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

[Fintourist]

Ok, let's update that cats amount immediately:

[Fintourist]

Turn 220 - 2nd part

Here is how the battle went:




We lost the first two battles at 66 % odds and I got a bit worried. Then our Cavalry won at 90 % odds and luckily we won the next 2 battles too at 73 % and 76 %. After that it was all above 90 % odds and final battles were just cleaning up. I finished the city with a rifle, upgraded it to Guerilla so it should take 1 or 2 units with him next turn (our musket that razed BoM managed to take 1 knight with him).




201 gold, quite nice. Ka-ching! Kind of makes up for lost rifles, well, not quite. But the fact that Ichabod again has a frigate and 2 Galleons less frees our navy to other duties even more. And of course one coastal size 11 city less..

Btw, you can see from events that WilliamLP declared on plako. I obviously hope that it's something concrete and he attacked some wounded plako units or something, but if I had to bet I would imagine that he just wants enforced peace. Probably works for plako too.

Aaanyways, back to us: Our ships can attack BridgeGojoAv next turn, but now we are officially out of steam. There are 4 muskets and 3 pikes inside the city and Ichabod can put several knights into the city too. We have 11 units on our Galleons, all wounded. So I guess it's time to pack our bags and switch into blockading mode. Maybe even offer peace? Possibly we now just want to control the Coast and don't even try to play it friendly? If I were Ichabod my morale would be pretty down, I wonder how he reacts to it and if there is an eventual revenge coming.. Buuuut, if we want to continue we have Galleon inside VV, which can bring 3 non-amphi cavs or 2 cavs and a super medic into the fight.. My current hypothesis is that it's not worth it though..

This turn I will report our domestic stuff as well, that will be in the 3rd part..

So let's start plotting against dtay or mack now? It's not like our position is really much better considering winning, but now with Ichabod revenge kind of out of the way, our chances to survive a while longer are much better.

[Krill]

How many people aren't at war?

[Fintourist]

How many people aren't at war?

Mack & dtay

[pindicator]

Pindicator - how come Scooter is flying solo now? Or is that spoiler info that we'll have to wait to read?

Scooter and I just couldn't get on the same page this game for whatever reason. So I thought it best to step down and let him take the reins rather than have both of us continue to bang our heads against the wall.

How many people aren't at war?

Mack & dtay

This has really been a lurker friendly game with all the warring. Maybe that was why I quit...

[Fintourist]

Turn 220 - 3rd/final part

Ok, some non-Ichabod stuff:




We are researching again. First we pick Steam Power and then we possibly don't commit to Assembly Line/Railroad just yet and pick Sci Meth, which also leaves Artillery path open. These both techs are kind of cheap compared to more advanced techs and both increase our known-tech bonus..

When we have spent our cash reserves we finish Wall Street and start saving gold again (for new techs/upgrades).




I'm doing the same thing here that OH did a while ago: Now that we are not in Theocracy we are not finishing units, once we switch out of OR we 1-turn them also in non-HE cities. Although we are now building infra (incl. Ironworks) in more cities than usual and some wealth so this is not such a common sight.

Our enforced peace with mack ends EOT221 so I sent this:




Currently I doubt that there will be a war in couple of turns, but I again moved some of our units in more defensive positions just in case. Our Eastern border city, suttree's former Toledo, Ulm, will be as vulnerable as ever, but as last time, my hypothesis is that the city is not worth starting a war. Apart from producing some commerce my hope is that the city will be able to draft an infantry during this game (size 5 now IIRC).

And well, let's put 1 more Ichi picture:




As said, it is really unlikely that BridgeGojoAv will be attacked, but we can be annoying.. If I counted correctly the city gets now only 17 food so there should be -13 starvation. If we move forward and blockade other cities from Ichabod that might be actually so annoying that we can black mail some kind of a peace deal. Say OH, if you want to start acting "friendly" again and not encourage Ichabod to build a new navy. Now it does not really matter that much though, because we have bigger navy and MFG advantage and drydocks and soon ironclads if we want etc..

Demos:




4th place in power.. My guesstimate is that Plako, Mack and Scooter are before us, but Commodore is a possibility too. The distance to no.1 is not that big though.

Power:




The damage that we did to Ichabod will be visible next turn (if we don't lose graphs - we might want to run some EPs against ichabod and dtay at some point when we want to remove their city visibility on us)

Foreign news: WilliamLP and plako seem to be actually fighting, plako razed a city from WilliamLP.
Current feelings: OH would like to attack dtay :P Feasibility study is not going to bring too positive results, but that has been the case pretty much the last 80-100 turns as well.

[Old Harry]

Scooter and I just couldn't get on the same page this game for whatever reason. So I thought it best to step down and let him take the reins rather than have both of us continue to bang our heads against the wall.

Heh, I don't want to play you guys when you do click!

[Old Harry]

I had another quick look around. I put Gallipoli back on Sistine since we have marble + OR again. Of course maybe no-one else will go for the culture win, in which case we could...

The Yearn for Motherland unhappy in Vitorio Veneto should go from 6 to 5 when our culture in that city hits 17%. We're at 15% now, and I think we've put about 400 culture into the city square so far, meaning Ichabod put about 2250 into it, meaning if we add another 60 culture this turn (by running 20 cpt + the 40 that the centre makes anyway) one unhappy face should go away. So I added one more artist to take us to +21 cpt and -6 food... You can fire them all next turn.

Other than that all looks good, although courthouses in Ypres and Wattling St may come in handy soon.

[Fintourist]

I had another quick look around. I put Gallipoli back on Sistine since we have marble + OR again. Of course maybe no-one else will go for the culture win, in which case we could...

Ha! I put it couple turns ago back to wealth because I thought that nobody is building that and we are never going to get that fail gold.. :P But yeah, I guess we could keep slowbuilding it.

What's your estimation reg how fast we could get a culture win if we would get a 100 turn NAP from all directions? Our central position and our starting point is not suitable at all for a culture attempt, but well at least we are SPI and there is no harm thinking about it anyways. And yeah, maybe there exists some kind of a crazy scenario where we configure a slow culture win attempt to finish just before Scooter/mack/plako are about to win a space race and try to create a situation where our neighbors are pushing with full power for their own space race so that they have no time to stop our culture attempt without sacrificing their own space race

Talking about long shots.. I'm very interested about plako/WilliamLP situation. Civstats shows that they both razed a city from each other, but event log does not show anything. The natural explanation is that those are former cities from Bacchus and therefore we did not have vision on them.. Yeah, that must be the case, but I have no idea whether there is actual fighting going on (need to check WW next turn). Aaaanyways, plako surely has most of his army in the former Bacchus land and if we would believe that there is actually a real war going on, we could try to be opportunistic..




These cities do have defenses, but I'm pretty sure we could take e.g. Seine & Chi. Itza if we want. Now that Ichabod's navy is destroyed we would actually have a respectable amount of navy available for this attack. Plako surely has a big navy too, but he does not have Mil Science for example.

Problem here is that these cities are pretty close to plako's core, his coastal HE city etc. So if we take 2-4 island cities it won't be that easy to keep them (and not economical at all). Our real chance here is that our attack starts a dogpile. We hope that WilliamLP remains in war and we hope that mackoti would join and attack plako too. With three of us involved the war could actually be profitable for each of us. Otherwise, surely not. Speaking of mack, I received and accepted this:




Yes, we always need to consider the possibility of backstab, but I interpret this as a 30-turn NAP kind of thing (btw, I'm happy that this number thing is banned in PB18, but I'm not sure if all the players have followed the tech thread there enough to know it..). This increases the remote odds that some kind of military action somewhere could work.

The Yearn for Motherland unhappy in Vitorio Veneto should go from 6 to 5 when our culture in that city hits 17%. We're at 15% now, and I think we've put about 400 culture into the city square so far, meaning Ichabod put about 2250 into it, meaning if we add another 60 culture this turn (by running 20 cpt + the 40 that the centre makes anyway) one unhappy face should go away. So I added one more artist to take us to +21 cpt and -6 food... You can fire them all next turn.

Other than that all looks good, although courthouses in Ypres and Wattling St may come in handy soon.

Also a good point. I switched Ypres onto courthouse, I'll finish the frigate there once we are back to Theocracy so that it is born with an ability to double-promote.

[Old Harry]

Offer Plako and William map trades to see what's going on?

I'm not keen on making a new enemy right now. Can't we kill one of the others first ? Anyway there's no guarantee that Mack or Scooter would pile on - I'd rather wait until (if) they actually attack and then be opportunist.

It wouldn't hurt to know more about Plako's army and fleet though. Maybe send a couple of boats over to check along with Lunch...