[PB 64] Ginger plays as Charlemagne, famed man of letters

[Ginger()]

Superdeath sent a trade deal fish-fish horse-horse and we both stop trading with Gavagai.
I replied honestly with Fish-Fish because I have no intention of warring SD but also don't want to go in on Gav at this stage of the game.

T150 update, still no HG, Mjmd must be crying right now

[Mjmd]

T150 update, still no HG, Mjmd must be crying right now

WTF.

Do we get an actual T150 overview?

[Ginger()]

I know, the poor gardens are not getting the love they deserve 

But hey, don't look at me, I've got no stone and the lowest city count. 



The t150 update will never happen, but you do get a turn 151 update because this turn is more significant.



What happened this turn?

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Well to start with, I both finished Compass and won a 60% roll for a scientist, allowing me to immediately bulb Optics. Hurrah for unnerfed CtH circumnav, I'll get 14 cpt from that and get a much-needed new luxury from the whales. Having to keep modern military units in unstrategic locations for HR military police hurts my soul, but it does make the power graph look very good. 



Also got some rather upset new Diplo from Superdeath.

   

 I think he's recalling the time I offered all my cities for his war with Gavagai. But I don't play to hold vendettas from the early game if it actively detracts from my position and I still have a shot of winning. I'd *love* to knock Gav down a peg and avenge the first war, but that's not feasible because of the interactions with Commodore. I've starting roading the jungle chokepoint to Comm and will fort the tile and stuff some units there as a toll gate, risk to roading the tile is that he births an artist from his Caste golden age. 
I replied to SD by asking for a loan to help me finish Guilds in 4. 

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What's going on across the empire?

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For starters this is the tech screen, and it looks pretty good. With a combination of golden ages, very large cities, serfdom/lumbermills, and supremacy of will I have managed to maintain a tech (and production!) lead (or at least parity) with the rest of the field despite only 8 cities and fractional cottaging. The only techs I lack compared to others are Mono, CoL, and Calendar. 
Arguably a large strategic tech mistake was made at the end of our first golden age, in going for Music and Math/Construction instead of straight Guilds. I had for some reason figured in my mind that I would prefer Catapults to Knights as a defensive tool, but it quickly became clear that Commodore brought a ton of junk/collateral absorption that would negate all but a rather large stack, and we ended up with pure hitter builds. Knights are 50% more expensive than WE, so if you are making a 1-mover stack, they're not that bad, but it's still yucky. Speaking of Commodore's  think there is a secret strategy to try out with CtH AGG where you spam 10 scouts and keep them in your stack purely as collateral bait. 

I would've liked to do a short spiel about the idea behind each city's development, but since I don't have much time today, I'll photodump all the cities in the order they were settled, and if lurkers have any questions they want answered about particular cities, I can oblige them. 

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

[Ginger()]

t152 report
Screenshots appear to be broken, they no longer appear in the same folder they used to. Only thing I did that mightve affected it was delete some from the folder, but I don't see that affecting the pathing, so... idk. Maybe I'll dig around through my files and try to find out where, if anywhere, the screenshots are appearing. Other explanation is mechanical, my PrtSc broke. 
So no photos of the impressive stacks walking around. Average power fell by 30k since my last log in, which is a pretty shocking loss of 180k power or 30 HA equivalent. Looks like Naufragar got the better of it, I counted 17 wounded Sumerian units, and excluding the possibility of Ethiopian collateral, that's about 17 dead units for Gavagai alone. I'm not going to try to make sense of the mutual love-hate triangle over there and what, if any all their relations are, but it looks pretty intractable. However Naufragar will have Knights soon. 
Speaking of Knights, I should have had those ages ago. I've been beating myself up for this the last couple days, but Math-Music-Construction was just a monumentally stupid waste of time. Even if I had gone Math -> Construction for the benefit of Catapults (which ended up being useless!!), teching Music still only made fractional sense as denial at best. Because I'm expending GPs to boost my tech rate, because GNP is the weak link in my MFG monster. As such I just dropped a Scientist to cash in on Optics, a tech that costs exactly as much as Music. So what on earth was the point of that? I could've just hardteched Optics and had it's effect much sooner 
Of course the benefit of having Optics pales in comparison to being able to drop hammers into Knights now, instead of stupid wealth builds to get to knights that I could've had 15 or more turns ago. I can console myself that sealing off the Music artist for everyone else limits their economic recovery choices and that wealth builds were always going to be a necessary evil with the way I've constructed the empire, but it still feels so bad. Ugh. All this MFG could've been knights. 

Superdeath keeps trying to get me to cancel deals with Gavagai, no, I can't, not only is 5 FPT lost from unhealth as I lose his Corn, but it's also just bad geopolitics from me. Yeah SD, I know he screwed me over, but I need his cooperation to win because of the way I've dug my grave with Commodore. I think SD is build his road to me in order to try and "surprise attack" Gavagai by routing his cavalry through my territory. The down side is that I might piss off Superdeath so thoroughly that he invades me instead, but I am top power so *shrug*
I also sent Gav a fish-fish but attached his conversion to Buddhism, I don't want that deal public. 
I'm thinking we try and fence-sit this as long as possible while eating Commodore, but if you have another idea Civac, let me know.

[Krill]

When you delete screenshot the new screenshot replace the old numbers.

[Ginger()]

           

Edit: Ahh okay, thanks Krill, this works now.
Gav doesn't have much, maybe 5 units in Gorbachev, Idk why SD is fixated on marching through my territory instead of just kicking down the front door. They have OB and Gav is monitoring his stack, so SD should have vision and I have no idea why SD doesn't immediately strike for the pyramids. Maybe he isn't scouting in order to feign disinterest in Gav, or maybe he's plotting on me instead, but both of those seem rather silly possibilities.

[Ginger()]

I love Superdeath, I love Superdeath, I love Superdeath

Oh, you've heard about that already? Well I'll just talk about my murderous intent instead.

Tech vision on Celtia finally came in and we can see Commodore going Engineering 
Pikes won't save you. Castles might though so maybe me gloat less? Last time I got cocky it cost me a delta of 400 gold, more if you count inflation. 
He also moved his boats to the other side, I can no longer guarantee the first strike with my Caravels. 
I'm running really light on collateral (this is a reoccurring theme), so I might need to actually promote Accuracy to bring down walls in time. Last thing I need is to bang my head into Castles with Catas. 
I don't think Commodore can fend me off this time, but to quote his reports, "he does not go gentle". So I'm in a race to close out the resistance and capitalize on knights faster than Naufragar can. To that end, I'm not sure why Naufragar gave peace to Gav, right now he's got the best relative position to Amica (the main defender of/contender for Gav's lands) before Renaissance tech.
Next GP comes in 2 turns, Name of the Rose is truly the greatest city in the world.  50% Scientist (on ice for Astro), 20% Priest (Mahabodhi), 20% Engineer(bulb), odds and ends Artist/Merchant.

Gavagai and SD are both asking for my intervention, but I'm set on killing Commodore (well, booting him off the mainland, those islands will take forever, and he might well survive the game). There's simply no way for me to split Gav with SD or vice versa, so it is what it is now. 

Still no HG, I check every turn for an aqueduct

[Ginger()]

Lmao really Comm? double move before my war declaration?

Whatever I'll play second and let you slam against that forest fort you want to occupy.
your main hitters are mounted

Edit: Since I'm declaring next turn, I gotta wait for him to play now... grrr

Edit Edit: which means I might need an extension to be able to declare war this turn and wait for Comm

Edit: Edit: Edit: To clarify, this is annoyed-me bitching in my thread, I don't assume that Comm meant to swap turn orders, and furthermore he's well within his rights to do so, but gripe gripe vent vent etc.

[Ginger()]

Commodore maxim #whatev:
Always be the one who knocks

The clock is ticking for my 8-city rump state, I've managed to patch an frankenstein economy together to squeeze something out of this dry dry land, but serfdom mills, stables food, specialist stacking, and golden ageing can only let me putter along for a while. This is my last chance to drive the debate so we best submit our closing argument. 

   
His stack, high number of catapults, high number of Horse Archers, and enough LBows to prevent me from storming the city without collateral. Not like collateral would be useful against a stack with 20 worthless units in it. (Seriously CtH Agg needs some serious consideration in snake picks, the ability to cheaply stack worthless trash and immunize against collateral is highly exploitable). 

My stack has a high number of advanced units, but only 5 catapults, and numerically disasdvantaged if you count Commodore's ancient junk. I promoted every 11xp Elephant to formation, but left all my knights at C2, even those with a third promo, we'll see how badly I'm mauled next turn.

   
And for fun, here's (one of?) Amicalola's stack(s?). Rapidly obsoleting in the face of Naufragar's Guilds, and with naught but farms for economy, the pressure is on Amica to make a move now against the Sumerians, or be consigned to the dustbin of history.

As for Superdeath's war, I find in unlikely he'll make much further progress unless Gav tilts and slams, but he should be able to cling on to the pyramids.

[Ginger()]

Hehe

I just remembered that the Greed quest is still active. If I sneak a settler down there and put the horse in my culture, will it trigger the event and spawn 4 knights?

60h for 360h seems like a fabulous deal. The spot is nice but I'm not heartbroken if SD or Gav take it, I just want the Knights.

Edit: the picture looks like it didn't appear in the reply mode, I'll take a pic of the current layout when I get to sign in. The city that formerly had those horses was razed by Superdeath.