[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Rusten]

Not sure I'll be able to log in before you play, but I should be available late tonight so I can check right after. If you play late Charriu will most likely not be around to log in immediately.

[Miguelito]

offered Charriu peace for 765 gold. Really curious what he makes of it, and I'm also not at all certain that fighting is a good idea for us. But we'll see where it gets us, the ship has sailed.

civac is amassing an uncomfortable number of ships. I count like 15 galleons, and on warships he's even with us now. On the upside we have not been finishing ships in order to build drydocks, whipping the first one in Madeira this turn (for 4 pop ).

[Miguelito]

Charriu did not take peace nor did he attack, only razed AllForMeGrog. Will we have to wait for his catapults to arrive? Not sure how we'd defend against that, even after the revolt he can attack through Mjmd's culture . Damnit for falling one hit on that pike short of taking Captain Jack, and my positioning mistakes around that.
I'd love to send some galleon loads to pressure him, but with civac looming it's hard to find units for that purpose.

[Rusten]

Yeah, razing that city would've made things a lot easier.

War with Civac means Piccadilly wins I suppose, but I can see why he'd do it, so I'd like to deter it as much as possible. His options are limited compared to ours.

[Miguelito]

I could not get to it, so you have the whole night to take a look
civac seems to be waiting for us to play...

[Miguelito]

civac very subtly did not play for 2 evenings before we did...
I saw a suspicious amount of fresh knights in his cities as well, like if there was a whipping spree. No new ships though, interestingly. It would suck if he went this turn already. I'd love a few more turns to whip out frigates from fresh drydocks.

I had not finished the continent overview series. Here's the last one, ours:


You can see the split, where both of civac and us got 2 of the hubs. civac also got the central island early, the island on the N-S-wrap, and most of Elkad as well. On our side we were able to settle an Astro island for ourselves, and have made some gains against Mjmd, but are stalled for now with Charriu's knights looming in the fog.
You can see the issue that I'm so nervous about on the signs, which are up to date. He has 7 privateers floating and 2 frigates, and more importantly 15 galleons, presumably containing his otherwise disappeared knight stack. I let the naval power balance slip a little (and built drydocks), and we currently have no galleons, 5 privateers and 2 frigates, but we'll start churning out a lot more now.He also has at least 2, maybe 3 unused GGs, so he might do an amphibious assault and send commandos, maybe even with morale, which would easily threaten all of our mainland. Of course defending against a fleet like that sucks very much. My main nightmare is him forking on the inner sea, but also sailing north he could cause huge suffering, threatening our southern coast or attacking the astro island (currently has just one draftee musketeer in each city ).

Meanwhile you also can see that civac has excellent inroads into Cornflakes, or also the option to attack Ichabod's island. Both have no relevant power compared to what both of us have. I guess Cornflakes' mainland will get taken by Piccadilly soon, hopefully with some of the spoils going to Ichabod. I think F4 is telling me that Frozen and Picc both have Rifling.
Edit:

I can't play my turn for now due to ingame factors, so if the timer is running low, could you add some time?

Ok I think the Cornflakes split is about to get started. Actually, did I miss a wardec?




wondering what to do with EP. I'd love some city visibility in Cousin Jack, but Mjmd is resisting and I think we will not get there without using the slider, which seems a no-no. I could also try to get it on Charriu, who generates less EP. Oh I also drywhipped a spy in the iron island city of Irish Rover before it starved after coming out of the revolt without a lighthouse. Maybe se'll be useful, the other options where a workboat  or walls (couldn't dry whip a 50h longbow or whatever, although 2*20*1.25 should return just that. But I think there's a bug around that which Charriu just recently fixed.

In the war we killed the knight that razed AllForMeGrog - scratched him with a draftee, then killed him with a musketeer waiting for his second promo, who could jump on  a ship to escape. Emboldened I attacked another C2 knights with draftees. Flawless loss in the first round, a little scratch in the second, lost the 70% battle, then had to delete the killer as well.
So we lost 5 draftees to kill 2 2promo knights, and now if you look at hammers that isn't too bad - the 5 pop we lost is worth 187 hammers even with forges, so we come out pretty even but we have higher capacity.

Drafted a full round because of civac paranoia, and our CY went down to third place, although I can't really figure who would be second. (from graphs: not Cairo nor Picc, civac is 1st. Amicalola?). 

I sent Charriu peace for the reduced ransom of 400 gold. He has no easy razes left, but did not offer anything last turn either.

[Miguelito]

Thinking about it more.... I feel that instead of pushing through RP to Rifling - what I had been saving up for, with the wane hope of a magical peaceful resolution all around so that we could go for Corporation instead - we really should turn up the slider for Military Science, right now.

Our tech advantage with firgates didn't last long. We do have an advantage with access to drydocks fwiw, but that doesn't count for much. SotL will be good on defense, and also if civac is doing what I fear he is - preparing a commando strike - he will take it himself and we'd have to research it just to get even. I can even see us building Nav I ironclads later on. Also we need missionaries, as due to the lack of vassalage the drydocks don't deliver the second promo yet (while civac does have vassalage).

I'm also still feeling an itch to call it a day and evacuate Wellerman. We are facing an existential threat at home, and meanwhile we have bound forces there with no clear plan on how to go forward. Even without it we still have the most cities in the world, as long as we don't lose our core.



vanrober in the PB62 thread asked how I am feeling about Exp/Fin, and that's a good quesiton of course, that I should think about a bit. I don't think it warrants spoilers for that game, I'm just voicing my thoughts with regard to this one, and the general state of the mod:

• EXP my reserved feelings are mostly about the whole trait being about just one building reduction, even if it's the most important building. But it is certainly very impactful, and changes a lot how you can approach certain things. I think it has been a pretty good fit for this map and our game - we've settled a lot of cities quite late, and without forests. For late cities I suppose the settlers are less of a problem, and the issue is getting them online fast. A 1pop vs a 2pop whip for every new city (or working a mine for some  7? turns) is obviously a significant difference. Now when there are forests the extra chop may be rather easy to arrange, but of course a saved chop can go into the forge or lighthouse. van (who knows more about other people's games) already noted that we took some time to get rolling, but then from maybe turn 60? on could manage pretty explosive growth, which is probably thanks to all the established granaries. Side note, the health bonus has actually been useful in Bonfim occasionally, which is a city without fresh water nor the option to build a harbour, and which has a few floodplains and reaches size 19. If we ever reach industrialization it might help more significantly.
  I don't think it is better than Imp in most cases. Imp helps you earlier, not only the second city, but also the third, which was very important in our PB54 game for example. And it has the GGs on top.
  
• FIN has, on the one hand been great for us, at least as long as we had the Colossus, which enabled us to conquer Donovan while picking up Taj, Lib, the Economics merchant*, and overall got us a tech boost that we're still nurturing ourselves on now that our economy has fallen behind. Regarding the bad economy, of course Fin is what is keeping us afloat more or less. But without having run numbers, I'm very much sure that Org would be a lot better for us in our current situation, taking into account the building discounts, and moreso considering that we might reach factories yet. The sea commerce nerf with the lighthouse did cost us significantly in the early game, after some time of course it doesn't matter as much anymore. Which is what Charriu intended.
  

Would we have been better off with Justinian? I'd love to be Spi right now. Just imagine switching between vassalage/nat/maybe even free speech, OR/theo/FR, Confu/Tao, slavery/serfdom/caste, all that. Otoh we'd likely just be broke, and would never have gone for the Colossus play which got us in a good position in the first place. Although possibly would have gotten mids considering how late they fell.



Also while remembering the earlier game I realized that Charriu betrayed the guys who sent him horses when he was rushed by Lazteuq (no idea if that was ever significant, but anyways)

[Rusten]

Charriu is a sweetheart outside of the game, but he's chaotic evil (or at least chaotic neutral) ingame.
Sorry for being MIA this week, I've been swamped. And I'm going out of town again for a week tomorrow. Probably can only login during mornings/early afternoon then. I'll find as much time as I can.

Military Science sounds good too. I'm sure you'll make a good/qualified decision on your own too.

[Miguelito]

Or directly to steam power, and block the inner sea with (nav1) ironclads? More efficient tech path with some economic benefit as well.
I have to look more closely but I think ironclads could work pretty well in the inner sea. Less so on the southern coast though.
Relevant edit: civac did not move his ships and launched a GA. Doesn't look like he's about to attack immediately, although he's keeping the turn split. Also the partition of Cornflakes has started, and he could try to get some islands for himself, and maybe even raze some on the mainland coast. If Picc hadn't taken the islands yet.

[Miguelito]

Turn 176 - remember we're still at war?
So yes, not only am I quite worried about civac, we're also still at war with Charriu and Mjmd. We've been holing up in Wellerman, with an occasional snipe:


Everybody loves to attack glowing units, but of course the knight lost . The musketeer who came afterwards, and those which I brought to cover, passed unmolested into this turn at least.

This turn I could not stand it any longer. If you have been following this thread you will have seen that I like to take risky, or arguably reckless and impatient decisions at times. What happened was that a) Charriu got MT and b) Mjmd's city popped borders, making the whole situation at Wellerman untenable. So here's what I did:


I'm speculating here that Charriu has moved his knights away to upgrade them, so I'd have the time to raze Captain Jack. It would have been much better to wait an additional turn so the spy could look behind the city to see if the knights are there. I thought that Charriu would have moved them back and upgrade this turn, so I'd have to use the window given, but of course this turn he doesn't even have gold yet . We'll see how it goes, but disaster is not unlikely. At least we'll get closure. Now if this works somehow, we'd have to survive the incoming cuirassiers until the end of the revolt, when we'd fire the GA and pop borders with artists. Charriu's Lazteuq peace running out gives me a little bit of hope that he moved at least part of the units back, but Laz is still busy with GKC.... Charriu is playing at this moment, but of course we will not know before tomorrow at the earliest.

This turn we were also good at something:


although I whipped away 8 food afterwards, but still uplifting. GNP, less so

We now have drydocks up in Canoa Virou, Madeira Boa, Chora Capoeira, and Onça Morreu, all located on the inner sea branch between our homeland and former Spain. Right now I count one more warship of ours, and we're getting new ones fast now. I've also started to build missionaries in a former Elkad city so the ships get 2 promos, but it will be a slow process. I can't bring myself to go missionaries over the salon in Bonfim (our other monastery), but the next excess citizen could be whipped into one.

This turn I turned up the slider for Replaceable Parts, and we should reach Steam Power in 4 turns. With the option to divert to Rifling, which depends a bit on how things turn out around Wellerman, and if civac sends back my fish-fish. Rusten, do you think my ironclad idea makes sense? (see the post above this one) Otherwise we could still change to MS next turn.