GeneralKilCavalry and thestick talk it out

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Nvm, we need machinery first, and we can build stables in lodi to have 2 promo war elephants.

We get 2000 beakers to trade soon. CS, with both prereqs filled is a 3.5 turn tech (3 turns at max, 1 turn at surplus). We'll have it one by turn 127. Then, 3 turns of gold saving and we can trade with TBW, grab engineering.

[thestick]

T120 Report

Pikes don't require Machinery, right? Or was that changed in Krillmod?

What's the point of black dot, north of Marengo?

Definitely agree that Engineering is a tech we should get after CS, maybe even before CS if the other alliance beelines to Guilds. Paranoia says we should watch out for SD and Cairo invading with knights T135.

If we had spare beakers, I'd toy with going for Theology for Theocracy and Formation pikes out of the box...

   

Other team has Feudalism and Machinery so can research Guilds, which is worrying.

In domestic news, we're sending more settlers to the islands. Any plans to sneak this Galley south of Rome so that we can keep it out of SD's sight?

   

Random shot of Marengo, finally getting chopped out of the jungle.

   

Graphs.

   

   

   

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Because of the ocean tiles, this is the fastest way to get the galley across

[thestick]

T123 Report

SD is whipping out an army. Probably. His score dropped 67 points this turn, for some high number of whips. His power is rising, and from the demos, he slipped from 2nd to 3rd in Crop Yield (because on the graphs, he's still 2nd, but on the Demos, we've risen to 2nd in Crop Yield).

I'm guessing he's either whipping out a bunch of catapults to prepare for a cat/mace conquest when he hits CS (he has Machinery already), or he's whipping out HAs to mass-upgrade to knights.

We're building War Elephants out everywhere to defend against knight invasion. If he attacks with catapults it'll be a slugfest since we don't have any catapults/HAs of our own. Hope we can somehow stagger the SD/Cairo NAPs.

In other news, CS comes in 3 turns, while the Golden Age comes in 10 turns. I'm starting to toy with Engineering over CS, a. because the Golden Age won't come for 10 turns, so we should be able to squeeze in another tech and b. a catapult attack should be slow enough that we can hold at Arcole unless Cairo piles in, so knights are the big thing we need to defend against. Of course, I have a naturally nervous disposition, and I have a habit of jumping at shadows... Do you think WEs are enough to defend against knights? Not very familiar with Medieval era warfare.

Any way we can squeeze out a missionary to get Hinduism in Smolensk to get the copper/horses?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Superdeath is whipping like a mad-man, but maybe for once it's the right thing to do.


Golden age in 5 turns. Preserving Abukir and Lodi is essential.

We have a T135 NAP with SD and Cairo. SD seemed very... concerned when signing it, and wanted a T140 one in fact. T135 will give enough time to react to him invading gavagai, which I find very likely. Invading us... less so.


Made a really stupid fucking mistake here. Should've scouted the fish, but oh well. City is building lighthouse, a worker will be ferried over in 6 turns. Another settler is coming here as well. This city is making 12GPT out of the box - thanks trade routes and colossus! Wish the luxury here was something other than spices but oh well. Praet will explore this land further.


This is what I mean. SD is surely whipping a load of xbows and horsearchers, probably intending to promote them to knights. Hopefully, he's making the usual stack comp mistakes he makes, although maybe he's mixing in enough pikes/cats to make this problematic. We cannot possibly match this until our golden age, which will give us 3 turn WE's in 2 cities, and 2-turners in the capital and Lodi. I am whipping some of the smaller cities.

If only we had 20 more turns. We'd explode in city count, as the island chain out there seems pretty significant.

[thestick]

Quick note, SD is in Slavery/Vassalage, while Cairo is in HR/Serfdom/Vassalage. Good news, Cairo is not attacking, since he's not in Slavery and he lacks Construction.

Good thing Eylau is a spike strip. It can't be one-turned due to the jungles/forests, so if SD rolls up we just retreat everything back to Arcole. Or something like that?

I haven't been watching the games too closely, what are SD's usual mistakes? How does crossbows having collateral in this version of the mod affect the defense considerations? Are Longbows worth building for our hilltop western cities, since they have defensive bonuses while WEs don't?

Bad news, SD has Guilds and I just realized Engineering requires Machinery as a prereq, so no pikes for us. Silver lining, he doesn't have Engineering, so no pikes. Machinery will take ~6 turns at breakeven and Engineering ~10 turns, ignoring the GA boost. I guess we save up gold until T130, trade for Machinery, then full-bore Engineering?

Maybe we can road the hill 1NW of Toulon to make sure we have tactical options?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Engineering should be a 3-turn tech in the golden age we pop turn 151.

Having a few longbows is essential for defense.

I’ll send workers off for road duty for now, most tile improvements are done in the last few cities anyhow.

[thestick]

T130 Report

We swapped CS for Machinery with TBW as planned, and are now going full-bore towards Engineering.

   

Good news, we are the only ones with CS. Bad news, SD has Engineering for Pikes, so if he upgrades some Spears to Pikes our WE army could be in a bit of a pinch. More bad news, Gavagai lacks Feudalism, Machinery, and Engineering, so if SD has a knight army, he could be in trouble. Does the NAP with SD and Cairo still expire T135?

   

Good news, Cairo's still in Serfdom. Bad news, Gavagai's in Caste System   . Still have no idea why SD didn't convert to Buddhism...

   

   

   

Looks like Raskol is starting to build up an army of his own. Probably gunning for TBW. This game looks ready to heat up in a hurry...

Have not checked the defences against a stack of knights against Marengo yet. If I remember correctly, we're vulnerable there, but will double-check later.

The good news, we still have island expansion prospects, which will pay off quickly with GLH and Colossus.

   

Demos. If SD's attack fizzles, we've probably climbed up to 2nd place. Famous last words, of course.

   


The barb spawning rules mean that as long as we don't move our praet forward, no barb land units can spawn on our uncovered tiles, right?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

the galley should be able to barb bust those few tiles. I also gave gav feud, and TBW machinery. Golden age starts next turn, which means 4 turn engineering.

Edit: Should I convince TBW to give us aesthetics + lit for the heroic + national epic? Or should we conserve his tech trading points for T150?

We need to also figure out a way to efficiently split up the tech tree between us two. I'm thinking we grab the naval techs + paper (guilds we'll do on our own) and trade those for phil and banking? Not really sure what the next 20 turns have in store, and the geopolitical situation seems gloomy. Cairo made a mistake allying with raskol/sd, as he has no chance to win, but has a chance to win with us against the other two, and would probably stand to really benefit from splitting raskol with TBW.

[thestick]

T131 Pre-Report

The headline:

   

   

SD took two cities from Gav.

SD is flashing knights:
   
He should be able to see into Marengo with that Sentry Chariot? Maybe we could build a Castle there to prevent a knight swarm from rushing Marengo -> Toulon and bisecting our empire...

   

Also, queued up Longbow in Friedland and Barracks in Smolensk, definitely change them if you'd like.

Suspect intervention vs SD will not be profitable, since our army is defence oriented with WEs everywhere.

Peacenik self says to take advantage of being the only ones with bureaucracy and hope that SD crashes against cats/elephants, since despite his low demos Gavagai is a good player and Krill has shown that massed HAs/cats can make conquest unprofitable. Build pikes to deter SD, then try to out-tech him to cavs? We have a leg up with CS and expansion and the water wonders. Or try to get a diplomatic breakthrough so we can run a successful 1v1?

Will think geopolitics/tech later.