[Spoilers] CH tries to be more than a warm body

[Cheater Hater]

Oh, not much is happening right now. For us, at least. taotao is hiding a little stack within our borders which makes me think he might go after DZ? It would be a smart move for him, DZ has no gunpowder units and lost a decent chunk of power trying to conquer us.

He doesn't? I thought he was almost done researching Gunpowder when I left? Does he have Nationalism to draft a bunch of Muskets?

What's our plan at the moment--head towards Gunpowder then MT as we discussed before? Or are you going for an economic gambit and salvaging our economy with Printing Press? Or have only two turns passed since the end of the war and you're saving up gold?

[Fenn]

DZ completed Gunpowder this turn, so he hasn't had time to do much with it yet. Right now he's 1t-ing Drama, and I don't think he has Nationalism yet, so emergency defenses from him will have to come from whipping.

I'm still thinking Gunpowder -> MT is the way to go; we can't ignore our defences at a time like this, we need time to build up Muskets and Cuirassiers before the next attack comes. DZ warring with taotao will delay that but not by much. Anyway we don't have all that many Towns and Villages, and even if we did we're much to behind the neighbours in city count and tech rate to mount much of a comeback. We are getting our second GP from Vilcas next turn, so if it's not a Scientist, the Golden Age will speed us along to MilTrad, and maybe then to Paper -> PP after that. Then Astro maybe, so taotao's EIs don't have completely free reign.

[Fenn]

Gunpowder was completed this turn, and with 10% Science we can finish off Paper too. Between that and being able to cancel our loan repayments to taotao, Inca is making about 250 gpt, which is about 2-and-a-bit Musket upgrades. I'll save gold until we can knock out our next tech, which will probably be PP but I'm open to alternatives. If we could make it to Rifling we'd be very secure against further Knight and Cuirassier incursions, but there's probably not enough time for that. Nationalism+Military Tradition gives us drafting and Cuirs of our own (pretty cheap to upgrade those from Knights too IIRC), but our cities will only be good for about one round of drafting each and Cuirs aren't enough of a step above Knights to turn the tide of war.

I'm also considering a detour to Optics for the extra sea vision - taotao could attack us at any time, and I worry that he might have EIs hiding in the fog. And if I were him, I'd definitely be gunning for Inca now. Having vision on his ships (or lack of them!) would let us make a more informed choice about what to do with our commerce when it comes to research vs. unit upgrades.

[Cheater Hater]

How much is Optics? Do we actually need Paper other than as a PP prerequisite? Has anyone tried to stop REM yet?

How's the espionage situation? Do they have research visibility on us?

[Fenn]

Optics is two turns at 100% science. It's not an afterthought, but our costs are super-low; our biggest impediment right now is beaker rate. Yeah we don't need Paper itself, but it's only costing us 17 extra gold to finish it so I figured we might as well. Espionage situation is very good; we have research visibility on both taotao and DZ, mostly because we've been spending everything on them and they've ignored us EP-wise.

Is anybody trying to stop REM? Not at all. taotao is likely busy preparing to invade DZ or us, and the rest of his neighbours are a mixture of weak, uninterested and indisposed. Things on the other continent are much more exciting, going by civstats: Ichabod is getting devoured by Adrien and dtay, who together took 5-6 cities this turn!

[Cheater Hater]

I'm curious, has anyone on the other continent actually found us?

[Fenn]

None of them have contacted us in particular, though I'm sure taotao and whoever else have Optics have overseas contacts. Would have been nice to get some foreign ICTRs.

[Fenn]

Pictured: my experience logging in this turn.

We've been invaded by taotao! Sadly my computer ate the screenshots I was going to take. His troops, mostly Knights with a couple of Swords, came from East Indiamen out of the fog, capturing Angola, Tiwanaku and Huamanga. That's in addition to a deathstack sitting outside Macchu Picchu that we have no hope of repelling. Not even going to bother there.

My plan was to retake Tiwanaku with our Knightss to give taotao some trouble (and not least because without it, we have no source of Horses), but we lost half a dozen high-odds (70% +) battles, well maybe not exactly six but that's what it felt like. SO, that's going to have to wait until next turn. In the meantime I whipped all our cities for Pikes and Muskets, then asked REM and HAK (whom we just met this turn) for some spare Horses. We have no chance of survival this time - the best we can do is delay the capture of Vilcas in the southeast and drag out this war for a little while. If it was just taotao our tundra holdings might hold on for a decent interval Donovan can declare in two turns and I'm expecting him to invade from the northeast.

[Cheater Hater]

Just retire to AI so I can read the lurker thread

[Fenn]

Hey, you can still do that if you want! I can't imagine I have much longer to live, and the turns take less and less time to play.