[SPOILERS] Pindicator emerges from the wilderness to play pb74

[pindicator]

Though honestly, if Comm had wanted to he could have done exactly the same thing to us. So I wouldn't put this too much on Bing not defending well as I would on Commodore executing a good plan.

[pindicator]

I really hope Plemo plays before Amicalola's usual playing window, otherwise I'm going to have to ask for yet another extension...

[pindicator]

129

Amica keeps sending these...




How many cities of yours do I need to burn before you figure it out??
I guess all of them.

Lots of mail this turn.
Superdeath wants us to fund his war effort.




Sorry SuperD, but we need to get to Banking in 4 to line up with the golden age.

Next up, Ginger wants to sell us maps.




Maps of the other side of the world are neat, but rather useless right now.

And Commodore has a very direct message:



This was puzzled out quickly, as we realized Bing only has 7 cities left. So Comm says we can take Dorp but he gets everything else. I'm very cool with that. Would prefer we got Grandeccita too on the coast, but that's just a runt of a fishing village anyway - Dorp for the better border is the most important part. And a happy Commodore that wants to take on Tarkeel next (and not us).

I quickly echoed his deal back to him.

Decided I didn't have enough to direclty take Dorp this turn:




So I moved up the 2 knights that completed nearby. If Bing doesn't whip a longbow the city should fall easily, and I think it will fall even if he does. Really don't want to delay this.

Once Dorp is taken we can focus on Amica in the north. Which is going to be mostly building a bunch of units during our GA. I'm going to try to hold off on the whip and use the GA-boosted production, but we'll see. Some spots still need a few whips.

I had to sprinkle in a few Wealth builds, but ideally the capture gold from Dorp will be enough to get us there. Just to be sure, I also tried selling Scooter one of our spare Spices for 45g.

[pindicator]

Pindicator's Very Longshot Plan for Victory:

1) Wrap up Dorp and keep an amicable & safe border with Commodore
2) Teach Amicalola the error of his ways and take all his cities
3) Help Commodore invade Tarkeel and give Commodore the lion's share of the cities.
NOTE: The important part is giving Plemo and Commodore a direct land border
4) Naval invasion of GKC will be our expansion angle, much later, while we get Plemo and Commodore to fight and bog each other down

[pindicator]

130

Pro: Bing emptied Dorp to spite Commodore




Con: Bing gifted his money to Amicalola to spite us.

[pindicator]

133

Start our golden age and switched civics to HR / Vassalage / Serfdom / Mercantilism. We'll switch back to Slavery at the end of the GA, but i didn't see any places where whipping right away was going to happen.

[pindicator]

134

Dammit Bing, stop gifting Amicalola gold. He's the instigator here, not me.




I killed Amicalola's scout 2 turns ago and showed my horses by Koko Head, to make him fear a run on his capital. It worked to get him to move a number of elephants north of Ford. He won't be able to hit me with all his slow movers - in fact, he has very few slow movers in range of my stack at all. But I think he will want to move them all in together now that I've shown my stack. I expect him to move everything into Ford.

And that's when I will show my real plan.

[pindicator]

135

Well, a pause on my plan as it's very likely Amicalola is trying an end-around with his horse archers.




Where are they?

I moved the triremes up the coast, threw a worker out to the hills by Powell, and no sign of them.  There are only 2 tiles they could be at that make sense from a defense-of-Ford point-of-view:  either 1 tile or 2 tiles west of his capital.  And even that seems suspect to me.

Worse, I got distracted by Tarkeel's attack on Plemo and sent my scout north that was supposed to be watching Tarkeel's lands.  So he has a clear shot.  This would also explain the EP spending:  denying vision would be crucial before he sent any units out.

I have a sentry chariot in Commodore's lands; that is 2 turns away from being in a good location.  For now it sees that Commodore is heading towards Astronomy:




And we need to prepare our core for an attack:




Figure on 15 Horse Archers.  Currently there are 3 longbows and a spear in Mather Point, which is a bit border line.  2 more longbows heading from the capital area.  Will have a couple of knights in the area, but we need more hitters able to take out his invaders so I've started a bunch of spears just to get something cheap and useful out.  If I'm wrong they can be MPs.

Ibera is closer to our main forces but only has 1 longbow.  I've got 4 more on the way to that city, if he decides to head north.  1 knight in the area of Waimea.

I asked Commodore to stop trading with him.

Next turn will be telling.  If we dont' see any Horse Archers, and especially if he retreats from Ford, then we know he's sending his units.

[pindicator]

136

Amicalola retreated again.




We weren't going to keep Ford.  We probably don't get to keep anything as long as Amica's army is intact, but if he wants to give me cities then I will not hesitate to take them.




The culture from Ford removed, we decided to spend some knights and take out McDonald.  Effectively this would split Amica in 2 and force him to pick a side to defend.

The 5xp knights were promoted to C2 where they get 70% odds against War Elephants.  McDonald was staffed with 2 eles and an archer, and both my knights succeeded.  Lost a Horse Archer at 65% odds to the archer, but the second cleaned up.




And there are the horse archers!  Very worth the 4 units to get that information.  We can keep sending everything north now, with the knowledge that he hasn't sent anything around through Tarkeel.

What we need to be careful about are the numbers of units.  10 elephants, 6 axes, 4 spears, and 17 horse archers - plus whatever he's whipped in the last few turns.  He has easily over 40 hitters here, and 20 catapults behind them.  Nothing to do but build more units ourselves and send everything north.

We thought about sending some knights west to take Powell, but I want to sit back and see what Amicalola does first before splitting any forces up.

Here's how thing stand at the end of the turn:




And what our core looks like:




Cispus can 3-turn knights during the GA.  And Engineering in 3t will help move them north.  All those spears that we started in preparation of a possible HA attack are going to be good fodder - actually I might continue making those as they work well against the majority of his army.  And some settlers in weaker cities as we need to fill in the lands we are claiming.  Razing cities is unfortunately but necessary with how Amicalola is playing the defense here.

I would expect if Plemo wasn't fighting Tarkeel/Civic right now they would be taking some of Amicalola's western cities.

[pindicator]

137

Bing down to just 1 city:




I don't understand what Amicalola is doing, what his strategy is.




Anyway, we just sat. Well, we also probed Powell a bit:




Tried to suggest Comm and I continue to team up. Comm didn't respond.
Yeah, we screwed.