GeneralKilCavalry and thestick talk it out

[Cornflakes]

Double check minimum island size for barb spawn. I think you are safe without barb busting.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Golden age demos are meh, I think 1/2 the players are in a golden age right now. MFG is perpetually low.

Wow, looks like we can get 6 cities out here. Potentially more.

If we consolidated out forces, we could force this city into our hands, but we're too spread out and too weak.

This is what I mean:







By the end of the golden age, we should have 12 additional war elephants, about 6-8 whipped catapults, and hopefully a smattering of longbows and crossbows for maximum defense.



SD offered a T145 NAP. I really need to conjure up something new on the diplo front to get SD out of our hair and be able to either focus on cairo, or somehow backstab SD, which is looking less and less feasible.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

We're in the civfanatics 7-year long PBEM turn pace zone.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

The main question I have after this turn is - can we survive 10 more before Mr. Cairo or SD invade.

Why?

That's how long we need to whip out walls, castles, and get a couple of pikes out to the border cities. As soon as engineering hits, we're going to want to whip out as many of those castles and longbows and pikes as possible. With the engineering movement bouns, we should be able to effectively use war-elephants to counter attack.

As a side bonus, with a couple of tiles rearranged, we could be #1 in crop yield right now.


Any suggestions on what to say diplomatically to get us out of this hell?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Sent a risky message to SD proposing a realignment - east vs. west showdown, implying that if he attacks us, I will whip to the ground to oppose him and leave Cairo unchecked.

[thestick]

T132 Report

Your fear is that SD takes peace right now and wheels his knight army around within the next 10 turns? You're right, he'll probably do that. He knows that TBW (Gavagai's ally) is on the other side of Gavagai and we're in no position to intervene, so if he cripples us then he can pick off Gavagai/us off later at his leisure.

I think the geopolitical situation is pretty fixed, frankly. Cairo is too weak to make a play by himself, and if he's going to piggyback, it should be off of the top power (SD) rather than the bottom power (TBW). SD has no room to expand other than through his neighbors, we've seen the maps and we've cut off his overseas prospects. Plus he knows that we have overseas colonies and growth prospects, so the best move will be to strike now while he has the advantage.

Of course, you probably made the right move by being bellicose towards SD. We just have to make ourselves spiky enough that he keeps going towards Gavagai while we build up defenses.

Was that 'east vs. west' realignment real, or just posturing? It was just posturing, right?

Things are bad internationally. SD took another city, and it looks like his offence is meeting little opposition:

   

   

Also note that Raskol's power is rising, so TBW might be about to get the smackdown.

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I won't pretend to have any good ideas, a. because I'm not much of a diplomat and b. because evaluating whether an idea is 'good' or 'bad' impedes the brainstorming, at least for me. Also keep in mind that I'm a natural pessimist, with a hint of fatalism.

1. We could try to pay him off. Give him CS, or gold, or agree to 'gift' him some cities by leaving them undefended and letting him walk in.
2. We could just whip, whip, whip and hope that we have enough pikes/catapults. His main strike will probably come from the plains of Marengo, possibly bypassing it to drive down to Toulon. The only way to defend that would be to have a large enough stack playing zone defence between Marengo and Arcole. We could acknowledge that everything west of Arcole is likely toast, and maybe Marengo would burn, and try to hold out with Arcole/Toulon, and survive via overseas colonies.
3. Is TBW going for Engineering? We're in a bad spot tech trading wise, since we gave away Feudalism, and TBW doesn't have anything immediately militarily relevant. We could blow our tech giving Engineering to TBW to help him defend against Raskol. He doesn't have much we immediately want, though...
4. We could bite the bullet and use our money to upgrade spears into pikes.
5. HR means that if we dedicate ourselves to doing nothing but HR for the next 50 turns (so no Merc/Rep fun), we can just whip Friedland/Marengo/Arcole to the ground and use military for happy.
6. We could go to Theology to swap into Theocracy and get C2/Formation pikes out of the box. Or bite the bullet and go into Vassalage, but I'm not seeing any techs that give immediate military benefit besides Guilds/Gunpowder, which will probably take too long.

If we somehow survive this, I think we should head for Gunpowder/Nationalism. Secure the mainland before going on colonial adventures. It'll be a huge problem keeping out Cairo's knight/musketeer swarm, but we'll cross that bridge later.

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On the silver linings, if we survive this, we have great overseas expansion prospects.
   

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Superdeath is open. He said that he's willing to ally with us, but only after he gets techs from raskol/cairo. I think i'll sign a T145 nap with him, and that should keep us safe, fingers crossed. All we need is whipped pikes and longbows and we should be a much harder target than gavagai was.

" TBW looking to be conquerered that easily by just Raskol? Seems a little weird. Im fine with this concept though, but im still needing to get the techs out of this current t130-era trade. As ive already given away something. If you are willing to wait for my techs to come in from them both, i would be up for the Rome + MontyPython vs France + India.

Until the techs come in, ( which i hope are soon.. ) i may have to declare war on you if Cairo asks. But i think i can avoid actually sending anything your way. Thoughts?'

[thestick]

Was that SD's message you quoted there?

If he's willing to sign a short-term NAP, I say we take it. We are in no position to intervene on behalf of Gavagai. And if he's not posturing and he's willing to go up against India, even better. The risk that he goes against TBW is ancillary. SD is an existential threat, Cairo is not, I think.

Cairo will be a tough nut to crack if he gets musketeers, but even just being able to free up resources towards development (Lighthouse in Austerlitz, anyone?) would be amazing. Cairo is small and boxed, so we can out-build him eventually.

What's SD's current thinking on TBW?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

He replied:

" I see no reason to not take the t145 NAP, Agreed.

t160 would be the next time i can trade much tech wise. I only have whatever is leftover from trading Engineering twice for this trade era. "

Austerlitz will be whipped into the ground soon, i can get the lighthouse after.

[thestick]

Random longer-term thoughts.

If I remember correctly, the number of cities maintanence is creeping up to 4-5 GPT pre-Aggressive discount, so we're hitting the quadratic part of the expansion costs curve. Whee. Hopefully Bureaucracy helps with that. Maybe we'll need to start building Courts, if we can catch our breath? Fingers crossed SD crashes his economy...

I'm starting to think that a conquest of Cairo will have to be amphibious. What's the fastest way to Astro in this mod?

Thoughts on tech path? Thoughts on Liberalism (e.g. will we have the security, and will the game be long enough, that it's worthwhile)?

We should probably either backfill or trade for Literature for the National Epic... and if we get a spare moment, run a Merchant in Lodi to keep its GP pool pure Merchants. Then we can run Scientsts in Abukir, and either get a Great Scientist for bulbing or a Great Artist for a Golden Age.