The Hills Send Back The Cry [SPOILERS]

[El Grillo]

T106:



Khan researched Monarchy last turn, and his show of force led to him proposing a war-peace. I'm more than happy to oblige him. This gives me a blank check to commit my current forces against Ginger, improve some of the remaining tiles on the border (and in the center), and means I can defend with the next generation of units. If this is the leadup to a hot war between Khan and Adrien for 2nd, so much the better.



Sankore bumps my break-even bpt to 736. Still finishing more temples and monasteries, should have them all done by the end of the GA.



Ginger refused the map for gold trade. Perhaps there's more animosity there than I thought. He's still whipping away into longbows, and I highly doubt Adrien will be able to make further progress without waiting for siege.



Adrien is still saving gold. I can 1t Gunpowder with overflow and 2t Liberalism before the GA ends, or 1t Liberalism with overflow next turn.



Domestically, we settled the last safe filler (will grow on nearby food and then swap to coast). The forest will be chopped into a Courthouse, after which it'll pay itself back through trade routes and Mercantilism commerce. Funnily enough, it got a free spread of Christianity (the holy city is just 3 tiles away, after all) just before I could spread Confucianism there.




Charts:

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Haha no one likes each other in this game. I think the OB between Khan and GE is partly why he made a bit of a resurgence. You seem quite in control here now. Anything worry you?

[El Grillo]

I think the geography makes it unlikely for Adrien and Khan to coordinate an attack on me, and I'm almost at the point where my production base can minimize variance from combat. I haven't had a chance to look at the save today, but my friend mentioned that he decided to secure Liberalism because of an apparent Scientist bulb from Adrien, and that probably means that we'll be doing a swap to wartime civics and mass-producing cuirassiers very soon.

Khan played very boldly in seizing two islands and the center of the map, but there was never really a window where I could've called him on it by myself (my respect for skirmishers has gone way up from this game). I don't actually know how many of Ginger's routes he gets after accounting for his two ICTRs, maybe a few +3c routes from his larger cities. On the other hand, Ginger would've had a Very Bad Time were it not for those routes, and a stronger Ginger resistance definitely favors Khan.

[El Grillo]

T107:



Let's start with the southern front, for a change: I don't quite have all my units rallied together yet, but I think it's time to advance. If I have enough overflow to 1t Gunpowder next turn, I'll have a close to a dozen knights queue-upgraded into cuirassiers that will begin entering the battlefield, and my trebuchets can advance to begin bombarding the defenses, since none of Ginger's units would do well attacking out of his cities.



My goals are to raze the two closer Ginger cities (their placement is awkward and orphans several good tiles), capture the four highlighted in blue, and then settle the four highlighted cities (orange and green as soon as I raze Rochester, purple and yellow after Sandwich is razed and Croydon captured).



On a broader strategic level, my friend has convinced me that this game will be called before too much longer, so we're going to use our newly generated Great Scientist and the Great Merchant from a few turns ago to keep our Golden Age running, then try and get a 3-man GA with our reserved Artist, a Scientist from the National Epic city, and the Economics Merchant. That should keep us in a Golden Age for effectively the remainder of the game. We're going to stay in research civics until Rifling (picking up Drama and Economics when convenient), then swap to Police State/Vassalage/Theocracy and run the culture slider for happiness while producing exclusively 9xp cavalry. The Spiral Minaret can't really pay itself back in the timeframe we're thinking of, so no monk trinity for me. I'm 5829 listed beakers away from Rifling, roughly 4663b needed after accounting for prereq discounts, which is 7t of sustainable Golden Age research. In the meantime, slightly less highly promoted cuirassiers should still be able to overpower Ginger and dissuade Adrien from fighting me over the carcass.

Charts:

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I would point out that if the game is called, there needs to be a clear first and second don't forget.

[El Grillo]

Ah right, silly of me to overlook that procedural issue . Well, we'll certainly keep playing as a going concern, though we'll probably value infrastructure lower than units from here on out.

I found myself up early today, and actually managed to play a turn when my friend would usually take care of it. That means I'm fully responsible for the following

T108:



Ginger not only kept those workers on the border unguarded, he added two more between turns. Well, I'll trade capturing 10 workers for slightly awkward positioning in an unfair fight. Elsewhere, Adrien and Ginger fought another bloody battle, but without a city changing hands. I'm actually 2nd in Power as a result, behind the surging Khan. If Adrien doesn't watch out, this could end rather tragically for him.



I noticed that Adrien is 1t from Banking, so I decided to secure the Economics Merchant now while it was a sure thing. This delays our cuirassiers for a few turns, but I think effectively securing a third GA (98% Scientist out of Tossing & Turning) and denying a second to Adrien is worth it. It's unfortunately a blank tech for us otherwise, not much use for Free Market or Custom Houses on this bitter, bloodied continent

[El Grillo]

T109 in brief:

- Adrien is showing 1t to Economics, but we claimed it and the Great Merchant at EOT
- Adrien didn't capture any cities on his previous turn
- Ginger whipped in more defenders but didn't make any offensive moves, so we get to keep all 10 workers
- We settled the Green site (Spring Show) and popped borders to 52-48 at EOT, but didn't gain control of the tile
- Knights and trebuchets are in position to bombard and attack Rochester next turn, with a mix of 1-movers in tow



Next turn we'll bomb down the defenses with the 4 Accuracy trebuchets, send in 2 fodder trebuchets (they're not called Newman for nothing), and hit the defenders at favorable odds. The closer cities are producing a mix of 1-movers, with an emphasis on pikes and trebs, and the ones further north will be contributing knights and soon enough cuirassiers. No sign of Adrien's knights yet, he seems to have hit resistance at Chichester, Margate and Chatham.



We're going to finish Sistine next turn by converting one of the plains sugar plantations to a workshop and running a Priest.



I'm not exactly concerned about it being stolen, but Khan has been chain-building wonders in Halton (including a Hermitage this turn, yikes!). He got a very inopportune Confucianism spread here a few turns ago, which doubles the effectiveness of passive espionage and grants me city investigation privileges. 56cpt and being at Refined status means that we're on a bit of a clock here, I'm currently losing 2% control over Marchup Cadence's first-ring tiles, and that would never do. The plan is to get to ~30cpt base (either Notre Dame or Angkor Wat would help get us there) and then build our own Hermitage here to match his output.



We're closing in on 1st in Power, with our production advantage meaning that Khan and Adrien would have to draft/whip to keep up. That unhappiness would quickly add up with Immortal war weariness, and there's a good chance that we'll actually get some value from that part of Police State too.

Charts:

[El Grillo]

T110:

1000AD marks our first real military victory (walking an Impi into an empty city aside). Unfortunately a couple of things didn't go as planned. First, I went to the trouble of asking my friend for a stack of mid-turn screenshots, and it looks like it caused some issues with the save. Secondly, Bognor Regis' culture extends to the site where we had wanted to replant Rochester, ack.

Next, we'll keep the stack together, since Ginger is well defended everywhere and I don't like the idea of throwing away knights into un-bombarded defenses, and march it to Bognor Regis in 3t. By that time, some of the first cuirassiers should have caught up, giving me a much better attacker for top defenders (+2 base STR and 15% withdraw is no joke). So far, we've only seen a single knight from Adrien, and it has no promotions, a reassuring sign. I'm estimating that Adrien has 25-30 knights in theater, with perhaps a dozen skirmishers and a few catapults. Hopefully, most of his units will have 0-1 promos, limiting his rate of advance.

After Bognor Regis falls, we'll march south and stage our trebuchets from the plains hill NE of Croydon, whose defenses will take 2 turns to bombard. By that point, most of our available attackers will be cuirassiers, and I don't foresee any trouble from Adrien or the remaining Ginger cities.



Elsewhere, Khan has started to move his units in the center, shifting the garrison from Odiham into Mount Pleasant. We still have 6t of enforced peace, so I'm not too concerned, and he'll need a few more catapults before that stack is a real threat.



In the north, his catapult stack has returned to its counter-attacking position. Not sure if he knows I have vision on all of them or not, and what he thinks my unit composition on that border actually is.



Domestically, we're already starting to get -1 happy from war weariness in our larger cities, and that's with barely losing any units on the attack. Nasty stuff, I can appreciate Adrien teching Drama for theaters and culture slider now. Now that we're done building, we'll be swapping into Vassalage and Theocracy next turn (still keeping Representation for the happiness and research until we get to Rifling) and dialing up cuirassiers almost everywhere.



So close to 2x MFG!

Charts:

[El Grillo]

T111:



We live in exciting times, for the world is at war! Khan declared against Adrien, using his cultural borders in the middle to advance a stack of 1-movers and engage Adrien in the former Ginger city of Selsey, resulting in the razing of the city and the death of one of Adrien's Great Generals. Since Khan and Ginger have Open Borders, any knights in the Chichester area will be easy pickings. However, I'm not sure how quickly Khan will be able to advance on Adrien's cities, and I don't know if this will prompt Adrien to make peace with Ginger and withdraw, or press his assault further. I was actually kind of hoping that Adrien and I together could make relatively quick work of Ginger to mitigate the effects of war weariness, but I can always revolt into Police State and pick up Drama to run the culture slider if things get unmanageable.





The other big news this turn is our long-awaited civics change (expenses shown before and after). We actually come out ahead very slightly on GNP after factoring in civics costs and inflation, and are effectively trading +25%/+75% building modifiers for 4xp on all of our units. My friend has a plan for ending the game that involves using war with Ginger to get a whole bunch of 9xp cuirassiers up to 10xp, then attacking Adrien alongside Khan and forcing a concession. His argument is that this is the quickest and simplest way to end things in a victorious manner, without much risk of anything going wrong (surely Khan isn't conducting this war as a ruse, as his combat this turn proves that he's actually committing to a fight). I'll be a little sad that we won't get to late-game civics or fully powered workshops or even building the Minaret, but there's no point in doing anything but trying to win the game as soon as we confidently can.



With the help of a longbow manning one of Ginger's interior forts and a sentry knight, we have pretty good visibility on the cities we're interested in. Without catapults or engineering, Ginger can't deny any of my movements without leaving his cities exposed to a counterattack, so we're going to play it safe and slow, bringing up siege wherever possible, to minimize war weariness and not leave any openings. We sent some of the injured knights from the Rochester attack back to Spring Show to heal and be upgraded to cuirassiers at the fairly cheap price of 41g.



Adrien/Khan's losses and our own round of military builds finally puts us 1st in Power (and Sistine is doing its usual GNP-inflating thing, don't mind it). I don't want to jinx it, but I'm feeling pretty pleased that we've managed to build a strong civ (mistakes, delusional planning, and lucky breaks notwithstanding).

Charts:

[El Grillo]

T112 in brief:

- We lost Notre Dame by 1t to Adrien (our fault, should've prioritized this ahead of the Confucian Academy); Khan built ToA to dump even more culture on us, but we can run 9-culture Artists if absolutely necessary
- Trebuchets advanced on Bognor Regis - will enter range next turn and bombard the turn after, with our first cuirassiers ready to lead the charge
- Adrien and Ginger fought a battle last turn, and while no cities changed hands, Adrien's power is flagging
- We finished Printing Press at EOT, Khan teched Constitution last turn, and Adrien is showing 1t to Gunpowder