[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[pindicator]

You're all right, of course. Mackoti is so good, might as well just resign now. What's the point?

[fluffyflyingpig]

Invade Blame Canada?!

[scooter]

Turn 173

I logged in just to look around, I didn't really have time to do anything. I was greeted by this:



That's more like it . Accepted. Mackoti hasn't played yet, so he hasn't moved either of his boats. I think we should continue playing after him at this point. Two things that are notable. First off, Retep may finally die soon:



Wait, did I read that second line right?! Yep.



Now, I realize we did just lose a city to an equally backwards civ, but that was a sneak attack. This was a war that I believe Commodore declared, although it's been so long now I don't even remember. Anyway... Yep, lends a whole lot of credence to what pindicator and I were chatting about recently - how extremely vulnerable Commodore has looked to us lately. No concrete plans to capitalize on that yet, but for me it's absolutely at least out of "I don't even want to discuss it" territory and into "we should definitely consider all options including going that route" territory.

Anyway, galley->galleon upgrades cost 110g apiece:



Not too bad. So we could upgrade 7 right this minute, technically anyway. As for tech rate - setting science to 70% (breakeven with minor gold surplus) nets us Gunpowder in 2T, Chemistry in 4T (so 6T total). Turning science on completely right now could 1T us Gunpowder from scratch, which is pretty nice. So those are our options for right now.

[Ceiliazul]

hows the tech chart looking? (t175 rankings are coming up but they'll inevitably be a bit late and im impatient!)

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Invade Blame Canada?!

Obligatory:

[scooter]

Heh, I'll take "things that are not shocking" for $800, Alex.





He wasn't in range to kill those main boats, thankfully. I've been trying to keep them out of range for that purpose. Anyway, we can't really outrun that Caravel, but we can move these 3 eastern Galleys all into Utes this turn, upgrade them next turn, and from there we should be able to use the extra movement to dance around the Frigate. Nothing we can do about the blockade, though.

[pindicator]

Whay are your thoughts on how to hanfle mackoti?

Btw, we're having a pretty big snowstorm here. Wasn'teven in the forecast until yesterday, but it's been dumping all day

[scooter]

Whay are your thoughts on how to hanfle mackoti?

For this turn:

1) Move the two galleys with Zerks into Utes. This expends their movement points. Keep them loaded to disguise how many Zerks we have. Next turn, upgrade to Galleons.
2) The galley marked to pick up Zerks. Move NW, grab those two Zerks (they're well promoted CR Zerks), then move it into Utes as well. That'll also expend the movement points, but it gets all our Zerks into a mobile position.
3) The "add to jazz" galley - move into Jazz, drop off that Zerk for additional defense, then upgrade it in the city (will have 1 MP left).

Past that, I'm not super sure. We don't want to send stacks of Galleons into the fog, for one, because we can't know that they aren't walking into a Frigate of his. If we go into the fog, it's gonna need to be one boat at a time. Generally, I think we just want Frigates ASAP, and a lot of them. Raiders, Pirates, and Bulldogs should be fulltime naval production, and we should generally be working towards upgrading all of them. However, if we can upgrade as few as possible until Chemistry, that would probably be best. For instance, I don't want to spend money on our eastern galleys until we have Chem - upgrading those isn't really worth delaying Chem by a turn.

The Caravel in Raiders completes end of this turn. The original plan to have it just go scouting through mack's water is obviously a no-go considering he'll likely just sink it immediately. In any case, I think we send that Caravel south through Azza waters to start making sure the coast is clear down there. If Mack is smart, he'll set up a Caravel sentry net down in those waters, so I think having a Caravel several turns ahead down there to check for that would be a good thing.

What are you thinking?

[pindicator]

What are you thinking?

The very first thing that popped into my head was this (so very NSFW):



I think everything goes military, PB8-style. And i still want to slip a pair of galleons south when he's not looking because it would be so worth the risk of losing 6 zerkers over.

[scooter]

Hm, notice any problems here?



Sure glad I did before playing the turn.

(Once you figure it out, yes, I did the only safe thing)


Anyway, pindicator, regardless of whether we can make something happen on the seas or not (and yes it would be totally worth it), I don't think I'm nearly as down about our situation as you seem to be. I think we're fine. We're teching at a rate that is very similar to mackoti, we have more cities than him, more land tiles than him, and our future expansion options are all softer than his. So I'm not ready to panic yet.

we really ought to just delete that galley or rename it to "CHECKMOVEMENTPOINTS" or something so we don't get majorly burned one of these days