[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[Lewwyn]

Thank you kindly. Not much production across the board yet you are top of MFG, which suggests it's a production poor map. The power of the whip, eh.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm absolutely loving early Police State via mids + cheap forges. If you noticed too, we have 3 cities with Food Surpluses over 10 (Johnny English will too once I fix the tiles after this last turn's border pop) and we also have a bunch of 7, 8 and 9 food surpluses. Slow building on this map is for suckers. We have huge amounts of happiness throughout the empire (forges + 3 for metals helps a lot) and we can whip with abandon.

I think Ellimist severely underestimated how much power we could amass in 6 turns. Also our 1T teching shenanigans kept him in the dark as well as our pseudo-war with Kuro. This led him to tech Aesthetics>Lit>Music, and that's gonna hurt him more than he realizes.

[NobleHelium]

Eh, they teched Literature a while ago. I'm pretty sure he recently teched Feudalism and then Music after that. He may have teched something in between.

It should be pretty easy to avoid a fork between Neon and Sodium. On T136 we pile all our ships in the area on the tile 1W of the fish, which is the forking tile. If their ships are on that tile that turn, that will be fine - if they DOW us on T137 before we get to play, their ships will get teleported either north or west (likely west but I can't be sure), in which case they will only be able to hit Neon. So we just make sure Neon is adequately defended, and Sodium should be fine with its current skirmisher and likely a unit that we complete on T136. If they don't DOW us, then we can pile our ships SE of the forking tile, which will mean they'll have to sink all our ships to get to Sodium on T138. Or we could just attack their ships if we have enough caravels to take out their trireme(s).

Most likely though those galleys are carrying reinforcements to Arcturus.

And you know the overflow cap is base hammers right? We aren't losing any hammers in Sodium, there are only 60 overflow hammers (base), which then become 90 after the multipliers.

[Lewwyn]

Eh, they teched Literature a while ago. I'm pretty sure he recently teched Feudalism and then Music after that. He may have teched something in between.

Yeah maybe, either way the point is he teched Music this turn which means he can't be teching military techs.

It should be pretty easy to avoid a fork between Neon and Sodium. On T136 we pile all our ships in the area on the tile 1W of the fish, which is the forking tile. If their ships are on that tile that turn, that will be fine - if they DOW us on T137 before we get to play, their ships will get teleported either north or west (likely west but I can't be sure), in which case they will only be able to hit Neon. So we just make sure Neon is adequately defended, and Sodium should be fine with its current skirmisher and likely a unit that we complete on T136. If they don't DOW us, then we can pile our ships SE of the forking tile, which will mean they'll have to sink all our ships to get to Sodium on T138. Or we could just attack their ships if we have enough caravels to take out their trireme(s).

Most likely though those galleys are carrying reinforcements to Arcturus.

Well I think you're overestimating the amount of ships we can bring to bear in that area. Next turn is T135 and I will whip the Trireme. I can then possibly manage the overflow to 1T a caravel T136. T137 if they attack we will have a Trireme and a galley in the water, but the trireme can NOT make it to the tile 1 W of the fish by T137. It has 2 moves on T 136 and can only make it to the fish. We could put the galley on the tile and it might delay them but it will also most likely be killed. I'm willing to do it if he put his Galleys there to prevent any chance at a fork. Let's just hope the galleys are carrying reinforcements.

And you know the overflow cap is base hammers right? We aren't losing any hammers in Sodium, there are only 60 overflow hammers (base), which then become 90 after the multipliers.

Yes. It says 60 hammers overflow now. But it was 94 hammers with modifiers before EOT. At EOT we lost 4 when it cut to 90, then it divided the multipliers out and gave us 60 hammers overflow without bonuses. With the bonuses it then knocked us back up to 90 hammers the overflow limit. I'm 100% sure because I microed the tiles to avoid hammers the last two turns and was only able to get the overflow down to 94.

[mackoti]

Lewwyn its right.

[T-hawk]

Damn. I was REALLY hoping they did. I was even looking around trying to figure out if it was true or not. The best I could find was that Triremes upgraded to Caravels.

The rule is that a build order gets auto-changed when the unit goes obsolete and can't be built anymore. That in turn happens when you have the capability to build *every* unit type that the original unit could upgrade to. Triremes upgrade to either Caravels or Frigates, so they don't go obsolete and have build orders auto-change until you can also build Frigates.

That's why warriors don't go obsolete if you don't learn Hunting. They upgrade to both axemen and spearmen, so they stay available until you can build spearmen (or a later unit in that same chain, pikeman.)

[Lewwyn]

Getting some of the last preparations done. One more turn of staging.

Ellimist has used the GA for a Golden Age and teched Machinery. There's a good chance he will tech Engineering next and a good chance he'll get a pike in the border cities by the time we attack. If we were ahead in turn order it would make a big difference. As it is we will still have 22 knights attacking the mainland border cities. His defense look like this atm:




These two screenies show the forces in both cities. Ellimist currently has 500 gold he could use to upgrade the archers. I'm sort of hoping he does waste the gold. It'll be tight but I'm pretty confident in the knights. If it looks like we won't be able to take both. Polaris is the priority since its culture defenses are only 20%. Hopefully he stacks more units there for us to kill as well.

Vega has the same forces as last turn, but he built culture in the city and it looks like he will take control of the tile by T137. I will check his forces in the north inner island city by running a worker into his lands and back. If its less defended we may go that direction. Either way it will be a knights only attack since the loss of the tile stops our cat from getting close enough. If we go Vega we can get 5 knights in the assault, if we go north we only get 4.

Power:



Demos:



Scary Golden Age MFG. Best to kill as many cities as possible before that production swings the advantage. caravels blocking the home island from ferrying units will also be a priority.

[NobleHelium]

I thought about it some more and I think they are likely to tech Optics next. They see our research and want to match it, and it fully explains the Machinery research.

Arcturus is definitely more valuable than Polaris is, particularly because they're chopping those forests into units now. In terms of land quality they're about even, Polaris is slightly better probably. But Arcturus's location is much more important and it's a much older city for them. But you're right and we're likely to take more losses on the attack there. I don't know really, we'll just have to see.

[Lewwyn]

Arcturus is definitely more valuable than Polaris is, particularly because they're chopping those forests into units now. In terms of land quality they're about even, Polaris is slightly better probably. But Arcturus's location is much more important and it's a much older city for them. But you're right and we're likely to take more losses on the attack there. I don't know really, we'll just have to see.

It's not a matter of initial losses. It's a matter of hitting Polaris before they pop the borders and make it more difficult in the long run. Also, once taken we don't have to deal with culture from a nearby city circling it. Taking Polaris will be easier and allow us to turn and focus on Arcturus faster since we won't have to reinforce it as much as if we took Arcturus first.

The turn moved pretty quick. I think we've sufficiently shamed Kuro into playing on time for at least a few turns.

[Lewwyn]

Just FYI I have 2 turns to update. The staging turn and the initial war turn. Yay. Unfortunately I have been very busy this Friday, Saturday and Sunday and have not been able to put together the write ups yet. I believe I shall do them tmr. And yes. Things have gone well.

[Lewwyn]

Well there's 3 turns to update now... I will start with the staging turn. Then break and update other threads and return to sifting through screenies.

So staging turn, T 136.

Here's the main field:



You may notice that Ellimist has retreated all of his units. This is a potentially smart play given that if he had tried to defend both cities with his units he would have still lost both cities + his standing army. This way he keeps his army for the counter attack. The only problem with this is that his cities are spaced far apart in the north and the city next to Arcturus doesn't have overpowering culture. You want to retreat in this situation because you'll be able to hit the cities while they are vulnerable and surrounded by your culture. But he doesn't have the culture or units advanced/powerful enough to take out a horde of knights. Anyway we'll see how this plan works out for him in later turns.

The other thing he could be doing here is trying to get more time to tech up. And still have an army when he does.



He's got his boats ready for action and I've loaded Sodium and Neon up with a skirmisher each plus 2 LBs in Neon and an LB and an Xbow in Sodium. whatever he has on those galley's IF he has anything on them will not break my cities next turn.



We still have control of that silk tile atm the moment so things are looking up for the attack on Vega. We scouted the north inner island city, Alphecca, and saw an arche and a LB. However that city is on a hill and I'm still hoping we keep the tile in the south so we can run the cat out too. So I set up our knights for the assault on Vega.

Power:



Just for fun!

And Demos:



Pop has really taken a beating. Or should I say a whipping?

Next turn.