[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[spacetyrantxenu]

T131 - Iron was pillaged, I killed the offender but I can't reconnect the iron. I mean, I could, if all four workers were in position to do it and I was willing to sacrifice them for it, but I'll try to trade for a source. Those four workers will be better spent path blocking/absorbing unit attacks when I exit Desperation Mode and switch on Last Stand.

This turn I whipped walls because protective is so OP and I have no metal to build spears.



New Fish already has walls, so I (probably) don't become the first person to ever drywhip walls in every city. At this point I assume I have less turns until the invasion than I have pop to burn in whipping, and I still grow super fast in my core even if I'll have nothing but unhappy faces, so why waste a turn to whip? The only times I haven't whipped since this calamity began is when I already had a build finishing off overflow. It's a population clearance sale, everything must go!




Brick is healing his army. He earned a GG and spent it on the mega axeman visible in the Blue Fish stack. I have my own general to use next turn. I'm thinking it's likely he'll go into Red Fish and sprinkle XP over a bunch of units to buy more promotions. One of the promoted units can try for a low level medic status, everyone else gets CG or a combat promotion most likely. And I just realized that I should have moved a warrior forward from (Two Fish?) to attach the general to, for the free spear upgrade. I could log back in and do that but the effort level is dropping here.

You can see in the picture that I have a slowly growing stack on the tile 2W of Red Fish. I really don't know what to do with those guys. It would be great to seal a western approach by holding them on the hill, but I don't have enough spears to protect both the hill and Red Fish, so the stack sits there awaiting further instructions. The point of those units is to reinforce Red Fish if Brick moves onto the grassland tile 1N of the city to attack. If he moves onto the hill, that's dicier, I'd probably have to fall back to the hill 1SE of Two Fish (2W of their current position). I could be attacked by his HAs on his next turn, which isn't good, but otherwise I'm not sure how to play the defense of One Fish and Two Fish. Not having much land I packed these cities in tightly. I never thought I'd be forked all to hell down here. The idea was to play defense at Blue Fish and we see how that worked out when I didn't have the defenders in place.

Not pictured, New Fish is ferrying over a pair of axes down this way. I'd send a spear but I only have one in that city and I'm not going to send the only spear until I can build more. In other naval movements Brick is sailing a galley around my eastern end of the continent. I don't know what the game is there, whether it's supposed to be a diversion or if it's loaded with units, but it's not very important. I'm considering Old Fish a lot cause anyway. I'm building the walls this turn because they're cheap, but every unit it builds goes to Red Fish. I should probably pillage the cottages at New Fish soon, but I don't have a 2 mover available for the job. As my population declines in One, Two, and Red I'll probably start pillaging those cottages down, too, once I don't have the population (or am too whip angry) to work them anymore. I'm trying to research something, anything that may help, this turn I've slotted HBR. I'd prefer Feudalism but it's too many beakers to research it. I don't know what good producing my own HAs will do, except that Brick doesn't have spears and at least they're six strength. Brick promoted nearly all of his units to shock so having my own HAs at leasts wastes that preparation. It will take five turns to research at 100% cash, but obviously I don't have that kind of money laying around. I'll probably never finish the tech, or at least not by the time I can do anything with it.

The Zulu are being asses about their espionage points. I think they're spending everything on me, just like I'm spending everything on them. I'm one EP short of getting graph visibility and I'm going to be pissed if they deny it to me. They may as well telegraph that they're going to try attacking. If they try to race Brick to my capital, well, I'm not giving it to the Zulu. If they want another capital they can go take Nakor's for like the fifth time.

Demographics (and I don't know why I still capture these. I don't really do analysis and it's just depressing).

[spacetyrantxenu]

T132 - Brick had an unsavory peace offer waiting for me when I logged in:



Declined! I mean, if I'm down to two cities I'm irrelevant and I may as well play it out now anyway. Then there's also the matter that Serdoa is about to invade me, so if I gifted New Fish (Serdoa's target) to Brick, well, can you imagine the whining about that? Nevermind if it's a legitimate trade or not, selling cities for peace isn't illegal, immoral, or against the RB ethics playbook, but it doesn't matter whether I have two cities or zero cities really, so let's keep playing at war and making Serdoa and Brick waste as many hammers as possible.

In the meantime, I went ahead and declared war on Serdoa. Hearing the war drums is the only satisfaction I'll get out of this conflict anyway, so why not? ALT+CLICK, dun dun dun dun dun dun duuuuuuuun! Wait, you didn't know there was an invasion coming? Well, why wouldn't he? He's already shown to be an opportunist (and the irony isn't lost on me here), but I do hope Lewwyn runs a sizeable army through Serdoa's western border very soon. Anyway, the intel is solid, it checks out:




Bring it! He'll take the city but I hope I kill them to the last man to do it. Also, since New Fish grows next turn back to size 6 I'll pile in 1 more axe, at the cost of 3 pop. Enjoy your size 3 city. (Sadly there is already a whipped archer in the queue that will never see the light of day, since I whipped it this turn before I noticed that Commodore had a boat in my territory...

...Which means that he accepted my offer for open borders, which gave him an ever declining number of foreign trade routes, and gave me a replacement source of iron. Thanks! For added insurance I traded a spare corn and fish to Azza for a source of copper, so I'm OK in metals for now, until someone cuts off my trade route. At this point it would take something significant for me to lose the route, like Commodore declaring war, since with all the map trading everything is defogged around this part of the world. If Commodore wanted to fight me I'm sure he wouldn't be propping me up like he is as I go through my terminal stage of existence:



Since he has Scooticator's Zulu lands in addition to his own, he can spare some extra resources. As long as I'm alive I'm draining the resources of whoever I'm fighting, which is a benefit to him. Glad to help. At this point there is no reason to keep OBs with Merohoc or the Zulu, but if I can bring a little charity to guys who haven't harmed me in this game, what's the harm in that? Their trade routes were helpful to me before I became irrelevant, so I'll return the favor until I'm eliminated. Speaking of that...Zulu, go kill Nakor!

International relations, as I know it:



I regret signing peace with Nakor, at least if we were still at war maybe I could throw a hail mary invasion down at him and hope to eliminate him before I was killed off. I can dream, right?

On the Brick war front, I put the great general I generated last turn to use, sprinkling XP over 10 units in Red Fish. Yay CHA!




I moved a spear with 5XP out of the city, moved a warrior into the city, attached the general to the warrior for the free spear upgrade, and the +2 XP to each unit bought them all a promotion. Then I moved the spear back into the city. I assume that's the right way to make sure the 5/8 XP spear didn't get any of the general's bounty. Red Fish is now a slightly more prickly pear:




Mmmmmm, promotions. I think I'd bypass that city if I was Brick and just go for the other two, they're better cities anyway. But I hope he doesn't do that, I'd rather he break his units against the fortress. If he does circumvent Red Fish, I still don't know what to do about it (if he takes the hill and then forks One Fish and Two Fish). I'd have to defend one or the other with the motley crew of defenders selected in the picture, and the correct one to defend would be Two Fish since it's on a hill. So I'd surrender my capital....ick. I mean, if I pile everything into Red Fish he probably won't try to take it, and I'll survive a while (until knights or muskets probably), but that isn't a lot to keep playing for. I guess I'll try to hold all three of these, but I'm open to suggestions from anyone who isn't spoiled.

I could take my five workers over there and double move those guys to put a fort on the hill, and then move the second stack onto it, but.... I guess those workers will just keep building mostly useless roads until the invasion comes. Then they can take turns standing in front of oncoming traffic, eating an attacker each hopefully. Such inglorious deaths.

Demographics and numbery things:

I did a bit of number crunching, the good news is that I have more total power than the invaders having my territory.

Serdoa's attack force:

axes (13 * 6000) = 78000
holkan (1 * 4000) = 4000
catapults (3 * 5000) = 15000

invasion force = 97,000

****
Brick's attack force

horse archers (16 * 6000) = 96000
axes (4 * 6000) = 24000
chariots (2 * 4000) = 8000
1 galley (unknown contents, not factored) = 2000

known invasion force = 130,000

****

Brick + Serdoa combined = 227,000

My current power number: 230,000 This should be an easy defense

And for viewing pleasure, graphs because I just added the Zulu to the list:

One Fish is no longer a global tourist destination, for some reason foreign governments are issuing severe travel advisories recommending their citizens travel anywhere else instead.

[Ceiliazul]

Not to turn the knife or anything, but your 230k total power includes a bunch of tech and pop that can't pick up weapons.

Absolutely amazing how fast India dropped off...

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm not going back and doing a write up on these, I'll just dump in the photos I took for turns 124-128.

T124

What's with the galley builds? I thought I'd need them to boat Nakor's last city and get something out of the attack.



Running away from Nakor's trireme.


That was some miracle. It must have attracted the Zulu.


MOAR BOATS PLZ.

T125

Commodore tried to renegotiate the horse deal, which I declined.


Mapification and tactinalysis of the southern seas:



Serdoa still wonder whoring.



Why did I even put up the sign saying to watch Brick's power?



Research


I was probably going to bitch about the limited number of tiles I had with the next two screenshots.







This one is still a hilarious picture, as long as it isn't your city on fire. Ever seen a capital like this?

T126

You can see my spider sense was tingling with all the new spear builds. Too late.



Those need to be pikes. Too bad I can't build pikes.


Yup, that's a buildup, and it isn't going for someone else.


GNP ranked #2 in the world. So much for that.

T127

Chariot builds because an attack felt imminent. 2 movers to get to the front ASAP. Useless. Also an indication that I renewed the horse deal with Commodore, I think I spent 30 gold or so for 10 turns, not too bad.



Screenshot to show how awesome New Fish had become. The plan was to build/whip units forever here. Have I mentioned that I think the timing of the attack was horrible for me? I was about to spam out a lot of power anyway...five or ten turns I may have been OK. No, probably not.


40% science slider, still doing well in GNP. This economy was ready to go, the defenses weren't that terrible overall, but badly misaligned. I was the best of the second rate nations, I think. Except that I had no land.

T128

Using newly researched Alphabet to get OBs with Merohoc, that should have boosted the economy.


Paranoia was in full swing, using military icons to show troop locations. Brick's galley was clearly scouting me to make sure I hadn't added units to Black Fish. Well, all the build queues were about to empty, but too late.



Last demos before the war. I moved from 4th in power to second by the time Brick played (I played last this turn, and had an opening turn demograhpics shot for the next turn when the build queues were emptied).

End of T128


Beginning of T129, #2 in power. Trailing my invader, #1.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Not to turn the knife or anything, but your 230k total power includes a bunch of tech and pop that can't pick up weapons.

Right. And I'd say the same for Brick except I think he's throwing just about everything at me, he doesn't have much excess population, and I don't know about his tech...but as bad as his economy is I'm sure he's way behind there and doesn't have the same tech power inflation I do.

Serdoa, on the other hand, probably has more tech power inflation than me, definitely has more population power at this point, and therefore less usable power left over for a usable military force. But the axes he's sending my way are real enough and will do the job just fine.

As for my population not being able to pick up weapons, I'm converting them to hammers just as quickly as I can. I'm not leading the population stat anymore by a long shot.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Keep up the fight. Not a lot I can say that would be helpful to you. Is Seroda only bringing one holkan in his stack? If only you had a half dozen chariots there. You'd deal him a nasty blow. I suppose that doesn't count as help, eh?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah, he brought just one holkan, probably because he had only seen me with one chariot in the area. He has more around here, they're probably providing garrison since he's likely emptied his cities of all the axes he has.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T133 - Brick offered peace again, with me giving up Red Fish and Old Fish. That would leave me with One Fish and Two Fish, which of course can again be forked easily after ten turns. Not a chance in hell, he's going to have to spend his army to take me out. I see no reason to help him at this point. Declined!



New Fish is going to fall next turn. I will have five axes, 2 spears, 2 archers, and a chariot inside city walls on flat ground, against the assorted units I described for Serdoa last turn. In an annoying bit of luck half of my units are one XP short of a promotion defending that city. That's a shame because an additional combat promotion five times would have been nice, if only to waste more of Serdoa's units. Yo Lewwyn...attack already, OK? I thought about pillaging my marble, but I've traded it away to Azza for ivory and I can use the +1 happy for this turn. So necessity wins out over scorched earth.

Since I could only load two of the workers onto the galley I moved the third one on a suicide exploration mission toward Brick's city Terrapin. He didn't see a lot, Brick has probably sent everything he has by now. I deleted the worker after taking the screenshot, I see no reason to help out with a worker gift.



Brick has two archers defending Terrapin, one horse archer trickling in toward the fight, one galley providing a sentry against any activity from Serdoa's direction (or mine, I guess). I don't suppose it would be too much to ask for Serdoa to march his axes east after he captures New Fish, but I give that about a 0% chance of happening because him releasing pressure off of me would just be too helpful. (On an unrelated topic Serdoa revolted into caste system and bureaucracy this turn, so he's up Code of Laws and Civil Service, among probably quite a few other techs).

For what it's worth I sank Brick's galley to the east of Old Fish. It was surely just scouting and empty, because he was facing east when I sank him. That means Brick moved 1 west, saw my pair of galleys, and turned around. I lost the low odds first attack (I mean, why would I win anything on the water with Portugal?) and cleaned up in the second attack without damage, which surely means this was an entirely irrelevant attack. If anything had been riding on the outcome I would have lost both battles.

One thing I'm going to do if I get a chance is to add a promotion to the axe that builds next turn before Serdoa attacks. If someone wants to get pissy and say that's a double move action, too bad. I could turn on auto promote units, but I have no idea how the AI would prioritize the promotions. For all I know it will put city raider on the new axe (and spears in other cities), which would be useless on defense. Just because I'm limited to playing in the second half of the turn doesn't mean I should be unable to promote a new unit before it is attacked. If anyone seriously wants to argue this point, go do it somewhere else. Now that I've said this, though, Merovech or Ad Hoc will probably play their turn in the middle of the night where I won't have a chance to do this.

Brick made his move out of Blue Fish toward either Red Fish or the hill tile.




What he does next turn will determine how things play out from here. I hope he goes SE and tries for a direct assault on Red Fish. He doesn't have enough troops to take that city if I defend it with everything. The risk would be that he draws my reserves into the city and then gallops away with his horse archers, cutting my army off from my other two cities. If my only objective was to stay in this game that is probably what I should do, just pack everything into one city and make him spend another 20 turns killing me. I don't know how fun that would be for me, though, so as of this turn I'm holding out hope that he'll make a mistake that I can exploit. Most likely, though, he'll grab the hill tile and force me to decide if I want to attempt defending One Fish or Two Fish, or if I should just hold Red Fish for a while and bleed him dry for as long as possible.

I have good enough food production that I can whip units in Red Fish for a loooooong time, and there isn't anything he can do to stop it (until he takes the city ).



This city has infinite HR happiness to counter the whip anger and has two lighthoused lakes and a clam tile that he isn't likely to pillage. I can get a new spear here every turn until the population runs out, or every other turn if I don't dry whip. Even if he pillages all my land tiles I can still whip reasonably well, so if I had to pick a city for a last stand, Red Fish would be it. Two Fish wouldn't be terrible either but he's more likely to whip out enough galleys to control the water that close to Terrapin, and the rice and corn can obviously be pillaged, so that's not as good. I thought about moving a settler onto the hill tile south of the mountains on the peninsula to the west of Two Fish, but I'd rather build more spears than a settler.

Demographics:



The sad thing is that my military power is my highest ranking. Oh, and the approval rating at 59%? I'll only refer you to the screenshot of Red Fish to explain that one. My current whip anger totals in my cities are 43, 53, 36, 34, and 51 turns (in order of city settlement)....a cool 25 unhappy faces all told. Those numbers are only going to increase until I'm finally extinguished.

Does anyone have anything else you'd like to see? There isn't a whole lot else going on that matters. I still have a workboat out exploring, maybe I'll meet Lewwyn before I'm gone. Otherwise...meh.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T134 Preview - Serdoa captured New Fish as expected, without taking extreme losses in the process. He offered me peace after that, which I rejected. At this point why bother? Maybe he'll waste an extra hammer or two in case I try some crazy last minute attack somewhere (and maybe I will, who knows).

Plako sailed a galley around to my eastern border and offered OBs with me. In normal circumstances I would have declined to deny a few trade routes to a leader, since I won't get anything out of it, but he'd probably just declare war to keep exploring anyway. He also offered me horses for my gems. Declined! I already have a sugar daddy, and one who is providing me much better terms than that. I don't exactly have a lot of spare happiness to go around these days so I'll keep the gems for myself until Brick disconnects them. I offered Plako a map trade, which is probably a good deal for him unless Brick has already traded maps with him. But I want to see what land he has without having to wait a few days/weeks to join the lurker thread.

I didn't move any units but I did take the C1 promotion on the new spear at Red Fish. Damn the turn rolling at 1:30 AM my time, and then Serdoa playing at 2 AM (what time zone is he in anyway?) That was unlucky for me, not that the promotion mattered against what he had left in his stack to use. I still maybe could have killed one more attacking axeman. I'm looking for small victories here.

I'll post pictures later when I play the turn.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T134 - The turn was eventful, I guess Brick has decided I'm too prickly to push in any further.



Take a look at the map under the trade window, you can see where his forces are. My guess of his movement is that he moved a unit SW from his previous position onto the hill, saw my hidden stack, and thought better of the invasion. He surely wanted to cover that unit so moved in most everything else to cover and discourage an attack. Then he took out the free worker (positioned 1S of where the 4 horse archers are now), deleted it, and then moved north. I guess he put 4 HAs together there to prevent me from attacking out with spears. I'm not sure which element of my defenses specifically caused him to want to get out of this war, because he probably could have taken (or burned) at least one of my three good cities, as I can only protect two with any credibility with these mostly slow mover units. Maybe he thought it better to keep his army intact and ready to deploy another day and see what he could buy at the peace table.

As for the peace deal, it's not a hard decision to make in my situation. Old Fish is worth more than the 100 gold being charged here, and I had written it off as a loss anyway. So I'll buy peace for 100 gold and keep that city. If Brick comes back for more in 10 turns what can I do, I'll still have a stack of spears sitting in Red Fish so he won't have an easy way in, unless he decides to build a lot of galleys between now and then. But with Serdoa now sitting tight with two cities on his border, and with a gaggle of axes, we'll see what happens. Best case scenario: Serdoa plays aggressively and tries to attack Brick. But with Brick making peace on my front Serdoa will have to assume that Brick's army will be available to reposition and defend his flank, making an invasion less likely. But I'm spitballing here, if I've proven anything so far it's that I don't know how to read other players.

Speaking of Serdoa, I went ahead and offered him peace now that I'm not fighting Brick. I may as well try to rebuild a bit. I do find myself short of axes in case he sends those axes across the water toward me, but he'll find no shortage of units he'd have to kill to take anything. Since getting 10 turns of peace with Brick I was free to shuffle my units around back into my cities for HR garrison (and I sure need it), so there are no easy boating options for Serdoa anyway. He'll probably take peace and go back to wonder whoring.

While we're on international news, Plako had another offer for me:



OK, so on the face of it I'm giving him probably like 1.5 happies per city (complete asstimate there on how many forges he has, but why not?) for essentially 2gpt + 10 gold, but whatever. I'll take the cash and goodwill, if that's worth anything. Though I think with Plako there isn't a lot of goodwill to be had, he pretty much runs his civ like a business. So yeah, I'm sure the other players will be pissed that I'm giving a good deal to someone in the top tier, but I'll accept better offers you know....

So what deals are on the books?



What will happen with the Azza ivory for marble deal next turn, will the game auto cancel it? Or will Azza have to notice that he isn't getting anything for his ivory? I'd hate to steal ivory from him, but hey, war is hell. Nothing I could do about it! (even if I knew the city was going to be captured on the turn I made the deal....sorry!)

With more players on the board, here is what we have for international fist fights:



I wonder how actively Scooter is trying to kill Nakor at this point. Nakor has had plenty of time to whip in defense in his little banana republic, maybe it's not worth the trouble now. I'm tempted to sail a galley down to have a look for myself. But didn't that get me into trouble before?

The task of rebuilding begins now (I'm going to assume Serdoa takes the peace offer for now since he offered it before. If not, I can go back to building chariots, whatever).




Just four cities now, so there won't be a lot of complicated micro to work through I'm sure. I've set the cities to max food as I try to regrow all the population I whipped off. I didn't keep track of the total pop whipped away, but I'm sure it was a lot. I was able to reposition enough units to pacify every angry city except Two Fish, which will be pacified next turn. Two Fish's unhappy face isn't a big deal as I've swapped that city to building a settler, dumping a ton of overflow into it. That overflow was going to be yet another spear this turn, so I'm glad I can use it on something else. (If Serdoa rolls in on a few galleys someone kick me about not building an axe or chariot). I'm finishing the galley build in Red Fish because it's going to decay hammers soon if I don't, and I can use another boat since I've lost a few in these wars. Until I can research Metal Casting (newest current target) I'll have to patrol my waters with galleys. I desperately need triremes, though, because there is a lot of traffic down here and I don't trust any of my neighbors.

Anyway, the short term plan is to grow these cities back up as quickly as possible in the next 10 turns (excluding the settler build). If Brick comes back for more or if Serdoa comes after me, I can repeat the plan from the last war and whip everything down for more units. I'd like to settle the silks island, I need to settle my own horses down on that godawful spit of land SW of the capital, and I'd like to try grabbing the new city location marked to the east of Black Fish. I moved that site 1S from the previous location to put it on a hill. That spot isn't that good, with the only food tile being in the shared ring with Black Fish, but it's the best land left in the area. If Brick doesn't hurry I'll settle it, wall it, and stuff it with archers.

City by city look at the whip carnage:

The one thing that worked out in my favor in this whole war is that I didn't pillage my own cottages. I was going to start doing that with the few chariots I have whenever Brick moved in, which meant this turn. Through this whole war, not a single permanent cottage/hamlet/village/town changed hands, so once Brick's city capture cash is gone he's going to have to pay for the new cities and the rest of his small city empire on his own. (I lost two calendar special tiles that were newly cottaged since I couldn't plantation them). I'm going to guess Brick runs about 20% science slider at break even. I'll have to check mine next turn to see what it is, but even with me paying 20gpt+ in unit costs, I'm still going to research fairly well since I have very low costs other than the units. Number of cities, distance to palace? Those don't apply to me! And the unit costs will go down as my population increases, right? Or is that based on the number of cities? Also, regarding my tech rate...I'll be OK until we hit the RB Mod wall of inflated tech costs. At least I'll know nearly everyone by then and will reap the known tech bonuses as I lag behind the leaders....

Demographics, yep, terrible.



The population stat will move in my favor some as I regrow these super food cities large again, but that's a useless stat that only makes me feel better. I'm concerned about the soldier count, but some of that is surely because I haven't researched anything in a while and whipped a gob of population out of my power rating. But yeah, there isn't a lot to like here because I've been relegated to the second (third?) division.

I have ideas about new objectives I'd like to play for in this game since winning is out. Anyone care to post some guesses about what comes next (assuming I get to elect what I do and am not reacting to yet another invasion)? This isn't one of Mackoti's Q&A sessions where he crowdsources his planning, I actually have some goals in mind. But a little thread spam wouldn't be bad for encouraging me to keep writing about this miserable four city empire.