Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[spacemanmf]

additional: A captured city can not flip back to the original owner unless specifically set in the game-options.

Alas, we keep setting cities alight...

[spacemanmf]

Ok, some strategic planning from T132.

I came to the conclusion that advancing on Thebes wouldn't be our best plan. This is because he can provide support from his naval fleet, unloading whatever troops he has on there (up to 24 units) to attack and shipping them away from a newly constructed fort on the attack square.

Therefore we would be in the situation as before where he loses all his cats, but minimal non-siege units, and we lose a chunk of our stack. It's not the worst thing in the world since we are producing units steadily, but it's certainly not ideal.

Also, I'm still uncertain as to how many units mackoti has in the fog because of those city gifts. His power is still rising quite quickly - up to 1.5m now. I think advancing along the coast would result in a bloody mess.

So that left SE, and this is where the stack has moved on the following shot. The units shown at the bottom are the ones now defending Give me a name, our new city which may well get enveloped in culture from a culture bomb shortly. But we figured that was better than him planting close to Puck and flipping control of the land to him.



Visible units from when we had the sentry war chariot on the hill are:

28 knights, 7 grenadiers, 2 phalanxes, a GG, plus 24 units on the boat we have to assume (mostly grenadiers), plus any more knights in the fog (which I suspect there are).

He has fanned out his units we have to assume to block a potential commando unit, but we don't have Military Science.

Moving SE moves us out of range of the cats, and would leave his big stack of knights without movement points so open to counter, so he is unlikely to attack us next turn. Our stack also provides cover to our new city, although his units are out of position to attack that too.

Hence it felt a good square to move to.



Next turn, we get to move S to the relative safety of the hill. My plan then is to advance on, and raze, Ephesus. Whilst on the hill, we can keep an eye on where his cat stack goes to see where we want to go - SW, S or SE. Ideally, we would go SW, so we can continue a path to the hill 2W of Ephesus.

Capturing Sparta would be great as there is then a hilled path to his capital, Athens.

The aims of moving inland are two-fold. Firstly, it stops him retreating injured units (apart from knights with movement points left). Secondly, he has to decide what to do with his naval-based land units. If he feels under threat then he will unload them, which means our coastal cities are safe.

Not only that, but we can make an uncontested (by land units anyway) strike on his island with Argos and another city on there. They are quite juicy cities and are good to capture.

We are assembling a fleet for this assault. We will position the fleet so that it can land at Thebes if necessary.



In the above shot, the green-square fleet is in the lake 1W of Ganymede, and the selected fleet is in the lake next to Puck.

He could block the tile 1W of the iron, but then we just fort the iron. If he tries to cover both tiles, we have enough frigates (about 30) and privateers (not many) to take out one stack.

Including the galleon from Ariel, we will have 10 galleons, so room for 30 units. We may well struggle to do fill them whilst also trying to keep Puck and the newest city reasonably safe, so it might be that we wait a turn or two.

We can assemble everything 1W of Puck next turn, and then move out to 1NW of Ariel on T134 (by which time Puck will be ready to draft - nice timing).

Anyway, that's my current thinking.

[spacemanmf]

If we can capture Argos and Knossos then that would be a good blow to strike. If our fleet stays intact then we can start to threaten mackoti's west coast cities.



The plan is to pull his army in different directions.

I thought I would check how many cities he has. Here are all his cities.



So he has 16 cities. Here are the ones that we can see.



On his mainland, we have Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Ephesus, Eretria, pink dot and, presumably, red dot (currently this shows up as Luddicator's land but I think it's one of those that was gifted).

On the northern island, Argos and Knossos. On the southern island, Mycenae, Halicarnassus and Pergamon. On the southern 'Ariel' island, compensation. Then, way, way out west, Megara.

So that leaves one more city (other than red dot) that we can't see - that being Miletos - presumably it's another western island city.

[spacemanmf]

This is what our new city looks like. Pressed by culture and not remotely belonging to us... tsk.



Here is the tech situation. We of course have a risk for the future. The longer we spend in a bloody war with mackoti, the more that Luddicator and YurNicLew get a chance to peacefully tech.



Novice has yet to do the tech analysis so I can't tell how far we are ahead (I am presuming we are ahead given that we have a number of key techs that they don't have).

Novice, I have all but ended turn. Do you want to see it before it goes?

[novice]

I'm not civworthy atm, so send it on. But maybe unnamed should get the bananas.

[spacemanmf]

Ok, switched to banana - good spot. Whip granary in 3. Then library to accelerate culture, I think.

Here are the post-EOT demographics.



Both ours and mackoti's power have been going up by around 0.1 million a turn. Impressive from mackoti since he can't draft and has fewer cities. I do wonder how much he has that we can't see. I fear quite a lot!

Io's great person will be born in 2 turns (from next turn).

We have 71 muskets and 45 cannons now!

Turn sent on.

[novice]

Ouch. Mack dropped the hammer, and it was a big one.

We might need to reassess our situation.

[oledavy]

Ouch. Mack dropped the hammer, and it was a big one.

Could we see the effects of said hammer?

[novice]

Could we see the effects of said hammer?

Sure. I'm not civworthy right now, but here is the general idea:

[spacemanmf]

Could we see the effects of said hammer?

75-80 units down to about 20, perhaps about 500k loss in power on our side, vs maybe 150-200k on his. Not pretty.

He forted in his units aboard the boats, and attacked with a lot of knights, a lot of which presumably were gifted. He also had some cats in range, which I didn't expect.

I've been outmanoeuvred. In hindsight, we should have retreated back across the river, I guess. I dunno. He has so many units thanks to the gifting and whipping his own cities down.

He asked for three cities (Puck, Nix and Give me a name) but that's a definite no. He should be able to take the latter you would have thought since he has 16 healthy cats in range, 20 grens and 27 knights that we can see (most of which are injured).

The risk is that he takes Give me a name and then culture bombs, exposing Puck. We'll just have to defend hard.