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

[WilliamLP]

Just a log showing Mindy that maybe you're lurking the wrong team?




Here's the trap to see if MYKI's gold city has only an archer or axe guarding it.




Note he's gone with a default city name, which is sign number one that someone is checked out of a game. Razing a city (if that's impossible) would be pretty mean, and the main goal would be to hurt him in the long term, though it would free up tiles for Riz. Another option is trying to get a couple longbows over and suprise attack when we may be able to hold the city.

I'm not sure if he's one to rage quit a game, but this would test his limits. This is fine except that the last thing we want is for a guy like 2metra or Slaze to take over...

[WilliamLP]

Turn 127. I logged in to this:




First, I know Gawdzak is a pretty strong newcomer, but who is he playing in this game? I didn't see any reason not to take the deal though, we have iron. It turns out he's playing former-Barry's one city empire. I guess he's the new Parkin? I haven't been following the drama with LP in PB20... what, drama with Lord Parkin? Really?

Anyway, I admire the scrappy play as a sub for a one city empire, getting a galley and metal from a contact! Pindicator may be pissed off that I'm giving it to him, but oh well. At this point, he's one of the contenders to actually win, and there's no way playing a depletionary negative-sum war over water vs an industrious guy with high hammers and triremes is what he wants right now. He might want war with us even less than we want war with him.

Over in the east:




I took a peek at MYKI and fortunately for him he's not totally clueless on defense. He's got Hwachas, one of the more dubious UU's in the game. The fortified C1Axe in Or has a +90% defensive bonus. An naval C1 Shock Keshik gets 27% odds on the axe, which definitely isn't enough to go for it.

I misplayed the science slider last turn and so I have to run a few research builds to get CS in 1. Honestly my play has been pretty poor since turn 75. The highly microed and analyzed start was enough to be in a strong position still though. I should try to play a game where I care as much about these turns as I did about the early game, with planned worker micro and city growth strategies. Bust out the computer programs and stuff. Maybe that's for a time when I have a job I don't need to care much about.

I'm thinking of trying to get OB with MYKI just to have more awareness of what's going on to the east and what Zanth's endgame empire shape actually looks like.

This appears to be a game of medium sized island continents with 3-ish civs on each one. We see that with Pindicator and Cyneheard's land to the south and Molach / AT / Yuri to the west.

The west:




Chub just popped borders, and is right at the gateway to being the monster capital-like city it is destined to be, once the pig and rice are up. It's not that long before we can unload invisible knights and hit Braganza in 1 turn. If Molach is not extremely prepared for that it will probably happen.

Champion is about the get Moai. I reserved the spot NW for a fort passage if we need it, but it's not looking like we really do at the moment.

AT has a pretty reasonable island to the SW, though it would be a pretty out of position play for us. All signs seem to point to a long term game plan of keeping a solid border while trying to eat up MYKI before Zanth does.

Zanth border:




I have no excuse for not having a filler city west of Toronado right now. It's just poor play, but a setter is en route.

Losing the floodplain cottage 2E of Black Stallion is annoying but we should eventually win it back. I wonder if I would have let Absinthe stand without a fight if it were Zanth at the helm and not Darrell at the time.

I think I'm going to fire a Golden Age in 2 to swap 4 civics and religion and speed the rush to Guilds (and maybe even Econ). This is the weird game where we don't even really need HR, but there's no downside at Low maintenance. There's one Scientist I'm building towards now (after the one that fires the GA) which I'll finish but I don't think I'll bother running Caste and trying to starve out more. That's for the next eventual GA when we have Philosophy. Serfdom is great in this mod and makes watermills a really fantastic tile for a vertically grown empire, which we are.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 128:




Zanth and Dtay have similar ideas, and are 1 turn ahead on their Golden Ages. I'll do my swap next turn.

Whoever has the Jewish holy city will have quite a shrine. Which religion to adopt is still a choice between Hinduism, Judaism, or Confucianism. I have mixed feelings about powering up Pindicator by going with Hindu, but it is the most convenient in terms of where it has spread. Also, it's extra value if he can capture cities, but I have a hard time seeing him going after us as his best play in this game. At least before he could own his own continent which will be tricky with Cyneheard and Dtay on opposite sides. I use Cyneheard's calculator all the time, presumably he must have the war basics covered.

I'm biding my time fishing for combat tactics. I'm thinking the plan has to be one or the other of going all in for the Econ merchant, including optimizing for early bulbs, running wealth, etc., or else fully committing to knights in a very transparent hammer attack. (I.e. get Theology, run Vassalage + Theocracy for 11xp units, lots of whips.) At the moment I think MYKI is enough weaker that the hammer is the play here.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 129. Started the Golden Age. Swapped 4 Civics:




I also switched to Hinduism, and Pin is going to be happy about that. I'm going to start playing more for the here-and-now from this point. The goals are to finish infrastructure, spread religion, finish Guilds, and then start amassing horsies.

MYKI's last turn was played by a lurker, so this is another sign he may be checked out. But he does have Feudalism now since I see the first LB. That's ok though, Engineering is really what he needs and that's very expensive and out of the way this early in the game facing an opponent teching this fast. I'm thinking to grab Theo and run Vassalage for 11XP knights... we have super-stables, we might as well get some use out of them.

One thing I need to remember to do in this game is to have at least a couple more sentry chariots, as well as an unpromoted chariot with experience to be able to take Medic 3 / Morale down the line with a GG.

This may be a bad move, but I decided to ask for Open Borders to MYKI. I don't know if he'll accept but, I want to get a boat through the channel to see what's over there, and also I think seeing the full lay of his land and units helps us more than vice versa. If he doesn't accept I'll probably declare to try and get a galley through at least. I really want to see what's to the east.




This is going to be a full hammer attack... which is why I'm not as concerned about MYKI potentially being able to scout us out for a few turns. He's going to see what's up anyway when power starts to spike like crazy. And this is going to be ongoing war to try and kill him and grab more land (and gold). So if he whips down everything in reaction this is actually fine... we have the luxury of being able to run sustained production, which beats whipping in the long run, especially in RBMod... and certainly not less with early IND forges and running Serfdom and buffed modded watermills.

GA demos at 100%:




A pretty strong position, albeit at GA levels. Then again, others are running GAs too.

[WilliamLP]

As you can tell by my reporting, I'm pretty disengaged from this game, and Civ in general right now. I'm playing turn by turn and making basic mechanical moves, making the sorts of mistakes you'd expect when you don't plan your worker moves more than one turn in advance. But... the good part is I can roll a little off of the momentum of a highly planned start and great capital location, and accurately having read local politics. So peace was kept long enough to tech into a pretty good position. Some random screenshots:




So this isn't a connection between MYKI and Dazed at all! In fact, this is an island that MYKI missed the boat on (no pun intended). Dazed has two very nice cities there. I declared on him to get passage over to this side of his land, but we haven't actually fought any battles. MYKI has at least one trireme over here, it's worth noting.

As far as my plans go, this is great, since this means the empire can simply crush toward the east until water is reached with no competition on the other side, unless Dazed has organized some naval transportation.

Tech here, after Guilds, is Aesthetics -> Lit, to build the HE. And that's based off of, not a highly experienced ancient unit, but being able to build 11XP knights.

After that, it's all war from here on out, so probably we're beelining to Cuirs.




I don't think anyone will suspect I'm planning war, right?

This is a slow war to the finish, not a timing attack. Hence Serf over Slavery. I don't think the average BtS player who hasn't played a RtR/mod game to the finish knows just how good Serfdom is in this game, compared to nerfed slavery. Doubly so with this many river tiles. And fortunately Vassalage, with its upkeep bonus, isn't as much worse than Bureau as it otherwise would be.

I just have to say good luck with this one MYKI.




This is right before the knight pump starts.




Twilight of the GA, plus I'm starting to spec out more into a high hammer econ.

Dtay may be clearly winning this game at this point... he's eating CH for breakfast judging by NoviceStats.

Do I have a clear plan for more great people and another GA eventually? Bah, no. This is all war now. First, crash everything I've got into MYKI, then try to fight for the west island, then who knows. I'll try to report more when there are actual war turns.

[MindyMcCready]

Oooohhh a post. And a war post at that. Good luck.

[Ceiliazul]

I had no idea you were 6th in crop yield. Nice job so far, and good luck!

No, im sure vassalage/theocracy wont tip wont raise Myki's guard up.

[MindyMcCready]

Yes good job. Looking forward to a top 5 food once MYKI's lands are liberated.

Any thoughts on Zanth's reaction to a MYKI DOW? In PB13 Ichabod made the attack as we were trying to pummel Retep. How do you see that playing out?

Once you engage MYKI, assuming the war goes relatively well you're going to have a very long border with Zanth giving him lots of opportunity until the culture starts to develop. Unless he intends to vassalize, his long-term existence means that he has every incentive to try to disrupt you before you can leverage MYKI's land or scoop them himself.

Given MYKI's likely one-sided defense to an aggressor,...what happens when Zanth dogpiles and scoops the rewards? How does enforced peace with Zanth play into that?

I see many knights. If MYKI piles everything into Pyongyang,...that's probably exactly what you want if you've got enough cats. Any tactical attack plans at this point?

[WilliamLP]

Turn 137:

GA is over...




Both Zanth and especially Pin have scary high GNP right now. To put it in perspective, during the earlier spike we were actually #1 in the world for a turn or too.

We're going to fall in tech now because the GA is over I chose the +2 xp per unit over Bureau (with a massive science output capital) for a while. Better? I don't know. More fun? Possibly.




We have 6 knights with many more on the way in the future. It's basically all going to funnel into the MYKI border.

HE is started now. Engineering is next, should come in in four turns.




MYKI is either completely unprepared for this, or a tactician. We could attack any time we want to, really, take Pyongyang and then fork everything he's got. I'm thinking attack in T-2 or so, get 5+ knights in position first. And build or upgrade a mace probably to be a cat stack defender.

I'm too busy to respond much today but I'm not that worried about Zanth's reaction because we've got tons of vision on him with well placed borders and sentry chariots, we're slightly ahead, we'll get Eng soon for mobility, the defender has a massive advantage, and the entire empire is producing knights.

[MindyMcCready]

If MYKI employs a one-sided defense and leaves his Zanth border open,...can you send in the Keshiks over that way for any easy picking? They could run through those forests pretty easily.