[PB64] Amicalola Gets To Heaven with Tarkeel and Ljubljana

[Magic Science]

I build a fort underneath Fever Dreams with 7 workers. Although I was planning to anyway, I think Ginger actually told me to do this in diplo this turn. I guess we can give him the credit.  

How did he possibly do that? .

[Amicalola]

I build a fort underneath Fever Dreams with 7 workers. Although I was planning to anyway, I think Ginger actually told me to do this in diplo this turn. I guess we can give him the credit.  

How did he possibly do that? .

It was something like copper/horse for all the resources at Fever Dreams, plus the city. So something to do with attacking there, at least.

[pindicator]

I was going to say, how could you tell us something like that and not show a screenshot of the diplo?

[Amicalola]

I was going to say, how could you tell us something like that and not show a screenshot of the diplo? 

"I don't need to take a picture of that. I'll just remember what was offered and explain it in my initial report."

[Amicalola]

T220
Naufragar pressed the panic button:


To be clear, I think that's the right move. The only way Slavery beats Serfdom is a short term whipping spree, and then damaging the Serfdom player before their MFG has a chance to catch up; in fact, that's effective enough to push Serfdom out of viability a lot of the time. 

Thanks to checking my images from last turn, we know he whipped his capital, these three cities, and one other. 


Hard to say if he whipped cannons or frigates. I expect cannons in the northern cities and frigates in the southern, I think. The disaster scenario next turn is that he's moved enough frigates to whack our fleet.


One of those Galleons is Navigation 2 (+2 movement) - I think that means his HE city has GGs in it, and is building ships. I love that, it's the same thing I did in PB59 and it carried my game very hard there. 

I spent our 400 gold upgrading two catapults to cannons near Get To Heaven, since we can see 4 cannons here. 


Then I realised that Naufragar also spent a bunch of gold, and those cannons were probably upgraded catapults for defense.  I think it's more likely that he attacks/pushes on Fever Dreams to the north instead, where he did the whips. We'll find out soon. Next turn I'll upgrade three catapults to cannons up there, for the same reason; short-term thinking is definitely the go here. 

Superdeath sent this diplo, to which I responded in kind. 


I don't trust him for a split second, but there's no harm in him thinking that I do.

[Amicalola]

T221
Naufragar was able to defend his cities from our stacks, but at the cost of losing most of his available hitters (that I know of, at least  ). So that takes some of the pressure off. 

Stacks to double-check next turn. I forgot to do this initially, but luckily, we only moved one tile, so I was able to move a privateer back-and-forth to sneak a peek. I'm getting a bit worried about where Naufragar's fleet is, so we moved back one tile to avoid any sneak attacks while still being able to fork all the cities. If I was Nauf, I'd be massing my ships on the tile SE of Caesars and/or 2E of Scytale.

Superdeath's stack is either healing or lurking. We'll be keeping a close eye on it, if possible. I also cut the southern roads towards Cherry.



And here's an overview of the post-Gavagai world. Naufragar made peace with Ginger this turn, leaving only the Commodore-Ginger and Amicalola-Naufragar wars for now.


As far as our builds, we ran quite a bit of wealth last turn to get an extra cannon upgraded, but now I'm mostly swapping to unit builds. I imagine these will stay that way for the rest of the game. I like doing knights in the furthest-away cities to get them to the front sooner, and otherwise we're going for a mixture of muskets, frigates, and cannons.


Actually, moving the fleet backwards might have been stupid. It means he can block access to two cities by guarding in that 1-tile choke point we were in last turn. It depends: if he has enough to wipe our fleet, moving was good. If he only has enough to block the choke, moving was stupid. If he can do neither, or his ships are out of range, it doesn't matter.

[Amicalola]

T222
Seems Superdeath's blood meter has yet to be satisfied. 

[Amicalola]

It would take a pretty big mistake, or a very committed dogpile, to stop us at this point. Famous last words.  

Porque no los dos?

[Amicalola]

T226 - The World At War 
Well, having presumably annoyed everyone by delaying the game for a week, it's happening. The Final Dogpile is upon us!  

Superdeath's knights rampage throughout the northern core. I expect him to land 6 more this turn. 



Naufragar marches on Fever Dreams with a massive army. It seems we weren't tying him down as much as I'd hoped.



Commodore whips up a storm, and gathers his fleet for a strike on the isles. 


There's an extra galley 1W. And that's just the units we can see.

Meanwhile, Ginger demands ~600 gold, with vague promises of attacking Naufragar in 6 turns. He is researching Paper, and we are desperate enough to accept. 

Before I discuss my turn, I just want to take a moment to appreciate the other players in this game. Rather than just giving up, they're properly dogpiling the leader, which is really quite rare in RB Pitboss, and I think that's awesome. Particularly because it looks like it might actually work; at this end of this turn, SD is going to have the most cities in the game.  

In the north, we clean up two of SD's knights and keep our cities defended. I'm waiting to retake Dreadsprings until I'm certain it can't be lost again, and razed. 


The experience nets us a new Great General: Chandragupta Maurya is enlisted as a supermedic.



At Fever Dreams, we sound the retreat. Sims show Naufragar's stack absolutely demolishing ours. We leave behind two longbowmen and a pikeman, to hopefully kill some attackers on their way out. 


Our fleet moves one tile to the north, to enable us to unload at the fort next turn if necessary. 



We also ship two boatloads of units towards our northern islands, and are once again forced to spend all our money upgrading as many units as possible. This was taken before upgrades, but defenses are thin.


We finally send Commodore some suitably passive-aggressive diplomacy to remind him that he so recently promised friendship for leaving Sean alone. We should have taken that city while we had the chance.  

Here's an interesting thought: Naufragar's game-long weakness has been production. He either bulbed or researched Theology many, many turns ago. I'd thought he was getting the AP to mitigate that weakness, but apparently he just wanted Theocracy. But I wonder how difference this game is if Nauf builds the AP all those turns ago...

[Mjmd]

A lot of the normal wonders weren't built this game and like the slow tech pace there is an obvious reason the lurkers have been loving