[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Old Harry]

Turn 201

Eyes popped its borders and starved down a size. We've also lost our stone trade with Scooter, not that we were going to use it any time soon. The wheat is actually more problematic as it plunges four of our cities into unhealthiness. I offered Bacchus dye for spices and plako Silk for Wheat. We'll lose food this turn because of it, but should be back to normal next turn.


I'm satisfied that Mack isn't going to attack next turn - if this stack did move in we'd do it quite a lot of damage and the coastal attack routes are fairly well covered too.


We're putting 50% into Constitution this turn, then will complete it EOT203 so we can switch to Representation, Bureaucracy, Slavery, Free Market and Theocracy. Then we can save some cash before getting Steel or Corporation. I think we can cope with Ichabod with just Slavery, but if we think Mack is coming after us in 10 turns Steel becomes much more important.

Omdu poped its great person when I ended turn - its a great merchant, so we can send a galleon into plako's territory in a couple of turns to get that cash


Also Commodore was voted Apostolic Palace occupant.


Demos and power

[Hashoosh]

That election has barely more legitimacy than a North Korean one

[Old Harry]

That election has barely more legitimacy than a North Korean one

I demand proportional representation for the Apostolic Palace!

[Old Harry]

Turn 202

Two turns in a day? Sort of! (Its after midnight here). First up Mackoti war-peaced us, offering his map as if to show off about all the new cities he's been planting... Needless to say I accepted. Then got an empty message from him. I wonder what that meant? I offered open borders back for our world map.

Ichabod has Astronomy, so the next few turns will prove pivotal in the west. In the southern five cities we can see two Galleys and two Caravels. They may get upgraded, but we're more concerned for boats finishing in the next three turns (he's still in Caste and Organised Religion so no whipping or promotions available.) Peace lasts until the end of t205, so he has plenty of time... His five naval cities (Mushashi has the Heroic Epic) could out-produce us as our decent coastal production cities are too far away . The good news is that unless he builds a ridiculous number of galleons we'll have more than enough Cuirs and cats on hand to prevent him making gains. The other good news is that William hasn't got a peace treaty with him any more and the treaty with dtay doesn't last too long either. Our EP ratio is 168/90 but we should get Ichabod's graphs back next turn.


This is really suspicious, but the exploring worker has been all over dtay's land and hasn't found his stack. Maybe its up on the border with Commodore? We shuffled a few units towards Dtay, although we don't expect anything from him, and we probably won't bother war-peaceing him on t204 when our treaty runs out.


Demos and Power

[Hashoosh]

HELLA BIG

But seriously, wut??

[Old Harry]

Turn 203

Events this turn: Lewger took Azza's ice-ball troll city (long before the rest of his stuff ), we get a couple of border pops and Commodore does something I've not seen in my two MP games so far - what is the benefit of running Emancipation? I'd have thought that he was mostly running mature towns now - has he decided that the increased tech costs mean he needs to build more or is he trolling the rest of us? I've highlighted a stack of 40 two-movers just too far away from the north and south coasts to help defend those cities - so they must be going somewhere...


Agincourt is pretty strong now, but still crap compared to Mack, Commodore or Ichabod's capitals. It'll take back the plains cottage next turn, then keep growing. With the customs house the trade routes go up again - a size 22 city gets us 15 commerce, but the next jump is if we get to size 20 and someone else hits 21 or we get to 19 and someone hits 23. Our best bet for upping the numbers then is to get corporation for the fourth trade route (worth another 12 commerce = 45 beakers or 31 gold). With all the banks and trade routes elsewhere our break-even rate is now ~60%, so I think that means building an Observatory is a better bet than the market.


Here are pictures of all our other cities for reference - spoilered for length. You'll see that we have units queued up to finish once we switch to Theocracy next turn. A lot of them will be whipped too to allow overflow.

Gallipoli might as well put hammers into Sistine for fail-gold now...










LB can chop into the observatory and build the grocer, then might as well run merchants instead of the mine and workshop.








Tet - see how badly we hurt our trade relations with Ichabod . Also see how annoying losing Peterloo was from an alphabetical point of view .












Watling Street is running three artists now, as I decided that popping the borders earlier was better...






Zanzibar isn't gaining culturally on plako, so I don't think we'll get the gems until the next border pop.




So where do we build 2nd Battle of Bull Run?

Icahbod launches his first Frigate . BoM can put about 50 base hammers a turn into units, and has a forge and the Heroic Epic, so let's expect a Frigate a turn from the city .


We offer Plako a little incentive to allow our galleon through - we'll set the merchant ashore next turn, then run the mission t205 . This means we can run 100% science this turn and about 70% next turn, then get the cash from the merchant the turn after and switch back to 100%.


Demos and power - We got Ichabod's graphs back, but he's spending 24 EPs per turn on us and we've only got 12 per turn to spend. Should we run some spies or are we happy to just have his graphs? Hashoosh - on imports/exports I presume the rival best is Plako or Mackoti, who have four routes per city and should have good infra, while the worst is someone like Ichabod or Lewger with a lot of cities, but not much in the way of infra and only two trade routes per city. Perhaps they should close borders, but by this point it doesn't make a huge difference as they aren't competing with Plako and Mack - we are their rivals...

[Fintourist]

According to my understanding those big and small import/export figures are caused by the order of players although obviously you need to have many OBs as well. Whoever is first in the list has a big negative value as other civs choose first X-commerce routes provided by him and then select the routes from 2nd player in the list and so on.. If you are the last one in the list you get a big number, because everyone prefers connection to other players if the yield is the same. I'm not sure how or how often this order is determined in Pitboss, in PBEM it's just a turn order. However, if you have more trade routes per city than your opponents it also leads to positive values and thus OH's guess makes sense, but it's not impossible that plako or mack is rival worst either. In PBEM45G Sareln had built the GLH and everyone had OB with everyone, but because he was first in the turn order his export/import value was by far the lowest.

Re actual game stuff: Let's see if Ichabod's navy will be our doom... This is the price we need to pay for our invasion and it was to be expected.. Ice is thin once again The positive thing is that Ichabod's teching has actually been surprisingly weak and it's great that we had so much time before he was able to build his first frigate, captured cities are coming out of revolt and they will have a major role in the production of our western navy. Aaand Ichabod should not be too close to combustion yet..

[fluffyflyingpig]

Okay, so you have 2nd Bull Run Manassas, an excellent choice. Now pick someone to go get some new cities from. Next up, and with an eye toward significant battles and avoiding Star Wars EU drek, I'd suggest:

3rd Ushant, the Glorious First of June (or 3rd Karkov, 3rd Petersburg, 3rd Ypres, 3rd Winchester)
4th Kawanakajima (4th Ypres, 4th Karkov, 4th Champagne)
5th Encirclement Campaign (5th Ypres)
6th Isonzo
7th Siege of Gibraltar

From there you can alternate between Gibraltar sieges and Isonzo battles up to 14 and 12 respectively. Other places like Constantinople or Jerusalem have a strong history of sieges but only Gibraltar has a definitive numbering system.


EDIT: Also, you really should name the city either 2nd Manassas or 2nd Battle of Bull Run, 2nd Bull Run is just odd sounding.

[Dhalphir]

So did you get your merchant through?

[Old Harry]

Turn 204

Thanks for those battles fluffyflyingpig! I guess we'll need to invade dtay to use them all . I'm tempted just to go with sieges of Gibraltar from 2 through 14 - who knew it was such a popular place!

Ichabod's navy: 2 Frigtes, 3 caravels, 2 galleys. From RockAndTheTree galleons can dump units NW of Ypres, but I expect the galleys to move to BirthOfMusashi and threaten Vittoria Venetto. We'll have enough cats near Ypres to give us odds on a beachhead just in case though.


Civic revolts - the economy under HR, Bur, Caste, FM, OR:


New civics:


Now the economy is pretty similar, but the number of beakers has gone up. Lets see if we can do something about that with the whip. We 1-pop whip Dunkirk for a Cuir, Endor for a Frigate, Issy for a Frigate, Konig for a Cuir, Midway for a Frigate, Nuremburg for a Pike and 2-pop whipped Zanzibar for a Frigate. This is such an evil game...



We'll go 70% on Corporation (ignore the Steel in the screenshots) this turn unless I hear complaints - getting that will be worth between 120 and 150 commerce a turn (unless I'm reading the Foreign Advisor totally wrong) and steel doesn't actually help us right away against Ichabod. The Great Merchant arrives at next turn. I felt like he'd be safer on dry land than on a boat that a privateer could easily sink, so we've tipped our hand to plako. Annoyingly I can't get the interface to tell me how much a trade mission will get us, so you'll have to wait for the turn to roll.


Demos and power - in other foreign affairs Plako is drafting Rifles and Dtay drafted four muskets last turn, but none this turn...