[SPOILERS] Out of retirement and into the fires of war. yuris125, Pitboss 68

[yuris125]

Miguelito built Parthenon. So much for our trait advantage - he certainly found a way to make hammers on this map and leverage Ind

Thoth now has 3 catapults, and is ahead of Commodore on the power graph. So far his units are in the cities, I'm keeping an eye on them - we will have to make sure we keep the southern border safe as we attack Commodore

[yuris125]

Commodore is researching Construction, due in 3 turns. That's a very fast Construction research, but I think everyone has the tech now, including Thoth, so he gets maximum known tech bonuses. He will have access to his own war elephants shortly before our stack is ready. We may have to bide our time and see if we find an opening. Worst comes to worst, these war elephants will be handy to include in our stack when it's time to attack Thoth

Currency is in, Machinery should take about 10 turns

[Qgqqqqq]

What's your goals in the medium and long term?

[yuris125]

The general shape of the plan is still "attack Thoth with crossbows, attack Commodore with knights". Obviously this is subject to adjustments depending on what happens in the game - if Thoth or Commodore attack us and we can kill a significant part of their stack, we can counter-attack sooner. If they attack and we cannot defend, everything is moot and we're sad. And I will probably still peek into Commodore's land in about 5 turns when our war elephant stack is ready, see if we can make any gains

We're at a point where we no longer have trait advantages, Cre's strong points are largely gone, and Miguelito's Parthenon negates our Phi bonus (if anything, his GPs will be born faster than ours, since he only had one born so far, we have 5th on the way). We can no longer sit back and defend and expect advantage in the late game, we need to take more land to keep up with Miguelito. But dealing with Miguelito is going to be late game, and I'm currently not planning for it - we need to know how much success we have against Thoth and Commodore, how much land we have after campaigns against them, etc. So the best long term plan I have for you is "review the state of the game and figure out a way of dealing with Miguelito"

[yuris125]

And we have another 2-turn day. All we needed for that to start happening was to increase the timer to 60 hours

Miguelito had a great merchant born - this must be from Colossus, don't think he has currency yet. In fact, he's probably about to bulb it, since that's the top of merchant bulb list

Nothing's happening otherwise, I'm still building war elephants for now, will have to reveal them to Commodore next turn as Boros Burn is ready to whip one. Will see if I can make an updated screenshot next turn

[yuris125]

Well now we know what Commodore did with his great general




I kept a stack of 3 catapults where they seemed safe from any attack and could hit any potentially relevant tile. Turns out they were vulnerable to swordsmen on freaking 4-move galleys. Only after playing the turn I realised that technically 4-move galleys could reach our capital in a single turn. There's a possibility of us losing it. It still has 2 bowmen and an axe, so should be ok against an amphibious attack from most combinations of 4 units. But definitely a bit of a blow, and will be an even bigger blow if I find it razed next turn

For now, with Commodore seeing a war elephant completed in the capital last turn (I already killed the swordsman who saw it), and it being time to whip another one in Boros Burn, I saw no reason to keep hiding, and started moving war elephants into Boros Burn. We have 4 right now, 3 more are about to finish. Still not sure if we go through with the attack - losing 3 catapults is definitely a blow - but would like to at least road the spices, take a peek into Commodore's territory, maybe pillage his road, and evaluate how best to proceed. Hopefully this at least scare him into putting some effort in defence instead of harassing us

[yuris125]

Did I mention that these 4-move galleys are terrifying? well they are. they are going to be a massive pain for the rest of the game

[naufragar]

Sorry I've been swamped and incommunicado. I should've mentioned that 4-move galleys are a Commodore favorite. Well, nothing for it. I still like that power ratio number in the bottom right.

[yuris125]

Well tbh I haven't been reporting well while on holiday and I saw Commodore use many-move galleys in other games. They're just hard to play around, even more so when you don't even know for sure he has them. At least it's just 3 catapults and not a city his sniped

[yuris125]

By the way, note Commodore's trireme in the inner sea. I couldn't understand its purpose until now, our only source of seafood is protected by a C1 trireme, and I couldn't see a reason for him to move a trireme towards us. But I think he wants to fort the tile SW of Yellow Comet and get the 4-move galleys into the inner sea. That would help to explain why he went for a snipe on the catapults as well

If that's his plan, it's not that scary, Gruul Smash still has 4 units on defence behind walls, and with our build-up in Boros Burn we could pillage his fort and lock the galleys in the inner sea