Luddite/Pindicator

[pindicator]

One other, riskier, possibility would be to try a ruse. We could keep our fleet hidden-say, in Hercules- then try and bait them into attacking Red Sonja. we could sail out through a canal and destroy all their transports, wounded units, and escort ships. That would be worth losing a minor city, I think.

But this is all just idle speculation while I'm waiting for the save.

I do like the idea of bashing heads with NoSpace someday, but the one problem with the ruse is if they raze Red Sonja then our navy is screwed. That city may be the most important on the north coast just because of it's canal status.

[luddite]

I do like the idea of bashing heads with NoSpace someday, but the one problem with the ruse is if they raze Red Sonja then our navy is screwed. That city may be the most important on the north coast just because of it's canal status.

aha, but we could also leave forts 1 turn away from completion on the hills next to the city. Then, after the city goes down, we complete the forts and have a canal to hit their ships.

[luddite]

by the way, something I forgot to mention last turn is that we got a GG. I'm not sure what to do with him. Since we've already got a medic 2 spear, I don't think we really need a super medic. I was thinking of settling him, either in Hercules or Pumping Iron since they're our strongest production cities right now outside the capital.

[pindicator]

I'm inclined to agree with you. Hercules is probably the winner, just because Pumping Iron is remote, and it's also one of those island cities.

[pindicator]

Guess what's in your inbox!

Edit: Yuri declared on Sian, and mackoti wants 250g. Extortion perhaps?

[pindicator]

I'll do a full screenshot report after I go to bed, but we took Aachen! Lots more too.

[pindicator]

Okay, Turn report time! And it was a very fine turn to report.

Opening the save gave us a bit of a puzzle:



Now, I know mackoti can be really aggressive in his dealings. So was this an extortion? Or did he need the money to help with his war against NoSpace? Luddite reminded me that we had just traded him wines for Spices the turn before, so that made extortion seem less likely (that and opening a second war would be tough on him). 250g is a lot right now, about what a turn of 100% research costs us, but we want to keep the goodwill going between us so we counter-offered gifting him 100g.

First order of business: we could revolt again! The last two turns we had picked up Civil Service and Monotheism specifically so we could pull off this revolt:



Buddhism felt like the safest choice - it was the only religion not owned by Mackoti or NoSpace and we didn't want to feed either of them if we didn't have to. I threw out a suggestion of researching Theology since Christianity is still available, but even if we wanted to go that route it would come a turn too late.

Then with some micro, I set up Parthonon to come in 2 turns:



The city gets 70h this turn, and next turn outside of the golden age it will drop to 50h, putting us at 272/268.

Speaking of hammers, we also finish Moai in Pumping Iron. I set it to max growth:





Enough of that boring domestic stuff. On to the battlefield!

Here was Aachen's defenses at the start of the turn:



Fierce had taken the turn to add a chariot. Aachen had a wounded spear, and the rest was chariots & HAs. Sadly we only had two impi in range of the town. Our medic and a wounded combat I. Since the medic only got 65% odds we started with HAs. Here's the battle report:



Having most of our attackers wounded made the battles tricky, and we lost a couple in the 60-70% range that always seem to go against you, but it worked out well. In the end we lost 2 horse archers and a chariot, but killed 4 well promoted chariots (including a GG chariot), a spear, and a formation HA. We killed 136 hammers of units and lost 86, our best exchange of the war.

We also got this prize:



It has a granary, but it's also Buddhist so that will help get the infrastructure in.

After Aachen fell, we had access to the rest of Fierce's workers. I brought an impi down from Commando (old Vienna) to take the biggest group.



And here is the battlefield after the carnage of the day was done:



I think it's safe to say we're in mop-up phase now. Fierce now has no metal, no horses. I sent out an Impi to see what was in Nuremberg, but forgot to delete him so if fierce attacks out he can get a promo on one of his axes. Actually, I was going to keep a chariot in range to kill any axe that went after the impi, but then I forgot and moved the chariot into Aachen.

Our army is gassed - the units we have around Aachen are all red-lined. There are a few reinforcements that have moved in from Prague. I think the plan now is to send them up against Augsburg in the NE while the main army heals. Then the last assault on Nuremburg.

I'm not worried about Sian poaching Nuremberg out from under us, because team Yuri / Nicolae attacked Sian and took a city last turn. So the whole world is at war, yay. Luddite has been eyeing Sian's silver island for a while now -- I think ever since we discovered it was there. We may now have our opportunity to take it.

Sadly, the golden age ended this turn. We spent our last turn in it burning through research at 100%. Probably could have done that last turn too, but we didn't foresee getting enough pillage funds to be able to do this. Luddite made the keen observation that nobody has taken the Music Great Artist yet, so we're on our way to do that. We could have taken Literature just with last turn's overflow, but with 100% research on top of that we're guaranteed to be able to 1-turn Music next. Then we'll be half-way to our next golden age, whenever we choose to take it.

Here are the post-golden age demos. The GNP is with no tech researched, so the days of 700+ GNP rating are gone, at least for a while:

[luddite]

Nice update

[luddite]

So, we're faced with a tough decision here of how to proceed. Clearly we need to finish off Fierce as fast as possible, and build the Forbidden Palace in Prague to get maintenance costs down. But what else do we do?

1) I'd like to help out mackoti by attacking NoSpace. Or at least, have some more units up there for defense.
2) Spread our new religion, and build up a lot more infrastructure. We still have hardly any forges, and grocers would be nice when they're available.
3) Attack Sian in the south, either overland or on his island.

Unfortunately these all conflict with each other. Also, with the lack of communication, it's hard to tell how other people's wars are going. My guess is that Mackoti and NoSpace have fallen into a stalemate, judging by the lack of city capture messages. Sian will probably lose some more cities initially, but eventually he'll build up enough pikemen to fend off yuri... unless we step in and take out his iron in the back.

Then again, as long as Sian and Yuri are at war, our southern border is completely safe. Maybe it's too our advantage for that war to go on as long as possible.

I wonder if it would be possible to snipe Sian's island and iron city, then gift back the iron in return for peace?

[luddite]

I made up an excel spreadsheet of when we'll get our great people, if we follow the current plan. I assumed they'd all be running 4, except for when I marked them as starting a forge engineer. Also, this assumes we get the Parthenon next turn, and never switch to pacifism or have another golden age. The turns for the techs are of course just rough estimates.


Interestingly, Vienna won't get a great person for a very long time. 5 is a lot though... assuming we do get that music artist, I wonder if we've got enough to take a second golden age early, and still have a 3rd golden age late?

edit: redoing with a golden age after Vienna gets a forge engineer: Happy Anniv gets one on turn 122, the Villain gets one on turn 128, Happy Anniv gets another turn 139, and Vienna gets one on turn 145. That's a total of 7, plus the music artist gives 8. So we'd use up 5 on golden ages, leaving 3 for bulbs/trade missions. I'd want to save the artist for the end though, which would delay chemistry/astronomy a bit.

edit 2: I forgot the +1 great artist gpp from the national epic. That'll help a little. Also, Happy Anniv and Vienna have enough food surplus to potentially run an extra 2 merchants from a grocer. The villain could run more also, but building there will be tough.