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

[Fintourist]

Turn 211

Our enforced peace ends this turn and mack is relocating his units and scouting our border areas, but not in an offensive way. I'm doing exactly the same:




E.g. these ship movements look defensive for me, the main fleet stays out of range reg hitting Omdurman & Cannae. (I put 1 cuir in Rorkes Drift just in case that scouting Galleon is loaded




In center the situation is the same. Both of us are keeping the main stacks out of hitting range. Seeing Stalingrad and Barcelona Flourish makes me sad, but that was the price that we had to pay for this current peaceful co-existence. Well, at least we used the time and got some compensation from Ichabod (who did not add new ships this turn).




In the east mack represents us his eastern fleet. Ulm can always be taken, that's clear. But the city is not that valuable in itself and I doubt that it's a big enough prize so that mack would risk turning this cold war into full military conflict again.

Do we want to suggest another set of enforced peace?

In other news:
- I think dtay has a Great Artist, he birthed one 1140 AD. I'll take that into account when our peace is nearing to an end and improve our defenses in the north a bit.
- We finish Rifling this turn. I'll revolt next turn into Caste+Nationhood and draft a round of Rifles. Yeah, they are not sooo amazing deal in RBMod as they cost 2 pop, but me and little Harry will sleep our nights better if we have couple of rifles in important border cities guarding us against a 2-mover attack.
- Any screenshot wishes/questions?

Demos and power:

[Fintourist]

I'll start looking for a sub tomorrow. I don't think I can manage to play the turns properly anymore.

This:
a) is a pity (that Ichabod is giving up and has lost the interest)
b) will have huge impact for our position. What will the replacement do (revenge us, attack William, just mail in turns) and how competent he is? Ichabod's existing army is so big that near-term attack from our perspective isn't feasible, but if Ichabod-sub would choose to waste his army elsewhere or play otherwise really bad we could dream of an attack (assuming we somehow can control our mack and dtay fronts...)

As a final comment, I feel sorry for Ichabod about our attack, because he is a nice guy, and our invasion must have been depressing. It simply was the only direction left where we could get more land and maybe get away with it with improved position.

[Fintourist]

Turn 212

Situation remains unchanged, mack declared and offered peace:




I accepted and offered OBs. Mack also declared scooter, probably offered peace there as well. I wonder what he is planning. Are mack & scooter just going to let plako consume Bacchus in peace so that we get 3 fairly equally strong leaders.

Us vs. Ichabod naval situation update: (only counting our ships that already are nearby)
Frigates: 11 vs 9
Privateers: 2 vs 1
Caravels: 2 vs 3
Galleons: 2 vs 2
Galleys: 0 vs 2

I spent a long-time wondering about whether we should switch into Nationhood. Economically it does not necessarily make sense, because giving up bureaucracy for 5 turns means a loss of 300 commerce and 45 hammers. It saves 250 gold in civic costs though (In 100 % gold mode we only lose ~25 gold per turn). We are only going to draft ~10 rifles, because as already said, 2-pop rifle drafts are not that awesome. They are still ok, so let's say we save couple of hundred hammers overall. In the end I still did it for macro/meta reasons. I want a couple of rifles into certain border cities stating to Ichabod that there is nothing to achieve for his knights, and also stating to dtay and mack that there won't be any free 2-mover attack opportunities available. And in the end, when our winter finally comes, I would guess that it's the hammers and not the money that is the true bottleneck in our defenses.

After going through our cities and adjusting them to new situation I have certain drafts in 8 cities scheduled (D,F,I,M,N,Q,T&Y). Possible additions are Omdu, Hastings, Watling Street and Zanzibar, but those are border cases due to their decent size and tile yields. One or two of those 8 more suitable cities are possibly drafted twice, but I haven't decided that yet.

Otherwise it was a fairly quiet turn, I work-shopped over couple of farms but left most still untouched, because I did not want to kill our irrigation chain. I shifted some units towards dtay front, our peace ends EOT215.

Steel should finish EOT215.

Demos & Power:

I promise to put more pictures in the next report!

[Krill]

I just saw the news, congrats to Old and Mrs Harry

[Old Harry]

Congrats on the young 'un! May your sleep go as well as you can manage it for the next few months.

Two hours at a time is standard, right?

CONGRATS

Congratulations, Harry.

I just saw the news, congrats to Old and Mrs Harry

Thanks chaps, as Fintourist said to me: once we've got the early micro sorted out things should quickly get back to normal...

[Fintourist]

Turn 213




More and more threatening signs are starting to show.. There has never been a higher demand for doomsday predictions.

Let's start with this:




Mack has accepted OBs after his/our previous war-peace moves. This time he didn't so I sent the offer for the 2nd time trying to signal that it is kind of important for us. If he does not accept it's a clear indication that our relationship is moving into colder direction again. We are most definitely not going to be caught with our pants down so if mack does not accept this, I will add couple of spies and a caravel to our troops so that we can check the most dangerous tiles when the peace runs out despite closed borders.

In north our dtay scout revealed something "interesting":




This might be old news for OH, who has been the main responsible for our turn-playing, but the fact that dtay has 5 galleons next to his capital was a good reminder for me. I'm happy that we have Midway as kind of a buffer city.

I also spent a good while staring at the tech situation:




The conclusion is that Mackoti, Scooter and Commodore are the only ones that could fight against us with a real tech advantage in the near future. Not with a tank-vs-warrior kind of tech advantage, but something concrete like infrantry vs. rifles or tanks vs. infantry. Obviously mackoti is the real threat for us.

Plako on the other hand is not much ahead of us in tech. He has Steel and Sci Method but lacks Consitution and Corporation (naturally because of GLH). His tech speed certainly improves in the future (currently its only 10-20 % better than ours) when former Dhalphir cities get their infra back and gains from Bacchus will be added. Anyways, if we don't collapse plako would still need a good while before he would get a real tech edge. MFG edge he obviously has already.

Dtay was our mid-game tech leader, but times have changed. Dtay has Steel, Mil Sci and Liberalism on us, but lacks still Rifling. This lead is not really going to increase as we are equal in GNP, Food & MFG. Due to our higher power I would still like our chances in a duel, but that's of course a stupid comparison. So dtay is not really a huge 1 vs 1 threat currently, but well, when pile-the-Babylonia party starts he will surely make us bleed. However, we must also note that dtay has Mil Sci, built Statue of Zeus, has birthed several GGs and is AGG, which means that Commando units are a real threat that we need to take into account.

All the others civs are several techs behind us, Poked Bear has rifling though.

So yeah, I leave Ichabod for a bit later, but what are we going to do about these threats on our own continent... We will finish Steel EOT215, but after that we will start saving money. We have currently 21 cuirs, 24 knights and 28 cats. Upgrading all those 2-movers to Cavs costs 1680 + 2640 = 4320 gold, that is equivalent to saving gold for 3.5 turns. Cats-to-cannons upgrades are more expensive, upgrading all those cats would cost 4780 gold, which means saving gold for 4 turns. But will we do it? Yes, we most certainly will, if things start look threatening when our enforced peace with macks runs toward its end. If we have more time, teching towards draftable Infantry seems like a good target (Steam Power + Assembly Line)..

Ok, Ichabod front:




Ichabod finished a frigate (BoM) and a galleon (West Coast) last turn

Us vs. Ichabod naval situation update: (only counting our ships that already are nearby)
Frigates: 12 vs 10
Privateers: 2 vs 1
Caravels: 2 vs 3
Galleons: 2 vs 3 (one of Ichabod's Galleons is still far away)
Galleys: 0 vs 2

Comments:
- We have 1 Frigate (+ 1 Privateer) on their way to the area
- This turn we are not completing ships, but next turn we finish 2 new Frigates
- We keep most of our Frigates outside Ichabod's vision, there are four W-W of Watling Street and four E-SE of Vittoria Veneto. Ichabod soon has all his ships at BoM so should we concentrate our troops to one stack as well? Which tile would you prefer?
- 3 tiles with "pre-fort" signs have 9/10 worker turns into forts
- Thanks to our promotion advantage the situation is tense, but still barely under control
- I'm running this turn couple of artists in VV so that I get the city above 10 % culture control so I can draft it if needed

The base plan is to keep the naval control here, keep adding ships all the time and soon get clearly an upper hand thanks to drydocks (if we ever get that far.. :P). However, after staring the screen long enough I decided to start also another operation here. Let's call it "Plan B"... It's once again a long shot, but I started the preparations this turn, here is the main idea:
- There are currently 10 units defending Birth of Musashi where Ichabod keeps his navy.
- But those units are not amazing defenders, 1 musket, 6 knights, 2 HAs and 1 Axe IIRC
- I've started moving our "spare" Galleons and Galleys towards Ichabod front
- If situation is unchanged still in 6/7 turns we put six Galleons into Vittorio Veneto and load 18 Rifles/Cavs/etc in them
- We cross our fingers that on that particular turn Ichabod/sub plays unfocused and does not notice the navy "hidden" inside the city
- If BoM is not reinforced we will burn the city with Ichabod's whole navy hopefully in it..

How does that sound? It's a long shot, but I haven't been able to figure anything more realistic that could improve our situation dramatically. If we could burn Ichabod's whole navy it would free all our ships to other duties and maybe we could start attacking dtay's island holdings..

Demos & Power:

[Old Harry]

I'm going to guess that Yuris played this turn and wasn't sure if he was supposed to accept OBs. Because the alternative is too scary... What are the chances that Mack is sending an Iron+Horses countdown to dtay at the moment?

Over in the west I really like plan B, success probably depends who takes over for Ichabod, but destroying the whole fleet in one shot would be amazing. An amphibious cav just gets odds on the Musket while amphibious Rifles get 96% on each knight and non-amphibious Rifles get 70%. Four or five galleons might even get the job done...

On upgrades don't forget that any xp over 10gets lost when you upgrade, so our 16xp Cuirs would become 10xp cav. Probably best to get those one more xp and promote them before upgrading.

[TheHumanHydra]

I'm going to guess that Yuris played this turn and wasn't sure if he was supposed to accept OBs. Because the alternative is too scary... What are the chances that Mack is sending an Iron+Horses countdown to dtay at the moment?

Euh, I doubt it. He just offered us (and we accepted) a "non-aggression pact"; it would be very dishonest of him to break it now. Is there a non-military reason he could not want OBs?

[Fintourist]

I'm going to guess that Yuris played this turn and wasn't sure if he was supposed to accept OBs. Because the alternative is too scary... What are the chances that Mack is sending an Iron+Horses countdown to dtay at the moment?

Euh, I doubt it. He just offered us (and we accepted) a "non-aggression pact"; it would be very dishonest of him to break it now. Is there a non-military reason he could not want OBs?

Yeah, probably there is no countdown just yet. Mack is still missing rifling + assembly line for example. I'll check soon whether the OBs were accepted this time.. I don't think there any other reasons apart from "I don't want your troops inside my territory" that affect the decision. Due to the recent war declaration our trade routes aren't really worth much to either side.

On upgrades don't forget that any xp over 10gets lost when you upgrade, so our 16xp Cuirs would become 10xp cav. Probably best to get those one more xp and promote them before upgrading.

Thanks for this. I was going to ask about it, because I remembered that there was something weird about promotions+upgrade, but was not sure what the exact rule was.

[Fintourist]

Way too tired for typing a full report today, but here is one eye-opening observation:

Today at noon:
"Aaah, civstats shows that Poked Bear has taken a city from scooter. Probably just some annoyance, irrelevant city somewhere. Hmm.. That's actually quite a big score drop, 18 points, so it has been a fairly large city. Oh well, scooter has so many cities, probably he does not even notice one missing".

When I opened the game:
"Interesting. Both Poked Bear and scooter have birthed a GG so there has actually been a real battle. Nice, nice."

30 min later when taking a closer look at demos:
"What the fuck. We are 3rd in soldier points. We can see that plako is the no.1 in power and we are trailing mack by ~150k so scooter is below us... Aaaand that should not happen when you have 100 cities and are in active war."

I did not do any calculations so it is possible that scooter was not far above us in power before this turn and did not lose that many units, but maybe he did.. Anyways, his power levels are now actually pretty low for his size and this should be an open innovation for Commodore and mackoti. If we weren't located completely on the other side of the world, we would definitely consider an attack. It's of course also possible that Poked Bear lost even more while taking the city, war is now over and there will be lots of cities changing hands in coming turns..

Btw, this game is a beautiful example showing why games should not be conceded too early. Maybe I'm being too optimistic (for a change), but I think there is a non-zero chance of scooter "going down" aka dropping few positions in score board, which is something that I considered much more unlikely still couple of hours ago. Of course, mack/commodore still need to act, which is far from guaranteed, but there should still be a fair few battles before this game is over.

Btw vol 2, we have now OBs with mack. So I back off from my doomsday predictions (last report) a little bit.