[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

Turn 120: I'm playing this game pretty casually right now, just trying to be difficult to attack and develop until knights. I'm making some micro mistakes, like whipping granaries in size 2 cities too early (the horror.)

Known world:




To the west, Orange is Yuris and I forget who the light blue player just west is.

You can AT (West Purple) has a smaller island southwest of ours.

Cyneheard (south yellow) is surrounded on all sides but like us has a natural coastal border. The Grey player to the west is (EDIT: Dhalphir), the Slime Green player to the south is Azza, and Harry/Tourist are Green to the southeast.

Pindicator is shaping up to the the power on the landmass to the south, but he does have Dtay (green east) to keep him in check, who has a ton of points for grabbing a bunch of first-to points and basically just being himself. He's an incredibly smart guy, obviously, and quite competent when in a war, though his default style is to go all-in for economy to the expense of being ready for a surprise attack or make sure he's not a very logical dogpile target.

Most interestingly, the land to the east continues quite a ways, and DazedRoyalty (Blue Player) is to the east of MYKI. I think we know Bacchus is over there somewhere too, perhaps on our land mass.

I've got a couple of sentry chariots checking up on MYKI and Zanth, and I'm not seeing anything suspicious so far.

Feudalism finishes in 4, and then the default plan is to get CS and then do the massive civic and religion switch with a GP golden age. Mr. Ed is size 14 next turn, and it's nearly an ideal Bureau capital.

The other possible plan is to get guilds ASAP, go all-in on Zanth or MYKI with gerrified knights. That removes us from the Economics Merchant race, but obviously it's by far the more interesting (and stressful for me) path.

[Commodore]

The Grey player to the west is Dtay,[snip]

Pindicator is shaping up to the the power on the landmass to the south, but he does have Dtay (green east) to keep him in check

Quid que?

[WilliamLP]

The Grey player to the west is Dtay,[snip]

Pindicator is shaping up to the the power on the landmass to the south, but he does have Dtay (green east) to keep him in check

Quid que?

Sorry, grey player is Dhal.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 121:

We're sitting around in 5th to 10th place... in basically everything. I ignored the Keshik, basically, but this wasn't really the game for it, imo, since there was no easily and obviously profitable war path. And in the absence of that I think you're far better getting peace and playing passive-aggressively, which has been a success.




MYKI has another settler that is going to squeeze out another city site to claim the deer, I guess. That is some slim pickings! War with him is possible next turn, though it's unlikely. I have a sentry chariot on the hill that can see him over the forests. It would be better to keep it out of sight and weave in and out so he doesn't know I see him, but Or culturally pushing and getting the rice ruins that plan a bit.

Annoying is that Absinthe is out-pushing culture and will take the flood plain 2E of Black Stallion, at least in the short term before Khartoum can get to 40% and we have 2 cities to 1 pushing on the tile and can start spreading religion.

Zanth is showing no signs at all of being aggressive. He has built a couple of Rathauses, so he's investing in a longer game.

Feudalism finishes in 3, and then this is the fork in the road that decides whether we want to try for the blaze of glory and spam knights for a timing attack, or play to stay with and maybe even gain on the economic leaders of the game.

[MindyMcCready]

OMG,...I'm hungry for some rice again!?!

Blaze of glory. We've built a whole bunch of Gers anyway. Clearly we need to leverage that investment.

If you're playing the economic game you have to leverage it at some point. There's not many better times to do that than at Knights. Before Zanth can get an economic lead (or equivalency?) via Rathauses we should establish a land advantage. If we go Knights first, we may have some opportunity before Zanth gets to pikes. If we go econ first, we likely lose that possibility.

How's the island looking?

[WilliamLP]

OMG,...I'm hungry for some rice again!?!

You and me both! We're actually trading our other rice to Fintourist for crab (which we lack). I'm trying a couple of trades to get another source since we actually are finally 1 past the health limit in the capital. There's also a hill deer I haven't roaded yet.

Blaze of glory. We've built a whole bunch of Gers anyway. Clearly we need to leverage that investment.

If you're playing the economic game you have to leverage it at some point. There's not many better times to do that than at Knights. Before Zanth can get an economic lead (or equivalency?) via Rathauses we should establish a land advantage. If we go Knights first, we may have some opportunity before Zanth gets to pikes. If we go econ first, we likely lose that possibility.

There's a right way and and a wrong way to respond to someone ramping up knights hard... The right way is to do what we did in PB13: notice it's happening very early, set Engineering as priority number one and start whipping everything and accept that the rest of the game will be played far behind the leaders. But... that works. And if it's Zanth he's extra likely to go there because of Landsknechts which screw us over until Rifles, basically. On the plus side his borders are much better for attacking than ours with Ichabod were.

It's unlikely that MYKI could handle a ton of knights in 15 turns, at least.

What makes the other option tempting to me is that I think we would have a chance in the Econ / Merchant race. And you have to leverage tech, I agree, but that would point to something like the Grens / Cannon path. On the other hand... yeah we've invested in Gers and they're pretty good. Do you think revolting to Vassalage + Theo for baseline 11XP horse units would be too obvious?

(Has anyone ever gotten their first HE unit by just building it? Heh.)

How's the island looking?

Chub is developing nicely, it has a monument and barracks now to get that second ring as soon as possible. I had a chance to go at Molach but decided the short term gains weren't worth the headaches. We do have a trireme and 3 galleys down there right now.

[MindyMcCready]

There's a right way and and a wrong way to respond to someone ramping up knights hard...

Do you think revolting to Vassalage + Theo for baseline 11XP horse units would be too obvious?

Right. These are the reasons that I think that we should make a beeline for Knights.

1. We should be able to get Knights before Zanth gets Pikes? That'll give us some options.
2. Raze Aachen. Threaten,....force Zanth off of the economic path. His UU makes attacking difficult but we should be able to defend easily with LBs or CBs.
3. Sign a 10T peace treaty with Zanth.
3. Re-deploy everything towards MYKI. Conquor.
4. Finish off the island with Knights?
5. Hit Zanth with Grenadiers or Cuirassiers.

You're right that we're probably not going to get away with sublety or stealth; so use it to our advantage to force Zanth off the econ path. It's possible that MYKI could drop his guard if he sees us DOW on Zanth. That deer city that MYKI is planting could be a blessing in disguise. He'll probably stack that city when threatened. He'd only get 1T to react and we can scout for defensive cats before going in. If he didn't retreat and we won a decisive battle with cats, the Knights might be able to sweep in with low resistance.

What makes the other option tempting to me is that I think we would have a chance in the Econ / Merchant race.

I have no opinion on what your odds are of accomplishing this. Still I'd value another half dozen MYKI cities higher than a merchant. A 5-10 city advantage moves us much closer to owning our continent and I still think that that's a key component to having a shot at the game title. We may be 5th (to 10th?) for now, but sooner or later lands and empires are going to start consolidating.

And you have to leverage tech, I agree, but that would point to something like the Grens / Cannon path.

Can we leverage tech twice? :LOL: Grens/Cannon for Zanth if he's still around. An easy win over MYKI could make it possible to stay ahead in tech.

Chub is developing nicely, it has a monument and barracks now to get that second ring as soon as possible. I had a chance to go at Molach but decided the short term gains weren't worth the headaches. We do have a trireme and 3 galleys down there right now.

Ok. Good enough for now. MYKI's cities are worth more than a couple of well defended island cities. Life will get more difficult if we lose that island due to the west-coast miltiary requirements. Has he seen the Trieme? And/or do you know if he has Metal Casting?

[MindyMcCready]

Can we tell what MYKI's tech's are?

I'm not sure if you've factored it in yet,...but if we can get to Knights before MYKI gets feudalism,...that should be the single biggest consideration in your war planning.

[MindyMcCready]

Nothing to report? You're going to lose your 3rd place Views status if you don't update.

[WilliamLP]

Wow, I had no idea we were so high in views... Sorry for getting disengaged in the reporting of this game, I'll try to bring it back a little, especially when the turns get more exciting.

Short version of what's going on:

- I decided that CS can't be delayed, it's too good. The irrigation spread helps a lot, maces are a great unit vs Molach / MYKI with a tech lead. Also, it will coincide with a GA really nicely for switching many civics. (CS is in 1 turn, GA in 2 turns.)

- Zanth is doing quite well, in tech, production, and everything else, and has a bunch of Rathauses already. He has every incentive to get Engineering early. This is not the guy to go after with knights, and everything is aligned against that plan. Especially, the fact that he has no other threats to worry about so can concentrate defense in one direction. So I think the operation is to try and grab land from MYKI and/or seize some island real estate from Molach.

- I've got a trap sprung for MYKI next turn, with a galley that can move and hit his gold city with two shock Keshiks. He should know better and be prepared against motive and opportunity, because he can see the galley, but if he doesn't I may raze it. It may move him to total war mobilization but I think I'd rather he be doing that then teching up.

- Pindicator is getting fortunate with quests and events, having landed a few key ones this game. I think he's gotten a library related one and a forge related one, unless I'm mis-remembering the logs. Zanth has the mass trireme quest but I doubt he'd go for that.

- The Pindicator / Cyneheard land is a big island, with a Dtay presence on the Northeast side.