[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Woden]

Doing Education next would give me the boost and I could spend pillage science elsewhere. My next target is Education after Printing so I can buy a university for the Astrology boost. Since you have a jacked science rate for another 5 turns, I think Education is the better play because it will get you more boosts a little further down the line and waste less science.

Edit: It is going to be very important with your drop in science that I give you boosts. I might actually get the Siege Tactics boost. I plan on chopping out the Grand Master's Chapel with the forested deer tile at Odin and could faith buy 2 catapults to upgrade once Metal Casting is finished. Even though Russia has twice my science rate, if everything goes right I should be the tech leader in 20 or so turns simply from pillaging and planning right.

Edit2; And I will send you all my niter next turn. Will you need any gold?

[ljubljana]

Okay, I will do Education next, which will take 4 turns. I won't need any gold if my income doesn't change at all (on pace for 489), but maybe it's worth sending me like 10 just in case my income drops for some reason.



After that, here is the tech tree. I really hope the selected tech is either Industrialization or Steam Power, in which case it will be a billion years until even CMF can tech to ironclads. What do you think we should do about the Industrial/SP boosts? I kind of think you may want to get them both manually, since you are definitely going to be the first player on our team to research both of these techs. If you want, though, I can get one or both as well, since if one of those techs is after Banking, I could conceivably reach it in a non-infinite amount of time. If we are going to double up on one, I guess it should probably be Industrial - I will need factories ASAP anyways, and will get a similar amount of hammers from two IZs + Workshops (working 2 engineer specialists) as I would from two shipyards, plus the shipyard are insanely pricey. My best city, Cuneiform, even in max production configuration that steals tiles from Hieratic, will still take 9 turns to build a shipyard, and Geneva will take 20 (!!).

edit: Wisselbanken sounds like an awesome idea. I think I will slot it in when I discover it as well and then swap my Chinese TRs over to your capital when they complete. I will probably want to prioritize Isolationism TRs with Cuneiform to grow my cities up to size over more routes to your capital (which probably doesn't need that much more food), but after I max out on those at non-housing capped cities I will send more to your capital.

Also, not sure about buying workshops for Industrial, although building them does seem like a pretty good idea. I am mostly nervous because you will need to be the one who does a mass-upgrade to ironclads when the time comes, and we should make sure you have the gold for it. If you are confident that you will be able to afford both, though, then I think workshops have a good ROI to prevent you from wasting pillage beakers.

[Woden]

If we make sure to position our boats so I can pillage everything I can, I think we should be good for gold. Just what I can see, I should get close to 4,000 gold when running Raid. Each Harbor has a lighthouse for 2 pillages plus all the mines and we still have a few English cities on the other side with Harbors plus whatever Kaiser has. I think we can easily pull 8,000 gold from both of them. Add in both our incomes for the next 30 turns (if one of the techs is #7) and we shoudl have plenty to upgrade.

[ljubljana]

Turn 136 - Phoenicia



RIP TAD's boats. I am not sure if I'm confident enough to send frigates up north - probably not quite yet, more likely I will just leave some in the south once we have a toehold here and move most of them up north. But I am confident enough to send my wounded caravels up north to heal instead of just continuing to throw them into the breach.

I will just barely be able to hit The Compassionate Society with 4 frigates next turn thanks to my GA placement, so you might want to leave the four tiles to the east of the city empty on your turn if possible. Hopefully we can take it out quickly before it finishes that encampment on the southern tip of its island. What do you plan to do with your caravels? I think we might want them to move west to cut off any Kaiser ships that might show up, but also TCS might not have its walls up for very long so it could be good to get started on its pillages. I will hit the city with 4 frigates next turn and then a lot of frigates the turn after that if no Kaiser ships show up, so my best guess is that you will be able to take the city in 3 of your turns.



I started the IZ in Cuneiform and stole all of Hieratic's hills to get it done in 3. No idea what to build after that - a pair of super long shipyards here and at Hieratic? A pair of workshops with Linear B? It will want both eventually since it is a future coal plant spot, but not sure what to prioritize - I guess the answer depends on which tech, if either, you would like me to try to eureka first. Any thoughts on that?

Let us check in on the CMF-suboptimal war...



CMF has a few caravels now, and it looks like China is ready for them. Well, ready-er than TAD is for us, anyways. Sub and roland might be able to outproduce CMF by himself, especially if he's building infra and wonders instead of more ships all the time, which would be a big boost to our odds in this game.



Suboptimal's island cities are starting to fall, though, so it's not like we have that much time. I guess we should see how hard it is to take the initial TAD cities while I build up a few more frigates (I should get 5 before the DA), and hopefully we will be able to still take cities with a split navy...

edit: I have been thinking...with TAD's navy pretty dead down here, maybe I don't need to swap in Twilight Valor right away. What if I just stay in Professional Army and Retinues for the foreseeable future (dropping TV and Conscription) so that I can upgrade one quad every 2.5 turns for the rest of forever? I could also alternate between a period of TV/Conscription while I build up niter and quads and a period of PR/Retinues while I upgrade them, though I'm a little unsure of how much niter we'd have to waste waiting for free civic swaps under that plan...

[Woden]

I will just barely be able to hit The Compassionate Society with 4 frigates next turn thanks to my GA placement, so you might want to leave the four tiles to the east of the city empty on your turn if possible. Hopefully we can take it out quickly before it finishes that encampment on the southern tip of its island. What do you plan to do with your caravels? I think we might want them to move west to cut off any Kaiser ships that might show up, but also TCS might not have its walls up for very long so it could be good to get started on its pillages. I will hit the city with 4 frigates next turn and then a lot of frigates the turn after that if no Kaiser ships show up, so my best guess is that you will be able to take the city in 3 of your turns.

I will leave the east side open at The Compassionate Society. I do want to get a caravel stationed on the tile NE of the mountain so I can start pillaging the harbor at Economy Drive the following turn. Most of my fleet is going to sail to the west side of TCS and pillage its harbor. I will eventually need the Japanese archer killed so I can pillage the plantation but that can wait until the walls are gone. I will try and leave pins on where my ships will need to be the following turn so we can maximize pillaging opportunities. This is going to be a little bit of a dance with our ships. I don't think we take a city until all coastal pillages are made. I think we will need it to keep competitive with CMF. Feel free to pillage any fishing boats to heal since they only provide health to me too.

Suboptimal's island cities are starting to fall, though, so it's not like we have that much time. I guess we should see how hard it is to take the initial TAD cities while I build up a few more frigates (I should get 5 before the DA), and hopefully we will be able to still take cities with a split navy...

Under African Skies has been bombed out for a while and I figure CMF has a frigate next to the city to prevent the walls from repairing. I don't think they have the land units to take the cities yet but who knows how long that will last. I think we should be able to take TAD's cities about as fast as CMF can capture suboptimal's. I think 2 rounds of frigate fire should remove the walls and then maybe a few shots the following turn to reduce all the health so I can capture the city. With their high defensive strength, you will pretty much need to reduce the health to zero on your turn so I can capture it after it heals the 20 HP on my turn. I am not sure if a single boat will be able to do more than 20-30 damage.

edit: I have been thinking...with TAD's navy pretty dead down here, maybe I don't need to swap in Twilight Valor right away. What if I just stay in Professional Army and Retinues for the foreseeable future (dropping TV and Conscription) so that I can upgrade one quad every 2.5 turns for the rest of forever? I could also alternate between a period of TV/Conscription while I build up niter and quads and a period of PR/Retinues while I upgrade them, though I'm a little unsure of how much niter we'd have to waste waiting for free civic swaps under that plan...

You might get more out of switching out of the cards and doing mass upgrades when you can. You will save on maintenance costs versus having a constant rate of upgrades and you could benefit from other cards. Might be good for the immediate future to do continuous upgrading to get enough boats to attack on multiple fronts but there will be a point where new boats won't get to the front before you capture the cities and move on. Better to mass quads and upgrade down the road a bit. Niter shouldn't be a problem in 20 turns, we will have another source from me and multiple sources from TAD's lands. I am also going to increase my storage with a few barracks and an Armory, so we can dump your niter to me and then upgrade when we get close to max capacity. Also, I will need some niter for bombard upgrades if we go for the boost.

[ljubljana]

That all sounds good to me. I guess the toughest thing at TCS will be pillaging the harbor since it will take two turns to chew through the lighthouse. We should be good though if you reposition next turn, then I hit with 4 frigates, then you get the lighthouse, then I hit with 8 frigates or whatever, and then you pillage the harbor and take the city in the same turn. We are going to have to be careful to do as much pillaging as we can at the same time as we bomb out the defenses to avoid giving TAD free shots...the best way for him to slow us down at this point is to kill a bunch of my frigates with city defensive fire. I will definitely pillage a bunch of fish on my end to try to stretch our ships down here a little more.

I do think we will probably want continuous-ish upgrades for a little bit until we have critical mass for city conquests on both sides, which probably looks like 16 or so frigates depending on how much military TAD and Kaiser build in the meantime. But it would be nice to get some turns in TV as well if it looks like we will need to actually engage another TAD or Kaiser fleet.

Two bombards seem pretty pricey for a boost, since they are expensive and bad units that eat up our precious niter supply. But it still might be worth it, we need to save every beaker we can get... At least they might be almost okay on defense against CMF, if we put one in Hod and one in your other eastern CS.

[williams482]

The Interface didn't update (what else is new), but the Siege Tactics eureka post-patch is for two trebuchets, not two bombards.

[ljubljana]

oh right, trebuchets exist. Okay, that seems much easier and less costly then.

[ljubljana]

It kind of feels like the game might be perilously close to dying for lack of interest here, with the favorite to win withdrawing and the turn pace vastly slowed from where it was 15 turns ago. That would be a huge shame, as I don't think the game is anywhere close to decided. If this dies like PBEM14 did without a winner (and it would be without a winner, I am totally unwilling to concede to anyone in this position) that would be really sad IMO.

Then again, I also have an eerie feeling in the back of my head that someone like TBS or Sulla is going to volunteer and totally shake things up. Now that would be a fun twist .

I also posted something in the tech thread to try to encourage someone to take a shot (which you can read, it has spoiler tags but all it contains is my thoughts on how strong a position CMF is in). Let me know if you think I should take it down, not sure if it was too much or not.

ps: I have dinner plans for tonight, but I will play the turn before I go to bed, and I doubt I'll be out for longer than a few hours anyways.

[Woden]

Turn 136-Vikings
No time for a full turn report but I pinned a few targets where I want to move my caravels in the south. I did send you a gift of 14 niter and 20 gold. Please send back me your spare turtles, if you can. Here is how it looked at the end of my turn...
   

If CMF's boat stays where it is or moves up to Official Visit, he is going to try and block city captures. I do have at least 1 berserker heading over towards these cities that can help take city. I thought we decided this kind of action was poor sportsmanship back in the early PBEMs? We will have to see where he goes, I though the same thing with william482 in PBEM18 but he was just watching the action.