[54 Spoilers] Nothing to see here! Miguelito and Rusten's max score game

[Rusten]

Completely agree with skipping rifles in that case, the ships and cannons will be more useful. We have cataphracts anyway so who needs cavalry.

[Commodore]

I feel like the esoteric truth that MilSci/Steel > Rifling still somehow remains obscure.

[Miguelito]

turn 138

We took Chichén Itzá against a LB and 2 pikes (one of whom wounded), losing one cataphracts at ~52%. The other battles' odds were not a lot better, so nice overall. Got a forge!
The conqueror will become our first C4 cataphract, receiving special honors (Commodore still reading?):



Look on Elkad's capital:


It's a shame we had no worker pair with the hill stack, so we could have ended this quickly. The 2 northern cataphract stacks in Elkad's terrirtory are just 2 each. He may take one of them out with his stack but lose a lot of units. Most of our cataphracts have to heal (Elkad threw his 3 catapults on the Chichén stack). That means that it is probably best to allow the catapults to arrive, whom you see on the tile S of the silk. We could probably still bruteforce it, but the cats should reduce the cost greatly.
Also nice unguarded city there I'm sending two lightly scratched cataphracts for whatever he might whip.

Before/after revolt (PS/slavery/decentralisation/theocracy ->Rep/caste/merc/OR, after also includes tile/spec reshuffling):





So this time it is evidently a big gain, in particular wrt GNP thanks to Rep specialists. At the same time, our deficit exploded again. Part of that is due to running artists in most of former Russia. I did set most other cities to merchants though, and even with the Russians we will be far from breaking even. We're due for some conquest gold yet, but may still need some wealth builds. Path to fix this, to at least break even?
- less unit supply (not gonna happen short term though)
- conquering Elkad's island (we're running 2/1(/1) trade routes in merc, and were before in some cities as we did not have enough open borders agreements- vanrober wouldn't even be bribed with a fur. Merc says )
- merchants in Russian cities after border pops
- a few courthouses that have started in Russia
- growth
- ?

We will 1-turn most of those techs soon.

I had no idea MoM is still available, that's crazy! Surely Akritai or a different city could get some good production going for it, and we have marble now. Leaning calendar before music now. If we could somehow get MoM in time for our GA we'll easily get 36 turns of it with the Taj, and I'd imagine 48 could even be a possibility (although I think the game ends before that). It's possible some players are too busy making war, and calendar is useful in itself. There are a lot of things we want indeed, so I think it's better to reassess after music. But with GL+NE liberalism becomes a lot more attractive than otherwise. We can't really lightbulb astronomy anymore, so that's a very good liberalism tech for us.

As you see researching even stuff like calendar costs us dearly (we could barely have researched it at 100% this turn). Building the thing would take > 10turns I think even in Akritai (where not building units hurts). I expect it to fall to superdeath who's had the tech for ages. Or wildcard, Ruff?
I went with Aesthetics, as it's a certain bonus.
Re: lib, I suppose you are referring to bulbing edu? Maybe I have a wrong feeling for the time scales here, but if we're aiming to finish the merchant/(engineer) in Angelia and use the first GS from KGB for a GA, is there really time to get out another one for a lib push?

Holkan is a free kill with our axe.

Preferred a 9XP cataphract for the job

Our crabfur region needs a lot of modernized improvements (watermills and windmills), but I see that we're spread thin on worker turns. Not urgent.

I'd argue that this is the one place where that job is most advanced? I was planning to keep one worker in the area, to change a few remaining mines to WMs mostly.

edit: Lakamha is size 8 (7 upon capture) and has a lot of hills. Decent candidate for the forbidden palace. Fairly central and will get it built fairly quickly. Best city IMO.

I suppose you meant Chichén. Yes it's an excellent candidate if you include Cairo's cities . My other candidate was Okhrana/St. Petersburg, which may be faster and helps with the Russian south.

I allocated our EP on El Grillo for a turn, I'm a little curious about his graphs and how the war is going. Mjmd after perhaps?

We can try. Last turn EG spent 8 EP on us for whatever reason, and superdeath also is dumping into us. So let's get EG briefly/try to maintain graphs, then Mjmd, seems good.

Completely agree with skipping rifles in that case, the ships and cannons will be more useful. We have cataphracts anyway so who needs cavalry.

exactly my thinking.

[Miguelito]

I feel like the esoteric truth that MilSci/Steel > Rifling still somehow remains obscure.

My impression is that in this era offensive war is to a large extent fought off galleons, and the bottom line gives warships. And then are grenadiers that much worse than Rifles when attacking amphibiously? Either they hit LBs/muskets where they still get odds, or they fight rifles where they are better.

But in this game I kinda want PP and I really want RP, so it's not a foregone conclusion.

@Rusten: I changed Kruptoi from Cataphract to a third missionary after you were in.

[Rusten]

Some of your images are broken. I changed a tile between capital and Angel for rounding issues (wine), need to switch back next turn. I did indeed mean Chichen Itza.

Yeah the economy will recover due to things you stated. We'll also grow onto some matured cottages.

I'd argue that this is the one place where that job is most advanced? I was planning to keep one worker in the area, to change a few remaining mines to WMs mostly.

I suppose the farms are decent enough once we adopt serfdom so it's alright. There are other areas that need the workers more I agree.
If calendar is a 1-turn tech we would at the very least get failgold from the MoM, but I don't feel strongly about it.

Re: lib, I suppose you are referring to bulbing edu? Maybe I have a wrong feeling for the time scales here, but if we're aiming to finish the merchant/(engineer) in Angelia and use the first GS from KGB for a GA, is there really time to get out another one for a lib push?

I didn't look at it closely, but we'll be able to run ~10 scientists in KGB once it's matured, so if we adopt pacifism and we're in a GA that's 10x9 gpp/t, or 10x12 if we've completed the NE in time. That adds up to a scientist or two pretty quickly, but we need to start growing it asap.

[Miguelito]

Some of your images are broken.

should have been fixed already. But you got the whole view anyways

I changed a tile between capital and Angel for rounding issues (wine), need to switch back next turn.

Hm yeah, didn't look as closely this turn, thanks.

If calendar is a 1-turn tech we would at the very least get failgold from the MoM, but I don't feel strongly about it.

Remind me on turn 150 when it's still not built 

I didn't look at it closely, but we'll be able to run ~10 scientists in KGB once it's matured, so if we adopt pacifism and we're in a GA that's 10x9 gpp/t, or 10x12 if we've completed the NE in time. That adds up to a scientist or two pretty quickly, but we need to start growing it asap.

Good thing I whipped it this turn, as per you suggestion! (was going to anyways fwiw)   I'll grow it full steam of course - well actually, cow to Okhrana (which otherwise has only the sheep) or KGB as well? 1 hamlet is 1 or 2 turns from village, so we leave it, but the other is 18 t from growing, so I don't feel bad about a farm there.

[Rusten]

Nah, Okhrana can keep the cow, that's an important city too. KGB has 3F lakes to use instead. And I don't mind the galley whip at all, even with the GPP plan -- it's an important unit for our conquest. Farming one hamlet sounds good.

[Rusten]

Logged in for a look and was met by a very weird diplo screen:




Not entirely sure how to read that, although I have a few ideas. I was expecting a blank peace offer to follow it, but there was no such thing, so we are at war with Mjmd right now. You know Mjmd better than me, so I'll give you a chance to form your thoughts on that without bias from mine.

edit: No combat IBT. Mayapan has a single longbow in garrison so we should be able to take it (50% for first cataphract, but the 2nd should do it if we're unlucky with the first).
edit 2: Rostov should be first in line for a missionary. Needs religion spread for OR bonus and then chopping the forest into granary in time for full regrowth on size 3, or at the very least size 4. I also think you should pillage the cottage 2E of Lakamha and replace it with a farm. It only has 2 turns into it anyway.

[Miguelito]

Not sure what to make of the offer either.
The war is serious though; he has a galley in range to burn GRU (southwesternmost iceball) next turn. I can only move Cataphracts so as to punish anything that lands. I can beat up myself over it, I saw it last turn but didn't give much thought to a single galley/ was feeling safe at KGB/FSB. Well the city doesn't matter too much.
He also made peace and signed OB with El Grillo. Is he telling us that everybody will attack us in 2 turns? They've all been spending their EP on us rather than each other. Maybe you should've accepted that offer (seriously, offer peace for war with EGSD/vanrober? We don't care about trade routes andit saves GRU). Also, offer peace for 100 gold? That's how I would price the city. Would you go higher?
He has seen our triremes but not the galleys. If we follow the plan of moving onto Elkad's island we can threaten a city of his on our way and then another, otoh we might face his triremes, in particular if EG joins in. We can also send our ships south to fork 2 of his core cities in 3 turns, but that let's Elkad off the hook.

I'm putting a galley with 2 phracts in range of Septem to be safe there, could also shift the 2 northern triremes in that direction. Sitting the new phracts towards Russia, so we have to organise the Cairo defense with Cataphracts from the Maya conquest. Should be doable, but we may not be able to attack Cairo if we have to defend the whole west coast. They nought also send something to save Mutal for Elkad?

Keeping KGB and Mutal (assuming we get it) will be paramount.

I took Mayapan, at the cost of the first phract.

[Rusten]

There's no way they have something that elaborate planned. Would surprise me greatly. Are they even helping Elkad with iron? Don't understand why he's making longbows if he has the option to get pikes.

I don't care much about GRU, but IIRC it kept both a granary and a LH so I'm OK with paying up to 100 for it. I'm guessing it's the same 2 HAs he was trying to be annoying with earlier (yeah, you probably should've seen that coming -- very telegraphed). Our western coast is expendable other than KGB and soon to be Mutal so I'm not sweating it. And they can't even get through the south without astronomy.