[SPOILERS] Rusten and Hitru laugh off any and all mistakes as bad RNG

[Rusten]

Back home, although still fairly busy.

Last few turns have been calm and revolved around developing the empire (30 cities next turn). We've finally caught up with Commodore's crop yield and hammers will be up there soon too. He's still ahead on land area, but I believe the land we've captured is greener than most of what Commodore has available. Of course all land is good land with late game improvements, but we're quite happy about our current position. The extra food from green land+resources come in handy for drafting.




The 2nd chemistry GS is due in 8 turns, and gunpowder should be completed by then. After chemistry the plan is nationalism for drafting, and once that is in the world is to be conquered by drafted guerrilla muskets supported by knights/trebs/frigates/privateers. The civs lagging behind will have no way to keep up with the hammer effectiveness of drafting, and I've already illustrated the strength of G3.

Now the question is if we'll be left alone for another 10-15 turns. Most likely path to victory is to eat naufragar+BGN+Cairo and secure a big enough lead to force concession from Commodore. This plan may change depending on how ambitious we feel when frigates are in, but attacking Commodore head on seems unwise at this point in time.

Naufragar finally started on astronomy, but even if he gets 1 GS to speed it up we should pretty much have frigates by the time he can threaten us again.

[Rusten]

So far things are going as predicted 30ish turns ago. We're currently 2 turns away from chemistry which means we're reaching our goal of having frigates before BGN/nauf has a fleet to match us. BGN just started on astro (shouldn't take long) and Nauf got it this turn. Rocking the #1 power by some margin which should be enough to dissuade attacks, but you never know so the extra safety will be nice to have. Still wouldn't trade our position for any other in the game, but clearly Commodore has come on leaps and bounds because he was left alone (as predicted). Given traits/civs the fact that we're not behind means that we're ahead, and to be frank I feel our position is just as good if you discount the traits too.

We're the #1 economy so there's no need to rush things, but the plan is still all out warfare once drafting is available. That is our timing for this game. Until then we'll slowly build frigs/trebs/knights.

Poked the Dutch bear a bit over the last few turns. I don't think Gavagai is particularly happy about us getting involved in the DZ war and "stealing" a few city spots. I've not spent much time on these forums, so my read on players may not be entirely accurate, but as for Gav we're considering him a pragmatic/practical player so hoping to get away with it. If he was to DoW and raze our new city then he'd lose out on a lot in trade routes. Trying to get some favour back by offering all of our surplus resources for trade, and gave the settled gems for free. If he can see past these settlements he has no reason to fear us, but we'll see how it goes once DZ is off the map. Can't remember if he has enough EP on us to see our teching (I think yes), but if not we're planning on showing him a frigate as soon as it's complete to avoid confrontation. He'll not want to "waste" his civ advantage by attacking someone with frigates that beat EIM over someone that only has galleons. That's my read anyway.

Too many cities to go into detail, but these are the main "new" areas since I was posting frequently.
Territory near DZ below. Still largely undeveloped, but has huge potential thanks to all the greenery. Borked culture as per usual (tile NE of NonFatYoghurt).

Things claimed through BGN below. In the end we captured 4 cities, razed 1 and made room for ~2 more for settling. I think we didn't lose more than 2-3 swords from the whole thing, so I'd say it was a success. Made an enemy of him of course, but the plan (as mentioned before) is to finish the job and wipe him out with drafting. It definitely set him back.

All in all still optimistic about winning chances.

[Rusten]

Units killed (top) and lost (bottom):

Efficiency. The 3rd swordsman lost was funnily enough to a random barbarian warrior after it had survived an assault by DZ's xbow.
I think the only other barbarian combat was defeating 4 warriors and a galley and losing the scout.

[Rusten]

BGN may have 1-upped us in regards to Gavagai. Seems he captured and razed DZ's capital which also held the (massive) Hindu shrine IIRC. That's not going to go over well. 

[Rusten]

EP spending is a wonderful thing. Commodore...

[Rusten]

So it seems Commodore turned back after spotting our frigate(s) with a caravel. To elaborate on the previous post: We have a maphack on naufragar thanks to EP spendage and saw Commodore's 8 galleons moving through his territory T170. Friendly or not, naufragar is still a wonderful scout. We were prepared to hit the galleons preemptively this turn if he followed through. I guess the cold war continues for now.

[Rusten]

We've made some slight alterations to plans. 4 turns until nationalism/drafting, and while we still intend on switching to police state+theocracy+nationhood and making a huge army at that point we've decided to continue scaling a bit as well. Demos show that Commodore is pretty all in on getting something done. Excluding chemistry he's way behind in tech and is making no plays for the mid-game wonders. He's completely skipped banking for instance, which is a huge civic with so many cities. We're currently 4 turns away from AP+UoS, and will add SM and Taj to that list if time allows. UoS is not that essential, but the AP will help bridge the slight MFG deficit. With these wonders the pressure will be on Commodore to make something happen, otherwise we'll pick up things like steel (drydocks) and rifling almost by accident. The value of the Taj speaks for itself at this stage -- nobody's rushed there. Quickly pays for itself in hammers alone, and it would speed up the following golden age too.

TLDR: We're sitting pretty comfortable as things are. The way the game is playing out right now we are comfortable winners and there's no need to rush into a possible dogpile. If this was a land-based map I'd be extremely confident as it's so much easier to defend, but given all the possible angles and weaknesses there's still plenty in it.

[Hitru]

Just fast update at this point. We have deflected attack from PindiCom and should not lose any cities. We have more raw hammers than they and can draft 3 muskets per turn+ we have PS helping out. Furthermore we have used our defenders advantage to sink more frigates than we have lost. Finally, we managed to trap around 9 galleons of theirs, which we assume to be full, in one of Naufragar's cities.

On economic front we also finish SM this turn with the help of a lucky GE, that should push our economy even further ahead. We also have lots of monasteries to build (most cities have temple already) once we feel secure enough, those are really nice with 2 gold, hammers and beakers.

Things look really good and we hope that Cairo and Gav will not start playing kingmakers here (If BGN attacks I can understand that).

[Mardoc]

Thanks for the update, was wondering what was going on.

[darrelljs]

Can you get the trapped galleons?

Darrell