[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[williams482]

do yall think we try to peace out w GT in exchange for some gold if nauf does buy aksum off of us? i doubt they'd take it but if they did we'd both make a profit and show the seriousness of our commitment to nauf

If you think Nauf would view that as reaffirming commitment instead of allowing GT to more efficiently deploy against one opponent, of course we should do it. It's not like GT actually has any useful places to put soldiers except for inside their own capital, unless they are planning some sort of convoluted defense-in-depth setup, or an attempt to recapture one of their lost cities. 

I doubt GT would accept, but if they do it's free money. Why not.

[El Grillo]

Does GT even have any gold left to pay with?

[ljubljana]

it looks like GT is dedicating some units to holding their iron source (i guess they're still making xbows or something in there) and to prevent us from stepping on some of their hills. but idk if that's correct.... probably the best they could do, vs either of us, is just to stack on the capital, maybe attscking out if we give an opportunity. they definitely can't retake their cities i think, we are at the point where aksum probably just gets captured if thwy try

believe it or not, they do have gold to pay with! they have 400g just sitting in the bank.... i was thinking they must be close to striking by now, but it's not even going down all that quickly.... i guess that's agg for you? maybe in conjunction w occasional wealth builds in a very strong hammer capital?

[williams482]

Another argument for peacing out, regardless of compensation, is that it signals to both Ginger and Dreylin that you are that much more ready for a fight on your eastern border. Dreylin presumably already knows this, but for Ginger, it should make it just a bit less likely that you (instead of Dreylin) absorb the full force of Ginger's doomstack.

If GT is losing money you certainly can't ask for all of it, but it sounds like 200g would easily last them the duration of their likely existence in this game.

[ljubljana]

Forgot. Logged in. Remembered. Logged out.

rare card? that sounds just vague enough to be the blue eyes white dragon

ok opening the stress box

Turn 150 (...really?)

ok who's first



self-explanatory (though this better not mean they view our earlier, 30 turn NAP as now invalid...)



i fear we either failed to get our point across or the asking price was too high



LOL it is so funny that i sent this exact demand to GAV of all people last turn.... at least this has an easy response which is this



of course i can't cancel deals with them NOW as that would spoil the fun... or the surprise of the fun. not that we actually have reasonable expectation that they'll be surprised

well, now what? send nauf a lower asking price? just take the city ourselves? last turn's sims had me convinced that the latter plan had us walking into a death trap - is that still operative? with ging hitting gunpowder in TWO turns and looking highly likely to just smash through to kirishima?

[ljubljana]

calling a vote here: who thinks we should swap to slavery at the anarchy turn now? if we are going to burn a stack of cats going for aksum ourselves, i feel grossly unprepared for ginger's push, and the only way to become so seems to be to whip out an enormous pile of units at kirishima, wakamotoharu, kotozakura, anywhere with pop really. that will dunk our economy FIRMLY into the toilet for the forseeable future, obviously, but is not the alternative that we lose at least kirishima and takayasu if they go for them?

i guess the "alternative" is we stay in serfdom and HOPE they go for dreylin, and if we see signs that we are the target we start whipping then. but if we are wrong that costs us a ton of time. i think we are only stopping ginger at the border if we can greet them with a 30-unit STACK of longbows and friends in these cities, and right now we are at 10.... and our economy is of course just as toilet-bound if our best economic city (why does this have to be RIGHT on ginger's border??) gets razed...

[ljubljana]

aksum position this turn



gt's gold stash, in case we want to try the MUCH slower but more efficient route of death-by-unit-striking on them



hahaha oh fuck you guys. when it rains

open the (second half of the) turn, halfway through superdeath's move, to






i decided not to try to sell aksum on consecutive turns, for fear of being annoying.... i may try to sell again for 350 or 400 next turn though. lmk what yall think

i am also strongly considering a swap to slavery (with anarchy) next turn, when we will have enough gold in the bank to make it to guilds even if after the swap and subsequent mass-whip we are only at about breakeven economically. with all our units locked into a siege at aksum this seems like the PERFECT time for ginger to stab us and crush our border cities, which will get castles in time but only have about 10 LBs between them as of now.... as opposed to dreylin whose military, weak though it is, will at least be ready to go and right there on the ottoman front.

overview shot of our empire's halting regrowth since we swapped to serfdom, to show how much pop we would have to whip



what do you guys think? is that an overreaction? counterargument is that if SD is going to obliterate gav they will be joining ginger in the front-runner slot again and maybe we need to go for the variance play of hoping ginger goes all-in against dreylin and then TRYing to hold them off while still in serfdom and without mass-whipping again...

or we could ask ginger for a 10-turn NAP extension to try to sus out who they are targeting.... but i think it's likely to be viewed as scummy to extend for 10 turns while planning an attack in 15, so i am hesitant to go that route

[williams482]

My instinct is "no" on immediate slavery swap. You don't just need units, you need tech: tech you are only going to get if you can keep your economy in tolerable shape. Eating a turn of anarchy to crash your economy to whip out a bunch of obsolete and/or predominantly defensive units in the face of a possible but hardly guaranteed attack into your existing prepared defenses, boosted by a wonder you chopped out pretty much exactly so you could hold those cities with fewer defenders.

Slavery now cuts the chances of you being invaded now. I wager it also substantially cuts into your chances of winning an offensive war (with outside help) against Ginger, and cuts your chances of actually winning even further.

Chill.

[Commodore]

That empire overview actually made me MORE ignorant of the status of your empire.

[El Grillo]

We really need some kind of shortcut for [toggle sign visibility]. Maybe it would make sense to include it with the [bare map] or [no interface] toggles.