[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Coeurva]

Agreed on Nationhood. Add that we'll also have barracks everywhere anyway, since many cities have to be able to reinforce themselves due to ferries not always being available.

Yuri will be dead before our ships arrive. I think Utica has fallen to dtay now. We might grab Rostov from him yet; that's all. Joey might take Seattle, actually. I'll send our own galley loaded with two chariots, mostly for decoration.

I'm quite sure Savant will not take the peace, but if he does, we should have 3-4 galleons on T144, some of them 6-moving, and can indeed shuffle our army to any other front very quickly. This includes stealthily building those forts at Ignis you suggested ages ago, and pushing for Harmondale when Savant least expects it, but there are other targets, including the unthinkable.

I'm not sure if dtay realizes that we can currently see into Novgorod (Yuri's former gems city and eastern port, south of Swallow), but there's a single knight inside, which would get demolished by 6-move galleons bringing CR3 swords, striking from the fog if that was ever done -- and I'm quite sure he wouldn't see our ships moving through the Zodiac Canal, either.

If all his coastal garrisons are like this -- and due to us only having to hold one chokepoint (Spire) if we can rule the seas -- we might find dtay at his most vulnerable, and could at least raze his acquisitions, although getting locked in a war with him would seriously drag down our development as well, perhaps only to Joey's ultimate advantage. Too soon to judge.

Deterring Krill's possible opportunism was another reason to offer peace, yeah. More than that, we're driving a wedge between their possible cooperation by staggering the enforced peace treaties this way (Krill still has OB with nobody but Savant), and we're re-opening the possibility of an attack on Krill -- with the captures of Chehalis and Sweet Water, his former backline cities have become more vulnerable to us -- without having to worry about Savant for a while, which means Emerald Isle could be essentially ignored in that case. By T151, we'll have lbows and xbows everywhere on those islands and will probably start building our first knights.

I do doubt whether offering peace before attacking Sandcaster was a good move in the end, if Savant is more likely to agree than I had thought -- probably not, unless Krill can move in ~8 embarked units right now. I don't doubt that we've dealt a harsh blow to Savant's plans, though -- he has lost three, perhaps four more cities by our intervention (I'm not sure JR4 would have taken Vulcania, if not for our attack) and is now substantially weaker than Mongolia; his presence on the eastern sea is much weaker, and not least, whatever the plan was for his Golden Age (chain two MoM-fuelled GAs, maybe?), we've forced him to change it; we've reduced the returns of his Mausoleum by capturing Regna alone, and also by inducing him to build/whip military that will be nearly obsolete against knights.

If Krill sees galleons, that show of strength might even convince him that his future lies in capturing dtay's islands alongside our possible campaign, to which he actually has good access. I don't want to ease the pressure on him too soon, though. If it turns out he's Gavagai's target, we need to stand ready to take his islands with galleons.

Can we partially bulb Chemistry with another GSci? What's the tech path there?

[Coeurva]

T142

Savant took the peace, unfortunately -- although he could have put two more xbows into Sandcaster, so maybe we couldn't have taken it after all. Still, chalk that up as my error. In total, we've lost three swords and a catapult to take three cities, though.

Switched production to galleys (they do upgrade to galleons in the queue), forges everywhere (cothons can still wait a bit, except at Lifeblood which gets great trade routes, and a few cities that don't have enough production, but good enough tiles, to make galleon production undesirable). We bulb Astro next turn. Without wealth builds anywhere, our GNP is worse than Donovan's at 0% (a glorious 67 gpt) and still not good at 100% (575 bpt, -387 gpt), but at least peace means that we get to whip off coast for forges, cothons and courthouses (and observatories after that, perhaps), and throw missionaries around for OrgRel. Briefly were #3 in food/pop, but whipping off 202 coast for cothons brought them down. The largest cost for us by far is city maintenance (181 gpt), we'll need to crack down on that.

Krill fired a GA and revolted to Hereditary Rule/Vassalage/Caste System/Pacifism (in Hinduism, of course). He also offered Open Borders, but since he has signed them with dtay as well and Bracken's reinforcements were a sword and axe, I didn't take that. Let's see if Krill wants to declare war again.

dtay took Rostov (one knight inside) and Cuckstantinople before Utica. Maybe that's where our army should be. Alternatively, we can position it against Krill or against Savant's western flank.

I think Krill is the best target for us right now, actually -- no matter his C3 Shock axes, he'll have to defend every city at once against galleons (especially three 6-moving ones), which I doubt he can do given his sub-Savant power rating, and I think we can overpower him that way. Besides, we have shock-promotable NumCav for attacking -- or xbows! -- and he has just revolted out of Slavery (no emergency longbows) and into Pacifism, so if nothing else, it will disrupt his game plan.

So yeah, Krill Round Two is what I'd suggest. Particularly with Gavagai potentially targetting him as well. No word on the timing yet, but before T150 for sure. If we don't use those galleons now, we might as well not have bothered with the Astro bulb plan.

Lost graphs on Gavagai. I'm putting EP into him until we're at 43. I actually want dtay to see our power rating now, especially if Krill is the target.

The good news is that we can make another GSci at Rhapsody rather quickly. Even without employing extra scientists, the next one would be due in 27t. Problem is that he'd bulb Scientific Method, which doesn't do much for us.

[Bacchus]

Next GSci should be used for another GA, we definitely need to generate him, probably partnering with a merchant from Whitehall. Did we run merchants in Whitehall speaking of which?

[Bacchus]

We also need to start thinking about the end-game, which is pretty vague at the moment. I don't think concession is happening, in any case not to us, so it's between culture and space, we are not particularly well-suited to either, so it will be culture/space whilst raiding people who are actually good at culture/space. OTOH, we already have three religions, so can start pushing on cathedrals. Sistine shouldn't be a problem to build with OR and high-production cities, some of the high-food islands can probably push out a great artist before the end of the game, I guess we might get 5-6? That way we also get to use the islands by accumulating GPP at least, otherwise they are somewhat pointless posessions.

One of our biggest problems going forward is the lack of a shrine. I don't think we can win without one, the long-term advantage is just too big. Could we reasonably say that the shrine in Animal Farm is the easiest to defend, due to being so far away from Gavagai on one side, and bordering Donovan on the other?

[Coeurva]

Yeah, we did run the merchants (got a GSci, though). That was the point of the market 4-whip.

Iirc the Hindu shrine is actually stuck in Room 101, closer to Gavagai than anyone else. Perhaps we could capture the Confucian holy city island from Mongolia (which is a reason why I chose to stick with Confucianism before leaving the GA, apart from logistics), although I'm not sure where the Great Prophet would come from.

I think our best chance is to try and take substantial cities from any of Krill/Savant/JR4 before deciding on a victory condition to pursue. I might just claim that because I don't think I could organize a culture victory, particularly with dtay likely reaching Cavalry before us.

The high-food islands aren't that pointless if we can consistently whip e.g. knights or rifles (free of happiness charges due to HR, at least until the units leave the city; still a rather strong source of production). Though I hope cothons + courthouses + forge wealth builds will fix our GNP.

[Coeurva]

T143: Bulbed Astro (and everyone will know, because of Renaissance graphics), then whipped six galleys to finish as galleons. And three more cothons, because they're insane. I've underestimated their output, I think -- it's more accurate to expect them to roughly double existent trade, and then add another route. Styx is making 22 commerce/turn on trade, and from the three cothons finishing eoT142, we saw a 30gpt increase. Nice enough.

Krill added another axe/sword pair in Bracken. They won't help him much against galleons, Shock NumCav, cats and CR3 swords, I hope. The NumCav currently in Zodiac Spire will likely join the attack; whipped a galley in Swallow. Still waiting on Cortés. Vermin builds xbows and nothing else. All of them are intended for Krill. If we only capture Mandrake and Bracken, we've already strengthened our position very considerably. Cothons are nice. More expensive than the GLH, but better than most other generic economic buildings for sure. Find myself pining for EXP, but maybe we'll actually build customs houses.

Capital builds a forge, then observatory. Most other cities build cothons and/or courthouses (saving roughly 5-6 gpt each). Regna finally leaves revolt next turn, too; sent a galley north as a provisory sentry.

Upgraded Hebona. Krill demonstrably knows what's coming anyway, but his power rating is quite low and we'll control the waters, so brute force might just carry the day. dtay has also grown warier; there's a CG3 longbow in Novgorod instead of the knight now. It's pretty much Krill or nothing for us, along with whatever opportunism the Big Three will allow. (I don't count Krill's civ among them -- yet.)

Need to get Confucianism and 1-2 lbows into Emerald isle, which is currently wedged against Sandcaster.

[Bacchus]

I meant whether we ran merchants during the GA, but I'll log in a while to look around.

If we do want to do culture, I would say we need to start keeping it in mind right now, especially which cities can generate GAs. The bulk of culture generation will happen later anyway, post T200. On space, we don't have to do much pre-planning, but we would have to be tech leaders, which seems unlikely from the current position. In either case, we would have to build a ton of military.

[Coeurva]

GA generation: Pomewater, Sherry can both reach ~11 food surplus, Maudlin is another option, Eyrie too but it's close to dtay and Joey


Three turns to war with Krill, using 4 6-move galleons (maybe use Hebona for lbow shuttling if we can capture anything), 3 4-move galleons, and about 30 available land units including ~11 NumCav, ~3 xbows. We'll be throwing almost everything against him. Might allow us to alpha-strike one of his mainland ports, too.

Traded stone <-> sugar with JR4 (forgot to mention that I'd offered him this), who annoyingly invested 10 EP into us last turn. This allows us to put walls into Sherry, which is about the only city except Styx he could attack, and will hopefully signal that we want to cooperate. The city he took from Savant is unfortunately squished into almost-eternal size1, it doesn't even reach its first-ring deer against the network of steles.

I've considered building Moai, but noticed that it doesn't seem to return its value fast enough for when we'll need to build more galleons and garrisons in the west (soon).

We'll attach Cortés to a galley + two galleons (all 2XP) next turn. Krill's axes aren't going to do all that well against xbows + Shock NumCav. He has Feudalism, but if we can control the seas, we might be able to stop lbows from arriving on the islands. He'll revolt back to Slavery and we can't prevent that, unfortunately.

Need to reinforce Ignis with more lbows/cats, I assume Savant will try for a revanche. His power is growing, and catching up with Gavagai's (they're still far below ours or dtay's).

Could declare war on Donovan as a ruse, but I assume it would merely induce Krill to build up all the same... I'll still move as though we were doing that (for as long as that doesn't interfere with our actual goals of movement)

dtay has like 30 cities and a huge crop yield / GNP. I'm not sure how we can stop him.

edit: Joey has built the Parthenon.

[Bacchus]

The confrontation with Dtay is the biggest reason why I'm not so hot on a war with Krill. In an ideal world, both of us would go after dtays coastal holdings, maybe reinforced by GJ efforts in the other sea. Maybe we can get a forces peace with Krill again? Harass dtay some, the come back for Savant with knights.

[Coeurva]

I'm concerned that the sole beneficiaries from a war against dtay will be Krill and Joey, who would take dtay's islands (which are nowhere near us) and pull further ahead, while we fight his knight stack on land and whip off even more pop in the process. Best-case, we raze a few of Yuri's former coastal cities and grind his knights to a halt before Zodiac Spire.

I'm hoping that our almost-equal power rating will deter him from attacking, more so once we can flash our own and triple-promoted knights at him. Krill, unlike dtay, will have difficulties counter-attacking us as long as we're strenuous with our galleons (we can also hit a lot of his triremes pre-emptively), and has considerably less power than Savant. Moreover, he hasn't repeated his move of declaring war to obtain peace (yet), which might show that he's concerned about us not accepting it.

I think we should move to take more cities for ourselves, rather than to try and take on dtay directly, and Krill, for better or worse, is the only target near us. A potentially lucrative one, too -- Mandrake is size10, for instance. Krill, doubtlessly knowing why we have Renaissance city graphics as soon as he notices them, can use his GA / Caste System / Pacifism to generate two GScis in short order and nullify our one remaining large advantage over him. And because Gavagai also needs to "break out" to catch up with dtay/Joey, we can be all but assured that we'll be attacking either Savant or Krill soon enough.

Of course, if dtay and Savant attack us while our army and fleet are fighting Krill, that would be trouble. But likewise, the best time to intervene against dtay -- if we get to choose -- would be whenever he moves against Mongolia.

In case obtaining immediate forced peace from Krill is the better move, I think we'll be more persuasive by steering galleons at him, too. ;)

5t to Guilds.