[SPOILERS] Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la Corée

[MYKI]

My World



Zoom in



So I've got currency, and am currently flailing around for further research objectives. I have settled on monarchy at the moment because I want to get the wine on line and I want to be hereditary so Ville de Peche can start getting BIG (note Moai - probably a foolish use of time and resources, but I've got it now and I love it).

What else. I couldn't help but notice that I have many fewer cities than other people. I have indicated the two sites I intend to occupy as soon as possible, and my trireme is investigating offshore options that will not be immediately taken from me like candy from a baby. Dazedroyalty has made this a challenge, but we shall see...

Zoom in



Yeah so there's this. While I'm technically at war with Barry Lyndon and he keeps refusing my peace overtures, I'm not too worried - perhaps Lord Parkin doesn't want to interfere too much with his diplomatic policies. But I am also at war with WilliamLP. Naively I sent a chariot off to do some exploring and WilliamLP, perhaps sensing a threat, killed it. Then he offered me a ceasefire, which worried me rather. I'll be the first to admit that none of my graphs look great and my power one is particularly woeful, so maybe he thought he could try it on. I pumped out some units, and lo and behold an axeman, spearman and chariot Swiss Army Stack appeared next to Ville d'Or. I headed him off with an axeman and a spearman and offered him peace. He came right back at me offering a ceasefire, and I remained worried. Now a slightly smaller stack has appeared next to Ville de Cochon, accompanied by another ceasefire offer. This I've obviously turned down. I now have a highly promoted (remember my hut?) spearman and two axeman on station ready to shank the bastard if he doesn't back off or accept my peace offer. And all the while, Zanth watches. I fear at the first sign of weakness the weak guy is going to get dogpiled by the other two. As I mentioned earlier, we shall see.

[MYKI]

So WilliamLP backed off and offered peace. Amusingly I did not accept it because I wanted to go into the game to make sure that he hadn't done something *funny* like taken a whole load of workers and then offered peace. He hadn't, but we're still at war. I've offered him peace - I hope he's more trusting than I.

[MYKI]

Another long-overdue update.

First, this:



So I was sailing along this coastline, looking for somewhere to expand. A couple of spots I'd identified earlier were now well and truly occupied by dazedroyalty. And I came upon a scene of some of his thugs trying to take a barbarian city with not quite enough power to do so comfortably. Sensing an opportunity, I crossed the channel, picked up two axemen who happened to be nearby, and returned in the nick of time.

I wish I'd taken a 'before' shot - maybe you can find one on dazedroyalty's thread. One wounded axeman and a fresh axeman laying siege to one heavily wounded warrior. I was able to sneak in and mount a marine assault at 95%, and now I have a city and have increased my trade income significantly.

Obviously this is going to piss him off pretty severely. I wonder how he will react. He'll have to overcome two fortified axemen on a hill, and the galley's popping back to the mainland to pick up a spearman. Hopefully he'll decide there are easier paths than the path of war.

Anyway, zoom out:



Here's me. Note the new city of Riz. It's got rice and sheep and is on a river. Slightly vulnerable to WilliamLP, but I'm currently militarising as hard as I can. Some way to go before I catch up (I'm too ashamed to show you my graphs), but I'm very much on the case. Note the Horse Riding research so I can get some elephants going. Between them and axemen I ought to be able to discourage a casual attack. Kind of. A nightmare scenario is brewing that involves getting attacked by both Zanth and WilliamLP - as soon as one goes for it the other certainly will unless there is something in the mist that I can't see - the pair of them do seem to be up in each others' grills, as it were.

Oh well. I've thrown some sentries out as far as practical, so I'll have a couple of turns of warning. But I am nervous.

My other short term objective was to get a couple more cities out - I felt I was lagging in this regard, and now I have currency the cashflow situation should be improved. One settler is finished next turn, another the turn after that. I have marked my current proposed city spots - one is a three seafood spot I had been saving, and the other I think will now be a silver/deer sort of thing in my new area. The latter city should provide a bit more beef to my colony if I need to crank out some anti-monarchist units in a hurry.

The question marked space is a possible. It would share a cow and have a deer of its own, but would be quite inflammatory. The good news I suppose is that WilliamLP can't take it, so I may leave it a while.

So the future... priority one is defence. I reckon I should now try to research my way towards longbowmen, and chuck out a decent number of axemen and elephants in the meantime.

Priority two is improvements. I am woefully under-workered - I think I have four at the moment, and currently have a wine, a rice, a sheep and a cow not developed. This is pretty stupid. I also need more cottages and, of course, to get my colony up and running. So I'm also going to shove out a couple of workers.

I reckon that brings you up to date. Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

[MYKI]

Errata: William probably can take the ? spot if he wants, and I'm not currently miliarising very hard at the moment, am I? But I was, and will be again soon. These reports are *useful*, aren't they.
EDIT and the ? should be 1 south

[MYKI]

I've found a solution to my worker problem.

[MYKI]

Yeah so it hasn't been a vintage couple of turns, although on a net basis I still have the same number of cities (well, nearly). I logged in to find that dazedroyalty had managed to mobilise his chariots a turn before my spearman could get to the city of cheekiness. He swatted aside one axeman, and offered me peace for the city. I complied. And then this turn WilliamLP took my not-quite-well-enough defended other new city with chariots (damn those chariots). He lacks the force to do any further damage, I think, and I probably lack the force to retake it despite now being on a full war footing. I'll have construction in like six turns and HE WILL LEARN TO FEAR MY HWATCHAS AND WAR ELEPHANTS maybe.

But New City 1 is built and a deer/silver/fish New City 2 will be built next turn so i've got that going for me which is nice

[MYKI]

So WilliamLP offered peace. I declined to have a look, then reoffered. I'm not getting Riz back, and he'd have an effort making any further ground.

But it set me thinking. I have eight cities to his 12. Zanth is also much bigger and stronger than me. In face, all my neighbours are. As things are, I am not a long-term prospect. So I have a mind, when construction finishes (in five turns or so) to catapult and elephant up and see if I can carve out a slightly bigger niche for myself.

Peaceful expansionwise, there are two marginal cities I could build, and I would defend them better this time. There is also plenty of work for workers to be getting on with. But to what end? I'm lagging in technology, and I really can only see one route back into the game. And even if I wasn't able to go on a massive spree, I would at least be able to defend myself against these raids.

[Gawdzak]

I played your turn for you, hope it wasn't a problem.

Zanth offered open borders, I declined. Reoffer if that's what you want. I would recommend against it since he would be scouting you out and you wouldn't profit much from traderoutes since you guys are the same continent.

I sailed the settler north, which is where I think you wanted to go.

I set tech to Metal Casting since you just finished a tech. You are Industrious with cheap forges, so I think MC is a good tech for you. Saving gold.

Building Longbows in your cities, since you've been building them in most of your cities.

I hope I didn't mess anything up.

[MYKI]

Gawdzak, many thanks. Played as I would have done, except a bit better. And by selecting Metal Casting you saved me a bit of a dither... I get cheap forges, though, and some triremes will be quite useful quite soon by the look of things, so that does seem the best choice.

But yeah, things...

Thing 1:



Thing 2:




Re Thing 1, not sure what WilliamLP is planning. If he goes to war against Pindicator, though, I'd be tempted to try and take Riz back. My army is not yet huge, despite my continuing efforts, but I've got a couple of hwachas and war elephants hanging around now.

But basically I'm surrounded by more powerful empires than me, and especially in the case of Zanth and WilliamLP if I end up in a war with one I'm pretty sure that the other would attack pretty sharpish. So my foreign policy plan should be based around isolating one of them. I feel that WilliamLP is the bigger threat. Part of this is irrational since he did quite sensibly take Riz, but he is pretty damn powerful.

But to sum up, I re-offered open borders to Zanth. Yes he'll explore me, but it means he can't attack me for ten turns, which is something of a relief, and it also means I can get some explorers out myself and expand my pretty unimpressive knowledge of the world. This also frees me up to react to WilliamLP if necessary and, amusingly, dazedroyalty in re Thing 2.

Thing 2 shows that great minds think alike. I've been working hard to get a settler up there ever since I saw that island, and it looks like he's beaten me to it by one turn (not sure how double moves work in this scenario, but I had no reason when I began taking my turn to believe that I should be observing a fixed turn order with him since I couldn't see his settler). Happily I should win this showdown because I have an axeman on the island and he probably could do without putting a settler and a worker under threat - he seems sensible, although a crab and silver city on a strategic island is a nice thing to have. But time will tell... I will certainly need to get a couple of longbowmen up there soon.

Anyway, apart from that things are ticking along:






Not massively impressive, but better than it was a few turns ago. Priorities remain cash and defence. One is going better than the other, although cash has been helped significantly by the recent building of an academy in the capital. I've also got a larger team of workers, and they're focusing on cottaging. Defencewise I'm currently getting some longbowmen out as a priority. I've also just got alphabet, so will try and get some spies into WilliamLP's cities as soon as I can.

Anyway, sorry about the lack of updates recently. It's mostly been a slog back to respectable nationhood, but things could start getting interesting quite soon. Amusingly I missed playing the turn myself because I had got into the habit of going after WilliamLP, so instead of seeing how much time was left on the clock when I checked into the tracker I checked to see whether WilliamLP had gone yet, and he's been playing quite late the last few turns. And of course his playing so late made me come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories about him wanting to establish a different turn order the better for declaring war on me. Which probably goes to show that I've developed a complex about him - from his point of view my lands probably aren't that attractive because they'd be out on a bit of a limb. If that's a problem for someone in contention for the victor's laurels. The fact remains that he's good and I'm vulnerable.

[MYKI]

Two other thoughts... should I convert to something like judaism or hinduism? And should I build a new city in the middle of my main lands? There is space for one halfway between Seoul and Mouton with lots of grass and hills but no resources.

And it'd be quite nice to take that southerly island from dazedroyalty, wouldn't it. Maybe I should build a navy...

EDIT: Dammit - I could have actually taken dazedroyalty's settler and worker that turn. Why did that not occur to me??

ANOTHER EDIT that's really annoying actually