way to prevent it.

I sail a longboat past suboptimal's capital...
   

He has Jongs. I can see 2 and I figure there is a 3rd in the city. I bet those will sail south to former Nazca next turn. I have a few ships in the area that are going to scout out Russia and see if there are any pillaging opportunities or if there are weaknesses that we can exploit to take a city or 2...
   

Back home...
   

I have Odin and Frigg start settlers. I will double chop some jungle at Frigg to speed up the settler there. Both will sail down to the desert. My other cities will build harbors and lighthouses to increase my gold and get some much needed trade routes going. I think my empire should be looking a lot better in 10-20 turns. For civic research, I am planning on researching feudalism straight through unless you think you can get it done sooner. I want to the extra builder charges when I settle my next round of cities. Odin will build another settler after the one current in production. Then all 3 cities should be settled right around the time feudalism finishes. Tech-wise, my plan is to finish Castles, then Apprenticeship (for added production to the few hills I have), then Machinery. I was planning on Machinery first but no need to rush crossbows yet. I might be able to fit a more archers in before Machinery completes this way.

[ljubljana]

For Feudalism, I should be able to get the boost - I made two farms at Oracle Bones, captured two at Mitla and WotW, have one at Linear A for housing, and my Runic builder is going to put the last one at Linear B on the wheat. I should finish it in ~9 turns, so you'll probably want to spend maybe one turn of culture on something else.

Apprenticeship is my plan for the next tech too. Are you planning to boost Machinery? I am probably not, but I do need to build at least one archer somewhere so I don't have to hard-build a crossbow for my walls.

I need to figure out if I can squeeze in another settler somewhere (Linear A? Hieratic?) instead of one of these builders - Magnus AH settlers are fine and good, but I'm really not using Phoenicia to its full potential by only making settlers in one city.

Wow, am I ever glad sub's Jongs apparently have someone other than us in mind. Our game would 100% be over if we had to fight off them right now, at least as far as remaining competitive for the win is concerned.

EDIT: Okay, so I have two charges left on the Runic builder, which are going to the Linear B farm and either the fishing boat or PFH lumbermill. We then need, by my count:

- 5 charges at Runic (fish, turtles, cows, marble, pearls)
- 4 charges at Linear B (hill, hill, PFH, forest)
- 1 charge at Linear A (mercury)
- 3 charges at Cuneifom (hill, crabs, third-ring niter)
- 3 charges at Hieratic (jade, forest, hill, excluding the line of farms that I want to put down eventually but that isn't necessarily urgent)
- 4 charges at Demotic (wheat, wheat, forest, hill)

That's 20 charges = 4 builders. I could delay some of them though - Linear B will take a bit to grow onto the production tiles, Runic fishing boats + pearls are non-urgent, and the Demotic farms are just 1 food each which is not a big deal. It might be better in terms of yields to wait on that last builder until the cities grow enough to work the tiles, and have Linear A either make a settler or go straight on to the lighthouse after this next trader. Well...although if I delay the last builder, that'll push it back to when I don't have Ilkum in, which will cost 30 hammers or so. Let me see how long these tiles are going to take to acquire culturally and then make a decision...

[Woden]

Apprenticeship is my plan for the next tech too. Are you planning to boost Machinery? I am probably not, but I do need to build at least one archer somewhere so I don't have to hard-build a crossbow for my walls.

Yes, I will have my 3rd archer in 2 turns.

[ljubljana]

...why in the world did I hard-research Stirrups instead of proceeding straight to caravels? No idea what I was thinking there...I don't have an HC to upgrade, I didn't need the era score from a medieval tech because Castles was ahead of schedule, and +5 total food from pastures is good but unspectacular. I didn't even wait to see where Feudalism was before just plowing through it without the boost...wow. Big mistake there from me, hopefully it doesn't cost us.