Let`s see if Wetbandit wants to work with us. I`m still very much playing to win this game and sometimes you have to take some chances in order to achieve that. A swap of alliances does entail some risk as I`m sure that the alarm bells are ringing for Mr. Cairo once he plays his turn and sees that he doesn`t have OBs with us (or a DP) anymore. He might even decide to do a preemptive strike but that`s unlikely as my read on Mr. Cairo is that he`s very much a rational player that is playing for the win and doesn`t often do random attacks.
Mr. Cairo turned up with an offer of Open Borders. Shrug, we just canceled that deal and I can`t see a compelling reason to accept. Offer declined. I though about making a Mackoti-style demand of gold per turn for OBs but, sadly, Mr. Cairo is researching at full speed and doesn`t have any gpt to offer.
Mr. Cairo and Superdeath re-signed their Defensive Pact. They must be worried about something. Also, Superdeath started a GA and swapped to Free Religion (finally!) and Free Market. Okay, he obviously needs to find a way of getting back into contention and going into builder civics is a good idea. Well, as long as no one attacks him of course. Btw, Wetbandit accepted our Horse-for-Horse deal which is interesting as it shows that he`s still willing to work with us.
I haven`t posted all the graphs for a while but it`s important to note that Mr. Cairo is building lots of units at the expense of growth. He`s surely working a ton of workshops to build all those units too.
Interesting that we're telegraphing a plan to attack Mr. Cairo right now - particularly, telegraphing it to Mr. Cairo himself. If we do plan to attack him in the near future, we closed borders (and ended our Defensive Pact) too soon. If we intend to attack someone else, there might be ways to make use of (or to be bitten by) this: What amounts to a feint in Mr. Cairo's direction. Of course, I imagine part of the intention here is to inform other would-be-attackers (especially wetbandit) that if they lead an attack on Mr. Cairo, we will join in. (Not the whole intention though; I definitely have noticed the trend toward warring with somebody soon, hopefully for profit, but for fun at least!)
Hesperides stole a couple of tiles from Thaliard in order to improve our chances of landing Pentagon. We`ll have a roughly 35 % chance of landing an Engineer in Lords in just three more turns which could rush Pentagon. We could use that GP for a Golden Age though.
@RefSteel: I don`t think Wetbandit assumes we`re going to war now - but these like-for-like deals are deliberately vague for a reason. I`m trying to signal to Wetbandit that we have to do something to stop Mr. Cairo from winning by culture and the sooner we can get an alliance going, the greater the chances of winning. I do agree that those deals can backfire spectacularly if Wetbandit decides to stab us or Mr. Cairo decides to attack us preemptively but we`re behind and have to take some risks imo. Wetbandit also canceled Open Borders with Mr. Cairo (and is currently researching Steel) so that`s something. I think that Mr. Cairo is somewhat nervous of the potential of getting dragged into a two front war. We`re up the second in power but still quite far behind Mr. Cairo. I still think we should be able to overtake him eventually but we`re not ready to go to war just yet.
We`re saving gold on Railroad for another turn as that tech is prohibitively expensive.
For civics have we thought about running environmentalism? I think it might be better than caste system right now because even though we would lose 1H off our workshops we could in theory work a lot more of them with the health resources. Especially since in some cities it will be an immediate +4 food.
Mr. Cairo has a crazy amount of Frigates around. I counted something like 11 (and surely he`s got plenty more in the fog). Um, maybe we should have prioritized our navy over building Wealth? Lords started a Drydock as we need a presence on the eastern sea and our cities will be in danger if we ever want to attack Mr. Cairo.
We`re second in power and slowly catching up with the leader. As we`re not the only ones with Infantry I moved a few guerrilla Infantry to our exposed coastal cities. You can`t be too careful at this point of the game. We`re probably moving our entire mobile army into Thaliard soon as we`ll get access to railroad in a few turns and can send units to either front line quickly.
@BaII: The F3 screen says that Environmentalism gives an economic boost but nothing to help our unhealthiness issues. I`ve actually not used that civic a lot but it did give health for every forest in the bfc in beyond the sword iirc. Environmentalism requires Liberalism which is a prerequisite for Communism if we decide to go that way. Also, environmentalism competes with Bureaucracy/Feudalism/Nationhood in this mod - not Caste.
Our two main stacks aren`t really impressive or anything as we have (too many?) units defending our border cities. Thaliard might be described as a backline city but basically every other city can be 1 turned from foreign culture. Our buildup is slowly taking form. We`re making something like 4 units per turn now and I think that number will improve over the coming turns. We can`t seem to catch up with Mr. Cairo`s power, though.
We`ll finally get our next GP end of turn. As I mentioned a while ago we have a decent chance of landing Pentagon if the rng decides to cooperate for once. That last Merchant from Antiochus really hurt our chances of snowballing quickly.
Railroad will complete in four more turns. Then we should think about going for Military Science or perhaps even Scientific Method - Physics. Airships are still very good at gathering intelligence (and are hard to counter for us).
(November 30th, 2019, 12:48)JR4 Wrote: @RefSteel: I don`t think Wetbandit assumes we`re going to war now - but these like-for-like deals are deliberately vague for a reason.
Oh, I agree! I don't think what you did diplomatically was a mistake - I don't think I know enough about the game state to comment very intelligently on strategy right now. I was mostly trying to think through the decision to end our deals with Mr. Cairo, and how this informs him that we're no longer aligned with him, and also potentially threatens an attack. Once again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing! It looks like it's helped to get wetbandit into our camp (now that he's realized who the real threat is, and that it's not us) and it may help to put someone else off their guard if they notice we've realigned against Mr. Cairo and think we're preparing to attack him. And it may persuade Mr. Cairo to put more resources into defenses that he could be putting into cultural infrastructure of various kinds.
(December 1st, 2019, 10:50)JR4 Wrote: @BaII: The F3 screen says that Environmentalism gives an economic boost but nothing to help our unhealthiness issues. I`ve actually not used that civic a lot but it did give health for every forest in the bfc in beyond the sword iirc.
Actually it gave a flat +6 health, and an additional +2 health with Public Transit, but that doesn't matter here since RtR took away the health bonus (there are no +health civics in RtR as far as I can tell).
(December 2nd, 2019, 12:29)JR4 Wrote: Railroad will complete in four more turns. Then we should think about going for Military Science or perhaps even Scientific Method - Physics. Airships are still very good at gathering intelligence (and are hard to counter for us).
MilSci is necessary for Commandos (which are a long way off, as noted) - apart from that, are we targeting Ships of the Line? Granted, 'clads are even slower, and we're still a ways off from Destroyers, but a full tech seems like a high price to pay for the right to build SotLs unless it's significantly cheaper than I think.
One other note on aligning against Mr. Cairo: If we and wetbandit have him worried about watching his back, he's probably less likely to take advantage of having double Donovan Zoi's power rating. This may already have helped a great deal, as it looks like DZ just now arrived at Assembly Line!
Mr. Cairo rushed Pentagon. Sigh, that wonder would have been good for us. And the fact that Mr. Cairo managed to get it ahead of us makes it even worse. I`m not feeling good about our chances of winning this game any more as our buildup still hasn`t resulted in us catching up in power. Mr. Cairo is still miles ahead in soldiers and his control of the eastern sea is a major problem. We just don`t have enough build queues to make a credible amount of units quickly. Are we desperate enough to launch an all-out attack on Mr.Cairo? Maybe.
We got a Priest in Lords which is okay and Escanes will eventually get us an Artist.
Our next tech is going to be important. I agree that we should think carefully about skipping Military Science as it`s basically a dead end. The two main reasons why I was keen on that tech was a) access to Sotl and b) swapping to Police State. I`m really unsure what to research if we`re not going that way. Any suggestions?
This kind of defending in the industrial age is.. not optimal. Even a couple of Chariots would have a decent chance of taking that size 15 border city. Surely, Donovan and Cornflakes are at good terms but you should not rely on goodwill alone.
