[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[TheHumanHydra]

I'm confused about your turn numbers - didn't you just finish t166 (ie. the Konig build finished and overflowed eot166)? In which case all those numbers would be pushed back one turn ...

Can mack revolt to Slavery, or is he in a cooldown window? 'Cause if he can't, he can't necessarily finish that many janissaries ...

[Old Harry]

Well spotted. We're on t167 now. So could whip the settler eot168, settle t169.

They love us, they really love us! So Commodore, Plako and dtay aren't interested in our battle with the evil empire, but Scooter and Ichabod understand!


Unfortunately Mack has eight catapults. If he uses them on our stack then we lose every battle to his knights, however many he has, so I think we need to retreat our stack. If we move one east of Konig, then heal for a turn we can hit Get This from the fog on t169. Look what Suttree has been up to though - those roads allow Mack to stage the six knights that were in Get This on the tile S of Madrid, then take Hastings. I'll move the two pikes back into the city and whip the longbow, then we want to get another couple of units in as meat shields - there are some bowmen available for the job.


BTW - what do you think is indefensible about the city? I think if we culture bomb it it gives us a decent bulwark against the Ottoman horde. Would offering peace in return for the city tip our hand or make Mack think it's a double bluff?

[TheHumanHydra]

Unfortunately Mack has eight catapults. If he uses them on our stack then we lose every battle to his knights, however many he has, so I think we need to retreat our stack. If we move one east of Konig, then heal for a turn we can hit Get This from the fog on t169. Look what Suttree has been up to though - those roads allow Mack to stage the six knights that were in Get This on the tile S of Madrid, then take Hastings. I'll move the two pikes back into the city and whip the longbow, then we want to get another couple of units in as meat shields - there are some bowmen available for the job.

All this is agreeable to me - basically we can direct our offensive either way depending on what looks most promising. The reason I think Barcelona is indefensible is how isolated it is from the rest of our cities. I guess technically our zone-defence stack could go on a tile equidistant from it, New Peterloo, and Hastings, though, so maybe it isn't so much of an issue.

As for proposing peace, well, we did just accept gold from two people for the promise of continuing the war ... I'd consider us contractually-obliged to repay them if we secured peace without additional combat at least. I don't know, what does Fintourist think of all this?

[Fintourist]

Yeah, if we make immediate peace, we should probably pay that money back (unless we want to be evil). However, no money in the world forces us to keep fighting if we would get a solid peace deal. I imagine that this turn is pretty straightforward, but I'll try to log in and analyze the T168-stuff later today! Overall I agree that either forking Eridu+Ur or threatening former Barcelona are the most realistic options if we want to fight Mack. (I would love to turn around and take easier cities from Ichabod/dtay/TBS, but it's pretty impossible to shuffle our units to attack someone else, win a quick war and be back to defend against mack+suttree before enforced peace runs out..

Btw, it's sad to see how our squeezed position is turn by turn just making our game position worse. Lewwyn/Bigger are catching up, TBS would too but he probably stagnates due to dtay and we are losing ground to Commodore/Plako/dtay.. And due to our southern neighbours there is not much that we can do about it. We really need a world war and a total mess, otherwise scoopin+mack are so far already in 30 turns that even miracles won't help anymore.

[Old Harry]

Turn 167

Ichabod settled a new city. I'm not so sure that we've been paid to carry on the war by Scooter and Ichabod, more to not fold like certain other neighbours of Mack did.


Mack started teching Astronomy (I presume).


Here you can see Ur's new borders and the peak that gives Mack far better vision, our axe who killed a longbow and will presumably get killed by something in turn next turn, and the naval battleground. Mack hasn't got his galley any more, which makes me happy, but I wonder what units he has in his coastal cities...


Only one longbow in Eridu. We have three knights who can sit on the corn (1n of the peak) this turn and force him to bring more materiel into the city... I just wish I could see what was on the plains farm SE of the city. I'm not going to risk losing the knights, because I think this is the sort of trap Mack is likely to set to kill some of our units. (Coward!) We can get sight of the tile with a sentry chariot next turn to check my suspicions. It would be nice to replant Peterloo here and road the tile SW of the city, then send knights straight into the city, but Mack has sight of the tile that we'd have to stage our knights on (NE of the city ruins). So I don't see how we can do it.


Okay, how about this for an alternate plan to take the fight to Mack. We build the settler in Konig, then on t169 we send four workers down here to build roads, we settle this site and we bomb the city. This allows our units to walk up to the doors of Get This and if we can immediately get enough muskets and pikes into the new city it will have 60% cultural defense and forms a new bulwark against Mack in an area that he hasn't had culture for very long. What could possibly go wrong?


Demos and power

[Old Harry]

We really need a world war and a total mess, otherwise scoopin+mack are so far already in 30 turns that even miracles won't help anymore.

If only, but it's not in anyone's interest to start a dust-up with Mack, it just lets the other contenders run away. If Plako has his eye on the power graphs he could bring his stacks from the Dhalphir war over to take advantage, but I don't see it happening. I can't see anyone else getting involved (although Scoopin could get astro and take some of his island holdings from him.)

Thinking a bit more about Mack's forces - without a big 2-mover stack he's a bit stuck for zone defense. I wish we had better vision on what he has in the fog, but our best chance to deal him a serious blow is to stretch those defenses he does have. We have two knights a mace and a cat on boats in the west, then we have our knight stack which threatens both Eridu (in 2 turns) and Get This. We could put our naval force ashore and (if our scouting chariot says its safe) threaten Eridu with a small number of healthy knights at the same time next turn, then bomb the new city and take Get This the turn after (t169). Is stretching our forces like that a bit risky?

I might have some time to tot up power ratings and likely unit numbers tomorrow, but if you want to have a go today feel free...

[Old Harry]

Two more things:
- the turn hasn't rolled yet, so you can check I've not done anything too dumb if you'd like :P
- Mack is logging into the game like a maniac - is that normal? Is he agitated? Does that give us anything to go on?

[TheHumanHydra]

How many knights are we finishing this turn?

I share mack's agitation. I spent all yesterday refreshing this forum every ten minutes to see if there was news, so I understand him logging in so frequently. It is his empire that's on the line, after all.

I support the idea of landing our troops. Still weighing the eastern bomb mentally.

[Old Harry]

Um, probably not too many, maybe one or two (Edit: none! our production cities are making three longbows, a cat, a settler and a missionary), we've got more catapults and longbows being built right now (as that was what was missing from Peterloo, and I don't want the same to happen to Hastings.)

Anyway, changing the subject I think this is what will happen if we bomb the city I'm suggesting. (Disclaimer: probably best not to take this as gospel...)


It takes four workers to get the city settled, then if we have another four workers we can get a small stack of cats from our lookout hill to take the walls of Get This down a notch or two (four takes it down to 34%). We won't get odds on Jans, but at the moment I think there are only two longbows and two maces in there, which we should kill... My main concern is that we don't have many defensive troops to put into the city yet, so if there are mack forces in the area things could get complex.

[Old Harry]

I just logged in to check and we're finishing two longbows and a catapult this turn. Next turn I had planned to use overflow in a couple of places to start building muskets (our only real counter to Jans) so we're not going to have more than 20 knights for our offensive... We need to consider what units we're going to upgrade to maces and longbows too - we have some highly promoted Bowmen and Axes that could be used to defend the new city...

Also TBSJ offered 3gpt for dye and gained a great general. I thought we should help the underdog so I said yes!