[Spoilers] luddite tries to remember how this game works

[luddite]

Turn started with Oxy cancelling the ivory deal and asking 5gpt for it. I didn't accept. Annoyingly that puts one of my cities (Dardanelles) into unhappiness. I cancelled our open borders and offered OB for ivory.

I Withdrew the stack for now, just to keep things hidden and save a little money.

whipped 2 artillery (from the capital and Mons Meg). Next turn rodman can also finish an artillery. So that'll give me a total of 4 artillery, 4 AT, 4 axeman, 1 spearman. Not as much as I'd like, but still pretty hard to counter when you've got nothing better than muskets. The rear 2 cities can also finish stuff relatively soon but I don't think it's worth waiting for them. They'll be used for defense.

This jumped me up from 4th in power to 2nd. I guess it's pretty obvious what I'm planning

[luddite]

So right now Cairo has 6 musketeers that I've seen. He's also whipped 3 times since I moved near him, with his power going up each time. So probably 9 musketeers right now. (I should probably watch the power demo more closely but it's confusing when he's not best or worst)

The way I see it, each AT or artillery can *probably* defeat 2 musketeers when defending, even on flat ground. More than 2, probably not, although there's still a decent chance to get lucky and win a big streak. But also a chance to just lose the first fight of course. The axes are kinda useless unless they have a hill or something, but maybe they can shield a badly wounded unit.

So my 4 AT and 4 arty can defeat up to 16 musketeers. Anything more than that and things get very dicey. Time to see how much whipping he does... my guess is he whips a lot the next few turns and his power suddenly spikes.

[T-hawk]

Looks a lot better than when you were stuck in your city desperate to squeeze out that first anti-tank.

Of course the trick will be getting in position to fight anything with 1-movers against 2-movers.

[luddite]

Looks a lot better than when you were stuck in your city desperate to squeeze out that first anti-tank.

Of course the trick will be getting in position to fight anything with 1-movers against 2-movers.

Yeah. No matter how bad things go from here, I consider it a victory to get this far after my stupid picks and opening.

If he doesn't want to fight me, that's fine. I can just raze his cities :D.

I think there's a good chance this turns into a race to burn each others cities faster. Of course his 2-movers have an advantage there... but maybe I can defend some too.

[luddite]

Big drop in power for Scooter this turn. Also a big drop in Rival Worst power, from 164000 last turn to 100,000 this turn. That must have been Scooter and Yuri fighting a big battle, right? I'm guessing that Yuri is on his way out. Also, I'm no longer last in land area... or was that always the case? I haven't really been checking demographics very much.

Big noticeable increase for my power on the chart, I'm now 2nd and close to Scooter.

[luddite]

I just had an idea. If I did get a GG- and I have no way of knowing when I'll get one- what if I used it to make one super-artillery? Specifically *drill 4* artillery. It would have a whopping *68%* chance to beat a musketeer without even taking a scratch!

[luddite]

No sign of any big power increase from our friend Mr Cairo. Instead he... settled another city...? Is this actually going to surprise him? Very greedy, Cairo.

I decided to go for a granary in Rodman (it had 31 overflow so I can whip it next turn) so maybe I'm just as greedy.

[luddite]

Still no power spike from Cairo. However, my forward scouting-worker revealed 4 musketeers in an interesting position:



I had been hoping to move onto that grassland, stay hidden, and then surprise him with a road move the next turn. But with his units there, he'd see it. He won't see the plains tile though, unless he has units on the other side scouting. Potentially I could attack him on the forest hill, I wonder if that's worth it? Not ideal of course, but artillery still gets good odds, and killing 4 musketeers for the cost of maybe 1 artillery would be amazing.

[luddite]

Thinking about it again... he almost certainly did that on purpose so that he'd have visibility on the grass tile. He probably has his other musketeers, or at least a scout/chariot, moving in and out on the other side to scout the plains tiles, since that's the obvious way to attack.

I could try to be clever and dodge around to the west, but that would mean a huge delay, and he might see it coming anyway. I think I just have to go for it, and pray for good RNG.

[chumchu]

If he is in a good defensive position, can you threaten his city to force him to leave it?