[SPOILERS] Pindicator emerges from the wilderness to play pb74

[pindicator]

Our Place in the World

We sit among the second-tier civilizations right now, with our GNP and MFG about equal to that of Plemo - who is doing the same as us while fighting 3 different wars. Frankly, we are not doing well. Gavagai is carving up the western end of our continent. Commodore is claiming overseas territory. Ginger & Miguelito are trying to conquer their island. Those are your front-runners. Picadilly I put with us right now, because while his golden age demos are impressive, he needs to turn that into more land. Really, it should be fun for lurkers to watch Picadilly vs Gavagai for who wins control over the far west.

Tech is on Astrology, though we are late to the party. Still 7 turns away, I hope to leverage this into easy conquests on the eastern continent. Perhaps there can be some lands to settle in the east, away from Commodore. But it is doubtful, as he has had such a lead on us. Regardless, we want to build up a navy. And then when Amicalola is gone we will look at what our best option is to continue. I am not in a rush to destory Amicalola. I would rather build up what we have conquered already. Frankly, the fact we were first to MC and have cheap libraries & zigs & lighthouses, yet have so little development is appalling.

I could also attack Commodore, but it would have to be right now. He's expending so much effort towards settling off shore. If we wait 20 turns it might be too late. This is very risky though, and it would count on Amicalola staying checked out. I don't think I have the balls for this kind of move. But it might be the narrow path we have to take if we don't want to be run over by Commodore's rifles later on.

I haven't even thought about tech past Astrology. Civil Service is needed. Drafting is needed. Eventually we'll get a 3rd great person and a 4th for a golden age.

I really am not having fun this game, and Amicalola might try taking credit for it, but it's really not him. It's the bad choices we've made along the way, and continue to make.

[klops]

Astrology? Hmm, not sure if THAT would serve you well for future research... :D

[pindicator]

Science has failed us. We look to the stars for guidance now

[pindicator]

154

This report is more for Plemo, because I'm sure he feels we're handing the game to Commodore.







Truth is we've been discussing exactly this for a while now. Commodore is settling islands, attacking Plemo, and meanwhile his core is about as sparsely defended as it gets:




I really want to invade Commodore. But if I'm being honest this isn't going to occur without either giving up the north, or hoping Amica just sits back. Otherwise we have 80 hostile units in the north bearing down on us, and we get pinched between two armies.

So nothing to do but whip hard and try to take out Amica. Then we can try to pivot quickly to Commodore.

So after the game when Plemo complains about how we let Commodore run away with it all, someone point out to him that it was Amicalola who decided to throw a temper tantrum and tie our units down.




First caravel is out - and we see overseas land to settle straight away. I'd normally start a settler, but ... well, see above.

Finally, I spent 120g to get a free scientist specialist at Cispus. Perhaps the worst city in our empire for this event to fire at, but it does speed along our next great person.

[Qgqqqqq]

What do you think Amicaloa should do, from their position?

[pindicator]

Right now? What he is doing.

Before?

1. He shouldn't have asked for 1 city for peace when he had enough of an army to take our entire north.
2. After taking our city he shouldn't have ignored our blatant military build-up to take the city back.
3. After we retook our city he shouldn't have thrown the rest of his game for the sole intent of destroying us. (How many peace deals did he decline?) He could have easily played on from there and tried to team up on Tarkeel with Plemo.
4. He should have made his stand in the hills, not on the flatland, when he outnumbered us, instead of letting us walk up and take half his empire.

[pindicator]

156

Right, so a lot this turn and I had to get all the dedlurker opinions before playing.

We started with a wall of diplo requests from Commodore:




And then promptly forgot to respond to him because of everything else going on.

It seems clear Commodore wants a safe core and to project his power overseas.  Makes sense.  It also makes sense to me that we would want to expand overseas to the eastern continent, especially since it looks like Ginger & Miguelito's war is not exactly going to plan:




That's a huge dive.  And I think we're back to #1 in power?  I really forgot to check demos, will need to do that next turn.

Anyway, that all sounds nice, except for the fact that it benefits Commodore more than us and I have been actively advocating invading Commodore for the last 10-20 turns in our lurker chats.  Let's put a pin in that for now, because we all agreed in the end that we had to resolve this Amicalola situation before we could do anything else.

Which brings us to the last diplo message we received.




Why would Civac and Tarkeel send us this?

Because they closed our borders!




I don't know if I mentioned this (haven't been reporting here much lately, sorry), but the plan was to hit Comben with a set of our knights.  The only problem with this is that getting to Comben is near impossible unless we go through Tarkeel/Civac's lands.  And unless we wanted to go the long way around through Commodore's lands we there was a very specific way we had to move in order to keep Amicalola from spying our forces.  Last turn that meant we had to move right up against Tarkeel's border.

I thought surely Tarkeel wouldn't take this move aggressively because if we were invading we wouldn't show our hand right before invading - we would have set up 2 tiles back and then invaded!

Regardless, they took our move as hostility and closed borders.  Or perhaps they are feeling good enough about their Plemo war that they want to take Comben for themselves?  Or they just don't want to allow us to do this?  In any case, Tarkeel's lands are off limits and we need a new plan.

The tile our sentry teleported to showed me the way.




Blue Rectangle:  We moved the two workers onto the hill NE of Powell, retreated the sentry chariot to the same time, and covered it with a longbow

I moved our 5 remaining horse archers and 4 of the knights to a staging point by Cirque Towers.  Next turn the workers will road the hill and we'll move that small stack to the yellow circle, threatening Comben.  This is a feint.

The main group will move next turn to the green circle, and we'll be sure to put a road on it too, and here is why:

Right now Amicalola does not have all his elephants inside the city of Philips. He has split his forces, keeping only the 11 inside the city that we can see, as well as another stack of 7 or 8 elephants NW of the city and another to the north. Here is a screenshot from 10 turns ago and I don't have any indication that Amicalola has moved anything since this turn:




I'm hoping that our yellow group will cause him to pull some of those elephants away towards Comben. If not we take the city.

Then next turn we hit Philips with the 28 knights we have. We should chew through the 11 elephants with about 5 or 6 losses, leaving 10 knights to hopefully take down the spears and some horse archers. If we can remove enough of his hitters then his catapults won't be useful for much. But this only really works if he pulls those extra war elephants away - otherwise we're going to need more knights.

I did send Tarkeel a corn-corn back and asked to reopen borders. Hopefully he realizes that we aren't after him at this time.

I forgot to send Commodore back anything. But we really should see how this resolves before I do.

[pindicator]

157

We are set:




Do we still go in if Amica doesn't move units away from Philips to protect Comben?

[pindicator]

Hey Amica, that's some phenomenal timing. You haven't moved a unit in turns, yet the turn we move our big stack in position to hit Philips you empty the city. Unless you have a sentry unit (you don't) you shouldn't be able to see that - unless I'm missing something else?

Anyway, just wanted to compliment you on your exquisite timing.

[klops]

maybe disbanded the sentry?
Is that a problem if the city is empty? A lot of culture will go away if you capture it...