[PB64] naufragar's bingo parlor for assassins

[naufragar]

A pretty uneventful turn. I took the barb city, losing two Vultures in the process. This was one more than the projections promised. Superdeath has broken ranks and is the only player trading with Amica. It eats me up that I'm gonna have to bribe him to close borders. I'll do that once I get a spare Calendar lux connected. Brother doesn't settle cities and just gives away free money to the Great Lighthouse/Currency guy. Why not?

The real news of the turn (110) was...


(And that's me at full research.) You can see some characteristics of my empire in these demos. We are almost dead last in land area. If we weren't Financial, we'd be pretty dead. We still might be since we have no hammers and therefore no military.

The massive rival GNP is Ginger spending that sweet, sweet Commodore tribute:


Ooooooh boy. I'm gonna file that under "Somebody Else's Problem."

[naufragar]

The massive rival GNP is Ginger spending that sweet, sweet Commodore tribute

Guess not.


That leaves Superdeath the GNP king. That's surprising. I still can't countenance ending settler production on turn 60, but perhaps I've been too harsh.

[naufragar]

That leaves Superdeath the GNP king. That's surprising. I still can't countenance ending settler production on turn 60, but perhaps I've been too harsh.

Finally popped our Golden Age and Superdeath is still lightyears ahead of me:


(Ok, yes, that's with no money going into science, but even with the slider at 100% research, he's still ahead of me.

Our peace treaty with Amica expires next turn and Amica is itching to attack:


This screen shows both Fortune 500 and Software Man produced chariots last turn. His city on the jungle pass also produced a chariot. Why is he building all these chariots? He has the means to build Horse Archers. Gavagai has also been building horse archers, so what's with all the chariots?

I've actually fallen for this before in PB59. I've got a spear at each of my border cities, which is only the illusion of security. If he can throw enough chariots at the city, he can get to the juicy vultures. It took Amica a while to connect horses, so I was relying on those axes. Let's see if I've corrected enough. Gav and Amica are still nominally at war, but since I haven't seen any power dips, Amica is most likely just looking to stagger his peace treaties and will peace out with Gav when it's time to attack me. I think Gavagai's interests are more aligned with mine than Amica's, so I don't think he'll stab me, but we shall see.

Pseudo-edit: Notice that Amica has moved from Construction research to Metal Casting. Is this because he has woken up to the threat of maces? I hope not.

[Charriu]

Totally out of context, but looking at your screenshot I think it should be possible to build a canal from your inland sea to the western water tiles. Always cool to see those

[naufragar]

Totally out of context, but looking at your screenshot I think it should be possible to build a canal from your inland sea to the western water tiles. Always cool to see those

I can't figure out which is best:


Obviously, the fort directly South of Uruk (which I still haven't renamed  ) is more direct. Using the two-canal system, however, is more discreet. Maybe there's some sort of opportunity there?

Pseudo-edit: Oh wait, the western water tiles? I'm not sure. I believe boats can only travel 1 tile inland using forts.

[naufragar]

Oof. What a mess:


Yes, I want this. I sent back acknowledgment. It's just darn tricky. Next turn after I get Currency, I'll try to propose a timeline with a gold countdown. I don't really want to go to war with Amica yet. I'm cruising through the tech tree, which means I've unlocked a lot more stuff I want to build (missionaries now and forges soon) and I haven't built up an army yet. On the other hand, I don't want Gavagai to feel spurned and to decide I'm more tasty than Amica.

I spent more time on the turn than I should have, and now I need to sleep. I'll try to write a more substantial post tomorrow. Things are happening in the wide world. Tricky, tricky.

[naufragar]

Here's what's tricky about the Gavagai offer:


Right now, he, Amicalol, and I are all pointed into this central area, which Amica has claimed first. I don't think it makes sense for Gav to fight me while there's so much tension in this area. If I attack Amica here and win, I cut Amica off from Gav and lengthen my border. This might lead to problems later.

Right now, Amica's only neighbors are me and Gav. Superdeath is across the water, and I have no doubt that Amica can eventually hop on over, but that's less likely than a normal land war. My neighbors are Amica, Gav, and Commodore. I've been treating Commodore as my strongest ally (as in "leaving cities completely undefended"). I hope that's a safe assumption. He's currently in a war with Ginger and captured a city off him too! I think it's in both my and Comm's interest to assume we're completely safe from each other. If I attack and defeat Amica in the area shown above, Amica's only neighbor is me, whereas I'll still neighbor him, Gav, and Comm. This seems a recipe for pain later on.

So I'm forced to attack here:


Amica has been building up forces on that tile in response to me putting more units in my city, which I did because I was worried about an Amicalolan sneak attack. Classic cold war arms race. Regardless, that is one tough nut to crack. I basically have to go straight through a stack fortified on a +75% defense tile. (Ignoring canal shenanigans. )

I'll suggest a 15 turn timeline to Gav. This hopefully gives me time to reclaim the dyes tile and get some catapults. Unfortunately, Amica is finally teching. For a while, he was completely out of money, but now he's at a very respectable +40gpt. Not sure what happened. Likely, giving two cities up to Gav in a peace deal was actually good for Amica's economy. All this to say, it's likely that I won't be able to attack before Amica gets a few cats. Very difficult.

So I don't really want to attack. But as I said in the last post, I want to maintain good relations with Gav and this might be the price. Gavagai has the problem that he neighbors Ginger, who has the potential to be a real problem for him, so I'll just try to keep him on my side as long as I can.

Because time is on my side:


Yeah, yeah, this is during a golden age, and if Superdeath's data was on here, he'd still have a bigger GNP spike than me. No matter. This is great. Fin/Org Sumeria in a golden age. Delicious.

Speaking of Superdeath, he's been demanding my extra Spices, first for free and then for 2gpt. I counteroffered with 5gpt and he repeated his 2gpt offer. So I offered him Spices for declaring war on Amicalola since I didn't have the option to ask him to stop trading. I'm not sure what he's on about. He seems to be negotiating from a position of "how can this benefit Superdeath" and not "how can I make this deal acceptable to naufragar." He has 7 cities. An extra luxury that enables him to do something so small as work an extra coast tile at 3 of them gives him +9gpt, more than enough to justify my +5gpt price tag. If he were my neighbor, I'd worry that he'd be offended at my refusing his wacky trade deals. As is, I don't think this bites us.

[naufragar]

Got back. Don't think I screwed anything up too bad, but this is a very difficult game.


Amica finishes Construction next turn. It's still at least 10 turns before I get cultural control over the dyes. This means Amica has plenty of time to whip some cats to one turn Uruk. Gav wants me to fight Amica but it's some time before I'm able. One wonders how soon Amica's 50% city lead over me turns into a crushing advantage. 14 catapult whips is a lot...

The north is probably where I have to attack. The south just doesn't matter:


Sure, I could put together a force that kills Fortune 500, but why would I? Maybe I could hold it, but it's exposed on flatland across that damned sea. (That inner sea cause me pain turn after turn.) If I were sure of Gav's commitment to fight Amica simultaneously with me, I'd try, but I'd much prefer if I could make gains in the North and Gav could make gains in the South.

And for what it's worth, Gav is still giving Amica open borders  so Amica has perfect information on how Gav moves his troops. Why in the world Gavagai and Superdeath haven't been respecting the Amica threat is beyond me. Explicable, but infuriating.

[naufragar]

Those of you who have read any two random posts in this thread know that my game plan has been to trust Fin/Org on 10 cities to out tech Amicalola on 14. I mentioned before that I only have a fixed window before my coastal tiles are outstripped by normal villages. On Amica's side, he has the mighty help of Protective Great Lighthouse. Even with all that, I trusted that I'd be able to maintain a tech lead. Well, friends we got trouble.




Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with GNP and that stands for-- well, you know. I'm having Golden Age withdrawal shakes. 

[Mjmd]

Do you have room for another crappy city or two down south? I honestly forget.