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

[Coeurva]

T132

Against my pessimism, Krill took the peace; excellent! Now we're poised to fork three of Savant's islands as early as T134 (not earlier, I'm pretty sure we'll need all the swords at full health, so I'm using our galleys to ferry over workers, an archer, and a catapult via a small chain next turn), while Krill cannot attack us again () before longbows and quite possibly galleons will be protecting our shores.

If we can allow a delay to ~T136, we can assemble a secondary strike force moving in towards Sorpigal -- about a half-dozen swords (Sicil, Ignis and Rhapsody will add 1-2 each), three catapults, and two assorted axes. That's not too intimidating -- but at present, the garrison of Sorpigal is one Shock spear, and Savant's power is still lagging. If not, these rascals will just hang back in Ignis.

For defending the north-west (Styx/Whitehall), should we 2-whip two triremes or two longbows at those cities first (or nothing, so as to work four more coast tiles during the GA)? My thought was triremes, but we can still switch next turn.

Teching CoL at breakeven; 2t to finish -- exactly on schedule for the GA and Astro bulb. I'm not sure how useful or dubious it is to enter a GA without gold reserves, though (~30g in our case).

Joey sent us map/map, I refused (we have his map). What's noteworthy is that both Yuri and Gavagai (!) have open borders with him, so he's no longer reliant on ours, and we can no longer trust him not to attack us. What's more, he has Medieval wall graphics (from Machinery?). As does Savant.

Discovered the hard way that archers don't upgrade to longbows in the queue. I don't think it hurts to have a few hammers invested into defensive units, though. In particular, I've also queued up a longbow in Sherry and a barracks in Foals (I'm assuming we'll lose the fish to Joey any turn now, thanks to his goddamn odeon running an artist), that border no longer counts as quiet.

dtay didn't add a lot of soldiers this turn for once (but is still towering 140,000 soldiers above us), and we're ranked 4th in everything once again. At least our performance is consistent?

Yuri whipped just about every city. I've responded by sending a catapult southwards and placing another axe inside Zodiac Spire. We should also look for marble <-> stone trades starting next turn; if we succeed, we can queue up walls in Spire (in addition to building Moai Statues).

Queued up a lbow in Vermin. More to follow.

Sorry about the ongoing lack of screenshots. Next turn might bring some again.

[Bacchus]

Oh yeah, I should have caught the Archer -> Longbow upgrade issue, sorry, that's a second fuck up from my side in too short a time. Thankfully we haven't really suffered consequences so far.

I would keep pop for the GA and leave north-west as is, LBows are necessary to protect against knights, but not C1-whatever swords that Savant may send. We can make some Guerilla2 archers in Sicil to bolster Styx, maybe 2, and maybe a shock axe from Rhapsody for Whitehall. Building triremes is also a sucker's play as we are going to have caravels soon enough.

[Coeurva]

I feel like we're going to have about 5 longbows by the time dtay is finished with Yuri.

In case it's not obvious, Lifeblood and Vermin will build nothing but those now. Same for Zodiac Spire, but whip walls first. Hopefully with stone on T134 (before switching to Caste System), but if not, I don't care either. Should we move all our swords over and abandon all designs on Savant, futile as it may be against 30 knights or whatever dtay might have for his gargantuan army? Or do we trust that Yuri weakens dtay enough that our border will hold?

I'm also sending JR4 and Krill iron/iron, horse/horse next turn, because if we can't get a coalition, this game is over. dtay is already in the lead, conquering eight more cities will just make him run away.

[Bacchus]

Yuri's first city to fall, interestingly, was something on his coast, whatever it was south of Seattle. There is no fallen cities on the border yet.

GJ has an absolutely insane Moai city in Heavenly star. He also has courthouses everywhere now, and odeons. Quite imposing, albeit I'm hoping our Glib+NatEpic combo will offset this a little.

We should not forget to offer OB to Gavagai during or a turn before an attack on Savant.

5 Guerilla 2 Lbows on a hill in a city behind walls would take a lot of knights to chew through them. 12, I think, if he wants to do it in a single turn. With siege it gets nastier, to be sure.

[Bacchus]

I logged in and changed Zodiac from Library to Walls, given your latest.

We definitely need to push on with conquering Regna, Emerald Isle, and the next island towards Sorpigal. Once we know if we have anywhere near enough forces after Emerald Isle to continue to Sorpigal, we may elect to build some reinforcements (cats, probably) in Ignis and Rhapsody.

[Coeurva]

Thanks.

I think we need to 2-whip a longbow in Westward next turn (whipping off farm + coast, regrowing onto coast), just in case. Somehow, we have to conjure up another one for Chehalis, too. Savant can outmaneuver our ships and we're operating roughly in the same zone as Joey, so we'll have to assume all his navy can come at us.

I'm assuming that Savant won't sign peace, if only because I suppose he'll hope for dtay to see an opportunity -- unless Gavagai comes rolling in; then he might.

We need to attack as fast as possible while Yuri still exists on the mainland (and if his last city turns out to be that island retreat for which the default list happened to draw the name "Yekaterinburg", I'll laugh no matter how grim all else might appear).

All that you've suggested here will be done. Sicil will also need a longbow for itself; Savant can land next to it from the fog. We won't have galleons before roughly T140.

Joey has had those courthouses and odeons for a while now. I think they started appearing just after JR4 founded Confucianism and when Joey started to pour EP into us (he has our graphs, by design -- our power rating is about the only weight we can pull against him, apart from possibly raiding the GLH later).

[Bacchus]

What's notable about Yekaterinburg?

[Coeurva]

Yekaterinburg was the last imposed exile of the last Car, shortly before he and all his family were murdered by the communists (who typically called the quarters of arrest the "House of Special Purpose" or some such). Not funny as such -- only the intrusion of ominous meaning into the lapidary default naming scheme would be.

More notably, Civstats reveals that Yuri took a city from dtay. Go Yuri!

[Bacchus]

Oh yeah, I wouldn't have linked that connotation to laughing no matter what But it would be appropriate.

[Coeurva]

Rarely enough, meaning emerges from an arbitrary order (the naming scheme we're using is similarly haphazard, the 15-byte limit only reinforces it, and yet I've found it to yield a few beautiful names). More commonly, what is meaningful is destroyed by one some-such. And I think that most often this does not even happen sadistically, but in necessary consequence of not knowing enough, and of resulting automatism (though the cruelty is not diminished; death is death). -- I try to laugh in defiance of the indifference that's needed to kill, but perhaps it is just weakness of character.

In any case, I've only now learned that that the communists shot dead a certain Dr. Botkin along with the others, and Anastasia's dog (because of course; lest it could have become a counter-revolutionary symbol) which was a spaniel of the "King Charles" breed. Of course, it could all be coincidence -- like that strange motif of Spanish overseas conquests entangled with John Shade from the beginning ("morocco slippers", "vicuna collar", "manila envelope" -- and even the famous "Red Sox beat Yanks 5-4 on Chapman's homer" pun in the poem itself obviously links back to a peak in Darien). Incidentally, both "hazel" and "walnut" are on the list of hapax legomena...

To preserve details in fiction -- to see them as inherently valuable, to load them with meaning consciously, and to innovate from them -- I think it means to salvage what's left of life in such insanities.

That's why I want to fire a Golden Age and take all of Savant's islands.

EDIT: and if we get reduced to one island ourselves at some point, I'll start logging in as "The Fisher King".