[PB84 Mjmd] Bounding Main

[Qgqqqqq]

Caught up. Interesting events indeed. I do enjoy your reports on coop games so happy to get updates of them (perhaps when your blood pressure cools!)

[Mjmd]

T71

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.

Tarkeel abandoned the city, which was what I thought would happen even if he had a second impi. I did not expect him to know about / go for Rolling Up Down, but would have been visibile via culture since it expanded. Doesn't really matter the axe and warrior previously covering workers can get back and the 2 axes not used to raze the city can cover Day of the Clipper.



There was some discussion about where the workers should go. Scooter wanted to have them south of Day of the Clipper to surprise ambush the impi, but I pointed out if I lose that high odds fight I would have 2 exposed workers and a city with only a warrior on defense. Not super likely mind, but I've done my damage I think its ok to play it safe. Let him know I could ambush him plus / or could cover the city and hopefully he just takes peace even if he doesn't take the offers I sent him this turn (I think I accidentally sent twice). Plus 2 turns on a flat land cottage that is shared is far more useful than a hill cottage. I also left the axe in Day of the Clipper at 4/35 and started a just in case spear to overflow into when I two pop whip later. 

Hopefully things get boring and I will pick back the story of the boreal coop game.

[scooter]

I really would like to know why they thought that city was a good idea to plant. I imagine their view is that DayOfTheClipper is a similarly forward city, and so what's the difference. If I'm trying to squint and figure out the rationale, that's what I've got.

The difference is creative, axes, and getting there much quicker of course. What I cannot figure out is why they didn't simply plant 1N which you surely would have let go. They didn't need the cow for it to be a productive border city.

Or failing all of that, you simply cannot plant that city with 0 archers and 0 axes.

[Mjmd]

T75

Note GNP actually went up to 58 as beaver finished this turn although it won't be roaded for another 2 causing capital to be unhappy for 1 turn.



Most people seem to be ish fulfilling 7 cities by turn 75. Tarkeel will be settling 6 next turn. Scooter is correct that while I wish he would go first ring corn 1N, I will not go full war mode over it (although I do have horse hooked and he only has 2 axes defending.....) but he has at least 2 impis somewhere and that would probably mean a game long feud.

Mistakes are starting to crop up as I stopped micro at war, which is about when I stop normally although I was hoping to continue through this week. Roll Call could have taken wheat last turn, but at least I caught it and took it this turn. 

I am starting to think I should settle the last "contested" site IE the middle city soonish even though I don't want to tank my tech. I had turned on tech, but then realized it doesn't matter yet and will wait on Day of the Clipper library for that sweet extra beaker.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Fantastic demos.

[Mjmd]

- in actual game its boring trying to time things out with HG and building 6 settlers, roading to all of them, and getting currency. I mean boring reporting wise. I love it. I'll update some kind of timing estimate at some point.

Bonus content - Sadly I didn't take a lot of pictures. Skip reading if you don't care about a random coop game. 

Reusing



So when we left off bottom of page 1 of this thread, Alex had just ventured across our empire to attack. Sadly he took just 1 city and then they made peace. Afterwards we were asked to close borders so we did.

Anyways, I had built up quite an army so I decided you know what lets just go. Alex lost some stuff right and Louis is still a joke. So I did a triple prong attack. 2 prongs against Louis and over half my power against Alex.



Ya without open borders or espionage I may have underestimated Alex................ Now you may notice on the mini map / picture that heh didn't you control Berlin last time? Yes I did. I moved my army out and Louis marched his past mine to retake his old capital. Now I did still take 3 other cities off of Louis during the war. Now you may ask "heh Mjmd Alex absolutely slaughtered your army with minimal losses why didn't he invade and crush you? Well Bx took a sweet quad deer 1 wheat city off of him up north and Alex decided he wanted it back. So while I was taking Louis cities Alex was healing and then marching north. When Alex showed up outside the city Bx took we quickly just gave it to him for peace. Thus ended our second war.

So ya we had declared on them twice and while if they declare on you a million times they can eventually come to like you, if you declare on them....... So we started building up again afterwards. Have I mentioned how long I spent at 0% this game? Due to horrible terrain and my massive army Bx's org was better than my fin for a long time. 

Anyways, I had just gotten out of my hole, golden aged, helped us get to engineering for Notre Dame (Bx built as most of my forests had long ago been chopped into units / were being chopped into units). Shortly afterwards Alex attacked. And this was awkward as they had maces and crossbows and we just had crossbows at the beginning of this. Luckily Alex attacked Bx and specifically his border city SE on a hill instead of my flatland city that kind of stuck into him. I don't think I've mentioned, but those looking at mini map have probably noticed Bx is the celts. So ya while Alex had a very large stack, Bx's stack while nothing compared to the number of units I've built this game, also hadn't really taken losses ever so it was pretty respectable. While Alex was bombarding Bx was also able to stuff the city further and long story short while Alex did inflict some losses even if his mini mini stack that got stuck on a resource had joined in Bx still would have held. 

Now I did do another city swap with Louis while all this was going on. I took Berlin back while he took Hamburg back on right of screenshot above. I then proceeded to have to slow march through culture to retake it. Both of these took some serious effort from cats and my poor swords / crossbows facing maces and crossbows. But we with Alex's stack gone, Louis sucking, and us getting maces it was time for the long slog of finally ending this. Giving peace to let Alex rebuild was not an option. So through awful war wariness we conquered. 

Afterwards once I had regrown my pop and assigned all those old military units to MP to get a descent happy cap I was finally able to long term contribute and become our primary techer (bx's land is crap).

Meanwhile in the rest of the world Justinian and Isabelle were doing very well. They got lib and were doing well in GNP thanks in large part to the Buddhist shrine. They then decided to invade Gandhi and Monte while they all still had medieval units.... They took a couple cities in the sucker punch and then got their stacks wiped. Ramesses and sitting bull then piled into Gandhi and Monte, who then got peace with Issabelle and Gandhi. Now we weren't in great shape to take advantage of this immediately. We had stopped building military as we were wrapping up prior war and obviously losses happen taking cities. We also were doing a lot of wealth building. Still we decided to gun for cannon followed by rifles (got printing press before cannon still). And we discussed attacking all 3 teams. All of them had reasons we wanted to. Ramsesses is doing culture really well. I think he has 3 cities all in the 18,000 s without turning on the slider and obviously their stacks were gone. Monte has great territory next to me and they were weak from their wars and Monte had his stacked wiped by Sitting Bull.

However, there was only 1 real choice. Justinian and Issabelle were miles ahead of us in tech and their GNP was above ours even with us building wealth. However, they had pulled a Williem. They had teched literally almost everything they could that wasn't military techs. So we got cannons, got rifling, turned off our tech, and upgraded some units really fast to hit them before they could relevant techs.



Now they did get gunpowder a few turns before we attacked, which is why we went full 0% upgrade mode. Cuirs were slightly annoying. I didn't just get to glue all those horse archers in above screenshot (although I did some of them). They would actually retake Patilipultra while my stack was marching on the capital and Bx had to retake it. I also had to pause 2nd stack at Calcutta to heal up. And they would VERY quickly get to rifles and cav. However, before that happened we had broken whatever stacks they had rebuilt and with taking some of their best cities early on they couldn't afford to upgrade all their defenders even so got to attack mixed defensive city garrisons, which while more painful then attacking muskets and longbows was easily slogged through. Monte did jump in eventually to steal a city from me, but it wasn't too bad as one of their cities was culture trapped in Ghandhi and we couldn't get to it so that one I was happy they got.

So ya we are in process of finishing them. They each have 1 city way NE left. I was trying to verify this when I accidentally clicked peace while doing so, but we decided to not reload (we allow for things we do on accident but NOT on purpose). War wariness was especially brutal this campaign as they had un-nerfed Statue of Zues. Plus with our cities starting at a good pop it felt extra painful having them start dying off. We also have some emancipation unhappiness creeping in as they weren't the only team to get it democracy (sadly they didn't finish statue before we invaded). Even when we had eventually taken Status of Zues city the war wariness was brutal. So 10 turns give us time to redeploy excess troops as military police as it will not be a fast march to kill them off as we don't' have open borders and cant' get them with Ramsesses who both cities are to the north of. I went from running 70% tech slider with a profit to losing money at 0% again. And that was with capturing Versailles early in the conquest.

We are at approximate tech parity to Ramsesses and Sitting Bull with each of us being up in different areas (they do have rifling). But ya 65 gold shrine plus the newly conquered cities coming on line we hope to be able to pull ahead and even if not to be able to out tech them we can outproduce them. Probably will be going for Dom as we do have to attack Ramsesses at some point due to his culture cities and not sure we can space race them if they turn slider on. Even though its like 7 tiles away Bx lost his only iron for a at the time due to one of the culture cities. Luckily I had a spare by then.

[Mjmd]

T87

Settled T86 - is the name too on the nose. Maybe. Marching Inland



Soooo barb holy city...... I was debating about this spot in my head way more than Scooter seemed to care. To me yes its probably obvious, but its also likely to be the most important city in the game, so some thought should be taken. Should it have gone 1E to grab sugar, well no I don't want Bing agro and I might grab it anyways (I would like). Should it have gone 1W; well Tarkeel is probably already mad at me, but still better not. I probably can't flip it now even long term. But it could have some good coverage still once the barb city is taken. Also, while I will miss working the banana, the accelerated start is nice; grow in 4 (3 in picture).



My Hanging Garden plan is in progress. My math was originally I had a worker go to a forest it didn't need to, but ah well. 

I am building Hanging Gardens, but I don't plan on prioritizing, but that is one of my likely GP cities, so having a rare type I don't have to work a bad specialist for is nice. Also, it will help get my 2nd GP person out for my first GA. My poor capital doesn't even have a UB library yet. A lot of my cities will be unhappy once HG resolves due to whipping and double whipping settlers, but hopefully can use that pop to whip markets. And obviously good for new cities.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

There's no way that barb city will flip now...

[Mjmd]

Oh ya it won't. But as Scooter pointed out how many tiles will it control once someone takes it? By that logic I should have gone 1E. If I wanted to specifically go against Tarkeel 1 W is better. 1E gets spice, but loses a grassland iron and food and production will be at a premium. That city is not a commerce city, its a mixed city, but very much lean production. Pretty much its vaguely mixed because of 1 dye and having lots of river tiles. There will only be farms there no cottages.

Either other spot agros someone though.

Forgot to mention decided to prop SD up with trade routes a while back so hopefully he can help contain Civac. The old rely on SD; never hasn't not worked sometimes nope nuh uh kinda eh blah betrayal.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

settling on hill prolly better. That spot looks hard to defend.