[68] Miguelito's famous last words, and Amicalola's sighs

[Amicalola]

Even if he does that, though, the axes can stay where they are. We'd have two turns before he would be able to move onto a forest.

I don't hate whipping a worker->barracks, or lighthouse->barracks. Moai will take an awfully long time to hit pay back, although better with IND. which do you prefer of those? I certainly want a barracks before more axes.

[Miguelito]

Commodore is camping on the jungle pig. I don't see how we dislodge that without catapults, but at least he's paying upkeep I suppose? No pig and ivory is sad but whatever.
Need to get that new city down. I'm worried that Comm might have a galley in the inner sea though. So need to protect it from the first turn on. Archer+ axe, something like that.
Comm loves galleys, we've sunken 2 so far but there's a 3rd, at minimum. The victorious trireme can rest and heal under our galley on the clam for a moment.

[Amicalola]

I agree - sad but not the end of the world. It removes a lot of his tactical options while he camps there too. For example, much easier to settle our new city! Did you whip the settler last turn, or are you waiting a while longer? I would whip for 3 and max overflow here, we have more food to spare than hammers (as we discussed earlier, I think?). Archer/axe is fine for the new city, even warrior/axe or double axe could be fine imo. You could maybe promote one of the axes to Formation if you're notably worried, and it'll still be helpful against HAs later (and on defense still beats a dog)?

Great news about the galleys, I think our hammer trade this game must be excellent between that and the worker and the fishing nets. I would consider whipping a second trireme to tear up his fishing nets - 'get your soldiers the heck out of here, or you lose the nets.' Or just pillage them regardless - might as well use the military part of the Oracle.

Edit: Oh wait, I guess we did also lose a worker. Ahem.

[Miguelito]

I was going to whip the settler, but then Comm showed up with another 5 units on our border, for a total of 12 now... Maybe I should've done it regardless, but I wanted to play it safe, also didn't want to whip off all the good tiles, and next turn the other 2 cities will have grown.
But still, him marching with 12 units into between our cities is very dangerous. Meanwhile yuri's demos soar. I can more or less understand why Comm does this - he has to achieve something with Boudicca of NA before tech (Construction mostly?) makes his stuff irrelevant, and attacking into Bowmen is even less attractive - but I fear it's not winning the game for either of us. 3rd ring borders in Brute have popped now, so we're a bit safer.
A second trireme would be cool, If we can catch some breath. Brute would be the best spot for it, without either Tatara or barracks, and for its position, but it has to finish the granary first.
Again slightly tempted to just settle the horse and work some more tiles.

[Miguelito]

Argh. I'm having thoughts of giving up Brute. Boudicca dogs are just nasty. Want to do a login and lift my spirits?

[Amicalola]

I logged in for a look but I can't post for a few hours, I'm afraid. If you can wait that would be good.

[Miguelito]

Big battle was had!

Commodore's stack, from last turn:



First waves:




Final result:


All in all, a pretty mixed bag. Our 7 C2 shock axes had 30.4% odds agaisnt the C2 shock dogs. We won just one of 6 fights and lost one flawlessly.
Then we got odds but lost a shock axe to a C1 dog at 65%, and 2! axes to stupid chariots.
On the upside, we had just enough axes left to take out the sowrds, and then won 2 50% fights with the spears, and 80% with the CG3 archer which felts risky.

I *think* he only gets his promos after the turn rolls, ie after he plays. At least the uber dogs shouldn't get promos anyways after winning their 70% fights. I bit the bullet and upgraded a warrior plus whipped the axe in Brute. We had been discussing doing so last turn already, but maybe Comm would have retreated in that case?

Also sunk another galley but the trireme got wounded in the process (but also earned C2 for next turn). That was the third galley, but Comm has two more on hand. Him unloading 4 units at Brute would be inconvenient right now, but he also has to have a limit?

There are also a dog plus 2 chariots on the jungle tile in the west, and a sword following. We are by no means out of danger yet, but we are looking better than 1 or 5 turns ago. Thoth appearing with his praet stack would really hurt right now though.

In celebration of heroic deeds we found a city:


Vivo! (I live!) seem like fitting last words for our situation. It's very thematic, the supposed original author is rumoured to also have been very fond of horses.
The city wants a workboat badly, hopefully Hastur can spare the hammers soon. Founding it now enabled us to 1 turn a chariot in the capital, which seemed useful, and on the inner sea coast, where we originally wanted to plant, there seemed a bit too much chariot traffic at the moment.

[Miguelito]

 




Commodore did the obvious thing in moving onto the forest, which was the one option that I had not really considered. Meaning that the workers in the capital could not rebuild the road to Brute. I could have sent them there as well, but had missed that scenario.
I used the GG to make a Morale shock axe - and lost it at a little below 50%, but cleared the stack without further losses (Comm's chariot had already been taken out by ours at the time of this pic).

He has the dog (C1 / woodsman 2) and 2 chariots on the hill, and Thoth is also poking with a chariot, which has me drywhipping a spear in Hastur . But I *think* with that we have the situation under control, for the time being. Let's see what Comm comes up with next. There are again 3 galleys of his on the east coast, after we have sunk 3 already. It might get a bit hairy there. Yuri meanwhile is merrily expanding his GNP and crop yield lead.

[Miguelito]

Can't get a break!



I hope this signals to Thoth that we're not willing to let him get through. otherwise we could still bring/whip enough to stop and probably hurt him. But at some point I'd also like to build a worker for Vivo, get a 3rd worker, build a lighthouse, that sort of thing.
Oh yes, we got our second GG by winning a chariot duel (ours was C2 ), before Commodore got his first. Does that count as a win? Btw a GG from Commodore would mean lots of additional headaches

Commodore is about to get Metal Casting. I hope he uses it to put pressure on yuri who is in urgent need of some. More likely he'll whip 4 triremes asap and send them after us.
We should also consider building Colossus now, before Comm does. Of course I like building axes nonstop as much as the next guy, but it seems like a strong wonder on this map where there is next to no river commerce.

[Miguelito]

RNGesus loves Thoth this Christmas:



Each of these axes was C2 shock or better, our odds in every fight were 65-70%. Lost another morale axe, yay. I fear we can't hold much longer agianst two neighbours attacking us alternatingly, and consistently bad combat luck. Maybe, if Commodore gets a good slice of our land, that even opens the game again, so a win for the lurkers.
You can argue that I should not have attacked out, but Commodore is already setting up the next attack in our north, so we need the axes back asap. Going to be too late now probably.