[PB 55] Miguelito and Mjmd help Amicalola avoid a repetition of last time

[Amicalola]

Launched our GA this thurn. I didn't see any point to waiting, since this game is going to end soon one way or another.

Here are the GA demos. Uh, I think Civac might be a liiiiittle bit of a runaway. He's in a GA too right now, but that production demo is pretty funny.



War-wise, here is the front:


Jowy has moved his main stack out of Elementary, and his capital is pretty undefended. He moves before Commodore, if that matters. I decided to move the stack back into our territory on the Dye this turn, hopefully the give Jowy the illusion of a retreat. My hope is that he will send his stack south. Next turn, we will probably move back towards Elementary, with the help of these units I have stockpiled since the war began. 



Would you have played that differently?


I am going to tech Guilds -> Theocracy -> Banking, hopefully all within the GA. Guilds is for knights, Theology is for Theocracy, and Banking is for, well, banks. Probably didn't need to explain the last one.  Let me know if you think anything should change there.

For Civics, I have swapped into HR/Vassalage/Serfdom/OR. I think the only controversial thing there will be the Serfdom swap, but basically my logic was that I don't plan to use Slavery during the GA, at least until knights are being whipped, by which point we will swap back into slavery/theocracy. In the meantime, might as well scrounge some coins from serfdom farms and the rare watermills/windmills in our territory. I should have built more of these in preparation, which is good to know for next time. Thoughts on this play?

What I plan to do with this GA is build any buildings necessary, and missionaries for whichever cities aren't in Buddhism, and then mass units again following knights and Theocracy. Then we will mass-build banks after the GA, and hopefully be ready to launch the second by then.

I don't think the game is going to last more than 10 turns from here, being honest, but I feel like I should be planning this stuff out as best I can, in case a) I am wrong, and b) because learning.

[Mjmd]

I would have gone 1 more E to threaten that city. While it would have been nice to get the capital, but Jowy falling fast is more important and Commodore taking capital would help with that. If you just get 3-4 cities and then Commodore fights Civac that is fine.

Whipping in a golden age is not advised. However you did just invade someone. Having some HA in queue to upgrade in queue and then whip them would be a good idea. You can still switch 5 turns into golden age though. Depends on timing.

One of my favorite things during PB52 was during golden ages build buildings and then out of them build units (basically multiplying extra hammers by organized). Again you are at war and that power graph show Lewwyn above Civac....... Maybe figure out what is necessary building and missionary wise. A missionary is basically a cat you could have. I definitely over built missionaries in PB51. As mentioned pages and pages ago a fishing village to whip out missionaries would be nice, but sadly haven't had time to settle those filler it looks like (prob correctly).

[Amicalola]

Jowy moved his main stack to his capital to fight Commodore. Not sure if Commodore will fight or not. Jowy offered us 50gpt for peace, which would be nice, but I think Civac just takes the game without fireworks then, plus we renege on our deal, and I won't learn anything else by staying at peace aimlessly. Sorry Jowy.

Civac offered us clam for clam (on top of our existing fish for fish, lol), so I think we're safe from attack on that front. I moved the stack back in, with the additional units. We will take Elementary MD next turn. Hopefully Commodore and Jowy have a big fight amonst themselves, but we will see.



Edit: Thoughts on whether we should bombard next turn?

[Miguelito]

so we're taking Elementary next turn, or can he still retreat the obnoxious stack?

Banking seems more important than theo... can we clear both during the GA, or do we not know yet? We have 2 islands, right? But not many coastal cities anyways... how many 3c trade routes? I'd guess they are few, and then Merc makes a lot of sense.

On your question if I had moved differently, if my aim was Elementary, I would have moved onto the rice. For attacking the city it doesn'T make a difference, but I think the psychological effect of having the stack 3 tiles away instead of 2 could be relevant.

Definitely start some HA in anticipation of guilds if you haven't already. Do we have stables? Well with vassalage it doesn't matter that much.

Usually people use caste system in GA, but if you think we'll get our GP in time anyways that should be ok. I'd argue that with both slavery and serfdom a PH windmill is at least as good as the mine. Less sure about watermills out of serfdom.

[Amicalola]

We should be able to take it; his stack is now two turns away. Once a city is taken, Jowy should have a hard time recapturing with his composition.

Yep, HAs started in many cities.

I think I should have used Caste (I haven't actually researched CoL yet). We won't have our second GA quite ready by the end of this one, but we will be a large chunk of the way there. But that was definitely a mistake retrospectively. We have 5 specialists in both the GP cities. We might be able to clear Banking and Theo both during the GA, but I will do Banking first just in case. I will check properly next turn, but I think there is a good chance of both.

[Mjmd]

Figure you how many cats you think you will use; add 1 to that. Use the rest to bombard. Then go in! You have some swords that will be useless if he ever adds 1 crossbow to future cities, so feel free to send those in first.

I don't mind delaying 2nd golden age. Can whip some knights in-between and then let your empire regrow / new cities hopefully get out of anarchy and grow.

[Miguelito]

logged in for a quick look, saw this:


I did not accept, but you may want to reoffer. They are moving from the ridiculous LB stack in the cap towards the city S of it. Maybe it means something about knights?



fwiw.

Set the empty build in Irish Coffee to an HA for queue upgrade.

Jowy only has single LBs in our 2 eastern border cities. If it stays like this, we could burn some 2 movers on this, striking from the fog (combat workers  roading on the turn of attack). Do we have any appreciable number of HAs? Else with dunno, 4? knights I'd feel lucky to take one out. Sim it when it gets serious

[Amicalola]

Thanks. I have been thinking about spending 2-movers on those 2 cities as well, but until this turn they've always had 4+ units so I had moved HAs to the main stack already. Thoughts on staging from this tile? We don't have many fresh right now but will in a few turns. I could actually run the current HAs away from the main stack and then we'd hvae 4 ready to go in 2 turns, plus some knights in 3-4.



Also, Jowy filled up his city pretty well on the interturn, much better than I expected. We can still take it probably, but it's more difficult. Thinking about bombarding for 1 turn with all our catapults, then attacking next turn. I know I know, bombarding is bad and you've told me that like 5 times, but his main stack can't reach here, so the only reinforcements for next turn would be a unit from the city itself. I THINK. Thoughts?



Going to do my physio and go to the shops for a couple hours before i play, if you guys see this before then. Let me know!

[Miguelito]

I support bombarding in this case. 4 Has will not do I fear so keep them with the main stack. Butt once we have knights they are good support.

[Amicalola]

I think I should have saved the HAs in retrospect, because even with 4+ longbows in those cities like there has been recently, I should have realised that Jowy is not an AI and would move many of those out to protect cities that were actually under threat, like Elementary.