[Spoiler] Sian is On the Road again

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Unless they're sandbagging heavily (although i'm going to go onwards with that expectation until i see otherwise in game), from what posts i've read from them, I'm going to call Greenline and Pickle greener than green and not much competition.

Beware the troll smurf account

[Sian]

*groans*



thats one lost worker turn right there, any other tile and i wouldn't have cared much, but rather cheered for the extra chop opportunity ... have to redo my mental worksheet for how to run the worker early on

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Gutted on the forest, but at least it wasn't jungle growth. I'm gonna point this out because the map sprite is not nearly showing up as well as others on the screenshot - check the coastal tile values for the forested coast tiles that give an extra hammer.

[Sian]

First city (Settler was just built), is going to be on the Desert tile northeast of the capital, intending to borrow the wheat until it have gotten a Monument (Mysticism and Animal husbandry is next ... probably in that order), and then grow onto the Corn, sheep and pigs, and become a very competent worker/settler pump, while the capital makes an early focus on commence on the FPs

Also, met Pikkle the other turn on what appears to be the wheel-hub to the northeast of me, and from the direction his scout was possitioned in, I'm cautiously guesstimating that he's living to my east

[Dreylin]

Sit-rep:

Yeah, this civ is toast. Mostly just a case of managing a collapse in such a way as to not play kingmaker.

Problem 1:


This is not moving in the right direction at all, however the real problem is here:


in the MFG number. Pickle's are inflated by GA (kicked off with the Communism Spy ), but running at half of your worst rival is not a good sign. Re-looking at these shots I took last night, I haven't spotted a single Workshop or Watermill, and Farms are few and far between; this is a Cottage Empire. But we do still have many forest resources available to tap.

This would be manageable if there were a bunch of Workers around to adjust, but....


Yeah, 9 Workers for 14 cities, no wonder there's a backlog - I'm guessing there have been some front-line losses, but still no quick adaptation possible.

All that aside, how does the military situation shape up. Well here's one front:


Not sure why Pickle's highlighted stack is hanging out there (maybe tying down the city's forces to stop reinforcement in the South?), I'd love to be able to hit it, but I don't think there are quite sufficient forces available to do so. A few Cats would help immensely here.

The Southern city is vulnerable, but I suspect a Draft & whip here will hold it for a turn at least while I look to bring in further reinforcements. All is not lost down here, but it'll be tough going.

In the North though:


Ugh, maybe I'm showing my age here, but that player name really makes me want to back out of the game again. But I can't deny that's a decent stack there. If he's willing to take the losses, I'm not going to be able to hold that city; I'll probably Draft and may look at dry-whipping a Rifle if it will help more than that Cav. Positioning for Counter-attack will be important.

Finally, here's the hub:


Which is a lovely woodland retreat for these troops. This is going to have to be abandoned; whip the Rifle in, pull the 2-movers (& the Worker?) back into the core and try to hold at Cicero. Also need to bring a bunch of those troops back from the island for more useful duties.

Builds are a little Cav-centric to my mind:


A few more Rifles would not go amiss in the frontline cities, but at least they can be Drafted.

Civics & Tech shots in Spoilers:

Probably has to be Chem next and start putting down Workshops.

Ideally I'd want to hit Pickle hard enough to be able to secure some sort of begged Peace Treaty to give me time to pivot all forces to stop Greenline's advance and then consolidate. It's going to be tough though with Pickle in a GA and with a Tech advantage.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

It was Sian that kicked off the war here remember with a massive knight stack. He razed an outer coast pickle city too. I feel bad as pickle didn't understand move mechanics otherwise there probably would not have been such a loss.

Greenline was the aggressor in the other war.


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[Dreylin]

It was Sian that kicked off the war here remember with a massive knight stack. He razed an outer coast pickle city too. I feel bad as pickle didn't understand move mechanics otherwise there probably would not have been such a loss.

Greenline was the aggressor in the other war.

I think I remember seeing that from their threads ... guess that Peace with Pickle is unlikely unless Jowy gets involved. As I recall / put together, Jowy & Pickle are currently top-two so Greenline definitely needed to make some progress, but Jowy is the one at risk now since he can't make any easy gains from vulturing Sian's corpse.

Bit of a different emphasis on this 2-round game; in a typical FFA, Jowy would be wanting to bring Pickle down a peg or two so he could build a lead, but with top-2 qualifying he instead should be targeting Greenline to increase the gap between 1&2 and #3.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Pickle has a lower city count than everyone else pre war with Sian, but won the lib race and has a good teching ability.

Greenline is a bit in the middle. Jowy is definitely leading currently but you're right he may start to struggle.

The other issue is Jowy I think lacks rifles? I'm sure he went steel instead.

2 is still up for grabs, I would say pickle is currently edging it slightly but it will be very different in like 5 turns. He also could try for a couple of extra backline cities whereas Greenline is full


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[El Grillo]

Yeah, it's certainly a bit of a diplomatic/metagaming curiosity. The top two are heavily incentivized to leave each other alone and force a concession, unless there are seeding bonuses or personal grudges to satisfy. Thanks for stepping in and updating!

[Dreylin]

I admit I'm not good at reading the "Can Research" and turning it into a tech tree (there's a tech shot in the spoilers). Jowy certainly has Steel and I think also has Rifles (IIRC it was only Steam on the 3rd row), but he's down Nationalism-Constitution-MilTrad-Economics on Pickle and Greenline is back Chem-Philo-Lib-Econ-SciMeth-Communism as well.

I didn't spend a lot of time looking at the others' comparative positions in terms of #cities or the graphs verses each other; and Sian has never had Jowy's maps (is map trading on?) and Pickle's look old from the mini. Most of the assessment above is what I'd gleaned from the other spoiler threads with a dash of new information.