April 5th, 2021, 02:15
(This post was last modified: April 5th, 2021, 02:17 by ljubljana.)
Posts: 2,830
Threads: 8
Joined: Apr 2015
ugh I feel so dumb, I wasted so many beakers just by being on autopilot and not thinking. note to future me - stop doing that, dang it! 
Posts: 3,002
Threads: 14
Joined: Apr 2017
(April 3rd, 2021, 20:53)ljubljana Wrote: 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.
Realize I didn't get you an answer on this. No, you can't declare war on the teammate of someone you have a DoF with.
Posts: 3,002
Threads: 14
Joined: Apr 2017
Nothing interesting happened on my turn except they added a new launcher, which sucks, and made me restart my computer. I ended up added the work around to launch the game directly. Screw having a launcher open while I play the game.
April 6th, 2021, 22:23
(This post was last modified: April 6th, 2021, 23:51 by ljubljana.)
Posts: 2,830
Threads: 8
Joined: Apr 2015
Turn 98 - Phoenicia
Cothon repairs finish up at Linear B, which starts a builder...or it should have, though unfortunately I think I forgot to double-check this. I think a builder was correctly queued up, but I'll verify next turn. Castles also comes in, and I start Apprenticeship, due in 3 (but actually 4 because I have to divert for a turn to activate the district discount).
In the west, biremes are slowly making their way towards that exposed MPF city - the leading pair is probably 5-6 turns away at this point. Because a number of biremes still have to heal, this movement is disorganized and trickle-attacky, which I don't like...but that's probably the right play, because even the four fastest-arriving biremes can easily snipe that city if they arrive before any MPF reinforcements. The GA is still scouting off to the north, because I realized a classical GA boosts neither biremes nor caravels/frigates, and so is totally useless for this attack...whoops.
In the east, we have more or less the same situation, with a stream of biremes trickling towards CMF's weakly-held western domains. How many ships do you think we should mass in this area before we make our move, and where do you think we should attack? Relevant considerations include the following:
Sub looks to be heading for Shikishima, in which case I don't think we have much chance of taking that city for ourselves. However, I imagine CMF, still believing our war to be phoney, will send their navy up here to hold off sub once the Jongs appear and war is declared. That could give us an opening to attack...
...here, at Mikasa. Your four ships and my bireme are enough to take the city if CMF's navy is off fighting sub, but if we attack now, CMF might respond here rather than committing ships to a pretty hopeless defense against Jongs, which would doom our attack. Maybe it's better to wait until we see CMF ships moving up towards sub before striking here. On the other hand, the city will get its walls soon - I'm not sure how feasible it'll be to crack that with just ships, though it might be possible if CMF doesn't have a knight upgrade ready.
Alternatively, there are a few other options available to us. One is that we could try to rout CMF's navy - you can use one of your longships to poke around on the ocean and watch for CMF attempting to move ships up to engage sub. Meanwhile, we can hide the rest of our ships at Oracle Bones/Hod, and, when CMF engages, we can swoop in from behind and threaten to trap and destroy their navy. If we actually did destroy their navy, I'd be a little worried about a partition of Russia in which sub claims most of the spoils due to actually having ground troops in the area, so maybe at that point we offer to let them go in exchange for a couple of outlying cities?
To be honest, I'm not sure we could even hold Mikasa against CMF's loyalty pressure, though it'd have reasonable denial value anyways and we could always just liberate the CS or raze the city. I'm not really sure what the best high-level plan of attack is here, but I do think we should try to come up with one in the next few turns before sub really starts rolling.
One more thing - TAD and Kaiser are building up troops again, which I don't particularly like. Should we try to convince them to join the pile-on after sub declares on Russia? That would give them something to do with their units other than preparing to attack us again. On the other hand, though, maybe we want TAD to be free to attack sub if it looks like they're going to snowball off CMF into a position of dominance. If all three teams really do end up attacking CMF at once, I'm not sure how long they can hold out, and sub's in by far the best position to capitalize on that. I really wish we had some ground units in this area...I guess I could start slowly sending over my horse, but by the time it gets to Russia I'll probably need to turn it around to head off TAD. Maybe we should think about upgrading your warrior down here and embarking them? I can give you some gold for that either before or after my lighthouse purchase if you think it's worthwhile.
EDIT: Okay, one more one more thing: let's say that by the end of this war you have taken one Russian city and I have taken one Australian city. How does peacemaking then work? If I offer a peace deal to CMF, would they be able to cede me marco's city even though it never belonged to them? Would they be able to cede you their city even though you're not the one negotiating? Or is the game only set up to handle city transfers from one member of one team to one member of the other team?
April 7th, 2021, 05:58
(This post was last modified: April 7th, 2021, 08:09 by ljubljana.)
Posts: 2,830
Threads: 8
Joined: Apr 2015
I wonder where Mercenaries is? My best guess is that it's in the same column as Feudalism after Games and Recreation - not sure how sub could have got there so fast with their below-average culture if it were after Feudalism/CS/Guilds. We're both going to need it in the next 25t for upgrades when the DoFs run out, and probably won't be able to get the boost - maybe after Feudalism one of us should start researching down that path while the other plows through Civil Service? That is, unless you think boosting CS is in the cards - IDK how close your capital is to size 10.
Posts: 3,002
Threads: 14
Joined: Apr 2017
You are probably right about Mercenaries. I will switch to Games and Recreation in a few turns while you work to complete Feudalism. I will also need a few more units to boost Mercenaries. My capital is no where near the boost to Civil Service, since I need to get 2 settlers out in the near future. I don't know how close you are to the 8 land units but I think I would need 3 more archers. I can do either one, which one would you like to research?
As for sub's attack on Russia, I do hope he draws CMF's fleet east. I will know in a few turns when I can get vision on CMF's coast. My plan is to scope him out a few turns and see if I can pillage or attack. I am not sure on how many Jongs is bringing down on Russia but if it is only the few I saw, not sure how successful he is going to be. If CMF is reading this right (which he probably is), he can jam up the Jongs by just throwing galleys at them. Make suboptimal kill his boats and not be able to focus on cities. The good thing, he will have to focus on suboptimal and won't have much for us. Unless of course, he abandons his island outposts and focuses on defending his motherland. Then we might have issues.
Posts: 3,002
Threads: 14
Joined: Apr 2017
(April 6th, 2021, 22:23)ljubljana Wrote: Okay, one more one more thing: let's say that by the end of this war you have taken one Russian city and I have taken one Australian city. How does peacemaking then work? If I offer a peace deal to CMF, would they be able to cede me marco's city even though it never belonged to them? Would they be able to cede you their city even though you're not the one negotiating? Or is the game only set up to handle city transfers from one member of one team to one member of the other team?
No but ceding a city doesn't really matter, at least I it didn't. In the past, it was a SP mechanic that prevented the AI from holding a grudge if they didn't cede it. Occupation ends when you make peace regardless if it is ceded or not. Having said that, I am not sure if it still holds with loyalty, i.e. do you still get negative loyalty if the city is not ceded? Pretty sure any occupation penalty still ends.
Posts: 2,830
Threads: 8
Joined: Apr 2015
I am nowhere close to the Mercenaries boost, unfortunately - I have only 3 land units as of now. I suppose I might be able to boost CS in Cuneiform, though, which will hit +9 food when I buy the lighthouse. That will take time (probably ~30 turns unless I run a TR), but it might be more urgent for me to follow you to Mercenaries than it is to get CS ASAP. Alternatively, I can just bite the bullet and hard-research CS next so we can get alliances up. I'm a little hesitant to do that if it means I won't have Mercenaries when the era ends, though, which I think is most likely the case given my slowish culture.
April 7th, 2021, 21:02
(This post was last modified: April 7th, 2021, 21:02 by Woden.)
Posts: 3,002
Threads: 14
Joined: Apr 2017
I sent a deal asking for 70  I want to upgrade my warrior to a sword and clear the rest of the southern island and make my way down towards Russia.
April 7th, 2021, 21:59
(This post was last modified: April 7th, 2021, 23:06 by ljubljana.)
Posts: 2,830
Threads: 8
Joined: Apr 2015
Turn 99 - Phoenicia
Pretty peaceful turn. +5 CH and +3 campus come online at Cuneiform and Linear A, respectively. That means Linear A did get the extra hammer from the Cuneiform TR updating mid-turn, neat! It also means I'm finally above the GA threshold, with 2 turns left in the Classical Age. Cuneiform resumes its settler, of course, due in 4 and earmarked for the double niter spot at Abugida. Linear A starts a 4-turn builder after much worrying about whether an 8-turn settler would be better - the tiebreaker ends up being that I plan to buy the Cuneiform lighthouse before this builder finishes, and would like a strong city available to start on the corresponding trader immediately. My builder at Cuneiform fixes TAD's turtle pillage, and will start heading over to Linear B next turn, where it will set up the last Feudalism farm.
I send you 70 gold - upgrading the sword seems like a good plan. However, I also ask for 6 of it back - is that okay with you? That 6 is exactly what I need to have enough for a lighthouse (480g) in 2 turns rather than 3, and I think you should have enough to upgrade the sword next turn either way. If that's not the case, though, I'd say the sword takes precedent.
As you can see, I switched over to Military Engineering for this turn to unlock the district discount. One thing I'm undecided about - do you think I should buy the niter tile at the capital? It's 155 gold, which is substantial (~1 caravel upgrade), but it would take around 40 turns to acquire by the tile picker, which could really mess up the timing on a potential mass Frigate upgrade down the road. I'm sending the next settler down to Abugida and probably chopping out a monument to at least start building up a stockpile, but I think the difference between +4 and +6 per turn could end up being significant.
When were you thinking of starting to work on Mikasa? As soon as sub attacks, after we see where CMF's navy is being committed, when the sword arrives, or when we have some critical mass of ships in this area? In case the answer is next turn, I move my bireme into range of the city - if CMF scouts it with a ship from Mikasa, it'd give us away, but the scouting ship would probably be doomed at least. If you think we should wait a few more turns, though, I'll pull back out of scouting range next turn so as not to potentially tip our hand.
In the north, CMF has scouted the Jongs with a Great Artist, so it's probably fair to assume their whole navy's heading up to Shikishima at its best rate. Hopefully your longship will be able to scout that happening next turn before we commit to a timing at Mikasa.
|
