Babylon's Nebula of Cheddar(Phi/Ind)

[The Black Sword]

I screwed up my GG upgrade. I thought a warrior could upgrade to a sword, but best he can do is an axe instead. Should have got me a super crossbow.  I spent the other 10xp on a super galley. If the Pin attack works out I'm thinking of using it to surprise OH up here:


End of turn I took top power spot from Pindi, my scouting GM found his stack of 16 HA, currently on the here sign.



But not much other defenses around.


OH just discovered Calendar, so I'm expecting the MoM soon. He was also looking for a fish for fish offer, I didn't see much benefit in putting him at ease and he did a lot of whipping last turn.

I'm halfway through my golden age, so it's time to apportion some of its value to the Phi trait. Here's my approach:
68hpt *8t = 544h centred around T87
78gpt * 8t = 624g centred around T87
30gpp (only counting those that will be realised soon) *8t = 240gpp. Assuming a very conservative trade of 500gpp for 700g, that's 336g extra.

Those yields are what I'm getting this turn in the middle of the GA, I wasn't bothered counting every turn for a slightly more accurate account.

Phi gets 3/5 of this value.

I'm just going to edit my trait valuations into the first post rather than keep posting update of it.

[The Black Sword]

Actually, since GAs are a bit of an outlier in terms of GP value, maybe I should just not count the GA at all for Phi value. Then I would increase the proportion of the value of the two GPs on either side of the GA that I allocate to Phi instead.

[The Black Sword]

I offered Pin peace for Dunk'n'Dolphin. I could possibly push on and take Flex Falcon, but that would just leave me in the same position Pin was before. I couldn't go any further and I'd be culture crushed, just waiting for him to get the collateral to retake the city.

I imagine he'll be happy with peace, so what do we do with all these troops? 

I revolted into HR/Vassalage/Serfdom/OR and Buddhism. I'm thinking about piggy-backing off Pin's AP build, and build Sankore myself if I get the chance.

I also missed a 50/50 Engineer vs Scientist roll. Might have to build an Academy with the GS, even if it's a little late.

[The Black Sword]

Pin doesn't want to accept peace. I think he's using the war as cover to attack someone else, so I'm pulling my troops out of the area too.

The two options for attack are OH or Gav.

OH has completed all the wonders I was planning for : MoM, Parth, SoZ, TGL. Surely he's about to throw a golden age and run away with things(I realise I've been saying this to myself for about 20t now!  ). The best course of action is to try make him whip all his pop away so he can't do that I think. 

But I think Pin is going after Gav. In that case I think I prefer to split Gav and try dogpile a stronger OH later. The other scenario is Pin becomes the leader, I kill OH's game, he makes sure to kill mine in return.

In any case, I've committed to trying to raze Gup X in the north and go after the Ethiopian fishing nets in the East. But I don't know where my land troops are going yet.

[The Black Sword]

I hate everyone. 



Thanks Sid, you know I didn't mean it.  

[The Black Sword]

This felt good, won the 50/50 and got over 100 gold out of it too.

Gav pulled his boats back, presumably since I spotted them and could cover my cities. 

However OH still threw his golden age, and I don't think losing 1 size 7 city will be that much of a hindrance. I sort of regret not sending my land units in his direction too. But it takes so long to reposition one movers.



I decided to pull the boat back after the raze rather than continuing down this strait to see what I could find. If I go past Milennium Falcon, I could get trapped by a whipped trireme and my 4MP boat is too important for that.



I don't want to leave him any boats in this sea either, and can pillage his nets here.



In the East, my cultural control of ocean tiles allows me to enter them and not be attacked. So this 1 trireme can hold multiple units in place while reinforcements arrive. The culture setup means I can probably pillage at least one his nets here.



My units are making their way towards a potential attack on Sardis. OH seems willing to give peace, so I might give it to him just before such an attack. I should be at Knights in less than 10t. I have two GPs coming out in quick succession with 50/50s for Merchants or GE's who can trade mission or bulb Guilds respectively. If they both miss I probably throw the second golden age slightly earlier than planned to get there. I'm pre-building HAs in the weaker hammer cities already, and getting the HE online.

I really expected Pindicator to attack someone by now with his big stack of HA. Maybe he's just content to build religious infra though, his hammers are going up.

Fundamentally, I don't like this position I'm in with a hammer advantage compared to a bpt advantage OH has. It feels like it's a lot easier to counteract a hammer advantage via a dogpile when I try to gain some land. In contrast when you exploit a GNP advantage to tech up, you just need to defend your current holdings.

After Guilds I want to get to Banking for Mercantilism which will be great. If Pin is still dittering on Sankore I will race him from there. But Merc is probably too good to delay for me.

[Amicalola]

Nice job beating back the Aztecs, that looked like a tough setback but it seems you've turned it around already.

I noticed RtR doesn't change trebs other than the tech, but you have built those instead of catapults. Seems the opposite in a lot of CtH games, where people build catapults even with the option of trebuchets later on. I'm curious why you went for trebs?

[The Black Sword]

I bulbed an early machinery, so I already had access to Trebs and never really needed to go to Construction. Apart from Trebs it also has War Elephants, but I didn't need those to retake the temporarily-Aztec cities and while they would have been useful for a Gav or OH invasion I decided I was close enough to Knights that I'd prefer to just get them faster instead.

If I have access to both I usually do build catapults since they're more cost efficient though.

[The Black Sword]

Since the last update I peaced out with OH, since I couldn't do anymore easy damage to him. I've still been gathering my 1-movers by Gav:




I don't want to trigger his whipping frenzy until I hit Guilds and can devote my entire civ to building Knights. So even though I have quite the power advantage I'm not really utilising it yet.

I missed 2 slightly favorable conflips for Merchants/Engineers and got a GS and GP instead. We'll throw our 2nd golden age next turn, and we should be able to just reach Banking and Mercantilism by the end of it. I could have gone earlier, and generated a GM to bulb Banking instead, but it wouldn't be a 100% clean pool and missing would be disastrous, so the delay felt safer.

Pindicator teched Paper, so Sankore fantasies are off the table after that. I have judiciously built a number of AP monasteries anyway though. Probably Nationalism and the Taj(into Constitution) is the next most tempting target but that's a long way out so we have time to think about it. I should hit Guilds EOT102 and I've got plenty of HA's waiting in the queues to be upgraded, along with what I think is the only Heroic Epic in the world right now. 



The treaty with Pindicator will be up soon, and I'm transitioning some LBs over from other fronts. Plus there will be knights popping up all over the place, and I expect him to be positioning his mounted units to vulture Gav. If he does, I should be able to get the units back to OH border cities by the time that treaty is up.

[The Black Sword]

It's finally attack time next turn. The main thrust is at Sardis:


13 Knights, a GG axe and the boat will supply a pair of crossbows and a pair of trebs. Hopefully that is enough to take the city without help from the slow 1 movers.



Secondary attack at Ergili. A knight to take the city, a Longbow to defend it. And the GG galley can continue to ferry over a pair of units every turn if he doesn't manage to kick me out straight away.

Gav is bottom power and it hasn't been moving for a while. Still, he should have a decent stack of Horse archers about somewhere from his previous skirmishes. I think I estimated about 20 decent axe/HA level units based on his power rating. It depends how many are on the borders and how many congregated together.


Without the golden age, I don't think I'm first in anything besides power btw.

Both Pin and Cornflakes will see my knights this turn, so there will be vultures elsewhere. OH has also built up a little bit of power. I'm still a bit worried about an attack from him and Pin while I'm engaged with Gav. Nobody else has knights yet at least, though Corn should be turning tech on for them soon. I'm going to continue pumping military for a while yet, even if some newly discovered Banks look tempting.

I recently got research visibility on OH and he's picked up Mono and now Priesthood. Those are pre-reqs for Philosophy, so I expect he's gearing up for a Liberalism run.

Also, Mercantilism will be a lot of fun next turn.