[SPOILERS-PBEM14] Sandover(phi/spi) of Egypt

[Sandover]

Turn 123

Hey look, Mardoc got a promotion!



I'm not really sure what's gonna happen down in Sheepland. Bad things, probably.

Scooter did some stuff with some stuff near Psamathe. I'm not bothered about it.

One more screenie from this turn:

[Sandover]

Turn 126

Close.



1 time out of 10 I would've razed that city. I can't exactly say scooter got lucky, but I do feel slightly disappointed this wasn't that one time. He deserved to have it razed taking a risk like that!

[Sandover]

10 more knights and I can liberate Thespis Hill. Come on, work those whips before he put more pikes in there!

[Rowain]

To help my Pharao his foes

[Sandover]

Meh, too late now. More pikes are being placed in the city, so going for it is way too risky.

In other news, my gulf fleet has been destroyed. Was just a matter of time really as scooter placed more resources into navy than I did. I could've kept it safe in port, but what's the point? I took some of scooter's ships down with it. He did have an annoying habit of winning those 33% battles of trireme versus trireme though, so didn't sink as many as I would've liked.

There's a small naval operation being planned in the west. It will be undertaken in about 5+ turns from now. Might get another city with that one, as scooter is using horse archers for defense.

Other than that I'm just waiting for something to happen while building more knights and pikes. Musketmen aren't that far away now, despite my being clearly in the red at 0% research for quite some time now (thank you Pyramids!).

Is scooter going to attack? I don't know. Gaspar seemed confident he can keep up his way superior tech rate, so maybe we can win space. That would force scooter to act, but he might be waiting for stronger units or larger numbers or something.

[Rowain]

Naturally I don't know any of scooters plans but He had his best shot with Cataphracts. I doubt he can get bigger advantage than that.

[Sandover]

Yeah that's what I figure. Hence why I'm a little confused regarding what he's up to right now.

[Sandover]

Your Dark Lordship, Pharaoh Sandover,


Figured as I'm at a bit of a crossroads in the game I'd drop you a line to see how things were in Egypt. Firstly, the current situation on the ground is stable. I piled enough units into Reaper that scooter seems to have decided its not worth it. I think he has *just* enough to take the city if he wanted, but he would no doubt lose almost all of his army in doing so. I was actually hoping he would do it, as while Reaper is tactically useful I'd rather scooter lost his army. Anyway, it seems he's encouraged Lewwyn to settle the rest of Sheepland and is either going to use his Phracts on zone defense there or take some of them home and gift the rest to Lewwyn. Either way I don't think I'll see another land-based attack from scooter until he has superior units.


The overall situation is this: I'll have Rifling on T134. Certainly slower than my initial estimates, but my initial estimates didn't have me losing 4 cities and getting a 5th pillaged to nothing. Regardless, after that I can 1T Military Tradition for Cavs as well. The reason I mention this to you is because I'm curious as to how stable your situation is. He certainly could be retreating his Cataphracts with an intent of using them against you. If that's the case, I'll prioritize getting a stack together to help there. If not, I'm torn between getting something together and wiping out Lewwyn and going towards Astronomy to hopefully land a surprise strike in scooter's backline. Astronomy is a bit of a poison pill tech for me but I don't see how we can get a land strike at scooter anytime soon, its just that Colossus probably accounts for a good 15% of my tech rate. But it also has the side effect that I could sail some settlers off around the globe.


As far as the tech position, I'd gander I'm still researching at roughly 1.5x scooter's rate. I don't think that will hold forever as I've lost a lot of land, but I should stay ahead so long as I can get some more for myself soon. scooter is ~7T from Rifling I'd guess, though he blew his latest GP on a shrine so he's still 2 GPs shy of a 2-man GA.


Anything else you're interested in knowing, or is there anything I can help you with?


Prophet Gaspar

Prophet Gaspar,

My situation is basically such that my gulf fleet was recently wiped out. It was expected to happen as scooter put more effort into strengthening his navy than I did, and it's not a huge loss as he has no easy targets available for naval operations anymore. My western coast is safe for the time being as I still have couple of triremes over there, and I may even be able to pull off an offensive move on him shortly. He's rather lazy with his coastal defenses and I actually got really close to razing Dominion at one point.

Other than that, Psamathe is defended by 20+ units (mostly pikes), I have 20+ catapults nearby the city and a stack of knights of about 30. There's also some extra units defending my western and northern coast just in case. I don't really know whether I'm safe or not as I don't know the strenght of scooter's army. Candy Land is held mostly by catapults and obsolete units with very few cataphracts in sight. He will see any attack heading for the city one turn in advance though so I haven't tried anything, which might give him a false sense of security in the long run (that we can abuse with some cavalry?). I can get muskets pretty fast if I decide to run some specialists but I have prioritized slaving more knights thus far. It takes a while to build a decent force with so few cities.

As for what to do, I don't know that either. Astronomy could certainly make a lot of difference since there's a lot of capitalist cities to threaten by sea, but whether it's worth the investment or not...? Maybe the goal should be to reclaim Sheepland first and foremost? I really can't tell. We sure need to do something if you can't keep up with scooter in tech in the long run. Could be some extra land out there that will put you ahead perhaps?

Yeah, I'm not really helping, am I?

His Dark Lordship, Pharaoh Sandover

[Sandover]

Your Dark Lordship, Pharaoh Sandover,



Thanks for the intel. As long as we keep each other informed, we can make the decisions ourselves, I certainly defer to your judgement in terms of warfare.




I think I've decided that I'm going to feint going after Lewwyn and then try and make a coastal strike at scooter's core while his army is tied up defending Lewwyn. I've been taunting Lewwyn pretty regularly about how I'm going to chew him up and I have little to no doubt that's gotten back to scooter. If he keeps his army in Ottoman lands, then his core should be reasonably lightly defended. How and how long this will take, I don't know. In the short term, I think I can get Sheepland back with Rifles but I think that Lewwyn's core will be a bridge too far. I suspect scooter is about 6T from Rifles, so Rifles in and of themselves don't have a lot of value besides nullifying the Cataphract threat.




As far as more land, I'm pretty sure we're on an Earth2 script and there's a "new world" in the west. While its tempting to rush some settlers over there and then go State Property, I'm not entirely certain that there's enough time to get burgs that far away up to snuff. Space is certainly the most likely victory option right now, since I don't know how much ability I'll have to properly assault scooter, but if there's any possibility of turning the tide militarily I'd like to explore that first




As far as how much scooter has at the moment, I've had visibility on 40 Cataphracts at their peak. I would guess that's pretty much his whole army, he can't have much back home. And while he will have Rifles soon, he'll have to build them all the old fashioned way, as he's nowhere near Nationalism.




Anyway, that's the status report.

[Sandover]

Such a snooze party this is.