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

[Bacchus]

Regarding the boated settler, why not just build on the island right next to Ignis and Westward? It's tiles are arguably better, and especially given an upcoming engagement with Krill, we don't want to make more stuff vulnerable on that front.

Also, now that Emerald Isle is on the scene, I'm quite keen to start taking Savant over, just once it's all grown an improved.

Dtay loves knights (they are also just objectively better due to speed). It will be knights against Yuri. We need to think what to do to stem his advance, but hopefully we have at least Longbows by then.

Joey's whips were forges. They are everywhere. Pretty pointless if you ask me.

[Coeurva]

My reasoning was:
* A 410 dry wheat and 150 iron are not as good as a 510 deer, 402 clams and 230 corn mine with 2h centre, and settling on that eastern island is absolutely useless past size2; it can't whip for much and doesn't produce enough either. I'd rather settle one of our mainland fillers than that.
* If we settle that island, Savant suddenly has two cities to strike at in the north-west (1t from Sorpigal!), and that island also requires a galley to supply workers; a galley which we'll simply need for transport in Operation Seafood, otherwise we suffer another 2t delay.
* If we can take the fogged city and Foxglove, that city is backline. I think one of our next techs should be Metal Casting if we go through with an attack on Krill, because we need to anticipate his retaliative strike. It's also on the way to Optics anyway (caravels would be great, maybe we can ignore Feudalism and go for Engineering early to stop dtay's knights from eating us).

Re dtay's knights, we have these options:
* 2-promo Longbows. Locked behind some useless tech and one expensive tech that's needed to unlock knights, as well as a great civic in Vassalage.
* 2-promo Pikemen. Probably the best pure Knight counter, but fare worse against combined arms. Locked behind some tech that's actually good and a wonder that's quite strong on Pangaea-type maps, but maybe not so strong when your cities have lots of non-Colossal non-Feitoria etc. coast.
* Formation NumCav, which we can 1t. Not really great, but useful en masse and don't die as easily to crossbows or maces as pikes do, either. Great mobility advantage, arrive at Zodiac Spire on the turn that they're built.
* Formation spears, but requires us to get 8XP options (settled Great General in Vermin plus Vassalage?)

We'll also be in a Golden Age around that point, hopefully.

If we go through with the strike on Krill, Savant is an option when we have knights of our own, probably, or can count on Mongolia and Gavagai (maybe even Joey) to assist us. Since Mongolia will doubtlessly have both hands full in some 20t at the latest (their power has also been rising, it's on par with dtay's right now) and Gavagai looks to be building up peacefully (settled his 15th city this turn).

The logistics are just better with Krill, since we have Zodiac Spire for whipping naval units and Heroic Epic Vermin (which Krill might not even know about) to supply 1t 4XP units. I think we can reconfigure Maudlin Sphinx to whip triremes more emphatically than to build the National Epic (I'll try to achieve both, but in doubt I'd rather have more units -- the capital can always sub in with GLib... or build the Epic itself, which isn't optimal, but better a suboptimal NEpic 20t sooner than one whose GScis come too late to matter; and GLib + NEpic is nice synergy)

Forge whips just make me more convinced that he's building horchers everywhere (there's also value in denying Mongolia the benefits of OrgRel by forcing them to build more soldiers). Not sure how fast those forges pay back for him; I think we could only use forges at Sicil and Rhapsody right now, which would pay back within 20t. Maybe Vermin, since it can 1t knights with a few workshops and a forge, but the forge wastes the Heroic Epic for every turn of construction which makes it less efficient there.

[Bacchus]

Logged in to look around more -- dtay actually revolted into Vassalage last turn. Pretty sure he is currently teching something like Masonry to overflow into Guilds. Scary shit. Our demos are pretty sad, we will have to take decisive naval action it seems to make do.

[mackoti]

Regarding the boated settler, why not just build on the island right next to Ignis and Westward? It's tiles are arguably better, and especially given an upcoming engagement with Krill, we don't want to make more stuff vulnerable on that front.

Also, now that Emerald Isle is on the scene, I'm quite keen to start taking Savant over, just once it's all grown an improved.

Dtay loves knights (they are also just objectively better due to speed). It will be knights against Yuri. We need to think what to do to stem his advance, but hopefully we have at least Longbows by then.

Joey's whips were forges. They are everywhere. Pretty pointless if you ask me.

I think you undervalue forges too much.I think evryone has 2-3 metal resources on the map so there you have 2 extra happy and from the next whip you get 25% more hammers , so i realy think what joey is doing is very good.Well i ma doing it all the time and worked just fine, because he will find in front of you with a generation of infrastructure  and cities can grow bigger and there you have a huge snowball.Its not like he si building forges with 3 cities....

[Coeurva]

Logged in to look around more -- dtay actually revolted into Vassalage last turn. Pretty sure he is currently teching something like Masonry to overflow into Guilds. Scary shit.

!!!

The one turn I forget to check the damn event log. Thanks a lot for catching that.

I think we both realize that this means that either us or Mongolia will get crushed if we don't take counter-measures right now. dtay has ikhandas everywhere, he gets double-promoted knights, he can whip off all of his coast-working pop.

There's no use attacking Yuri at this point. We would just widen our frontline and neighbour knights all the sooner; Zodiac Spire is at least defensible in theory once Cahokia's culture gets removed. We might want to attack Yuri and raze cities to deny them to dtay; everything else is just inviting disaster while we're sitting around on cities that take 7t or something to go out of revolt. At the same time, we cannot stay idle on sixteen or eighteen cities with nowhere relevant to go because of the same threat (as well as Savant, long-term); from what I can see, it's war with Krill or we'll die to dtay sooner or later anyway.

Alternatively, war with Savant, but I'm quite concerned that we won't get anything out of that before dtay goes through Yuri and our stack will be stranded somewhere in the far north. Conquering Krill's island cities at least doesn't give us any new neighbours, those islands are quite distant from anyone else, and dtay can't lob knights at them quite so easily.

How many turns do you reckon we have before knights appear at our doorstep? Fifteen? We could tech Metal Casting right now, then go straight to Feudalism (maybe even delay HBR for that) and fire our GA into Vassalage; sacrifice all growth and such at Whitehall to just crank out the next GP as soon as possible and sensible; get NEpic into Rhapsody right after GLib and grow scientists (outside chance of artist could still prove useful). During the GA, we get Machinery, maybe get Compass if we can afford it, take Guilds, then put our faith in Vermin and anything we can conquer from Krill, with Astro being our long-term lifeline to strike at backline cities with galleons. Maybe we can fuel Feudalism research with conquest gold from the Krill war, who knows.

Our demos are pretty sad, we will have to take decisive naval action it seems to make do.

I'm hoping our demos are just bad because we whip away a lot of coast; I think we still have a decent GNP at least, dtay's first spike in the graphs was worth ~290 and we're at ~280 right now.

In food, we're only ahead of Savant and Krill, although not actually far behind Mongolia (who have 19 cities). I'm sure it's dtay who skews Rival Best CY with his fifty thousand tiles of GA Colossus coast, I don't think most others are that far ahead, but I suppose we'll see.

Damn.

mackoti: You didn't quote me, but for my part I think I've been undervaluing that forges also pay back in whips, not only natural production. They actually serve to make double-whips efficient in RtR (62h), and we pretty much have no choice but to whip our cities; the problem is installing them in cities like Sherry that start with one forest, high food and low production, while they can always scrounge up the hammers needed to double-whip a cothon, which is a bit like a weaker but more sure-fire Colossus.

[Bacchus]

GJ aside: I think some forges are ok, I just think he built far too many. Also, we've been whipping pretty heavily as it is, we kinda behind on pop a little. I guess there is something to be said for staying easier on the whip until forges, whipping them, and then going on a slavery frenzy.

Dtay situation: Catapults, Longbows and C2 Elephants leave us with just enough to hold against Dtay on a narrow front, I would say. Zodiac is enough of a chokepoint that he has to take it with brute force, and it will be pretty difficult. We can OB Yuri and stuff some Longbows into Cahokia? At CG2/GuerillaII, in a hilled city and fortified they get odds on C2 knights. Dtay is in a bit of a bind, I would say. He has Gers right to his south, and his buildup will leave Mongolia no choice but to reciprocate. Gains from Yuris are pretty limited, and almost negligible for as long as we can help Yuri hold Cahokia, which we are pretty well located to do.

I don't think we can afford a war with Savant, whilst getting some levelled-up swords on Galleys would be useful. We may have to throw them at the Collosus

[Bacchus]

By the way, do you appreciate that the barbarian archers in the newly built city have a +155% modifier against swords? They get odds on unpromoted, and even CR1 swords because of the first strike. If you want, I can switch away from sword builds in Vermin and Westward.

If we skip compass, push wealth pretty hard to reach Feudalism, how many LBows do you think we can churn out, and how many of them get to Cahokia? Maybe 5? 3 from Vermin, 1 each from Lifeblood and Zodiac?

[Bacchus]

Actually, we can just churn out a bunch of GuerillaII Archers and march them into Cahokia ready to be upgraded as soon as Feudalism drops. We can also station some swords 2 NE of Cahokia, on a road, to counterattack the city should it fall. CR2 swords can take knights on the offensive piece of cake.

[Coeurva]

I wish we could build elephants, but apart from HBR (not much of an issue), we lack ivory. The barb city (Chehalis) blocks all settlements in the region; yet the ivory is second-ring for that city as well, so even capturing doesn't help much; we'd have to wait for the revolt to end, then construct some cultural building (from Slavery), then wait for it to accumulate. At that rate, the first elephant might trot out of Rhapsody's gates just in time for dtay to enjoy the very photogenic witness to his knight rampage. Same goes for trying to grab the ivory with Westward's third ring. Shouldn't have placed it on the hill, I guess.

Alternatively, we raze and resettle with first-ring ivory in a subpar location: probably the best option short-term, but another shot in the demographic foot long-term.

I'm not sure if we can even take Chehalis quickly, our swords need ages to travel there and we actually need them all against Krill, the galleys from Zodiac Spire can't get that far in time to fetch them. Most pertinently, we'd be alerting Krill to our military presence by shuffling boats around near his borders, which we absolutely must not do. He's already uneasy, I'd imagine, with our empty galley bumbling around (seemingly) empty cities and coverless settlers; but showing a sudden abundance of galleys and (presumable) swords taking a city close to him might kill our chances of a quick and decisive strike (I hope he doesn't pop borders at his fogged cities, because he won't even see the fleet in that case -- I think; need to check this). For all he knows, we're building up against Yuri because we've noticed dtay's Armageddon clock and the galley was just scouting some islands for later.

EDIT: Just saw that you had similar thoughts. If you log in again, don't switch away from the swords, they're needed for the attack on Krill! (The unpromoted one is still useful as garrison if we can get an eighth sword in time; the CR1 sword will be useful.) But yeah, we're not going to take Chehalis with them.

What we can build is large masses of C2 Formation NumCav (finishing HBR by eoT127). Probably the best stuff we can get for the immediate future on the defense. Catapults are important as well; longbows would be excellent, but we can't build them for a while. Swords to counterattack dtay are a clever idea and it fits with the plan to attack Krill, but we can't fight Krill and dtay at the same time, so deterrence is more important unless we can sign a quick peace.

Razing the Colossus is a distant dream, although a nice one Unless we get lucky with our four-move galley, the city is just too far removed. dtay can build triremes, he'd have to get incredibly negligent about the wonder that fuels his economy right now.

A good reason to try and take over Krill's islands is that knights on galleys still lose to triremes, which makes dtay's tech advantage less of a threat there as long as we can keep up sheer numbers to sink any fleet that appears. We'll have to expect Krill to be hostile for the rest of the game, but he's already aligned with Savant anyway while we have common interests with Gavagai, and settling into one direction aggressively can be seen as hostile (it's why all our northwestern islands have three archers for garrison right now). Holds up in court, I guarantee.

I don't know how much sense it makes to stuff longbows into Yuri's capital. If we can fork Yuri with horse archers, then so can dtay with knights; he'll just take everything except the capital, and then fork Cahokia and Zodiac Spire. Then we're screwed because our longbows can't get out of the pocket. If we take any action against dtay (and such a war would be very dangerous, not least because I believe Savant would build up), then it's probably best to hit his injured stack just after it takes Yuri's capital.

Nor should we open borders with Yuri, or trade with him at all in a way that could be visible to others. We would just invite dtay to build some more knights in anticipation, he'll know perfectly well that nobody else can compete with him in research right now, and I think he's assuming we're building up against Yuri, who must be his own target (he doesn't care about our graphs, but has like 200/80 EP into Yuri).

dtay is only bound for the moment, and Joey will be the one to free him. I think Joey has no reason to conquer a few of Donovan's cities and get close to Krill's Heroic Epic capital when he can take Mongolia's cities instead; but any war between those two means that dtay gets free choice on the neighbour he wants to devour; if this war is inevitable anyway, and everything I can see points to this (we're the only other target: that's not very desirable, either), then buffing Joey is for the best, because it might induce dtay to go south and meet the threat, or to take the Holy City for himself.

I think you're right about Savant. Let's also keep the borders open. Let him be the one to open hostilities, if he wants to.

EDIT: Screw Civstats and meta-knowledge from spoiler threads. I'm quite sure Krill is paranoid about us now from the flurry of posts I've made. He logged in right after you left the game, whipped 1 pop, and finished turn. (Well, he's not paranoid if he's right, but still it's annoying not to be able to discuss without waving around a red flag.)

[Coeurva]

T120 report:

Krill has built Shwedagon Paya.

Build colosseums everywhere (2t in Sicil, Vermin, Lifeblood; 3t in Whitehall; 4t in Ignis), demographics are still shit (although to be fair, we look better in the graphs, our crop yield is always about 2t behind Mongolia's; JR4 has whipped away about 10 pop this turn).

Yuri has a galley near Crested Eyrie (could amphibiously attack this turn), and I'm hoping he's building his super secret island hideaway (if not, there's a shock chariot and archer inside the city, I think that holds; but he could snipe the worker if he really wants to ). He has Iron Working by now. I've also been wrong about his EP ratio with dtay, it's actually 100/190. It also seems that dtay is investing quite heavily in Mongolia and vice versa... who knows, Yuri might live to get his revenge on us. Or rather, force us to call off the invasion of Krill.

I'm also not sure anymore if attacking Krill is all that wise, we can take out two cities in two turns (Mandrake, Foxglove), but then we need some 2t of transit to pick our next target. We can only sort-of fork Bates Motel / (fogged) Machineel and Krill's available scouting will decide a lot. Have to decide whether Sphinx whips a galley or trireme. Probably the latter... We have to do Nat Epic at the capital, no choice at this point.

Set research to Compass at 0%. Might actually go through with it (everything takes 2t at ~60%) and whip all the cothons in the west, essentially hoping that dtay's target is Mongolia. Then go Metal Casting (mainly for triremes), HBR (defense against Yuri/dtay), then Feudalism (defense against dtay), then fire GA and try to get to knights. I feel like it's quite pointless, which probably isn't true. Our GNP isn't anything special anymore, either; we're #4 without any wealth builds at 100% sci (252 score) and our GNP spike on Construction was as high as anyone's, we're not quite behind but we're surely not ahead.

dtay has lots of pop. Same for Joey.

Didn't send anything to Gavagai after some consideration. Might as well declare war on Krill, it just shows our hand. He'll see galleys retreating towards our coast, he'll see our new island settlement, he'll think we're using them to ferry workers and such. Hopefully.

Good night.