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

[Coeurva]

You were even advocating against the war with Krill. Clearly we should have chosen Augustus, so I could have sent you off to Tomis for that transgression.

Besides, nobody could claim to be surprised. Obvious quip about a Lydian king, too, although our GNP was mostly horrible iirc (but then we went to great lengths, or at least an ample assortment of longitudes, just to acquire gold).

Edit: chumchu, please rename our civilization's exonym to "Least Serene"; thanks in advance

[chumchu]

Will do! Things are pretty serene atm though.

[Coeurva]

How's it going?

[chumchu]

There has been a pause waiting for gav. We are just at chemistry and so is Krill. I teched banking before it and a number of banks are finishing up. I have genreally built a fair bit of infra, castles, courthouses, missionaries, forges so eco is looking up. We have three new cities to support. Military wise I have built the knight/cat stacks for defense but the fleet is quite depleted and needs building up. I have prebuilt caravels in a few coastal cities on the east coast and a two on the west coast.

Could you take back the reins for ten days while I am away Couerva? At Gavs current pace that will not be many turns I think. I am going to a cabin in the country tomorrow with little internet access and no gaming computer to relax and write.

[Coeurva]

I'm a bit pressed for time these days, but if we're at a pace of ~36hrs / turn, I'm good to play. EDIT: and will do it now.

I'll try to post more later, going out now, but yes, RPS system to make rushing Astro have a counter play that is not just rushing Astro yourself.

I wonder what may have inspired this update to RtR...

late edit: Not just this game, it seems. Regardless, I've learned the hard way that 4XP galleons are nearly untouchable in their era. The trade-off seems to come in that pursuing Astro and the necessary civics (Vassalage/Theocracy) incur costs such as not running Bureaucracy, but then Bureaucracy seems rather weak in RtR and Oracling Aesthetics with a CHM leader and Myst start was Krill's plan from the beginning, I'm sure.

[Coeurva]

JR4 has just landed ~10 units next to Tularian Forest (Savant is currently losing cities to Gavagai)... seems we've got a poacher here. We're in no position to join that war yet, but I'm keeping our northern stack on the out-of-sight tile 1 of Ignis -- once Savant's capital and Middlegate fall, that's probably a sign for us to join in -- can't leave Sorpigal to Gavagai, but then he has the power to ensure that it stays with him. Need to be very careful, since any prolonged war will end like the last one.

When the current round of infra finishes, we need soldiers again -- wedged between Gavagai and dtay (who both have ~200,000 soldiers more than us), we'd be next to fall.

Haven't changed much -- just queued a knight in Rhapsody, moved a crossbow into Seabear, and moved a few workers towards the tile 1 of Whitehall, currently a plains workshop, to fort it so that we can, maybe, snipe Fountain Head via unseen galleon assault and amphi knights (it's lightly defended, and no wonder; Savant needs his guys everywhere else) some 10t from now. Can't really declare while dtay / Krill aren't occupied, although against Krill, all hope to equalize in navy is long lost. A few ceremonial frigates, that's all we can do.

Also putting a few workers to bolster certain windmills with prebuilt mines, so we can increase production if needed (Rep. Parts due in ~12t).

[chumchu]

Thanks!

I though about that as well =) We could have teched theo and whipped our civ to bits to counter Krills galleons. It did not seem worth it when I took over as we was already losing the war (a lose button if I ever saw one) but maybe it would have been worth to do it before the war and whipping out the initial fleet.

I moved the swords up for that case but I think we need a few trebs, a pike, musket and xbow to get a poacher stack. A lot of our military is tied up in garrisons unfortunately.

About Krill I feel that our defensiev lines work at the moment, he would be hard pressed to defend any gains from a landing against cats and knights from us. Dtay is more threatening.

As you see, the tech plan is PP and RP to get infra on the road to rifles. We should get a sizeable boost from that. Mines should not be so necessary if we are in serfdom as 3 hammers from a mine is nearly alwyas inferior to 1 food/2 hammers/1 commerce from a windmill. Steel is probably best after that as drydock and cannons are very important.

[Coeurva]

What ho, there is no "counter" to C2 galleons (except C4 galleons; good luck getting those in numbers). You just build more of them than the other player, which we couldn't do -- and I was whipping galleons almost every turn; Krill simply had more production (queues) in that sea. I wasn't aware of exactly how devastating these double-promoted galleons are; I would probably not have pressed LOSE THE GAME otherwise (or at the very least, spent the second GGen on Combat upgrades, not Navigation); the right move was quite obviously to flash galleons around, but not take further offensive action after the island conquests, until the inevitable point at which any of Donovan / Dark Savant / Krill would already have been losing ground in some land war -- such as now. Water under the bridge, though. Take it from Krill's position -- when your neighbour bulbs Astronomy, he forces you to react by one right move only: get Astro yourself and outproduce him, which will cost you elsewhere (two Great People, at least). If Krill had just ignored our Renaissance graphics (which are another part of why this play didn't work, btw; there's no surprise to it), I doubt he could have prevented losing his islands. We've kind of pressed LOSE THE GAME for him as well, except that he has gained three cities from this and defended all his other aggressive settling -- but this is likely how Krill feels about it; now his galleons sit around and won't save him from Joey / Gavagai.

We have no defensive line against Krill, except that dtay could just take the cities from him. Our fleet consists of two galleons; we can't prevent a landing where he could easily bring 30+ units -- if he wasn't afraid of Joey / Gavagai at that time. Which, I suppose, he'll be for a while yet.

dtay has Steel already. Or rather, he has Industrial graphics, but what else could it be? I haven't read the event log; most likely, he used Liberalism to get it. Cannons blast all our units to his kingdom come. We're sixth in soldiers, slightly below Krill. Need Rifling asap.

Trouble is that JR4 will surpass our civ if he takes some Savantine cities, we don't want to be the softer target among dtay's land neighbours, so poaching is somewhat urgent; poaching, in turn, will invite dtay to prepare war, but it's impossible for me to gauge whether he'll be more likely to do it vs. JR4 now or vs. us later. There's yet another reason why I'll never play long-form Civ MP again; look at how many of the wars in this game invited "poaching" -- we did the same against Savant, for instance, we even unwittingly did it against Russia -- and I imagine I'd blow at Skat as well, whatever that game's called in English or Swedish. The landsknechts played that during the time Gustavus Adolphus came over to Pomerania, I've recently heard. Best friend's reading a book about their customs.

(That's not to say that I'd consider "poaching" dishonourable play at all, but rather that I think I prefer duel-like games over free-for-alls. By a vast margin.)

[Coeurva]

We have so few soldiers (less than Krill, who is adding a good bit of power, and even less than Savant!) that our hands are tied; we need to wait for Gavagai to break Dark Savant's endboss stack, which will certainly allow JR4 to capture all the western islands. We might have a chance at Emerald Isle, unless Krill decides it should be his; same for Sandcaster. We absolutely need to capture Harmondale / Sorpigal / Paradise Valley / Fountain Head if we want to stay in the game; even assuming Gavagai will just declare on us next, sitting around and waiting for dtay to grow an appetite is just as hopeless (his army is about the size of Gavagai's). But hopefully I won't be in charge by the time that chance arises, and thus avoid another bout of self-destruction.

I've queued up a few more knights and muskets where buildings have finished, and chopped the forested deer at Crested Eyrie into a castle, because the city will never produce anything beyond that with its meagre hpt anyway and we could use the trade route 5t earlier. Krill is researching Paper, dtay is burning through ancient techs (possibly to get Economics) and is the current tech leader.

Also, our capital needs a stable / colosseum to produce 3t 8XP knights. We'll need a lot of them to flank dtay's cannons (which will be covered by copious pikes / lbows / muskets, I'm sure; if it's rifles then lol, hopefully we'll have rifles ourselves by then, but still ~15t to go).

[Coeurva]

I can't meet the 24hr/t pace currently, I think. Perhaps a sub request is in order.

Joey has sent us iron/whale/sheep for the same; he might be looking to attack the Khatunate or Krill requesting our assistance, he might be warning us of an impending attack by dtay (Krill seems unlikely, although seafood might mean as much, but what would Krill gain here? -- Krill attacking Joey seems even less likely). Whatever the case, I declined and sent the same deal back.

Gavagai has surprisingly made peace with Savant after losing a whole bunch of units (nice going, Savant!), now rated the same in power as us/Krill/Savant, roughly (dtay spiking, JR4/Joey not eligible for graphs) -- JR4 is still at war, though, with Savant teching Chemistry (4t to go) to meet the Mongol frigates. I dialled up sci to 80% so that PP arrives one turn sooner, which takes our treasury down to 80g eot. Considered giving fish/fish to Savant to hopefully "persuade" dtay into attacking JR4 with Savant "sure" to have a flank covered, but decided against it since we'd probably prefer a weak Savant down the line, probably our only target for expansion left (and even then, I doubt we could surmount him alone)... Plans for an attack on Savant scrapped at the moment, unless Joey attacks him of all people. Mostly, we'll have to align with Joey down the line and let him create opportunities for us to expand, I figure. Not a path towards victory, but none lead there anymore -- either of dtay or Joey will win this game.

Queued up a market in Dragonish Sicil, queued up military in most other places (some frigates, too, for potential use against Savant/JR4 rather than Krill). I'm at a loss what to do with our workers, as every tile is roaded or improved by this point, so I'm mostly prebuilding farms over workshops, workshops over farms, and mines over windmills, in case we ever need to reconfigure broadly.

Moved six 10XP knights from our northern stack to the west. We have two galleons (lol), a frigate and a caravel in the western sea, which doesn't mean much, but maybe Joey will attack JR4 and we could use the units there. Savant will never attack us while at war with JR4, and we can't attack him since if Gavagai failed to capture more than two cities with that much more power, we'd just get stuck and dtay would notice.