Genghis Machinates

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, I've just spent a whole turn hacking away at catapults in Neander and there's still a bunch of them left.




More seriously, I think his ratio of siege to hitters over here was fine, probably 50:50. The way I went about the attack meant the cats couldn't be very effective though, the tradeoff being it took me longer to take the city. In the west losing that group of 10-15 knights really hurt him, maybe they needed to try escape the peninsula on Carracks again. There was just too big a production disparity between us overall.

Speaking of the west, Comm attacked out:




I wasn't expecting that until next turn, but it still seems to have gone worse for him than I'd have thought. IIRC I lost about 12 units in total. I kept enough Cavs behind to counterattack, undamaged by cannons, and it was a slaughter.




I lost some xp from flank killing too many units. I think that probably finishes off the last resistance of the campaign. The capital will probably fall next turn, it will mostly be a race to take everything from here out to get rid of the war weariness.

I did actually take two cities this turn:



I had 4 hitters here to deal with 4 defenders, so I was a little bit free with my catapults to ensure I took the city. I think I lost 3 of them, I doubt I'll have much use for catapults in the future anyway.




Amphib cavs killed a mace and a cannon here to take the island. The galleons now head to the southern islands ASAP.

All the fighting spawned yet another GG and I've hit the commando threshold.



Just building a Woody 3 healer first before I start on West Point(maybe I need a Jail first too).

Mack is also keeping busy:



Surprisingly enough, so is REM:



That's got to be the absolute furthest he could possibly get from his homeland.

[The Black Sword]

I could build the SoL by T219. Mack is currently on course for a T220, but if he makes the necessary sacrifices I think he could do T218. He isn't doing so yet and if he doesn't start soon he'll slip back to T219.

I also have an engineer possibility:

[The Black Sword]

I'm seriously considering attacking Mack directly after finishing with Commodore. He has a bit of GNP advantage and he'll probably keep it in the long term. Financial coast is just hard to compete with. I have a hammer and soldier advantage and I think it will probably increase with Commodore's land. So I think a bit more war plays to my strengths. I could attack either REM or Mack, but I feel if I attack REM then Mack will get involved, while if I attack Mack REM won't react. Right now Mack's India island is defended by less than 1 unit per city, while his army is on the other side of the world. REM's defenses look a lot tougher. In any case, the staging location for either attack is the same.

I'll have about 50 rifles to garrison my own cities and 50 cavs for any attack. The emphasis will be on building the fleet to transport and protect it. I think I'll leave the SoL(unless I roll the engineer) and I can get to Assembly Line in about 10 turns. I can have a round of ~30 infantry pre-built to add to an attack then get started on the factories. Then beeline Destroyers?

[The Black Sword]

Here's the remnants of Portugal; there are 4 different areas, 2 of which are easy to finish off, 2 will be a bit harder.




Our GG healer did good work here and we should be able to take the rest of these cities quickly. A G2 Rifles managed to snipe the northern ice city.




Amphib Cavs are making short work of the resistance down here.




Cliffrunner and Prinz will take a bit longer. Most of my units were redlined hacking through the catapults at Neander and the GG healer is on the other front. There's also some sizeable garrisons here, because the cities were cut off from Neander and couldn't reinforce it. I might need to ship a couple of Cavs across the sea to help here.




This is the big holdup though. I've been assuming OH would snipe these cities, so I didn't have galleons prepared for them. They'll take a while to get around the peninsula. Hopefully OH can spare the forces from his Ot4E/Mack standoff.

WW is pretty bad right now but manageable. My Moai city has been hit pretty hard because I didn't have a Jail prepared, but that finishes next turn and it will get out of the red(14 unhappy going to only 7). Everywhere else is still threading just above the red line, albeit paying 20gpt to OH for a gems loan. Still, I expect a few cities to go over the top before it disappears.

Here's the garrison in India btw. Any city without a label was empty last I checked.



REM's defenses are bit sterner:

[The Black Sword]

Bad news; Mack got a GE.




Each turn that speeds up the SoL by is worth a lot of beakers. I actually feel ok about it though, I consider it a pretty big mistake to have lost the SoL in the first place. Mack is not in Bureau and has less concentrated hammers than me, I never should have lost the wonder. I should have ignored steel, went directly for it and built it in my capital. That looks damn nice with a levee:




Just like the Hanging Gardens earlier, it was a case of me being too greedy and trying to make the payoff from the wonder better. But if Mack gets a GE anyway, I guess I would have been punished.

Meanwhile, somehow, Mack finished off Ot4E:




Looks like he got the city in the SW by the pigs too. Good job OH? Maybe he'll kill that berserker and retake the city, but I doubt I'll be so lucky. Honestly OH's play for the last 100t has been a bit of mystery. He got the MoM, he captured some really nice land and the ToA from Ot4E and then it's like he stopped trying. I definitely had him marked down as the favorite to win at that point. I know he had the city raze and some pressure from Mack, but Mack had to put resources into that too. While Mack was off conquering India, OH should have finished off Ot4E instead of ending up with about 10% of his lands (just Cutthroat and WeDemandFood IIRC). Anyway, I have to figure out if he's still in contention or if I can just fight it out with Mack. Theoretically he should be friendlier with me but I'm sure the main factor would be jumping in against whoever is winning.

He has declared war on Commodore, but no city captures yet:



What's up in my own empire? I'm building 10 settlers on T207.



Lots of fillers in Commodore-land to plant(and still two in my own). Unfortunate that I can only have 3 missionaries out at a time too. These are my 'economic' builds while we wait for Assembly Line.

I haven't posted Demos in a while:



As mentioned, a fairly sizeable hammer and soldier lead, and I expect I have more tiles in conquered territory to come on line than Mack does. I'll probably pick up Military Science first, because Mack is starting to build Ships of the Line, and his navy is moving back toward India:



There's also the small matter of commandos.

[Gawdzak]

Congratulations on win! Very well played game.

[GermanJoey]

GG man, congrats on another well earned win.

[The Black Sword]

Thanks folks, but now I still need to cross commando factory off my bucket list.

[mackoti]

Thanks folks, but now I still need to cross commando factory off my bucket list.

I was expecting some of those and I was preparing some defence with G2 riflis on hills and having railroads just passing on those hills but when i looked at MFG and yours was double and you wasnt in a GA I completly disharted.