[SPOILERS PB71]Krill: By the numbers, when the walls fell (on everyone else)

[Krill]

Turn 125 further pictures:




superdeath declared war. Everything is set up now, if he moves his units adjacent to Cherry they die. If he pillages any of my tiles his stack dies. If he sticks to the outer ring and moves towards Commodore I do not intervene. My workers are finished in the area and are retreating.

SD has his sentry Keshik with his slowmover stack so this looks relatively straightforward. I've moved a few vultures down to play safe given that I know there are so, so many samurai not on my doorstep (literally 200K of Pindis power is in the earlier screenshot, 30K in barracks and forges, 44K in tech, 12K-ish in pop leaving around 80K spare. Rhubarb is safe for the next few turns).





Any counter invasion of SD is relatively straightforward to do. If I had two Xbows and 4 war elephants and could plant Lemon, just pivot with the HA stack to take his second city and then converge on his capital. But I don't have those units in position and I'm extremely unlikely to, so I may have to be more inventive. I need to remove his keshiks from the equation to enable trebs or cats to bombard his capital, so if SD really does run at Commodore with everything, well, we'll see what happens then.





Murder Squad captured T129? Random Killing T134? Here's a terrifying thought: what if he turned on Commodore? Commodore doesn't have HBR or Construction either and it looks like he is refusing to research either of them. Right now there is not a single player who could fight that samurai stack. I'd have to cripple myself to do it.

I need knights.

[greenline]

Do you see pindicator as a runaway if he absorbs Thoth?

[Krill]

I'm not even sure he can afford to capture Murder Squad without going negative on gpt at max tax, but capture gold might just save him.




He has 257 gold this turn, after capturing the city on T124. On T122 he had 206. He has been losing gold at max tax for the past several turns (tech visibility shows he is not researching, the time to Currency dropped due to workign scientists).

Honestly, I have no clue what is going to happen this game. Usually I can come up with some sort of rough idea (like I suggest might happen in post 275, this isn't a prediction, just one possible scenario). Here it's possible Pindicator might actually decide to capture Murder Squad and then be forced to wage war to try and not go on strike, and this leads to him taking over half the map. But if he can get to Currency wealth builds will save him. I imagine if he could reach Random Killing he can save his economy.

If I don't push, I'm pretty sure that I could get Machinery, Monarchy by that point (if I don't go CoL) and have and easy 200 gold in the bank? But that means Guilds would still be a long, long way away. But I might get to push simply due to happy cap limits and lack of good tiles to work. I really, really want Literature though, and I need Calendar for the extra happy to actually whip out knights, this also ignores the need/want for Civil Service (to be able to grow pop and feed it in preparation of knight whips). So I need to work out tech priorities.

FWIW, I can defend fine with catapults and Xbows, but I need to build them and I need a while to get the wheels turning on that (hence Literature and HE, it allows Cherry to one turn Xbows for ever).

[Krill]

SD is heading for Commodore, as expected.





I can keep an eye on troop movements from here.





That -1GNP is superdeath. You can see that everyone is slow to Currency.





Thoth is trying, and given that all the units he can whip are lower in power than Samurai his numbers must bet getting decent. But numbers alone will not be enough now the ball is rolling. I'm more interested in watching the pass to see if Pin retreats his units, I don't need to watch the war. Constant vision on the samurai stack just puts my scout at risk.





As of the end of T127 I have Sailing and Priesthood ready to complete with maximum overflow and enough gold for two turns of max research. Machinery bulb puts in 1100 beakers to a 1217, so another three turns of prep opens up the third tech to overflow from.

I got a Confucianism spread to Cherry so I have a decision to make: I could build a monastery in Cherry to spread religion to Apple, then use Apple to spread religion further (as it wants a monastery for hte science boost), or research Code of Laws and use the free missionary to spread into Apple. In either case I also need to research Meditation to open up the monastery build, and that opens up a potential fourth tech to overflow out of if I want to play safe.

So I need to decide if I want to spread, Confucianism which belongs to Bing, or my own religion, when I am not going to get a shrine unless I get a really low odds GP as the third GP. But I probably need to use that great person for a golden age, unless I somehow grab and use the Music GA for that end which precludes other options. I probably do want to just accept the Confucianism option, I even want the culture in Cherry and it can help out with spreading religion as it's my best hammer city.

With that in mind, I probably want to skip Code of Laws, except I need Civil Service for Bureau and farm spreading. I need to bulb Machinery simply because Xbows are the only way to be safe from Samurai but I need more production to manage medieval unit production, so I need to get Literature for HE and Civil Service to allow me to stockpile population to whip later. But building Xbows mean I need to clear out build queues. Olive, Apple after the forge, Plum?

But if I'm going to build SP for Theocracy, then I need Aesthetics and I want to start it sooner rather than later. I need that in Rhubarb for the culture. Rhubarb needs the aqueduct first though, so don't need Aesthetics until T135 or so.

I suspect that the tech path is going to be defined by build queues: I want Literature the turn I can start HE in Cherry, but if I am building a 60 hammer Monastery and at least 1 missionary, then I know I finish the forge eot130, catapult eot131 (to stop hammer loss), monastery eot134, missionary eot136. I kind of want to fit in the market but I might have to give that up (but from a unit perspective it makes no difference if I build it before or after HE). That means I wouldn't even want Literature until eot136 or eot140 if I went for the Market, maybe moved up a turn for due to growth etc.

Which raises the option, maybe I should get Calendar next? Research it via Meditation and Sailing overflow? Then just get Machinery with minimal overflow and save priesthood for something else in the future.

[Krill]

What the absolute fuck just happened that Pindicator gave peace and his captured city to Thoth (the only way to explain the score change)?

[Krill]

Holy mother of god what happened over there?

When I played T128:




When I opened T129:




Thoth was top power on 407K. He got a city back in a peace treay, so I suspect he is still the stronger of the two players, so he is now at 299K. Pin was around my power level at 385K plus, and the average power loss was 50K, which is spread over 6 players for a 300K drop.

We know Thoth lost slightly over 100K. But I also know that SD has not been in any battles with Commodore so the other unit losses must be Pindicator. Did Pindicator really just lose 200K worth of units? I saw 20 Samurai and 3 trebs, thats 192K in power. It matches up, but OMG.

Edit: And then I check the even log and see that both scooter/Pindicator and Thoth got a GG so yeah, that was a very, very big battle.

[Krill]

I'm going to post this comment here: I sent a sheep to sheep deal to Pindicator several turns ago, when I had a trade connection. The offer was accepted, but terminated when superdeath pillaged a road in Commodores territory. Any road I put in place directly to Pindicator will look like an aggressive move, but it wasn't me cancelling the deal. Pindicator cannot know why the deal itself got cancelled.

I'm not going to be attacking Pindicator any time soon, if at all. Whilst I feel that I have reasonable diplomatic grounds for an attack (ie he came at me first), I'm not going to attack at a time that suddenly works for me after sending the undefined "Fish-fish" deal. That would just make any future diplomatic offers I make worthless, and trust has value. Commodore is fair game though, and I really want superdeath to lose his stack so I can take his two core cities and just remove that threat, but Bing is off limits and Pin I'll probably ignore now until at least T150.

[Krill]

I think Commodore just killed SDs stack but I dont have vision and the demographics are hiding everything.

The most important thing is I am over 100K soldier points stronger than my nearest rival.

[greenline]

Who's going to invade you next?

[Krill]

I honestly have no idea what's going on, and I'm unused to having the best demographics at this stage of the game and the effective tech lead (OK, I need to actually bulb and finish Machinery, but Pindi is down Construction, Calendar and HBR as of this turn. Commodore has Monotheism and Theology but no one has Aesthetics and there is no competition for Schwedagon Paya so that's mine to build).

So, at this point, I reckon a dogpile is actually warranted. I just don't think anyone has any actual units left to invade with and I have very little left to build except units. It's weird.