Babylon's Nebula of Cheddar(Phi/Ind)

[The Black Sword]

So hopefully my score points won't freak everyone out and start a dogpile. For the moment I am continuing to build MoM along Pin's border,

That statement aged quickly.



I wasn't believing his war with OH until I saw some WW, but 20 HAs is also way more than I expected. I guess I was a bit too much on autopilot. We have 7 units with odds but that won't be enough, average losses were simply 7 HAs in my sims.

I'm pretty sure he could take Jackie, House and Chuck if he wanted and we couldn't stop him before he gets to the capital. If I can stop him there though, all my cities are settled with overlapping culture, and I have access to collateral in the form of trebuchets, so I might be able to take the cities back in the long run. It would be fairly crippling however, and there is the question over whether anyone else is about to join in. Still, if no-one else does that has the potential to be a pretty bad outcome for Pindicator too.

I offered him Jackie Chan for peace, which would be a great outcome for me (because the MoM is half-built in House). But I suspect it doesn't reign me in enough for him to accept. Still, he gets a free city with infra and keeps his stack intact to go use on someone else, it's worth a shot.

[The Black Sword]

Cornflakes took some low odds potshots at Firefly with a super-galley, which fortunately didn't work out. He also had a chariot stack in the north that pillaged a pasture, but I had enough spears and they weren't going to get anywhere. So he wasn't much of a worry, but it was still very nice of him to peace out this turn. He could have at least pillaged a net and held some of my units in forked coastal cities. It's not like I was going to have the ability to hurt him back either.

Looks like OH is thinking about being annoying too. I really wish I knew who the other person with Horse Archers was, I think it's Gav, but I need to be careful on my OH border if it is him.



Pin asked for Jackie for peace, but I'm feeling quite decent about the situation now, so I don't see a reason to give him my culture when I'm not getting anything out of it. I'll be curious to see after the game whether he feels he can keep these two, or if he was just trying to reel me in. I should have enough mass to start Trebs and Swords.

Meanwhile, looks like OH is going to GE the Great Library and will probably build up quite a lead if me and Pin grudge it out.

I have a new Great Scientist who probably needs to be used on a golden age now, it's not going to improve much for a while. The only 2 questions are if I wait 6t to see if I get an Engineer next for the MoM, and whether I can make it to Feudalism (for Serfdom/Vassalage) before the end of the GA. I also got a GG from the whole ordeal, so Aes-> Lit is looking even more appealing for the Heroic Epic too.

[The Black Sword]

So we managed to peace out with everyone, and can take stock.





We still look competitive at least. I'm expecting OH's output to explode soon, surprised it hasn't already. At some stage I think we're going to have do something about that, but I want to get my cities back first while I still have the cultural advantage there.

We have to give up on the MoM if this next Great Engineer doesn't work out. Really unfortunate but we can't delay the golden age 15t to wait for it to build, and we need the hammers for an army too.

I had to do some whipping vs the dogpile, so we can grow quite a bit of pop over these few turns. That made me feel ok about delaying the golden age to see if I hit the Great Engineer. It would bulb Feudalism instead of the MoM, which is also really good, but MoM would be better. We'll throw the GA after seeing the GP, and get to Feud before it finishes to revolt into HR/Vassalage/Serfdom/(maybe OR?).

In the meantime, I'm building Sword/Treb/Crossbows during the GA to try take back the cities from Pindicator. The round of Trebs come first since I'll only hook the Iron next turn. (Iron location is terrible btw, it's under the village 1S of my cap, at least RtR allows the village to provide the resource without replacing it with a mine). 

I didn't see how I could do anything more than hassle Pin with Triremes during the 10t of peace anyway. So I might as well give him the treaty and get the most out of my GA.

[NobleHelium]

Player surprises mapmaker by building a dry plains cottage very early in the game, gets surprised in return when it becomes iron.

[The Black Sword]

Is that what you had in mind when you asked about it earlier? In hindsight I'm still pretty happy with the decision, Buffy just didn't have many tiles to work before the Moai/LH and the extra hammer was a breakpoint on the Moai build too.

I definitely don't pay that much attention to iron locations when I make maps btw. So it was sort of a general woe is me complaint rather than aimed at the mapmaker.

[NobleHelium]

No, I did not remember where I put the iron, the question was asked without any ulterior information. I put the resources in what I thought are reasonable locations without specifically making any detailed plans for how players might build their cities and improve them, since such projections are generally not going to pan out.

[The Black Sword]

I rolled a Merchant for the GP. Not as good as a GE but not as bad as a Prophet either. He'll go on another trade mission, which is only another 700 gold. It's a bit disappointing because I'd usually expect to be able to get 1100g at this stage of the game, but it's still a good deal for 400gpp. So the specialists I was working were getting 13gpt from the gpp points.

I can golden age next turn and head towards Feudalism. The Merchant gold puts me very close to Knights too, might think about going there first before Literature. 

Pin went on another whipping spree, I thought it might be monk infrastructure to go with his AP build, but top power is increased this turn. Not sure if this is targeted at me or somewhere else. I'm keeping completed units in the queue for the moment.

In a far away land another Great Engineer was born. This is a great world for Engineers. Seems most likely to be OH but could also be Cornflakes.

[The Black Sword]

I had a think about delaying my unit completion for Vassalage, or just setting up the attack now. Waiting would delay the attack at least 6 turns, so I decided against it.

Mainly, I wonder whether Pin will just chop all my forests, whip the cities dry, and then evacuate when my units show up. In which case I want to attack ASAP. 

Delaying also gives him time to get to potentially get Construction for catapults or Code of Laws for caste system. He might be able to fix the culture issue in Jackie Chan with artists. 

So the plan is to go in on T90 with roughly 8 Trebs, 13 spears, 3 Crossbows and 5 swords.

[NobleHelium]

I can't say I've ever seen 13 spears participate in an attack before.

[The Black Sword]

It will be a first for me too! 

It feels like you should see it more often after a HA attack. I had to whip a bunch of defensive spears, and Pin still has a large contingent of horchers that need to be countered.

Gav also flashed a HA at me, so I now know for sure that neither Pin nor OH has any themselves and spears are less necessary on the other borders.