[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[ljubljana]

I can play in 2 hours.

ok, well, an hour from now it looks like i do have a work meeting but i can play for a bit starting in 2.5 hours (10:00 your time) if that works?

[ljubljana]

Oh of course.

I remember people briefly considered Sumeria for PBEM7, but that was before the shared strength bonus was thrown in. I'll bet what Thrawn was testing was if the permanent alliance in a team game is sufficient to trigger it, and since he did take them, I'll bet it is.

Novel but inspired, what else is new. I'm miffed I didn't think of that myself.

I wonder if they are considering a combined longship/war cart rush? Would be very risky, but against an unprepared team (see: not us, possibly no one in this game) it might actually work.

I strongly suspect this combo is just unstoppable and the game is already over  Not really because of war carts (although they will likely bring those along too, using ziggurats to rush shipbuilding) but because I assume Sumeria shares the science/culture that Harald pillages with his longships, in addition to the gold. And all my combat strength calculations are off now, and with Victor 3 + Twilight Valor + Oligarchy + Sumeria (!) Harald's longships will attack at

wait for it

fifty-six combat strength

stronger than a Jong, stronger than a caravel

as soon as he gets freaking PoliPhil on, like, turn 60, at which point he will have roughly 20 such longships if he spams them

this is so disheartening  god dammit thrawn

[ljubljana]

okay! so, the following things are likely off the table:

- monumentality
- tithe

and the following things are likely mandatorily on the table

- both TAD and I taking victor before anyone else
- crusade
- twilight valor, maybe for both of us even though Portugal badly needs Free Inquiry for Naus and I will have roughly 4 cities ever following that playbook

[ljubljana]

and the thing is, with Japan, crusade, anticipation of thrawn's move to take Victor 3 first, and a plan for both of us to do a dedicated military buildup from the very early stages of the game, we are likely the best positioned team to stop this. wtf are poor Woden + Banzai supposed to do? if they are playing with 30-strength galleys i give them precisely zero chance of keeping an RND unpillaged vs harald's 26-hammer caravels, and once sumeria starts spamming ziggurats and drafting off norway's pillage science they will hit actual caravels SO freaking fast and just crush everyone.

no, this train has to be stopped BEFORE norway can pillage someone out and ride war carts to a conquest. it demands a response so badly that chevalier and us will pretty much have to be in galley spam always war mode w the thrawn team from the very start of the game.

well, here we go.

[ljubljana]

maybe by quintuple-posting like this i will inadvertently signal to chev just how dire the threat is?

not that they need it really, i'm sure their thread reads pretty much like this one just in one long, coherent post instead of 56734832 incoherent ones

[ljubljana]

one thing's for sure though: i badly overrated Indonesia in the lead-up to this game. Jongs will not come close to trading cost-efficiently with thrawn's longships, which, let's say this a second time

- are as strong as unpromoted caravels
- can be built for 26 base hammers

and, since i as Japan am expecting to nearly match their CS, i probably could hold off jongs without too much trouble either following the same playbook

maybe stacking combat bonuses on melee ships is just the way to go and we've all been badly overestimating the frigate line? is that even possible?

[ljubljana]

well, you know, dipping from Monumentality from Twilight Valor could be fine honestly since it sounds like my faith will have to go pretty much exclusively to crusade missionaries

but is a classical dark age even possible if we're scouting well and i found a religion + hit poliphil? let alone chaining it to the following Medieval dark age which is pretty much our main wincon?

hopefully it really isn't possible for thrawn who has to take 6 guaranteed from longships (4 from UU, 2 from a boat) and can't really prevent others from contacting them. we are gonna have to do what we can to sabotage thrawn's era score math - contacting them is the obvious way to do that, but what's less obvious is we'd like to delay contact until everyone else does so thrawn will think they have ES headroom. and maybe there are other things buried in the ES math we can use to mess them up too

[TheArchduke]

I think that UUs are still vastly overrated. I held of War Elephants with Warriors.

Positioning does matter, promotions matter.

Now longships and oceans destroy positioning but still they are not invincible.

If they are, well they will get banned for future games.

[ljubljana]

yeah, UU is worth less than one promotion level. We just have to match them combat bonus for combat bonus by both going Victor first, taking Crusade, maybe both taking Twilight Valor. I fear that not all teams will be able to do the same (especially Woden + Banzai are really vulnerable) but luckily Chev's Phoenicia (please play phoenicia chev) is in this field and you'd better believe he won't give thrawn a second of peace if they start killing Woden. we can't really out-quality thrawn's troops but maybe maybe maaaaybe we can win a 3v1

luckily the threat is dire enough that i think there's very little danger of an early attack from chev here

[TheArchduke]

Oh of course.

I remember people briefly considered Sumeria for PBEM7, but that was before the shared strength bonus was thrown in. I'll bet what Thrawn was testing was if the permanent alliance in a team game is sufficient to trigger it, and since he did take them, I'll bet it is.

Novel but inspired, what else is new. I'm miffed I didn't think of that myself.

I wonder if they are considering a combined longship/war cart rush? Would be very risky, but against an unprepared team (see: not us, possibly no one in this game) it might actually work.

Spot on.

Hmm, I do think this is a one trick pony. We will be prepared, I hope the others are.